Alpha 19 - How do you think repairing the ship should work?

Hey gang. Happy Thorium Thursday.

For starters, here's a new alpha for you. This has the first iteration of ship-to-ship combat. If you want to play with it, start a flight, open the Flight Directors controls, spawn a new ship, and use the controls at the bottom to command it to attack the player ship.

Or wait a few more alphas for me to put in a proper dogfight mission.

Also, for those Windows users hoping this alpha fixes the problems we've been having with Windows... I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little longer. It turns out the way I'm bundling the code and assets is incompatible with Windows file systems, and it's hard to debug since the issues only show up when working with the fully bundled app. Give me a few more alphas. Maybe you'll get them at the same time as the dogfight missions.

A few months ago I talked about the plans for 2025, which included

• Dogfight AI - NPC ship movement, targeting, and firing weapons
• Damage control and repairing the ship
• Sensors & Science

We're almost halfway through the year, and I've almost completed all of those (though, with much tweaking and bugfixes left to do). But we still need to get repairs working.

So I want to hear from you - how would you want repairs to work? Reply to this email and let me know. I'll provide some extra context below.

The plan is that ship system damage will be modeled as efficiency loss. The lower a systems efficiency, the more power it takes to do the same thing. With the same amount of power but 50% efficiency, impulse engines will only be able to go half as fast.

In Thorium Classic, systems would either be damaged or not damaged. Flight Directors either sent pre-made reports, or had Thorium procedurally generate task reports with different tasks for crew members to do. This included transferring cargo, sending out damage teams, manipulating dial and switch panels, and sending long range messages. The goal is to involve as many of the crew in the damage report as possible.

Most other bridge simulators have very simple damage control. In Empty Epsilon and Star Trek: Bridge Crew you just have to assign damage teams to whichever system is damaged and they'll automatically fix it for you. In Starship Horizons, damage teams will automatically fix any damage and you can prioritize what you want fixed. They also have repair drones which can repair the ship's hull.

Dreamflight Adventures involved the entire crew in repairs by doing Special Procedures, which would give the crew member a small set of random switches and sliders and would relay instructions to them - kind of like a single-player game of Space Team.

A few other thoughts

• Repairs need to work with NPC Damage Teams that move around on the ship map, but also work with small ships that don't have a ship map.
• Repairs need to be fun, both in a physical bridge set with integrated dial and switch panels, and in a living room with just computers.
• Repairs can involve the rest of the crew in some ways, but not be too distracting. There's a balance.
• Repairs should be mostly automated. Writing damage reports can be a drag. Is there a way to do damage control without reports? Or are reports an important part of it?
• What does repairing the ship look like with a Flight Director, and without a Flight Director? Would there be a meaningful difference?

That's all my thoughts for now. I'll write up more in a future post. Again, I'd love to hear your ideas - send a reply to this email. I respond to every email that I get.

Be good!