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.

It isn’t very realistic and we have always been attached to have a universe which would be as close to reality as possible or which could function in a logical way.

Indeed, having planets which are all equivalent to each other, having stellar systems which always have the same number of planets and are so regularly organised in the universe or having a universe which is only a plane and not a 3D structure isn’t realistic.

Moreover, travel times to go from one side to another are getting enormous when the universe gets bigger. For now it is still manageable since the player base remains small. But what if we manage to attract more players?

Therefore we definitively had to rethink the shape of the universe to have it solve these various issues.

This implied including various types of planets, be it on the size or environment point of view. Stellar systems had to include a random number of planets. The shape of the whole universe had to be less regular and had to include a notion of volume and not only plane. We also needed means to go faster from farther locations.

While we were at it, we could also include concepts we had thought of for Beta 5 but didn’t include at the time, such as stellar objects other than just planets, nebulae and planetary remains, for example asteroid belts.

This lead us to design a Beta 6 universe divided into layers. A layer is a roughly circular area containing a set of objects such as star systems, nebulae or black holes. Each layer has a Z coordinate, which indicates where to place the layer on the map. The only normal way to go from a layer to another is through a supergate. A graphical representation of an example layer is presented below (click the picture to get more explanations).

Various types of stellar objects can be found in each layer. Star systems are basically composed of a star which can be orbited by a varying (but limited) number of planets, planetary remains or asteroid belts. Nebulae are dense clouds of gas floating in space.

Black holes are singularities in the structure of space-time. They can occur naturally, which is fortunately rare, and can appear because of the use of devices related to a very advanced technology.

Finally, supergates allow fleets to fly from a layer to another. Supergates cannot be built; they are leftovers of an ancient civilization, which connect layers in the universe. They occupy whole systems, a bit like nebulae, and are indestructible.

What do you think of this new shape of the universe?

Is it too complex to apprehend?

What do you think of the list of considered objects? Would you add something else (along nebulae, black holes, supergates, stellar systems including planets, asteroid belts and planetary remains)?

Considering supergates can be “controlled” by alliances, what kind of features would you associate with this supergate control?