UNION Cooperative Spaceship Simulator

Faerdan

Hi all,


I'm an indie (as in independant) game developer based in Dublin (but I'm a Galway man through and through ).

I've been developing UNION in my spare time for over a year now, and it's finally gotten to a stage where I feel that I can share.

UNION is a cooperative spaceship simulator with deep tactical gameplay. You, and up to four friends, take control of up to five stations (Captain, Helm, Tactical, Engineering and Science) on the ship, working together to survive, and maybe conquer.


This video shows my latest progress:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9rl05sg9-U

At the moment I'm using IndieDB to post media and updates, which you can find here. On that page you'll find my first dev diary entry, which talks about the flight system in UNION.

I'm basically looking to build a following for the game and would love to get feedback on developments. Early Watchers on IndieDB will get access to the closed alpha early next year (February/March) for themselves and three of their friends (four keys).

For those who may be wondering, UNION is inspired by Artemis, though it's a very different game.


Thanks,

Mark

Overheal

Neat. Reminds me of battlefield genre games that use multiple seats in a vehicle to house different weapons/functions, but with more depth by the time you get your end product. Keep going with this. What role does each position play, aside from the obvious? Engineering seems a little hard to figure out from a game perspective, just to me, so Im intrigued. I could see perhaps engineering teaming up with science to analyze enemy weapons and shields to remodulate your own weapons and shields to match up and leave tactical free to do the pewpew.

Faerdan

UNION has quite a large scope and I find it difficult to condense down into a few paragraphs.

The Engineer is one of my favourite stations though. Basically every system on the ship (sensors, weapons, shields, engines etc) has an energy bank/battery. The engineer controls the input and output power for each system. The higher the output power the more energy is expended per system use and the more performant the system is (better sensors, more weapon damage, more damage absorbtion by the shields etc). The higher the input power is the faster the enery bank recharges (so weapons, shields etc recharge faster).

There is a cost though. Input power generates heat per second and output power generates heat per use. Each system can dissipate a set amount of heat per second, going above this causes the system to overheat, which can damage the structural integrity of the system, making it less effective and in extreme cases causing it to explode.

The total heat output of each system also sets the energy signature of the ship, the bigger this is the easier the ship is to detect and the stronger any locks on the ship will be.

The Engineer has other things to do as well but that's the core of the station.


You're pretty much spot on with Science and shield/weapon modulation. I've posted an overview of the game to IndieDB, which has a description of each station, but it probably won't be authorised by an admin until tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you're interested, you can read it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r01wIgKetOQG6Z95Ojl6IhzzmVjx5FoCSsJivto1k-U/edit