Spaceship Commander News

I'm just working on the next update (quite small). Simple crafting will be added. Crafting will be possible in several ways: either create an item directly by a crew member using a special hand tool, or craft on the production module of the ship / station. Crafting items will be a new crew member of the engineer class - production engineer. The production engineer will have the ability to use hand tools for crafting and also maintain the production modules of the ship.

I haven't been heard from for a long time, but that's all because I was hard working to preparing a complex but interesting update - the "Processes System".
And now it's ready! The new "Processes System" deepen the gameplay and gives the player new tasks and new opportunities.
Based on this update, the following ones will be released, which will add even more variety of game scenarios and features!

More info about the "Process System" update:
Now many activities (for example, or drilling, healing, unloading, etc.) are based on a single "Processes System". The process has such parameters as: cycle time, consumables used per cycle, a tool without which the process is not possible, as well as personnel.

- Process personnel this is crew members who must be assigned to the process carrier (for example, an engineer is assigned to the reactor module). Moreover, there are "mandatory personnel" - this is the personnel without whom the process on the carrier does not work (it is on pause), as well as "support personnel" - this is the personnel whose presence is not necessary, but it gives bonuses for the process (mostly it a bonus to speed of the process).
It is important to note: that sometimes there are requirements to the personnel. For example, a crew member (personnel) must have some of skills (module maintenance skill, engineering equipment mastery, etc.), and some kind of equipped tool and consumables.

The medic work as the personnel for the med. module (process speed bonus)

- There are processes without personnel (for example, the mining drone is automated and its drilling process does not require any personnel).

Mining drone do an automatic drilling process

- Also has been added to the game a "breakdowns". As a rule, breakdowns occur just during the execution of processes. Moreover, each process has its own unique breakdowns.
For example, on the mining drone there are two processes - the ore drilling process and the unloading process. During ore drilling, the drill may break (and the mining process will pause) and during unloading the unloading connector-conveyor may be damaged (the unloading process will pause). There are also quite universal breakdowns, such as a short circuit on the module or a failure of the module's control panel. They occur on almost every module, but they still look unique to each module.

- Breakdowns can have different effects - some slow down the process and some stop it altogether, and some can generally cause damage or disconnect the module from the electric system of the ship.

Broken fuel line

Reactor short circuit

Broken drill of the mining drone

By the way, the engine module and the reactor module can now be serviced (the so-called maintenance process) this gives bonuses for the speed of the ship and a bonus for energy production.

Flight engineer maintains the reactor

- Each breakdown has its own unique "fix process", which has its own set of requirements: as a rule, the fix process requires personnel with some kind of skill, tool and consumables. Most often, only personnel with the "fix skill" of a certain level are required (when there are no complex breakdowns). But sometimes, in addition, may be required consumables - "parts". Again, different breakdowns require different amounts of them.
By the way, in future updates, support maintenance slots will also be available for the fix process (to speed up the fix process), but this is for later.

- By the way, the fix process may also have breakdowns. That is, the repairman, fixing a breakdown can breaks something else because of his crooked hands), but this does not happen often.

Do not confuse the "fix process" of breakdowns/malfunctions and production problems with the "repair process". Repair process (ship, car, module) this is quite another thing - his task is to restore health points (HP). The repair process is similar to the healing process, when we restore HP from a character, but repairs restore HP from ships, equipment, modules and other inanimate things.
So far, there is no repair process in the game, you can only repairing from traders. But the repair process will appear in the next updates. It also will be not easy:) but more on that later.

By the way, medicines are now needed for the healing process (by a medical module or by medics). They can be bought from traders. Medics can maintain med. module (increase in the rate of healing).
There is also an idea to make such a feature - a medic crew member begins the process of healing a target and support personnel can be attached to him (well, like assisting a medic), they can be an ordinary soldier. If you are interested in such a feature - write here:)

Parts and medicines

New crew members have also been added to the game: a pilot and a flight engineer.

Flight engineer can repair more complex breakdowns and maintain more complex modules (for example, soldiers can also maintain modules, but not all), also flight engineer has good skills in engineering equipment. But the main task of a flight engineer, as can be understood from its name, is to maintain the ship's modules, which increases overall efficiency.


Pilot is needed to maintain the Bridge module, which increases bonuses for the speed of the ship and its maneuverability (which increases the chance of evading an enemy hit). Other characters can also maintain the bridge module, but they will not have a bonus for evasion, only for speed.
Also, the pilot is generally not bad at maintenance usual ship modules and has the skills to fix breakdowns, but to a lesser extent than the flight engineer.


