This sixth post from the Milestone 2 database structure series describes the information that is associated with the universe: the map and the objects that are on it, as well as the description of a planet’s surface and operation.
Map
The map consists in two major entities: stellar systems and planets.
A stellar system consists in a pair of coordinates, representing the system’s location on the map.
A planet is found at a specific orbit of a stellar system (each system has 5 orbits). It is identified through an unique map object name and includes a picture identifier to be used when displaying the planet. A planet has a population; a portion of this population is happy, the rest isn’t.
Planets may feature any amount of resource providers (at most one per type of resource); each resource provider includes its maximal amount, current amount, extraction difficulty and regeneration factor.
In addition to basic information regarding a planet, its infrastructure and current tasks must be described.
Buildings
The infrastructure of a planet consists in a set of buildings. A building is associated to a specific planet and building type. The record includes the building’s current hit points, used to determine whether it should be destroyed or not, and affecting its production level.
Civilian queues
A planet may possess a civilian build queue which lists which actions are being performed with regards to the planet’s buildings. An civilian build queue entry is specific to a planet and is identified by its queue order. It indicates the type of work being performed (construction, repair, destruction) and includes information regarding the amount of work which was already processed.
Construction is associated with a type of building and a quantity of buildings to construct, as well as the amount of work which was already performed on the current building. Destruction and repair operations may be associated with either a type of building and a quantity (in which case the game update should select the most damaged buildings) or an actual building.
Repair and destruction operations are updated when buildings are destroyed by external causes (inability to pay for the buildings’ upkeep or battle damage).
Military queues
A planet may possess a military queue which lists which actions are being performed by the planet’s shipyards; military queues are only supported for planets actually owned by an empire. A military queue entry is specific to an empire-controlled planet and identified by its queue order. Each queue entry is associated with an action being performed (construction, repair, refit, decommission). There are two different types of military queue entries:
- some entries are associated with an empire ship design; these entries also include the amount of ships that should be affected by the action (this information is updated as ships are processed),
- some entries are associated with an actual ship.
In addition, ship refitting operations are associated with a second empire ship design which indicates the type of ship the operation will produce.