4 months of development!
I took a few days off to have a creative pause so there are not as many new things to see this time...
Also, I had a few early alpha playtests and the feedback is worth gold! So rather than implenting new systems, I even removed some and refined the core gameplay.
During the last weeks and months, I implemented many many many systems and mechanics that were floating around in my head. The plan was to test lots of things and see what works well and what doesn't so for now everything is going as planned.
What did I remove and why?
Crafting
I had implemented a basic crafting system to create items, such as explosives. This meant, I had to have crafting materials (many different ones, otherwise it's pretty senseless) and crafting recipes. This meant a lot of work and a lot of balancing later on. At the same time (and much more important), I implemented base building for the outpost. This is part of the core gameplay: Explore, expand, defend. To build new buildings, I implemented a simple resource "building material". This led to a weird system where I had this macro-level building material and micro-level crafting materials, which I wasn't happy about. Crafting was implemented to enable items for characters on expeditions but this can be solved without crafting - simply by having unlimited items or find them on the expedition.
Inventory
No crafting -> no inventory required. Since I want to keep items in general, there will be simple slots for the characters.
What did I change?
Eating, sleeping, and stress
Eating, sleeping, and stress were handled by a value between 0 and 100. This was too much micro-management and didn't add to the gameplay.
Now, the main stat to keep in mind is STRESS - level 0 - 5. Stress is increased / reduces by 1 or more levels by events / decisions. Hunger and Fatigue is not removed but handled differently than before.
At the start of the day, the player can decide, which character gets to eat or sleep.
Eating options:
Normal -> -1 stress
Ration -> 0 stress + status effect ("slighty hungry")
No food -> +1 stress + status effect ("hungry")
Sleeping options:
Sleep -> -1 stress
Don't sleep -> 0 stress
At the end of the day, the player can decide, which character goes on an expedition and who goes to sleep. Depending on who slept during the day, the status effect ("tired") is applied.
High stress levels, hunger, and fatigue affect the skill of the characters.
Robots
Definition of robot class and damage system and related mechanics
Head (Vision): Defines the range of the robot (shooting and sight)
Arms (Accuracy): Defines the damage of the robot
Legs (Movement): Defines the speed of the robot
Core (Abilities): Defines if abilities can be used
Damage during combat is split between these 4 components. At 50% damage, each component creates a penalty.
Combat
Only defending could be boring later on. Therefore, I'm working on a concept for monster nests. There, monster waves are spawned. If the player waits too long, more nests spawn and the monster waves become more dangerous. Attacking and destroying monster nests is dangerous as well, since monster defend them and patrol around them.
This leads to a healthy balance of defense and attack, which requires the player to think about robot selection and their loadout at the start of an expedition.
Small changes
Bug fixes regarding enemy AI
Bug fixes regarding pathfinding
Selection of robots before starting an expedition
Showing existing robots in the base
Restructuring of the base
Next steps:
Implementation of monster nests
Adding more monster types