"No Nation Was Ever Ruined By Trade"

6 May 2011

…and, hopefully, Distant Star won’t be either. In the last week or so I’ve made good progress on the 1.5 update, which will bring trade lanes, freighters, and (as a result) a more complex and flexible economy. Adding in trade affects almost every aspect of the game: new technologies, new ships, new stuff happening on the main screen.

Freighter

There’s a lot left to go, though — I want to make sure that establishing and managing trade lanes feels like a natural part of the game, rather than something stuck in as an afterthought. Right now, only the human race has trade ships, and the AI remains blissfully unaware of their existence; obviously, this cannot continue. I also need to make it more intuitive to establish routes, and show how much wealth they’re generating. Whether this is through some sort of drill-down economy screen or something more clever I can’t yet say.

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