Friday 28 June 2013

Sneak peek - Resource Icons

It's been a long time since I posted content, for the obvious reasons listed in my last post. So I decided it was about time I released some Sneak peeks at the next update which I'm hoping to wrap up sometime next week.

Here they are, the Icons for the 6 resources in Starbase:

Credit
Money, sorta an alien version of $



Power
Very simple, what better way to express electricity that a lightning symbol, has more detail better seen on a black backing.

Water
Very essential, this icon has a neat little transparency gradient.
Oxygen
The symbol for Oxygen... literally, because I ran out of good ideas.

Food
Because corn is delicious :D

And my favorite....
Ore
A building block, metallic kind of symbol.
  
So there you have it, all 6 resources. I also have devised purposes for all of them.

Credit and Ore are your basic Building/Researching materials and necessary in order to progress further in the game.
Credit covers your expenses, and is the basic medium used to exchange Ores, Food, Water, Oxygen & Power on the market. It is also necessary for construction and research, since you have to 'pay' the workers involved. Overall Credit is your basic currency/maintenance and trading resource. You obtain credits through tourism, the selling and buying of resources on the market and allowing merchants to visit your base.
Ores are your basic construction resource. They are necessary for ALL constructions and some research. It can be traded on the market however it's price is always in fluctuation.You can mine Ore from asteroids, Ofcourse asteroids in close proximity to your starbase are a finite resource so later in the game through use of jump gates you can send miners to other systems to harvest Ore from infinitely richer patches of space. Ore is also necessary for repairs, you cannot repair a component without sufficient Ore.

Power is hard to explain, it's kind of like a limit. Your main hub will produce a certain amount of power on it's own but as you build slowly these extra components will eat up your energy reserves. Power Generators solve this problem by producing additional power thus enabling you to expand your starbase further. The more power you have the larger your starbase can get. In addition to that some components like weapons consume larger amounts of power, so keeping high energy reserves for these powerful weapons is encouraged. If you run out of power everything begins to fail, That means construction sites work x3 slower, and food/water/oxygen production is decreased by x4. Ultimately If you don't have enough power you will eventually run out of vital resources needed for survival. Power however is also a commodity you can purchase off the market, like ore it's price fluctuates.

Water, Food and oxygen are your survival resources. Without them your Starbase will fail. If you cannot produce enough food/water everyone on the starbase will starve or die of thirst. Likewise if you don't produce enough O2 then everyone will suffocate. Starbases thrive of a healthy community of civilians who work and live on the starbase. Sorta like a city, and cities need to produce these vital resources to survive. Food, water, oxygen can all be produce via special components. Your main hub will also produce a base amount of food, water and oxygen (though not very much). As you expand and more and more people move into your starbase you will need to make more of these facilities. They can also be sold and purchased off the market, but their prices fluctuate.

So there you have it, resources and how they work. I'm looking forward to implementing these systems into the game. it should make for interesting game play, having to judge all these resources which interact with one another. By interact I mean, like food will require water and oxygen might require water as well, but water might require oxygen in a dramatic reversal... This will all come down to whatever it is you decide to choose when it comes to facilities. Different facilities will use different resources to to produce the resource you want. It's all very confusing but I promise there will be a tutorial!

Enjoy

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