Try try again

As with so many projects, I abandoned this game after a while. There were a multitude of reasons.

I used Bevy before, which is a great "engine" don't get me wrong, but it made me fight all the way writing a prototype. I made the mistake of tying the game logic into its ECS system. I don't even think its such a bad idea, but it slows down exploration while prototyping.

I couldn't make the game "fun" - while game logic complexity increased manifold I decided to make every aspect "moddable" by config files - which is VERY nice while tweaking, but horribly to change fundamentally.

Now a lot of time has passed. I still think the basic game idea is solid and pretty much unexplored: Instead of map movement, it's "who gets to act next". But reducing the state space on that side requires a lot of tweaking on the "potential actions" side. It can't just be fire and forget, it requires actions that voluntary and involuntary move ships back and forth in a predictable but albeit surprising way.

And this is where the new prototype comes in: Macroquad allows me to quickly build web-builds. The game has a "not-ui-tied" logic core that can be unit tested and played by a simple bot (to some degree - I only test combat that way). Turn based games, while seeming simpler, have an inherent complexity due to logic happening on transitions (When a ship get active do this... etc.).

Despite the simplicity of the UI I hope you enjoy playing around a bit, a battle takes only a few minutes. Feel free to comment what you liked or disliked!