Hi all! I've been posting regular updates to the forums over the last few weeks. I thought I would post a consolidated progress update to the news area.
https://youtu.be/ylYudCk-B3M
This week was primarily focused on finalizing the ship storage management code, ship repair systems on stations and the space combat loot system. That wraps up most of the work. Here's where I am right now:
Done:
--Turret systems for missiles, projectiles and mining,
--Space combat fully functional - turret based combat as shown below in a previous update.
--All 40 ships playable - Light, medium and heavy variants of fighters, merchant ships, explorers, interceptors and massive cargo vessels.
--Skills are all tied into the ship combat system in the game. Team members at stations gain skill and apply bonuses from their skills to your ships systems.
--Ship equipment system and all loot tables tied into the combat system.
--Ship merchants - trade in or purchase a new ship.
--Ship equipment merchants offer millions (really!) of ship specific variants for components like warp drives, turrets, missile launchers, ship armor, electronics systems, ammunition, targeting computers and shields.
--Cargo management.
--Simple ship repair. When I add the final skill based repair system, you will be able to repair ships in space. For now you can simply purchase repairs on the station.
--Ship storage so you can have multiple ships stored around the universe.
--First pass enemy ship AI system.
--Space exploration HUD update.
--Ship scanning.
--Combat loot system - destroyed ships drop ammunition, ship equipment and ore.
To do:
--Chaff and missile avoidance system.
--An update to the mission system to allow for space combat specific mission types.
--Some additional AI work.
--A few quality of life features.
--A few testing, bug fixing and tuning passes.
--Additional polish.
Things are coming along nicely and I should have everything wrapped up soon. I'll continue to post weekly updates and give you a release date for the space combat patch when I get a bit closer to completion. I should mention that this is not all the work being done, another mission set is nearly completed and be implemented along with two other new mission sets after the space combat patch is released.
Thanks for your patience everyone!
I'm going to post all previous weekly updates below.
Progress update - 11/3/17
This week was all about ship vendors. Still have a little work to do on swapping ships and a bit of cleanup work on the UI. See the video below for details. Please excuse my monotone - I need to catch up on some sleep - coffee and Red Bull's aren't doing it anymore...
https://youtu.be/MkPl3R9sZg0
Ship vendors can be found throughout the universe and they all carry fixed sets of ships that they sell. Purchasing a new ship requires that you either store your current ship or trade in your current ship for a cash credit towards the price of your new ship.
One issue is that your equipment, because it is ship specific, cannot be swapped between different ships. To make things easier, the merchant gives you credit for each item currently equipped on your ship during the trade in. The value generated is the current market value of your equipment + the current trade in value of your ship which is credited towards your purchase. Your charisma affects the trade in value of all items.
If you choose to store your current ship, it will remain on the station until with all of it's current equipment until you come back for it. I'll make sure there is an easy way to see where all your current ships are stored. The ship storage menu in the video is still a work in progress. There will be more information available that is visible anywhere, anytime. For example, the ship list will provide two lists - the first is a list of all ships and their locations in the universe and a second list displaying the ships currently on the station you are visiting.
Regarding cargo - if you have more cargo in your cargo hold than the new ship will fit, you will need to sell your cargo before purchasing the new ship. The hamsters in the cargo bays will go on strike and the ship vendor will reject the purchase. The rule is that the cargo in the cargo bay of your current ship needs to be less than or equal to the maximum available cargo on your new ship.
As you explore, you will loot ship specific equipment. If you plan in advance, you can horde items for that future ship upgrade and after purchasing your new ship, slot those items into your ship.
One last note: On the ship info screen you can see an area for "MISSILE MANAGEMENT". This will eventually bring up a menu that lets you fit various payloads on your missiles and tweak their subsystems for range, avoidance and a few other things. Missiles come in one main variant and you can adjust them for various purposes and damage types.
That's it for this week. Thanks everyone!
