Hey everyone, it's a been a while since we post a dev diary. The last one was on May of this year, for Leaders. Since then, pre-orders have opened with Pre-Alpha 7, we did lots of gameplay and balance adjustments for Pre-Alpha 8 with the feedback we obtained from the community, and a major UI revamp was made for Pre-Alpha 9. Now, we're currently very busy adding all the remaining systems in our road to Alpha. These major systems include: Ground combat, bombardment, starbases, ship refit, espionage, race customization, more techs, more wonders, more weapons and system specials (ship modules), a new race, an in-game tutorial and events. After all of this is in the game we'll hit Alpha and we should be entering Steam Early Access soon after. Today we'll be discussing two of these systems that are already implemented and currently undergoing internal playtesting in preparation for Pre-Alpha 10. And these systems are, as you probably already guessed by the title of this dev diary: Ground combat and Bombardment. Ground combat and Bombardment To invade a colony in ISG, the attacker must bring Assault Ships. Assault Ships can also be used to raid the colony, to try and capture the colony leader, steal a tech or bring down the shields. To bombard the colony the attacker must bring starships equipped with bombs. The bombardment can be focused on the population, infrastructure, buildings or on military installations. The player can choose between conventional bombardment or mass destruction. If mass destruction is used, the chances of destroying the targets are greater, collateral damage can happen and bomb fallout "pollution" will be applied with a production penalty in the planet until it is cleared out (bomb fallout reduces every turn). The defender can have three types of planetary defense structures: planetary shields, garrisons and airspace support facilities. Planetary shields protect a colony from bombardment reducing the chances of a bomb drop hitting the target. Garrisons increase the defender's ground defense capabilities and can make planetary assaults more difficult. Airspace defense facilities add some ground defense value, reduce the chances of raids being successful and provide support to defending ships in orbit. Certain technologies boost your ground combat strength which are the indicators you can see below each race's portrait in the picture above. Better armor technology provides greater ground combat strength. There's also personal shields, power suit and a series of different rifles (e.g. Phasor Rifle) that also boost ground combat strength further. When you feel you're ready, you can try and take the colony by pressing "Invade". Then a cutscene plays out. If you opt not to invade the colony, it will be under siege until you withdraw your forces, for which the colony will lose ground combat strength every turn, production will be halved and the colony will not receive cargo from asteroid exploitations. If you don't bring assault ships or starships with bombs, you can simply blockade the colony, for which it will have a mild production penalty and will also not receive cargo from exploitations. As said above, the ground combat and bombardment systems are already implemented and are currently being playtested internally before being available in the next public build, which will be PreAlpha 10. If you have any comments or suggestions you'd like to make please feel free to let us know in the comments below. Thank you all! Adam Solo & MalRey Interstellar Space: Genesis (formerly Project Space Sector) is a spiritual successor to Master of Orion 2, the turn-based space 4X strategy game from the 90's that we love so much. This will be a faithful successor, that is true in spirit to the series. A game for everyone who wants to have that “feeling” of Master of Orion 2, but also wants to experience something new and fresh, with all the complexity and depth of a big and complex 4X game. You can join the discussions here. Pre-Orders with instant access are available here. Thanks for your support! We are Praxis Games, a young development studio devoted to making great strategy games with deep and complex gameplay for a diverse set of settings and themes. We strongly believe in good and solid gameplay first, community-driven development, product quality, transparency and extensive client support to keep our clients as satisfied as possible, so that we can keep making great games for them for a long time to come!
Hi guys, thank you describing how these features work. Nice idea with capturing colony leader! However, what will happen if you capture him? Will he be working for your colony for free? Will he retain his attributes? I do have one more comment regarding this: It is hard for me to see how blokading a colony can have a direct effect on its production. Lets imagine for a while that there are alien ships orbiting around Earth. Would that affect its production? I don't think so. What it would affect is happiness of people. I would be unhappy that aliens might want to destroy my planet So what I am suggesting is to change from production penalty to happiness penalty. Of course if people are unhappy they might work less effective. I think this change would better fit reality. What do you think?
Hey Wodzu. When you capture leaders they will make a proposal to join you, which you may accept or reject like when leaders approach you normally. The captured leaders keep their stats. I pondered between applying a morale or a production penalty upon blockades. As you say, it doesn't make much of a difference since what counts in the end is that work will be less effective, being it because of morale or shortage of materials (no access to outside the system), or whatever reason. Also, I thought that not all aliens would respond in the same way, with low morale to a blockaded planet I mean, some could even have more morale to fight off the blockaders/invaders. So, in the end I opted just for the production penalty, a smaller one than when it's a siege. Another reason to be like this is that since sieging already causes a production penalty (more severe than a blockade), it eases the implementation, as I can just apply the same production penalty logic to the blockade That said, we may revisit this if we think morale could work better than applying a production penalty directly. We'll see as we go.
I understand less production caused by not having access to asteroid outposts. I remember that blocking a planet in MOO2 could be very harmfull due to not having access for food from freighters. There is a slight difference between morale and production. I can have high morale on a planet so decreasing it a bit due to blockade would not have an effect on production. (Correct me if I am wrong). While now, there is always a production penalty and I can do nothing about it. I can understand a psychological effect that fleet stationing on an orbit can have but now it is like an invisible hand is decreasing production I agree with you that some race can behave differently but this is a trait of such race which makes game even more interesting I understand that now you have a common routine for production penalty and your code is easier to maintain just wanted to share my opinion on this. It is not a big issue anyway.
Yes, freighters would not work and you'd also get a production penalty from a blockade in MoO2. It is different, but only slightly. Morale affects production, but also affects culture, money and research output from your citizens. Morale will also play a role in colony unrest and revolts (not implemented yet). Currently, a blockade only affects production. In fact, I could see a morale penalty working as well, or better because not only production would be affected, but also culture, research and money generation from the population due to the morale modifiers. Also, it could be another cause of insatisfaction in the colony leading to unrest and insurrection. We kind of lack negative morale modifiers at the moment other than the race and environment modifiers, plus the occasional planet special. Sure, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I took note of this and we'll have a look at it at a next opportunity.
