What's New

Looking at the patch notes (there aren't any) it's been a pretty dull week. I've been busy on some large features, neither of which are finished yet, hence no releases.

Quests

Most of the week I was working on the first quest, helping Gillian Mclaren track down her brother's missing submarine. That quest is mostly completed, but a bunch of supporting dialogue and several NPCs have yet to be completed. I ran into some writer's block writing dialogue, though, so I took a break before finishing.

Dynamic Reputation

To take a break from dialogue, I moved on to another long planned feature: dynamic reputation. The idea is that your actions in game will change how the different factions in the world feel about you. Completing missions and turning in bounties will increase your standing with a faction, while abandoning missions and attacking their submarines will decrease your standing with a faction. Standing changes with one faction will spread to affect other factions as well. For example, raising your standing with Hudson will lower your standing with the Blackreef Privateers who dislike Hudson. Conversely lowering your standing with Hudson will raise your standing with the Blackreef Privateers.

On the point of attacking submarines decreasing standing, this doesn't happen immediately. The attack has to be reported to a station (or witnessed by a station). So if you're through you can eliminate all witnesses, and not suffer any standing penalty. Additionally if you're not detected and identified, then no crime will be recorded. With brutality and stealth you can, quite literally, get away with murder.

There is one last aspect of Dynamic Reputation remaining. There will be a temporary state of hostility that can be reached without lowering standings fully to "enemy" status. This will be triggered by doing a certain damage threshold, high enough that you won't be instantly attacke d for a stray torpedo, but low enough that you can't get away with casually murdering a transport. This state will reset once you've entirely cleared detection by the witnessing parties.

What's Next

I expect to finish up both the quest and dynamic reputation in the next week. Time permitting I'll then either start on cargo scanning or minisub hangars.

Cargo Scanning

When close enough to another submarine you'll be able to see the contents of their cargo bay, and details of their equipment. This can be used in some mission types, and for supporting smuggling gameplay. Security submarines will then scan the cargo bays of all subs entering or leaving a station, and become hostile if they detect contraband. Contraband and smuggling will be added later.

Minisub Hangars

Some subs (the Republic and Province) already have  hangars modelled on them for minisubs. This feature will involve actually making them functional. You will be able to launch minisubs to assist in combat and salvage, with minisubs added to support other gameplay options as they're added.