Pirate Dragons has been live for about a month and now that things have settled down a bit, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the future plans I have for the game! [h2][b]New Battle Types[/b][/h2] I'm working on a variety of battle types that can be used on their own or as part of a mission or quest. Note, some of these are only in the design phase so the details may change. Also I may decide to not do one or some of these if they aren't fun. [list][*][b]Destroy Enemy Ships[/b] - this is the current battle scenario. [*][b]Escort[/b] - a battle that requires you to protect another ship until the ship makes it so specific location in the battle map. At first this will be a new mission type to get in towns, however it can also be used for more story based content such as ensuing a governor makes it back to their town safely or guarding a ship with a specific, important cargo. Use the tactical map to order your ships to intercept enemy vessels and use breath weapons like ice to block off enemy ships. To win, the escort ship must survive, meaning you don't have to destroy all of the enemy ships to win. [*][b]Take and Hold[/b] - use the tactical map ([i]did you know there is a tactical map in the battles!? There is! Press M to open it![/i]) to tell your ships to sail to a specific location and stay there until an objective is completed. Sample uses for this could be pillaging an outpost, picking up loot (perhaps the floating loot event uses this too!) or capture the flag style gameplay. Destroy the outpost's defenses so they don't blow apart your ships while they pillage. As above, you don't have to destroy all of the enemy ships. You win when take each point. [*][b]Destroy Outposts/Forts[/b] - a normal battle except the enemy has small fortifications that must be destroyed. In this battle, you also don't have to destroy the enemy ships to win. Although leaving them alone means a LOT of cannonballs coming your way! [*][b]Defend Location[/b] - in this mode, you'll either be defending a fort or defending a damaged ship or some other object that can't move. This battle has a countdown timer and you will have to hold off waves of enemy ships until reinforcements arrive. Depending on balance, this mode might have more balloon powerups from your ships or even from whatever you are defending. Having healing breath will be very important in this mode to keep your ships afloat![/list]I have the escort battle working right now. The others are in various states of design or early development. [h2][b]Factions and Economy[/b][/h2] I want to make factions more meaningful. [list][*][b]Notoriety [/b]- gaining positive notoriety will unlock mission types and quests. Gaining negative notoriety already causes factions to send convoys to attack you. I'd like to add a bit more to this as well. Also, I want faction notoriety to improve slowly over time if you have negative notoriety. This allows you to get out of the bottom if you leave a faction alone for a while. High notoriety will not decrease over time. [*][b]Economy Balance [/b]- right now there isn't really a need to buy and trade goods because battles yield a lot of resources. I want trading to matter more while also keeping battles rewards. Right now you can go over your maximum cargo from battles. I left this in because I didn't have a clear way for you to know you are at cargo capacity and fighting a battle and getting nothing from it would be a negative experience. Once I do some more work on the economy, and surface your cargo capacity better, I'll likely start to enforce the max capacity. Also, right now each resource has one price for buying and selling. I did that to keep things simple, but I might change this so resources have a buy price and a sell price. This would allow me to have factions give you a discount on the sale price without also automatically lowing the buy price. For each town, the price to sell resources will never be higher than the price to buy them though of course. This will require a pretty big update to the Trading UI as well as having a big impact on the economy, so I will probably not do this part any time soon. [*][b]Faction Resource Focus[/b] - right now the factions already focus on different resources but I don't communicate that well. I'd like to make this more obvious and also have factions request resources they are running out of, essentially creating a mission opportunity that is based on the actual state of the economy. [*]Economy State Changes - like the above, your actions already affect the economy. So if you destroy a convoy that is carrying fish and it's on it's way to the town of Trensec, the cost of fish will go up in Trensec because those fish never arrived. Again, this isn't communicated well so I want to improve that and make this even more meaningful. [*][b]Faction Differences [/b]- I want to add some differences between the factions. For example, Verrxenn might make better cannons, Baphel better captains, Alporee better crew, and Pithariee focuses on hulls. To get rank 3 in one of those ship parts, you'll need to go to a faction town that specializes in that part. Your notoriety will affect the cost of that upgrade and if your notoriety is super low, the faction may refuse to upgrade your ship unless you do something to gain their favor first. [/list] [h2][b]Story[/b][/h2] I have the beginnings of an overarching story that I want to add to the game. Taking part in the quests associated with the story will be optional but may unlock some aspects of game play. I'm still working through this so it may be a bit further in the future. [h2][b]Miscellaneous Stuff[/b][/h2] Some other things I want to work on: [list][*][b]Full Controller Support[/b] - you can use a controller to play, but full support means adding a virtual keyboard, adding controller support for slider bars in the settings UI, changing the controls text when using a controller, and controller button mapping. [*][b]Steam Deck[/b] - Pirate Dragons already works on Steam Deck (including the built-in virtual keyboard) but I can't officially request certification. Hopefully Valve will look at Pirate Dragons and give the thumbs up some time soon. If there is any work to get verified, I'll make it a high priority, [*][b]Quality of Life[/b] - mostly doing a better job surfacing things like quest rewards when you complete a quest, faction notoriety, more settings options, and other things that will make Pirate Dragons more enjoyable to play![/list] This is a pretty big list for one developer, so it may take me a while to get to all of it! I would love to hear your thoughts on these ideas as well as hearing your own ideas! Thank you for all of the feedback and support everyone! A nd, don't forget to join the Pirate Dragons discord! -Jonathan "Calandryll" Hanna jon@supersixstudios.com [list][*]My Twitter: [url=https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios]https://twitter.com/SuperSixStudios[/url] [*]Discord Channel: [url=https://discord.gg/qjMQMA79xe]https://discord.gg/qjMQMA79xe[/url][/list]