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CERES is a cyber-tactical space combat game, where you lead a squadron of ships in an exploration and battle-filled single-player campaign. Inspired by Homeworld, Elite and Paradroid, it features thorough ship customization, advanced cyber-warfare and elaborate space combat. Command your ships in a rich 3D environment, manage your crew and artificial intelligences, mine, explore and trade your way through multiple missions -while keeping clear of alien monsters, rogue machines and dangerous transhuman mutants.

Post news Report RSS Dev blog V and a new Demo version available

Happy New Year! A little dev blog about ship crew and AI. Also a new demo available for download.

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Hello, every body this is developer Tryggvi Hákonarson bringing you some rambling text about ship crew and AI. We've released a update demo version to indieDB. Version 0.9.2.5. Linux and Windows.
Please note that the Linux version is not tested.

Windows:
Ceres 0.925 Windows

Linux:
Ceres 0.925 Linux

This version has noticeably improvements both in graphics and game play.
Most noticeable is that we've changed the skills a bit, combined a few and added some others. Also we've added a dialog tree, so now you can converse a bit with the captains, haggle for better mission rewards etc.
The Dialog tree is styled after similar to Skyrim and fallout 3 games. You can use skills to influence your dialog. This adds more RPG feel to the game.
A work in progress.

We have started adding crew and AI to the game. Each ship now carries a small crew and a AI core. Both the crew and the AI contribute to the performance of the ship with their experience. Each ship now has a minimum crew number or skeleton crew and a max crew number.
The ships will operate at full capacity when the current crew number is above the skeleton number, but as soon as the crew number drops below that number, performance will start to suffer. Ship crew now has experience levels and gains experience through combat.
There are currently 4 levels.
Novice, Competent, Proficient and Expert.
Novice give -10%
Competent 0%
Proficient 10%
and Expert 20%.
Crew status is uninjured, injured or dead. Injured crew counts as a half a crew man when calculating performance. Dead is dead. Crew is only injured when structure is taking damage and the bridge of the vessel starts taking heavy hits.

Example 1:
1. If we have a frigate with a skeleton crew of 6, Uninjured crew 3 and injured crew 3. XP level is Novice Then performance would be a 64%
2. If however no one is injured then performance would be at 90%
3. With 1 Injured crew and XP level is Proficient would yield performance of 89%
4. With 3 dead crew and XP level is Proficient, would yield performance of 70%

This is just simple percentage math. It might grow more complex in the future, but currently this is the general idea.

The AI works in similar way, but no crew. We haven‘t decided if it can be damaged, but that's probably a good bet.

Example 2:
Same frigate as above, now with a Expert AI.
1. Performance 76%
2. Performance 108%
3. Performance 107%
4. Performance 84%

So crew and AI can quite contribute to your ships performance. This is of course all in the works. With the addition of Crew and AI, new modules need to be added and the ships need to be thought out a bit. Do we now need a Bridge module? Or a AI Core Module? Good to be able to switch them out for a more advanced types.
The Bridge could provide bonuses for the protection of the crew, bonuses to performance and reduce the skeleton crew number. Advanced AI Core would strengthen the ship against hacking, also reduce the skeleton crew number, and provide bonuses to the ship.

The Crew and AI is still not implemented into the game. But in future demo released it will be added.
Ship hacking will also be included.

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d10sfan
d10sfan

Thanks for the Linux version, downloading now!

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Vaktezraj
Vaktezraj

The date on the file at IndieDB says Oct 20th, 2013. Clearly that's not right, but there's nothing on that page saying it's from a newer date. Am I correct to presume that ModDB is in error on this?

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tryggvienator Author
tryggvienator

Yes, I updated the file throught IndieDb.
I will not be doing that with the next update on the Demo.
The next demo update will be coming hopefully within 2 weeks.
3 weeks Tops!

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qhartman
qhartman

Looks cool. Thanks for the linux build! Looking forward to trying it out.

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tryggvienator Author
tryggvienator

Any feedback on the Linux version would be most welcome!

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