Dev Diaries: Base Basics, Part II news - Nuclear Dawn

During the design and pre-production phases of Nuclear Dawn, a lot of care went into distilling the essence of strategy games, the real time kind, and ensuring that we would be presenting players with an experience that would allow them to focus on the tactical possibilities of building outposts and bases, without getting lost in the impulse of dumping a billion building options on them.

In the frantic, merciless warfare that is every Nuclear Dawn game, commanders need to be able to make snap decisions on how to best protect their troops and assets, without being mired down in pointless technical choices.

The same goes for soldiers on the field, who need clear reference points to respond to their needs, and at one point of the design process, in a far too zealous version of the design documents, a soldier would have had a choice of Hospital, Infirmary, Healing Pad (Apple beat us to that one), Supply Station, and Automated Surgical Post to go heal their war wounds. A bit much? We thought so, too.

There are a variety of buildings that a soldier will be called upon to interact with, in the world of Nuclear Dawn, for a variety of reasons. Some may never come up in a battle if the commander does not build them, but one that players will become intimately familiar with is their spawn point – the Imperial Long Range Transporter, and the Consortium’s Cloning Station.

Based on two completely different technologies, these two buildings are faction-specific, and will be visited over and over again at each death. As well as being your average places of birth and endless rebirth, the spawning points can also be accessed at any time to travel to another spawn point in the map. Transfer is not instant, and it does mean going through the regular spawn queue, but it does beat legging it through the massive cityscapes of Nuclear Dawn’s devastated future.

Next up in order of importance, and it would be a poor commander who did not build this one, is the Armoury. Each faction has its own version of this versatile building, which will be a regular pit stop for players who wish to customize their weapons load-outs, change class, or simply pick a different ammunition type.

Long-range Transport Gate for the People's Empire

As games progress, research and nanotechnology blueprints will unlock powerful new weapons, and ever deadlier ammunition types. A quick visit to the Armoury lets players pick out their favourite loadouts. It’s a bit like choosing between buckshot and heavy calibres depending on whether you intend to hunt rabbits or elephants, except that in Nuclear Dawn, the rabbits snipe and assassinate, and the elephants wield weapons of mass destruction.

Last, but certainly not least on the list of to-visit buildings in the Nuclear Dawn universe, is the supply station. Wounded soldiers without medic friends, poor sods, and bloodthirsty killers low on ammo will welcome the sight of these unassuming shrines to plenty, where med-packs and ammunition spring forth from the ground as by miracle. But it really is just advanced future nanotech manufacturing, you know.

Supply Stations used by both Factions

There’s a lot more to see and visit, click on and get shot by, in the world of Nuclear Dawn. The Base Basics series, the first part of which can be found here, just runs through the most popular options. Keep your eyes peeled for the first gameplay videos, to find out exactly what a sonic turret is, and just how overwhelmingly pretty the lasers on imperial relay towers are. Until the next time, stay safe, and stop playing with your spawn point. It will make you blind.

Igor Raffaele, Lead Game Designer

(3D Art once again the work of Alan Van Ryzin, original Empire LTG and Consortium Supply Station designs courtesy of Philip Klevestav)

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