Abandon all hope to ye who reads past this line. There be a wall o’ text coming! /pirate
Glorious teaser vanity pic
We’re about a month since Early Access launch, and we’ve learned a whole bunch of things about the game that we didn’t know before. Some people really love mining, others hate the mining and think it’s a grind. Some people only play alone, others only play with friends. The AI is stupider than we thought. Some players have no idea what to do--even for a sandbox. Some people really want mouse control and/or gamepad control. There’s some bugs that we never would’ve found without the communities help. Space Impossible is also getting more attention in Alpha than we expected. Most people seem to enjoy the game, and are excited to see what comes next. And that makes us excited too!
So we’re deviating a bit from the roadmap for Alpha 2 (Update 1 is now known as Alpha 2). Instead of adding more regions with more mining, we’re shifting the focus towards:
- Combat
- Early Player Experience
- *AI*. AI was already on the list, but now it has stars and underlines around it.
Combat
We’re not going to be fixing or finishing combat in one update. But this first step should give players significantly more choices, both strategically, tactically and visually. We’ve reworked the templates, so that each tile type (on a per object basis) has its own health value. Each tile type can also have a “damage type”, to which its susceptible to.
Medium Asteroid Base Art and Tile
Take something like the Medium Asteroid Base as pictured above. On the left you have the visual data that you actually see ingame. On the right you have the tile definitions. There’s black, red, yellow and white. Black corresponds to the rock. With this new system we can make rock have 1000 health and vulnerable to a specific damage type (internally called “Type 0″ but also being known as “Mining Damage”). Compare that to the red tiles, which correspond to manufactured metal. We could give that 3000 health, and be vulnerable to “Type 1″ aka “Combat Damage”. Theoretically there can be up to 255 damage types, but we’ll probably just have three for now, Mining, Combat and Exotic (not yet used but planned for).
That leads us to the weapon changes. Each weapon can now have multiple damage values. We can now have “Mining Laser” that does 1000 DPS to tiles marked with the “mining damage” type, while at the same time do only 5 DPS to other tile types. Conversely, we can have “Combat Lasers” that do 3000 DPS to certain tiles, but only 30 DPS to others.
Finally, as part of that system, we’ve also added tile loot modifiers. It now will depend on what kind of weapon you use to destroy the tile. A mining laser might drop 2x ore 100%, and a combat laser might cause only 1 wreckage to drop 10% of the time. It opens up the door for a number of specialty beams and roles.
Alpha 2 will see a normal “Laser” which is middle of the road, Mining Laser for faster and more plentiful mining, a series of Combat Lasers which use lots of energy, but do lots of damage to “man-made” tiles, and a Salvage Laser series that is slow to drain energy and do damage, but yields increased wreckage amounts.
Which leads us to the visual element. Stuffie’s been working on a system that allows us incredible flexibility with both beam weapons, but also engines and other effects. They’re now accessible via text file, instead of hard coded/referenced directly from the Unity scene.
So we’re giving beam weapons a make over. We’re still discussing style choices, but we’re aiming for each beam type to have a distinctive look that also scales with power/tier.
Early Player Experience
Most of the feedback has been good. But there’s been plenty that says the game is boring and/or they didn’t know what to do and quit. No game is for everyone, and that’s certainly not our plan to appeal to everyone, but we do feel we’re failing to encourage players in the right direction.
That means Alpha 2 is going to see a new system introduced amongst other adjustments.
Warp Gate Bubble Art is still WIP
We’re introducing Warp Gates. We’re overhauling the warping system to accommodate it. Each warp gate will have a warp bubble (the red thing) will lead to a different region, in a network of connections that (generally speaking) lead to higher and higher level regions. And they have to be discovered. So to move from Region A to Region B, you’ll have to discover (once per universe) the warp gate in Region A that leads to B. If you enter the bubble, the Star System Map will automatically open and prompt for a destination.
As you discover more warp gates in regions, you’ll create a network that you can then warp to any destination. Example: You’ve discovered warp gates to A->B->C. If you’re in A and enter a warp bubble, you’ll be able to pick C as a destination so there won’t be tons of needless flying around.
Warp gates will be extremely rugged and very difficult to kill. They will be moveable, as is any object, but it might require some really powerful tractor beams to move it about.
