0.3 - With Actual Planets!

In the two months since Demo Day 55, I've gotten a lot of good feedback and implemented a lot into this new build. I already knew I wanted having multiple planets was going to be the next big change, but there were many other suggestions and ideas that I was able to add. Still, many ideas had to be delayed, like having random events, contracts to fulfill, etc.

MULTIPLE PLANETS

Obviously the big change is adding multiple planets. When you start a new run, you'll be presented with three planets and will visit all of them in any order. In the long-term I want to have 8 planets chosen from a bigger pool each run, but 3 is a good starting number to get the planet switching logic in place. Along with multiple planets, we now have quotas for each planet and bonuses for doing better on each planet.

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY ABILITIES

Another big change is the addition of buildings having both primary and secondary abilities. Initially, the feedback was given for the player to view the contents of the Logistics Network, similar to viewing the deck in Balatro or other card games. In trying to come up with a good solution to implement this, the idea of adding LMB and RMB as standard actions on every building really appealed to me. It allows for a lot more design space:

• I could do a cycle of buildings revolved around selling goods where each of them has a basic shared ability and then has a more specific secondary.
• As like all card games and roguelikes, I want to add passive abilities but the idea of losing an ability solely for some passive seemed wrong. Now, buildings can have an active primary and a passive secondary.

POWER

One area of contention has been Power. It feels like an obvious mechanic, yet the feedback from DD 55 was very mixed. On paper the numbers made all sense, yet in practice players felt differently. I tried fixing it with different numbers, both starting and costs, but it felt like the same issue where the numbers might look good on paper only. So with this update we're trying some A/B testing. On launch you will get a random selection of parameters, and you can change these in the Options menu.

FULL CHANGELOG

• Added 2 more planets:
  • Tangaroa, a water planet
  • Phenor, a gas giant
• Added 7 more resources:
  • Helium
  • Hydrogen
  • Oganesson
  • Old Earth Tech
  • Oxygen
  • Sulfur
  • Water
• Added a delay to instability. Instead of resources being instantly destroyed when instability is triggered, they will be marked for destruction. Performing any action that does not have anything to do with marked goods will result in them being destroyed. 
• Added a main menu, with options and credits. 
• Added a planet selection view, a planet results view, and a final score view to the game flow.
•  Added a starting money total of $10B on all runs. 
• Added a victory bonus of 50% of your total money if you manage to get through all planets. 
• Added A/B testing to Power. After getting a lot of feedback on Power, it was not obvious how Power should be changed. You can play with the different parameters in the Options menu. 
• Added motherlodes. Every deposit has a 1% chance to have all high quality goods instead of the default low quality ones.
•  Added Prestige. Prestige is a bonus that can be earned that increases your final score by 10% each. 
  • Currently the only way of obtaining Prestige is the Shareholder Bonus. Starting on the second planet, if your profit on that specific planet is more than the previous one, you get bonus Prestige. This bonus increases with each additional planet with an increasing profit and stacks, so in this version you can get a maximum of 3 Prestige (1 + 2) this way. 
• Added secondary abilities to buildings. All existing abilities are now called primary abilities and can be selected by Left-Clicking the building, while the new secondary abilities can be selected by Right-Clicking. 
  • Added a secondary ability to Atom Smasher: Spend 2 identical resources to gain 2 Power. 
  • Added a secondary ability to Dark Matter Engine: Spend 1 Dark Matter to create a random resource. 
  • Added a secondary ability to Drillbots: Create a High Quality Mineral and lower stability by 5%. 
  • Added a secondary ability to Hardlight Array: Spend $15B to gain 1 Power. 
  • Added a secondary ability to Logistics Network: View a manifest of the resources currently in the Logistics Network.
  • Added a secondary ability to Research Team: Spend 3 resources of the same quality to create 1 Data. 
  • Added a secondary ability to Steelworks: Spend 1 Iron and any 3 resources to create 1 Steel. 
  • All other buildings will have "Not Yet Implemented" as their secondary ability. 
• Added the ability to cancel out of certain buildings when activating their abilities. Note that some buildings cannot be cancelled as their effect does not require input from the player. 
• Added quotas. Each planet now has a required amount of income you must make or you lose the game. 
• Added ultrarare goods. Whenever new resources are created, there is a very small chance to create ultrarare goods. These currently include Dark Matter, Oganesson, and Old Earth Tech. 
• Changed Depart's primary ability to selling all goods before leaving the planet.
•  Changed Drillbot's primary ability from pulling 1 resource from the logistics network to creating 1 resource. 
• Changed Expand Operations' primary ability from costing $(10 to the Xth power)B to $(50 times X)B, where X is the number of times it has been used. 
• Changed Expand Operations' primary ability from lowering stability by 20% to 10%. 
• Changed the starting layout of the planet view. The tutorial pop-up now appears before the first planet selection, and you get to see a beautiful vista before starting on each planet. 
• Changed Trading Hub's primary ability from selling 1 good to selling any number of goods at a $1B cost each. 
• Changed Transport Drone's primary ability from pulling 1 resource to pulling 2 resources. 
• Fixed Bureaucratic Firm's primary ability being usable with no cards in the Logistics Network. 
• Fixed UI issues with resizing the window. 
• Fixed various tooltip issues. 
• Published a roadmap via Trello here: https://trello.com/b/1Q7EquIv