Cogent contracts - Development Log #372

A quick update on what Michi is working on.

Michi (molp)

With Nick being on vacation, Fabian working on things he cannot talk about yet, this is going to be a short devlog!

I continued to work on the new player experience this week. Specifically I implemented most parts of a new tour, called the base tour and the "build a base" faction contract.

Maybe I should explain a bit more in detail how all these contracts and tours work together, so you get a better understanding what we are aiming for. When we were talking about how to improve the new player experience, Fabian took a closer look at how a typical start of a new player looks like. He calls that the player journey and separated it into three parts (or play sessions):

1. Company creation and base setup
2. Ship flight
3. Commodity exchanges

I am currently working on the first part.

1. The play session starts with the company creation as we know it.
2. After the company is created, the UI tour starts automatically and immediately. This tour already exists and shows how APEX works in general
3. After finishing the UI tour the player receives the "build a base" faction contract I mentioned in my last devlog
4. At the same time a new screen ("03. Contracts") is being created that consists of a few contract related commands. It shows the above-mentioned "build a base" contract and a short tour about contracts starts.
5. Armed with that knowledge it is now the player's turn to actually build a base.
6. Once the player builds their first base, a new base screen (“04. Base”) will be created automatically and a new tour will be started going over how the base works.
7. The faction sends over another contract that incentives the player to start their first production order
8. To let the player know that they did well, and it is now okay to take a break, or concentrate on other aspects of the game, they will receive yet another contract from their faction that will result in a small reward, when coming back a few hours later, when the production order finishes.

Oh, and btw this is how the "start a production order" contract looks like. We are currently investigating if it makes sense to replace the monetary reward of the introductory faction contracts with building materials, so that at the end of the introductory tours and contracts a player has enough buildings materials to build an additional production building. This has been suggested by players in the forum.

As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!

Happy trading!