Hello and welcome to Dark Nebula Online!

I wanted to write this short post describing some of the goals of the game,  what I'm hoping we can develop this forum/community into, and to try to define reasonable expectations.  First just a note that I(Al Shady) am solo developer who also has a full time job and 18 month old baby. Luckily, my passion for the project takes up the rest of my time so i had to give up sleeping to balance things out : ) I've not made any announcements about the project other than in some discord chat rooms for other developers because I want to get a stable and reasonably playable version done before opening the floodgates.

I have been putting out mostly weekly updates for the last few months and streamlining my client/server release process that it can be done with very little effort. Sometime far in the future I may want to release the final version as a paid game, but for the foreseeable future it will be free(as in beer).  My only asks from you are:

• Engage with each other and me to help make the game better.
• To try to be respectful of other players before you blow them to bits :)
• To understand that I’m only one person, am doing this for fun, and am doing the best I can.

Although I have an overall vision for things that I do and don't really want to see in the game, there are also significant gaps/questions where I don't have plans or am open to experiment with different ideas to see with resonates with the players. I will open up my feature/bug tracker into a shared thing so I can integrate suggestions here and from in-game chat into my current workflow. I'd also like to post some polls to get feedback on features I'm currently planning. I'm mentally breaking down the improvements/roadmap into 3 categories.

• Core Features: These are thing that will definitely happen and be in the game permanently. (unless they turn out not to be fun)
• Exploratory Features: There are things that may or may not stay in the final version but  I will implement so we(the community) can decide if its fun.
• Bug Fixes/Server Maintenance: If its broke, i'll fix it!  I've also got a lot of experience with server design/deployment/maintenance and am running them in low-touch cloud based VMs.

Bug fixes and server maintenance are the top priority, followed by core features and finally the exploratory features. That said, as a indie who is doing this largely for fun, expect some fluidity in this. Once there is a player-base, I will try to run polls to determine the implementation priority. Below are are some core pillars of things I'd like to accomplish, but this question might frame it.

What would Master of Orion (or Stellaris) look like if Blizzard designed it and if fleet flagships were piloted by skilled players?

Some things I feel pretty strongly about:

• Combine elements of strategy games with a challenging real-time combat model and atmospheric space game-world..
• A combat system that is approachable and intuitive, but has a high skill-cap. IE: Easy to learn, difficult to master. My mental prototype for this is the old subspace continuum game which also started with basic asteroids-like mechanics but made a deep combat system.
• Higher-level team-based strategic goals so that the outcome of combat means something. At most a small starmap / web of wormholes and at a minimum, MOBA style matches.
• Seamlessly blend things like maps/scans and other UI stuff so that you never leave the main gameplay screen.
• Seamlessly blend "matchmaking" into the game. IE: flying from your personal home zone into a wormhole to join a battle.

Some things I do NOT currently want to do:

• No pay-to-win, no microtransactions.
• No fully open-world generic space trading/combat game. A lot of great games already exist and do it better than I ever could.
• No things that aren't fun. I've spent more hours than I can count mining asteroids and hauling goods and I'm not interested in space spreadsheets anymore :) You might start by shooting some asteroids, but things that are tedious chores should either not exist, or be done at AI/bots.
• No realism for the sake of realism. Realism can be a guide but should not be the sole reason for doing something.
• No big, open, empty, expanses of space. I want space to feel packed and busy.
• No complex ship upgrade systems with lots of Mark1, Mark2, Mark3 versions of things. I do think ships should be upgradable and there should be lots of weapon choices, but this may look more reconfiguring the core strengths of a handful of ship classes versus making ships that are just better.
• Don’t give the player too much to do at once. I don’t really think its possible to micro manage a fleet and a series of bases/planets  while engaging in fast-paced combat.

Some things I THINK I want to do but would like to discuss/get opinions on: ( I’ll do dedicated posts to each topic to organize the thoughts. )

• Persistent world vs Instanced matches. This is tough.
• Novel networking mechanics. This project was an excuse for me to learn to write efficient networking code, but how this is used can vary a lot. I believe I can currently support hundreds (or more) networked objects a single real-time match
  • I could support many(30+ players) each leading small AI fleets (50 or less) into battle.
  • Alternatively, there could be smaller engagements that use the network bandwidth to have a very dynamic environment (like large physics based asteroid fields/bases)
  • PvP and PvE within the same matches/modes. This may include not only bots supporting the players but also entire AI factions.

• Large motherships which are very difficult to destroy and move slowly. These would be AI piloted though you may control where they go or just clear the path for where you want them to go. They would store resources collected, and construct the ships for your fleet  
• Your character is a person(or alien) and not a ship or abstraction. Even though you may construct/direct/fly in a fleet you are always an individual. Death may occur but perhaps you could pay to recover the dead, or your player character can eject and fly back to mothership for a new ship.
• Player generated content / modding. If the game is multiplayer/competitive I may not be able to make all elements fungible but should still be able to do some things. This could range from map creators to an interface to create/submit scenarios, storylines, races, etc.
• Lots more, but this post is already too long.