7/15/2024 - devlog
Fabian gives an outlook on what the team will be working on next.
Fabian (Counterpoint)
You may remember that we talked about the topic of “Politics & Infrastructure” before and with the recent release of Realpolitik we focused on the former. So what about infrastructure then? We’ve discussed many different ideas for new types of impactful infrastructure that could be added to the game in the future, and while we liked quite a few of them and put together relatively detailed concepts for some, we had to decide for one of them to be the first.
Today we’re excited to reveal: Gateways.
Gateways will allow players to re-shape the structure of the universe map and create their own custom FTL-like routes. Two gateways within reach of each other can be “linked” to establish a connection that ships can use to jump from one gateway to the other. This will be integrated as a new type of travelling segment to the current flight controls, and you will be able to explicitly decide to use or not use gateways.
But why would you ever not want to use gateways if they make your journey faster, thereby reducing ship damage and fuel usage? Well, of course gateways will come with their own management aspects. Building a gateway will be a huge endeavor. Maintaining a gateway won’t be free either. And on top of that there will be an all-new type of fuel that a gateway owner will have to provide to enable ships to make the jump. This means using a gateway will come with a price, set by the owner and, ideally, allowing everyone to profit in one way or another in the end.
Speaking of gateway owners, the first iteration will focus on public gateways. This means, governments will be able to issue “infrastructure construction” motions that enable a specific company (i.e. player) to access a new gateway project’s construction storage. While the company will of course receive payment for its efforts, the resulting gateway will be owned be the government of the planet whose orbit it was constructed in. However, in the future we also want to open this process up to private companies as well to, within the respective governmental rules, construct their own privately owned infrastructure.
This means there will potentially be multiple gateways in the same planet’s orbit, either providing access to different destinations, or waging usage price wars with one another. To better differentiate gateways we also plan to allow for custom upgrades that allow you to pick whether you want to focus on capacity, fuel storage size, or expand the radius of potential targets for your gateway. But at this point you should have a decent idea of what the feature is all about.
We hope you are as excited for this new way of shaping the universe as we are!
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!