I’ve been finishing the alliance diplomacy zone. On Orion’s Belt 2.0 alliances will be able to establish a diplomatic relationship with other alliances:

• Neutral – the default relationship
• Non Aggression Pack – the alliances agree on not to start battles with each other
• Alliance/Confederation – the alliances are united
• War! – the alliances are in war

These status are mainly for alliance management. With this relationships we can have information on the universe map that shows the diplomatic level of the fleets you see on the map. On thing we really don’t know is that if we should enforce these rules on the players. Could a player start a battle with an allied player? I think that we should allow that, and if in fact he started it, then the alliance admirals should work on that.

When two alliances engage war, they can only end the war if one alliance proposes and End of War to the other. In here we have an interaction, just like when an alliance wants a Non Aggression Pack or a Confederation with another alliance. What we could do, is allowing extra functionalities on these interactions, like Civilization: Do you wish to end the war for 1000 orions? Could you please engage war with our enemy Alliance for 1000 orions?

Another thing we’ll have is the Alliance Lounge, where all alliance related messages will be displayed, for example:

• Player AIR Diogo joined the Aliança Independente de Rulers alliance!
  The player psantos has founded the System Lords alliance!
  Player Shadow Domination abandoned the psantos alliance!
  The player AIR Diogo has founded the Aliança Independente de Rulers alliance!
  Player Shadow Domination abandoned the tsousa alliance!
  Player psantos is now a Admiral of the Shadow Domination alliance!
  Player psantos joined the Shadow Domination alliance!
  The player tsousa has founded the Shadow Domination alliance!

This could be used to check out all alliance news… or maybe to fake some ones.

Fog of war and line of sight are finally implemented. Here are some screen shots to satisfy your apatite.

Below is an image of your initial position, the private zone. You can see your first planet (do not try to conquer a planet because that feature it’s not available) and a fleet.

This is an image of the private zone fully discovered. Notice the fog of war and the line of sight of the fleets.

Finally a image that is equal to the previous, but shows one of the universe menus. This menu appears when you, with a fleet selected, click on a wormhole.

The universe will be available today. So explore all the cool available features of the universe.

If you have any doubts, please use the forum.

A final note: what you see in the above images doesn’t represent the final graphical version of the universe, their just temporary ones.

The resource management will be target of a huge revolution. The concept of buildings and construction will be totally new as well as the user interface.

The idea is that the player have all the things he need at a distance of a click. So the interface will have a list of all the planets, all the fleets and a image with the current planet an it’s buildings.

Below is our initial concept. It’s raw, of course, and it will be subject of major changes. This is just the initial scratch. This concept page is equivalent to the unit construction page of Orion’s Belt 1.0.

The most noticeable thing in this layout it’s the center image. This image is suppose to contain a background layout unique to each race and a limited number of slot’s were the player will construct it’s buildings.

In future posts we will explain in further detail all the layout.

Player ad420 gave an interesting overview of his favorite light units on the forum:

LIGHT UNITS

In this article I will list 3 light units and highlight their Pros and Cons and hopefully evaluate their worth. I selected the Toxic the Raptor, and the Panther for the review. I started by listing each cost and there stats. I then followed that by kills in the battle calculator, I picked one unit of each type, light (rain) medium (krill) and Heavy (Crusader) and the Black Widow will be representing the animal group. I selected these as these are the most likely to be seen in the universe. Then I added the other 2 competitors into the mix, well because we all love a good fight.

