Released

[Praetorian]

Just got the option to lead invasions. Great stuff. A shame you can't launch multiple invasions remotely. I imagine it'd an absolute nightmare to code!

Plus there is something fun about leading your army from the front

Without wishing to be presumptious (Even though it totally is!), a couple of things for the suggestion box:

1) The option to upgrade colonies beyond building: say, increase the number of soldiers / defences / tech

2) The option to set the colony / station "attitude": defend would mean the colony defends any bases / stations of that faction within the solar system. Aggressive would mean it would cycle through assaulting other non-faction stations / bases in that solar system. Support, where they support any station that you launch an invasion from to ANOTHER solar system. This would free you up a bit (Though considering the size of the space map, maybe only an option for when the inevitable expansions come along as at the moment it is small enough to manage )

3) The alert that one of your colonies / stations is under attack seems a little abstract: a yellow icon that usually pops up when you're in the middle of a mission is a bit frustrating. Something that forewarns you perhaps?

4) Defense options to blockade wormholes Pipe dreaming I know. Maybe the option that, if you control a whole solar system you can fortify it? Not enough to stop an invasion, but maybe it could shoot down drop ships, but at least would be able to buy you time to get a planet / station defense going.

5) Multiple invasion options. Further to the automation of the ai thing above, maybe have it so that if you do a planet invasion you could have a second station support you? Obviously in terms of balance it has few cons, but if, as the fellow above said, station boarding was an option then it would make things very risky for a counter attack if you empty a colony / station of troops to invade

6) The option to upgrade your TROOPs and FIGHTERS. As the defenders get tougher, it'd be nice to throw maybe a couple of upgrade options for your grunts / fighters to increase their effectiveness if you aren't about.

Just some high thinking pipe dreams for the sequel. Trying to crush the Free Nations: they keep taking my colonies that are about 3 wormhole jumps away. Only thing that bugs me: no front line, no way to stop a fleet just waltzing by to take your "rearmost" colonies. Hence my desire for wormhole defenses / blockades

Man, pulled another long stint. This game is FUN. And my guy is now a walking death machine and dogfighter. I keep saying it, will throw a quick thingie up on my blog (For all 10 of my readers!) to accumulate all my thoughts. Now you just have the pressure to follow up with an amazing sequel

[Kujo]

Is anyone playing with a joystick or gamepad?

360 controller here. Only complaint is that the left sick ground movement took some getting used to: the switch from forward+strafe to strafe+gun is very abrupt. I'd also like to turn a tiny bit faster sometimes.

Re: Wormholes & Jumps
They don't hurt my eyes even on my "true rgb" display. At first, I was really annoyed by having to get through all the UI to jump, wormhole, jump to get to and from the first fleet mission. But I made peace with that and now kind of like the sense of travel. However, trying to get from place to place without getting hurt is much more of a chore than I think it's supposed to be. For a long time, I had dramatically more deaths to travel than to enemy fire. It's especially bad when I'm limping home after a tough fight!

For sure, those battles where you're down to the last few men are the best.

Is there any game benefit to minimizing your side's losses? I've had quite a few missions were I was the only living thing at the end. (The most satisfying being the time I came back from a bounty mission to find my station under attack. The sense of living, unscripted war is really neat.)

[Jabberwocky]

Just got the option to lead invasions. Great stuff. A shame you can't launch multiple invasions remotely. I imagine it'd an absolute nightmare to code!

Plus there is something fun about leading your army from the front

You reached faction commander by burning up the battlefield. No hiding behind a desk now.

1) The option to upgrade colonies beyond building: say, increase the number of soldiers / defences / tech

There are some difficult problems combining a strategy game with an action game, and this is one of them. From a strategic angle, I totally agree - it would be great to be able to hugely upgrade a single colony or station. But from an action/combat angle, this isn't true. The best combat experiences are carefully tuned for balance. If it's too easy, it's boring. If it's too hard, it's frustrating.

