Last week, I mostly focused on implementing the racing mode Fresh Freight. My original idea was that different types of ships with different abilities would tow containers through the system. However, it turned out not to be that much fun when I finally got to play it.

The main problem was that the ships were quite spaced out, so there was naturally no interaction between them, and you could just fly uninterrupted through the race. This was partially solved by allowing only ships of the same type to race together. But it still needed more mechanics to encourage interactions between ships. Therefore, I added these simple things.

Finish condition

The connection between a ship and a container can be broken when too much force is applied. You have to finish the race with an attached container, but you don’t have to fly through the checkpoints with it. This allows you to try to snap the joints of other ships to slow them down, or even snatch their container when you have lost yours.

Ship collisions

Ships now take damage when they hit something hard. This makes flying through debris fields more dangerous. To make ramming opponents more rewarding, a properly executed ram can deal heavy damage and even let you steal some of their energy.

Besides this, I also had to implement some behavior for bots to let them race, so I could better evaluate all the mechanics. This is always a painful part of development, but I think I have a good enough implementation for now, that it could even be used to let bots fly together with players.