Update on this: I put it to a vote among my patrons, and it's overwhelmingly looking like I will be wrapping up Exalted here soon and starting work on Stationmaster 2.
Given that this is probably the most active community for this game, it seems important to ask here. What do you all think the biggest opportunities for improvement are? The code will be mostly new, so this is the time to make big decisions about how it works. As always, I really appreciate your input. It helps me focus on the right things during development.
So far, the big core design changes I'm planning are:
- Scrap the old character engine and use the one from Exalted. This is slightly less flexible, but the models and animations are much better. This should resolve a ton of issues, though clothes probably won't be in 0.1.
- Decouple animations from macro. This should save a lot on performance and allow stuff like multiple floors (think Startopia).
- Time controls.
- More detailed army management. Make armies have positions around planets, and handle opposing factions' armies as armies, not events.
- For the nerds: Ditch that piece of shit ASCII save system in favor of SQLite (or maybe JSON).
Things I think should stay the same are:
- The tone of the game, the main character, and the universe it is set in (but not the exact main plot).
- The station building UI. Although it will be gaining floors (and losing the pillar), the moment-to-moment gameplay should look about the same.
- The core gameplay loops around station building and conquest.
- Random events and furniture items (with some content edits for things I've learned about writing since then), though I plan to write new faction leaders and "main quest" events.
