What's New

I got distracted from working on the AI positioning and docking issues, instead I spent most of the week adding several pirate factions and stations to the Hudson area. These stations don't have a player-visible representation yet, but they do have functioning economies and spawn their own sub agents. The current factions are:

• Liberté - an independence group centralized in eastern Hudson, agitating for the independence of Nerva and Bastion. They are considered a criminal terrorist group by Hudson.
• Blackreef Privateers - A loosely affiliated group of pirates that operate across the colonies, and have two stations in Hudson.
• Cartel - An organization that straddles the line between criminal and lawful, they are typically associated with smuggling, and funneling supplies to criminal groups.

With these criminal factions added, I next started work on a simple combat simulation. This is a very rough dice-roll based approach to combat, enough to get a general sense of what would happen without burdening the game. Combat is only resolved this way far from the player, any submarines the player is close enough to see will fight the normal way.

Stations now rebuilt destroyed submarine agents as well, with the rebuilt rate depending on how well supplied the station is. Stations that aren't fully supplied will only replace destroyed submarines at 30% of the maximum speed. Larger submarines also take longer to replace.

What's Next

I'm going to be on vacation for a large part of next week, so there might not be much progress. The immediate next step though, is to account for battles in saving and loading the world, as well as ending existing battles when the player gets close to the location.

Following that, I need to better account for submarines docking in the summary simulation and when loading / spawning, as well as the positioning and behavior noted last week.

That will probably take all the time I'll have, but while working last week I identified a few more long term issues to address.

Trade Intermediaries

Right now trade routes are only formed directly between supplying and consuming stations. With the new pirate factions and the Cartel acting as a grey market intermediary there is an opportunity to route trade through the grey market to meet the needs of the pirates. There will need to be extra logic around this for both the player and AI traders as well, to ensure nobody ends up a smuggler by accident.

New Station Module Styles

The main reason that the pirate stations don't have a detailed representation yet is due to art assets. I want to design stations for them that are distinct and reflect their more haphazard / black market origin.

Tutorial / Introductory Quest

I have an idea for an introductory quest to help get new players situated in the game. I plan on framing it as both a tutorial and a prompt to get the player to engage with the world. At the same time it will be easily ignorable for those who don't want to engage with it.