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Hey all!

This is Steve, lead developer of Alliance of the Sacred Suns. This is a quick blog to talk a little bit about the relative lack of updates from me! Basically, it’s hard having a baby, especially when you’re still working full-time as well as trying to complete an alpha for a game.

Although Ethan has been a great baby, he’s still a baby, with baby needs and baby volume, and with my 50 hour a week job, it’s been difficult for me to find time to develop. Oliver and Ogi have continued to work on the writing and the graphics, and I’m happy to say that I’ve found a new balance, my wife has been supportive with my efforts to rebalance everything, and have been able to successfully work on the game again.

We’re back on track and be ready to hear a lot about what we’re doing in the near future. I just wanted to muse a bit on how much your life changes when you have a kid for the first time and how much harder it is to get up in the morning! So this is a combination thanks to the team for carrying on and an apology that I haven’t posted more stuff in the last month or so. I promise to make up for lost time :-p

We’re going all-out on the .5 build for this month and it should be ready by the end of November. We’re starting to look at a target date for an alpha release that you can purchase. We’re not yet ready to set a date but we’re getting closer to that decision. We’re also in the process of redesigning our web site so we’ll have a one stop shop for all things AotSS in the near future. As always, you can catch up with the updates on the forum or this blog. Thanks for everyone’s patience – as some of you may know, it’s hard being indie!

-Ave imperator!

-Steve

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Hello again!! What what? 2 posts in a day? Must be getting active!

Anyway, in continuing to move Imperia towards its macro control design document, we introduce the concept of System and Sector Focii. Governors run their territory under a master ‘plan’ depending on their personality, traits, and the needs of (what they) feel is most important to their particular AOR (area of responsibility). Sector governors always set a top-level primary focus, with a corresponding secondary focus that show the ‘direction’ that the governor wishes to take. System governors are generally forced to run their system under their sector governor’s primary focus (using the sector secondary focus as their primary) but may pick an independent secondary focus depending on their ambition and/or will to do so. Viceroys, who are generally the low head on the totem pole, will be forced to more or less go along with their sector and system governors’ requests. Here are some examples of sector focii primary and secondary:

-Raise Revenue

Secondary: Increase All Taxes, Expand Economy, Expand Sector Economies, Cut Waste, Change Designation

-Build Military

Secondary: Expand Military Sector, Expand Starship Production Sector, Increase Taxes, Stockpile Materials, Build Sector Navy, Build Sector Army, Change Designation

-Promote Migration

Secondary: Terraform Worlds, Decrease All Taxes, Expand Economy, Expand Sector Economies, Build Starbases

-Promote Trade

Secondary: Build/Expand Starbases, Decrease Industry Taxes, Build Logistical Stations, Improve System Security

-Advance Technology

Secondary: Expand Science Sector, Increase Industry Taxes, Improve System Security, Build Science Colonies

-Expand Sector Territory

Secondary: Build Sector Navy, Build Sector Army, Request System Annexation, Colonize Planets, Create Colony

-Improve Admin Capabilities

Secondary: Expand Government Sector, Lower Industry Taxes, Improve Personal Popular Support, Cut Waste, Change Designation

As the Emperor, you can request that these focii be changed, or demand change with a sector or system Edict. You can also make changes at the planet level that go against the general spirit of the sector governor’s demands. For example, if your sector governor wants to raise revenues, asking your system governor or viceroy to lower taxes will not go over well. Depending on the relationships and power that a sector governor wields, some viceroys may be too afraid to make changes that they might otherwise be agreeable to! Again, Edicts trump all focii; although remember that if you involve system or sector assets, and the Edict goes against what the goals of the governor are, they might hang it in committee for a while…

Locking down a governor to ‘Nominal’ or ‘None’ Autonomy will allow you to choose the foci for a sector and have it enacted immediately. Of course, it takes a significant military presence in a sector to force an uncooperative sector governor to simply have their power reduced in such a way. The game will tell you what force ratio is required to be present on the system/sector capital to allow you to change a governor’s autonomy downward. Even if the governor is forced to change, they may still plot behind the scenes to change their situation! Oh, and yeah, locking down your governors this way is considered very, VERY tyrannical.

The full focii system will not be in .410, but should be in by the .5 release. But I wanted you to know what was coming and what another piece of the full political/social system of Imperia will look like!!

-Steve