Milestone 1 is definitely not a good game, in that there are no incentives for anyone to actually fight (which was also true of Beta 5, with the exception of corruption which never really worked as anticipated). If the next step had been planet management, as was initially announced, it would have made it even worse, as the relatively heavy Beta 6 rules on this point would have added complexity, but no incentive, and no reason to spend money on anything other than just “breeding planets”.

Milestone 2, reloaded

The (new) second milestone must therefore concentrate on bringing these two elements to the game.

First of all, the new ship design and fleet management system will be added. Ships will be capable of carrying three different types of weaponry (beam weapons, mass drivers and missiles), as well as their countermeasures (shields, armours and point defences, respectively). But since a weapon in space isn’t really much of a viable ship, other parts will be provided – hulls of various sizes and engines. Finally, a “special module”, the drop pod, will allow ground troops to be deployed. A few default designs will be provided, but you will have the option to customise the designs or to create new ones.

Why is this important? Because, by changing the fleet’s configurations, you might gain an advantage on your enemy. For example, if you are at war with someone who uses mass drivers and shields, you might want to construct or refit ships to use heavy armour and missiles. This constant need to adapt will cost money, which should take care of one of the problems mentioned above.

The second problem remains, however. Why would you go fight your neighbour if there is no actual reason to do so? The solution is relatively easy to find. Why are there wars, in the real world? The major reason for that is resources. As a consequence, the resource system which was planned for Milestone 4 will be added in the next release. However, to keep things simple for now, resources will only be found on planets (which will remain the only available map objects for the time being), and won’t come in too many varieties. Most advanced technologies will require resources to be used.

While what we just discussed hopefully took care of both major problems, they introduced new ones.

A consequence of the new fleet system is that the hastily designed, totally unbalanced battle system from Milestone 1 has to go. This is not a bad thing, it’s just worth mentioning.

Many ship parts, many new types of turrets (as they would have to follow the same pattern as ship weapons), mining facilities to extract resources… The line-based research system of Milestone 1 will not be sufficient to handle this. A graph-based research system, similar in structure to Beta 5′s, will be implemented. It will not feature any optional technologies at this point, as this would require some form of technology exchange. In addition, the “research budget” system used in Beta 5 will be replaced with a much simpler system allowing per-technology control.

In addition to the above features, which should introduce major changes to the gameplay, a few minor elements might be added, depending on how much time I have: a new user interface as well as replacements for both internal messages and the “normal” messaging system. The French translation may or may not be included.

Because of my relatively heavy schedule, Milestone 2 will be released sometime between April and June of 2011.

So, what about Milestone 3?

Milestone 3 has become more distant. It will definitely feature the new planet management system (from M2 in the initial post), the new economy and in-system objects (M4). It will also include forums, although its alliance management will remain simplistic – this will allow Beta 5 to finally rest in peace. It might also include the new universe structure, but that is a big “maybe”. A few alien races might be present as well.

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.

Different types of minerals can be found on both planets and asteroids. To find minerals on a planet, owning it is enough; special agents can also obtain this information from planets owned by other empires, and probes sent to investigate a planet may be able to discover it as well. Minerals in asteroid belts can be located using probes or a mining station’s scouting abilities. Note that, to spot minerals other than titanium and copper, some technologies may be required. Some resources can be extracted faster than others due to their nature.

All of the game’s planets and asteroid belts feature some of these resources. However, the less common an element is, the smaller the amount of it which can be found and the lower its regeneration rate.

Gases can only be found in nebulae; in order to first discover a source of some gas, a player has to first send ships or probes to that location, or use a mining station’s scouting abilities. None of the gases are visible by default, they require at least one of the nebulae extraction technologies.

All types of gases are present in a nebula, but the less common a gas is, the smaller the amount. The rate of regeneration depends on the nebula’s class – class 8 nebulae will regenerate more than class 1 nebulae. This is balanced in the end as, the higher the class, the less common the nebula type is.

The final type of resource is dark matter. Dark matter can be obtained from the Oort cloud of systems neighbouring a black hole, provided the player has the appropriate technologies. Dark matter can be detected either by probes or by the mining stations’ scouting ability.

The amounts of dark matter available are relatively high around natural black holes, and much smaller around black holes created through the space-time drilling technology. In both cases, the regeneration rate is low.

Do you think there are enough resources? Too many of them? What do you think of the few details included about extracting resources?