Update Log #3
As part of our continuing commitment in 2022 to offer up monthly updates to what we’re working on, this post describes some of our more interesting updates for the month of March.
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The New Docking Menu
In the original Stellar Conflicts, much of the game played out between two primary scenes. You had the undocked free-range mode where you could fly around and the docked scene where you could change ships, outfit your ship and trade cargo. This UI middleman is what we call the Docking Menu.
One difference between the original Stellar Conflicts and our game is the Docking Menu is now a modal. That is to say, it’s designed to be drawn on top of the open world rather than replacing the open world view.
That’s not to say it may not change in the future, but right now it’s our plan to keep the open world visible as much as possible.
Here’s what the docking menu looks like.
The four inner panels labelled “SB114 Marketplace” our a stand-in for a variety of services offered by an individual station or carrier. Under that is a regional news ticker which will give you important story or player events based on what has happened in that region lately. Obviously there’s also an undock button.
The part of the docking menu we want to really get into, today, though are the services. Right now, the following services exist:
Outfitting
The Outfitting service is the replacement for the Ship Equipment icon in the Original Stellar Conflicts. It allows you to change your ship’s equipment. Unlike the old game, ship equipment are cargo items just like trade goods. They may be purchased, won, crafted, or found. They can also be salvaged into their raw ingredients which may also be sold.
The Marketplace
The Marketplace is the replacement for the Buy / Sell icon in the Original Stellar Conflicts. It allows the user to purchase and sell trade goods as well as disassembled crafting items to a docked station. Not all docking locations have a marketplace and, just like in the original game, not all marketplaces sell or want every trade good.
Shipyard
The Shipyard service is where you can buy and sell certain ships. We’ve split up the hangar and the shipyard for a better user experience. It also allows us to provide certain ships for sale on certain stations. We’ll have more on this next month, so stay tuned.
Ship Hangar
The hangar is where you would go to change ships. We’ll have more on that next month, so stay tuned!
The New Outfitting Menu
The first service we want to show you all is the Outfitting service. As stated above, it’s the replacement for the Ship Equipment icon in the Original Stellar Conflicts. This service is broken down into three sub-tabs named: Equip Upgrades; View Upgrades; and View Consumables.
Equip Upgrades
This screen lets you select which upgrades you want to equip from your cargo. To equip them, you can either drag them in from your cargo or right click the items in your cargo to equip it in the first available slot. As you can see in the picture, we are also introducing a few common Roleplaying Game concepts such as item rarity.
So far we’ve mostly conformed to the original game’s data structure. We’ve renamed Energy Generator to Powerplant and Shield Generator to just Shields. The Energy Capacitor is now just Capacitor. This simplifies the naming of the slots as well as removes ambiguity between the two “Generators”.
View Upgrades
This screen lets you purchase upgrades that may be available on that individual station or carrier. Some stations will have rare or legendary items which may have special stat modifiers. Once an item is purchased it places it in your cargo hold. Afterwards, the player can click Equip Upgrades to install it.
View Consumables
Like the original game, missile launchers and certain specials such as the mine launcher and the pulsar emitter require you to buy consumables. As you can see above, we have introduced rarity to these items as well. The workflow is similar to the original game. You click the slot you would like to load and you can either sell the currently loaded consumable or purchase a new one from the station or carrier.
The Marketplace
The other service we would like to show you today is The Marketplace. This replaces the Buy / Sell Cargo button in the Original Stellar Conflicts. Like in the original game, you are allowed to buy and sell trade goods as a way of making money. In this menu, you can view all the various trade goods that a station may be selling and you can sell any trade good that you may want to. Not all stations sell every trade good and not every station may want to buy every trade good. You can also purchase and sell raw ingredients for crafting and salvaging.
Thanks!
That’s all for this month’s Stellar Conflicts updates! Feel free to let us know what you think. We’re always on Discord. As always, thanks for your ongoing support.
