Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

Category: gratuitous space battles

The Fighter Spam Issue

Posted on November 16, 2010

I have a slight problem with the balancing of the GSB campaign. The problem is that swarms of fighters are just *too good*. The main game prevents this because each battle has pilot limits. The campaign battles do not. It’s not a total game killer, because spatial anomalies act as ‘chokepoints’ preventing fighters roaming everywhere. It’s annoying though.

One solution is to increase the maintenance costs of fighters. The downside to this would be that it’s hard to explain to the player, doesn’t make *that* much sense and may not be effective enough.

Another is to make them more difficult to build, maybe using twice the resources per CR in a shipyard, thus making shipyards more efficient when building cruisers etc. This maybe just delays the inevitable, and is also hard to justify.

Another is to introduce the idea of needing carriers. This is tons of work and testing, plus it breaks the link with the main game, where they are not needed, and means the player will fight AI fleets designed by players operating under different rules.

Another is to introduce flight schools, and pilots as a new resource. This is adding even more complexity, although to be fair, I could make academies churn out pilots too, so its just a resource, not a new facility too…

Another is to add more anomalies that block fighters, or set hard limits of the number of fighters in a particular fleet or battle. That involves real chaos, as I’d have to handle it when merging fleets yada yada.

I can see whatever I do will involve lots of work won’t it :(

Stats Summary Window

Posted on November 15, 2010

I was looking at the conversion rate for the GSB demo (The percentage of demo downloaders who buy) and thinking I could find a way to improve it. One of the pieces of common feedback about the game was that people had no idea whether they had made good choices or bad in terms of ships and weapons.

Obviously there are all the ship and module stats and the post-battle stats, but I was thinking that it’s a bit much on the first playthrough, and that maybe something more simple was needed to give instant feedback. So I’ve coded a popup dialog on the stats screen that basically gives you four stats, based on the amount of hull damage that ships and modules do:

Thoughts? I know there are some people here who tried the demo but didn’t buy. Would this have helped ease you into things a bit?

This was a weekend diversion, I’m back on campaign bugs now…

GSB: Galactic Conquest

Posted on November 8, 2010

Right, here we go, Gratuitous Space Battles: Galactic conquest is now on sale for pre-orders / beta. You know the drill by now. The game is in beta, so it might be a bit flaky here and there (hopefully not), but you can buy it and download/play it now anyway, and I will be releasing a patch or two for it before it’s considered final.

Here is the website:

http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/galacticconquest.html

Obligatory video:

I’ll be waiting 24 hours before I send out a proper press release, and tell people on my newsletter. I’ve never done a game with as much server-side integration as this before, so I’m slightly wary of having a sudden mad dash to promote it in case the server blows up. I’m pretty sure it will be fine.

One final warning: This expansion REQUIRES an internet connection, because of how the game works. It downloads enemy fleets from the central server, as they are player designed. it also uploads your fleets (rarely) to serve as cannon fodder to other players. This game just will not work if you can’t connect it online, so don’t buy it if that upsets you / is inconvenient / reminds you of fascism. Make SURE you can browse challenges in the normal game before buying this expansion.

Also, the game really needs you to be on the latest version (1.48). Auto-updating should be happening today/tomorrow for everyone. If you don’t have the latest version, and the patcher won’t run for some reason, you can re-download the whole game (it’s ready-patched). Email me if the link is dead (cliff@positech.co.uk).

For anyone wanting to know every detail about gameplay before buying it, here is the manual:

http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/media/Campaign Manual.pdf

I hope it sells a few copies, and it works, and I don’t look like a prize idiot :D

Patch 1.48 for Gratuitous Space Battles

Posted on November 7, 2010

Is now live. Expect your copy to autoupdate over the next 24 hours. Changes:

version 1.48
1) Performance: Major rewrite of tons of areas to reduce memory usage and squash lots of small memory leaks.
2) Bug fix: Tractor beam turrets are no longer drawn when a ship should appear cloaked.
3) Bug Fix: Limpet launchers and Plasmas are now fired from the correct position when placed in multiple-hardpoint slots.
4) Bug Fix: Fixed a few minor miscalculations that meant ship damage  looked (purely visually) like it was being repaired faster than it actually was, especially when cloaked.
5) Bug Fix: When you leave the ship design screen, any open module stat comparison windows are now closed.
6) Some playbalance tweaks
7) Bug Fix: Imperial fighters with tiny engine glows (also a nomad  fighter) now no longer get drawn when the parent ship is docked at a carrier.

The balance stuff:

nomads:
Awazem loses its cost boost, gets 8% armour boost
Duwasir loses its armour boost, gets 10% speed boost
Majali reduces speed penalty from 22% to 12%
Abbadi gets an 8% armour boost
Nomadic dogfight laser damage increased to 8
Nomadic beam laser power usage reduced to 13

general:
guidance scrambler beam weight increased to 147
EMP Shield ecm strength increased from 66 to 82
All frigate armour maxdamageabsorbable increased by 20%
EMP Missile launchers, (both types) missile speed 25% faster. fireinterval reduced 10%, ecm strength increased 10%
Decoy missile launcher weight reduced to 70

order:
Limpet launcher limpetweight increased to 8.2, cost reduced to 110

Campaign news to come soon. I needed to get this patch out there and live first.

Ad stats, and why people make DLC.

Posted on November 4, 2010

Sooo. I managed to keep my grubby paws from editing my ad campaigns for 30 seconds. I blogged a few days ago about how I took the top 25 sites for ROI (return-on-investment) and confined the Gratuitous Space Battles ad campaign to just them. Here is the results.

Over almost 6 days the impressions for the banners totalled 678,000. The clicks were 3,636 and the average cost per click was a whopping £0.10 (roughly $0.16). That cost me £366.94. Over the same period the income from gratuitous space battles sales was a total of $1,095.71, or roughly £684.

So in a crude sense, I spent 366 and got 684 back. In theory, a pretty good deal. However, I would have got some of those sales anyway, through word-of-mouth, and through reviews and so on. Plus some of them are people buying expansion packs for already bought copies. On the other hand, some of the visitors would have bought the game from impulse or steam or elsewhere, so I get that money too. Plus a bunch of them may buy the game in a week, or even in six months. It’s hard to tell.

If you look at it as £318 for 6 days, that’s nothing very exciting at all. Thankfully I have other games on sale, otherwise I’d be scared :D.

For comparison, I looked at the month of september too. $9,203 sales.  £2,532 ads (roughly $4,051) . That is heavily skewed by the release of the Nomads expansion pack. On the surface, my recent 6 day ad-driven experiment was a ROI of 186% and september gave me a ROI of 227%.

So one of two things has happened. Either the new ‘let google pick them’ strategy is not as effective as I thought it would be, or in fact adverts are just not in any way as good at generating income as new expansion packs. I think it’s probably the latter. Don’t forget that the expansion packs will continue to sell for a few more months, and also generate extra income from sites like impulse and steam (if they actually add the nomads :D).

I know some people hate games that keep releasing DLC, but programmers have to eat, and if I’m honest, the smart thing to do (from a business POV) is to keep doing them. I don’t think I will though, I think the campaign is the last one.

Out of interest, has anyone here ever seen a GSB ad? where did you see it?