Resource and Items Management
I have had to postpone starting on the faction AI as I have been making some major changes to the way resources and items are handled.
When resources are collected such as when some asteroid ore gets processed at a refinery and refined into metal, it will no longer just vanish and get added to the resources total counter at the top of the screen. Instead the metal gets added to the colony inventory and will remain there until its used or moved to another location.
If you have seperate colonies for ore refining, equipment and ship production then you will need to transport the items they require between each of them rather than having your entire empires resources available invisibly no matter where they are being used.
All ships have at least a small cargo hold but I will also add new transport ships that can carry large volumes of cargo but will be quite fragile and defenseless.
This is how the transport orders screen currently looks. I would like to keep it as simple as possible, so I am not adding multiple waypoint settings and items will be seperated into different cargo catagories. If you really need to transport cargo both ways between planets you will need an extra transport ship with different orders although there shouldnt really be a need for this.
Something I am also experimenting with is requiring the "data" produced by research facilities on colonies to be transported back to your designated capital before the points can be spent on research projects.
Most of these changes are to discourage having well defended colonies that are isolated away from your main empire but still be fully functional.
Hopefully this should all make empire building a lot more complex and enjoyable and open up a lot of possibilities for features I would like to add in the future.
Epic.
This is a game I look forward to playing on a Tablet.
thats awesome makes this game seem more realistic =D
I really like the look and style of the menus and infomation HUD graphics, they are really clean and elegant. It fits well with the look of the game.
I'm looking forward to this and its ongoing progress.
Love it.
Having to organize resource transports indicates a higher complexity than i anticipated at first - didnt you say you want colony management to be as easy as possible? I'm looking forward to see how this will all work together though. :)
Wouldn't it be to complex for game like that? RTS with resource management? I think that taking care of every mining colony would be a little annoying in the beginning and in the end of the game it would be just impossible. The game is great without resource management. If I waste all my time on ore, no one will be leading my ships to the battle.
I'm certain the developer will find a way to make it user friendly. A lot of the resource management will probably be automated and the main issue will be defending cargo ships.
I still want to keep colony management relatively simple and will make sure that assigning cargo transports doesnt become time consuming or tiresome.
I think it will add a lot of extra strategy to the game and is neccessary for some other features/game modes that I will be adding eventually.
I agree with your choices here. Its best to implement all the core elements early to have a funtioning platform to build on. Adding complexity doesn't always correlate with overly time consuming if its done well. So I like your 'ethos' from what I've read and seen.
Just as an idea: How about an automated resource distribution that is dictated by supply and demand which you may even set manually? The AI then sends transport ships on its own, and you only have to secure the trade routes.
Dunno if this would fit in, just a thought.