Greetings, Citizens ~ In the process of working on NPC Factions, we’ve been doing what we can to release those pieces of it that work on their own. One such piece is the Fog of War.

Fog of War

Most of you already know this mechanic in one way or another. This is how it works in StarMade in its current state: Fog of war happens on a per-system level with local granularity. This means that any sector and its neighbors become ‘scanned’ instantaneously when visited, and they keep being visible in the map until you log out (for personal usage) or the server/game restarts (for faction usage). You can ‘scan’ a system if you have visited at least 15 of its sectors (trackable in the galaxy map) or if you simply use your scanner. A system will be always visible in the map once available. The reason for this two tier-system is simply scalability, as it would cause immense database load (and size) for an entirely per-sector fog of war. Keep in mind that the Fog of War system is subject to change, since it’s an important piece of the NPC update. Scanners will also likely be rebalanced to be better at exploring. The system also already supports trigger based and time based “re-fogging” of areas.

Faction Sharing

Factions share their fog of war. This not only means that newly scanned systems are instantly available to all members, but it also means that factions share progress per system: if a 16-member faction all warps into different sectors within a system, they would reveal it instantly. There is also a new permission available for faction ranks: Fog of War Sharing This means that factions don’t have to share their information to new members they don’t trust yet. However, once the information is shared, the player will retain the gathered fog of war information, even in the event they lose the permission or get kicked from the faction entirely. At the same time, a player will always share their personal fog of war information when they join a faction, even at a rank that doesn’t provide the player with any faction fog of war data in return. Additionally, a member with the ‘Faction Edit’ permission can share the faction’s fog of war information with other factions. This option is available in the diplomacy panel.

Display Block Upgrade

In addition to last update’s new copy function, you are now able to modify the content of your display blocks in even more ways. When copying the content from one display block to another, you can now use the following tags: [shield], [shieldCap], [shieldPercent], [power], [powerCap], [powerPercent], [auxPower], [auxPowerCap], [auxPowerPercent], [structureHp], [structureHpCap], [structureHpPercent], [armorHp], [armorHpCap], [armorHpPercent], [mass], [blockCount], [sector], [system], [name], [docked], [cloaked], [jamming], [speed]

• '[PASSWORD]text': The text in this block will not show up.
• '[ADD]text': The text after [ADD] is added to the existing text of the connected block ([ADD] must be in the very front)
• '[DEL]number': Removes an amount of characters from the conneted block ([DEL] must be in the very front)
• '[REPLACEFIRST]regexp[WITH]replacement': use java conform regular expressions to replace specific text ([REPLACEFIRST] must be in the very front)
• '[REPLACEALL]regexp[WITH]replacement': use java conform regular expressions to replace specific text ([REPLACEALL] must be in the very front)

You can also use the sensor block to check if two display blocks have equal text content. Just connect the sensor block to two display blocks as input. The [password] tag is ignored when comparing text. All this information is also available in the ‘Help’ panel on any display block! It’s worth mentioning that, with enough logic circuitry, you could write a command parser using the above additions. You could, quite literally, type “open airlock 12” into a display block and have your ship execute the command.

Further Development

Progress on the NPC update is steady, but we might need a 4-week release period to get the NPC update done more quickly. As always, thanks for playing StarMade! ~ The Schine Team