Vapourware The Mandate - LOL DEAD

[Eirikur]

The Black Eagles (Prussians) are Africans? Come on, they even have German family names, what sorcery is this.

 

[Beastro]

You are aware that the first version is from the McNelly's fanfiction project Dune Encyclopedia that had no direct input from Herbert? Or that that the Butlerian Jihad was probably named after 19th century author Samuel Butler, who wrote about machines supplanting humans? Frank Herbert left the background and history of the Butlerian Jihad deliberately vague.

McNelly said in 1999 that "FH and I had discussed writing it together and he agreed with my general plot outline, completed first chapter, and so on but his untimely death prevented us from continuing", which shows that Jehanne Butler is McNelly's contribution. Interestingly, Joan of Arc spelled her name as Jehanne.

Anyway, the Mandate looks great so far and I'm looking forward to further updates.

Yeah, unlike many writers today and pretty much all of the gaming industry Herbert knew what it was good to leave areas of his world mentioned and not elaborated on to create mystery and have the readers imagination fill in the blanks.

If only he'd banged that into his son before he died.

 

[Bubbles]

We're sending Codex representatives to Gamescom to talk to the people behind this fine game. It's not 100% guaranteed that we'll get a full interview with them, but we'll probably get to ask a few Special Codex Questions at the very least. Any suggestions for what to ask about?

We're collecting the questions in the Gamescom thread now. The questions about feature creep, open-endedness, and session pacing are already more interesting than anything we'd come up with.

 

[gestalt11]

Let's be *special* together. *Spicy games* are always fun.

 

[Morality Games]

It's actually upsettingly retarded so I spoilered it. My favorite part is the idea that Dune literally developed every technology they needed and didn't bother to improve on them for the next 10,000 years

Well, that's the core concept at the heart of Dune regardless of whether we're talking about Frank Herbert or later writers. Humans developed a super massive and largely unchallenged presence in the galaxy/universe thanks to Thinking Machines, discovered Thinking Machines were alienating to human happiness due to some unspecified reason, and launched a Jihad that never officially ended to correct that alienation. One aspect of that Jihad was minimizing the creation and use of nearly all advanced technology because advanced technology served a platform to the development of Thinking Machines and the scales of distance and time involved between human inhabited worlds meant that a planet in a condition of high technological advancement could easily recreate the Thinking Machines that nearly doomed humanity without there being enough time for the Imperium to intervene, especially since the fact they observed the Jihad meant the Imperium government itself had only limited war potential based on a super specific ship operating technology that entailed utilizing humans as biological computers.

An even bigger problem: maintaining the massive population that had spread out across the stars due the infrastructure provided by the Thinking Machines and advanced technology required re-purposing suitable worlds and systems to super specific tasks (especially farming according to largely late medieval methods) so that humans across the cosmos could survive and maintain decent living standards, the result being an autocratic feudal society where powerful dynasties held all the power because problems needed to be resolved by a single autocratic authority immediately without becoming encumbered in democratic or bureaucratic process.

Or in short, they didn't bother to develop new technology or improve on existing technology because that was a contradiction of the goals of the Jihad: allowing humans to live a dignified existence and fulfil the essential needs of their nature with as little reliance on technology as possible.

 

[Excidium II]

The Black Eagles (Prussians) are Africans? Come on, they even have German family names, what sorcery is this.

That's how all europeans will look in the future

 

[veevoir]

The man dating simulator was on gamescom, here's the trailery-teaseary thing (no real gameplay, though it seems in-engine):


And here some rough basic gameplay (starts in about 3min), during an interview with some folks from Germanistan:
EDIT: Really rough gameplay of running around with a squad. They obviously are far way from finished anything at the moment..

 

[Kem0sabe]

Looks more and more like the project will never get finished in its intended form, that gameplay is very rough.

 

[Bubbles]

There will a be a report on this.

 

[Zombra]

Update #52

Aug 21 2015

Gamescom video with dev commentary
Hi backers,

Today we are sharing a video of the Gamescom boarding combat demo with developer commentary. You will find the link to the video a bit further down on the page.


Originally Kickstarter Update #52 was supposed to talk about artificial intelligence but due to logistics we have had to swap topics so Update #52 is instead about the Gamescom demo. Update #54 (Game design update) should arrive in a couple of weeks time.


Speaking of Gamescom, we had a huge presence allowing attendees to play the Pre-Alpha demo at several demo stations. Volunteer staff were on hand to answer any questions players might have had.


