«Sol-Ark»

 

«Sol-Ark» - is an indie-project focusing on 2D space faring real-time strategy (RTS) with some Rogue-like and Sand-Box elements. It’s an old-school hand-made flash project

 

Approximate release date

 

Approximate release date - middle of 2016

 

Inspirations for developers

 

–“Faster than Light” (FTL), “Dwarf Fortress” (DF), “Ancient Domains Of Mystery” (ADOM) and “Laser Squad” (LS) projects.

 

The main protagonist

 

The main protagonist: Virtual Intelligence system (V.I.) of space ship station «Sol-Ark 1»

 

Main game features:

 

Indirect crew management

 

The player poses and highlights problems and issues, sets priority (if it is needed) and appoints the specialization of NPCs. More info here

 

Deep Space Sand-Box

 

Sol Ark’s core mechanic centers on the player’s ability to build their own unique space vessel, from the wall and floor sections, to different communication arrays, electronic systems and other structural elements

 

Necessity of constant control on crew life-support systems and habitat

 

• Keep an eye on the crew’s health level along with indicators of morale condition and tiredness level.

• Sustain necessary oxygen resources; develop systems for water production and food storage

• Manage the treatment of NPC intoxications, injuries, infections and radiation sickness.
• Monitor energy manufacturing and consumption, and upgrade to increase the effectiveness of monitoring and management systems
• Extract some metals, inorganic and organic compounds, fuel, oxygen, water and food

 

Space battles with other ships and stations, landing operations, sabotage groups and personal crew fights

 

• Use a large arsenal of tactics and strategy to prepare attack and defense sytems for enemy combat.

• Destroy an enemy battleship with torpedoes, or turn off all electrical ship-equipment and pretend to be dead ship and board the enemy
• Plunder a trader or capture a pirate stronghold.

• Wide variety of battleship weaponry, defensive and resistance systems

 

 

Scientific and engineering projects for ship upgrading

 

• Invent new equipment, shells, systems and subsystems
• Increase your ship’s V.I. computing power, which allows you to expand the management of different systems and subsystems
• Search data bases on derelict and conquered space objects

 

Fully destructible environment

 

• Construct/Break down station sections into pieces, extract resources from asteroids and comets, extinguish fires and repair flooding damages, and neutralize the epicenters of chemical and radioactive contamination
• Extract minerals from asteroids, earn abilities to disassemble an asteroid down to the very last rock, or integrate your ship with the asteroid to create a base and inner compartment to your station.

 

Journeys through the stellar systems

 

The game generates random events which differ in class, severity, effects and consequences:

 

For example, the rays from a gamma-burst (small, average or large) in a neighboring galaxy can induce a rapid growth of plants on your hydroponic platforms, or conversely, lead to a station-wide fire or break down some electronic schemes. The burst can also ray your crew and cause radiation sickness. Other effects include providing a stimulating effect to wound healing (the effect of small doses) or greatly increase fertility on the insect farms.

 

Random generated game world map

 

There will be several map levels to navigate at any time in the game:

• The station management and crew activity level;
• Spaceship battles, trade and docking with different space objects level;
• Journey within sole solar system level;
• Journeys between different stellar systems level.

 

Freedom of action within the game world, free walkthrough, interesting storyline

 

Explore randomly generated space objects, disassemble their parts or use the objects as modules for enlarging your station.

Venture out on side quests strewn through the game’s galaxies, or befriend NPCs from different classes and factions and join them on their own quests.

Bravely fly out to the strange and unknown quadrants where the Sol Ark must explore, defend, and fight its way through the main storyline to complete its core mission.

 

Crew morale system and its influence on NPC’s actions.

 

• Many factors and events can either increase NPC’s morale level or decrease it.
• Influence on NPC’s morale is not linear and depends on the NPC’s surroundings, class of NPCs and their tasks. Thusly, a panicked Technic can freeze with fear; try to escape, refuse to perform its task, execute a suicide or even instigate a mass suicide; pick up an enemy’s assault rifle and boldly venture into battle to try and become a hero (this may not necessarily be successful).
• >Or, for example, a crew member may become temperamental due to the monotony of meals or food deprivation. A NPC with an unstable psyche can fall into apathy and refuse to perform a task, but it can also take a pistol/flamethrower/rocket launcher and start to shoot its own crew memebers, or <<quietly>> jump out from the space gateway, or <<not so quietely>> blow up the thermonuclear reactor on the ship.

 

There will no standard ability to save/load the game

 

• There will be auto saving before quitting and during key moments of the game, but the gamer has to respond to all events, including the negative ones. In other words, the player will not be allowed to reload after an asteroid has smashed half of their station compartment and all the crew has been carried out into deep space. The player will need to take care of the disaster’s aftermath, proceed to repair damages and initiate rescue operations, extinguish fires, etc.
• There will be a temporal management system implemented that will allow the  limited ability to load game back to key time nodes.

 

Great number of ship systems and subsystems

 

• For example, the ion engine consists of a jet system, a combustion chamber, a magnetic coil and fuel pump/fuel barrel. By combining different types of hardware you can achieve an array of engine features and optimize its efficiency.

• Each ship system will require manual/personal control (i.e. gamer must utilize a responsible NPC crew member to conduct maintenance or monitoring), or control by automatic systems (provided you have enough computing power in your V.I.)