Progress update - 10/27/17
Hi everyone - nothing terribly exciting to report this week though lots of progress was made. The focus was primarily on ship equipment vendors, equipping ship equipment, the ship information UI and tying all equipment stats into the combat and ship systems. This was a ton of work and I'm glad it's behind me.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1182538737
What I have now is a fully functional ship equipment system that allows for the purchase and sale of all ship equipment types. This includes changes to the NPC AI systems, the ship vendor UI, managing the moving data around between the vendors, cargo and the ship itself and displaying that information in the UI. When ship equipment is looted or purchased, it's placed in your cargo hold. From there you can drag and drop the equipment to the equipment slots on the right or the ship UI assuming you are docked at a station.
One item of interest is what I'm calling the "Power Bias". This is rainbow colored bar in the ship UI that displays the combat power state based on your currently equipped engines, shields and turrets. The display calculates the amount of power required to sustain all firing turrets in combat assuming default power settings. A reading to the left of center means that your power balance based on equipped hardware will be effective. Anything to the right of center means that the power draw from your equipment will lead to mis-fires and you will not be able to maintain your maximum fire-power. I'm still doing a bit of work in the screenshot below, tying the correct numbers into several of the fields and moving things around.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1182540036
I mentioned this before - shields and turrets have a base power cost which reduces your capacitor charge rate. Turrets draw from your capacitor. Your warp engines provide your overall power rating. All equipment displays this information, however, I needed a way to display this so you won't need to break out a calculator every time you are equipping items. The power bias gauge will help by displaying the current power sustain based on the equipment currently slotted to your ship. I may actually add this to equipment rollover info so you can easily see the effect a shield, turret or engine might have on your power bias. There will be lot's of equipment variants to choose from and you will always be looking for the best performance at the lowest power cost.
I can say that I am now weeks away from the space combat update, so that should be good news to everyone. No specific date yet as I have quite a bit of coding and testing to do yet.
Have a great weekend and thanks for supporting Stellar Tactics!
Progress update 10/20/17
The ship loot system is nearly finished - just need a few days to clean things up and get the rest of the rollover information data coded and this task will be finished. There is a lot of code tied to the system including vendors, rollover information, ship attributes and more. I won't go into all the details and will just say this was a productive week with lots of coding, spreadsheet work and many cups of coffee...
A few things about ship equipment and loot. Let's take a look at a ship shield and turret. This is the same equipment at level 10 and again at level 40. Your skills in weaponry and electronics modify the effectiveness of these components as you gain skill. You can see in the screenshots below how bonuses from your skills scale the attributes of the equipment. Green attributes are modified by your skill while yellow attributes are unaffected. Turrets display minimum and maximum DPS scaled to your skill level and the adjustments to their base damage values.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1175021819
Turrets gain additional damage, reload speed and more efficiency in their use of the capacitors as the team member at the weaponry station becomes more skilled in combat.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1175020521
Shields gain additional HP from your skill level - this is based on the premise that someone assigned to the Electronics station gains bonuses to shield efficiency from their skill level. Shield resistances are static and scale with the quality of your equipment. Resistances directly remove a fixed percentage of damage from incoming weapon damage before that damage is applied to your shields.
Ship equipment comes in various tiers of quality from Basic to Epic. Legendary equipment can only be looted from vessels/enemies that are high risk or rewarded from missions - it cannot be purchased. Epic ship equipment can only be purchased using faction tokens or looted from bosses.
All equipment is generated by ship type. So, turrets, shields etc are clearly called out for fitting and will only work on that specific ship type. This is because equipment is scaled based on ship attributes like mass, number of hard points and available energy. All equipment has a minimum skill requirement which is also called out in the equipment information UI.
As always your charisma stat will adjust the value of equipment when buying or selling.
The available equipment for ships include turrets, shields, electronics systems, targeting computers, hull armor plating, cargo expansions, warp and FTL drives.
In other news a fourth procedural mission set has been started, the third is being lit as I write this.
That's all I have for this week. I'll be focusing on ship merchants and the ship merchant UI next week.
Thanks again for supporting Stellar Tactics!