There are 2 listing for each unit, one with a base line of 1000 units, then one with as many units as I think you can buy with a set amount of money.
For this I added up the MP and Energy and then added 1/100 of the Gold.
so for the Toxic it would look like this:
500+250+5=755. I Then bought as many as I could out of 2001000(1000000 for MP 1000000 for Energy and 1000000/100 for gold)
I don’t care if this was the best way to do it or not. That is not what this article is about THEY WERE ALL done the same way so it DOES NOT MATTER if you have a problem with it too bad I don’t care. It is to see how many you can get for the same price.
Hope you all like it.
____________________________________________________
Ship Type: Toxic
Base Attack: 450
Damage: 350 to 590
Range: 2
Catapult Attack: false
Can Damage Behind Units: false
Triple Attack: false
*2000 added to damage when targeting unit/animal*
Defense
Base Defense: 600
Hit Points: 700
Can Strike Back: false
Movement
Cost: 1
Type: normal
Level: air
———————————–
* 580 of gold Required
* 500 of mp Required
* 250 of energy Required
* 1 of uranium Required
* Star Port of the Building Category
* Duration: 4 – this is the production duration for 100 units

Toxic kills with 1000
Panther 777 – 1311
Raptor 700 – 1180

Rain 5833 – 9833
Krill 318 – 536
Crusader 145 – 245

Black Widow 1175 – 1295

Toxic kills with 2658 units @ 756
Panther 2067 – 3484
Raptor 1860 – 3136

Rain 15505 – 26137
Krill 845 – 1425
Crusader 387 – 653

Black Widow 3123 – 3442*
_______________________________________________________
Ship Type: Panther

Attack
Base Attack: 300
Damage: 250 to 500
Range: 1
Catapult Attack: false
Can Damage Behind Units: true
Triple Attack: false
Defense
Base Defense: 300
Hit Points: 450
Can Strike Back: false
Movement
Cost: 1
Type: all
Level: ground
————————————–
* 600 of gold Required
* 650 of mp Required
* 600 of energy Required
* 1 of titanium Required
* Tank Facility of the Building Category
* Duration: 4 – this is the production duration for 100 units

Panther kills with 1000
Toxic 357 – 714
Raptor 500 – 1000

Rain 4166 – 8333
Krill 227 – 454
Crusader 104 – 208

Black Widow 125 – 250

Panther kills with 1600 units @ 1256
Toxic 571 – 1142
Raptor 800 – 1600

Rain 6666 – 13333
Krill 363 – 727
Crusader 166 – 333

Black Widow 200 – 400
_________________________________________________________
Ship Type: Raptor
Attack
Base Attack: 280
Damage: 200 to 500
Range: 2
Catapult Attack: false
Can Damage Behind Units: false
Triple Attack: false
*200 added to damage when targeting terrain/ice*
*1000 added to damage when targeting unit/light*
Defense
Base Defense: 400
Hit Points: 500
Can Strike Back: false
*200 added to Hit Points when targeting terrain/ice*
Movement
Cost: 1
Type: all
Level: air
————————————-
* 400 of gold Required
* 350 of mp Required
* 200 of energy Required
* 1 of diamond Required
* Star Port of the Building Category
* Duration: 4 – this is the production duration for 100 units

Raptor kills with 1000 units
Toxic 1714 – 2142
Panther 2666 – 3333

Rain 20000 – 25000
Krill 181 – 454
Crusader 83 – 208

Black Widow 100 – 250

Raptor kills with 3638 units @ 554
Toxic 6219 – 7774
Panther 9674 – 12093

Rain 72560 – 90700
Krill 659 – 1649
Crusader 302 – 755

Black Widow 362 – 907

Pros and Cons

Toxic
Pros
Low Movement cost
2 range
Kills animals units
Money to hit points is very high

Cons
Movement type is only normal

Raptor
Pros
Cost lowest of the 3
Great bonuses if they can be used
*1000 to light, great
*200 damage on ice is ok
And added hit points is ok too
Movement cost and type are the best in the game
2 range
Great hit points for the cost

Cons
200-500 damage is a very big leap and can be unpredictable
Low attack damage when not receiving bonuses

Panther
Pros
Movement cost and type and the best in the game
Can damage behind units/rebound- is barely ok with this unit (read below)
Ground unit