Many different types of players were playing the demo and we noticed two distinct types of players who would play the demo: Casual Gamers and Core Gamers. Casual gamers seemed to check out the game briefly, while Core gamers who were more comfortable with Real Time Strategy games stayed and played for much longer. We even had some dedicated Captains who played for 30-45 minutes and some of those even managed to beat the demo, which we were really not expecting!


Perihelion devs also did presentations for the press in the business area and our schedule was fully booked for all three days. In general the response from the press can be summed up as enthusiastic but cautious. Since our demo was about boarding combat we were asked about the adventure mode and space combat mode. However, those two modes are not yet at a stage where we feel comfortable showing them off to the press. That being said the response from the press is inline with what we were aiming for: To create an awareness about The Mandate among the gaming press since most of the journalists had not heard about The Mandate before.


As a side-note we were told a story by one of the game journalists. He had interviewed Sid Meier a few years ago, and Sid Meier told him that back when he originally pitched ‘Pirates!’ nobody believed the game could be done. It was three games in one! This was back in the late 1980s. As one of our biggest inspirations, you could say that The Mandate is actually Sid Meier’s Pirates in space but without the dancing mini-game (from the 2004 remake). Of course our boarding combat is different and we put more emphasis on crew dynamics and RPG mechanics but we still feel the comparison is valid.

Ok, time to switch over to the Gamescom demo. Please keep in mind that the Gamescom demo is pre-alpha. It contains prototype code which is not optimized, the visuals are not final and the install process is tricky (involving installation of 3rd party database software etc). In the Gamescom demo the player is given control of 8 squads of Grand Fleet marines with orders to take back a Grand Fleet heavy cruiser which has been stormed by members of the Black Eagle faction who have dug into fortified defenses on the Heavy Cruiser. The demo contains two decks: the cargo hold and the main deck. The player’s squads start in the aft cargo hold and must sweep the cargo deck before proceeding to the main deck to take control of the bridge (and ship). Over to Robert and Garret!


We’d also like to take a second to talk about the Arkwright Heavy Armor. Originally we posted the Arkwright Armor family as part of Update #51 and also on The Mandate Facebook page.


After a lot of feedback from backers and members on the forum we decided to place a recall to all deployed Arkwright Heavy Armors to do some urgent repairs. Whenever you make armor you have to sacrifice something for the protection you get. Thanks for the feedback, we took your suggestions and made it better!


We bought a new rubber stamp specifically for this! Just kidding! We all really appreciated your feedback and decided to go back and look at how we could improve the armor based on your comments. (We had some fun messing around with them too)


In the end we decided to go with a slight variation on #3 and the armor is currently being modelled. You can see a work in progress shot below.


We really appreciate your feedback, and often times when we show off what the art team is working on, we wind up looking at it again after we see your comments or questions and see if we can improve things.

Hope you enjoyed the video with developer commentary and a sneak peak at the new Arkwright Armor! As always post your feedback and comments either here on Kickstarter or over at theforums.

Cheers,
Your friends at Perihelion Interactive

 

[Bubbles]

That's exactly how the booth looked on Friday afternoon as well.

 

[GlutenBurger]

There will a be a report on this.

Will the Mandate portion be in part three, or are there even more parts than that to the report?

 

[Bubbles]

There won't be more than 9 parts in total, that I promise.

 

[Azazel]

So as someone familiar with the cost of such things that booth is about $150-200,000 worth of their budget, for the record.

I thought indies were supposed to free us from the wasteful shackles of pointless marketing departments, not embrace them wholeheartedly FFS.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

If those guys are indies without any loaded sponsor behind them I'm Queen Elizabeth.

 

[Zombra]

 

[Darkzone]

If those guys are indies without any loaded sponsor behind them I'm Queen Elizabeth.

Not now. Now they have an publisher or so. This was one of the news in previous updates.

 

[Bubbles]

What's the latest official word on the release date for this game? I did get a clear quote at Gamescom, but I can't find it posted officially.

 

[Ulminati]

Last I heard was "2016". If that's true, I'm guessing they mean late, late 2016. We haven't actually seen a functional slice of all the systems yet. Just cheographed demos of what they could look like.

 

[Bubbles]

Codex Report.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I couldn't quite tell you if the Mandate devs are scam artists, if they are delusional, or if they're merely suffering from some truly incredibly bad luck; either way, there seems to be something deeply wrong with this project, and I'm very excited to see what's going to happen next.

...

Yeah - that is the feeling. This project always seemed like more ambition than follow-through. If it were possible to deliver this game... that'd be something.

