I just wanted to swing by here and drop a little more detail that came straight from the orange-hatted horse's mouth, because this game is incredibly exciting.
Note that most of these features have yet to be implemented, and may change somewhat before release, but all have been discussed. Some particularly relevant and juicy morsels are:Material Mining, Refining and Storage Players will need to mine resources from asteroids. To mine an asteroid, you use your torch to break off a block, then either mark it for collection and toss it out of your way, or just toss it out of your way. The crew members will then swarm the asteroid, carry off the blocks, and bring them one at a time to the ship's hold, which can only hold as many of the meter-cubed blocks as it's big enough to contain. Once the ore is in the hold, players and clones can take blocks to an ore refinery - a machine which breaks the raw ore into its component parts (typically iron and chondrite, among others) and spits out blocks of them once the machine collects enough. The ore refinery, like any other powered device in the game, requires electricity, which can be produced by various engines and reactors (which in turn
require liquid, solid, or gaseous fuel), or by solar panels. ScrumbleShip subscribes to the First Law of Thermodynamics, and energy can neither be created nor destroyed - only transferred. Component Production and Power Players and clones can then take these refined materials to the ship's hold(s), or to a factory to be reconfigured on an atomic level into useful ship components like railguns, thrusters, beds, rations, and “hygiene stalls.†Clones perform their tasks better when they have amenities like beds and hygiene stalls. These components can then be attached to the ship and hooked up to a wired/wireless power network, and/or to a pipe network for components that need a supply of matter (e.g., thrusters need a piped-in supply of fuel to burn and expel). Wire networks must include energy-producing components (like fusion reactors) and storing components (like batteries) for them to power any component on the network. Similarly, a pipe network must be attached to a tank or hold full of fuel for it to supply fuel to the ship's drives - fuel which the drives will deplete according to how hard they work.Hot Hot Heat The game is the first of its kind that will feature a realistic heat transfer engine! The heat transfer engine is already 90% written, with all the hard problems solved. Fire a laser into a ship made of butter, and watch it melt pitifully away. Fire that same laser into a ship made of tungsten, and the hull will take much more abuse before melting, if it does at all. Shoot a laser at a ship with a hull of diamond, and it will pass right through! The amount of energy you put into powering a laser will determine the amount of heat energy it can output. Hook a laser up to a fusion reactor and a whole bank of batteries, and watch it slash through armor with ease. Certain materials are very good at distributing heat, which results in much of the outer hull of the ship absorbing heat energy until it finally melts, rather than concentrating it at the impact point and allowing a hole to be melted. The engine works on more than weapons damage too - heat dissipation will be a major issue inside any ship, as heat does not dissipate well in a vacuum. The heat from the ship's own systems, from diesel engines to fusion reactors, can be its own worst enemy, and can melt players and hulls alike; a smart ScrumbleShipwright will design with heat dissipation in mind.Use the Force Not only will the game feature a fully functional heat engine, it will employ a force transfer engine as well, allowing ships' hulls to buckle, shear, and crack realistically under the force of kinetic weapons, missiles, collisions, and even a ship's own acceleration. Fun with Physics The physics engine will be fully Newtonian. Ship flight will take place in six degrees of freedom (player movement on foot takes place in 4DoF to make movement and building easier, both from a player perspective and a coding perspective - and to prevent motion sickness). Each player character and clone has his or her own inertia, which can result in crew slipping to the rear of the ship when it accelerates hard, or splattering on bulkheads when the ship comes to a sudden stop (e.g., ramming another vessel). That's what crash couches are for.Multiplayer As development progresses, the game will become increasingly multiplayer-based. In the first multiplayer modes to be implemented, gameplay will center on battles between two or more player-designed ships. Multiple players may also man the same vessel. Players will wager money on the outcome of the fight, and battles will be fought in different gameplay modes: capture the captain’s terminal, last man standing, and modes where victory is based on the value of damage done are all contemplated. As development progresses, the game will take on an open world feel, with each server comprising a solar system, and all servers stitched together by player-owned warp gate space stations. The servers will be represented as a system map. Some servers/systems will be designated as safe zones, where battles can take place by request only, and damage is only simulated (unless the players choose otherwise). Other servers, however, will be lawless zones where battles can occur at any time, and damage is permanent. Only visit these systems if you like to play for keeps.Shipbuilding Although ScrumbleShip is, on its face, a blockbuilder, building a ship won't be a matter of simply plunking down as many blocks as a player has in his bottomless inventory: each player and clone will be able to carry one block at a time (they're a cubic meter in volume, for crying out loud)! Players will "build" a blueprint of their ship, choosing what material and which blocks will go where, and freely laying down placeholder blocks in the traditional blockbuilder style. However, these blocks are ephemeral, and merely serve as a guide for where the clones and/or player will place the actual blocks as they are produced through the methods described above, or purchased or gifted from other players. The clones will swarm over the ship and assemble it, placing the appropriate blocks into the blueprint, building the ship piece by piece - much as they disassemble asteroids.You might occasionally find remnants of an ancient civilization embedded in asteroids. For those lucky enough to find them, asembling these relics will allow you to construct an entirely separate type of spacefaring ship.The Damage System All weapons damage in the game takes place on the individual voxel, rather than cube, level. This allows for very high resolution damage detection and modelling, which results in realistic gashes and holes being punched and scored in ships, based on both the kinetic and heat energy carried by weapons. Player characters and clones are subject to the same voxel-based damage system, and stress and heat engines, as the rest of the ship's components. Dismemberment, vaporization, suffocating, starving, and dying inflated like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man in the cold void of space are only some of the ways a clone or player character can go out.BATTLE! There are as many ways to deal death and damage to the opponent as you can dream up - the player will be limited only by his imagination. Design a ship with a small boarding craft attached, fill that boarding craft with clones holding laser rifles, and send it over to board the enemy ship. Or, take that same boarding craft, fill it with hydrogen, send a luckless clone to drill into the enemy's hull, flood the enemy ship with hydrogen, and
detonate. Create pods full of explosives mounted in a hold on explosive bolts, and jettison them out the rear to act as mines. Not to mention the standard tools of the trade, like railguns, gauss guns, and lasers, the power level and ammunition of which you control; missiles with
payloads of your choice; and much more. I could go on, but I'll stop here for now. Suffice it to say, ScrumbleShip will be the single most realistic and fun space sim ever devised. Watch this one closely!
It's definitely worth checking out everyone!