Hello everyone!
As the title suggests, we are working on adding organic ships to the game. After our recent 0.4 and 0.4.5 updates, we spent some time brainstorming about the position and purpose of these alien ships in the current game state. Here are some mechanics we're working on at the moment:
Organic Docks
We think that an alien species at the near peak of the evolutionary cycle would probably keep operating with "food" and not liquid spaceship fuel. In order for these marvelous creatures to be able to land on your station, you'll need to build some organic docks. These new docks are made to support and feed any organic life form that may find itself visiting your station.
(Work in progress.)
Pathogen Outbreaks
This will introduce a new kind of event that requires you to make some critical decisions in the case of a pathogen outbreak. You can probably guess where the inspiration for this new mechanic came from...
With each organic dock you build, the chance of a pathogen outbreak occurring steadily increases. To counter this; you need to build some hygiene centers, research hygiene tech, and upgrade your organic docks. This new event can even lead to the death of some employees.
In the case of a pathogen outbreak, you'll have 3 options. The first option is to pay a hefty fee and call the decontamination team to take care of it. This option has a great chance of ending the outbreak but might be a little too costly for some stations. The second option is to initiate a month-long lockdown. If you can afford to operate for a month without any visitors, this is a great option. The third and the most brutal option is to do nothing and watch some of your employees lose their lives. This will also dramatically decrease your popularity.
Alien Raids
Aliens, like humans, aren't always peaceful. There are a lot of hostile aliens that roam the galaxy for precious technology. Their biggest motivation is to find valuable information. That's why, unlike regular pirates, these raiders don't want your money but your research points. To help you better defend against these wrathful creatures, we are also adding "Bio Turrets". These are a new kind of defense turrets that deal extra damage to organic entities. They also deal less damage to inorganic ships.
(Work in progress.)
Organic Trade
Organic ships might also sometimes offer some random trade deals. These trades are usually much simpler than those of the intergalactic merchants. Organic ships usually want to get some organic materials in return for the inorganic materials they've collected. This makes these trades perfect to turn some of your emissive shrooms and caerulus fruits into more useful items like gold.
Procedural System and Planet Generation
We are working really hard on building a 100% procedural system with a seed system. This way you'll be able to experience different galactic views every time you start a new game. This system will also bring "system perks" with it. These perks are small buffs and debuffs special to your system and the way it was generated. For example, some systems might have rarer astroid events, some might be in the middle of a trade route attracting more traders, etc.
Thank you!
Thank you so much for reading this dev diary and for your continuous support. Don't forget to join our Discord and share your thought with us!