What's New

I wrapped up the cargo scanning feature as mentioned last week, and expanded upon contraband and smuggling. There are now AI smugglers attempting to carry glitterweed from the pirate bases to the non pirate bases. They can get scanned and destroyed by security as well. Additionally a basic ability to talk to subs was added. You can now ask subs what task they're doing, and demand they drop their cargo (if they have any) if you fancy turning pirate. The relative combat strength of your subs will determine if the AI subs accede to your demand, and in either case piracy attempts will be logged as a crime. If you successfully bully a trader into dropping their cargo nearby security forces may become aggressive as well and attack you. This ties into the previously added "temporary aggression" system, and can be cleared by just hiding until they forget about you.

The Full World

I gave some thought as to what to do next, and I think it's finally time to stop playing with prototypes and move on to the real deal. The first step was world generation. Above you can see an exaggerated relief map of the world, colored by biome. My plan is to have the whole of the world playable, with generous options for time compression. By my calculations, a typical submarine would take 37 hours to circumnavigate that world at 1x speed.

I may end up having to adjust the scale, depending on how distances work out, but for now the world size is set at 800km radius.

Patch Notes

• Basic cargo scanning UI and improved target information.
• Added glitterweed commodity.
• Defining contraband for factions.
• Security patrols scan for contraband.
• Cargo scan ultimatum handling and response handling.
• Cargo ejection, cargo pods.
• Added faction presences to bases, and used them to generate trade missions.
• Smuggling missions.
• Reduced the chance for pirate cargo demands.
• UI improvements around missions.
• Bots doing smuggling missions.
• Basic conversations for current task and piracy.
• Define bots as security patrollers and have them respond to piracy attempts.
• Add crime for attempted piracy.
• New main menu background image.
• Turn off spotlights when docked.
• Added defender submarine as purchase option and patroller.

What's Next

With the "high level" world generation done, the next step is putting the player into it. That way I can get a feel for distances before spending a lot of time placing stations. A major part of this will be creating and destroying patches of the world immediately around the player, in a seamless manner. The setting helps this, as view distances underwater are naturally very limited.