Reading our devlogs on a weekly basis gives you a good idea about what we are currently up to. It is easy though to lose sight of the big picture and our medium term goals. With this devlog we want to recap what happened in the last months and what happens next.
In July last year we have been able to finally share the good news with you: Our application for funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action has been greenlit (devlog #393). The application consisted of three major parts:
A German translation of the game and related pages
Part one of the politics extension: parliaments and motions
Part two of the politics extension: infrastructure
Translation
The funding program will run for a whole year. Right after the summer break we started working on the German translation. The German translation has been a requirement of the funding program. Since there was no way around that, we decided to translate several other resources as well: the account management, the handbook, the website and last but not least the Steam page.
We released the german translation in January with the Transmission Release and took the opportunity to do some influencer marketing on german YouTube channels as well. I even joined a twitch dev stream of a large German streamer and presented the game to his audience.
Doing all of this, not just translating the game itself, definitely worked out for us. We saw increased sign-up rates over many weeks and could grow the player base.
Parliaments and Motions
We started working on the actual politics extension in autumn last year (devlog #405). But what is it all about?
We want to move away from single players being governors, to a system that has parliaments. These parliaments can have multiple members of parliament (count depending on planet population, elected by the local players) that form the local government. All activities of these governments have to go through a voting system based on motions. That way the activities of governments are far more transparent for the inhabitants of the planets than with the current system.
Right now, being the governor of a planet is a tough job, since APEX doesn't provide them with the proper tools, for example to manage funds. All fees that a governor earns are being transferred to and divided amongst the members of the governor's corporation. Since there is no separation between the accounting of a company and the governor, most players form a new corporation, specifically while they are in office.
To combat that, we decided, a long time ago actually, that governments need their own accounting and other systems. In order to make the accounting system independent of the governor's company accounting we can implement it in two ways:
a. Have separate commands for everything a player does when acting as governor.
b. Allow a player to switch between several contexts (company, government, ..) and re-use the existing commands.
Obviously we decided to pursue option b. Here is how we envision it:
Once a player gets voted into office a new context is available (think 'Government of Promitor', for example). The context can be changed via a drop-down menu, similar to the existing screens drop-down. Once switched to the new context, a default screen greets the new member of parliament. The company-related screens are all hidden, instead the player can create new screens that are relevant for the given context. Using an existing command, for example FINLA, will not show the player's liquid assets, but rather the ones of the government.
We are currently making good progress on these features. The context switch has been the toughest nut to crack, but it works now:
We have a system in place that prevents access to commands that should not be available in a given context:
There is a new `GOV` command that displays all kinds of government information:
Motions can be created, edited and the voting process is implemented:
We are currently working on the motion components. These are the building blocks of the motions and effectively describe the outcome of a motion. We have many ideas for motion components, but here is the list with a few essential ones:
Local rules: So far, the local rules can only be changed by the governor. We want to move this system over into the new governments
Population infrastructure: Motions will allow to change the target levels
Government programs: These will also be a responsibility of the government
Access to the FX: Since governments have their own accounting now, we want to allow motions to create buy and sell orders on the FX markets
Payout: A payout motion will allow to transfer government funds to a player
Fees: The government will also be able to control production, warehouse and local market fees via motions
Once we have all these essential features implemented we will release them. Right now we don't have a concrete release data in mind. We'll let you know once we do :)
Infrastructure
You might have noticed that we haven't talked about the last part of the funding application: Infrastructure.
The motivation here is two-fold: We want to make the job of the governments even more interesting by letting them control certain infrastructure via motions. At the same time we want to make the universe more vivid and interesting for players.
In the past months we have created design documents for different kinds of infrastructure:
Space elevators that allow to transfer cargo to the surface/orbit without using a ship
Beacons that allow faster STL or FTL travel
"Hyperlanes" that open up new FTL connections
.. and a few more. We haven't decided yet what the infrastructure part will be. Again, we'll let you know once we do :)
We hope this devlog makes it clearer were we are at the moment and what to expect in the next months.
TRANSFORMATION update now live!
New Features
German translation - Willkommen!
APEX is now available in German. That makes German, after English, the second officially supported language.
The logout button has been replaced with a drop down menu. It hosts the audio mute button as well as a new component that allows to switch between English and German.
The tutorial and wiki sections of the handbook have been translated as well.
As 2023 draws to a close, we'd like to take a moment to reflect on the year and provide a brief glimpse into what lies ahead in 2024.
