Comments - GaldorStudios

Harvesters only use the rally point when they're first created, after they drop off their load they just go to whatever the nearest resources. They'll also always prefer scrap to asteroids (scrap is more valuable because it gives credits as well as ore) so they'll only harvest asteroids if there isn't any scrap nearby. That's how it's supposed to work, although maybe it needs a better in game explanation.

The harvesters collect nearby resources automatically, as it is now scrap metal and asteroids aren’t actually targetable (clicking just sends a regular move order, although the harvester will begin collecting nearby resources once it gets to its destination.) Were you trying long distance harvesting? They’ll always attempt to harvest nearby resources (preferring scrap to asteroids) so you really have to make sure you move your base to the nearest scrap field.

Thanks!
As for the number of races, there are unfortunately only going to be 2, it takes a lot of time to add another, especially one that's significantly different from the others. Hopefully 2 is enough for now, though I haven't entirely ruled out a 3rd for a post-launch update or expansion.

The orbs are called disruptors, they have a tractor beam and a rocket launcher, I've added a new image that shows a few of them in action.

Thanks for playing! I did wonder about whether the mouse buttons were set up right. I think I’ll end up at least adding an option to reverse the setup for space station construction. Custom cursors are also something I plan on adding eventually, hopefully with little animations as well.

Well, I haven’t programmed the AI to avoid it yet, those ships were just trying to attack the base, but eventually I want to make them try to stay out of its line of fire. (The entire station can rotate too, so you can aim the cannon in any direction.) The superweapon can shoot across the entire map and damages everything caught in the beam (although its line of sight can be blocked by planets or moons) and for now I’ve got it set to take 5 minutes between shots, although I might change the exact amount of time later on.

Yeah, music is something I’m still not entirely decided on. There’s a chance I might get some original compositions, but if that doesn’t work out I’ll use some kind of royalty free music. Thanks for the link, I hadn’t heard of that site before.

At the moment, it’s just the cruisers, where you can customize their weapons and a few utility modules. I might add in some minimal customization in terms of applying upgrades to frigates and fighters, but for the most part, they’ll stay how they are. The game’s more of an action RTS than Galactic Civilizations, so it’s important to me that ships are easily recognizable and that it’s easy for the player to estimate the types of units and their strengths and weaknesses at a glance.

A few of the lighting effects actually got turned off in the video since some of the graphics settings right now adjust themselves depending on current framerate and I had fraps set to capture at just 30 fps. In the future, I’ll put in options to set the graphics settings with a little more control, and try to brighten the particles that are being drawn to compensate for this when the game is running on lower settings.

The fuzziness is mostly just from there being a lot of compression on the video, although there is also a little aliasing occurring with the colored glass parts of the models, since I’ve had to load only the higher resolution textures to do color replacement and I haven’t smoothed out the results yet.

It looks like there are problems with media being broken all across the site so it seems to be some problem on indiedb's end. Hopefully everything gets fixed soon.

Yeah, that’s definitely something I’ve been doing. Check out some of the older updates and videos, the first update especially shows a good number of the ships and their combat roles. (a few things have changed since then, but not too much) The next update I’m working on is going to be mainly about weapons, so I’ll be writing about the ships as well in a bit more detail than before.

Thanks for the kind words!

That’s a good point, and I really appreciate the input. After reading this I actually made a few quick changes so that all the larger ships will now individually change direction when moving and face whatever their current target is, rather than the whole group always having the same direction. As a result, that seems to make the larger ships look a little more natural in their movements and at least they move a little when they’re in combat. As for always moving like the fighters, I’ve considered having the frigates move around in some way, but they tend to look more awkward when they’re circling like the fighters or even just moving back and forth. The size makes it difficult to make them move too much without clipping into each other, and I don’t really want to increase the spacing between the ships in the same group by too much. I'm leaning towards keeping things roughly the way they are now, but I’ll keep trying a few different things to see if I can make them move around above/beneath each other in some interesting way. I want to at least change the way they line up in their groups since the front 3 always look like they would be blocking line of sight for the back 3, and the game does technically support full 3d movement.

Yes, the game is still a long way from being completely finished, but the plan is to put out an alpha release and demo relatively soon. (I’m definitely planning on putting it out in some form before the end of the year, but it’d be difficult estimating an exact date.) There’s not a huge amount left to do before the game is in a playable and fairly polished state, (at least for the basic skirmish modes) but I still have a couple of big updates to go before then.

Hmm, I never actually owned that game, but from the looks of it, it probably is pretty similar, at least in the setting and core gameplay.

Thanks, it'll definitely be similar in some ways, those are both great games. The game design is still evolving as I see how different features feel in the game, but the game most likely won't have nearly as many planetary systems as Sins of a Solar Empire. I'm also trying to make battles a lot faster and I think it should leave room for a lot more positional micro than a lot of other space strategy games.

I think something might have gone wrong creating the gif, for some reason it runs at normal speed in internet explorer, but is sped up in other browsers. (I skipped frames to reduce the file size, I guess the new timing isn't being read correctly) The super weapons video in the Videos tab is a more accurate depiction.

That's a good point, I'll fix that before I post the main update. I started working on an updated version where the explosion fire does a better job of covering up and blending with the big chunks as they disappear, so far that seems to make it look more believable.

As far as implosion effects, the explosion is meant to go along with a "death star" like superlaser shooting the planet, so I feel a more immediate explosion fits best.

Yes, there will be a single player campaign (a set of missions for each of the 2 factions) and a skirmish mode.