Dev Journal #10: National Production Policy in v2.1

[p]Long time no see! Sorry about that. Happy New Year![/p][p]The sausage factory behind the scenes means that there are often multiple projects happening simultaneously. The Oxide team is busy working towards having a beta version of their near-future RTS: Ashes of the Singularity II. Do me a favor and wishlist that please! If you like strategy games, especially ones with a strong single player effort, and that focus on strategy instead of click speed, you’ll probably like it.[/p][p]A lot of the Stardock time has been finishing up on the remaster of the fantasy 4X series, Elemental (War of Magic + Fallen Enchantress + Sorcerer King). It’s actually in early access and you can go check that out here: Elemental: Reforged on Steam. If you like Ara and want to imagine what a fantasy version would be like, there you go (except no supply chains).[/p][p][/p][h2]The Good News[/h2][p]We talked with Microsoft near the end of the year and they were happy enough with how things are going that they’ve renewed us to continue working on Ara for another year. Our success is based on sales of the game and the DLC. That’s what determines our staffing levels (well not mine, I’m with you guys no matter what).[/p][p][/p][h2]National Production Policy[/h2][p]We have been working on version 2.1 which has turned out to be a lot more complex than originally expected.[/p][p]Besides having lots of balance and other tweaks the big feature is the National Production Policy system:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]So here’s how that works:[/p][p][/p][p]Players can globally set what quotas they want for all their items and set a priority for reaching that quota.[/p][p]That part is done and working great. The tricky part is how to handle it in the cities and here’s what we’ve designed and slowly been implementing:[/p][p]Choice 1: Player wants to manage their improvements themselves or let the store owner handle it (which is what you have now):[/p][p][/p][p]But as you can see, the UI (this is a mockup btw) is a little different here. We are trying to make it easier to use.[/p][p]Choice 2: You allow the improvement to be managed by the National Policy.[/p][p][/p][p]So in this case, your National Economic Advisor chooses what’s being built. You still have to decide what improvements are being built, what ingredients you want to let them use to speed things up, etc.[/p][p]But this isn’t as straightforward at it sounds. There is a fine line between automation and having the game play itself.[/p][p]And we’ve actually considered having this feature gated behind a technology in Act II or even Act III because by the time you’re entering later ages, you really shouldn’t feel like you have to tell every grocery what they should be doing. You have bigger fish to fry.[/p][p][/p][p]So we’d like to hear what you think! Let us know in the comments![/p]