About the current state of development
Hello everyone, since we haven’t shared any updates in a long time, we felt it was important to clarify the current state of development. The development of the game is completely paused for an indefinite period of time. However, it is not abandoned completely, at some point in t
Hello everyone, since we haven’t shared any updates in a long time, we felt it was important to clarify the current state of development.
The development of the game is completely paused for an indefinite period of time. However, it is not abandoned completely, at some point in the future, but unfortunately, we have no idea when exactly.
Celestial Command is our first project, one into which we invested an enormous amount of time, effort, and passion. It carries significant personal meaning for us, and we do not want it to remain unfinished forever. Our intention is still to return to it in the future and bring it to a proper 1.0 release with a solid gameplay experience. However, we cannot currently provide any timeline for when that might happen.
Original post 
Placing multiple controllers allows you to independently assign colors to different groups of lights.
Feel free to share on Steam or Discord how you decorated your ships.
Happy Holidays!
We have also decided to introduce a new version numbering system to better reflect the content. Previously, the system was in the form of a range from 0 to 1, but now it consists of three numbers to represent major, medium, and minor updates, with an initial digit of 0 that will change to 1 upon full release from early access.
New
The difference is so significant that it may appear as if the game has become more casual. However, this is not the case. Information that is needed less frequently is now tucked away in various menus and windows, keeping the main screen uncluttered.
Nuclear rocket launchers
New engines and visual effects
Charge cannon
New door animation for solar panels
This was the final part of the post about the upcoming changes and we plan to release the update within the next few days.
As a result, over the years of development, the game has accumulated some mistakes, and in certain aspects, it appears as a collection of incomplete features, which could be frustrating.
To resolve this, we've decided to take a step back, carefully reevaluate every aspect of the game, and focus on its core elements that make it enjoyable.
Of course, no one likes when features are removed, but once the base game is stable and polished, we will gradually reintroduce features one by one, subjecting each to thorough testing to ensure that new features are both enjoyable and really enhance the gameplay experience.
So, what aspects are affected?
The multiplayer tag has been temporarily removed from the store page to prevent any potential confusion. However, once we are confident that the single-player game is stable and functioning correctly, we will make every effort to reintroduce multiplayer as swiftly as possible.
The problem is that all of this is essentially a completely different game of a completely different genre. It's a galaxy / empire builder built into the current ship construction game. Essentially two games in one.
This is a very difficult task even for developers who make a game exclusively about that and focus as much as possible on the economic simulation of the entire galaxy, with strong optimization of ship systems, where ships are a single, non-modular object in order to achieve better performance of large fleets, and even such games have many problems from an economic simulation, AI, performance and many other things.
For our game about ship construction, implementing such a system is a practically impossible task. Such a system will only burden the game and it will be impossible to bring it all into good condition.
This is still a great idea, and we likely will try to implement it in another game in the future which will be built from the ground up specially for this purpose. But here in Celestial Command, it is not a good decision.
However! We still want to have freighters in the game because cargo spaceships are cool, so we have decided to implement a cargo mission system.
That is, it will be something like a simulator of a space trucker and not a simulator of a galactic trading tycoon.
And by the way, such a system may work even better than a theoretical economic simulator, because cargo routes can be chosen in a more interesting way, with more clear rewards and events along the way, instead of hauling ore many times between the same stations.
This system is almost ready, however it is still raw and unbalanced, so we have decided to finish it first before releasing it in the game to be sure that it provides a great experience for our players.
You can place any module on any side with any angle for decoration purpose. As a result, you now have completely new possibilities for creativity, allowing you to easily construct absolutely impressive and unique ships.
Now you will need to build your own large ship which will not be armed at first, but will be a base for warehouses, production modules and the warp drive, while on a small ship you will complete missions, returning to the base from time to time to replenish supplies.
After the complete system redesign, locations became larger, planets appeared larger and realistic. In orbital mode, orbital mechanics gained more significance, and in aero mode, we added a large asteroids field to the environment to reduce the emptiness of space and make navigation more interesting.
The global map was also extensively overhauled to improve its appearance and usability.
And this have a couple of problems:
Yeah, that’s all. Storage, engines, and most importantly, engineering drones!
Of course, engineering robotic arms looks cool and we probably will use it somehow in the mid game, but its low range makes any kind of construction is extremely uncomfortable and tedious.
Drones, that is another matter, they can easily salvage debris from large radius around the ship and build anything in range, either own small ship or new capital ship.
Construction done, now back to salvaging
Landing pad
Yes, in earlier versions of the game, we already had similar drones, but now they are better than before. Earlier they were physically bound to the ship and was more like an animation effect, but now they acts like individual objects which may fly long away from its carrier ship, or could be destroyed, which is a good foundation for future combat drones.
Also, considering new 3D construction features, you can do something like this
Overall, we are happy with combinations of these 3D feature and drones on small starting ships, now it is easy and fun to extend starting ships into some interesting design just in a few clicks
New power generator, by the way
What about capital ship, earlier we had some problems with design some kind modules specially for large ships, with increased details and special visual design, but came out to the conclusion, that actually, it is not necessary, just a set of scaled up basic modules could work very well, and result could looks cool, especially considering 3D possibilities.
Possibility to place modules on different altitude or unusual rotation can be great tool to achieve interesting design, but player is not forced to do that, and even modules placed only on zero plane should looks well because such method of construction is very comfortable, especially for a new player.
Here is a preparation of all modules for capital size ships. Implementation of Tier 4 size still have some questions considering number of mounting points and game performance, but we will resolve it somehow.
Thus, the problem described above is solved. At the same time, we have maintained the effect of ships physically losing their modules during combat.
Additionally, repairing a ship after each battle will no longer be an annoyance. That is because the HP pool can be replenished at the shipyard. Also, keeping track of the current status of any ship will now be more straightforward.
Simple and convenient.
Such ships are very effective in combat, but they are cheesy, and so are the battles between them.
Remember the various ships from sci-fi movies. Usually, their weapons occupy only 10-20% of the hull.
In real battleships, it is similar. Below each turret, there is a large and complex system for servicing and controlling the weapon.
Such a system will encourage building sophisticated ships instead of "a cube with cannons on each side."
This is especially important for orbital game mode, because now there is much more space around the planet, tidal forces is weaker and even small burn of maneuvering engines does not changes trajectory so much as it was before, in result orbital mechanics feels more like it should be.
Added rapid fire missile defense system, and considering that rockets now may fly in 3D space, we are like how result is looks like. However it will require some more improvements for accuracy.
Rockets with nuclear warhead as advanced weapon
Several new Sci-Fi looking engines. With possibility of 3D building and free rotation, even a few new parts allows to build quite an interesting design.
Also we started to perform large changes in missions system, since it will be a core of a new game loop, and one from the new types of missions is "delivery mission" which will require a ship with specific amount of cargo holders to ferry cargo containers from one location to another, with possible ambush on the way.
With such cargo freighters this type of "space trucker" activity should be more enjoyable than standard cargo transportation inside a ship.
We are really sorry that updated turned out so extremely delayed, but will try to complete it as soon as possible, and from this point we will try to report you about a progress more often.
And happy New Year! : )