Iteration 3 will feature a more linear game difficulty. Actually one of the main goals is for Iteration 3 to be more game like. Basically spawn points will start with a small “budget” that will increase. Different ship types cost different amounts, it is designed in a tiered way, so even if the spawn point could afford a destroyer it will go down to the lesser ship type so that it will spawn more ships in general and with more variety. EG: a destroyer costs 500, I have 1000, I will spawn a destroyer, now I have 500, but this is below the threshold of even checking to spawn a destroyer so I will spawn a frigate, etc etc.

Basically I want a wide variety of ships to be created and the difficulty to be a bit linear in the beginning then scale up to a certain point, and then remain somewhat static. I’ll throw in some randomness as well so that the spawned forces are not always predictable, also once there is a difficulty slider, the randomness will slide more towards creating more enemies. These spawn points won’t be the only source of opposition in the game, once there are story elements, triggers, special events, this will add to the overall conflict.

Back to the more game like goal of iteration 3, the player will start with less ships than in previous iterations, and won’t have enough resources to build any stations at the start, although the asteroid base can build corvettes and frigates so that the player can start building ships. The player will have a choice, start making smaller ships? Invest in a shipyard to build bigger ships? Build or go for a defense platform instead?

While doing some tests I realize that there is a serious need for a path finding algorithm. Fighter ships that launched in response to the first threat became horribly stuck before being able to reach the hangar bay to dock with the asteroid base. This isn’t the first time it happened, but the asteroid’s base size makes this a more likely occurrence than a carrier, either way I need a some sort of a path finding algorithm (A* etc).