Our journey in 2023 began with a makeover of the new player experience. As outlined in various devlogs, if we want to increase the amount of players, we have two options: spend more marketing money to get more players into the game, or try to keep players engaged for longer. Our work on the new player experience falls into the second category. We transitioned from a single UI tour to a system of tours that is interconnected with introductory contracts provided by faction agents. The tours introduce major game mechanics, like the UI, contracts, flights, trading and so on. With the help of SeaPear we also replaced the old tutorial videos with brand-new ones! All in all, this makeover was very successful, we saw a significant improvement in the retention of new players!
A project that wasn't as successful was the UI refresh. Given that we are still using a design that Martin and I came up with during the early days of Prosperous Universe, it really is time to let someone who knows what they are doing re-design the UI. We found someone and even started to redo some of the UI components, but eventually the project was put on hold in favor of more pressing matters. We haven't given up on the UI refresh though and hope to finish the project some time in the future.
In March, we introduced the first Monthly Economic Report. At the time, players suggested to create some sort of report to gain more insights into the economy. We liked the idea, but due to our limited dev-time couldn't make this an in-game feature. Instead, each month we publish a screenshot from our internal tool that tracks this kind of data. The reports now live on the forums.
In May Nick posted his final devlog as he, unfortunately, left the company. Lena and Michi assumed his marketing duties, concentrating on influencer marketing mainly on YouTube, but also Twitch. Performance marketing, which had not proven effective for us, is currently on hold.
Martin said it himself: Something's up when he makes an appearance in a devlog. In July he announced the good news. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action has greenlit a new Prosperous Universe project. We have been keeping it secret up until that point, when we were able to secure the funding. The project consists of three major parts: a German translation, a politics update and an infrastructure update. The German translation is a requirement to get the funding, but it has been on our wishlist for a long time anyways. With the politics update we want to introduce a new politics system that allows more participation by the general player base and finally gets rid of the shortfalls players experience with the governor system. The third part will introduce new infrastructure projects and will also change how infrastructure is built and operated.
With the Liquidity Release, a major update has seen the light of day in July as well. It brought a host of new features. We introduced Leaderboards where players can compare themselves with others in many different categories, like amount of bases, ships, HQ level and most interestingly the production output for individual commodities and resources. The APEX representation center is a "show-off" feature that allows investing hard-earned currency to show your wealth to the universe. Another feature that has been received very well are loan contract templates. These extend the existing contract features and allow to hand out customized loans to other players. Especially new players profit from these, and it can speed up the early game quite a bit. The full release notes are available on the forums.
After the summer break we started to work on the German translation. We decided that it is not enough to "just" translate the game itself, but everything around it as well. That includes the website, the account system, the handbook and the Steam page. Although we planned ahead and added support for additional translations when we started Prosperous Universe this turned out to be more work than anticipated. We are happy to announce that the translation is done, and we'll be able to release it early next year.
Recently, work began on the second major milestone of the new project: politics. We envision a context system that allows players to switch back and forth between their company context and any government contexts that they might have. This allows players to have a separate set of screens for each context, creating a clear boundary between the company and the government tasks. We are halfway through with the implementation of the context system.
This brings us neatly to the tasks that lie ahead in 2024. As already mentioned, we will deploy the German translation early next year and with that out of the way we can focus on finishing the context system. This will be the foundation for the development of the politics system. Instead of having a single governor that rules without much oversight we'll introduce parliaments that can consist of multiple players. Everything from setting the taxes to outsource upkeep contracts for the infrastructure will be managed and voted upon with motions. These motions and the corresponding votes will be public so interested players can gain insight what their government does. We'll also remove the rule that restricts a player to only be governor of one planet at a time. Players can be member of parliament on multiple planets at the same time, allowing more participation in the political system.
We will also increase our marketing activity to try to bring in more new players. We are currently sitting at around 5000 monthly active players and hope to increase that number significantly.
As we look forward to an exciting 2024 with new updates, we're grateful to have you with us! The entire team wishes you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
LIQUIDITY release is now live!
The Liquidity update introduces new loan templates for private contracts, an updated company rating system and leaderboards!
If your APEX console is stuck in a loading state after the update, please make sure to refresh it once after the update to ensure you got the latest version.
New Features
Leaderboards
Under the new LEAD command, you will find a variety of leaderboards. Finally you can track your progress and compare it to other players!
APEX Representation Center
One of the new leaderboards refers to the APEX Representation Center, which is a new “show-off” feature accessible via the ARC command. Invest currency to upgrade your ARC and compare your status across the whole universe!
Loan Contract Templates
New custom contract templates in CONTD allow you to create loan contracts.
