Inside Interplanetary: The Resources: The Material: The Movie

Don't worry, it's just steam. Black, smelly steam.

Yo, everyone! Game Design fellow Sasu is back in action, currently testing the newest build of Interplanetary. Some key features are still missing; it's a little bit difficult to enjoy the game when buildings and cities don't even have life bars, but the game is otherwise quite playable already. Add in a couple of features and balance, balance, balance!

Today we shall delve into a central system, that isn't completely implemented in the game at this point. As such, many of the terms used will probably differ in the final game and the system itself will evolve. In spite of that, let's take a look at the basics of...

The Resources of Interplanetary: Material

We've already mentioned some things about Interplanetary's resources in these posts. There are quite a few, such as Production, Science and Power, but one of the most important ones, for you to keep your eye on, is Material.

Material represents everything, well, material that you need to build structures: concrete, rebar, currency, whatever. It's all lumped under the moniker of Material for your convenience! Along with Power, a bar showing the available Material is always shown to the player; these are the two things that need constant attention when developing your planet.

All those railguns ain't cheap.

As we've explained before, many actions in the game cost Power, the amount of which is recalculated, according to the amount of Power Plants, at the beginning of each turn. Material, however, works more like normal currency, meaning it can easily be depleted, if you consume more than you produce.

The game begins with a set amount of Material for each player, but it won't last for very long. A savvy player will construct a couple of Mines to keep their stocks full. A normal Mine yields a small amount of Material each turn, but they can be upgraded to be more efficient.

The Material doesn't just appear from thin air, though: each planet has a set amount of it, and once it's gone, it's time to start thinking about alternative means of sustaining your development. The planet's Material is divided into three parts: Normal, Aquatic and Deep. The type doesn't matter when building structures, but each of them is acquired in a slightly different way. Most of the planet's Material is Normal and is mined by Normal Mines. Aquatic Material is mined with Underwater Mines and Deep Material is gained by upgrading Normal Mines with Deep Mining capabilities.

Planet Material is like a pizza: tasty and crunchy and I'm hungry.

Initially, all Mines work quite inefficiently and a lot of the mined Material will go to waste in the process to convert it to usable resources. This can be remedied with upgrades, however.

Interplanetary warfare can take a heavy toll on the resources, and you will inevitably run out of Material at some point. When the final drop is consumed, it's time to look to the skies and attempt to colonize a nearby planet. To colonize a planet, you use your interplanetary weapons to shoot Colonization Probes, which in turn will set up a small colony on the planet they land on. The colony is able to, among other things, mine Material and send it back to the home planet.

Long matches may very well end with almost the whole planetary system dry of usable Material. Insert commentary on unsustainable development and the irony of war here.

Hopefully, a complete image on how to play Interplanetary is beginning to form for everyone. We'll be back another time with more tidbits and such. See ya!

Inside Interplanetary: Weapon Types

Game design guy Sasu, here with another post detailing Interplanetary's progress and game mechanics. Alpha is coming along nicely, even though the graphics might not show that big of an advancement. The weapon types have been basically implemented and just need to be fiddled with. A lot. This feels like a nice point to segue into the subject of this blog post:

The Weapons of Interplanetary

This time, we'll expand on our last time's subject of Targeting by taking a look at different weapon types and their targeting features.

There are three main weapon types: railguns, missiles and beams.

Railgun

Railguns are simple weapons, meant to overwhelm the enemy, but they're not exactly known for being accurate. They don't use a huge amount of Power, so it's usually possible to fire many of them in one turn.

Stupid gas planet, messing up a great shot.

The targeting of a railgun is very simple: choose the weapon and select the trajectory. It is, however, very difficult to hit an exact spot on the enemy planet, even with the possibility to put markers on the enemy planet in Intelligence View. Sometimes, it can be quite difficult to even hit the enemy planet, due to gravitational pull's strong effect on railgun slugs.

Missile

Whereas railguns have a bit of a luck element in them, missiles are designed to be accurate. They are not as much affected by their surroundings and it is much easier to hit specific targets with them. Missiles are a bit of power hogs, though.

The targeting of missiles actually consists of two phases. In the first phase, the camera zooms in to the enemy planet and you can get a proper look of its surface. This is basically the Intelligence View. In this view, you'll be able to click anywhere on the planet to set a target. After choosing your target, you enter the second phase, similar to railgun targeting. Now you can set the trajectory and try to hit as close to the marked spot as possible.

You can even target the opposite side of the enemy planet.

So, you've set the trajectory and also an exact target on the enemy building. As long as you manage to shoot your missile close enough to the enemy planet, it will enter its orbit. While there, the missile will travel towards the target point on the planet's surface. The longer the time spent on the orbit, the greater the chance that it will get shot down by defense guns or other hazards. This means you should try to aim as close to the target as possible.

Beam

Beams differ from other weapons in that the gravity doesn't affect them one bit. Their trajectory is always a straight line. Depending on the situation, the enemy planet can be very easy to hit, or simply impossible, because of obstacles in the way or beam weapons placed on the wrong side of the planet.

Beams also have a two phase targeting: once you set the trajectory, you can specify the exact spot the beam hits. The choice of targets is much smaller than with the missile, since you may only target one side of the planet. In optimal conditions, this makes beams the most accurate weapons by far. Unfortunately, their attack power is fairly low.

Everything's in the way!

The weapons in Interplanetary will be based on these three types. Some will have radically different stats and some will have added effects, but the basic concepts are still the same. There will also be slight tweaks to this system in the future, but the idea stays. Hopefully, this has been enlightening. See you next time!