Demo 5 Debriefing & Roadmap to Demo 6

Debriefing for Demo 5

Demo 5 ends is 2 hours. Thank you all for the feedback and bug reports collected on Discord and Steam; my plate is full now.

As I said in the video last week, this is the last alpha version primarily focused on the engine. As a result, future updates will improve at a visibly faster pace for you, as a player. Indeed, the past six years of development have been focused on all the inner machinery that allows the universe, spaceships, industries, projectiles, AIs, and everything else to be simulated, interconnected in a single world at high time resolution, and this foundational part held up well. From an engineering point of view, all the bugs reported were relatively superficial.

Roadmap for Demo 6

The next version, Demo 6, will focus on fixing the gameplay bugs, content and balance problems, while consolidating the existing features and the UI.

Some features will receive a significant gameplay pass. The goal is to give more substance to the player’s political standing within an organization, while also making character AI more active in that sphere.

It is also meant to make character progression more impactful and intelligible for the player.

Policies

• A revision of the policy system, with only a few meaningful thematic policies that have a significant impact on society

• A revised policy UI

Politics

• Parliament UI improvements, with more filters and a heatmap

• Revised political interactions, both from the player and from AI characters

• Rank progression and elections will have their UI and dynamics reworked for characters, including the player, to make political gameplay more dynamic

Cabinet

• Actions within a corporation will be gated by cabinet roles assigned by the head of government (the “leader”), so sharpen your bootlicking skills.

• Marshal: controls theatre objectives and fleet assignments

• Minister of Industry: manages shipyards and procurement

• Minister of Colonial Affairs: controls colony designation and nominates planet governors

• Planet Governor: a special mandate to manage a specific colony

• Minister of Science: once research is implemented, will control the organization’s research and designs

• Leader: can accumulate mandates and control the organization’s diplomatic actions, can nominate cabinet roles

Characters

• Character attributes will all be removed and replaced with a more consolidated system

• Character skills will be reworked, removing per-skill experience and removing or consolidating half of the existing skills

• Character traits will be finalized and tied more closely to perks, skills, and AI behaviour. The UI will be expanded to better communicate all of these aspects

• Character perks and leveling: the progression of both the player and AI characters will be tied to a single leveling system, allowing perks to be chosen from multiple paths (Trading & Finance, Industry, Politics, Science, and Military). This will become the main component driving skills and role