Updates on the new version’s design and progress
Posts tagged ‘technologies’
Beta 6 introduces an optional system of stock markets which, while usually being beneficial as they increase revenues, also happen to create a small risk of economic depression. A planet’s stock market normally affects only the output of industrial factories - however, some laws allow the planet’s base income to be indexed on its value (of course, this is a “use at your own risk” situation :))
In Beta 5, some technologies might be considered as leading to the construction of buildings; however, the construction process is implicit and no actual building is present on the planet. Beta 6 will feature actual buildings, allowing for a much higher degree of control.
Several buildings with either different effects or different levels of effect on the same parameters are available. These buildings are organised in several building types, each including several building categories.
A ship’s hull is the main component of its design. While a ship is of course to limited to a single hull, this choice has a lot of consequences, from influencing the space available inside the ship to the type of components which can be used to whether or not the ship requires a crew of officers to fly.
There are two main types of hulls. Standard, mechanical hulls are the most basic option, while it is possible later in the game to create biological ships if the proper technologies have been researched. Biological ships, while leaving slightly less internal space available, are more robust and possess natural regenerative properties; they also include a basic power generation unit.
In addition, it is possible to categorise ship hulls according to their size. Indeed ship hulls come in all sizes and shapes. The size of a ship hull determines how the ship will be used.
LegacyWorlds Beta 6 will feature different types of hangar bays which can be included in a ship’s design. These hangar bays allow to carry various smaller ships which don’t have hyperspace engines through hyperspace.
As a follow up from our previous post about generators which can be installed in ships, this post presents the last two categories: biological generators and zero-point generators.
LegacyWorlds Beta 6 will feature different types of generators which can be included in a ship’s design to produce the required power. Each type of generator is based on a different energy source / concept and is declined into various upgrades.
In this first post we introduce the mechanical generators - which are of course specific to mechanical ships. A second, later post will present the other generator types.
Missile countermeasures come in various types and shapes; some will disrupt a missile’s guidance system while others will try to get a missile to explode before it can reach its target. Quite obviously, they protect ships against missiles.
Missile countermeasures come in three different types. Continue reading ‘Missile countermeasures’ »
Space-time drilling is a technology allowing an alliance to bypass the standard fleet movements rules by jumping to a layer directly without having to go through supergates (it doesn’t allow players to jump to a different protection level tho).
While this very powerful technology has quite a few inconvenients (it costs a lot and presents a variety of risks), it gives an alliance the ability to attack an alliance located on another layer without having to go through potentially dozens of supergates, which can be quite a lengthy process and could alert the target before it’s too late if the fleets are detected on their way.
Missiles are projectiles containing both a propulsion system, a guidance system and some explosive materials. While they inflict quite a lot of damage, missiles are usually bulky, and they can be stopped using appropriate countermeasures.
Some missiles exist in different variants, depending on their guidance and propulsion systems. This is not the case for all missiles, as some of them really require advanced automation or powerful engines, while others are really too basic to be worth an upgrade.
One thing that has become clear recently is that Beta 6 will not be the same game at all; while Beta 5 was already very far from Beta 4, it still amounted to the same principles: build factories, research technologies, build more ships than your neighbour and then bomb him back to the stone age. Which is basically one big pissing contest. We are going to try and avoid that.
How, you say?…
The first thing is to make the new version about choices. Beta 5 was quite limited on this point - sure, you could choose to enact a law, or not, and you could decide to follow one strategy or another, that is either “fact-whoring” or “pop-whoring”. But that is far from enough.