Capital Command News

It’s been a while (sorry!), so here’s a quick update concerning the state of Capital Command, last year's progress, and what comes next.

[h3]State of Development[/h3][hr][/hr] Core gameplay is still the major focus. I've gone through a couple of iterations and settled into what I believe will be the final version. I'll write a separate post with more details about the gameplay iterations and the current, and hopefully final, model, but briefly:


[h3]Firing Runs![/h3][hr][/hr] Space battles are now based on firing passes: ships flying at high speed toward each other, firing their weapons while the enemy is in range, then turning around to do it again, and again, until someone either gives up or blows up. The implementation is mostly done:

• Game Engine: Fortunately, I didn’t need to change the flight model - ships move realistically, missiles track their targets, projectiles hit or miss, same as before.
  
• Stats Adjusments: What I did need was some heavy stats tuning — like making artillery short-range but more effective against missiles, and tweaking the ships' engines to work better for firing pass dynamics.
  
• AI: This took some doing. The ship's autopilot got a significant rewrite, and the enemy AI is still work in progress as I'm typing this. Fun times.
  
• UI/UX: I'm not doing a full redesign, but some work is definitely needed here. Mostly, just cleaning up old elements that no longer provide useful information for the firing pass model. It's always a balancing act between having too little info, which is frustrating, and showing too much, which creates clutter that obscures the important stuff.
  

[h3]2025 Roadmap:[/h3][hr][/hr] The plan for 2025 is basically to lock down the flight simulation and then focus on the campaign.

• Core Gameplay Completion: I aim to bring the flight and combat models close to their final state, and freeze them until release.
  
• Updated Demo: There may be a playable demo of the final state of the flight and combat sim, but I'm not sure yet—it’ll depend on how much work it might require and the state of the project at that time.
  
• The Campaign: The single-player campaign is NOT done. I have a reasonably accurate idea of what it will be like, and that's pretty much all I have now. I expect to start serious work on the campaign sometime next spring.
  
• More Ships! I'm really looking forward to adding more ship classes to the game. I'm planning to add destroyers, light and heavy cruisers, and battleships, in addition to significant reworks of the corvette and the battlecruiser.
  

That's it, now you know what's up :)

Thanks for reading!
The dev

Hi everyone! Capital Command and other games published by Hooded Horse are all featured at the Hooded Horse Publisher Sale. Come check it out!

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Greetings, captains!

This update delivers a significant overhaul of the game's propulsion mechanics and the autopilot. Details follow.

In Capital Command, ships' engines use a limited resource to push your ship through space. Previously, engines were either actively thrusting, or recharging, but never both. The change is that recharge takes place continously, even while the engines are working.

This means you never run completely out of "juice", and can always accelerate using your main engines. If there's charge in reserve, the engines will run in their normal, high-power mode. If they're depleted, they'll still work but on a lower power setting, consuming charge just as it's being generated.

The autopilot has received a lot of work, mostly fixing bugs and updating it for the new propulsion mechanics. You'll see the same flight modes, but they'll hopefully work better and be overall more useful.

That's it for now. Next, I'm aiming to make the autopilot easier to use and add a "cruise mode" that will allow captains to handle their ship completely and effectively without using manual flight control.

Thanks for reading and as always looking forward to your thoughts
The dev

Greetings, captains!

The new demo version, now live, has a number of features that unfortunately weren't ready for NextFest, as well as some that were requested by the players in their well thought-out and useful responses.

Secondary batteries (including the Scout Corvette's starting armament) no longer reset their target after they've emptied their magazine. This was a constant complaint, and quite valid. The best tactics is still to hold fire until the enemy is close enough that most shots will actually hit, so captains are advised to use Cease Fire or simply fire manually for optimal effect.

I've added a trajectory marker for the ship's auto-pilot. When active, if the ship's current velocity is not what the autopilot wants, a yellow marker is displayed in the game world. I think this conveys much better what the auto-pilot is trying to do, and gives a better sense of the player's interaction with the system. More autopilot UI improvements are likely in the near future.

Also, the trajectory marker system now has 4 operating modes. The default is what's already there - show the trajectory for the player and the current target. All-vs-target shows the trajectories of all objects relative to the current target, and all-vs-self -- all objects relative to the player's ship. Off hides all trajectory markers from the UI. You can use the button on the top-right of the screen to switch between these modes.

And of course minor tweaks and fixes, as usual.

For the next update, expect some changes to the game's propulsion mechanics. I hope to come up with something that's both tactically deep, interesting to use, as well as less frustrating and easier to understand. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks for reading
The dev

Come join us for a Next Fest stream of Capital Command!

See the discussion at Discord: https://discord.gg/f3j8FPD8B3

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