BTW - Ship management + crew management... those Russian Pirates games had in depth ships as well as crew management. Flawed, but fun.

 

[CryptRat]

Capitalism and the IFTL - Trading In All Sectors of the Galaxy

Hi backers,
Time for another update.Today we will provide a production update, covering many different areas of the game production and also discuss the IFTL (Interstellar Free Trade League) and the role this faction plays in The Mandate.

Audio

Let us start our production update with the audio department or more specifically the soundtrack. Choir and soloist recordings were completed on schedule during August and both the stereo and 5.1 versions were finalized in early November. This means that from a production point of view the soundtrack is done. Below you can listen to the final stereo version of The Mandate main theme with choir and Russian lyrics while reading the rest of this update!



GUI

As you may have noticed - for the Gamescom demo we put together a functional GUI but this was not the GUI direction we wanted to go with for the final game. We have spent quite some time iterating on the GUI design and one of the goals we were aiming for was to introduce some historical motifs and designs into the interface.

Specifically we wanted to introduce some Napoleonic influences to connect our historical references visually inside the game. We investigated and did tests with baroque, rococo, Empire, neo-classical and Federal styles. Some of the iterations on the GUI are shown below. Note that gradient colours, highlighting, animations etc are not represented below.


The art direction and detailed scroll work provides a coherent style connection to the period while setting an immersive GUI for interacting with the universe as the Captain in the adventure, space combat, and boarding combat modes. We are still doing tweaks to find the right balance between immersion and usability and now we are at a stage where we are testing out a more refined design inside the game.

Ships

Next let us check the status for ship production. With eight factions each fielding six ship classes, we have a total of 48 ships to produce. As we reported on the ship production at end of July we had roughly 21 ships completed back then.


As it stands now, we have 33 ships complete with two more battlecruisers right around the corner which will bring the number up to 35. While this would seem to indicate that the production rate has been lower than expected, there are a few things to keep in mind. Firstly, the Rebel ships are - unlike the other factions- asymmetrical by design. This increases the workload on the artists since they have to model and texture both halves of the ship instead of mirroring one half.


Secondly we reassigned artists to work on the star-bases so we could test the modular approach as well as scale of star-bases since we need to experiment with both model detail and texture usage on such huge structures.. Thirdly, we invested time into doing a polish pass on existing ships as well as upgrading smaller details like the windows.


Also, we had incorrectly reported the Grand Fleet light cruiser as complete last time and the Grand Fleet heavy cruiser was also rebuilt from scratch after the last production update. This particular ship which we first put together for the Kickstarter campaign has now been built for the third (and last) time. Finally, we got behind schedule early when folks took some well-earned vacations after Gamescon but we are still steadily reducing the backlog.

Armours

Leaving the ships behind let us look at the status of character armours. From the table we can see that 25 armours are completed. Compared to the previous update we added four armours for the pirates so instead of producing a total of 32 we will produce 36 armours.


We decided to add the pirate armours since we decided they really ought to have a distinct visual style during boarding combat to reflect their tactics and make them stand out. Once the pirate armours are done the rebel and IFTL armours will follow.





Since the last update we have finished the Europan and Osmani armour sets. The Europan armours have a high-tech feel whereas the Osmani armours are inspired by the uniforms (and headgear in particular) of the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. Historically they were elite infantry units who formed the Sultan’s household troops and acted as bodyguards.





Animation

On the animation side the focus these last months has been on the heavy armour animations as well as the animation sets for the four levels of marine veterancy: rookie, trained, veteran and elite. After we are done with the veterancy animations we will switch to make social animations which you will see when your crew is either working or off-duty and which should add a lot of life to the ship.


Programming

On a more technical side the programmers have been very busy with the adventure mode. First of all we needed to make sure that the ship statics properly take into account basic ship performance characteristics as well as officer attributes and traits. As an example this means that if you replace your chief astrogation officer this can impact the effectiveness and range of scanner probes launched in adventure mode.

The galaxy generator has also received attention where we have added new gameplay objects like gas clouds and asteroid fields. Each of these has a specific behaviour as well as associated visuals to make their function apparent. We are also adding additional spawn and randomization functions to diversify the visuals and take advantage of the procedural textures.

A third area we have been working on is the match-making and the multiplayer prototype. We needed to validate that our object entity model works well both in a singleplayer and multiplayer environment and that the transition between singleplayer and multiplayer works as intended.

