Dev Blog #012 July 05, 2023

Hey everyone, I can finally give you all some info on the new corporation building system in this blog!

Mission Updates

Previously there were two types of missions, primary missions and secondary missions.

Primary missions were not repeatable, they were used for the campaign missions and a few other unique missions. Secondary missions are repeatable after a set amount of time, these were things like distress calls, requests to clear pirates and other "smaller" missions.

After reviewing this I've now added in a new mission type "Campaign", this seems obvious and a small change but it's actually been a bit of work as they are handled differently to other missions, however it was worth it. I’ve also made adjustments to allow for multiple campaigns to run alongside each other.
With this new mission type I’ve now got better separation between repeatable small missions, unrepeatable important “one-off” missions and the main campaign missions.

Primary missions are now exclusively used for unique handcrafted missions that are scattered all over the galaxy. For example there is a unique mission that unlocks wormhole travel, this mission is not part of the campaign and can only be started by finding the right contact and starting their mission. I am hoping that I can add all sorts of unique missions like this, so that exploring and chatting to contacts at new stations will always have a chance of rewarding you with something new. Maybe you will find a new contact that can unlock some advanced research? Or give you access to crafting your own ship riggings?

Secondary missions haven’t changed, these are your normal everyday missions such as traders requesting aid, AQSEC posting bounties for wanted pirates and of course miners looking for help gathering Ores. These are repeatable after a set amount of time, these are posted at almost every station allowing you to pick up a quick mission whenever you want.

Corporation Building

I've been excited to finally get this section of the game complete, it's about 80% of the way there now and I don't think it's going to change much so I can finally release some notes on it.
Corporation building has had a huge overhaul, it's much more detailed now and is almost a whole game in itself.

AQ1 was fairly basic, you could build Auxiliary buildings and do simple upgrades to improve their effectiveness. AQ2 is much more detailed, you not only have to upgrade buildings but you are also required to look after your workers, providing them with food, entertainment, security and of course somewhere to sleep. Beyond that you can also track local markets to ensure you are making big profits on the goods you are producing.

AQ2 still features Outposts and Auxiliary buildings, to give you a high level overview:
Outposts are your main building in the sector, they have several slots for modules you can construct. You are able to upgrade the Outpost to unlock more module slots and improve its basic stats.
Auxiliary buildings can also be upgraded and have module slots, although the modules you can construct for them depend on the type of building. For example the Solar power plant can support extra modules for overall power generation and the Orbital farm can have its food quality improved with extra processing modules. There are generic modules as well, such as Crew quarters and shield generators.
Auxiliary buildings can also be manually placed in the sector, so you can place your defenses in the best position.
How you develop your Outposts also depends on your workers, local trade and other factors.
The main elements of controlling your Outposts are:

Workers
Nothing gets done without workers, workers are required to run your Outposts and Auxiliary buildings. The basic requirements for workers are housing, food and wages, without housing workers won't move to your station and without food they won’t want to. Workers don’t appear as soon as you provide housing, they move to your outpost over time (or leave it!), depending on how satisfied your current workers are.

Satisfaction
Worker satisfaction is a key statistic, high satisfaction should be the primary focus when building your outposts.
Satisfaction has a major impact on the production of your outposts, unsatisfied workers will produce less and therefore outpost revenue will drop. If it drops too low workers can riot and that can lead to the outpost being damaged or even your Corporation losing control.
Keeping satisfaction high will increase the amount of workers moving to your Outpost, too low and they will start leaving.
Enough food, good wages and a safe environment will ensure your workers are happy and productive.
External factors can also impact satisfaction, if your enemies start bombarding the Outpost or blowing up traders then the workers will feel unsafe. Corporations at war can take advantage of this by crippling their enemies' production.

Power
Generating power is important, without power the outposts production will drop and workers might start getting upset. More importantly it can even knock out the shields on your Outposts making them vulnerable to attacks.
Power can be generated by reactor modules or by dedicated Auxiliary buildings like Solar power planets or Fusion generators.

Sector Production
Periodically your controlled Outposts will sell their produced products on the local markets and will generate revenue for your Corporation. You will however have to pay taxes, wages and upkeep, so a badly managed Outpost can actually cost your Corporation more to run than it generates.

UI updates

I’ve also been working through more in-game screens and making sure they look good and are fully functional, this is an ongoing effort towards getting an alpha version of the game out.

A boring bit

I’ve also been hard at work ensuring the server architecture will handle enough players and adding new systems for logging and tracking server performance.
The new logging system collects all logs from all servers and puts them into a centralized database, allowing me to search through them in near real time. This will be very helpful when tracking bugs or responding to players when something goes wrong.

Hopefully that made sense, I find it hard to describe these features in a blog format.

As always if you are interested in adding it to your wishlist on Steam then please check it out at https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172070