Hello DC - ça va?

Hello @Cody 👋 Happily adding new parts to the contraption thanks! 😊

Looking good DC 😎 just as a rough estimate how much would you say still has to be done. 

Hello @pinback.
Right after the life support systems I'll start working on the gamification layer. So over a year or so the game should evolve toward a space trucking sim with a very heavy emphasis on the ship and systems. Then the matter will be to add the necessary elements to make it the intended "space police" game. However I'm definitely planning on working on the project after the initial release so that could mean adding the most complex features of space warfare later. TBD!

Am I really seeing this?! This is exactly how I imagined the spaceships of the future! Nothing is missing, it seems

Posted by: @spaceship-buran

Am I really seeing this?

Yep... good, ain't it!

@spaceship-buran Thanks, whenever applicable I'm trying to use IRL tech as a reference... Well... conveniently forgetting about the nasty real physics implementation details and dividing the equipment mass by 1000 ! 👨‍🔧😊 

Hello SSC,

I hope everyone's fine, back to the station for the quarterly dev report! 🙂 After dealing with the atmosphere control systems this update is about the crew itself. Basically it's based on a model of the metabolism (had to take a "Physiology for Dummies" crash course on that one ^^) with a little "Sims" layer on top for the long term endurance.

The following objective is to complete the rest of the life support equipment (notably the part about the ionizing radiations model) before moving to the fancy stuff at long last!

Fly Safe!

Hey DC - good to see you!

Posted by: @d-c-elington

"Physiology for Dummies"

Crikey!

That looks like some complex crew simulation going on their and I don't think I have seen anything like it before in this type of game. 😎  

Hello Captain @cody 🙂 Yes nothing that complicated but I learned a thing or two on the run, about the "heat index" for instance (that's the relative humidity affecting the rate of evaporation of the perspiration i.e. the efficiency of our cooling system).

Posted by: @pinback

That looks like some complex crew simulation going on their and I don't think I have seen anything like it before in this type of game. 😎  

Hello Pinback! Over the week-end the testers were worrying about their crew getting tired or wondering why they were feeling too hot, so far so good! 😄
More seriously I hope this does not feel too "Sims"-ish, but on the other hand I think it was important to try to convey the fact that a manned ship requires special care. A related feature that should come soon is the management of the crew's radiation dose over time. This one will not vanish after a few hours in a station's spa so it should become an important factor to consider when going pedal to the metal on the reactor power. The more connections there are between the different components the richer the gameplay hopefully.

You may want to think about an option to automate it or scale it back for new player of the game, given that the game is going to have a steep learning curve. 

Yes scaling certainly, that's what's in place for the wear and tear. Also the design goal with these tunable systems is that they should work with their default settings, and then it's possible to optimize their output if wanting to do so. For that matter most testers are making a much more efficient use of the ship than I do! But the fact is I'm only flying test rides these days, not really playing 👨‍🔧

Hello SSC 🙂

Here's the latest mail package from the ASG systems (no FTL comms in there, delivery by ship required! ^^).
Still working on the life support systems: water, food and supplies this time. Gameplay wise the endurance concerns were previously focused on the power plant. This adds the crew's needs on top, requiring a bit more planning.

Hopefully the next update should be the last on the topic, and focusing on the radiation protection systems 👨‍🔧

Fly safe!

Awesome as always Dc. 😎 

Any plans to have a shuttle resupply or rendezvous in case their are no nearby planets with any stock?. 

Hello @pinback, yes that will certainly fit as one of the rescue mission types. Related to this, "orbital drops" would let the ship deorbit resupply packages to ground teams. That would involve exactly the same complex maneuvering as an orbital "bombardment" but fits much better in the game's intended background!

Woah what detail.... so many games this whole process you put into your game is one button press. This video really makes you think if I was going to do this for real this is what I would have to take into account to do this long haul mission. And Pinback has a good point that maybe if people like me eat and drink too much that I don't starve to death in space 😉

I cannot even imagine the logic behind all of these systems. Nice work as always @d-c-elington.

@sscadmin Hello D1, thanks for watching! 🙂

Under the hood the front section runs on an hybrid of the systems simulator for the equipment (already in-use for the power plant) and of a simpler, more abstract layer to manage the higher-level resources (water, food, supplies, crew metabolism I/Os etc). But that's an incremental process all that stuff was implemented one element at a time 👨‍🔧

From the feedback I get from the testers, having to plan for food is definitely an important point for us humans indeed ^^ And I just added the hygiene related parts, showers do seem to matter too 😄 (They are related to the navigation because the ship must be under acceleration for a sufficient time for them to happen - that's to be able to recover the water easily).

Hopefully all that stuff will provide more choices and interconnected trade-offs to operate for the player depending on the situation. Planning for a few days patrolling around a central world is obviously not the same as one month crossing remote parts of the galaxy. In that sense the difficulty should go with distance, which I think fits such a sim's context.

Hello SSC! 👨‍🚀

New update about the game, this time about ionizing radiations both from the ship's reactor and celestial sources.
Gameplay wise that requires to be more careful when handling the reactor's power. And that also differentiates planets with some additional "terrain" features. Typically you would not park on an orbit that lies right in the middle of some highly radioactive region for instance.
There won't be any risk to badly hurt the crew but the absorbed dose is more like a variable to monitor on the long run - and could serve as a rating in the career too (marker of good management).

This time the work on the ship's "civilian" parts is close to completion, and so I should be able to work on the operations soon.

Fly safe 🙂

David

Awesome video as ever DC 😎 

If my understanding of the video is right, will this space weather (for want of a better term) have any effect on the sensors or weapons as well as the crew.

Will for example a pirate ship choses to hide in high radiation arear of space.

Hi @pinback thanks for watching.

"Space weather" is the right term, although in the game solar storms will wait for a later update I think. Right now the "winds" are possibly strong, but steady 🙂

I have not done the math about the sensors yet but supposing that the areas of high radiations may mess with them sounds perfectly valid. Probably not enough to hide but possibly to prevent identification for instance. That's a matter of frequency bands: these regions are not active in the infrared so ships will still be detectable, however the parasitic radio emissions may possibly make the analysis of their power plant signals much more difficult.

Damn @d-c-elington you are really diving into the technicals of space travel 🙂 You are definitely doing your research and putting this into your game. You may need to have a disclaimer when you start the game that your going to 'die a lot' until you have read the manual 😉 I remember playing AH-64 Longbow many many years ago and that came with like 400pg manual. So will be interested on how you tackle instructing the non-technical gamer on how to play.

But as always your videos are very informative and I am in Aww in how all this is coming together, so many mechanics are running on this consoles simple wow. Keep up the grind.

Hello D1 @sscadmin thanks for the feedback 👋

All these systems certainly do look complicated! However all the related operations are assisted by interactive checklists that point at the controls to use and also explain the underlying process. From what the new testers report it's still possible to learn while playing without a 400 page manual... albeit with a little help from veteran captains here and there of course. And that's very good because I don't intend to write one! 😄

Generally speaking the ship is meant to be plainly operational and so is fitted with all the necessary support systems and automation. I mean that dealing with the space environment is part of the every day job, although seasoned captains will manage that more efficiently of course. Incidentally in a few weeks the dev should shift from "flying" the ship to "using" it to perform its missions. At long last!