In the last part of this update we will present a scenario related to the IFTL faction and the AI for different factions that are active in the sandbox. Our programmers have been working closely with Apex Software developers to provide gamecode hooks and interfaces so the Apex Utility AI can read out our game data, perform various evaluations and then relay decisions to the gamecode.

A lot of work has also been done to ensure that missions can be issued by AI factions based on the game stat itself. As the factions will constantly try and improve their positions and constantly evaluate their standing in the galaxy, they will need the help of Great Captains to expand their power and encroach on their goals. For example If resources are becoming scarce, Great Captains might be tasked with missions to conquer new resources. This ensures that missions will constantly spawn and these are relevant to the context of the game. Both the player and other Great Captains can make a difference in the Galaxy and affect the course of history by action, inaction, success and failure.

Another important area is the mission tracker and mission editor. This is where designers and writers can implement the story missions and events which are described further down in the design section of this update. We are still in the process of adding new goal types but now that the basic tools and architecture is working it is a rather straightforward task to expand on this with additional mechanics that build on the foundations. All in all the mission editor has been designed to be both fast and powerful to enable designers to create a content rich game while utilizing a diverse set of mechanics and triggers.

Game design

The designers have been working closely with the programmers to implement the game features for adventure mode and so this has taken up a lot of their time and focus. Another focus area has been to test and implement dialogue, tags, events and mission systems.

Tags allows us to set flags on the player based on what has happened in the game. A tag can be applied to the player through choices made during character creation, dialogue, events, or through game triggers, such as visiting a specific asteroid belt, encountering a specific ship and so forth. We can then use these tags to trigger specific ingame events that the player has to deal with or use them as criteria checks for allowing events and specific dialogue to appear for the player. This system gives us a lot of power to control both exactly when as well as why certain in game events trigger.

When it comes to events, we want a lot of them to spice up your playthrough. As we mentioned earlier, events can apply tags depending on your choices in them, which allows us to have events that follow naturally from previous experiences; In one event you may bring on board a medical cache where you find some experimental medication and in a later event find out that the medication in fact has caused a number of your crew to suffer unwanted side-effects. The goal is to create a cause-and-effect scenario that makes sense for players and at the same time keep the events interesting.

In general we distinguish between three broad event categories: Crew events, Space events and Galaxy events. The first two are interactive while the last is non-interactive.

What do we mean by interactive events? Well - when an interactive event triggers you will be presented with a briefing of the event by your XO and asked to pick from one of several options to resolve it, each with different outcomes and effects. Depending on your tags, traits and skills as well as the skills and traits of your bridge officers, different responses may be available. As an example; An event where you encounter a Romanov military satellite may have an option for dismantling, salvaging and/or hacking the satellite depending on what skills your officers have.

Crew events are generally focused on the behaviour and interaction of your crew. This extends further than simply being a measurement of ship morale (although that is definitely in there as well) and deals with any potential crew challenges and problems that may occur on board. As an example; How do you deal with the discovery of a traitor on board? Do you throw the traitor in the brig or do you banish the traitor from the ship? And if so - via shuttle or through the airlock?

Space events are linked to the area which your fleet is moving through. For example, if you fly through an asteroid field then there is a chance that an asteroid field related event could trigger, such as a mineral-rich asteroid presenting an opportunity to get some rare resources or micro-asteroids threatening the integrity of the ship hull.

Galaxy events concern the overall sandbox world and the events could be of either a permanent or temporary nature. For example, a star going supernova would be an example of a permanent event whereas a famine or plague hitting a specific system or planet would be a temporary event.

Finally, a third focus area has been the main story. The designers and writers have iterated on both the story and narrative structure to ensure we have a good balance between being sandbox friendly on the one side, and telling a compelling storyline for each faction on the other.

The general organization is that we have a New Player Experience which is followed by three chapters. It is important to stress that the player decides when to finish a chapter and proceed to the next and she will receive ample warning before this happens. That being said it is a bit tricky to discuss the narrative structure without giving too much of the storyline away but this is a generalized structure of the game:

• During the first chapter the player is free to interact with and learn about the various factions but by the end of the first chapter he or she will need to make a decision on which faction to support. At the conclusion of the first chapter certain changes will also happen in the sandbox.
• Chapter two sees the player working with his/her chosen faction to expand its influence and build up the logistics and support infrastructure needed to sustain a war effort. Missions will include a mix of universal missions and faction storyline missions.
• Chapter three again introduces some new opportunities to the sandbox and by this time the player will have an important position within his/her faction and can now influence the destiny of his/her faction.
• At the conclusion of chapter three the sandbox again undergoes certain changes with the injection of additional end-game content.