Progress update 10/13/17
Hi everyone - another progress update this Friday. First, a video that covers ship skills and how they change the space exploration portion of the game.
https://youtu.be/yZJidlU29C4
Please excuse the bands at the top and bottom of the screen. This video was captured in the debugger and is running at 1/2 FPS and a non standard resolution.
Stellar Tactics takes a bit of a different approach from most other games. Your crew contributes to the performance of the ship over time based on their experience in four key skill categories - Piloting, Weaponry, Electronics and Targeting. Each of these categories is represented by a dedicated station on your ship.
Piloting affects:
--Ship speed - your base ship speed is calculated based on the mass of your ship. Piloting increases your base speed, afterburner speed and micro-warp speed.
--Ship turn rate - massive ships turn slower than small interceptors. Piloting skill adjusts this.
--Evasion - the ability to evade incoming fire as a bonus
Weaponry affects:
--Weapon damage bonuses - as you gain experience, your skill with weapons increases the weapons base damage
--Turret reload speed - How fast your turrets recharge and reload
--Weaponry capacitor drain (Efficiency) - the amount of charge taken from the capacitor each time the turret fires
Electronics affects:
--Scanning range and the quality of scanning data. Higher quality scanning data will sell for more credits to various factions
--Security - the stability of your ships systems against hacking - this is for the boarding module - you may be boarded if the enemy ship is trying to capture your cargo/ship or if they have a mission to capture you.
--Shield bonuses to your shields maximum durability and recharge rate
Targeting affects:
--Sub-system targeting (The UI in the video needs to be updated) - for the boarding module
--Overall chance to hit scaled by range for turret projectiles
--Shield bypass - your ability to bypass shields by attuning your weapons - this bonus applies damage directly to the enemy ships hull armor.
As you gain skill your bonuses are applied to each of the above. At various tiers you will also get perk selections similar to ground combat that allow you to fine tune your ships systems to adjust for different scenarios - Larger or smaller ships, the number of ships you are attacking/being attacked by and their weapon types based on scans. You can pause combat and scan ships and make perk adjustments at any time in addition to adjusting your power, turrets and targeting.
So, space combat, experience and skill bonuses are code complete - that's the majority of the work. I'll be moving on to the loot system next. Following that ship and ship equipment merchants, some faction work, simple space combat mission systems and testing. I'll be sure to post another update for you next Friday.
Have a great weekend and thanks for supporting Stellar Tactics!
Progress update - 10/6/17
Hi everyone. Here is the update for this week. Hope you all have a great weekend.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1159889900
Added experience system for piloting, weaponry, electronics and targeting skills. You gain experience at the end of combat for each skill assuming you have a team member assigned to the appropriate station on your ship.
Completed key bindings for turrets - Keys 1-6 - press for individual targeting - hold and release to toggle turrets on/off.
Mining lasers moved to turret system. Can individually target each mining laser to multiple asteroids.
--Combat while mining possible. Mining is a bit less peaceful now as it is possible to be attacked by hostile ships while mining.
--Mining turrets come in light and heavy variants.
--Mining turrets will come in various quality tiers similar to combat turrets and can be purchased or found as loot drops. Higher quality mining lasers will generate bonuses to the yield of rare minerals.
--Mining lasers draw energy from your capacitor and have no ammunition requirements
--Mining turrets use the same energy management system as combat turrets. You can balance energy to engines and shields against your capacitor charge. You need to power up your turrets to mine asteroids.
--You can mine while in combat with enemy ships. Larger ships have more turret mount points and you can balance mining with defensive turrets
--Heavy mining turrets generate twice the yield and consume twice the capacitor charge of light turrets. Yield is modified by your skill in mining. When perks for mining go in you will be able to fine tune mining in a number of ways based on your selections.
--Mining turrets can be brought on and offline for energy management as needed
--Mining can be quite profitable and you're going to need the money to purchase new ships and equipment - ships are expensive. As an example the Pharris Crate MRCH-4 has six turrets total, 3 laser turrets and 3 missile turrets for defense. Filling the cargo bay (1700 cubic meters without a cargo expansion ) and not being picky about the mineral yield can net you around 34,000 Credits per trip. Imagine what you could do with a Behemoth CRG-2 which has 4 heavy turrets that will fit heavy mining lasers and 180,000 cubic meters of cargo space!
