Hexagons in Space

2024-10-29

While the strategic layer I added tied the combat encounters together nicely, it still felt a bit too static for me. Each "layer" of the game (action, tactics, strategy) should be a fun game by itself. The solution, of course, is hexagons.

Meet the new hexagon-based starmap:

Each hexagon on the map represents an area where combat encounters can take place. Each individual ship is visible on the map and can be given orders to move to other areas.

When ships of different factions enter the same area, combat will ensue. If your own faction is involved, you can jump right into the action, command your fleet, and find out if your new designs work as well as you hope against this enemy. Combat between other factions is auto-resolved.

Days of War

The strategic layer is turn-based. Each "turn" is a single day, where you can take your time to decide what to build or upgrade and where to send your fleets. You prepare movement orders and hit the "Next Day" button. At that moment, all fleets with movement orders will move to the next sector:

I like how this results in an ebb and flow of calm consideration on the strategic layer and more intense action when entering combat. Seeing a large fleet approaching your newly built base is pretty exciting.

Increasing Threat

One problem with many strategy games is that once the player survives the early game and conquers a bit of the map, things get increasingly easier instead of more difficult. The reason is that the player acquires more resources at the cost of the enemy, which gets fewer resources. This results in a situation where it is quickly clear who is going to win:

To avoid this, I use a threat level in eXoSpace (shown using a red exclamation mark icon in the screenshot above). The threat level represents how far the other faction has escalated the conflict. The threat level slowly increases over time but jumps up immediately when the player destroys an enemy base.

When the threat level increases, the challenge goes up by a significant step as well: enemies will build larger and more dangerous ships and attack with bigger fleets. If the threat level becomes high enough (which is surely the case when the player has defeated all enemy bases in the sector), the faction will send a boss in a last-ditch effort to keep the sector. When you defeat the boss, the sector is yours, and you can move on to the next sector.

Using this approach results in a much more interesting flow for the strategic game, where the challenge to the player increases by marked jumps (typically after a significant player action such as destroying an enemy base) and builds up to a climax where a boss ravages your sector:

Spicing Things Up

Currently, the strategic layer contains star systems with planets and asteroid fields. Each planet allows one metal resource to be mined by a mining module on a starbase in that area. Sufficiently dense asteroid fields also provide resources that can be extracted by a mining outpost.

Some planned additions for the strategic map, to make things even more interesting, include:

• Unidentified Signals: An unknown signal is detected in an area. Move a ship to investigate. The signal may turn out to be one of many things: a powerful abandoned vessel for you to use, a hidden cache of resources, or perhaps a pirate ambush.
• Enemy transport ships: Currently, there is no way to get module blueprints from the other factions. To enable this, I plan to add enemy transport ships that sometimes move around on the map. When intercepted, you have a chance of acquiring an enemy spaceship module design, allowing you to, for example, use their own weapons against them.

That's it for now, back to coding!