Overview
Many of the classic game play elements from the space game genre have been incorporated into Astrox Imperium. Basic interface controls were designed using elements from RTS and FPS games. All fan favorite core game play elements have been included; mining, crafting, trading, refining, fleets, combat, exploration, and more. This game will seem familiar to fans of the space survival / exploration game genre.
The Lore
The human struggle to survive is an all too familiar one. As the planet collapsed into an ecological depression, mankind as a whole is forced to expand his vision to the skies. A grand ship was built, and the ‘Imperium’ was scheduled to launch mankind into the future. With a new Quantum technology at its core, the Imperium was mankind’s greatest achievement. Putting aside all differences, the people of world came together. Under a common goal, the efforts of an entire generation came to fruition. The Imperium was ready to carry the dreams of us all, and with it, the hopes of finding a second chance.
Non-linear Story
The story line begins with you, the last refugee discovered in over 70 years. Stumbled upon by a lost drone trying to find it’s way back, you awaken at a nearby space station. Your memories from a time long past, only add to the confusion of this strange new place.
The factions you align with, the choices you make, will all effect how the story is revealed to you. As there are many versions of the same story, different layers of the truth weave between the characters and events that you can help to unfold. Your degree of participation is completely at your discretion. Take a front stage in a main role, or follow along from the sideline.
The Gameplay
The main gameplay loops are fairly simple, and familiar. What makes Astrox Imperium unique, is the way that you can easliy glide between the various loops to maintain a nice level of progression, without it feeling any more ‘grindy’ than you want it to. Sure, you can just mine rocks if you want, but Astrox Imperium provides you many different ways to progress your pilot.
Open World
You can completely ignore the story line, and go where you want, do what you want. The story of the game will wait for you to interact with the characters that help to move it along. You are always given the choice to participate in the story, and there is no penalty for jumping in and out. You can do so at your discretion without any time constraints.
Exploration
Explore over 100 star systems; each with a unique environment, effects, resources, and dangers. A basic scanner comes equipped with every ship, and using your scanner is the only means of gathering information about the resources and threats around you. Using your Galactic Position System, you can plot a course and navigate long distances through multiple Sectors. Each Sector has various life support factors that affect your ship’s life support systems. You will need to upgrade these life support systems if you want to venture away from the heavily trafficked, more civilized areas. Each Sector is connected to other nearby Sectors using Warp gates. These gates can require keys, tolls or even repairs to function properly. As you visit a new Sector, the area will become visible on the Galaxy Map, along with some information about the Sector itself.
Using the ship scanner, you are able to lock onto targets, whether they are stations, resources, NPCs, or warp gates. Each ship can hold a limited number of locked targets in the targeting panel. You can toggle the Auto scan feature, which will send out a new pulse scan when the ship has an available slot in the targeting panel. This allows for a feeling of true exploration, as not everything is always visible. Dense gaseous clouds and refracted light can obscure objects in space, and using your scanner will make uncovering them much more realistic.
Along with the new scanner system, you will also find your exploration limited by the energy and life support systems.Keeping close to a star will allow your solar systems to recharge your ships energy efficiently. the closer you are to the star, the faster it will charge. Not all sectors have stars, and in some cases, you will need to stock up on auxiliary power before exploring areas without a constant source of light.
Mining
Mining – Mine over 12 unique resources, each yielding unique raw materials that can be used in crafting. Mining resources is an easy way to earn money in Astrox Imperium. You will need some basic mining lasers to get started. As you progress, you will be able to expand your earning potential with a variety of upgrades to purchase and skills to train.
Refining
Take the raw resources that you have mined, and break them down into raw materials. These raw materials can be used to craft components, which in turn can be used to craft a large variety of game items.
Crafting
The Fabricator can be used to craft items in a Station. By using a Technical Specification Document, you can learn what raw materials and crafting components are required for production. Once these items are supplied to the fabricator, you can begin production of the item.
Crafting is NOT required , and more of an overall progression incentive. You may only want to manufacture your own ammunition to save money, or invest the time , resources and training to construct a star ship.
Trading & Economy
Buy and sell hundreds of good across the Astrox universe. Station markets, personal merchants, etc… Various factors control each Sector’s economy. The number of stations , faction ratings, local events and even raiders can have an effect on the economy of a region.
Although the economy is NOT a realtime economic simulation, It is designed to function using many of the same principles of a supply and demand driven market. Each station’s type determines what types of special products are in frequently in supply and demand at that station. This adds a bit of stabilization to what could easily become a consumer nightmare after just a few bad player choices.
Missions
Generated contract missions, allows pilots to take on jobs for credits. With 11 mission types, and 10 variations for each type, you will have plenty of mission contracts available to all Stations with a Mission Center. These missions provide you with the ability to take on job contracts for the various 18 factions in the Astrox universe. Earn credits, special items, and even skill points for a job well done.
Factions
There are 6 main factions, each with 2 sub-factions for a total of 18 factions. Each main faction has territory, stations, ships and skills. Your pilot’s faction ratings will affect a variety of game elements, and require that you pay attention to these ratings when trying to maximize your profits. These rating affect how other NPC will react towards you, and this will affect what missions become available and when. They will also adjust various prices, control Warp gate and Structure accessibility. Faction rating plays a major role throughout the game play mechanics, as well as the side missions and story line missions. Faction ratings will also affect how fast skills from that faction train levels.
