Pirates. They turned out to be the last feature.
At the moment there is max one pirate fleet per sector, and they stay there.
They also steal 5 production point from every planet in the sector, so player needs to take care of them anyway.
They have the weakest ships in game so it won’t be a problem, but the cost in movement points might make player vulnerable to the upcoming ai fleets. Also, pirates may reduce sent ship hp by 1/3 which is important.
Moment of Disappointment
Last week I had a sad moment. I was sure I’m doing polishing, with most of the game ready. And then 3 crushing errors in research logic appeared.As it turned out, I didn’t really test research, and basically nothing could be researched.
After rolling up my sleeves, I started debugging and they were UI-related issues rather than logic issues.
So research worked under the hood, but the UI didn’t display newly researched techs.
Polishing Continued
Errors I’m fixing stopped being “window doesn’t show, which halts the game.” Now they are “if I unlock frigate and open the design window next turn, I can’t create a frigate design.” That’s good.I also added advertising and in-app purchases. It strangely doesn’t work, but at least I know Google Play will accept the game with new SDKs and Android permissions.
As I see it, you run out of motivation, so you don’t want to have technical build errors at the end-you prefer to have game-related errors, which can be left in todo section of your project.
I’m also working on AI, with option to boost AI in main menu. Now it has right priorities (don’t send fleet to colonise a planet if there are human ships in the system) and use all ships up to the monstrous Battleship hull.
My first psychological deadline for releasing the game is end of February. Probably will miss it, but setting the deadline is important anyway.