Hello. The second part of this post about the upcoming update will be focused not on what will be introduced, but rather on what will be temporarily removed. Why remove something in the first place? Celestial Command is our first project, and like many other inexperienced developers, we fell into a common trap known as 'feature creep' the desire to implement numerous cool features without proper consideration of whether they are truly necessary or feasible. This becomes even more problematic when previously added features are not properly completed yet.
As a result, over the years of development, the game has accumulated some mistakes, and in certain aspects, it appears as a collection of incomplete features, which could be frustrating. To resolve this, we've decided to take a step back, carefully reevaluate every aspect of the game, and focus on its core elements that make it enjoyable. Of course, no one likes when features are removed, but once the base game is stable and polished, we will gradually reintroduce features one by one, subjecting each to thorough testing to ensure that new features are both enjoyable and really enhance the gameplay experience. So, what aspects are affected?

Multiplayer

Any game is better with co-op multiplayer, and we are determined to include this feature in our game. However, despite listing multiplayer functionality on the store page for an extended period, it has never functioned as intended. We were committed to fixing it and making it playable for this update, but due to time constraints, we decided to release the initial version without multiplayer to prevent further delays.
The multiplayer tag has been temporarily removed from the store page to prevent any potential confusion. However, once we are confident that the single-player game is stable and functioning correctly, we will make every effort to reintroduce multiplayer as swiftly as possible.

Crew

The crew system underwent significant changes. We made the decision to remove the regular crew and food as they didn't add much interest to the game and were, in fact, more of an annoyance. However, keeping the concept of a ship captain with unique skills that affect ship performance seems like an interesting idea. Nevertheless, although we've already started working on the skills system, we found that the current implementation lacked the depth and balance we desire. Therefore, the skill system has been temporarily removed and will be returned once the skills become more engaging and balanced. Also, the skill system will work even better in co-op multiplayer, allowing each player to level up skills for their preferred play-style.

A workshop with ships

With the addition of 3D construction, the Steam Workshop now makes even more sense than before, as ships can be more complex. However, we want to ensure that the new construction system is reliable and that your ship files will not break in the future. As a result, the workshop feature is temporarily removed and will be returned later when the game is properly tested.

Trading

This point will probably seem the most unpleasant to you, because unlike others, the trading system is removed not temporarily, but is completely replaced by another system of delivery tasks. This may not sound good, but we have an explanation for this decision. Of course, the idea that you can start with modest trade routes between stations, buy where it's cheap, sell where it's expensive, then buy more ships and send them out to trade, build your own trade stations and end up influence the living economy of an entire galaxy - all this certainly sounds very interesting. We used to think so too and wanted to implement it.
The problem is that all of this is essentially a completely different game of a completely different genre. It's a galaxy / empire builder built into the current ship construction game. Essentially two games in one. This is a very difficult task even for developers who make a game exclusively about that and focus as much as possible on the economic simulation of the entire galaxy, with strong optimization of ship systems, where ships are a single, non-modular object in order to achieve better performance of large fleets, and even such games have many problems from an economic simulation, AI, performance and many other things. For our game about ship construction, implementing such a system is a practically impossible task. Such a system will only burden the game and it will be impossible to bring it all into good condition. This is still a great idea, and we likely will try to implement it in another game in the future which will be built from the ground up specially for this purpose. But here in Celestial Command, it is not a good decision.
However! We still want to have freighters in the game because cargo spaceships are cool, so we have decided to implement a cargo mission system. That is, it will be something like a simulator of a space trucker and not a simulator of a galactic trading tycoon. And by the way, such a system may work even better than a theoretical economic simulator, because cargo routes can be chosen in a more interesting way, with more clear rewards and events along the way, instead of hauling ore many times between the same stations. This system is almost ready, however it is still raw and unbalanced, so we have decided to finish it first before releasing it in the game to be sure that it provides a great experience for our players.

Landing on planets

The same situation applies to planets. They look cool, but a full implementation into the gameplay loop would require too many changes in the game's core and balance, especially when considering that ships are still flying on a 2D plane. Therefore, we have decided to completely remove planet surface locations. Perhaps later, they may be reintroduced as a background for the combat mode, but we're not certain about that just yet. That's all for now. In the next post we will talk about some more features that will be introduced in the upcoming update.

[ 2023-10-27 09:20:15 CET ] [ Original post ]