Larger and/or more advanced ships (haven’t decided the cut off yet) will also be getting a new component type “Warp Engineering” (not 100% married to that name yet). That component slot will allow things like "Warp Engines", that allow those ships to enter warp from any location in space. More seasoned captains can still experience region-region movement like it currently is in Alpha 1. Coming out of a warp from that method will still plunk you down near a warp gate so entrance to a region will be predictable.
Additionally, we’re hoping to introduce the basic discovery process this Alpha, but it might be bumped to Alpha 3 depending on scheduling. The data is already present in all objects, but it’ll require some hooking up. Basically certain objects (think ship wrecks or secret outposts) will appear as Unknown Objects until you get close enough to discover them. They will then be marked as discovered, given a timestamp and possibly a reference to the player who discovers it. We hope this system, along with better clues about what is around you (without opening a map) will give new and experienced players something interesting to do.
Finally, to spice things up, we’re working on a system of encounters. This system will allow us to expand AI interaction beyond the current “neutral/friendly AI flies in a circle, hostile AI spawn and bee-line for you”. We aren’t going to yet give more depth to AI attitudes so things like stand-offs won’t be happening, but instead the diversity in AI spawning will change.
1) AI on patrol will now pick objects to fly between. So a Ticeroy ship might now patrol from a space station to a warp gate instead of a big circle.
2) We’re going to try out “ship rescue” scenarios, where a trader ship will be flying between two warp gates. Bad guys spawn and are chasing the trader. It’ll be your choice whether to join in on the kill (and deal with the bad guys afterwards), defeat the bad guys, or just ignore it altogether.
3) Warp Gate ambushes. Upon entering hostile regions, you’ll be much more likely to encounter hostiles near and at warp gates.
4) Periodic hostile attacks. This will most likely take the form of “A pirate ship has appeared on the nav”. So even if you’re mining in relative safety, you’ll still have to occasionally address one or two hostile ships that show up to ruin your day. I’d honestly probably just run away myself.
5) *Stretch Goal for Alpha 2* AI bases. Hostile ships will patrol around an asteroid base or something. If you engage them, more ships will spawn from the base.
AI Improvements
This ties closely in with Early Player Experience goals. Here’s what we plan to do here. AI ships should have a variety of spawn templates. No more “laser mk 1″ on all ships. It means some ships are going to be really deadly, and you might not always be sure who it’ll be. It also means that sometimes AI will blow themselves up with torpedoes. That should be fun.
AI improvement in Multiplayer. The AI behaves dumb in MP for two reasons. There’s an occasional bug where only the first player to enter the region is accurately aware of the AIs behavior. All other players know about the AI ship, but not that it’s an AI ship and thus subject to different rules. That process is going to be a bit more forecefully enforced to ensure synchronicity.
Secondly, AI spawning. They currently spawn near where a player is. They only despawn if all players have left a region for 30s or more. This leads to problems where Player A enters region at Point 1. Player A leaves region. AI remains near Point 1. Player B enters region at Point 2. AI is too far away from Player B to engage them, and just ignores it. Depending on luck, no additional AI may spawn, and Player B who was expecting a rip-roaring fight is sitting there with his/her thumb up their backside.
We’re going to fix it so that AI ships that spawn in certain situations, if they lose engagement and don’t re-engage to a player/other ship in X seconds will “warp away” aka despawn. AI that are attached to a specific spawning event will behavior differently, and attempt to return to their original place and patrol some more.
Finally, for AI, going to add a first pass at better sensitivity. Currently you have to destroy one of their tiles before a neutral/friendly ship will turn on you. They should be more sensitive to you shooting up their backside. But the goal will also be for them to revert to neutral if you do no further damage to them in X seconds, so they’ll let bygones be bygones.
Summary
TL;DR; Alpha 2 is a bit bigger than we originally scoped for. But it’s becoming clear that those systems are more important than growing the size of the universe, yet. It does mean we might not hit a mid April release, though a mid April feature lock (shift to a 1-2 week debug/polish state) is still possible. We’ll have to see.
So that’s what’s going on with Alpha 2. We thank everyone for the great enthusiasm we’ve received, as well as patience. We hope Alpha 2 doesn’t let people down.
Additionally, we may or may not still release an Alpha-1.4. We’ve received no further reports of failure to load, so we might just release that fix in Alpha 2.
I’ll be updating the main website’s roadmap sometime later today or early tomorrow.
Original Blog Post