Dev/log 8

Although the game is single-player oriented, sociability is an integral part of any MMO, and there is no better tool for this than clans. In the game, I’ve based the system on EVE Online, as it’s the same genre of game, and I’m creating interfaces in HTML, so making hundreds of checkboxes is not difficult :)

In the game, clans are called “Clusters,” a union of machines for a common purpose. A cluster consists of the following entities:

• Participants, directly the players

  • Roles, each participant has a “role”

  • Permissions, tied to roles, allowing certain actions.

• Accounts, for credits

• Office, which are actually warehouses :)

• Policies, taxes, allies/opponents, etc.

• Bases, more on this next time

• Wars/Sieges, and more on this too

Participants

To join a cluster, you either have to create it yourself or find a suitable one in the search and apply there:

After that, the leader or HR will review your application and make a decision.

Roles/Permissions

When someone creates a new cluster, two roles are created: Leader/Member. The first has all rights, while the second has none. Then, the leader can create new roles with special permissions and delegate certain tasks to other cluster participants.

Accounts

Cluster accounts are a simple storage for the cluster’s monetary sums. The game’s financial system is set up so that each cluster has five accounts, allowing for finer control over expenses and rights to them.

In addition, the accounts themselves can be renamed through the “About the Cluster” menu.

Any player can deposit money into the cluster’s account, even if they are not a member of the cluster. This can be done through the “credit transfer” menu.

Each account has its own logs so that those with “audit” rights can see who sent money where and from where.

Office

The office is a special place representing your cluster at the chosen base. The office allows you to have up to four warehouses on the base, each with a capacity of 10,000.00 cubic meters.

Before opening the office itself, the player will have to rent a space for it. Only those with the rights can rent an office. The rental price depends on the total number of offices already owned by the cluster and starts at 25,000.0 cr for 30 days if the office is the first.

The warehouses and offices themselves can be renamed, performing this action in the “About the Cluster” tab.

If a player is late with the payment for the office rent, the base seizes the cluster’s warehouse, restricting access until the debt is paid.

Also, the office functionality includes teleporting the character between other offices, the only way of fast travel in the game, and only “consciousness” can be transferred, meaning nothing material.

Policies

The cluster’s policy is divided into “global” and “local”. More on local policies next time, as there’s already a lot of text :)

The global policy currently has only four parameters:

• Tax, if it is set, then a portion of the cluster members’ profits (from sales/missions/bounty hunting) will be transferred to the cluster’s treasury.

• Friendly Fire, indicates whether the justice system will work if participants shoot each other. Useful to disable, as in group battles, you can accidentally hit your own.

• List of Allies, allied clusters.

• List of Opponents, competing clusters.

Lists of Allies/Opponents

The lists themselves do not have any mechanics, except that the specified clusters will be marked in the game with an arrow indicating their status. The lists are anonymous, meaning a potential opponent or ally doesn’t even know that they are an opponent or ally.

These lists will be needed when setting up local policies, when we allow something to allies or prohibit something to opponents, and also, no one has canceled the rules of free PvP without declaring war. :)

Audit

Of course, all actions within the cluster are logged, and this journal can be viewed by the leader and those who have the rights to do so.

This is not all there is to clusters, but the basis works roughly like this. :)