Upcoming changes to the site

Hello! With the work on entities, actors making what I hope is good progress, a series of changes are going to be introduced to the site: not "design" changes as I currently do not have time for them (and am not really a designer anyway…). No, this will simply be about reorganising the navigation.

In a (visual) nutshell, here's what I am thinking about:

Play

Well, not quite just now yet! But a visual and subliminal reminder to myself of the ultimate reason why I am trying to build this!

I honestly have no detailed idea about what will actually be in this section, but it will surely be around one of endless possibilities:

• galaxy selection lobby;
• galaxies statistics and simple dashboards (population, etc);
• when logged in, view your factions and which galaxy(ies) you are currently present in;

So a lot linked to the meta (whatever it turns out to be) and global visibility, management, etc.

This will come when it comes.

Log

Nothing new here; this section gets good traffic and as of today, I do not really see any reason to modify the way it works/is built.

Try

The new label for the current "Tools and experiments" section. Short, straight to the point and valid both from external users' perspective ("let's try and check stuff out") and mine ("Turn this CLI tool into something nicer and quicker to use to check whether what I am building is shit or not").

As the entities, etc are starting to be born, expect some new tools reasonably quickly in there. Perhaps that will warrant the split into subsections rather than a long, flat list directly underneath the top level. We will see.

Explore

Merging the data explorer and the 3d explorer, nothing too unreasonable or earth-shattering.

Codex

The big one. This section will be structured as several subsections, going quite deep as it will cover a lot of ground:

Sciences subsection

Very simply the current Tech tree, but profoundly enriched with blueprints, links to and from the related entity types, etc. So a lot more cross-linking to follow information around.

Procedural universe data

What is currently sitting under the data explorer: star types, satellite classes, compounds and what not. This will also be linked to other subsections for ease of navigation!

Entities

Likely to be split into subsections such as:

• Entity classes
• Entity types
• Entity instances
• Entity tags

Factions

Faction creation mechanisms, the rules and possibilities around their evolutions and management. This will likely contain questions, notes and tentative requests for feedback/impressions from you.

This section will try and clarify many types of questions that you may have -- but that I also currently am thinking about:

• How many crew members make up a faction?
• What kind of hardware/toys does a faction begin with? What level of pre-existing scientific research?
• How involved should faction creation be? Should the creation process offer quick "pre-made" templates? Probably, but then which ones?
• Various meta options around pricing (yes believe it or not I am thinking about that as well… I have to!)
• Noob zone? Yes or no? How to enforce it? Why not to?

Attributes

Definitions, usage and mapping to entity types:

• Which entities make use of which attributes?
• What units are attributes expressed in? Standard units? Dimensionless?

Skills

What they are used for and how, and their mapping to actions.

• How are skills split as classes and types (by now you guys have probably noticed my obsession with that split :-P)
• How easy are they to learn? Do they decay if not used? Would that be too much of a penalty/hindrance?
• Can they be self-trained? Taught?
• Can a faction monetise a highly skilled crew member ingame? Can it have this crew member teach other factions? Why? Against what?

Movement mediums

The various environments in the engine that entities can move through: from hard vacuum to seas of liquid methane.

• How easy is it to move there; using what equipment?
• How those mediums are defined from the procedural engine: atmosphere density, winds, stellar winds, etc.

Detection mediums

The various environments and the rules governing detection and stealth in them.

• How can tech make this easier/harder.
• there is no stealth in space is true… but how can we make it untrue by using an almost-realistic and reasonable amount of handwavium?

Damage types

How damage is expressed in the game engine; both in infliction and resistance.

• Joules will be the main unit. But what about more exotic damage types? What unit should they be expressed in?
• Damage is damage, but how does it affect a target? Which attributes are affected by thermal, radiative, gravitic damage types?
• I've written before that combat will be brutal; so more based around critical hits than 100% abstractions such as "hit points". Ok but then what critical hits are we talking about?
• Damage means weapons, but it also means environment: what kind of damage is inflicted in the proximity of a O-type raging star? When sitting inside a corrosive atmosphere? In which amounts?

Core values and Governance systems

The list of more abstract values defined upon faction creation that a player will have to stick to without incurring penalties by the engine. At least that's the plan! :-)

Governance systems will include a wide range of options from traditional regimes to more advanced ones and some very trope-like. :-) All will have weights on facets such as Agency, Authority, Autonomy, Coordination, Accountability or Representation.

All very blurry still, but the following concepts emerge:

• "leaders" emerge as a natural/logical consequence of the coexistence of governance systems and crew members. They will probably have to be skilled accordingly. At the moment I see them as the vector determining how well a governance system is implemented; but they can play many many other roles and introduce mechanics I have not thought about just yet!
• Alliances, as in groups of factions

Trade & commerce

I have not really started to think about this one… although it is of course extremely important. But I have only one brain so…. Still:

• Does the system evolve around a common currency? Why? Do I have to justify its existence thanks to made up historical reasons?
• How to balance money sink versus inflation?
• Do we allow pure trading? It feels natural to do so but what could the implications be?
• Trade hubs: player-driven? NPC-driven? A mix in between?
• One must not neglect a player's tastes for industry and commerce; and that role should fill a niche just as important as other roles. See the "Fuel rats" from Elite Dangerous :-) what great guys!

Mechanics

A very important, and potentially information-heavy, subsection. It will evolve perhaps even more than the other subsections as the game engine rules are drafted, changed, thrown away, etc. But roughly the following subsections can be expected:

All in all this will be quite some work (the worse being to back-update all blog posts with the new url schemes… urgh). But the more I think about it, the better it is in my head.
Another way to look at the new navigation is that is quite closely represents a roadmap for Adlumens!

I will also have to update the home page and the about page in terms of content and perhaps layout, to make them more… enticing and perhaps a little bit less geeky bordering on the nerdy. :-) Same as always, we'll see!

Last but not least, global ideas that are still to come:

• Endgame management
• How to deal with power creep and "the next big thing"
• Timeline creation: in Adlumens's philosophy, when is now? Why? I consider important to frame historical events that led to why humans are thrown in brand new galaxies: why? how? what for? To that end, and via suspension of disbelief, a nice historical timeline should be created, laying some groundwork to pseudo-realism. This will be a long and arduous process, but extremely worthwhile!