Design Screen update and future plans

It looks like I'm not going to get the basic gameplay working by May 31st :( That's not from lack of effort though, I just underestimated the amount of work required.

But I do have some good news. I updated the design screen to work with the new data-driven ship stuff. It now have icons displaying correct information. There's no ship validation yet (grey out the add button if too much items were added for example). So for now, I'm done with design screen and equipment selection. There's still some things to polish, but for now it's functional.

Here's what it looks like:

In my last post, I asked for feedback about travelling with grid or star-to-star. The decision is made. I'm going with star-to-star movement, and re-introduce "supply range". Yes it was in game previously, but I removed it because I felt that it don't make sense if two systems far apart can contribute to the same project. I just simply gave up with explaining why it's possible to build a death star at an outpost that's not in supply range. Let's just assume that it magically gets its supplies from the other systems :D However, each system still have capacity limits, so if that outpost is just a bunch of hamsters in a shack, then they can't build a death star :)

Here's how it's going to work. I'm going to implement two different options that players can toggle with the supply range. One option is if the destination is within supply range, you can move any fleets from anywhere to that destination, even if the route between start and end is not in supply range (aka MoO 1/2). Another option is to enforce supply range, which means the entire route have to be within supply range. So if your empire is in a crescent shape, you can't go directly from one end to another in a straight line. This can generate choke points on where arms connects to the cluster in a spiral galaxy.

I hear you say "Wouldn't that increase micromanagement? You'll have to click on a star, then wait for the fleet to get there, then set the next destination." My answer is that I will add "Navigation Graph" which will take all places where circles intersect (two points for each circle intersection), then generate a route using those nodes. The game will give you a route if it's possible, and the route will end at the desired destination, but it may not be straight.

For now, I will implement the first option, as it is simplest and requires less coding. Later on I will add the second option, then starlanes at one point (again, starlanes will be an option you can turn on or off). Sounds good?