Week 7

Hello everyone,

This week we worked on 4 main features that we decided to add based on feedback from our playtests.

The first is build time. Players found it frustrating to have so little time to react to the AI's action since the building was built and started operating immediately. As such we've implemented build times for all buildings in the game. For most buildings, this time is under ~3 seconds but presents an opportunity for the player to counter-attack the AI's actions in that time period. 

Note: For the moment we do not have any feedback to indicate a building is in the process of building and will address this in the next art pass or maybe with a temporary effect soon.

The second is click+drag wires. Players found it exhausting to click and place wires one after another and so we've implemented a special builder just for wires so that they can be dragged out too quickly extend the player's base outward with fewer player actions. With the build time of the wire being only a fraction of a second, this means that wires build out in a line. This should give the player more time to strategize and implement quick counter-attacks.

Note: The visual effect of building out wires is not complete. We hope to do something very cool visual when building out a network like this!

The third is a build queue. Players found it annoying when their actions were ignored/failed because they did not have the needed compute resource to complete a building.

Why Compute Exists: One of the game's current philosophies is that actions per minute (APM) related to a player's power do not scale infinitely. The game should be able to be playable (on the easiest difficulty) at ~20 APM (one action every ~3 seconds). Additionally, at ~100 APM the game should be playable at the highest skill levels. A player's ability to burst beyond 100 APM shouldn't afford any direct advantage.

That being said, we do not wish to ignore player inputs. As such we are now only requiring that the building reserve the requisite energy cost. Once reserved the building is added to the build queue and will start building once remaining compute resource is collected. 

The 4th feature, auto-capture, is still in active development and should be ready by the next week.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day,

Micah Rust