Update 0 - State of the Game

My first of (hopefully) many updates. This game has been on-and-off development throughout the Pandemic and the purpose of these posts are to help establish a more regular cadence for working on the project. Since this is the first post, it will be a bit longer explaining the features of the game so far and further plans for development 

NOTE: All Art in screenshots are placeholders and do not reflect the intended look or feel of the game. I would like to get a little bit more functionality coded first before I begin to tackle whether I want to commit time to produce quality artistic assets or hire someone with some more experience.

Gameplay 

As described in the main project's page. The object of the game will be to take command of your base and manage Earth's foray into intergalactic politics and conflict. You will assign crew members to 1) Away Teams 2) Security Teams and 3) Research Teams. Each individual recruited will have unique states in Combat, Science, and Civilian Skills. 

Away Teams will constitute the bulk of the progress in the game although they will take place off screen. You can sent a probe to a planet to get an idea of what dangers will be faced, and then send a team you think best equipped to deal with the situation. Once off-world, the team will be on their own and unable to rely on you to micromanage their decisions. 

At the moment the plan is to have at launch, 10,000 planets with 1000 unique or custom encounters. Many encounters will be standard encounters that will randomly generated off of a porotypes of a a few main conflicts. (Combat encounter, science encounter, trade encounter) The purpose of this is to 1) allow the player and avenue to farm resources and 2) Better simulate the life of a commander. Not every mission will be an adventure. You will have to manage multiple outbound teams and be juggling their needs all at once. Having a sense of routine will be important to keep the dangerous or unique missions fresh and exciting. For example, an enemy incursion into your base is a lot more stressful if you have a routine non-combat trading mission due to return in an hour. 

From a Story perspective I would like there to be a primary antagonist faction, 5 major factions, and then of course as many unique races and groups as I can think of. I have a good idea of my 5 major factions... jury is still out on the primary antagonist. Its remarkable hard to make a sci-fi baddie that hasn't been done 100 times already. 

Current State: RNG prototypes have been loosely defined and approximately 150 unique/custom encounters have been drafted. Coding has been done to allow each Crew Member GameObject to be assigned to a specific Away Team and track that information.

Security Teams will mostly just be present to protect the base from unforeseen threats. I'm not positive how I will balance the game but in my head they will be your sort of "B-Team" while your best soldiers go on daring missions abroad. I think the biggest thing they will add is a little bit of realism to the ambience of managing a base, with soldiers walking around and give the player a little bit of control over the action - since most of the content happens "off-screen." I envision players being able to select which Security Teams will take which shift and set up specific "defensive formation" for example you may want to select "Alpha formation" when routinely guarding the teleporter, but if you're expecting a heavy assault you can switch it up to whatever you have designated as "Bravo formation"

Current State: Crew Members can be assigned to Security Teams but no additional functionality

Research Teams will take the information and materials gathered from your Away Teams and use them to produce new and exciting technologies and solve the types of problems you can't solve by shooting more bullets at them. Another mechanic that the Player will have more control over as they can dictate what scientific initiatives take priority. Research Teams will generally require protection as someone with proficiency in both Combat and the Sciences will be too value in the field to keep in the base. 

Current State: Crew Members can be assigned to Research Teams but no additional functionality

Base and UI and Underlying Mechanics

I'm currently operating in a poorly designed map just to test the basic functionality of my game. I have been teaching myself about NavMeshes to that the Crew Members can navigate on their own throughout the base. I have successfully implemented a 2D NavMesh that allows Crew Members to move about the base. 

I have built the bones of a functioning UI that (as you can see in the screenshots) requires a lot of work. Right now it successfully opens the rosters of the various teams. The other menus remain non-functional for now. In fact, the Destination tab is currently the button I am using the send all Crew Members to their respective "rooms" but that is just a convenient way for me to temporarily test their navigation. 

Finally, in order to track all Crew Members and their respective data, I have been learning how to utilize JSON files. I have successfully built the roster you see in the screenshots via an Excel spreadsheet, converted to JSON, and then imported into the game. This was a big step for me as I don't want to overly rely on Unity's tools to create GameObjects - plus, if I want my game to be savable, I am going to have to learn how to import/export files from the game anyway. I still need to get comfortable with the idea of making changes to the players base stats, and writing that to the JSON so the change becomes permanent. 

Conclusion

Right now I have a game where I can import custom Crew Members, have them walk around the base, and the beginnings of the UI to track them. Still a ton of work to be done on all aspects of the game. The amount of work before me is often daunting, so don't expect rapid progress. I hope to chip away a little each week. Please feel free to chime in with any feedback, things you'd like to see, or general words of encouragement.