Improved Company Ratings
Each company now has only one rating instead of three. The new single rating is based on how much “contract value” players actually fulfill of the contracts they close. This means the rating takes into account the monetary value at stake. For example a 10,000 NCC loan will actually impact the rating much more than buying a handful of rations for 500 NCC.
Changes
Recent contract partners are now shown as suggested recipients of contract drafts in CONTD.
Relevant locations from active contracts (e.g. pick-up or delivery) are now auto-suggested as destinations in ship flight controls (SFC).
The destination selection in SFC now shows suggestions when the input field is focused, without having to type any characters.
When planning a route in SFC you will now see a percentage of how much fuel will be used.
The Building Repair Assistant (BRA) now optionally takes a base address as an parameter and will then open with that base pre-selected in the drop-down.
BRA is now available as a context command in BS and BBL of each base (with the respective base address as a parameter).
FIN now uses endless scrolling and can display more than 100 bookings.
When trying to fulfill a condition on a contract where termination was requested by one of the parties, the game will now display a warning and require a confirmation.
New players (in their first week of playing) will now be warned about investing commodities into population infrastructure projects.
Increased CX order size limit.
Balancing
This time we’re focusing on making some (right now) niche approaches and recipes more viable.
Made hybrid habs more area-efficient:
HBB: 15 → 14 area
HBC: 20 → 17 area
HBM: 22 → 20 area
HBL: 25 → 22 area
Made PP2 B-fab recipes more viable alternatives:
BDE: input 75 PG → 60 PG
BSE: duration 0.25 days → 0.22 days
Made INS/HSE recipes more efficient to not disincentivize settling on extreme climate planets quite as much:
INS: output 20 → 24
HSE: duration 0.65 days → 0.4 days
Made Orchard recipe variants using SOI more efficient:
Reduced fuel usage of advanced and hyperthrust STL engine
Increased thrust of hyperthrust STL engine
Increased charge speed of high- and hyper-power FTL reactors
Increased effectiveness of heat and whipple shields
Ship repairs now use 25% fewer hull plates and shields, but also require SSC
Fixes
Fixed BRA sometimes not being able to grab the correct building data. It should now consistently work for all bases.
Fixed command search not working for words at the beginning of a command description.
Fixed “insufficient storage space” error message not showing when trying to delete a CX order.
Fixed faction contracts sometimes requiring the provisioning of 0 units of a commodity. Implemented snapshotting for several additional actors to improve performance and loading times.
See you in APEX!
Funding Secured - Development Log #393
Martin
These days, you know something's up when yours truly makes an appearance on the devlog. And this time is no different: Today I finally received an email I had been desperately waiting for weeks. It contained the very good news that our next funding project had been green-lit by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. For obvious reason, we hadn't talked about this at all so far, but now I can finally spill the beans: As you have probably guessed, said project is a Prosperous Universe project again. I won't go into details now - those will follow at a later time - but I can already tell you that the working title has both "politics" and "infrastructure" in the name. Believe me when I say that I am beyond excited about these news. It means that we continue to work on Prosperous Universe to bring it ever-closer to the vision we have for this game!
Michi (molp)
I started working on the last big feature for the upcoming Liquidity Release: templates for custom loan contracts. We will provide three different templates that can be used with the `CONTD` command to create loan contracts.
The first loan template I tackled was a simple interest loan, where the lender pays out the whole sum at the beginning. The borrower will have to pay back installments that are only made up of the interest. The final installment will contain the full borrowed sum. In the video below you can see a first iteration of that template:
It is also the start of a new month, and that means it is time for a new monthly economic report! Click the image for the full report
Fabian (Counterpoint)
In line with the changes mentioned in last week's devlog, I tweaked some of the higher-tier ship-building materials to be not quite as heavy. In some cases they could negate their advantage in power by creating a much heavier ship, now they're a bit closer to the rest.
Additionally, as another small buff for shields, ship repairs will change to require fewer hull plates and shields (by 25%), but in turn also require Structural Spacecraft Components. This should also help create a more continuous demand for those.
Other than that just lots of cleanup tasks for the upcoming release last week, such as handbook and wiki updates and small fixes.
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!
Ratings revisited - Development Log #389
Michi (molp)
I am back from a short vacation, so naturally there is not much I can talk about this week. Except! There is a new release upcoming, and we finally can share what it will entail!
You can find all the details in the respective Release Notes topic on the forums!
It is also the start of a new month, and that means it is time for a new monthly economic report!