Both of these subclasses are considered non-military. Their weapon and armor skills are very weak, but in general it is possible to equip them with low level weapons.
Both the pilot and the flight engineer are subclasses of the profession (class) engineer. That is, the class is an engineer, the subclass is a flight engineer. Other subclasses will appear in the future, such as a repairman (specialist in repairing the hull of the ship and fixing module failures), a miner (specialist in mining equipment for resource extraction, etc.)

In general, it is desirable to have at least one engineer on board (1 pilot and 1 engineer are now included in the free ship, instead of old soldier recruits).

Hint: always take at least one flight engineer with you, as module breakdowns can be caught at the most unsuitable moment, and soldiers cannot fix breakdowns of high complexity. It is recommended to take a pilot in the same way, his bonuses for the ship will help in space battles.
It is also better to take as many medicines and parts on board with you as possible, they are inexpensive and can be useful. And in general, it's good take more armor suits on your ship, especially with a helmet for walking on airless planets, as well as hand weapons. Fortunately, the cargo hold of the ship is large and these things take up little space.

Here's an update. Well, I'm going to do the following update as usual:)

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Mars


Which planet should humanity go to? Of course to Mars! In the game Spaceship Commander people fly to Mars like they go to their grandmother's village, some for work, and some as a tourist.
Why to Mars? Because for a people he is the most favorable from the planets closest to us.
Mercury is not an good decision, it is too hot there (+427°C on the sunny side and almost -170°C on the dark side).
Venus - landing there is a sure suicide (pressure 100 atmospheres and temperature +464° C).
Earth - well, we are already here :)
The moon - although it is close the conditions there are not very good (there is no atmosphere, harsh temperature drops from +100°С to -170°С), and low gravity.
And then Mars - the planetary traveler's best choice. The force of gravity is 30% of the Earth's, more or less acceptable temperature conditions (about them later), as well the atmosphere, though it is of carbon dioxide (CO2). Another bonus is that the length of a day on Mars is 24 hours 37 minutes 22.7 seconds, just like on Earth.
Our gas giants Jupiter and Saturn also have interesting satellites, but they are much further than Mars.

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun


Solar system. The bunch of planets in the center are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - also called the "Inner Region of the Solar System". Next up are the gas giants.


The mass of Mars is 0.10 of the mass of the Earth, and the diameter is 0.53 of the diameter of the Earth. Mars is called the "red planet" because of the reddish hue of the surface, given to it by the mineral maghemite - iron (III) oxide.

Size comparison


The relief of Mars has many features - impact craters like on the Moon, volcanoes, valleys, deserts and even polar ice caps like on Earth.
The Martian extinct volcano Mount Olympus is one of the highest known mountains on the planets of the solar system, its height is 21 km. The grandiose Mariner Valley has a length of 4500 km (a quarter of the planet's perimeter), a width of up to 600 km (an average of 200) and a depth of up to 11 km. At the north pole of Mars is the Great Northern Lowland - a plain that occupies 40% of the planet's surface, which lies 4-5 km below the average radius of the planet, and is essentially a crater from a colossal collision with another celestial body.
Mars is a godsend for "space archaeologists", because Geologically, it has remained almost unchanged for 3 billion years! And on Earth during this time, violent tectonic processes took place, which erased almost all traces of the early history of our planet.
Previously, Mars had rivers, lakes and seas and reminded the Earth. However, a billion years ago, active processes in the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere of Mars is stoped, and it has acquired a modern look. The fault of the global catastrophic changes in the Martian climate is considered to be the large eccentricity of the orbit and the instability of the axis of rotation, which cause huge, up to 45%, fluctuations in the flow of solar energy incident on the surface of the planet. And also weak influx of heat from the bowels of Mars, due to the small mass of the planet, and the high rarefaction of the atmosphere.
Mars is a quite harsh place, although there are a more worse places. The atmosphere of Mars consists of 96% carbon dioxide, and oxygen here is only 0.1%, which is clearly not enough for breathing. Also, the atmosphere here is very rarefied, how much? Approximately 100 times more rarefied than on Earth! Therefore, walking on Mars without a helmet you will very quickly get air out of your lungs and you will feel yourself very bad.
And Mars is also famous for its dust, it is able to cover any apparatus or building very quickly, by the way it is very toxic, since it contains perchlorates.
There is more bad news about the very powerful radiation that comes from the Sun, because Mars does not have a magnetic field and nothing stops it, unlike Earth, for example. To date, the best way to hide from this radiation is to sit in caves (lava tubes). But in the game Spaceship Commander people use a special nanofiber that effectively shields radiation (used in buildings, ships and uniforms).