Finally one thing to keep in mind is that the sandbox will be fully “operational” during all chapters. So if you prefer to take your time and exploring the sandbox then this is a valid option (and player choice). We use the chapters to introduce some extra elements and story hooks to progress as part of the overall story arc progression.

IFTL

That concludes the production update section of this update so let us now switch to the other major topic of this Kickstarter update. Namely the IFTL.First a quick reminder from the Mandate lore document about who the IFTL are and what they do:

“Originally a loose association of free colonies and independent traders, the League is now a powerful but largely invisible political force within the Mandate. The League has its own fighting ships to escort convoys through pirate-infested systems, and it works closely with the Gate Transit Authority to keep the Gate network secure and open for business…”

Whenever a new game is started, a limited number of trade hubs are scattered throughout the sandbox as part of the generation process. These trade hubs are starbases which are under the direct control of the IFTL. Each trade hub may establish and maintain a number of inter-system trade routes. These inter-system trade routes always terminate at another trade hub governed by the IFTL. When a freighter begins its journey along a trade route it will first plan a route for which stations to visit on its way to its final destination.

When an IFTL freighter enters a star system and docks at its starbase the local economy will receive a boost and as a result the faction controlling the starbase gains additional income. The freighters may carry different types of goods which can influence the selection of available goods at a starbase, and freighters naturally attract the attention of pirates or other factions who are out to earn a quick buck by less than legal means.

Conversely when IFTL freighters are attacked and looted this has a negative impact on the economy in a star system and will increase the chance of the next freighter planning another route to avoid this system as it is obviously risky and bad for profits.

Ingame this is modelled through a star system security rating. The security rating and says something about how safe the system is to travel through and how likely one is to be attacked by pirates. Repeated pirate attacks on freighters or a state of war between two factions can reduce the security rating of a star system.

Now, how does this affect the AI and how the factions play? When the security rating goes down the IFTL faction AI looks at historical data for trade routes and can also evaluate the profitability of certain trade routes. This means that it can decide that the loss of a few freighters is acceptable and justifiable if the profit margin is sufficiently high. Alternatively the IFTL faction AI may decide to group freighters together into bigger fleets and assign escorts to deter pirates. It could also decide to ban any of its freighters from entering the star system where the pirate attack took place and request that the faction controlling the star system deal with the problem.

The AI of the faction that owns the star system where the attack took place may decide between different strategies for dealing with the pirate problem, irrespective of whether the IFTL requested intervention. For example some factions are more likely to use guile or diplomacy while others prefer brute force.

As an example the Romanov faction AI could decide to take the long-term view and build up military patrols over time to increase the security rating. The Arkwright faction AI would perhaps instead elect to pay off the pirates (and request they at the same time go cause problems for another faction, in another star system). Likewise the Black Eagle faction AI could decide on a more aggressive solution and either assemble an attack fleet or offer a mission to one of its Great Captains to deal with the pirate problem. If the situation is really getting out of hand then any faction AI could decide to request the intervention of a Great Captain from its faction. As you know the player is also a Great Captain in this context and may therefore accept a mission to deal with pirates or respond to a request for intervention.

The AI of the pirates must decide whether to move on to another star system or continue attacking freighters in the current system, building up its presence and perhaps investing in better ships or establishing a pirate stronghold somewhere at a remote location. If the pirates become sufficiently strong they may even attract a Scourge of The Mandate, a Great Captain and notorious pirate.

Moving on let us talk a bit about the IFTL ship roster which is a bit different from the other factions. The ship roster is distinct in that the IFTL does not field heavy cruisers, battlecruisers or battleships. Instead it has three modular freighter classes as well as three escort classes (frigate, destroyer, light cruiser).

The freighter classes come in three different sizes: small, medium and large. Both the bow and stern sections are relatively short and the midship takes up the majority of the length of the ship. Each freighter can be configured either for carrying cargo containers or are purpose-built. In the case of the former the midship has ample space to mount a number of cargo containers. There are different types of containers and each is optimized for carrying a limited selection of goods or resources. This gives the freighter a lot of flexibility and the ability to be adapted based on the trade route it is serving, commodity prices and the need to diversify.


If the freighter is purpose-built to fulfill a specific role then its entire midship section is optimized for that specific role and it sacrifices cargo space to install facilities to undertake this role. Some examples of roles include prison ship, hospital ship, luxury ship / yacht and troop transport.


