January 2023 Game Update

Welcome to the first update of Drifters! Been hard at work over the holiday season to hammer out features. Many exciting things in the pipeline.

Overworld Overhaul:

This update a significant focus was done on expanding the overworld interactions. There were a couple key features missing that didn't quite make it into the initial alpha release, and I'm happy to be able to include them now.

Derelicts

Derelict stations can be found scattered around and looted. I've added support for generating different types of derelict stations. Right now I have armories which grant weapons and hullmods, cybernetics labs full of…cybernetics, refineries full of ore, and hydroponic stations which can be looted for food. The loot is currently hardcoded, but in the future it will be randomized. More backend work needs to be done to introduce loot tables as simply hardcoding a wide range of loot into the generator functions would be a waste of time.

Cargo Pods and Credit Loot

Another big item I'm happy to announce is cargo containers. Yes, so exciting I know! Getting them to work was rather involved and I'm glad they're done. They function similar to starsector, where failing to loot everything will leave behind cargo pods containing the unlooted items. They will disappear over time, but can be stabilized using fuel so that they remain indefinitely. With those out of the way I can circle around to allow the player to directly manage their inventory and eject unwanted items.

Credits can be salvaged from derelict stations and destroyed fleets. For fleets the amount is proportional to the cost of the ships, so larger or more expensive fleets will grant more money.

Overworld Action Delays

Interacting with objects on the overworld now has a delay to it, represented by a progress circle around the player's fleet. This makes things feel a little bit more "weighty" and prevents silliness like instantly looting or using relays. Currently only implemented on the player end of things, but it will be extended to AI interactions in the future.

Mothballing:

Another core mechanic necessary to make a fleet management game work, mothballing disables a ship and effectively removes it from being a part of your fleet until you un-mothball it. This can be used to salvage ships you find without going over the fleet point limit, or mothball logistics heavy ships for long voyages.

Mothballed ships have their own indicator to differentiate them from disabled ship

UI Improvements

The second major goal of this update was to polish up and rework the UI where I could.  Seeing people interacting with my game (thanks /u/dan_Qs) provided some useful feedback which served as the impetus for these changes.

Better Minimap Icons

Minimap icons have been replaced with more specific icons instead of the different colored debug squares I was using for everything. Still placeholders, but we're getting there.

Revamped Dialogue System

The dialogue system has seen massive improvement. I initially intended to create my own style deliberately divergent from starsector's UI, but it just ended up looking terrible. Like the ship editor looking suspiciously similar to starsector's despite my best efforts, gameplay mechanics ultimately drive UI and creates convergent evolution. An important lesson to keep in mind when making a game.

I also added fleet previews to the dialogue screen for bounty and salvage missions, and some basic info for missions. Like many things it's still WIP and will be expanded on as I continue to get more UI work done, but I'm pleased with the results so far. The blank rectangle is reserved space for when I can get a mini star map added.

Adjustable Combat Size

Alongside the dialogue improvements, combat size can be adjusted using dialogue flags, with both relative and absolute values. I can also do it for enemies as well as the player, depending if I want to make it easier or harder for the player. Station fights for instance are given extra deployment points on the enemy team to make it harder for the player to take the station down.

Salvage Screen and Ship Buttons

With mothballing now as a mechanic, the salvage screen saw some love. The fleet strength is listed each time you select a ship for recovery, so you know if you're going over your fleet limit. A checkbox is included which by default will mothball all the recovered ships, which is usually a desired outcome.

Ship buttons saw an improvement, with different modes for displaying ship buy/sell price, fleet point cost, and combat deployment cost (after negative hullmod modifiers). A simple change but it allows for conveying a lot of information while reusing the same UI component in different parts of the game.

Misc changes

Updated to Godot 3.5 which was long overdue. I saw some decent performance gains from it during my stress tests which was nice. I expected the port to be difficult but it was surprisingly seamless. The real pain will be switching to Godot 4, whenever that gets a stable release.

I also took feedback into account from my initial alpha release and pumped up the speed and rotation values for ships. I haven't begin to do any serious balance passes on ships yet, but it was a quick change to make and it made everything feel less sluggish when people mess around in the simulator.