Category: game design

I’ve been doing lots of stuff around the release of the Tribe expansion pack, so I’ve got behind on work for the next patch. I ended up taking some time to re-balance a few of the least-used weapons, and do some admin stuff, like tweak the challenges code so that it doesn’t show you older challenges in the list when newer ones are available. I also got rid of some really really old challenges. Currently the list only displays up to 1,024 of them, sorted in date order now. That was always enough in the past, now it’s not, hence the tweaking.

Anyway…

I was testing out the new supply limits stuff and trying to ensure it was user friendly at the deployment phase. One of the things I needed was a way to see how much of each supply limit was taken up, and the other was exactly which ships were using up those limits. My current solution isn’t perfect,but it’s a starting point. The supply limits window is on the right, so you can still your fleet. The individual module icon bars now have a feint progress bar as their background showing you how much of that specific modules supply limit is used up. If it turns red, you are using too many and the fleet is invalid. If you click one of those strips, it will highlight the ships in the fleet currently using that module so you can see where you are using them up.

My current thinking is that when I next patch the game, with this functionality included, I will put it in one of the existing missions, so people can see how it plays out (and of course modders will be able to use it). In the lonegr term, this functionality will form part of any meta-game or maybe a map editor that gets done next.

Here is some more information on how the supply limits stuff will be presented

This first image shows the choose mission screen, after I hit the new ‘supply limits’ button for a specific scenario. (The button only appears if limits have been defined). Only modules which are actually limited are shown in the list. The new window is highlighted in red.

This next screen shows the similar window on the deployment screen itself. The difference here is the game can tell you the current number in use, as well as the limit, and the fraction of supplies used is shown by a subtle highlighted progress bar across each item. One of them is red, and this indicates we are actually using too many of that item. (not possible by dragging, but theoretically possible by loading default deployments). The extra button at the top right is the way this window gets launched, and you will see on the far left that a module which has been ‘over-allocated’ gets highlighted red.

This final screen shows the details window for a selected module on this screen. There is an extra strip at the bottom now which shows the limit and the number of modules of this type currently deployed.

One side-effect of working on this stuff is that the window at the bottom left of the deployment screen, showing a ship type and its breakdown is now decoupled from the stuff above it, showing a specific ship’s orders. What does this mean? It means that when a ship cannot be added, and is greyed out, you can now click it and see its data at the bottom left without having to deploy one. I also changed the tooltips so that even when you can’t deploy a ship, the tooltip will now still tell you it’s name.
The eventual plan for this stuff is to have customisable challenge maps, so players can put together supply limits themselves and embed them in a challenge. I’m not quite there yet, but I’ll likely hold off a while until both features are done before patching.
In the meantime, there will be an expansion pack for GSB released in the next few days. woohoo etc :D

One of the naturally occuring design conundrums with GSB is preventing there emerging any single killer strategy that always wins. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into avoiding this, both before and after releasing the game. One way to do this is the conventional Rock Paper Scissors design, where there is a counter for each weapon. But GSB introduces a new quirk, in that you can tell 100% absolutely what the enemy brings to the battle, and how they behave.

One of the best ways the game prevents killer game-killing strategies emerging is variety between battles. Because the size of maps, the spatial anomalies and the race of the enemy is different in each map, the player is (hopefully) working with different strategies on each map, having to adjust their fleet design to fit the cirumstances. In addition, financial and pilot limits also restrict the design of fleet.

And Generally… I think for the majority of the non obsessed uber-gamer, this is working ok. The problem is that although a strategy doesnt emerge that wins every battle with the same effectiveness, it is true that sometimes the best fleet turns out to be aesthetically very dull. Such as a block of 64 identical frigates all flying in formation. This isn’t what GSB is about, so I need a way to make the player design fleets that not only win, but look l33t.

Enter supply limits, which I’m working on now (in-between testing the now almost done expansion pack). The general idea is that as well as having pilot and cash limits, a scenario (or a challenge) can support arbitrary total limits for any ship component. So for example, there may only be 11 frigate engines available, and 3 plasma launchers, meaning that certain ship designs are now only deployable in small numbers. By default, every module has infinite supply, but the scenario can limit some, none or all of them.

In code terms this is nearly done, but in UI terms it will take ages :D. However, I am very very excited about seeing the effect it will have on the game, especially going onwards into its potential for user-designed scenarios. It wouldnt be a massive leap further to allow challenges with player-chosen supply limits, and take that extra step towards letting GSB players shape the nature of the competitive game.

Supply Limits: It’s the future!