Starbase Progress Notes: Week 1 (2022) - Siege insight

[ElluFB]

Hello everyone, here are the progress notes of the week 1 of 2022!

The first progress notes of 2022 are here! This week's notes focus on the status of the upcoming siege feature, which was first seen in detail in the insight from week 43.

You can find the latest extensive overview of all items in development, including siege, in the previous progress notes: Starbase Progress Notes: Week 50. A new update on the big picture will follow next week!

Please note that the "Progress Notes" are different from the Starbase "Patch Notes". Progress Notes are snippets from the development team and what has been worked on during the previous week, and many of the features might not be present in the current or upcoming builds of the Starbase Early Access. Some features, especially in the design portion, can be subject to change as the development continues.

Starbase Progress Notes: Week 1 (2022) - Siege insight
January 2 - 7

• ❌ = Not started
• 🟡 = In progress
• ✔️ = Completed
• ➖️ = Not applicable (work not required in this phase)

Siege technology

Siege gameplay

Capital Ships in siege

Gallery



Videos

Purchase Starbase Early Access now on Steam!

 

[Kenetor]

Nice! the millcap shield gen is really nice lookin!

 

[mrchip]

The siege hud, although functional, doesn't really look... good. It's definetly not horrible, but it's not good either.
This is nothing new, btw.
For some reason a lot of Starbase's UI aesthetics and polish seem to be an afterthought.

It might serve its purpose, but this is stuff every single new potential player is going to see and judge when they see screenshots and video from this game, and then when they get hands on the game, this is jank they'll feel in person.

 

[Senkii]

That is one sexy cube!
Cool beans though, nice to see sieges are coming along... Wonder how it'll end up working out ingame, we'll see ^^

 

[ZatriX]

Sieges... without proper functional bases. Shouldn't the stuff we already have in PTU be moved to main first? )

 

[SubaruSama]

why would someone choose "Helsinki Central Railway Station" as the target for the siege?
is the Finnish Railway that bad that you are trying to get back at it?
well, can't play the game right now but still really looking forward to the station stuff, moon base hopefully soon

 

[runzik]

Really nice looking update

 

[Recatek]

Siege interface/UI looks solid. Really nicely executed handshake siege system so far. Looking forward to seeing it in action!

I'm curious about the window with the "Join as Attacker" and "Join as Defender" buttons. What changes based on which side you join? Is it so capture points (or equivalent) recognize the team to attribute themselves to? Is joining done on a company-basis or individual player basis?

 

[HardworkingSlacker]

Sieges... without proper functional bases. Shouldn't the stuff we already have in PTU be moved to main first? )

Yeah, don't understand this very well either. What will be there to warrant a siege except the act of sieging itself?
No economy outside of origin, almost no hotspots or zones of interest, no real way to control large territories and no real need for sieges hence.
I don't doubt that these things will follow in the future. I somewhat expect that, with the order in which they are doing things right now, the core pvp interaction is supposed to happen within sieges and that FB will center their whole game mechanics around them.
It would be interesting to see how this is going to work out if this is their course of action.

 

[ChaosRifle]

arrival time inventory ui: time should be in a tooltip to show UTC on top of the already displayed presumably local time, to tell your friends easier.

when in cursor mode I expect the siege hud to have tooltips for what different ui elements do, like the boxes/outlines of boxes.

P.S: I love that times are listed in local AND UTC, its extremely useful for coordinating with other people (speaking from a lot of experience running game nights for several orgs/corps in various games)

 

[SirSplendidSupreme]

I feel like size class could be an issue, Perhaps it is a good idea to limit smaller cap ships to not be able to siege high effort mega stations, But i feel like if you put a lot of time and effort into a mega cap ship, you should be able to siege all the low effort stations you want. I dread the idea of having to make another cap ship because your main one is "too big"

 

[Venombrew]

@LauriFB this is nice, once this is done with the siege and moon bases(in the next couples most likely) would this than be an advance to Alpha 2 stage?

 

[IronGremlin]

Yeah, don't understand this very well either. What will be there to warrant a siege except the act of sieging itself?
No economy outside of origin, almost no hotspots or zones of interest, no real way to control large territories and no real need for sieges hence.
I don't doubt that these things will follow in the future. I somewhat expect that, with the order in which they are doing things right now, the core pvp interaction is supposed to happen within sieges and that FB will center their whole game mechanics around them.
It would be interesting to see how this is going to work out if this is their course of action.

Territory control - established via station

Economy - Player run AHs, Alloy production, Automated production facilities, all run on stations

Hotspots / Zones of interest - see Territory control


So in my mind it does make a lot of sense to focus on sieges, since all the upcoming "solutions" to those gaps involve stations.

Since this will be the core mechanism by which resources and territory changes hands it's probably a really good idea to start by focusing here, whether or not there will eventually be other mechanics that primarily involve crap that happens outside of sieges.

 

[Cavilier210]

Ya know, the pickaxe and punching are OP as hell. I'm good if having fists and axes damaging stations conveniently gets forgotten.

 

[VicToMeyeZR]

Y'all have got to get something on the live before this turns into another DU!!

 

[Coy]

looks pretty good

 

[MrFaul]

Looks good. Siege mechanics sound reasonable and agreeable so far.

But I always find it astounding how many people are completly missing the point of the progress reports...
E.g. complaints about the visual appeal of the UI are at this early stage irrelevant.
On the other hand, complaints about functionality and usability are valid and important.

I'm eager to see how everything fits together when the current multitude of systems are finally moved to the game be it PTU or live.

 

[Cavilier210]

Looks good. Siege mechanics sound reasonable and agreeable so far.

But I always find it astounding how many people are completly missing the point of the progress reports...
E.g. complaints about the visual appeal of the UI are at this early stage irrelevant.
On the other hand, complaints about functionality and usability are valid and important.

I'm eager to see how everything fits together when the current multitude of systems are finally moved to the game be it PTU or live.

Functionality and usability are integral to visual appeal of the UI. They go hand in hand.

 

[baraban-bayan]

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