Stardeus "Bioverse" Major Update

Welcome to the "Bioverse" update. This patch is the most comprehensive update we've made to Stardeus in Early Access yet. It's a collection of core system rewrites + content, mechanics and balance updates. It was meant to be named "New Beings" (beings as in humans, robots, animals), however, this update ended up much larger than expected, impacting far more than just beings. This is the biggest major update that Stardeus ever had since launch to Early Access in 2022.

The following sections will explain the most noteworthy changes. Many of them are mechanics changes and system rewrites that bring the overall simulation depth to the level like never before.

New AI System based on GOAP

Before this update, AI wasn’t great. It had plenty of bugs and colonists would behave in dull and boring ways. The rewrite completely uprooted the old AI system and replaced it with a new, much more refined and flexible one.

The new AI system is based on GOAP (Goal Oriented Action Planning), an award winning technique first pioneered by F.E.A.R and later used in high profile games such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

To achieve this rewrite, every single AI behavior was redesigned and reimplemented, mostly from scratch. A bunch of new behaviors were introduced as well.

The new AI solves a large majority of bugs the old AI had, and adds much more flexibility and emergent behaviors that are essential for a complex colony simulator like Stardeus.

New Body Parts System

One of the biggest and most anticipated changes is the new body parts system. It brings Stardeus closer to games like RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress. For example, a cat now has 28 body parts - eyes, ears, jaw, a set of internal organs, legs, paws, a tail, etc. Robots are also fully modular, with replaceable parts that you can mix and match to create different combinations.

Each body part can provide the owner with some stats and abilities. For example, legs give the ability to move. If legs are amputated or damaged in combat, the colonist will not be able to perform any activities that involves moving around, and additionally, if any wounds are left unattended, a colonist can bleed out to death. If that happens, the healthy organs and body parts could be amputated and sold, or reused for someone else.

This system brings new levels of gameplay depth and immersion. It is tightly integrated with the new AI and other systems such as Combat, Health, Stats and Conditions.

It is now possible to conduct various experiments, such as replacing a robot’s tracks with a jet removed from a drone, resulting in previously grounded robots gaining an ability to fly. Equipment items can also provide such abilities - a jet suit will allow a human colonist to fly.

Internal organs from biological beings are also interchangeable across different species, so for example, you can harvest kidneys from a pig and put them into a human who had them damaged during combat. Or do the opposite.

New Combat System

The old combat system was even worse than the old AI system. It was using its own separate AI implementation for combat situations and in result the colony and combat behaviors were very separate and that would often cause problems and bugs.

The new combat system is driven by the new GOAP AI, it is much more flexible and tightly integrated into the whole colony behavior.