Hello everyone, here are the progress notes of the week 13 of 2022!
This week's progress notes focus on how siege and some of its related features are coming along. The last siege insight was in week 7. We hope that you enjoy these snippets of the Starbase development!
You can expect the initial siege implementation to land on the Public Test Universe very soon, so stay tuned! You can find more information in our Siege announcement post.
You can find the latest extensive overview of all items in development, including siege, in last week's progress notes: Starbase Progress Notes: Week 12
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 13 (2022) - Siege insight
March 28 - April 1
- ❌ = Not started
- 🟡 = In progress
- ✔️ = Completed
- ➖️ = Not applicable (work not required in this phase)
| Feature | Description | Design | Art | Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Station destruction technology | The technology and servers enabling station destruction. | ✔️ | ➖️ | ✔️ |
| Weapons damage stations | Explosions and projectile based weapons can do damage to stations, Capital Ships and moon bases. Missiles and torpedoes also explode when they hit surfaces on stations. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Melee weapons damage stations | Melee attacks with the pickaxe and bare fists damage stations, Capital Ships and moon bases. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Siege initiation tech | At the start of a siege, both the defending station and the attackers' Capital Ship become destructible. | ✔️ | ➖️ | ✔️ |
| Structure areas | The build zones of structures will be used to create the capturable areas for siege by forming layers. | ✔️ | ➖️ | ✔️ |
| Feature | Description | Design | Art | Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warzone creation | When a military Capital Ship fast travels to the target station for a siege battle, a warzone forms and causes the Safe Zones of both the attacker and the defender to get disabled. Civilian Capital Ships cannot fast travel to an active warzone, and Military Capital Ships engaged in the battle cannot leave by fast traveling. | ✔️ | ➖️ | ✔️ |
| Capital Ship and station size classes | Capital Ships can initiate siege only against stations that are in the same size class or smaller than it is. The size class is determined by the amount of build areas that have passed volume validation check. | ✔️ | ➖️ | ✔️ |
| Area validity for all station types | All types of stations have a minimum material volume required for each area to be valid like Capital Ships do (however, only Capital Ships have the effect of requiring all areas to be valid to expand). Only valid areas count towards station class and form capture zones in sieges. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Siege scheduling mechanics | Mechanics for initiating the siege. The defending station can set their preferred time slots for battles, from which the attacking party must choose their window to attack. | ✔️ | ✔️ | 🟡 |
| Siege teams | The attacking and defending companies or factions become the two teams that fight. Unaffiliated players can take their pick of the two, or remain as outsiders and for example try to scavenge the siege area for resources. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Capture mechanics | Mechanics for the capture gameplay. When a siege begins, both the target station as well as the attacker's Capital Ship become capturable for the other side. Capturing proceeds one area at a time towards the center of the structure. The HUD and other visuals will indicate if an area is capturable and who is currently in control. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Defending in a siege | While fighting, both the attacking and the defending side will be able to create obstacles by welding new parts to the station, though there will be some restrictions in place as well: the station build areas cannot be expanded and only manual welding can be used for building. | ✔️ | ✔️ | 🟡 |
| Siege win condition | To win the siege, one side needs to have control of all participating structures, meaning both the attacking Capital Ship as well as the targeted station. If the minimum siege time has also passed, a victory countdown starts for the end of the battle. The countdown gets interrupted if the win condition is no longer fulfilled. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Siege aftermath | After a siege is finished, all structures will regain their Safe Zones after a short delay. The warzone will also disappear, removing limitations it imposed on the stations and Capital Ships within it. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Feature | Description | Design | Art | Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Siege terminal | Similar screen view as the Capital Ship Fast Travel Terminal, where a military Capital Ship can initiate a siege to a station whose location is close enough or saved on a Navigation Chip. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Siege tab | A menu similar to station or ship manager, where you can view your own scheduled sieges, both incoming and outgoing, browse all publicly visible sieges, as well as set the preferred siege times for your stations. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Capturing progress and sides | In an on-going siege, entering a capture area brings up the capture UI, which is visible to both the attacking and the defending players. It shows the current capturing progress of the siege, as well as the participating Capital Ships and player stations. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Participants and transponders | Players of same side will see their names color coded according to specific attacker or defender colors. In addition, the transponders for the participating stations and Capital Ships will be visible to the fighters regardless of their specific permissions. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Choosing affiliation | When a player who isn't part of either of the two teams battling enters the siege area, an affiliation pop-up will appear. The player must then choose which party they want to support, or if they'd rather remain unaffiliated. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Siege timers | While fighting, there are different siege timers in the HUD that give you information about the progress of the battle: a siege end timer, a minimum timer, and a victory timer. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Feature | Description | Design | Art | Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Military Capital Ships | To participate in a siege, the type of your Capital Ship must be changed from civilian to military. Capital Ship types can be modified in the Ship Manager with a similar cooldown period as ship renaming. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Military Capital Ship shieldbreakers | Shieldbreakers are required on a military type Capital Ship for it to fast travel to a siege battle. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Hangar halls (test ver) | A temporary siege test version of Hangar halls that can be used for simple ship spawning and despawning. Building Hangar halls on your Capital Ship allows you to bring your own squadron of fighters to the siege. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Reconstruction Machine for stations | The new station version of the Reconstruction Machine is an integral part of siege, as it can be used for respawning during the fight. For the machine to work, it requires an Endo Kit as well as a connection to a generator for electricity through a Supply Conduit network. Unlike ship machines, you can be linked to multiple station machines at once. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Feature | Description | Design | Art | Code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Station ownership in a siege | It's not possible to change station ownership in a siege, nor is it possible to resign your stations before the battle is over. In addition, if the ownership of a captured station changes due to the siege results, all the existing permissions of that station get reset. | ✔️ | ➖️ | ✔️ |
| Further warzone restrictions | Stations and Capital Ships that are not part of a siege but still within its warzone will become locked and limit players from exiting and entering. Similarly, limits to how many players are allowed to exit and enter Capital Ships near warzones will be placed. | ✔️ | ➖️ | 🟡 |
| Improved affiliation and unaffiliation | Using the siege terminal, other Military Capital Ships can join a scheduled or ongoing siege as either the attacker or the defender. In addition, while it's already possible to remain unaffiliated when approaching a siege area, the improved implementation makes it possible to for example switch sides in the middle of the fight. | ✔️ | 🟡 | ❌ |
| Enhanced capture zone visualization | Additional VFX to the capture zones to show which team is currently on control and which areas are in the process of getting captured. | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Integrating companies to siege | After the initial main implementation, companies will have a larger role in sieges, as they will be able to own their own stations and join sieges with the whole company roster. | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Player relation icons | New player relation icons and colors that are visible in the game world, transponders and also in chat. These visualizations for e.g. the attackers and the defenders, your stations as well as just random players make it easier to tell who is who in the middle of the fighting. | 🟡 | 🟡 | ❌ |
| Respawn system v2 | The respawn system will get updated with new features which will improve the fighting experience, such as being able to reconstruct others with endokits, and later also the ability to use parts from dead endos. | ✔️ | ✔️ | 🟡 |
| General siege improvements and optimization | To make the siege gameplay with its many systems and moving parts as smooth as possible, there will be a lot of optimization, tech changes and general combat improvements as the feature gets more polished. | 🟡 | ➖️ | 🟡 |
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