Despite the game developed already more than 3 years - we are continue to add significant features to the core of the game which are significantly changes the gameplay. One of such changes was a galaxy map, but we have a plan to add more. First, we want to completely develop core features of the game. After that, we will start to add a lot of new content (modules, missions, events) on top of this core features, so we will be sure that new content will not be wasted next time when we will decide to redesign half of the game. What exactly we want to implement in order to make core of the game complete? Here is a list: 1. New inventory and production system 2. Heat system 3. More complex combat system 4. Complex global economy in galaxy Let's describe each from these items.

New inventory and production system

What exactly wrong with the current production system? Currently, if your ship have mining laser and engineering module (note, it is quite small modules) - you can go to nearest belt of asteroids and you can build anything. We think this is not very good. This is not only very unrealistic, but also it makes gameplay less interesting. We want to add more complexity in construction process by implementing resource chains. For example: You have a small mining ship, it have a small mining laser (you don't need a big ship in order to retrieve chunk of rock), but you will not be able to build anything from this raw ore. This ore should be delivered to the refinery. Refinery is a very big construction, much bigger than mining ship, mostly due two factors: 1 Refinery module just very big and massive 2 Refinery module produce huge amount of heat, so this station should have huge radiators (look information about heat system below) After ore refines, it can be used in order to produce "parts" - inventory items which is used to construct modules for space ships. So resource chain will be: Ore -> Refined ore -> Parts -> Modules Not "Ore -> Modules" like now. And since this approach will add much more types of resources, we need a brand new inventory system which can store many different types of resources in the same container.
Actually, in earlier version of the game we already had similar system, but we decided remove it because it was hard to maintain two different types of inventory (for parts and for ore). But now we decided that it was mistake, we deleted wrong inventory. Now we will return such system but it will be better than before. Such approach have a lot of advantages and zero disadvantages. For example: 1. Construction drones can be much smaller and usable, it is no longer necessary to have 10 containers on construction drone with all required resources 2. Recipes for various modules now can be much more logical and balanced 3. Ammo for weapons will have proper volume. Projectiles for light cannon and heavy torpedoes no longer have the same volume
And many more, you will see. We already started to work on it and it is ready approximately on 50%. The new inventory system will be released in the next update.

Heat system

Due some Sci-Fi movies many people may think that "space is cold", which is quite wrong. If you are doing something in space, especially if you have heavy industry, you should worry about heat, not about cold. So we are going to implement a heat system, which is very useful not only for educational purposes, but also will make gameplay much interesting. Most functional modules will generate heat. Industrial equipment will generate a lot of heat, especially refinery. In order to do something with this heat there will be two options: 1 Radiators. Big things similar to solar panels which will disperse heat via infra-red emission 2 Emergency coolers based on the evaporation of water which can be used in order to quickly disperse large amount of heat. Useful during combat if your ship overheated due too much emission from lasers of energy shields, or if the ship was heated by enemy weapons. However it will require water as a resource. As we said above, refineries will generate a lot of heat, so large radiators will make industrial ships stations even bigger and less agile, which is very good for gameplay and balance.

More complex combat system

Currently combat is very simple, just place more guns and you will win. We want to make combat much more tactical. In order to do that, we want to implement different types of armor and different damage types. Also kinetic weapon will have "armor-penetration" parameter, so light cannons will be unable to cause any damage to heavy armor. Like tanks in real world. Energy shield also will be reworked, maybe it will have different protection from different side, we are not decided yet. Also maybe we will implement more types of rockets, since new inventory system allows to implement many new types of ammo.

Complex global economy in galaxy

Once everything above will be implemented, we will try to implement this. Note, this is very complex technology, we will need to perform some experiments, maybe it will be impossible to implement, or maybe it will be very simplified, so do not imagine too much about this feature, because we don't want to disappoint you. But the idea is, that the galaxy will be filled with many production space stations, each station consumes goods A and produces goods B. Also there will be many NPC traders which will trade between stations. Overall, the universe will be live and populated with many NPC and factions. But note, this system is very complex even for simple games which are designed around this system. But in CC we have fully customable ships which consists from many modules, in combination with such a complex trading systems it creates huge impact on performance, so direct simulation will be impossible. If such trading system will bb implemented, it will be very simplified. For example trade ships will consist from single object (not from modules like other ships) and maybe they will not have collisions with other objects except projectiles, because collision avoidance algorithms is extremely complex and almost impossible to implement, especially in orbital mode. But even with all of these simplifications, it is still could be very interesting feature. But again, we are not sure how detailed it could be in order to keep reasonable performance on modern computers, so we will keep you informed when we will perform some research about this aspect. Currently we are focused on inventory and production system which is important for others features which will be built on top of it.

[ 2018-06-06 20:21:47 CET ] [ Original post ]