I'm glad, thanks. Not sure how long I can keep up the current hyperfocus pace of updating almost every day since I will inevitably get distracted working on another project, but for now here are some vague ideas/synopsis of where it is going:
- standard 'obvious' things like iterating game balance, UI, QoL, tooltips, settings, saves, and boring tech stuff
- more interlacing system expansions with tendency towards modular scaling lists of things derived from each other
- actual scaling of all proof of concept systems (more stats/resources/buildings/events/units/traits/upgrades/etc.)
- more incentive structures for archetypes, like a mercenary system that uses credits/hr or blueprints from research
- more important leader character/customization, such as having presence in battles, autocast cooldowns, attributes that can influence combat or city performance, and perhaps some kind of leader mastery system that accumulates bonuses across every other system
- dynamic unbounded achievements as an excuse to track infinite stats and incentives to chase higher achievement values with some kind of trophy-point system that accumulates small bonuses based on total achievement points, while being completely adversarial to 'completionist' mindset (in other words: it never ends)
- some random excuse to add pie charts and graphs somewhere for no discernible reason
- maybe a desktop version (seems possible but managing both for each version could slow updates down a lot)
- probably more if I keep working on it for a while / these are just a few things that come to mind
most notably, I consider the various modular systems as multipliers onto each other, so eventually adding a single new building is a multiplier across 100s of strategies compared to having it in isolation in an earlier version of the game (in a similar way, adding a new city stat like 'health' has had a multiplier effect, allowing the stat on buildings, research, traits, calculations, events, buff/debuff statuses, etc.)
it seems like having tons of event variety would be more interesting that seeing some of them repeat, and I am tempted to add 999 different buildings filtered through a blueprints system or something like that, if only the variety of stats/effects/combinations/themes could handle it (probably could add like 50 more already with current stats, but at a certain threshold the namespace and variety becomes limited).
...oh,
- maybe eventually the game could have a learning curve design where ascension tiers gate some of the complexity so that casual players don't run into a brick wall of endless stats as soon as they start the game. I have no real desire to simplify anything, but this might be an incentive for reaching higher difficulties (although it makes overall game balance 10x more complicated in a way).