Somewhere in the wastelands of Mars


Oddly enough, it cannot be said that Mars is catastrophically cold. Of course, it is better not to go to the surface of Mars without a heated spacesuit, but on a good summer day the planet can be warm. Since the atmosphere of Mars is very rarefied, it does not smooth out daily fluctuations of surface temperature. Here there is a temperature below -120°С, and sometimes +20°С, it also depends on the season, but on average it is somewhere around -60°С, which is comparable, for example, with the Arctic regions of the Earth, so if you are a Siberian, then Mars will not surprise you much with frost.
On Mars, the color of the sky is reddish. This is due to the size of Martian dust, which is suspended in the atmosphere, as well as the composition of this dust - it consists of iron oxides. There is an interesting point - at sunset, the color of the sun on Mars ... red? Very red? No blue! The physics of this process is not very simple, but in short it is again due to the size of the dust particles.
Mars in the game Spaceship Commander is the main transport hub. It has many supply bases and most of the personnel of these bases work on a rotational basis.

Supply base


Working days on Mars


Inside the Martian base (plants are highly valued here)


Landing window


So, Mars although not a paradise, is quite suitable as an initial base for humanity on another planet. After the infrastructure is built, it is already possible to go to other, more distant planets from here more efficiently than from Earth. There are also ideas about terraforming it, but that's a completely different story.

I haven't been heard from for a long time. It's because I was working on redesigning the equipment system for the crew members. The old system when all the equipment was "glued into the character" is a thing of the past, and now we can separately buy weapons and armor/armoured suits for each crew member.

However, there is a point - in order for a crew member to be able to put on an item, he must have the abilities (skills) to own this equipment. The maximum level for a abilities is 10.

At the moment, the following types of equipment and skills of possession have appeared:
- Standard armor (requires the skill "Possession of standard armor")
This includes usual body armor and some types of armored suits.

- Heavy armor (requires the skill "Heavy Armor Mastery")
This includes powerful and cool armor and exosuits.

- Standard weapons (requires the skill "Possession of standard weapons")
This includes light types of small arms, rifles, shotguns and submachine guns.

- Heavy weapons (requires the skill "Possession of heavy weapons")
This includes powerful and mighty guns such as plasma cannons, assault rifles or machine guns.



You can buy new equipment from the Earth Trade Fleet (i.e. at the player's station).
As for the crew members, they can also be hired at the player's station. Crew members now have a "specialization", which determines which skills a character have and how his skills will be pumped when level up (however, level up will be added in future updates).
Now you can hire several "pre-trained" crew members (so-called presets) - from an ordinary soldier with an usual rifle to a cool space marine with a plasma gun. It is important to remember that by buying a simple soldier, you will not (most likely) be able to put cool armor on him, you need to look at what skills he has for owning a certain type of equipment.

By the way, now each armored suit has its own resistance to various environmental conditions.
At the moment, there are already the following environmental conditions: heat, cold, lack of oxygen, toxicity. Each of the above effects has its own level (for example, the heat of the 1st level corresponding to 100 degrees Celsius or the heat of the 5th level corresponding to 500 degrees Celsius).
To fully comfortably and safely enjoy the views and beauties on the surface of Venus, whose temperature is around 450 degrees Celsius, which corresponds to the 5th level of effect "heat", you need a spacesuit with at least 5 level of resistance to heat. If the level is lower, for example 4, then the character will receive damage, although reduced. But a character without a spacesuit at all, who decides to walk around Venus, will instantly receive a lot of damage.


The following minor edits and improvements were also made in this update:
- The start of a new game has been fixed. How it works always and under any case. Previously, there were problems of which you had to restart the application to start a new game.
- A player database patching system has been created. So this made for the data structure on the current player database matches the one that was changed in the updates. Well, in case the patching of the player's database with his current progress does not go according to plan and a bug occurs - you can always start a new game, since this function now works flawlessly :)
- An ugly bug has been fixed when enemy characters "blinked" after being detected.
- The new player's crew members now have a normal, human name and not the name of his preset.
- Fixed the short description window of the item (popup) in the store. Now it stands in the right place and does not fall over the edge of the screen.
- The ship's power system is finally working correctly. If there is no energy, then the modules will be switched off alternately until the energy balance is ok. Also, now disconnecting a module that consumes a lot of energy will release free energy and possibly reconnect another de-energized module. By the way, it began to work well and correctly just thanks to the new equipment system.
- Fixed a possible bug when you can put a module that is installed on the ship in the shopping cart for sale. Now you need to uninstall it before selling.
- Fixed a strange and unpleasant effect when pop-ups near the cursor "lagged" behind it.
- Fixed a bug with incorrect image movement in the mini-windows of the unit preview (these are the windows that you see in the store when you selected an item or when the unit inventory is open). Now the picture moves smoothly, so now you can view the goods/units without suffering.
- Now, when a player destroys enemy units (characters, ships), he is given a reward - credits. Also, the amount of the reward is now displayed near the icon with credits.
- Added new hints when using some perks. For example, if you use the "heal" perk on a target that has a maximum hp.