Non-IFTL factions also utilize freighters but tend to prefer the purpose-built freighters which serve as fleet auxiliaries, yachts or prison ships.

Unlike military warships the freighters are built to less stringent standards. As a result they may be rebuilt or enlarged by combining multiple midship sections. By chain multiple midship sections together it is possible to construct freighters with additional cargo capacity or purpose-built freighters which can fulfil two roles, like a combined troop transport and hospital ship.


While freighters are not defenceless they usually not armed or armoured for protracted engagements as this would sacrifice valuable cargo space. If in serious danger lone freighters would prefer to outrun their attackers or failing that send out an SOS signal to request assistance from nearby friendly forces.


Bigger freighter convoys or freighters travelling through dangerous star systems will typically be escorted by one or more escorts. The escorts make up the second half of the IFTL ship roster. They are typically fast and cost-effective and protect the valuable freighters from light to moderate attacks.


We hope this update has given you a good picture of where we are in production and the progress made during the last few months. Also the discussion around trade routes and the different decisions that the AI can make based on pirate or player attacks on freighters, should illustrate the type of interconnected experience we are aiming for.


In the next update we plan to discuss the adventure mode in more detail as well as share a developer video with commentary from the adventure mode.

From all of us at Perihelion Interactive we would like to wish you Happy holidays!

Cheers,
Your friends at Perihelion Interactive

 

[CryptRat]

The Captain's Journey

Hi backers,

For this update we will discuss the campaign structure, the event system and what we call the bridge dialogue mode. While we will go through them in the order mentioned, we first want to re-iterate the unique selling points of The Mandate

• the captain experience: you are a character on a ship, you are not “just a ship”, and as captain you must manage your crew
• the human factor: the focus is on crew and interactions between people, not just ships blowing up other ships
• the historical setting: the game is built upon a new theme that draws on Napoleonic references to create a rich historical context via cohesive lore documents and factions with a coherent ideology

Campaign structure

Before we discuss specific acts we should make a note on the game’s duration. It should take, on average, 40 hours to complete the main story. Each of the acts below assume that the player focuses on completing a specific act. However, it is the player’s actions that actually drive the game environment towards a particular stage. So if the player prefers to do side activities like hunting down notorious pirates, that will increase the playtime.

When starting a new game you first undergo the character creation process. This process will be similar to what was outlined during Kickstarter whereby you select your background and build your military service record by travelling between various planets and picking responses to the events that pop-up. Next the player may (optionally) take some time to learn about the basics of crew management and ship handling.

Act 1

After character creation the player will proceed to the New Player Experience. The main focus of the NPE is to let the player familiarize himself with the various factions. The player’s journey to build the future of The Mandate begins. The New Player Experience takes place inside one star cluster (each star cluster has multiple star systems).

The New Player Experience should take a couple of hours to finish and when completed will grant the player access to his or her own starbase.


The starbase is important as it is where you can recruit and train both crew and officers as well as refit or upgrade the ship(s) in your fleet. While other starbases offer similar services, your starbase supports further specialization. You can assign officers to oversee production, training and research and upgrade the starbase facilities. By upgrading its facilities you may construct larger ships, reverse-engineer captured technology and manufacture new equipment for your ships, light craft squadrons and crew.

Act 2

After the New Player Experience is completed, the player unlocks access to several new star clusters.

When adventuring into and exploring these clusters, the player will find that the Mandate is more of an ideal than a political reality. Alliances between factions are strenuous at best and in the cases of the major factions, conflicts have arisen between them forcing the player to take sides or attempt to mediate between them.

Star clusters come in two types and are either “wild space” clusters or “designed conflicts” clusters. The number of “wild space” clusters is variable but the number of “designed conflicts” is exactly three. The “designed conflicts” centers on the conflict between The Mandate and The Rebels whereas “wild space” involves gameplay centered around responding to distress beacons, pirate attacks etc.

The “designed conflicts” clusters contain both star systems for you to explore as well as disputes to settle between two major factions who do not see eye to eye. Initially the player is an independent actor who can perform various actions to assist either (or both) factions inside a “designed conflicts” cluster. The player will gain faction reputation as a result of his or her actions and eventually be able to pick a side in a conflict (and join that faction). This means that the player effectively supports three different factions during the course of Act 2. As you progress with one faction and earn its trust, you will unlock faction rewards and access to one or more of their sub-factions. Sub-factions may offer special faction rewards (such as ) and unique equipment.


In terms of playtime we are aiming for the three conflicts to take around 8 hours each so 24 hours in total. However, at any point you are free to go off and explore other (“wild space”) clusters or even switch between the three “designed conflicts” clusters should you desire.

