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 is therefore necessary to write rules regarding the method used to travel from one location to another, and the distance it corresponds to. In order to do that, the different modes available have to be clearly defined, and the geography of the universe must be described more precisely than the vague definition we posted here earlier.

There are two different methods an object may use while traveling through the universe.

• An object can be flying through normal space, in which case it will not be affected too much by gravity wells, but will on the other hand be slowed down by e.g. asteroid belts or Oort clouds. In addition, interstellar travel, while possible in normal space, is extremely slow.
• An object can be traveling in Hyperspace, which allows relatively fast interstellar travel. However, Hyperspace is heavily affected by gravity wells; as a consequence, it is a highly inefficient way of moving inside a stellar system, although it allows bypassing asteroid belts and Oort clouds.

The next thing we need is a notion of “distance”. In this case, we do not really need to define that distance in terms of real-world units (nor do we want to); what we need is a numeric value which can then be used to compute e.g. travel times.

Obviously, the actual distance between two locations is always the same; this distance is specifically fixed for each possible type of location. However, depending on whether an object is moving through normal space or Hyperspace, different multipliers will apply.

For example, adjacent systems are always 1000 distance units away from each other, but a x10 multiplier applies when traveling through normal space.

While the example above is very simple, multipliers are actually much more complicated than that. Many objects can affect the multipliers: nebulae, black holes, location in a stellar system, etc. What’s worse, the two multipliers (Hyperspace and normal space) are not affected in the same way by a given object; the typical example is the Hyperspace multiplier in a stellar system, which gets higher the closer you get to the star, and which is not applied to normal space travel at all.

In order to define both the “base” distances and the multipliers, defining the structure of every possible “geographic” object is necessary. The next posts in these series will therefore describe the structure of solar systems, the structure of “special” objects such as nebulae and supergates, and the rules that will govern interstellar travel. The final post in this series will combine all of these elements.

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.

As stated earlier defining such a time flow allows the recording of events as they occur. Several types of events can be considered. The first set consists in actual in-game events. These events can be unique in the game’s history, such as the first ship in space or the first colonised planet. Others can be recurring events such as random events, alliance creation or disbanding, etc. The second set consists in stories written by the administration team which add depth to the game universe. Of course these stories shouldn’t logically affect any game parameter (we can’t have a story about piracy in an area of space if no-one there sees their income decrease) and they should be impossible to check on by players (we can’t talk of a pest on a planet occupied by a player since he wouldn’t see any pest on the planet). These events can also be used to inform players about changes in rules. The last set consists in players’ requests. Each player can submit a story to be added, story which is reviewed before publication.

The transmission of information recorded in the news system is then fed to players through the Intergalactic News Service. This service can be considered as available in several forms (news on one of the game pages, RSS feeds, etc.) and is backed up as an archive which can be browsed.

What do you think of this idea of an Intergalactic News Service?

What kind of events do you think could be recorded and fed as news?

One issue we have considered is the recording and display of information regarding wars. This is difficult to do since we have no automatic means to know when battles are part of a given war or not. Moreover providing unbiased information regarding wars is difficult (usually each side reports its own perspective) and might not be welcome (stating side A hasn’t lost much so far is intelligence one might not want to see displayed). How do you think this could be managed?

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.

Random events are defined by an effect, an application range and a duration. For instance, one such event could be a disease reducing population growth in a layer of the universe for a week. Several categories of random events have been devised so far.

Spatial phenomena such as ion storms, meteor showers or electromagnetic waves affect the behaviour of fleets, ships, communication and detection systems. Economic events affect planets’ production, resources and research. These include for instance economic booms or depressions, strikes, piracy or research boosts. Population-related events include epidemics, food shortages or religious holidays. Species-specific events affect various species-related parameters or occur on a per-species basis. Some affect all species, such as periods of xenophobia. Others affect the relations between two species, such as territorial disputes. The last ones are specific to one species, such as a breeding or hibernation cycle.

Various ranges for the application of random events have already been defined. These ranges can first of all be based on geography: an area of a layer, a layer, a set of layers or the whole universe. They can also be depend on species: one particular species, a set of species, all species. Finally the range can be have specific conditions, for instance all planets with an happiness level below a particular value or all mixed population planets, etc.

What do you think of this random events principle? Do you think it could add some dynamics to the game?

Do you consider the proposed application ranges are adequate?

Can you think of other random event categories?

What kind of events would you suggest?

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.

To use the space-time drilling ability, the first requirement is the construction of ships equipped with space-time-drills. These very cumbersome, power-hungry and expensive pieces of equipment can only be transported by the largest ships. The space-time drills carried by the ships are necessary, but not sufficient to the use of the ability. A drilling control center has to be constructed in the system that will be used as the point of origin; this building can only be constructed on a planet owned by an alliance.

Once driller ships have been brought to the origin system and the drilling center has been built, the alliance must decide which layer the drill is to reach, as well as the approximative location of the fleets when they arrive. The distance between the layers determines the amount of energy drilling will require: the higher the energy, the more ships are needed. Planets in the system being drilled contribute to the amount of energy produced.

After the decision has been taken, the drilling operation is initiated. It lasts quite some time, depending on the amount of energy required. During the drilling process, space-time in the origin system is being heavily modified; any interruption of the process, for example if enough driller ships are destroyed, or the planet on which the control centre is gets captured, the whole system will be destroyed immediately and turn into a black hole.

Once the drilling is complete, all fleets in the system at the time (including enemy ships) are sent to the approximative location selected by the alliance’s commanders. However, some ships will be lost, some fleets will end up in the wrong layer … In any case, the origin system is completely destroyed and turns into a black hole.

What do you think of the possibility to go from one layer to another without using supergates?

Do you think the cost (in time, resources, potential losses), the complexity of the process and the required technological level are high enough to avoid having black hole flourishing all around the universe? What would have been the limits you would have defined?

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?