Another great week went by and Im ready to push version 0.3.0 of Eons of War to Steam! This update is filled with pretty significant changes based on the feedback from private beta players. Lets dive right in!

New Combat System

One recurring comment from beta players that I kept getting was about how the combat system feels like a black box. Another problem with it is that enemy attacks are unpredictable and they take out locations in one charge. The new system is based on combat strength (CS) and population. CS comes from multiple modifiers that include the type of location, research, and a few others. The damage is calculated based on the CS difference between the two combating locations and involved populations. You can still control how much population you want to participate in the battle but now, unless you have a huge military advantage, you cant take out all of your enemys population in one attack and vice versa.
We also updated the combat interface. It gives you a breakdown of CS modifiers as well as how much of yours and enemys populations will survive after the attack. As you can see, the population is shown as a range. This is because we added a degree of randomness to damage calculation to make it more exciting. Therere countless other little interface changes improving the combat experience that youll notice during the game.

Adviser

Several beta testers pointed out that certain Eons of War game mechanics are not obvious (e.g., how resources work, what happens when stars go supernova, etc.). Instead of creating a tutorial mission, I decided to add an adviser (similar to the one in Civilization V) that provides information based on the current context. It was more work than adding a tutorial but I think its a worthy investment at this stage since I can tune the timing and the content of the adviser messages as more game mechanics are added.

Other Changes

Heres the list of other less significant changes:

• [UI] Add numbers for turns until supernova and remaining minerals to the location details panel.
• [GAMEPLAY] Lock the next turn button until the player picks a new research item.
• [GAMEPLAY] Increase base amount of minerals in all locations.
• [GAMEPLAY] Lower attack and population/mineral transportation energy costs.
• [GAMEPLAY] Increase energy sphere and reactor energy outputs.
• [GAMEPLAY] Building a hyperspace tunnel to a neutral location automatically colonizes it.
• [GAMEPLAY] Make enemy resources visible if the location is directly connected to one of our locations by a hyperspace tunnel.
• [GAMEPLAY] Drop the space fleet requirement for mineral and population transportation.

Next Week

Over the next seven days we are going to focus on:

• [GAMEPLAY] New game mechanic that generates random positive and negative events in your locations.
• [GAMEPLAY] New game mechanic for fortifying locations.
• [GAMEPLAY] Other minor changes based on player feedback.

Originally published on Vasinov Games.

[ 2018-12-18 18:32:34 CET ] [ Original post ]