Cons
Cost too much for what you get in return
250-500 damage is just slightly higher than raptor with no bounces to aim for
Lowest hit points and defense of the 3
No Bounces makes him very predictable
Rebound is wasted on this unit as it will be use to block more often than attack
1 range

Units review

Toxic
Toxic can withstand a high amount of damage for the small price tag, in fact highest base hit points of all of the light ships. Costing in the middle of the 3 it is a great light weapon and blocker. Not being able to move in ALL directions does hurt it, but normal is still a good movement type; it should not be over looked for this small flaw. Being able to gain an extra 2000 damage is great, but unfortunately it will not be used very often. Range is also a plus, will lower its movement in the battle saving you those precious move points.

Raptor
While its base damage is not great his bounces make up for it. The 200 damage for fighting on ice will not be seen nearly as much as the other larger bonuses of 1000 damage for light units. All other light units can be hunted down quickly with this ship, due to its great move cost and type, and increased range than most other light ships. This one will save you move points and still get the job done. The hits points are more than could be expected for paying so little and again the bonuses for fighting on ice will make him one of the highest light ships. Cost is the biggest selling point though, one of the lowest costing ships in the game.

Panther
An over used ship that when compared to other light ships is hard to see why. Great move cost and type. These ground units that will help fight a select few ships and tanks. Rebound is never bad but this is as close to being bad as you can get. It is almost wasted on this tank with little damage to be given out. No bonuses will make it even more unlikely that it will be blasting though ships let alone trying to take down ships behind it. Yes rebound can and will be used with this unit, but fare less than other units. It is more likely that this tank will be used for chump blocking, it will be thrown out to save your big guys form getting smashed. That is what it is there for but, with so little hit points it will not be as effective as other units… So why is this tank bough so much?

A Word about Rare resources and finale thought.
The last thing that I have not covered yet and will play a big factor is the rare resources that are involved with the units. All the units that I have talked about in the article use one rare resource, and they are all different. So I did not factor that into the price. You will have to factor that into the price though. You will have to take a look at your planets and take into account what resource you are using (for Income, or other ships, I.e. Fenix take Diamonds as do raptors), not to mention what resources your planets are giving you. You can still make a large fleet of Toxic if you have no planets that give you uranium, but you will have to add that into the cost. That is what this article is about units cost virus their worth. If you have a preference then go for it and don’t let me sway your judgment. It is your call this is your game to play as you see fit, just keep in mind that there are other ships to look at besides what everyone else is doing.

Like i wrote on a previous post (Universe Features), the next feature i needed to implement is the fog of war.

It’s development is very advanced, with the first step completed: the lineof sight. Here are the first 2 pictures:

The line of sight is a feature that let’s the player see everything in a certain range around it’s fleet. According to the type of the fleet, the range it’s bigger or lesser.

The type is given by the category of the units in the fleet. If there is a heavy unit, the fleet is slow but has a bigger line of sight (2 squares all around). If there is a medium unit, the line of sight is the same has the previous (the same 2 squares), but the fleet is faster. Finally, fleets with only light units are very fast, but have a poor line of sight (1 square all around).

Here’s a video of a battle between two experienced players. This combat clearly shows the need for the «you can’t draw blood on the first move» rule. Has you can see, the Shikamaru player got major advantage because of that. And winning by chance, is something that we don’t want on this game.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Documentation’s always a tricky subject. It needs a lot of work and maintenance. On Orion’s Belt we have tried several manual implementations:

• The first version had a generated manual. Everything was automated and all pages were generated based on the universe rules. This was nice, it allowed us to generate several utility pages, like “All resources that need Gold”, or “All resources that depend on the Starport”, but it had a problem: we couldn’t add custom content (for example, descriptions/tips per unit)
• We tough that adding custom content was a must, so we changed tactics. Instead of generating all the manual, we migrated to a Wiki. We wanted input and collaboration from the community, and in fact we had several players contributing to the wiki. But we also had several problems, every time we updated the universe rules, we had to manually update both wikis (Portuguese and English).

