Stationmaster 2

I don't think I need to wait very long. The response to the poll was pretty overwhelming.

I have quite a bit more thinking to do, but I've been sketching out some design, and come up with the basic path I want to follow. This is the time to make major changes, so if you have any feedback on core stuff you think could be improved on, this would be a great place to leave it.

So far, the big core design changes I'm planning are:

• Scrap the old character engine and use the one from Exalted. This is slightly less flexible, but the models and animations are much better. This should resolve a ton of issues, though clothes, gender overhaul, and furries probably won't be in 0.1.
• Decouple animations from macro. This should save a lot on performance and allow stuff like multiple floors (think Startopia). It might even unlock enough performance for VR to become viable (that requires a lot more UI thought though, and I still have to work out if it's worth it to start with that in mind).
• Time controls.
• More detailed army management. Make armies have positions around planets, and handle opposing factions' armies as armies, not events.
• For the nerds: Ditch that piece of shit ASCII save system in favor of SQLite (or maybe JSON).
• There needs to be a bigger distinction between "Harem" characters and "Station" characters, with the former getting much more development. I'm still thinking about what this would look like, but my gut tells me that the biggest writing focus should be on more detailed personalities and training for the few you care the most about. AIDungeon has taught me a lot about how to do this well, and while SM2 probably won't have direct access to GPT-3, I can definitely use it to pump out a lot of events.

Things I think should stay the same are:

• The tone of the game, the main character, and the universe it is set in (but not the other characters).
• The construction and management-centric UI. Although it will be gaining floors (and losing the pillar), the moment-to-moment gameplay should look about the same. I won't be making the player's environment a core part of the gameplay anymore. It seemed like a good idea in theory, but didn't work well for QPQ or Exalted.
• The core gameplay loops around station building and conquest.
• Random events and furniture items (with some content edits for things I've learned about writing since then), though I plan to write new faction leaders and "main quest" events.