Combat
Combat can be configured for an ‘Autopilot play style’, where targets are automatically scanned and selected, and turrets are brought to bare on the enemy without a click. Or you can take a more hands on approach, using WASD to manually fly the ship around. With a smooth transition between tactical sensors, the 3D camera, and first person cockpit view, finding targets becomes a matter of preference. Hands on combat will always give the player an advantage, but it is nice to have to autopilot available to wipe out those low level baddies with little effort.
Each turret on every ship has specs that limit its mobility. Each turret tracks the ship’s target independently and must fall into its target lock before the turret will fire. All projectiles operate with the physics engine, forcing a real collision before calculating damage.
Overall, combat is much more engaging than the usual, point the ship and pull the trigger. You can rotate and position your weapons on your ship in the station garage, to take advantage of your playstyle and strategies.
Each ship can be upgraded using Active and Passive Modules. Active modules are modules that appear on the ship, have a special UI button associated with them that allows for control of the module. Active modules are often turrets, missile launchers, mining lasers, etc. Passive modules are internal upgrades that affect various aspects of the ship and its base attributes. These modules function within the constraints of the physics engine, as well as their individual attributes.
Example: If you are piloting a ship that has all the modules on one side of the ship, you will find an advantage in broadside combat. Adding a passive module to improve your turn speed could make all the difference. Perhaps you choose to equip additional Engine modules to your ship, and have your weapons facing to the rear of the ship, so that you can deliver damage to ships that chase you, keeping them out of range as you use your superior thrust to escape their weapons systems. Maybe you move the weapons to the front of a ship, for a head on, guns blazing type configuration. The way you configure your ships are limitless. The same ship, with the same modules, can be configured many different ways to achieve various combat play styles.
NPC AI
They are smart! they play just like you do. All NPC’s are aligned to one of the 12 sub factions, behave accordingly, and are persistent in their actions and ability. They will reconfigure their ships, just like you do. They will optimize and adapt, just like you. You will actually learn a lot by watching NPC’s
The AI fights like you would. They will team up on a single target, they will run and try to draw you away so that their gang can swoop in behind your 6 o’clock in an effort to score some easy hits. They will retreat when damaged, or hide when trying to recharge.
Example: If you destroy an NPC miner that was mining Adamyte, you will discover that exact amount of ore in the wreckage. If an NPC grabs a crate that you dropped while you made a quick run to a station, you can recover your stuff by killing or robbing them. I really spent a lot of time making the AI play like you, but more importantly, they play by the same rules you do.
Life support
This is new system that has been added to allow the player to manage their exploratory reach. Life support breaks down into 4 categories.
- Food, You gotta eat right? You ship comes equip with a food synthesis unit, and food items can be created in space using special food items. These will provide various bonuses to the pilot, and can be useful when training skills, engaging in combat, mining , or just plain exploring. You never ‘Run Out’ of food, but be discovering and or purchasing new food items, you can manage your food systems in a way to exploit the play style you prefer…. and yes, there are cheeseburgers in space.
- Water is also an important factor of your life support system. Similar to food, your water collection, and filtration systems will provide you with clean drinking water and hot showers. Water is greatly effected by temperature, and if things get too hot or cold, your water will become and issue, thus limiting your exploration range.
- Thermal, It’s cold in space, and you need to keep warm. By upgrading and improving your thermal systems, your ship will provide the adequate warmth needed to maintain a comfortable temperature on board. The further away from a star you are, the colder things get. Extreme temperatures can effect your ship, its modules, and so on. If you get too far away, and your thermal systems cannot keep the ship warm enough, you will suffer from malfunctioning equipment, thus limiting how far you can explore.
- Waste disposal, at lower levels, is just ejected into space… I know, it’s messy. But as you improve your waste management system, you will be able to extract and utilize the waste so that the resources it can provide are not…. wasted. Yes’m there are diapers in the game… but at higher levels, you will be able to process and extract valuable resources and use the waste you produce in a productive wa.
The best way to summarize the Life Support systems as it applies to game mechanics is, the better your life support, the further from a station, or outpost you can travel. Eventually, you will need to construct you own outpost to allow for safe docking when exploring the furthest reaches of the Astrox universe.
Drones
There are a number of different drone types in Astrox Imperium. This allows the drones to perform a variety of tasks, that in some cases, cannot be performed by the ship alone. Learning to use these drones to maximize there abilities, and thus their profitability, will take some time.
Drones require energy to move around and to carry out tasks. If the drone’s energy is depleted, it will automatically return to the parent ship from which it was launched. Once docked with the ship, the drone will use the ship’s energy to recharge itself.
Click here for more about drones.
Fleets
Hire, befriend, and in rare cases enslave NPC mercenaries to join your fleet. Set their targets, assign support roles, and even trade and equip their ships to make the most out of your missions. Create a party and assign, train and level them up.
They will fly with you, work for you, and you have full access to their cargo. Of course they will expect to receive a paycheck every so often. You can level them up, watch them grow stronger. You can command them to engage you target, dock, evade and patrol. They will mine resources and even bring the ore back to you. Before you can hire a mercenary, you will need to be in good standing with his or her faction. Keep their loyalty up, and you may convert an employee to trusted friend.
You can control the way that your fleet behaves when traveling the sectors. At a cost to your top speed, you can have them fly in formation, and even control the spacing and type of formation they fly in. Wall, Cross , Broad, and Capital formations are all available. You can also individually set their tactics. Should they guard your ship, and fight in formation? Should they chase down a hostile enemy. Maybe you want them to retreat to the station at the first sign of combat. You are in control of how your mercenaries behave… after all, you’re paying them.