Let’s talk about the options the player has for moving around the Sector! For a long time, the set of movement mechanics has been incomplete, with additions made here and there (slipstreams, unlocking the use of the Gates), but still lacking some of the options that in my mind would make up the final picture. Perhaps “final” isn’t the right word – things will certainly be tweaked as necessary – but it’s about having a more complete set to tweak, rather than what has been, until now, a partial implementation.
I’m not sure where to start with this, exactly, because this is something that pulls together a bunch of different systems, using the “Event” infrastructure (introduced in the previous blog post) to tie it all together. So, let’s just start… in HYPERSPACE!
Primarily, this is a system that interacts with slipstreams. In brief, those are temporary passages in hyperspace that can make travel much, much faster and enormously more fuel-efficient. One of the problems, though, is that it can be a little hard to plan for – there are some general indicators of where they are and where they might take you (i.e. the direction they travel in is seasonal, you can use the Neutrino Detector ability to find them, and so on), but I think for a lot of players, that doesn’t quite add up to being “enough” to make slipstreams as useful as I’d like them to be.
Technically, the next release was meant to be a “bugfixing and polish” release. It’s true that the skill system update already pushes the boundaries of that, but still, we’ve somehow ended up with some major new features, too, which will be discussed in this post. The short answer to “how did we get here” is “weeeeell, one thing led to another, and before you know it…”
I’d actually like to give a longer answer, too. The first thing I want to say, though, is that this is ok! Ultimately, it’s all stuff that was going to be in the game one way or another (though the specific form would depend on exactly how it happened), so as long as it’s added in a way that lets it fit into the existing mechanics nicely, it’s all good.
I could have held off on adding these until a later release – there’s something to be said for sticking with a plan. But also, I think it’s important to take advantage of inspiration when it strikes – and to occasionally, have some fun! Read the rest of this entry »
In an earlier post, I’d talked about terrain. An astute observer might have noticed that the terrain discussed there is all more or less normal stuff – nebluas, asteroids, etc. Nothing that’s a good fit for hyperspace, which has more of a “weird” feel.
The first question is, what’s the goal of adding terrain to hyperspace? Obviously not having any terrain there would be a bit boring; spicing things up with some variety is not a bad goal, but something more specific would help guide the design better. So: “make hyperspace travel something that can be done well or poorly by the player”. This fits with the overarching goal of terrain making travel more interesting. Unlike normal terrain – which generally makes things interesting by impacting your interactions with other fleets, i.e. hiding from someone inside a nebula – the goal for hyperspace terrain is to be interesting by itself. This fits nicely with the primary role of hyperspace as a travel medium. Read the rest of this entry »
Update: Hotfix for crashes from picking up a ship in your fleet under some circumstances and from showing the tooltip for an over-capacity crew bar is up. Please re-download the game using the links below – make sure the file you get ends with RC4.
Starsector version 0.6a is now out! You can get it here:
While that’s downloading, let’s take a look at what’s new in this release:
Hyperspace, a new star system, and a new faction
Complete combat sound overhaul
New campaign battle mechanics – use of travel drive to enter the battle space, a new battle type for chasing down escaping ships
Reworked logistics system
“Combat readiness” used to deploy ships into combat
“Logistics rating” combines fleet points and other supply-consuming expenses
New logistical support ships – Construction Rig, Ox-class Tug
Campaign UI overhaul – takes advantage of higher screen resolutions, displays more pertinent information while traveling
Improved fighter mechanics
Adjustable battle size
A ton of modability improvements
The above is a rough outline; if you’re interested, the full list of changes is here, and it’s… sizable.
I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about why 0.6a took until now to get out the door. It’s been a little over 8 months, certainly much longer than I’d like a release cycle to take. The reason for this is that almost all of the features in this release are interrelated, and so 1) are difficult to separate and 2) are dependent on each other to work well.
Except for the addition of hyperspace and a new star system, this release is dedicated to reworking how the combat and the campaign layers interact. Combat readiness is central to that, as discussed in a prior post. The new battle mechanics are inseparable from it. The logistics rating and the new fighter mechanics are, if you will, its tendrils, reaching both into the combat and the campaign.
Would it have been possible to separate out some of these? Sure. But, I don’t think introducing a feature without related mechanics that actually make it work is a good idea. Given that, the best approach was to wait until enough features were ready to make a coherent whole, which is where we are now. On the bright side, this makes the development process more efficient – the amount of placeholders, temporary UI elements, and the like is reduced significantly. So, yes, it did take a while to get here – but would have actually taken a good bit longer if I tried to force out a couple of releases along the way.
With that said, thank you for your continued support, and I hope you enjoy this release!
