Greetings once again Citizens! Here's an update for you that will hopefully answer some questions. We have worked hard the past two weeks to bring fleets into StarMade. Unfortunately, all the fleet work we have started to implement is not ready for release yet. The backend is fully implemented, and it’s already usable, but we would feel uncomfortable releasing it in this state, especially since the testing team didn’t have much time to try it out. You can expect a release soon... Instead, we will talk a little bit about how fleets work, how they integrate, and what they will mean for gameplay.

Fleets

Basically, in its rawest form, fleets are a collection of ships. For StarMade, they are going to be much more than that. Fleets will become a whole new gameplay chapter which will make the universe come alive a lot more. As said, a fleet in the game is a collection of ships. However, a fleet also has an owner and a flagship. Only the owner has full control over the ships, but there will be different flags that you can set, so that other faction members can make use of a fleet if so desired. We haven’t decided yet if fleet creation should be allowed anywhere, or whether it will be restricted in some way. When you create a fleet, you can add ships in range to it. For a ship to be added, you must have access to it, and it may not be in another fleet already. When ships are added, they go into a list of ships in that fleet. The first ship in your list will always be designated as the flagship. You can change the fleet order at any time, as that also influences other features we will talk about later on. All the backend systems are implemented and will be using SQL databases for fast lookup and updating in real time. Now, one nice thing about fleets is that their ships don’t need to be loaded at all, or can only be partially loaded. Any entity that isn’t loaded will still be represented by a virtual object with the bare basics. This avoids a scalability problem since always attempting to load every sector that has a ship (that's part of a fleet) in it would cripple performance. This system opens up the door to a whole new gameplay element. Fleets can execute their mission, even if they are not close to a player, or even when no player is on a server.

Fleet Missions

Fleets can be used to perform a lot of active and inactive tasks: keep different Formations, different forms of attack, defend, come back, salvage, dock, trade, cargo, patrol, jump, and many more. Some of these tasks can be executed in an unloaded state. That means you as one player could send a fleet to attack a sector, and another could send their own fleet to defend that same sector. While both fleets aren’t loaded, the fight would then be simulated according to (more balanced) ship scores. You can also send fleets to bring cargo from point A to point B. These cargo lines can be raided in real time, since if you have your raiding fleet on the path of the cargo ships, they will load in and you can battle and defeat them, provided they didn’t send enough fighters to protect their cargo. This is just a basic form of conflict that will be integrated into our objectives/missions system later on. These cargo lines, as well as other fleets on the move, will probably be made visible on the map with an updated scanning system.

Carriers

After basic fleet missions are implemented, there is also a fully functional and convenient carrier system planned, a carrier simply being a ship you use to deploy ships or fleets from. The main problem of carriers is getting ships out of and into the carrier. Plotting a path in space taking into account moving obstructions, custom sizes and shapes through block placements, etc, is immensely complex. Add moving and possibly rotating carriers to that equation, and the problem becomes nearly impossible to solve. However there is a solution we came up with that is a lot more straightforward and streamlined: Let the player plot the path into their ship themselves. We even have the tool for that already: Rails. There will be a zero mass zero structure hit point invisible railblock that players can use to guide their ships in and out of their carriers. They will be restricted specifically for that use in some way so people won’t replace all their rails with these new blocks. At the end of those rails will be a “pick-up area” where ships coming back have to fly into to connect to the invisible rail that will guide them into the ship, where ‘real’ rails can do the rest. You can even use your carrier to pick up ships without any AI if you fly your pickup zone onto another ship that you have access to.

Gameplay

We hope that this will make the game a lot more exciting as we will be using the same system for AI from this point out. Not only will different NPC factions try to grow their empire. They will use their fleets to protect and attack, or maybe even offer them to do the dirty work for you. Scalability wise it is possible to have as many and as big NPC factions as we want because they are going to be procedurally generated, that means, their bases and ships don’t exist in the database until the time someone loads them in by visiting them. Through NPC factions, we will try to build a more survival style mode without relying on a lot of time-tedious gameplay elements like having to manage food (that doesn’t mean food won’t also come to the game. But we will make sure that it’s not tedious). NPC factions will grow around you, and interact with you, so you will have to grow your own empire, or be crushed. You will need allies for yourself to combat your enemies, or you will have to flee to a less rich but safe part of the galaxy or universe, because some factions will prefer the rich spots and some will even try to eliminate you if you’re in the way. This is just one of the elements of what we have in store for objectives/missions/quests etc, we hope you will like these changes as it will be another major pillar of gameplay. - The Schine Team