Act 3

Up until this point the conflicts have been contained inside individual clusters and only involved two factions. However, during Act 3 things will escalate quickly as the Rebel fleet and the Grand fleet arrive on the scene.

The player must pick which side to support during this final conflict and any allies the player may have made during Act 2 will come to the aid of the player.

Epilogue + open-world

As the final conflict is resolved in the Outer Rim the player is rewarded with unique upgrades based on the campaign choices that were made previously and gets to see the impact of his actions on the core worlds & factions.


The vast content (including backer content) available in each randomized galaxy will guarantee hours of additional play.

Event system

Next let us discuss the event system. What are events? Events are situations that occur during your playtime in The Mandate that require a response from either your crew or yourself as the captain of the ship. Your ship scanners may have found an escape pod with faint life signs floating in space. Do you take the pod on board and risk exposing the crew to whatever might be inside it, or do you leave it where you found it?

Some events require snap-decisions to be made, while others allow more in-depth problem-solving. In the aforementioned example, it could for instance be prudent to first let the medical officer look at the scan-data to see if there is a medical reason why the escape pod shouldn't be taken on board.

With that said - how are events started? While we have the ability to trigger events using almost any criteria you can think of we will limit even triggers to mainly be based on the location of the player fleet in space. This means for example that if your fleet is inside an asteroid belt then there is a chance that an asteroid belt event will trigger. The event system also has support for cool downs so we can limit how frequently an event of a specific type can trigger.

Events are not limited to outer space - your ship is a living, breathing anthill with many opportunities for you to interact with your crew and officers. If morale is low, the risk of certain events go up - on the flip side - if morale is high, the risk of other types of events go up. Events can be both positive and negative and are not designed to be hurdles to be jumped over. Rather, they are designed to convey the life and activity on board the ship while playing.

Events also vary depending on your campaign progress. They respond to the galaxy around you as you have affected it and how you play the game. Events can feed on themselves as well - a response in one event or the completion of a specific mission may lead to another event becoming available (or locked).


When an event triggers you can opt to respond in a number of different ways to the event. A number of basic event responses will always be available. Extra options may be available due to your captain’s traits, attributes or faction rank.

We also want the event system to let players make important moral choices which define your captain and how the world around you perceives you. It is important that you do not feel forced to act according to a single set of principles or morals, so we feature a diverse set of responses, ranging from morally reprehensible to generally accepted behaviour. These choices in turn may apply tags on your captain which we use to unlock or lock events further down the line as well as provide additional responses in subsequent events.

In addition, your officers may also have ideas about how to solve some of these events (based on their attributes and traits). A savvy Engineering officer may come up with a technical plan for hacking an enemy satellite to prevent it from relaying information about your whereabouts to your enemies or a very attentive Medical officer may suggest a way of dealing with an outbreak on board the ship.

This means that the player is exceptionally unlikely to have the same event occur twice in a playthrough, and if this happens then the event responses will be different.

Returning to the discussion in the introduction the event system is both an efficient way for us to reuse existing systems and to push the captain experience and put more emphasis on the human factor.

Let us now take a look at an event seen from a “technical behind the scenes” perspective...

Our event-system is designed to be very modular and easy to expand by both designers and possibly future modders. At its core, an event can be thought of as consisting of a Briefing, a selection of Responses and a selection of Outcomes. The Briefing of an event is the text shown to the player that outlines the event; for example:

"Captain! Short-range scanners are picking up a faint distress call from inside a nearby asteroid field. It could be a damaged ship but this is pirate space - it could just as well be a trap. Should we investigate?"

When an event is selected, our system runs through all the response-options, checking them to see whether the player qualifies for any (or all) of them. Once this check is completed, the Responses list is displayed.

To expand on the example from before, the responses for the player could include options such as:

• "Yes, we need to investigate but ready weapons just in case."
• "[Light Squadron] Scramble a recon squadron to investigate the signal. I am not going to risk this ship in case it is an ambush."
• "[Scanners 6] I want to make certain this is not just a pirate ploy. Do another scanner sweep and make sure there are no surprises lurking in the asteroid field."
• "No, let's not take any chances."

In this example the player has a Light Squadron in his hangar which means that (s)he may opt to send scouts to investigate. Furthermore, if the player captain or the chief astrogation officer has a Scanner rating of 6 or higher, (s)he may instead elect to perform another scanner sweep. This means that there is not only a single way of potentially solving a situation but multiple ones.

