Eons of War development is going swimmingly: game loops are tightening, graphics are improving, and sounds—well—are sounding better.
With this update, we'd like to start covering some of the core game mechanics and systems. The first topic is the in-game economy since it's used in many game loops.
Energy
Energy is used to power all of you space stations. If there is not enough energy then stations' efficiency steadily declines. This has different consequences for different types of stations. For example, shipyards will slow down ship production and sentries won't fire weapons as fast.
A cluster of solar arrays next to the Starbase.
To get more energy you have to build solar arrays. The closer they are to the star the more energy they generate.
Credits
Credits are used to pay spaceships for their services. If a spaceship is assigned to a specific location then it expects to be paid a salary. If you don't have enough credits then the spaceship's loyalty will decrease. Decreasing loyalty affects spaceships behavior, making them worse workers, and, eventually, if their loyalty drops to zero, they will leave the colony.
More stations—more credits!
To earn credits, you have to build more stations at the beginning of the game. Later, once you research various improvements, spaceships will buy them from the colony bringing some of their earned credits back.
Minerals and Nuclear Fuel
Minerals and nuclear fuel are mined from asteroid fields and transported back to the colony by miner ships.
Mining minerals.
Minerals are used to build and repair stations. Nuclear fuel is used to power planetary shields during stellar radiation spikes.
Each asteroid field contains one type of resource and it's limited in quantity, so you have to explore the planetary system early in order to find more fields.
Miner ships have weak defenses, so it's always a good idea to guard them with sentries or the military.
Antimatter
Antimatter is used for special actions such as super weapons, station and spaceship repairs, and some others.
Chasm spawning a Rift spaceship.
To gain more antimatter you have to destroy more enemy spaceships from the Rift. The stronger the ship the more antimatter it generates.
Population
You need population to build new spaceships.
Planets are the only source of population in the game. As long as the planet is protected from stellar radiation by an active shield and enemy ships are not bombing it, population will increase steadily. There are improvements and some other actions you can do to speed up population growth but those are currently a work in progress.
Every planet has a population limit and if you've reached it, but you still need to build more ships, then you'll have to explore new planets and potentially terraform them if they don't support life.
Planet protected by a radiation shield.