2023-11-30 Vehicle Entry, Location Desync

[GaelicVigil]

I would like to address some comments I read on Steam.

1) Pirate empires could be more advanced and interesting.

I also think it would be fun to play against an AI opponent who plays and acts like a regular player. That is no small task. It is too early to decide if that manifests as smarter pirate empires or an entirely new player AI.

2) Network play.

When I referred to LAN play in the past I meant player hosted network play. The networking will use TCP/IP of course.

I am most curious which of these improvements you would prefer to see first. Each of them is a lot of work.

That's a tough one. Both will be highly rewarding and as you said, both have high time commitments. To me being able to play with friends would be a huge selling point and most likely would be the highest demanded features.

Honestly if network play is easier to tackle, I would do it so you don't rush the pirate AI. I only say this because you'll also want to add friendly empires too that you can open diplomatic relations with and do trade with and more. Yes that is a huge undertaking but it will have the biggest impact on the game, so you'll want to get that right the first time or at least plan it out in stages that makes sense and focus on that more over time.

I agree with this.  Start with multiplayer first.

I think multiplayer would be a more efficient use of development time because it would give you empires to play against without any need to program new AI systems.  That said, some form of local dedicated server hosting would be the best, but I'd be happy with LAN too.

Improving pirate empires could be done in stages.  Don't try to eat the whole elephant right off the bat.  To start with, just some alien empires clustered in sectors.  I'd mark them either as friendly or aggressive.  Each system would spawn cities on planets with a station in orbit.  Stations should allow some sort of commodity trading, buy low sell high to other friendly empires for profit.  Aggressive empires would spawn ships into your system periodically and attack your cities, but keep it basic at first - there is a lot of depth here that could be done later on.

EDIT: Oh, and Haxus, congratulations on the game launch on Steam. You've already fulfilled a dream of mine. Thanks for all the hard work! If you do nothing else, you've already made my day.