Upcoming Changes to AI
Hey everybody, this is a quick update to what we're working on right now and what you can be looking forward to! In general, the next update will be about AI improvements and improvements to controlling your fleet in various sectors.
Pathfinding + Flying
We're improving the pathfinding and flying AI, which means that ships will fly their full speed when they can, and they will also maneuver asteroid fields a lot smarter. This will also make the game a little harder, because you won't be able to fly away from enemies as easy as before.
Mining + Salvaging
We're making improvements to the AI considering mining and salvaging. So far, miners and salvagers have been behaving a little weird for lots of people. There's a simple reason for that: Mining is just "attacking" an asteroid. This led to some weird behaviors since ships were also trying to move dynamically, which is not necessary, because they don't have to avoid being shot by asteroids. We're now implementing a separate AI for harvesting, ie. mining and salvaging, which will improve things a lot.
Inter-Sector-Communication
This change will hopefully make lots of modders happy: Over the last weeks we've been laying the ground work for calling functions and executing code between sectors. Scripts from one sector will now be able to call functions in scripts present in another sector. There are a few limitations to this due to how the Avorion engine is structured, but in general this will allow your scripts to easily talk to each other even when they're in different sectors. Which brings us to...
Remote Commands & Queues
The above groundwork will enable one vastly important feature: Inter-Sector commands for ships! You'll be able to command ships over the galaxy map even when they're not in the same sector as you. But we're not stopping there! We're also adding queues of commands, so you'll be able to command your ships to fly to one sector, mine asteroids or attack enemies, and then jump to yet another sector. And you'll be able to loop these commands as well.
Analytics Data
To be honest, we don't know how the majority of players play the game. This is a big issue when it comes to making decisions about new features, balancing and content. In order to improve this, we're adding completely anonymous analytics to find out how you guys play the game, and things like where most players die or how much money is actually made by combat, trade, etc.
Mac OS Release
We're currently preparing the Mac Version of Avorion for Release. While we won't list it for Mac immediately in the store, we'll be releasing the Mac Builds for download soon, so everybody who has a Mac will be able to download the game. We're asking everyone of you to please download and try out the game on Mac, and please report any issues you're having!
There is no time frame yet as for a beta release. Progress is good though, we're done with nearly everything except for queuing commands and the new (scriptable) UI for the galaxy map. We're hoping to be able to release to the beta branch in the next 2 weeks!
Until then, have fun and leave us your thoughts here!