Greetings, Magnates! Last time I talked about getting the market simulation up and running. One big remaining task here is balancing, which affects the whole in-game economy. What should buildings cost? What should the upkeep cost? How much should products pay when sold? And so on. It's going to be a huge, ongoing effort to make sure everything is reasonably balanced. But, to balance things, all parameters must be known. And they are currently not. One of the parameters is energy (power). Some buildings will require energy to work. So I've started implementing the new energy system, and all the basics are in place and done; energy is currently generated only by solar panels, energy is stored in capacitor banks (homage to Minecraft mod Ender IO) and energy is then relayed wirelessly through energy nodes. Any energy consuming building in range of an energy node will receive energy automatically. I need to add more energy sources, and, again, balance everything. How much energy should this and that produce, and how much energy should this and that consume, how fast should energy flow between buildings? Etc. It may not sound like a big deal, but it is. As the game designer I want to strike that perfect balance where the player needs to put some thought and effort into the energy system, but not too much because then it just becomes an annoying element, but also not too little because then it just becomes a superfluous and thus annoying element.. Anyone saying game design is easy clearly hasn't tried it. Anyway, moving on to the next parameter: research. There will be a tech tree of some sort, but I haven't settled on a model yet. Either way, I want to add a bunch of unlockable augments you can apply to buildings. One augment could increase mining speed at the cost of increased energy consumption. Another augment could decrease energy consumption but increase the upkeep cost significantly. With each augment and/or other possible unlockable modifiers I have to consider how I'm going to offset that in other parts of the game, making sure there's not an obvious route to "easy mode". Right, I should also mention that my intention is to reward the player with research points based on how much money they allocate to research.. soo yeah, yet another factor that affects the economy. And everything else, really. This is one of the reasons it takes so long to make a game I'll leave you with this recent gif and the changelog:

Changelog

Core Gameplay

• Make landfall on planets and moons and set up factory sites.
  
• Build factories to best utilize the resources available.
  
• Enter into short and long term contracts, committing to deliver a steady supply of products.
  
• Build relations with the inhabitants of the solar system, affecting trade prices and opportunities.
  
• Navigate the Interplanetary Central Market, looking for the best trades.
  
• Compete against AI companies.
  
• Hire scientists and product specialists for your Research & Development department, allowing you to unlock factory unit upgrades and new product lines.

Development Status

Mod Support

• A procedurally generated solar system. Each playthrough will create a unique solar system, offering good longevity and replayability.
  
• Procedurally generated factory sites, in which you'll be building your factories.
  
• 3 starting resources (ores).
  
• A starting range of factory units - a lot more to come..

• Fully simulated trade and economy system.
  
• Multiple market sectors each with their own range of products.
  
• Company AI.
  
• Relationship system that enables all entities in the game to have a rating or standing with eachother.
  
• Tech tree with unlockable branches of factory unit upgrades as well as entire production lines.
  
• Various difficulty modes and starting conditions.
  
• More natural resources, aiming for around 10-12 of them with different uses and characteristics.
  
• A lot more factory units! Counting a lot on community feedback and ideas here.
  
• Tileset variations. Intuitive UI components. Factory animations. And much more.

• OS: Ubuntu 12 or newer
• Processor: 2.0 ghz Dual CoreMemory: 2 GB RAM
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: Intel HD3000 or higher with OpenGL 2.1 support
• Storage: 200 MB available space