So imagine if you're part of a upgraded and overpowered fleet - it will be boring to fight weaker fleets. Or, say you're trying to attack a massively upgraded colony that you have no hope of defeating, that sucks too.

With Salvation Prophecy I very much focused on good, balanced combat. That's why the current limitations are in place for all the different units. It could imagine making a game where I just tossed combat balance out the window completely, allowing me to loosen restrictions on colony and fleet upgrades. And there may be ways of making a game like that work. But the easy-boring / hard-frustrating thing is a serious design concern.

3) The alert that one of your colonies / stations is under attack seems a little abstract: a yellow icon that usually pops up when you're in the middle of a mission is a bit frustrating. Something that forewarns you perhaps?

The obervatories do this a bit. For example, if an enemy fleet is launching towards one of your stations, and you have an observatory in that system, you will see it on your galaxy map's observatory report. But you're right, this could probably be done better with an "about to be attacked" alert.

4) Defense options to blockade wormholes Pipe dreaming I know. Maybe the option that, if you control a whole solar system you can fortify it? Not enough to stop an invasion, but maybe it could shoot down drop ships, but at least would be able to buy you time to get a planet / station defense going.

I really wanted to do something like that. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks it's a cool idea.

I play a lot of Civilization, and the positioning of your cities and troops is really important, based on the boundaries with your enemies. In space games, unit positioning always seems less important (unless the game artificially restricts you to 2D), because you can be attacked from any angle. But wormholes are a choke-point to access a stellar, and I agree this would be the best place to set up blockades and system defenses.

6) The option to upgrade your TROOPs and FIGHTERS. As the defenders get tougher, it'd be nice to throw maybe a couple of upgrade options for your grunts / fighters to increase their effectiveness if you aren't about.

Agreed.

Just some high thinking pipe dreams for the sequel. Trying to crush the Free Nations: they keep taking my colonies that are about 3 wormhole jumps away. Only thing that bugs me: no front line, no way to stop a fleet just waltzing by to take your "rearmost" colonies. Hence my desire for wormhole defenses / blockades

Exactly right!

Man, pulled another long stint. This game is FUN. And my guy is now a walking death machine and dogfighter. I keep saying it, will throw a quick thingie up on my blog (For all 10 of my readers!) to accumulate all my thoughts. Now you just have the pressure to follow up with an amazing sequel

Thanks Praetorian!

[Jabberwocky]

360 controller here. Only complaint is that the left sick ground movement took some getting used to: the switch from forward+strafe to strafe+gun is very abrupt. I'd also like to turn a tiny bit faster sometimes.

Thanks for the feedback. This is the first time I've programmed for a gamepad, so it was an interesting experience. I tried to match the space flight controls as much as possible with the troop controls (on all controller types, not just gamepad), but of course there are some differences that need to be accounted for.

The challenge I found with turn rate is:
fast turn rate:

• great for general movement
• terrible for aiming

slow turn rate:

• annoying for general movement
• great for aiming

There's a couple things that can help for aiming, like the aim button which locks you in to more precise steering. But I noticed about half the playtesters didn't even use aim at all, so it's not reliable. I also put more precision towards the center of the stick, which helps a lot.

Probably I should allow turn rate to be adjustable on gamepad, like the mouse sensitivity slider.

Re: Wormholes & Jumps
They don't hurt my eyes even on my "true rgb" display. At first, I was really annoyed by having to get through all the UI to jump, wormhole, jump to get to and from the first fleet mission. But I made peace with that and now kind of like the sense of travel.

For a long time, I considered adding a shortcut. Like maybe "hit use to jump to next fleet target", so you never have to open up the scanner. That would have been way better from a simplicity standpoint.

The reason I didn't do it is because it only works in fleet missions. While on a fleet, it's evident where you're jumping to. As soon as you need to start navigating around the galaxy yourself, say in pursuit of bounties or unstable wormholes, the game can no longer reliably guess where your next jump target is. So this means using the scanner to pick jump targets.

So, I finally decided that teaching you how to navigate one way, with a "jump to fleet target" shortcut button, then forcing you to learn a 2nd way using the scanner was a worse user experience.

