One of the most important and tricky aspects of Beta 6’s design is the creation of formulas. This series of posts (don’t ask me how many will be written, I really don’t know) will try to explain the process.
In this first post I’ll present the different types of formulas that need to be written in order to create a game such as Legacy Worlds.
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Beta 5 doesn’t include any notion of time flow. Nothing is really recorded and past events only remain as a part of the memory of players. However only relying on memory isn’t sufficient if we want to build up a real history. And history is what makes a game alive. As such we are planning to introduce a “true” time flow in Beta 6 as well as an event recording system, which feeds its entries to players through the Intergalactic News Service.
However, this notion of time poses some problems. Considering real life time or server time as the LegacyWorlds time doesn’t make much sense, since the game is supposed to take place in a relatively distant future. However we can’t only rely on a fictional time indication: it is important to inform players about real-life time so that they can infer what to do and when. Therefore we intend to use a dual time system, using both the real-life, “server” time and a fictional LegacyWorlds time.
In Beta 5 the only events which can occur in game are the direct consequences of some game actions performed either by yourself or other players. There is no surprise nor anything linked with the universe itself. Introducing alien factions controlled by the game itself is one way to improve the game dynamics. Another way is to introduce random events.
These events occur randomly in the course of the game and affect game parameters on a scale wide enough not to advantage or disadvantage too much particular players. The frequency at which random events occur will have to be precisely defined, however it will be devised so that everyone is affected by a random event every now and then in any case.
Biological drones are the achievement of many years of scientific discovery and advancement; they are produced by humans as a general purpose, low-maintenance workforce.
Biological drones were made to look like humans: they were designed to their creators’ image. They have a limited understanding to prevent people from getting worried about what would happen if they should revolt, which explains their blank stares, picturing their stupidity. Moreover they are generally very athletic. In order to further distinguish them from humans, they also bear a specific marking on their face; this marking can’t be removed, even through surgery.
In Beta 5 the only items which can actually be built are ships. Moreover the only “permanent” items a player can control are planets which are located at specific coordinates. With the introduction of real buildings it felt logical that a planet’s surface might not be the only location where permanent structures could be installed. How about space?
That’s where space structures come in. Space structures are structures which can be constructed by an empire or an alliance in various places in space. Three types of space structures are considered, depending on the locations at which they can be built.
In Beta 6, an empire’s primary cash reserve is limited to at most 2 billions. All cash earned after this limit is reached will be wasted. In addition, 75% of the empire’s main cash reserve is split between its planets, the exact proportions depending on the planet’s category. When a planet is taken by an enemy, this cash is removed from the victim’s bank; most of it is wasted and just disappears, while a small portion is taken by the victor.
Communications technologies associated with banking technologies allow an empire to access the interstellar bank. This intergalactic facility allows empires to donate money to each other and to get loans, and provides them with two additional accounts onto which they can deposit their money for short- or long-term savings. All of these services depend both on the amount of interstellar bank buildings owned by the empire as well as their type.
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In Beta 5, alliances are only groups of players who have chosen to play together. There isn’t much which can be done at the alliance level. For instance the type of alliance government has an influence limited to the leader’s election; being a member of an alliance or another has no real effect on the player’s empire, except through decisions made by the other members and implemented manually: for example sharing knowledge or resources is only achieved through gifts or sales.
Beta 6 will add many more possibilities to the alliance system. These features would have an actual in-game effect instead of being reflected only by the actions and strategies of the alliance’s members.
We have already mentioned several times in comments that Beta 6 would include more resources than just money. There are in fact several types of natural resources which can be mined from various sources such as nebulae or asteroids. There are 3 different types of resources: gases, minerals and dark matter. While dark matter is a one-of-a-kind resource, gases and minerals come in different sub-types.
Resources are extracted from mines on a planet’s surface, or using mining stations, which are specific space station modules equipped with mining ships; however, to ease the process, the empire never manages these mining ships directly. They are considered a part of the station.
While Beta 5 only featured three different types of buildings, we stated in an earlier post that Beta 6 will feature dozens. But that isn’t the only building-related change Beta 6 will introduce, far from it.
One of the worst defects in Beta 5 was the “optimal factories” computation - it relied on nothing but arbitrary values and had one big flaw: it was supposed to prevent older players from being too powerful compared to newer players by having a decreasing derivative (yes, as in maths). This had a completely reverse consequence - people would just “whore” the planets and go away, having high population wouldn’t give you enough of an advantage in the long run.
Beta 6’s buildings will be managed in a completely different way. Instead of using arbitrary formulas, the new system will rely on a more realistic computation based on the size of the workforce available on a planet, the amount of jobs the buildings provide and what we call “secondary jobs” - construction, maintenance, police…
The Arc’kha’to, often referred to as controllers, are a species of ugly, parasitic and predatory aliens.
It is very hard to describe an Arc’kha’to as most of its appearance is determined by the host it currently uses. However, a host infested with an Arc’kha’to can be identified by the various protuberances and nodes that have pierced the host’s body.
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