Working on hammering out the rest of the game details. And I still need a game name! Was thinking of something to do with stars maybe?
Commanders:
Each commander or mind is either biological, uploaded, or AI. At the start, you will only have a small pool of biological commanders and your academy will only produce biological commanders. Ships with such commanders would be limited to something like 100m/s^2 of acceleration (no interstellar travel also). Either the development of AI or mind uploading would be required to start using ships which can accelerate faster (among various other benefits such as higher stats and not dying). To get the most out of the ships you still need physical avatars although all ships will still function perfectly fine with no avatars. Having a highly skilled team is going to be very important.
Each person has 4 RPG like stats: intelligence, conscientiousness, reflexes, and loyalty. Intelligence and conscientiousness affects the speed at which the commander improves skills. Each skill also has a primary attribute which affects the speed which it improves. There's nothing preventing jack of all trades type characters.
Piloting, reflexes, improves evasion from fire.
Gunnery, reflexes, improves weapon accuracy.
Engineering, intelligence, improves engine efficiency and ship based construction.
CrewTraining, intelligence, same as aurora (crew grade bonus mechanic)
Science, intelligence, improves sensors and surveying.
DamageControl, intelligence, improves repair rate.
FighterWarfare, reflexes, improves attached fighters.
Logistics, intelligence, improves cargo module.
ColonyAdministration, intelligence, improves colony happiness and growth rate.
Construction, intelligence, improves ship construction rate.
Mining, intelligence, improves mining rate.
FactoryProduction, intelligence, improves construction factory production.
WealthCreation, improves wealth creation.
Research, improves research rate.
No ranking system for now, eventually I want a ranking system which depends on your form of government.
Colonies:
Energy: Required for everything. 3 methods of production, fusion plants, solar collectors built close to the star(relies on luminosity of star), or geothermal (amount relies on geothermal resource on planet).
Population Growth: Population growth relies on base population and carrying capacity of the planet which is proportional to the surface area.
Wealth: Similar to Aurora's system. Low population colonies will cost large amounts of money.
Happiness: How close the planet is to the home planet's environment, amount of infrastructure, and energy surplus.
Productivity Bonus: Combination of happiness and population on planet. All buildings can be run without anyone home but having a large happy population would give you nice bonuses.
Shipyards: I'm thinking of doing without the whole retooling mechanic and commercial/military split.
Orbital Structures: Option to build solar collectors / mass drivers in orbit around the star. Energy will probably be free to beam around the system (but not to ships) for game play reasons.
Fleet Orders:
I'm trying to avoid queuing orders as much as possible. Instead of giving a long queue of orders to a fleet to get it to shuttle all the resources around you give it a "transport minerals" order and it goes around collecting minerals based on your colony settings and refuels/resupplies when required. Same thing with buildings/surveying/construction.
Interstellar Travel:
Eventually you'll get FTL but early on you'll have to rely on mass drivers. For example if you want to launch a 10,000 kg ship to 0.5c then slow it down you'll need mv^2 of energy. To slow it down you'll only use energy 50% as efficiently (need to beam energy to ship and have it's engines burn). So 1.5 * 10000 * (0.5c)^2 or around 900 EJ of energy. A single starting game fusion plant would maybe produce 20 EJ of energy a year. Everything will happen slower in the early game to match this. Interstellar freight is probably not going to be very viable. You could launch the ship at a much lower energy cost at 0.1c or something.
Research:
27 categories of research. You distribute your research power and get a chance of discovering a random new tech in that field. Each time you discover a new tech you get a choice to encourage further research in that sub-category.
The problem with that design is that 1 meter thick armour plating is really REALLY heavy, and you restrict the weight of a minimum armor layout, and also restrict the level of detail by to much IMHO.
What about an armour tile and a bulkhead tile? With the bulkhead tile being the bare minimum to keep the air in. And think of the armour as some sort of honeycomb/spaced armour structure and not a 1 meter cube chunk of metal.
Heat System and Life support check (light green area is pressurised):
Heat:
Powerplants generate 100 heat, processors generate 50 heat. Each run heat gets conducted based on heatDifference / transferFactor. Bulkheads have a factor of 2, floors 32, and all other modules 16(4 to space). Heat sim is run 50 times only then the values used. Modules will start receiving a penalty above 200 heat and explode at 1200 heat.
I intend to have proper units for everything ultimately.
