Hello, everyone! We are publishing the second article from a series about main gameplay features of Sol-Ark - Deep Space Sandbox.
If you didn’t already know, astronauts can’t survive in space if they are naked, or if they don’t have a ship. Aside from disciplining nude crew members, in Sol-Ark it’s up to the player to craft a proper star cruiser for their herd of daring, mentally deranged, and sometimes homicidal space explorers.
A spaceship should be a personal reflection of the player, and in Sol-Ark you’ll have full control over crafting your own void hardened interstellar vessel. Want your ship to look like a cat? How about a dinosaur riding on a cat with laser vision? In this game no one is going to stop you.
You’ll build your ship starting with structural frames to outline the shape of your ship. From there you’ll construct floors, walls, and every system the ship needs to stay afloat. You’ll place engine components, install shield generators, and build anti missile and laser defense arrays.
There are crew critical systems you’ll need to craft as well, like a water pump that will allow your astronauts to drink their own recycled pee. Tasty! Resources to develop all of these systems and compartments aren’t as rare as you might think.
Asteroids can be hollowed out to become an additional compartment to your station, or be turned into battering rams that will make the bravest space commander strap on a diaper and abandon ship.
Derelict stations, once cleared of beheaded aliens, can be attached to your ship as well. Even enemy ships can be commandeered after you enslave their crew or spank their drunk pirate asses out into space.
You’ll also have the option to break all these objects down into their component resources. With all of these options you have the ability to craft the ultimate dodecahedral death star of galaxy ending proportions you’ve always dreamed of.
Screenshots compilation.
Join us on Sol-Ark's official website to know more!
Alex this is looking pretty sweet man. It would be great to hear how the game will progress though, perhaps in the next article ;)
Basically I was wandering what would be the constraints to my ship building shenanigans and how I would eventually overcome them. Would there be some sort of 'leveling' mechanic?
Given that this is a rogue-like the distribution of enemies would be random to a certain degree I suppose. What are your plans in that department?
Will you make it completely random making players run into a bloody Death Star as soon as they start or will it be more or less reasonable? Based on sectors or zones or something along those lines.
- Alex
Hi, Alex!
Thanks for your comments. We'll try to post news twice a week - first time with devlog update, second time - with article about main gameplay features.
There no physical limit for expanding your ship. But I think in reality it will be pretty difficult to build your Death Star. Firstly, you need many resources for that. For better types of constructive elements, you need more material. Secondly, there are a few classes of random events like a random ship, global cosmic disaster, internal event, crew event etc. I.e. the larger your station, the more chance that it'll be hit or damaged by any event.
Also, we've already implement a parameter of mass for every constructions and technics. Due to this fact, a huge ship will have huge mass, so it will be very clumsy. In that situation ship is not able to dodge effectively and it will be an easy target for every enemy ship or meteoroid.
About enemies... We want to create more random behavior for enemies. I.e. pirate ship can give you a quest and prepare an ambush for you by its finishing. In another time it will offer you to trade and send a bomb with the cargo. etc. Actually, the engine is almost ready for that but we need more time to fill it by content.
Sounds great. One more thing though.
How will the ship travel over long distances? Some sort of warp jumps or will it be more Alien like, hibernation of the crew and hauling *** through space at a snails pace?
Basically I was wandering if I would be able to ambush ships in hyper space or catch one with most of it's crew on ice so to speak.
Hi, Alex! It would travel by few ways, including warp jump and anabiosis. Stay tuned for more info)