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[Tarran]

You could also be proactive and ensure that systems which are less loyal to you or close to your enemies' borders have a military presence installed to provide some measure of defense against outside influence

So, are you saying military presence reduces influence, or do you mean just stationing in order to take over the planet when it changes?

Other questions:

How are planets recently taken from a influence empire going to be handled? Is there going to be some serious but temporary influence cost barrier to the influence empire easily taking them right back after the war?

Is there any sort of cooldown per-player on diplomatic proposals to limit how many actions can be made at once, or a limit on how much influence someone can have, to prevent someone military oriented from being hit several times in a row before they can react by someone with a lot of people willing to vote against you and a lot of saved points?

[Firgof Umbra]

Military presence increases loyalty; loyalty adds to the cost of performing influence actions on targets within that system.  High level planets also increase loyalty in the systems around them as well as the system they're in.  Net effect is that systems close to your core are particularly difficult to perform influence actions on, especially if they're defended with military assets.

Military presence can also decrease loyalty in the case of enemy Empires sitting in your systems.  This is one of the means for 'more peaceful' hostile takeovers: drain the loyalty of the system to 0 and then hit them with Annexes.  The alternatives are to commit Atrocities and Atrocities give political ammo to the Empire you're hitting.

Not sure on your other questions; I'll get back to you on those.

[Edmus]

I can't believe I only just now saw this thread!!!
PTW and all that, I'm reading through all your stuff now!

[ank]

Hey Firgof!
How are going to handle combat in SR2?
Combat was a huge problem in SR1 as fleets had a very hard time engaging each other because of the Newtonian mechanics.
Do you have any plans to address this?
I feel like attacking something is about as hard as docking in KSP...

[Edmus]

Okay, I have a question.
What happens to a planets development level after it is annexed (either militarily or diplomatically).

[Firgof Umbra]

Newtonian motion is still in for SR2 but it's been significantly improved from SR1.  In addition there'll be the ability, via FTL, to force your ships down to 0 velocity which should allow the player to prevent over-shoot etc.  Combat in general is going to be upgraded significantly.  We're still finalizing the design on interaction and specific mechanics.

What happens to a planets development level after it is annexed (either militarily or diplomatically).

Currently: Every three minutes the planet will lose a level from its original level after annexation; all the way down to L0.  You can prevent the loss of levels by supplying resources to the planet.  For instance, if you have a Level 1 world which will decay to a Level 0 world because it has no food or water, if you give it food and water it will not lose a level.

[ank]

Newtonian motion is still in for SR2 but it's been significantly improved from SR1.  In addition there'll be the ability, via FTL, to force your ships down to 0 velocity which should allow the player to prevent over-shoot etc.  Combat in general is going to be upgraded significantly.  We're still finalizing the design on interaction and specific mechanics.

Good to hear you are taking steps to improve combat.
When you say FTL, do you mean something like warp, that does not apply a force to the ship, and therefore does not have to brake?

An idea I got, a long time ago while playing SR1, was: Fudge the thrust so that ships would get maybe double thrust when braking or changing direction, compared to forward thrust?
I am not sure how this would play out, but it should make ships more manoeuvrable.
I know this is unrealistic, but realism in space games is a two-edged sword.

[Eclectic Wizard]

Oh god yes! I loved the first game, even though i never became an empire capable of creating worlds.

I cant wait to try the second one! Please dont make it easier at all! Will the AI cheat? Yay!!!

[Firgof Umbra]

Will the AI cheat?

Only if you tell it to.

When you say FTL, do you mean something like warp, that does not apply a force to the ship, and therefore does not have to brake?

There are four main types of FTL in SR2; two are not on-board systems.  You'll probably begin the game having selected which to start with.  All of them cost "FTL Fuel" which is a slow to generate, rare, resource.  When ships come out of FTL, they come out at zero velocity.

• Hyperdrive:  Your ships phase into subspace and travel at superluminal speed to their destination.
• Slipstream: The ship goes FTL and creates a 'FTL wake' which other ships can travel in to its destination.
• Gate: A large slow-moving structure which, given enough time to situate itself after moving, can establish a permanent wormhole to another available gate.  (The Gate itself cannot go FTL.)
• Fling: Much like a railgun, Fling accelerates its target to superluminal velocities but it can only Fling nearby objects.

The "FTL Brake" may be a thing that all ships can do regardless of what type of FTL drives you have or maybe it requires a subsystem.  It may or may not be semi-automatic (e.g. "I'm going to miss my target, but I'm very close to it while passing by it, so I'll spend FTL to make a zero-distance jump to instantly null my velocity).  We're still rubberstamping that part of FTL.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

cool.

Speaking of combat, will we be seeing any more cool fleet formations? maybe custom fleet formations?

I mean, lines of battle right?

[Xantalos]

I'm liking this more every time I look at it. How much do you estimate it'll cost?

[TheDarkStar]

This looks interesting. I'll have to take a look at the original game too.

[Farce]

Fling sounds hilarious.  I don't suppose I could use it to shoot planets at enemy empires I don't like?  Because that would be pretty great.

Will ships require having those vector maneuvering thrusters, like in Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, or will they still have to flip around to do their whole 'thrust' thing?  Are there any plans to implement directional armor/shielding and the like?

[Firgof Umbra]

I don't suppose I could use it to shoot planets at enemy empires I don't like?

Maybe.  We've considered that possibility amongst other fun (ab)uses but haven't finalized Fling's mechanical design yet. 

Are there any plans to implement directional armor/shielding and the like?

Shields may or may not be omni but armor is likely to be directional.

Will ships require having those vector maneuvering thrusters, like in Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, or will they still have to flip around to do their whole 'thrust' thing?

They will have to do a burn on their anti-forward-velocity vector to reach 0 velocity, yes.  We may provide an option, as we did in SR, to force ships to face their target vector at all times rather than show where they're thrusting. 

The reason for the flipping: If you want a ship to reach a destination as fast as possible but reach 0 velocity when it gets there, it'll be doing a full burn the whole way; half accelerating towards the target and half decelerating towards the target.  Since SR's ships have their engine on the rear, the thrust vector has to flip to accommodate the second full burn.  That said, it'll be in script format this time around so the community may be able to provide mutations (e.g. the classic ST-style 'inertial dampener' effect).

How much do you estimate it'll cost?

Price hasn't been decided yet but it'll probably be aggressively priced, as SR1 was.

Speaking of combat, will we be seeing any more cool fleet formations? maybe custom fleet formations?

Formations are going to be much more moldable than before.

[Firgof Umbra]

Things you can never have enough of.
a) Bullets.
b) Humongous filesize gifs.

Spoiler: (Warning) Huge GIF (click to show/hide)

Sorry it's taking longer than I hoped for this next dev diary.  There are a lot of systems that are kinda/sorta not quite ready to show and under some flux so it'll be a while yet before we can showcase more on the game.  Hopefully not too long though.

(Please note: The above GIF doesn't represent how fast the game runs; it's much smoother and faster than the GIF implies.  Also, if not immediately apparent: art being shown is mostly placeholder.)

Also, interest check: Who would like to see a streamed multiplayer match of SR2 at some point?  We'd be the ones playing (I'll be playing as the Empire that's going to lose against Lucas'; as is Reaper (at least that's how the last 5 or so MP games have gone) )