During the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working more and more on content for the next release, as opposed to features. The next release is going to add four new star systems – Arcadia, Eos, Magec, and Valhalla. David has done a lion’s share of work in mapping these out and creating the backstory – and now, it’s time for these to be populated with fleets.

When adding content, a key question that comes up is how much to procedurally generate vs hand-craft. Both approaches have their pros and cons; on a very basic level, hand-crafted content is going to have higher initial quality, while procedurally generated content is going to have more replay value. It’s not a question of which approach to choose, though. Every approach lies somewhere on a continuum between the two, so the question is exactly how to mix hand-crafted and procedural components, and in what proportion – in this case, specifically as it applies to fleet creation.

Before deciding how to do something, it’s not a bad idea to figure out what it is you want to actually do. With that in mind, let’s take a look at what we actually want out of fleet creation. There are two parts to it: what ships make up a fleet, and what kinds of fleets to spawn (and where, and how often).

Fleet Composition
First, the obvious: what ships go into a fleet depends on what type of fleet it is. A trade fleet is going to need freighters, a patrol is going to need fast attack ships, and so on.

Completely unrelated screenshot of the habitation glows on Sindria, along with some backstory

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