I just keep working according to the plan :)

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The solar system and neighboring stars (radius 10 light years). Projection from above.


The number of stars filling the galaxy is just enormous. At night, we can see a maximum 2 thousand stars, although there are 400 billion of them in the galaxy! Consider the nearest celestial bodies within a radius of 16 light years. There are 57 star systems in this zone. Some of them are not single stars, but double and triple stars, so the total number of celestial bodies reaches 64. Also included are 13 brown dwarfs.

The closest neighbors


he closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri. The distance to it is 4.2 light years. This is a red dwarf, its mass and diameter does not exceed 10% of the solar. Proxima is a very "cold" star, the temperature is only 2700°C (the Sun has 5500°C), it emits little light and therefore it is not visible to the naked eye (0.0005 of the Sun's luminosity). It was opened in 1915. Despite the seemingly a "weak" of this star, it sometimes behaves like a real monster - the fact is that, like many other red dwarfs, Proxima Centauri is a flaring variable star. During flares, its luminosity can increase many times over and exceed the energy of solar flares by 10 times! The radiation from such a flare, which will irrigate the planets of this star, will be lethal.
Proxima Centauri belongs to the Alpha Centauri triple system, which also has the stars Centauri A and Centauri B. Are you already sick of these tautologies and oddities of astronomical names? :)
To put it simply, stars Centauri A and Centauri B are two cool and interesting stars that are very similar to our sun, they orbit very close to each other, at a distance of 29 AU. It is as if in our Solar System instead of the Sun there would be Centauri A and instead of Neptune there would be Centauri B. Proxima, is included in this star system, although it is distant from Centaurus A, B by 13000 AU. !
So, first fly to Proxima and from there already to Centauri A, B. Although in the game Spaceship Commander humanity first visited Centauri A, B (due to their potentially favorable conditions) and only then to Proxima (well, what to do near it ?) Although it has one confirmed planet (and 2 unconfirmed), its name is Proxima Centauri b. But I thought that this is not a very cool name and in the game Spaceship Commander it is called Rilotetu.
An interesting fact: a modern Earth spacecraft that go to a journey to our nearest neighbor Proxima Centauri will need 70 thousand years to get to it. This is if you use modern chemical engines. About engines, by the way, there was already an article.
The next closest star is Barnard's Star. Its distance is 5.9 light years. It is a single star, it is also a red dwarf star, but brighter and more massive than Proxima. The mass and diameter is estimated at 20% of the Sun. Barnard's Star is often named to as "flying" because it has the highest rate of angular movement across the celestial sphere of any known star. For 174 years, the star moves along the celestial sphere by 0.5°. It approaches the Solar System at a speed of 100 km/s. The star has one confirmed planet.
The last nearest neighbor is the double substellar system Luhman 16. The distance to it is 6.58 light years. Why is it a substellar system? Because instead of normal stars, two brown dwarfs live here.
Brown dwarfs are substellar objects becouse they are somewhere between a planet (like Jupiter) and a star. Their masses in the range of approximately 0.01 to 0.07 solar masses. In the depths of these "planet stars" thermonuclear reactions can be launched as in ordinary stars, but the power of these reactions is insufficient and they cannot reach a constant luminosity.
Despite their small mass (by the standards of stars), thermonuclear reactions can still occur in brown dwarfs, although this is achieved not due to the burning of hydrogen as in normal stars, but due to the burning of deuterium, which is quite small, and because of this brown dwarfs start to cool down quickly.
Due to the fact that brown dwarfs are difficult to detect, the first detections were as recently as 1995, although the theoretical justification for the existence of brown dwarfs appeared as early as 1963. Luhman 16 was opened only in 2013, due to its dullness. Brown dwarfs is detecing in the infrared spectrum, due to the large amount of heat released.
So, there are interesting neighbors around the Sun that are definitely must a visit. Both in real life and in the game Spaceship Commander :)

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