If you aren't already in the Alpha, you can join up today at our new website!
Battlestations! Battlestations! And all that nautical stuff. The newest update for Star Command Galaxies out and the primary focus is, as you can probably tell, ship-to-ship combat.
Planets have been disabled because we broke a bunch of stuff with our new changes. We updated our super objects to support some new features like breakable external walls which, in turn, made things like the villages and antorian fortress look funky.
There are a ton of finicky things (including repair and heal) but this should start to plant a seed of where the combat is headed.
So what's next? Glad you asked!
This build basically has all our pieces in place: planets, super objects (towns, forts, etc), resources (fuel, scrap, food), crew, objects, ships, crew combat and ship combat. So what's missing?
We need to integrate a more robust navigation system. We will likely keep it very bare bones so that we can keep our focus on marrying all our elements and giving the game an ounce of polish/purpose. So here are our areas of focus:
1) Saves
Star Command Galaxies is currently a roguelike - in the future it will not be. Our major goal is to switch from our current XML save system to a binary system, allowing us to save a lot more data and states of things like characters, ships, resources, desires, etc. Everything is somewhat dependent on this architecture so this will be priority 1.
2) Trade/Negotiations/Hiring
A big difference between mobile and Galaxies is the ability to do things other than battle. The game was built from the ground up for that purpose. Resource collection, relationships, diplomacy have all the pieces in the game and just need to be fully realized. This means you will have the ability to talk to captains and negotiate trade and earn a reputation with them. You can also talk to individuals in the game and recruit them to join your crew. Loyalty is in the game and we want to really bring that forward as a primary goal for you as Captain. A more loyal crew will allow you to do more things in the game and it will be a critical measurement for success in the galaxy.
3) Captains
It’s time to let you bring yourself into the game. Captains will be extensions of you. They can do all your basic ship operations, use special Captain Kits and, most importantly, spread desires. What does that mean? Missions in Galaxies are delivered in the form of desires. Your crew has their own desires, other Captains have desires, Admirals and NPC’s all have their own desires. A good captain with a loyal crew will be able to form their own desires and spread it around their crew. So if your goal is to Capture an Antorian captain you will have to form that desire and do your best to to spread that to your crew so you are on the same page.
4) Kits
Flamethrowers, extinguishers, med kits, turrets, machine guns, personal shield generators, space suits, gravity boots - these are some of the items we want to get into the next build so that you can start to customize your crew, their gear and their capabilities.
5) Planets
Reintegrating planets is going to be a major focus. We want planets to be hubs of different forms of action - exploration, negotiations, discovery, resource collection. Very different environments and goals than on your own ship. Again, the pieces are in place but there will need to be some focus on our current save structure which is now XML but will need to be binary in order to do everything we want to do.
6) Multiple Ship Hulls
We want you to have a choice of ships and the next build should have different ships with different specialties.
There will also be bug fixes, polish and other things that we started but just couldn’t get done in time for this release (power readouts come to mind).
Overall though, we couldn’t be more excited about this update. We think the game is really coming together. Internally we are really enjoying playing our own game and we know from past experience that that is a recipe for success.
Can't wait for you to play! Enjoy!
Cheers,
Warballoon
