u/Cloud_Fortress_Games

Something got thru your defenses and hit your base. Ok, now what?

I'm building a pressure management game set in deep space where you command an Outposts defense while you mine ore from asteroids to upgrade the Outpost. To make damage mean something I built a quadrant system as the outer layer of the Outpost. Each quadrant is tied to a critical system like shields or turrets. Damaging a quadrant causes a state change in the system its tied to. Shield integrity drops, turret fire rate falls and other more unique states. These states are gated by threshholds and have varying levels. Example from %100-%70 normal then from %69.9 to %50 minor degradation and so on. Quadrants can be repaired. They repairs are automatic and begin after five seconds of a quadrant taking no damage. And for every five seconds beyond that there is an increase in repair rate up to a hard cap. So I'm wondering is this in any way a smart or elegant solution to making damage mean something more than just a lower number on an HP bar or is it too much.

I am done with P1 of design and dev for my first game Outpost Omega. Or so I thought. Now that I'm tuning the game I'm finding things from P2 that i pushed out of P1 with the goal of not bloating my prototype stage to be needed in P1. Things likens rotating turret instead of free click to fire. The core loop is solid. I had my 7 year old try it and she loved it and kept wanting to beat her "score" I'm using Ore gathered count to determine that as of now P1 has Environmental pressure thru 3 types of asteroids. Direct pressure thru 3 tiers of basic ships with a swarm mechanic. A system that moves the asteroids in a specific way not just free floating toward the outpost. A slow, 0.5 second interval auto fire from the outposts cannons as well as player controlled cannons. Later phases include new types of ships, upgrades to existing ships. A merge mechanic for asteroids, a couple readability upgrades and such. So should I keep tuning what I have or build more or P2?