--I'll be adding asteroid and asteroid field scanning during alpha so you can evaluate the quality of the mineral yields for various asteroid fields. Rich asteroid fields will be guarded and you may need to purchase mining rights from the local faction authority or face resistance.
--I'll be adding the ability to eject cargo for the space combat update.
Moved all new effects (impacts, beams and explosions) to ground combat.
That's it for this week - back to work...
Progress update - 9/29/17
Hi everyone - hope you had a great week. I'm going to post these every Friday so you know how things are coming along with space combat and other content.
This week:
--All 40 ships are now combat ready and playable by both the AI and the player.
--The combat pause system is in. When you pause combat the entire universe stops allowing you to pan your camera to get a better sense of the environment around you, turn turrets on and off, target enemies and turrets individually, review scanning data and manage your energy. While combat is paused you can also review inventory, character info, log data, the universe map and all ship data including swapping team members to various ship stations in the ship UI.
--Combat damage tables are complete and balanced as far as I'm going to take them for now - I'll tweak things once you get a chance to play with space combat and I gather feedback.
--Shield damage mitigation is in and working. Shields mitigate different types of damage based on the quality of the shield you have equipped. You can buy and loot varying quality tiers of ship equipment so as you explore, your ship's equipment will improve (and so will the AI).
--I'm working on the ship scanning system today which is nearly finished. The team member assigned to the electronics station of the ship UI gains experience from scanning and as they improve in skill will gain perks that you can customize. Scan data will provide you with more/better information. Some of the info you won't get at lower levels of scanning skill are enemy turret damage ratings and shield mitigation bonuses.
A few things about space combat and shields:
- Ion weapons can turn the tide of battle and are very important. This weapon type is a shield killer and comes in three varieties - projectile, beam and missile. You can of course choose to equip any type of weapon you like, however, if you scan a ship and it has multiple Ion weapons and you do not, you should run or make sure your ship can handle the damage.
- Ion weapons do increased damage against shields which is then mitigated by the shields ion resistance ratings.
- Ion weapons do very little damage against ship armor.
- Non Ion "beam" weapons do 1/2 damage against combat shields and are then mitigated by the shield resistance rating for that damage type.
So, beam weapons are not very useful against shields unless they are Ion based. Depending on the number of mounts you have on your ship, you may want to balance your weapons accordingly. I was trying out a matched enemy ship that had two ion weapons, a missile turret, and two Gauss cannons. I had 2 missile launchers and a few Gauss cannons and the other ship tore me up. I think the key here is picking your fights. I would have been fine against another ship with matching equipment. If I had quality shields that were attuned to Ion damage, I would have likely survived.
And now for something different!
Missiles come in three base types - explosive, thermal and ion. I'll be adding a warhead settings menu for each missile type that lets you customize their payload for specific purposes like disabling turrets/engines, evading ECM and chaff, range/damage, splash damage and a few other settings. Settings for missiles are a trade-off - each of the below can increase/decrease damage based on how you set up the missile. Missiles are configured once and all missiles of that type use those settings until you change them. This may not be in for the initial release of space combat.
- Setting the missile for longer range adjusts damage values down and conversely shorter range increases missile damage
- Setting missiles to evade ECM and chaff will reduce damage output, however, they are more likely to evade active countermeasures.
- Splash damage reduces damage and affects more sub-systems (Shields/Turrets/Engines etc)
- Targeting specific systems increases damage to that system and reduces damage the hull of the enemy ship once the shields are down.
At least that's the plan. Once I get the warhead settings menu in place I'll play test it to see if the system is practical.
In other news a third mission set is being worked on now that the caves are done. It's shaping up nicely and will go in the game after space combat is finished. I'll share a screenshot once the lighting is finished.
Until next week...