Dev Journal: Thoughts on Bases (Patreon)

BASE OVERVIEW:

    One of the things I want to implement for the Alpha is a base management system that both incorporates vore, and gives additional utility to your vessels. I've been brainstorming on how I want to do this for a while now, and I think I've come up with a solution that I like for it.

    Entering the Base menu, you will see an isometric map of the base, with vessel chibis roaming the interior. Three colored meters will appear on the side representing resources to be used in this mode: Materials, Population, and Morale. Set plots will be available for the player to construct facilities in, each of which has a different effect. Vessels can be assigned to each facility, increasing its positive effects and potentially affecting their passive vore rate (More on that later.)

    Base management will be a balancing act between the aforementioned resource types. Materials will increase the player's passive income of currencies like seeds that can be used outside of base mode. Population will increase the passive vore rate of all units. Morale will increase (or decrease if low) the positive effects of all non-Morale generating facilities.

    There will be different sub-categories of facility, but the most important types will be:

• Dyson's Sphere: Dyson is a gigantic, mute vessel that serves as the beating heart of the base. Her chamber is built from the start, and increases a unique resource called Energy at the expense of Population. A different amount of Energy is required for each facility to operate, making this the most important room on the base. Both the Energy output and Population consumption of this room can be increased by upgrading it with resources obtained over the course of the campaign.

•  Vessel Creation Laboratory: Produces Population at the expense of Materials.

• Production Facility: Produces Materials at the expense of Morale.

• Recreational Facility: Produces Morale at the expense of Population. Assigned units will have a highly increased passive predation rate.

PASSIVE PREDATION:

    Passive predation has already been implemented in the current version, but not fully. In the future, each unit will have a log of all units they have eaten, and the circumstances they were eaten in. If this was player-controlled it will appear as something like "Eaten on 0-5" or "Fed by Commander," but in cases of passive predation it will randomly select from a list of options combined from the predator, the prey, and the facility the pred was assigned to.

    Passive predation is based on time passed. Every time you complete a mission, a certain amount of time will pass. It's also possible there may be ways to make time pass manually while remaining on the base. To be honest, passive predation is mostly for fluff purposes, but each unit will also permanently gain a fractional amount of stats every time they digest prey (based on what the prey is) making it a decent way to grow your favorite units as well.

    A quick list of potential facilities and vore scenarios is as follows:

• Dyson's Sphere: Increases Energy, decreases Pop. Assigned vessels will clean and feed Dyson, increasing Energy output, and may have Dyson share her prey, out of appreciation, or sample them for themselves.

• Vessel Creation Laboratory: Increases Population, decreases Materials. Assigned vessels will aid the Doctor in operating the equipment, and may sneak some of the new vessels after they're created.

• Dormitory: Increases max Population. Assigned vessels will clean and maintain the dorms, very slightly increasing Morale, and may eat sleeping vessels or those wandering the halls alone at night.

• Cafeteria: Slightly increases Population and Morale by helping vessels ease their hunger pangs. Assigned vessels will cook and clean, and may eat unruly customers or those sneaking to have a bite from the kitchen.

• Laboratory: Increases Materials, decreases Morale. Assigned vessels will assist in experiments and material production, and may eat others as an experiment or through the result of workplace accidents.

• Factory: Increases materials, increases production of a certain currency, decreases morale. Assigned vessels will work on a production line, and may eat others as lunch while on break.

• Gym: Increases morale, decreases population. Assigned vessels will work out, maintain the equipment, and may eat unsuspecting visitors as protein or training.

• Pred Maid Cafe: Increases morale, increases passive vore rate universally, highly decreases population. Assigned vessels will work at the cafe, blessing their customers food, and occasionally churning them. Your other vessels may also enter the cafe as customers and devour the other patrons.

• Music Stage: Increases morale, decreases population. Assigned vessels will perform on stage, help manage other acts, and may eat adoring fans through handshakes events, crowd dives, etc.

    A comment I've seen a lot is people wishing for more vore that isn't controlled directly by the player, so I think this is a good solution to add a lot more variety to the vore and make the base feel more alive without adding a huge amount of extra work. Let me know how this sounds to you all, too!

GENERAL UPDATE:

    I got the character design bug last week, so I ended up spending a big chunk of it just working on a couple of new designs. The good news is 1 of the 3 designs required for Alpha is now totally done and ready to be drawn, and I am very happy with how it turned out.

    Outside of that, I'll likely release one more fix trying to address the last of the issues in the current version and hopefully not introducing too many more soon. I'm also (finally) going to start releasing beta builds from time to time in the Discord. These often won't feature any new content and will really just be for bug testing purposes, so I really appreciate anyone that does take the time to check them out! The first beta build (coming some time soon) will be the aforementioned fix, so hopefully once it makes its way onto the patreon page it shouldn't contain any major bugs. Lastly, thank you so much for the support and reading this long post! It'll be a good ways out, but I can't wait to show you the new character once she's in the game!