Comments - LeeHarris

Yeah, I kinda skipped the dev log last month and did the 12 month of dev thing instead, but I'm still working away at it! Glad to hear that I'm not doing anything too wrong yet ;)
Well, do you think Destroyers are really needed? Most of the present-day classifications barely make sense in space as it is, so I thought I was being generous with Frigates being the lightest of the capital class, and the Cruiser being a more substantial non-carrier (and I realise there's arguments against space carriers in general, but meh, I want carriers). Assault carrier would probably fit from a purely-militaristic standpoint, but in the lore of the game-world, these kind of vessels were more tailored for peacekeeping operations than large scale invasion. And the name suits their re-purposed role as ground operation coordinators, I think.

The entire concept of FE revolves around seamless interaction between the space and ground tactical layers, so of course I'm going to try and make the most of that! Any semi-realistic recommendations for ground units would certainly be welcome too :)

I can relate to that :d Thanks for the support!

Hi :)

For those interested in finding out more, the Discord community server can be found over at Discord.gg
And the YouTube channel can be found at Youtube.com

Hi :)

For those interested in finding out more, the Discord community server can be found over at Discord.gg
And the YouTube channel can be found at Youtube.com

Hi again :)

The scanning mechanic was intended to be on the more passive side of gameplay-- you add the relevant scan component to the ship and it draws power whilst active but generally just scans everything in a region below the ship whilst it moves around. You can turn it off if you need power for other stuff. One way or another the game is largely about exploring planets to get resources to keep surviving, so it amounts to just a slightly more involved fog of war than anything particularly revolutionary :d

I'm actually working on fleet carry-able ground base modules that can be similarly dropped to the surface and picked up again when evacuating. That's a detour from anything BSG ever did (they only had tents on the algae planet?), but if we're exploring lots of planets I think I need to give players a sense of progression, with upgradeable modules that they want to survive an evacuation rather than completely expendable bases.

The logistics of getting an adequately equipped expedition down to a planet surface and back up again at a later point is perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of the game, I think. With only a handful of dropships available and requests to be ferried around queuing up, it'll be fun to oversee and support an emergency evacuation and such...

Well, I was a science teacher for a while... but I'd like to think I've left that life behind by now :D

I have been slowly building up a list of 'youtubers' that might be interested in having a look at the project once its further along (i.e. pre-alpha demo stage) and Explorminate is on that list (though I think it's a slight stretch to classify FE as a conventional 4X: we certainly expand outwards but we don't retain our holdings for the duration of the game, so I don't know...)

I'd be happy to hear about any other recommended content creators, but it's still fairly early days so no rush :)

Haha, did I mention that I'm also intending to add walking around the inside of the ships and on the ground and such..? Just kidding, let me know if I'm ever reaching Star Citizen levels of feature bloat. I'm pretty focused on reaching a real gameplay vertical slice by the time the project is a year old, but going forward I'd ideally grow the team to help flesh out the actual content.

So a civil engineer buddy is already telling me off for putting building construction under 'Construction' rather than engineering, but that's a whole different debate :p Perhaps it's because I'm currently re-watching Voyager, but I had the idea that maybe it made sense for pilots to be the ones piloting ships of any size (much like Paris is considered) and I fully intend to have fighter craft which would call on other piloting skills as well. I realise BSG definitely didn't go that way (who was even doing the piloting-- just CIC officers, I guess?), but they modeled the show on real life naval vessels and it's pretty obvious that fighter pilots wouldn't be seen controlling an aircraft carrier-- maybe it's less obvious if the navigational controls of the smaller craft and parent carrier were virtually identical?

I'm quite happy for you to write as things stand :) As for motivations, I won't wasn't time stating anything that I'm sure many failed developers also expressed this early on, but the fact that I'm working on FE relatively full-time (and living on savings) is a pretty large impetus to work towards building a successful studio out of the project. I like to think my decision to focus on the core framework rather than the more exciting stuff will pay off eventually, if only because it means that I've already done a big chunk of the more difficult design elements.

By all means do so, but I'd reasonably advocate waiting to see the next update when system-wide fleet movement will finally be implemented and something resembling the intended game-play is starting to emerge

That's not a bad idea, to be fair! Something like a 'Cascade' drive (I literally just looked up synonyms for 'falling') that somehow greatly amplifies gravity of a destination whilst inhibiting other sources, so is more or less just kinda falling towards the target. Almost sounds vaguely original (but probably isn't?), thanks :)

And I thank you for your continued support, Mr Konstantine :)

Well, thank you sir; but I'm afraid I am most definitely not on Steam yet -- it's easily going to be at least another 6 months before I even begin to consider some kind of early access pathway!

And I couldn't possibly ask for more :) I maintain a public road-map at Trello.com if that's of any further interest, but I appreciate that I do have a lot to be getting on with... thanks again!

Mr Konstantine, thank you for your support! There are some official BSG games out there that look gorgeous, but the developers never tried to capitalize on the more human factors that the show emphasized... maybe it's not truly possible, but I'd like to have a go :)