We will only ever be 1/10th of the size and scale of Elite. Our game-play is rooted in a single player interacting in first person with their crew and NPCs, on the decks of their ship, as it fights other vessels in the star systems it can jump to. You gather resources to keep your ship and crew alive, navigate political alliances, and trade resources to upgrade your ship and expand your fleet with other ships you refurbished from combat or bought at an allied (or pirate) shipyard. That is what makes us so different from the other space sims. Were aimed straight at the story, the personal story of your player character and your crew, and its broader impacts on the Faction-Reaction algorithm. Our combat is always following the lore. If in the tutorial level you chose to play as an Astral Anactora Peacekeeper, you will be defending the galaxys peaceful worlds against the Serin Empire, fighting Serin foes and the odd Lantus & Confederate Rebel faction, trying to keep the peace between all the empires and end the war by taking the Shadow Star out of the equation; achieving a political victory. If you joined the Serin, you are seeking the Shadow Star to take the entire galaxy by force for your god, waging war against the Confederates, Torlan, and Lantus, for a Military victory. If you joined the confederacy, you want the Shadow Star to cripple Anax and restore the Galaxy to freedom from his reign of terror, another military victory, but also a political victory in creating a permanent peace between the empires that serves Confederate economic interests. Every fight will change the balance of power in a system by tracking the number of ships that entire empire owns. Destroying one procedural ship will be a drop in the bucket of an entire empire, but it sends the message to that systems inhabitants as to whos side youre on, what youre willing to do for them, and it may just change the allegiance of the system to your faction, sparking an interstellar skirmish to take that system back until one side gives up based on its value. That systems NPCs will offer you different trade, new missions aimed at strengthening their access to better equipment and resources, and grow their local economy and defenses against their enemies. Every system is a challenge aimed at the bigger picture. You may want to gather X amount of Nickle-Iron to reinforce the local Torlan deference forces against the regular Serin incursions. Theyll pay you well, and give you access to rare Torlan gear you cant find as often. Youll gain loyalty rewards with the Torlan and that star system can serve as a safe haven to return to for free-resources and a place to repair in your fight against the Serin in the next star system you plan to invade. Take a core Forerunner system from an Empire or its allied sub-faction and expect to wage a full on procedural campaign to fight for control of that system, and the systems linked to it for a dozen light-years. theyll never give up trying to win it back, so you will forever be on the offensive to ensure it stays yours. Youll have to forge political alliances with the nearby systems to convince them to send military hardware in exchange for some equal or greater value - depending on your character stats and reputation with that faction. Take an uninhabited system far from Sol and build a mining colony there, and expect to encounter a bad guy pirate maybe once in a blue moon, or to be hunted down by a specialist NPC sent to take you down by your most heated rival empire. Otherwise, that empty system is just one of your many satellites. Shadow Star will be about the story of the galaxy while you are just trying to get by on your ship in the immediate environment. Big broad changes occur to the map in scripted Main Quests, side quests help flesh out how that change will take shape, and procedural NPC battles and trade agreements make up the meat in between. Your ship is always running out of fuel, your crew are always watching your actions with NPCs for signs of disloyalty to their race, and the ship can always use more capable crew and hardware. There are stories taking place on your bridge as your officers level up and react to ship events, and a broader story in each system you choose to invade or defend. Our combat will be very unique, fought across great distances and times. you can literally watch ordinance approach you from light-seconds away, choosing how to counter every enemy action. You wont be directly piloting the ship with AWSD and mouse trashing to aim, but setting way-points and ordering specific guns to aim at specific targets and counter incoming ordinance according to threat priority. Youll be boarding ships in first person to fight along with your marines and even the odds, or repelling boarders on your own ship. Youll have to assign gear and training regimes to your crew to prepare them, always looking in each ship for better weapon upgrades and armour bonuses that are cheap to replicate at your ship-side fabricator, or rare items that can only be traded for rather than printed onboard your ship from resources you can gather on comets or planets. Entering a new solar system is always a major event. Some systems are just stepping stones, but each one can be contested by an enemy at any time. They exchange hands as each faction retreats, abandons, invades, or marches through each one according to that part of the overall galactic story. You may have to race against the clock to stay ahead of the enemy before they overtake a mission specific location you need to complete a main quest objective. You may find an objective hard or easy to complete as this faction-engine calculates who is winning where, and where their fleets are moving & defending across the stars. And while this is a very broad picture, its always coming down to more simple designs on the CPU, and less reliant on having lots of features. Working out how this will work out is why Im spending so much time on design, and planning how these features will be limited and implemented more simply.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 21:10:51 +0000
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