Crew Bonus:
A "Terminal" is crewed by 1 crew member. Tiles surrounding the terminal (no diaganols) receive a 100% bonus. Tiles 2 manhattan distance away receive a 25% bonus. Each additional terminal affecting a tile receives a 50% penalty to it's bonus.
Placement Bonus:
If not mentioned bonuses will be applied in a similar manner to the crew terminal bonus.
Bridge: The first terminal on the bridge provides a 100% bonus to all functions on the ship. Each subsequent terminal provides half the bonus of the previous terminal. The processor tile improves the commander skills by 5% per tile (additive) up to a maximum of the commander's base skill.
For example if the commander has a 25% bonus in gunnery 5 processor tiles would mean a total of 50% bonus while a 5th tile would have no further effect. Processor tiles are also crucial to the running of the ship, destruction of all processor tiles means complete loss of the ship.
Crew Quarters:
Crew start with 1000 morale and lose 1000 morale a year. Each avatar tile provides 1 crew member. Each personal space tile per crew member provides 100 morale. Each empty space around the personal space tile gives it a 25% bonus.
Energy Storage:
Energy storage tiles store increased energy in contiguous clusters (number of tiles) ^ 1.3. Each tile explodes with (number of tiles) ^ 2 strength.
Engines: Engine tiles must have an uninterupted line of sight of the bottom of the ship (except for other engine tiles). There are 2 other special tiles for the engines. Power boost tiles increase engine power (50%) at the cost of extra heat generation (50%) while power efficiency tiles decrease energy usage by 50%.
These tiles provide the bonus to all engine tiles in the same horizontal row or 3x the bonus if placed directly above a row of engine tiles. Engineering tiles reduce the chance of a random maintenance failure.
Power: Engines require a power plant to convert stored energy into energy for the ship. Weapons and shields also require energy.
Active Sensor/Fire Control:
There is no distinction between sensors and fire control. 3 types of tiles, sensor range tiles which increase sensor strength, sensor resolution tiles which improve sensor resolution, and tracking tiles which improve tracking (rad/s). I have yet to work out the sensor formulas.
Passive Sensor:
Thermal or EM sensor tiles. Strength would go up by (number of tiles)^1.3.
All sensor tiles receive a 100% bonus if next to open space. Single "islands" of open space in the middle of a ship do not count.
Kinetic Weapons:
Railguns: Railguns have equivalent range to missiles and do more damage than missiles. However they'll require a lot of space and energy.
Gauss Cannons: Gauss cannons have less range and damage but a lot more accuracy and use less space and energy.
Missiles: Missiles have the benefit of not requiring energy but can be shot down.
Energy Weapons:
Lasers travel at light speed so are almost completly affected by the target's acceleration. They also do damage in a straight line but require more energy.
Plasma cannons have similar characteristics to gauss cannons but are armour piercing and explosive. They will skip a few tiles before exploding.
Meson cannons have a chance to destroy enemy systems directly with lower chances the further away the system is from the impact location.
All weapons have a core tile. The average width of each contigious cluster will determine the damage while the average height will determine the penetration. Only the first contigious cluster per module will be counted.
Loader tiles will improve rate of fire but increase energy requirements while accelerator tiles will improve projectile speed. Turret tiles will improve tracking speed by (number of turret tiles) / (sum of all other relevant tiles in module).
Missile launchers only have magazine and magazine ejector tiles.
Shields:
Shields are directional. The length of each contigious cluster will determine the distance of the protective barrier (diagrams needed). A hit to the barrier will reduce the shield strength. Regeneration tiles improve regeneration at the cost of energy.
Special Function:
All special function tiles (mining, construction, terraforming, survey, tractor) have a (number of tiles in module) ^ 1.2 bonus.
Tractor beams have a force and distance proportional to the number of tiles.
Hanger:
Hanger space is calculated by the least width and least height of hanger space tiles in the module. Each repair or rearm arm provides a multiplier to repair/rearm speed starting with 1x for no tiles, 2x for 1 tile, and so on.
Cargo:
Cargo, Troops, and spare parts. Spare parts are required to repair any damage caused by combat or random maintenance failures. Cargo arms provide a multipler to cargo/troop loading. Terminals here only provide bonuses to cargo arms and not storage space.
I realise making a ship building AI is going to be a heck of a lot of effort. I will probably rely on uploading/downloading designs to a webpage for AI ship designs.
