New Version Released!

Here's a screenshot of the latest version, showing the construction screen, and the empire's financial summary.

I was unable to implement spending cap, so right now you can spend unlimited amount on construction. However, note the overrun cost in the screenshot. I want only 294 production points, but I only have 50 factories. Overrun works like this:

first 50 production points = 1 BC each

next 50 PP = 2 BC each

next 50 PP = 4 BC each

and so forth, doubling every time the total factories output is reached in each iteration.

It lists the overrun cost as 2664. So 2958 - 2664 = 294 BC

If I had 294 factories, it'd only cost me 294 BC. So overruns are very very expensive. There will be technologies that you can research that will reduce overrun costs.

Now, without futher ado, here's the download link for the latest version!

http://www.mediafire.com/?2p9sly1yjghsfbx

Make sure you have SlimDX installed

http://slimdx.googlecode.com/files/SlimDX%20Runtime%20%28March%202009%20SP1%29.msi

On a side note, Joseph pointed out that it's my game. While that's true, if it's fun for me, I'm sure it'd be fun for others. But I want to polish this game as much as possible, which requires other point of views. I will incorporate ideas and suggestions that I think are good and fun for the game, as well as my own ideas :) So feel free to leave feedback!

New Release Tonight!

I've been working on the economic aspect of the game. Tonight I will release a new version after I'm done working out the kinks. What it will feature:

Fixed idle fleet merging bug
Empire Reserves (if you don't spend all of your income, it will go into reserves)
Ability to spend more than you earn if you have reserves left.
Interest rate for reserves, they will earn some money even if there are no money going into it.
Capped spending.

What's with the capped spending? When you click on "End Turn", it will check to ensure that you have sufficient income AND reserves for your budget that turn. If you're spending more than you can afford, it will prompt you to adjust your budget. You cannot end turn until the budget is fixed.

While I was working on the economics, I thought of a couple nifty features that I haven't really seen in any other TBS games. Borrowing money with interest rate, and liquidating.

Let's say that you have an ally that's earning a lot of money. You hit a rough patch, and ask your ally to lend you 200 BC, with some interest rate. The 200 BC is directly deposited into your reserve, and you pay your ally back each turn automatically, plus interest. So let's say you take 20 turns to pay back your ally, with some interest rate. So you pay 15 BC per turn, which results in a total payback of 300 BC.

The amount of turns and interest rate will be set automatically, so you just ask for an amount, and the game will handle the rest. Advances in technology will enable you to get a lower interest rate.

Now what happens if you can't pay your ally back? It'd prompt you saying that you can't afford your budget. The best thing to do is to scrap your ships (reducing the upkeep, and getting the scrap money to pay back). If you don't want to scrap ships, or don't have any ships left, then the next option is to sell some of your planets. Each planet will have an "estate value". Newly colonized planets sell for a lot less than a fully developed planet. (Think of Russia selling Alaska to USA)

This will present an interesting twist to the game. An empire gets wiped out because it managed its funding poorly. All of its ships were scrapped, and all of the planets were sold. I don't think I've ever seen a TBS with this kind of defeat. Master of Orion 3 came close, with sections of empire revolting away if the empire is approaching bankruptcy.

In diplomacy, you can trade planets, but each planet will have its estate value listed, so you could trade one of your fully developed planet (worth 400 BC) for four of his planets (worth 395 BC total). Or trade technology for planet, or money.

Back on topic of development, I plan to work on planetary development after the update is released. It will feature a couple of things that you can develop on planets: Factories and Labs. It's not a complicated screen, just that there will be some tedious user interface programming.

Concept art

This is the concept art I've drafted up for the construction screen. On bottom left will be your empire's financial summary, it will be visible in all screens except for battle. In the construction screen itself, on bottom left is information about your production capacity and how much you're funding construction. On right is list of ship designs, then amount of funding, then amount per increment. If you set it to 5, then every increment you make in either funding or ship construction will add 5. This allows scaling

On top left is the ship's design, helpful if you want to review which ships you need (ie, torpedo ships or missile ships? Bomber or ramships? etc etc)

Feedback on this layout (aside from art, which I know sucks)?

Beyond Beyaan Economics

I've been thinking about economics for Beyond Beyaan, and I feel that I may be over-simplifying things by just developing factories on planets, and those factories will produce BCs (billion credit) where you spend on research, construction, or planetary development. In Master of Orion 1, you could have 1 to 8 factories per population unit based on your current tech/racial bonus. They contribute to whatever construction effort you have on that planet. That's not really "realistic" So I worked out a more accurate economic model.

Here is how it will work:
Each planet will have three components:

Population - They will spend money on consumer stuff (food, toys, homes, etc), resulting in BCs for you to spend on. The more population, the more BCs you get. This will not be dependent on factories. So having an undeveloped planet full of people won't be so useless, they'll give you money to spend! Population growth means that they're developing infrastructure and small businesses and stuff. Also, population is a factor in planetary development, the more people you have on a planet, the less cost overrun you will encounter building factories/labs there.

Factories - Those are big factories capable of producing parts for starships and other major constructions. They will reduce the cost of building starships. If you start with a planet that have 10 factories, you can spend up to 10 BC before you start getting cost overrun. Cost overrun is basically stretching the factories capacity at diminishing return. Think of overtime pay for employees, equipment breakage/repair, etc. The more factories you have, the less overrun you'll encounter in building starships.

Labs - Those are government-funded facilities that allow you to pursue your research. This will work in a similar manner to factories, but with research.

I think this system will still keep things simple, but make things more manageable and less abstract. If you set up trading agreements with other empires, they contribute BCs, but not production or research points. So even if you have tons of BCs coming in from trade/population, if your planets aren't developed, you'll have a hard time building things.

Comments? Thoughts? Feedback? Feel free to comment!

Initialization!

I've created this blog as a place to put updates and pictures of the game I'm working on, Beyond Beyaan.

I will post pictures and more details later!