Drone Overhaul and competition thoughts
This is a page on my intentions for drones and how they will work in ShellCore Command Remastered.
If you've played a prototype version of the game before (or if you've been paying attention to the conversations on the Discord server), you'd know the prototype currently only supports mini drones. This is primarily because many of us want a more in-depth system for drones in the remaster than what was present in the original games, and in particular, customizable drones. It would indeed be really cool to be able to send custom drones into the battlefield at the press of a few buttons, so we decided we were going to try implementing drone customization into the game. This did mean that spawning abilities were neglected for a while since planning out how customization was going to work would need some brain power, which we needed to spend on other things like implementing all the features currently in the prototype (Take a shot every time I use the word "implement" in this document).
Currently though, there aren't many big things left from the original games to implement. Tasks are currently being worked on by Ormanus, which leaves only the Core Upgrader and upgrade shards. Now, I am fully aware that having to collect shards alone and without the assistance of several worker drones would be a very sad thing indeed, which makes implementing drones the obvious task in hand. This is exciting territory since this will be the first real concept that would be completely original to the remaster, instead of just being ported over from the original games (other than the sector creator but that's a whole other conversation).
Out of the features in the current prototype, the Ship Builder is particularly important to this task since it can be expanded to support not just ShellCores, but drones as well. Drones would use the same kind of parts as normal ShellCores, so it is particularly helpful to have a nearly complete system for such a purpose.
However, there will certainly have to be rules behind how many and what kind of parts you can place on drones. We also don't want drones to be completely unlike their original counterparts, rather we should be inspired by the original drones' designs and build on them, while still allowing complete removal and replacement of the original drone designs' parts. Ignoring the combat, gun, and bomber drones, there are eight different drone types in the original games, so I think there should be eight different frameworks for drones in the remaster, which you can add parts into for customization.
Now, how would that work? My idea is to have each drone-spawning part contain an individual drone blueprint, which you can then expand on. All drone-spawning part collected in the game would contain a blueprint containing one of these eight frameworks, which you will then be able to edit yourself. I think this idea is versatile since it allows the original drones to still exist in their raw concepts, though your own drones may not look anything like them.
From here, there are two questions that come to mind- What in particular would differentiate these frameworks and make them hold their original drones' concepts in spirit, and how we are going to be able to edit these blueprints to create original designs. They will each need their own sections so have fun reading it all.
Each blueprint will contain one unchangeable core, which is based off of one of the eight drones. Cores themselves convey some special characteristics to their blueprints- they all boost regeneration and max shell/core/energy differently and have different masses, but they also each have one unique characteristic. My (tentative) ideas for what they will be are displayed below for each drone core type.
- Mini Drone- Free cannon
- Worker Drone- Free tractor beam and auto-collection AI
- Strike Drone- Weapons only cost 60% of their original energy costs
- Light Drone- Parts only convey 60% of their original weight to the blueprint
- Gun Drone- Weapon cooldowns on this drone are reduced by 40%
- Counter Drone- Weapons deal 75% more damage against other drones
- Torpedo Drone- Any weapon attached to this drone can attack only ground stations and units
- Heavy Drone- Inherent core regeneration of 20 core per second
Feel free to give me your suggestions on these core characteristics.
In addition, each core will have a different maximum number of total parts- Mini and Worker cores can hold 2 parts (out of their original 0), Strike, Light, Gun and Counter cores can hold 4 (out of their original 2), Torpedo cores can hold 6 (out of their original 2) and Heavy cores can hold 8 (out of their original 5). To balance out discrepancies, you can only find Mini and Worker cores on small parts, Strike, Light, Gun and Counter cores on medium parts, and Heavy and Torpedo cores on large parts. Also, each of the spawn abilities associated with these cores will have appropriate cooldowns and energy costs.
Finally, none of these cores will likely be able to hold parts above the small size, but I'm happy to hear reasoning behind allowing medium and large parts on drone cores. I think placing this constraint adds value to small parts even after your core can handle larger parts, plus it allows sufficiently sized ShellCores to destroy any kind of drone, as they should be able to. It also adds an additional challenge of choosing the best parts and maximizing the effectiveness of the ability ranks you have, rather than just spamming Missile or Beam 3s. For obvious reasons, you also won't be able to place other drone spawning parts on any drone core.
There'll need to be some way to change drone blueprints and their parts to what you desire them to be. My idea for this is to add another station, just like Yards, Traders, and Core Upgraders, and it will be called the Drone Workshop. I don't have a concrete idea of how the interface will look like, but it will likely have two sections to it- A pre-selection phase where the inventory list and your ship display highlights only those parts with a drone spawning ability, and a post-selection phase where you can place valid parts on your selected blueprint.
In the pre-selection phase there will be a possible option to copy blueprints from one part to another, as long as you have enough parts. There will also be drone blueprint presets just like with the Yard, which you can apply to any drone blueprint regardless of their cores (you can apply it to entire stacks of parts in your inventory too). You will be able to view the blueprint of each drone just like how you view part information in the Ship Builder (bottom left). I've realized after making the Ship Builder that I can only give you details on some of the functionalities that I will implement since a picture would likely not hold any value since my ideas constantly change while working on interface displays, and as such, I can only give you a picture once I've started working on the interface.
The post-selection phase will contain a build system not unlike that of the Ship Builder. You'll also be able to name your spawning parts to differentiate different blueprints while searching for parts in the Ship Builder.
I've also mentioned a competition on the Discord server. This competition will be on designing how the Drone Workshop looks in the game! If you've noticed from version 2.1.0-proto onwards (including possible bugfixes but before version 3.0.0) your core now looks like a tier 3 core, this is to reflect the Drone Workshop's core so you can have a better idea of what you want it to look like. The Drone Workshop should fit in with the other stations in-game, so use small and medium parts sparingly and ensure that your design is symmetric.
Submit your design on the ShellCore Command Discord with a screenshot and your ship's JSON (copy paste the text given from the Ship Builder into notepad and upload that on Discord). A month after this announcement all submissions will be voted on somehow by everyone (you will be able to vote on more than one). If there is a tie, we will vote on the tied submissions again (this time, you will only be able to vote on one). Third and second places will have their stations in the game as NPCs, while first place's submission will be used as the final design for the Drone Workshop!
(Ormanus, Sbert and I reserve the right to deny any of these submissions their prices regardless of the number of votes they have. We most likely won't use it, but this is just in case we really, really don't like the prize-winner entries.)
Once again, thank you for testing, playing, and following ShellCore Command Remastered!