Hey guys!
Here's what's been happening.
Short Summary:
- More work on base ownership.
- Indie faction added
- Bases (and player) building defensive platforms
- Mining and economy changes and addition
I've prepared a "Dev Update" vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNHiUlSc0mo
Direct Link: YouTube
Working more and more towards a well implemented base ownership mechanic. Its been sometimes rough going due to having to put in many sub items to get to major goals.
For example - wanting to create a counter attack type mechanic (where factions will try to re-capture bases) means that I need to give the player proper tools to defend a base. Which requires many additional changes/additions/features including a thriving economy, a way to make money and gather resources.
Indie Faction:
You can think of this faction as individuals and small groups similar to you, with their own agendas - usually making money. These are traders, miners and combat pilots, unaligned with any particular faction, that have dealings with all of the factions. The player can't raise faction score with them, however if the faction score is negative, it will rise once you stop being hostile to them.
Base management:
You now have control over bases economy, you can designate a base as a resource supplier or a resource requester, your other bases will full fill these orders via indie transport ships. This lets you create resource loops via a very simple interface that's self managing (indie ships).
Player building platforms:
You can now manually - build defensive and production platforms at your owned bases.
Mining:
You can now assign transport ships to support your mining ships, making mining more efficient. Simply select a transport ship and right click one of your mining ships, the transport ship will ferry the ore from your mining ship back to the base.
Field Patrol:
In order to make mining safer, you can now assign patrol ships to fields, select a combat ship and right click on the field. This ship will now patrol the field and attempt to destroy any hostile ship within the field. If you are friendly to them, other mining ships will pay you a small fee for this service.
What's next?
More work towards the base ownership mechanic. Working towards the ability to build ships (instead of buying them) via resources. Then working on a "counter attack and re-capture" mechanic and further elements of base ownership/capture.
Thank you for your support!
Paul