On keyboard, there is a shortcut key for jump, but I don't officially teach this in the flight tutorial. You can hit "j" as a shortcut for "jump to current selection". In a fleet, your next jump target is usually auto-selected for you so that works pretty easily.

It's funny how even the simplest things can seem like major design decisions.

However, trying to get from place to place without getting hurt is much more of a chore than I think it's supposed to be. For a long time, I had dramatically more deaths to travel than to enemy fire. It's especially bad when I'm limping home after a tough fight!

Dying on your way home from a space battle is just one of those things that just sucks.
That's one of the reasons I added the station teleportation drive (plus it cuts down on travel time). But it might be a little too expensive to purchase until you're at least rank 3 or 4.
The game also auto-saves on each scene change. But if you've got no health and no shield regens left, it may be a losing situation.

For wormholes, the cartographer, if asked, gives some good advice,
"Stare as far down the wormhole as you can see, and aim your ship at that spot. Use slow easy motions. Don't oversteer."

Is there any game benefit to minimizing your side's losses? I've had quite a few missions were I was the only living thing at the end. (The most satisfying being the time I came back from a bounty mission to find my station under attack. The sense of living, unscripted war is really neat.)

There is a minor benefit to minimizing losses. All units, stations, and colonies cost resources to build. If more of your guys live, that's less resources that need be spent replacing them. (This will be more clear for those who have progressed to faction command.)

But there's always a little chaos to how a big group battle goes down. Sometimes luck ain't on your side, and pretty much the best you can do is win by the skin of your teeth.

[Praetorian]

[quote="Jabberwocky]There are some difficult problems combining a strategy game with an action game, and this is one of them. From a strategic angle, I totally agree - it would be great to be able to hugely upgrade a single colony or station. But from an action/combat angle, this isn't true. The best combat experiences are carefully tuned for balance. If it's too easy, it's boring. If it's too hard, it's frustrating.

So imagine if you're part of a upgraded and overpowered fleet - it will be boring to fight weaker fleets. Or, say you're trying to attack a massively upgraded colony that you have no hope of defeating, that sucks too.

With Salvation Prophecy I very much focused on good, balanced combat. That's why the current limitations are in place for all the different units. It could imagine making a game where I just tossed combat balance out the window completely, allowing me to loosen restrictions on colony and fleet upgrades. And there may be ways of making a game like that work. But the easy-boring / hard-frustrating thing is a serious design concern.[/quote]

Balance is a right bugger and I think you've nailed it from the action perspective. I can see your point: make it too easy and it removes the need for the player to DO anything. Sometimes that can be good, especially if power is expensive / difficult to obtain. But it could undermine the sense that the war could turn at any point and you need to be constantly aggressive.

Nice to hear you thought similar on defenses in space, but again I suppose it's implementation.

Hoping that the game continues to sell. I want it to justify an expansion / sequel I really enjoy reading the little backstory snippets that unlock as well. Effective use of loading screens!

[Jabberwocky]

Balance is a right bugger and I think you've nailed it from the action perspective.

Thanks for saying so.
I think it was the right decision for Salvation Prophecy to carefully control the combat odds to make for exciting battles.

The designer in me is tempted to make an empire building space game that doesn't do this. But it would be brutal, and there would be a lot of unfair deaths. It might be the kind of thing that sounds fun until you play it - that happens surprisingly often with game ideas. We'll see...

Hoping that the game continues to sell. I want it to justify an expansion / sequel

Me too!
If you bought the game on GamersGate, you can give it a rating. High ratings help sales, which gives me a better chance at this.
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-SALVATION/ ... n-prophecy

I really enjoy reading the little backstory snippets that unlock as well. Effective use of loading screens!

Hey cool - I wasn't sure if anyone would actually read those.
If I can someday afford it, I'd love to add some painted artwork and narration to those.

[Tachyon]

I just had another idea. How about salvaging resources from the battlefield on a successful attack or defense? Unless of course everything in this game is vaporized.