Lord of Rigel News

Hello Lords of Rigel,

We lost a few days this week to some unexpected server work for our development repository, but we’re still at work on the next hotfix! This next hotfix will be a major rework of the ground and orbital combat systems for optimizations, feature completeness, and balance.

In addition, we’re also working to address a major request users have had since the demo release: a reworked sensor and fuel indicator system. The revised display keeps the 3D spheres that are accurate to current fuel and sensor ranges, but uses the depth buffer for intersection instead of overlap. Also, map modes are toggle-able for easier access.

Based on user feedback, the tutorial now has “off-ramps” at different stages that allows players to leave the tutorial and begin a new game if they are confident in the mechanics they’ve learned.

And finally, the combat log we showed last week has been implemented, along with an auto-targeting system that toggles on and off. Auto targeting is on by default.

[h3]Game saves from prior to this update will no longer work![/h3]
Since there is a large number of changes to underlying data structures this upcoming update will break old save games.

[h2]What’s in the immediate future?[/h2]
We'll be adjusting the menu UI to make reading planet and system names in the fleet combat, orbital combat, and ground combat menus more clear and easier. We'll also work on getting the AI to utilize the same revised ground combat and orbital bombardment code that the player users. Effects in orbital bombardment will also be revised to include unique bomb explosions for each bomb type. Ship Designer will also see a refactoring of its code, which should give us some more consistent calculations between various windows and some UI tweaks.

We’ll be focusing more on the AI over the coming weeks. As we mentioned last week, this update should help how the AI behaves, but we want to do additional adjustments to optimize turn times, AI behaviors, and to make sure it is behaving as intended. We want to improve this before expanding to add new features, such as the Elder Species.


Image 1- New Sensor Range Display


Image 2- New Fuel Range Display


Image 3- Autotargeting and combat log

Thank you, Lords of Rigel. As always, if you have any ideas for future devlogs, please fly into our Discord and share them with us.

When starting on Lord of Rigel one of the main points was wanting to have an in depth tactical system. Some games that had released when we started thinking about the game had simple “card style” combat but not the more fleshed out combat we were wanting in a more modern space strategy game.

We wanted to make sure that ship customization mattered, upgrades weren’t all just linear bonuses, and that things such as positioning mattered. Strong planetary defenses was another point.

Tactical in LoR is real time with pause. Orders are issued with the right mouse button which involves issuing an attack order and a move order. Move orders set unit placement and use your selected formation. Attack orders set targets for ships. We based the controls off of how large units behave in modern RTS games like Company of Heroes to make it familiar with RTS genre players.



Ship health is also more involved than other space strategy games. Your ships have shields, armor, structure, and internals. Shields and armor have facings and if a ship is flanked it can take additional damage. Damage that penetrates armor has a chance of hitting a ship’s structure or internal systems. Internal damage is based on if a weapon passed through a subsystem’s area. However, there is always a random element too on which internal systems get hit.

Weapons come in a number of forms. Missiles which have limited ammo each battle and can be shot down by point defense, but can deal substantial damage. Beam weapons include energy and kinetic weapons. These don’t have ammunition (railguns and KEWs use physical projectiles but for the sake of gameplay ammo is abstracted) but tend to have lower accuracy. Torpedoes are like missiles but have no ammo limitations and can’t be shot down by point defense, but have a longer firing rate. Strikecraft act as small ships that hit and run targets but can be shot down by point defenses. Bombs don’t target ships but can be used on planets with defensive structures to quickly neutralize them. Finally, there are a wide range of special weapons with different unique abilities.

Tech tree decisions can also effect your gameplay. Railguns are excellent for long range engagements while fusion cannons are best for up-close combat. Later weapon types are also specialized for roles like disrupting shields or internal systems.

Knowing the ins and outs of the tactical system and building specialized ships can let you turn the tide personally in battles that you may not have an advantage in autoresolve. Maneuvers such as adjusting shield facings to take the brunt of missile volleys from a planet, or knowing when best to decloak to use close range weapons behind a ship for maximum damage can both change a battle.

From your feedback over these weeks we’ll be focusing on quality of life in tactical in the long run such as a chase camera. An event log and a toggle for unit auto targeting are features coming in the next patch, based on feedback and watching gameplay videos. We also want to work on some more forms of space terrain that would effect gameplay, beyond the current minefields and nebulas.

Some of these “dirty tricks” may be crucial for surviving encountering the Rigelans, Arcturans, and other threats coming later in Early Access.



Image 1. An Aranid starbase firing a volley of warheads



Image 2. A Human carrier and its fighter wing



Image 3. Tharrn fleet pummelled by torpedoes and spinal mount lasers

And that's all for this devlog! Hopefully it was enlightening, and if you have any ideas for future devlogs, feel free to share them with us.

While this past week has seen a multitude of releases, we are about to hit a lull due to some extended code refactoring which currently has the game in a state where ground combat and orbital bombardment are not functional. Once we have those systems refactored, we will work on a push and making some visual refreshes to those menus. I am sure you all have noticed that it has taken several weeks to update these systems. We want to provide to more information in this week’s update on what is taking so long with these systems and other work we already have completed and ready for release.

Orbital combat and ground combat have been undergoing very extensive “brain surgery” that will give players a more optimized, consistent, and fully feature implemented experience (universal antidote working with bio-bombs, etc). These changes have also led us to rethink how we are calculating data in the game overall. This is no small thing - LoR (and really any 4x game) at its core is a massive stat calculator with all species traits and technology being modifiers to those calculations. A lot of things were being calculating by code functions within widgets rather than a centralized system of functions. Often how something was calculated for the player and the AI were different as the AI does not need to deal with player input or additional information from the UI. We are now consolidating these player and AI functions, checking functionality, and optimizing code. The optimizing is what has taken additional time because we have also moved from dynamic calculations in some places to have some data be more static and centralized and then using it to be displayed or used for additional dynamic data generation.

In the midst of this process it became clear that the AI was not calculating research correctly in a number of games nor was it doing so very efficiently. While going through logs to troubleshoot ground combat stats for the AI, it became clear that the AI was sometimes not getting the research that it was selecting and the process it used to select research was not efficient. Some benign functions were causing over 10,000 pieces of information to be checked by the time the AI had made research selections for all species. This is now down to a couple hundred loops and the AI is getting the research it is completing. In the process we also developed some tools to help us get logs from the game to better understand what the AI is doing to troubleshoot when and why good or bad decisions are made.

All of this to say that it will be maybe a week before we can release another update that is in a state we feel comfortable releasing. That release will invalidate all previous saves – players will need to start new games because their old saves will not work. We will also be asking for players to send saved games to us for analysis when they are experiencing a weak AI opponent(s).

Lastly we have been working on some other fixes this week that we are excited to be releasing on the next update. This will include a tactical log (see below) for players to see specific data in tactical. We also will be working on a chase camera that should help with player management of ships and add some immersion to tactical in coming updates.



Again, we encourage all of you to report your experience with the game both good and bad as well as provide feedback on hotfixes and quality of life improvements. Please let us know if there are specific technologies or systems not working or unclear which can help us focus on systems to work on.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback and we continue our journey through EA!