Based on our past experience we choose the first approach for the Orion’s Belt 2.0 Manual. We can’t spare much time to maintain wikis in several languages and if we auto generate every thing the manual will always be up to date.

But we don’t want to loose the custom content. Although it’s advantages are discussable, it’s a feature that we don’t want to loose. So we are considering a generated manual with custom content. The custom content  will need manual maintenance, but it will be bearable.

The manual is still in a very alpha phase, but we have it already online:

• Orion’s Belt Game Manual
• Manual do Jogo Orion’s Belt

Here you have it, in Portuguese and English. It’s still very raw, but the only objective is to provide some documentation for the alpha version players.

The tournament module was released in the final alpha, but there are some features that are not yet implemented:

• Starting a tournament just with playoffs (mini tournaments for a specific type of player);
• Paging groups, like 10 groups per page, and the first page to be showed to the user is the page that contains the group he is in.

Now we need more people registed in the alpha tournaments to test all the engine and verify the results obtained in the simulation tests. The tournaments are open to registrations and will begin after Orion’s Belt team vacations (in 2 weeks).

The universe development is going very good. You can already:

• Travel in the private zone
• Transport your fleet through wormholes
• Travel in the hot zone
• Attack enemy fleets

Next step: Fog of war. This is going to be a difficult part. A lot of information has to be checked. I hope that at the end of the week I have something show you.

After that i still have to develop:

• Conquer planets
• Attack planets
• Have support for universe facilities, like markets and arenas
• Resources lost in the universe that the player can collect
• Pirates – enemy fleets that can attack your fleets

Meanwhile, here is a picture of a battle between 2 fleets:

I’ve been working on the new Alliance infrasctructure for Orion’s Belt 2.0. The current Alliance support is quite simple, and we wanted to bring a more powerfull interface to the player. Currently, you can only add/manage members. We want much more!

Online games are all about alliances. We can’t run from it. When we have an universe of 5000 players, they will team up and promote organized objectives per team. At this moment we cleary see that on Orion’s Belt, where we have several alliances teaming up to fight against other alliances. But that’s it, we have to rely on the alliances instincts to attack, to fight for the first position. We say that’s not enough!

So, the new alliance interface will provide the following:

• Add/Manage Members, each member will have a rank
• Alliance news: you’ll have a page with the news regarding the alliance: members attacked, attacking, war declarations, members added, quests completed, etc
• Alliance Diplomacy: you’ll be able do define your relation with other alliances – war, neutral, non-aggression pact, and confederation (alliance of alliances); we are still considering adding the a trade relationship
• Honors: a page displaying all the alliance’s honors

This is the basic support for any alliance. However, we want the alliance page to be even more important.  Today, when an Alliance engages war, the members have to gather on some forum and decide the strategy. Then each player proceeds with its tasks. We want to support out of the box that functionality via quests. So, when an alliance engages war, the admiral will be able to:

• First of all, declare war on the other alliance, thus notifying all the alliance members
• Assign quests for each member, forming the global war plan:
  • Member A will attack a planet
  • Member B will protect some trade route
  • Member C will intercept other players
• The admirals will be able to see the progress of the quests that form the war plan, and act accordingly

This is the base war sequence. But why to alliances engage war? They basically want the first position of the Top Alliances. What we are aiming for, is to give additional motives to engage battle. And we will provide them via Alliance Quests.

The propose of Alliance Quests is to define global objectives that alliances will want to accomplish. Naturally, only one alliance will. Examples of alliance quests:

• Domination War: we could create several relics over the universe, and the alliance with most possession wins
• Space Race: alliances are given several packages that they must deliver to the other end of the universe, only the first to get there gets the prize

All this side quests will make the alliances interact and fight each other, instead of just sitting around. Any more ideas or additional thoughts you’d like to share?