The big focus for the next few updates is beginning to transition into multi star system and fleetwide gameplay. Thus far I've been primarily developing features that apply to a singular star system, but as I continue to expand the scope of the game that will no longer be sufficient. This will entail a lot of AI, dialogue, and UI enhancements among other things. I'm not sure on the exact timeline of things, but expect this to be a 2 maybe 3 month process with it rolling out in phases. The stuff listed here I'm pretty sure I can get out within the next month or so.

Jump Points

These snuck into the tail end of the February update, but were essentially step one towards the goal of sector wide gameplay.

Distress Beacons

With jump points now a thing and requiring fuel to travel between systems, the next logical conclusion is the player getting themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. We need to integrate that very real possibility into gameplay so the player isn't completely screwed.

For that I want the player to be able to deploy distress beacons. The idea is similar to starsector or FTL, where you have to wait around for a bit for someone to show, and it could be anything from a mining fleet happy to share some fuel, to a pirate fleet looking for an easy mark. This will be the impetus for a lot of features I'll need to roll out, including more dialogue API enhancements and getting AI to be able to properly handle moving from system to system using jump points and relays.

Eventually I'd like to show distress beacons as part of the random event system. The plan is as you fly around you'll see little notifications popping up to let you know a system adjacent system to yours has a beacon, and thus a random event.

Better Pathfinding and AI

A big missing functionality for the AI fleets are they can't actually move between systems yet. I need to write a lot of backend that will allow me to pass in arbitrary vectors or objects and generate several different types of paths. Once I have the pathfinder it will open up a lot of doors for the AI. I'll be able to have fleets move between systems for things like mining, going to war, answering distress beacons, and whatever else I need them to do.

World Map Screen

Since we'll be moving to sector wide gameplay, I intend to overhaul the map screen as much as possible over these coming months.

Information modals

I'd  like to have it where when a player clicks on a system it brings up a modal with a bunch of information on that system, such as planets, markets, faction info, and whatever else I can think to cram into it

I'd also like to do the same for quests.

Player notes

Should be easy to let players add notes to systems using the info modal, which would be a pretty good QoL.

Map Panning/Zooming

Panning should be easy at least. Zooming might be kind of awkward and not scale well, we'll see.

Quest orbitals on map screen

Starsector has a nice little feature where each system has orbital icons next to each system icon on the map screen. Should be easy to do for quests with a bit of work, though eventually I can expand it for other things of note.

Enhanced Autopilot

The aforementioned path-finding will also be integrated into the player's autopilot, allowing them to click on a system in the world map and have it do all the work for that. Otherwise flying around  would be somewhat tedious.

I'm also thinking of having some configurable settings down the road to allow the player to automatically use jump points and relays where possible/convenient. Still toying with the idea.

Fleet Screen

Fleet Skills

The fleet management screen has thus far been empty save for a very basic text dump for skills. I intend for this screen to display a total for each skill, which can be clicked to display detailed information on that skill and the breakdown of the contributions to that skill for each ship in your fleet.

Income and Crew Charges

It's intended that crew will charge monthly amounts to remain on your roster. I intend to list those in the fleet page under its own income section.

Game overs

I'd like to have an actual game over state for when you lose a fight and can't continue. I'm thinking that the penalty will be losing all of your credits and items. I want it to be penalizing, but not so penalizing you feel the need to save scum. I might crank it up to losing a handful of ships, but we'll see how it feels without that first.