Fleet Movement

The "End of Turn Processing" is now mostly implemented. It have its own screen now. When a player clicks "End Turn" button, it will process the next empires, and if there's another human controlled empire (hotseat), it will halt the processing to let that player play. After all human controlled empires are done, it will process any remaining AI empires, then display the galaxy without nebula to reduce confusion. You will see fleets moving around in this. Each fleet icon is their maximum size for easier visibility.

There's only one thing left to do before I release this, and that is to add exploration code. When a fleet finishes moving, and is adjacent to a star system, that star system will be explored, and added to the empire's queue of systems explored that turn. When it becomes that player's turn, it will center on each system explored, giving the player a chance to see which systems are now explored. When the queue runs out, the player's turn begins.

When that is implemented, I will release this version, but it'll be pre-pre-pre-something-alpha, not really playable. The only thing you can do will be explore and move your fleets around. Planetary development isn't implemented yet, despite the sliders.

Here's a screenshot of the "Processing End of Turn Screen"

Two things I'd like to discuss.

First: I've thought long and hard about colonization in the game, and decided on migration instead of colony ships. Your empire will extert "claim" that's based on your owned planets and fleets. The more population you have in a system, the more "claim" it exterts around it. The bigger fleet you have, the more "claim" it also exterts. When a star system is completely enclosed in your empire's "claim", people will start migrating there. The "claim" can be weaked if another empire overlaps it. So a star system with high maximum population is desirable to extert more "claim".

Second: The space combat phase will occur after all fleets have finished moving this turn. They will occur only if the opposing fleets occupies the same grid cell, or is adjacent to the same star system. I'm still debating whether or not to have more than two opposing fleets engage in combat (allies vs another group of allies, or free for all between three or more empires, etc). It'd be simpler programmically-wise to only have two empires in combat at a time, since that means the AI will be easier to work with. But it's more fun and exciting to have more than two empires involved at once. We'll see how it goes.