Ending Scenario and other new Features

A closed test game is currently in its final stage. Here are some of the features added in the last months:

• Player and Alliance Rankings
• Starbases
• Refittable Ships
• New Resources: Hydrocarbon and Carbon Fibers
• Fog of War
• Research Tree Overhaul
• Tooltip for Detail Data in the Colony Screens
• Unique MMO Ending Scenario

Starbases

These can be built directly over a planet the same way as ships, or you can put an expensive starbase module on a ship and deploy it in a location of your choice.

Refittable Ships

Ships (and also the new starbases) can be refitted with ship modules which they have on stock (in their cargo bays). Just drag and drop the modules, and click "refit". The ship will be immobile and defenseless for a few turns.

New Resources: Hydrocarbon and Carbon Fibers

These are researchable in the late game (later they will belong to the midgame or even earlier stages).
More resources will be added soon, to get more different trading goods and also provide more options during colony management. 

Fog of War

The fog of war was badly needed - now the first X in 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) is fully covered by Empires in Space. I used a quadtree to implement the client side functionality, which works like a charm. I will post the typescript / javascript sourcecode of the implementation in one of the next posts and upload it to the github repository of Empires in Space. 

Research Tree

The former research tree was split into 4 parts, each shown in a different tab of the research mask. They are now merged into one tree making this tree much more complex and interesting.

Colony Details Tooltip

The colony screen now has tooltips for the values shown in the lower left area. In addition, the research output of the colony is shown in that area. The tooltips were needed to show modifiers from research. Modifiers will soon be added by other features as well, for example distance to the homeworld or asteroid mining.

Energy Tooltip

Ending Scenario

This kind of ending scenario is unique as far as I know. It consists of the quite common team project victory, modified to enable thousands of players to fight for this goal simultaneously.

The team project has local coordinates where the project is built. To help building it, support ships have to be send to the location. These support ships are slow and thus easy targets.

The owner of the project decides who can help in finishing the project - allies, friends or just everyone who is not at war with the owner (at the moment, only the last option is implemented).
After beginning a team project, it is visible for all players, even those who are far away.
The game ends when the first team project is finished.

The player and the alliance owning the winning project will get a higher part of the generated victory points. This, and the fact that the projects have a distinct position which may be a bit too far away, hopefully leads to multiple concurrent team projects in the end stage of the game.

The amount of helping ships needed to finish a team project is calculated based on the amount of players in the game. A quarter of the players should need about one week to finish the project.
Victory points are distributed based on the amount of help a player contributed to the winning project.

Even players with small empires should be able to build a few supporting ships and thus make a difference to the outcome of the game.
The fact that there are concurrent team projects, and that they can be easily sabotaged by intercepting the slow support ships, makes this ending scenario challenging.


If you like what you read, join the next game of Empires in Space, which will shortly be announced here...