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CrimsonHearts6 days ago

I quite like the idea, the strategy element of it is quite interesting. I'd like to think that this is what *actual* scientist do.

In terms of gameplay, it is a bit simplistic at the moment. It's fairly intuitive after you get 1 day done correctly. Visually, I loved it. I think a paper UI is amazing, and as I said this feels like something an actual scientist might do and the paper visuals feel like notes that you write to keep track of everything.

I imagine the scratched lines on the lower part of the battery indicate the amount of time left to research. 

Not sure if this is how it'll be once everything's been implemented but I feel like the the downlink time of the day being randomized everyday could be interesting and might interact a bit more with the overall strategy. And the additional hazards will also help with that. I think a customizable rover with different tools and looks could be very interesting. The observatories also feel a bit static, I thought they might move or might have limited used, but at the moment, moving the rover in the middle of them essentially guarantee daily downlinks.

There are a few bugs that I found, mainly the Data that you research in the data holding block is difficult to drag into the downlink block, and a lot of the times when I'm dragging the data, it just disappears when I try to drag it into the Downlink block. It's also hard to click on the energy action sometimes.

A bit confused as to what the top left corner block does, but I think that's the un-implemented stuff.

All in all it's a really interesting game/idea, where I think I would really like coming up with strategies.

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ktyl6 days ago

thanks for the feedback, the data one is not a bug i've seen anywhere before so i'll absolutely have to look into it! the energy one may be an interaction with another part of the UI, for example if the ui overlaps an observation target on the map then the event gets eaten. i am new to godot UI!

the scratched lines are actually supposed to represent a danger zone - if you drop that low, the battery degrades more quickly. real batteries are damaged if you discharge them too much (you might have heard advice to keep your smartphone between 20 and 80% or something along those lines), and this is an _extremely_ important concept for batteries on spacecraft. so, i wanted give the player the option to degrade their battery in the name of science, or play it more safely and keep the battery in good condition.

it sounds like you got an easy spawn with the locations of the observation targets, they are positioned at random so usually you have to move quite a bit. the range on the instrument currently is quite low, but i intend to have multiple instruments on the rover which do different things - one to look at things far away and get a bit of information about them, from which you can then decide if it's worth investigating more closely with a short-range instrument.

i'm definitely planning on having customisable rovers: i want to add different battery compounds, for example, different instruments (as many as possible, real rovers usually fly with a payload of ~10 instruments which are all fairly multipurpose), maybe different locomotion types? a helicopter would be cool. and different power sources - nuclear rovers can run through the night, but might have different disadvantages too. there's a lot of customisation that i can add, i am definitely planning on a tech tree.

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CrimsonHearts6 days ago

Ah I see, Batteries having a degradation zone is an interesting idea, I think. Though in the game I feel like energy is used minimally after a few days since I can just farm energy for some hours and then research and have a downlink hour afterwards.

I certainly did get lucky, they were all in close proximity of each other.

A tech tree is definitely a great idea for this. Having different rovers that have different abilities they can use (longer movement, larger research area, longer battery span) would definitely be fun. Maybe having different types of rover entirely, like one rover could be for recon, one for research and one for downlink and the player has to manage all three, But I think that could get out of hand really quickly.

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ktyl6 days ago

two more aspects of the battery behaviour:

- mars is very cold! surviving the night requires power to stay warm, so you will need to finish the day with some power left, and ideally this will stay out of the degradation zone or have a very rough morning

- batteries degrade anyway, no matter how well you take care of them, so every day you'll have a little less capacity even if you stay totally out of the degradation zone :)

re: tech tree and customisation, my design north star is everspace, which has a lot of incremental upgrades as well as some qualitative ones that give you entirely new abilities. my plan is to start with a basic rover (inspired by sojourner, the first mars rover) and then have incremental power, range, comms upgrades and unlock new instruments roughly in-line with the real history of mars rovers. the choices the player makes through upgrading the base rover and the choices the make on payload (many more instruments have been designed for mars than have ever flown to it, payload capacity is limited!) should give this range of experience.

i like multiple rovers as an idea (the latest mars rover had a companion helicopter which i would love to have) but i think one constraint i want to keep for my own sake is a single, linear plan. a real rover would not have to split its time between observing and downlinking, it could do both, or it could downlink and move, but managing multiple timelines in parallel makes the controls a lot more complicated for a game that already has a lot of complexity coming to it.

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