Once a response option has been selected, the event either proceeds to an outcome or an updated Briefing. If a sensor sweep was ordered and the Astrogation team finds nothing out of the ordinary, the briefing text will now update to show this information to the player (which may in turn lead to new Response options).

Now, how is the outcome decided? When we write events, we write a number of possible scenario variations for each event. When an event is triggered, one of the possible scenarios is set as “true”. So in our example above perhaps it IS a decoy ship or perhaps it is a damaged vessel that badly needs aid. Perhaps it is a damaged vessel from an enemy faction.

Let's say that the ship in our example is not a pirate but a damaged ship in dire straits; their reactor has taken a serious pounding and radiation is slowly leaking into the ship, poisoning the crew. Without help, they'll surely perish. The first step for the player may have been to scan the area to make sure there were no pirates around. However - a successful scan should inform the player about the full reality of the actual situation. The outcome of this step is a simple briefing update to reflect the facts as well as populate the Response list with appropriate responses to this situation.

From here, the player may now be able to choose from additional options more suited to this particular scenario - perhaps sending a medical team in radiation suits on board the vessel to extract crew or an engineering crew to attempt to repair the reactor. Again, the skills of the player and his officers will determine what options are available and not.

Bridge design

So far we have discussed the the campaign structure and the event system. This has been a lead up to the bridge dialogue mode. But before we discuss the bridge dialogue mode, let us quickly talk about bridge design.


We are taking a modular approach and are building six bridges: frigate, destroyer, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battlecruiser and battleship.


The starting frigate bridge will feel quite cramped (as it should be) but the bigger bridges will have more space. There is also a clear progression in terms of officer consoles, the introduction of the captain’s platform which elevates him above the rest of the crew (and very much in line with the historical/aristocratic inspirations for The Mandate) and expanded guest areas.


With our modular approach each faction will have variations of the holoscreen, captain’s platform, blast doors, stairs and the battle orchestrator.


When combined with faction-specific texture kits and faction-specific lighting this means that an Arkwright and Osmani heavy cruiser bridge will look and feel quite distinct.


In addition we are setting up several camera positions on each bridge. This will allow us to switch the camera around when the player is interacting with his officers. In addition we can set up some interesting shots on the holoscreen when the player is interacting with another ship captain or starbase commander.


Bridge dialogue mode


Now what exactly is the bridge dialogue mode? It is one of the primary ways for us to tell the story (campaign progress) as well as let you interact with events, and it is heavily inspired by the TV shows that we have used as inspiration for The Mandate.


Whenever you meet another ship/starbase in adventure mode and decide to hail it (or respond to its hail), or you respond to an event pop-up, or just wish to check reports from your officers, you can activate the bridge dialogue mode. This will pause the time on adventure mode and overlay your ship’s bridge.


At the bottom of the screen you will see your captain and XO. The service branch chiefs (chief engineer, chief medical officer etc) are arrayed in a semi-circle around the captain and XO. In the rear of the bridge there is a guest area where passengers or envoys may gather. At the top of the screen you will find the holoscreen or main display where event images or external contacts (typically ships, starbases, talking captains etc) are displayed. Depending on the size of the bridge each service branch chief may have one or more assistants which they can delegate tasks to.


As well as being a hub of communication with others through the holoscreen, you may enter the Bridge at any time you wish as part of normal gameplay. When you do, you may speak with your officers outside the context of an event or mission briefing to ask them about their thoughts on the current situation, request status reports from them or consult them on a variety of topics.


We are also making high resolution heads to be used with the holoscreen interactions in bridge dialogue mode, and these heads will also be used for character creation when you create your own captain character. Our process is such that we first start from 3D scans and our artists use this data to create heads that we can use.


Once we have several heads we can then blend these together to create entirely new heads. The image below shows our blending process and is obviously a work in progress (missing eye balls etc). The new head (in the middle) is generated using the two other heads (left and right) as input. There is still some work left on this system but the results so far are quite promising.


Next update we will do a video of the adventure mode with developer commentary to showcase the adventure mode, the event system as well as the new bridge dialogue mode. In addition we will have a production update to go over the status of art, design and code.

Cheers,
Your friends at Perihelion Interactive

 

[GlutenBurger]

This is still looking really good, and their site anticipates a release this year. This quarter, even, but that's way too optimistic.

I have some reservations on the basis that they're already planning DLC, but the price is pretty low so I may end up taking a chance on a preorder.

 

[Severian Silk]

Cool concept. Hope they succeed.