Click the image for the full report
I haven't been able to add new categories this time, but will do so for the next report!
Fabian (Counterpoint)
Today I want to talk a bit about a rework of the company rating system that will be a part of the Liquidity release.
Currently, every company's rating has 3 sub-scores: activity, reliability and stability. We've been getting feedback on these for a long time now, mainly that high reliability (i.e. a high percentage of fulfilled, and therefore not breached, contracts) is by far the most important factor for almost all players. Activity on the other hand is seen more as an "interesting trivia" piece of information and "stability" is easily the most obscure one that's rarely every considered for any decisions.
In the future, there will only be one rating, and no more sub-scores. In short, we will "double down" on the idea of the previous reliability sub-score, but take into account the value of each individual contract. The old reliability rating only cared about "fulfilled contracts" and ignored whether said contract was buying 3 rations or 300 prefabs. In the future, the latter contract will be much more impactful for your overall rating, since the value of conditions involving either currency or materials (i.e. "something of value") changing owners will be considered. As a side note, this will be especially important for the new loan contract templates we're introducing, since these are even more well-defined "pure value" exchanges than e.g. buying or selling commodities.
Your company rating will then be determined by how much the contracts you fulfilled were actually worth (versus the contracts you breached). Of course a few other mechanisms will stay in place to e.g. ensure we take a healthy mix of different contract partners into account and also don't only just consider the most valuable contracts ever to give the ratings a bit of recency.
However, the overall idea is to simplify the ratings by getting rid of superfluous elements, while also making them more meaningful and useful to players at the same time by placing more weight on fulfilling more valuable obligations. As usual, let us know your thoughts on these upcoming changes in the forums!
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!
Lucrative Leaders - Development Log #379
Michi (molp)
I mentioned last week, that I started implementing a new feature, and I can finally show some pictures! It is part of a larger endeavor towards leaderboards.
Leaderboards have been requested many times in the past, as competitive players want to know how they are doing in comparison to other players. So far, the game doesn't support that directly. There are some community tools that do it indirectly by showing stats like the amount of bases for example.
Instead of getting started with leaderboards with an existing metric, we decided to use a new feature we call APEX Representation Center. Here is the description:
The APEX Representation Center allows companies and corporations to donate some of their profits to the APEX foundation. The foundation uses the money to supply new and upcoming CEOs with the necessary capital and ships to start their entrepreneurial journey. Having a high representation level is widely recognized as a testimony of wealth and success.
There will be a new command called ARC, where companies can contribute towards the APEX Representation Center. The current level will be visible in the company info command CO.
Corporations can build an APEX Representation Center as a corporation project.
Recently a player brought up the topic of economic reports in the forums. While we agree, that these could be very interesting, we don't have development capacity at the moment to implement such reports as an in-game feature. Instead, we could utilize the internal tools we have to generate a report. It could look like this for example.
Please let us know in the forums if that is something you'd be interested in!
Nick
Last week I reported that we were launching on LootBoy, an app that gives players discounts and boots game discoverability. We did indeed go live on Wednesday, and we already have a good many sign-ups! Fingers crossed that this continues to bring in new players to experience the game.
I also have contracted a few more influencers for the coming months, so please look forward to those videos, which I will share when they are made available. The new trailer for PrUn is still being worked on, and I will be busy fleshing out the script and coordinating with the art director and other members of the team in order to have something really special to show off when the project is completed.
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
New Maintenance Release is Live - Development Log #375
Michi (molp)
I was finally able to finish the implementation of what we call the new player journey. If you haven't been following the devlogs lately, you can read up what it is and what we want to achieve with it in the last few devlogs.
While the first three parts of the milestone were about implementation of faction contracts, new screens and UI tours, the last part was about cross-cutting concerns and clean up.
If you set up your company in the last year or two, you might remember the HINT command. It basically opens a buffer with a helpful comment once in a while when you reach certain milestones in the game. Since pretty much everything that was covered by the hint system is now in the UI tours and respective faction contracts, we removed the HINT command entirely.
Another change we implemented is that the status of the tours is now reset when the respective company is being liquidated. We did this because the faction contracts that go hand in hand with the tours have monetary and material rewards that can be used to get a second/third production building way faster than before. We think shortening the time to the next production building is a great motivator for new players to stay in the game. If a player restarts though, it would be unfair to not give these benefits again, just because the tours do not reset.
Unrelated to the tours, but not unrelated to the factions, is another change I implemented this week: generated faction shipping contracts now prefer routes to the closest commodity exchange for new players. That will make the shipping contracts more attractive and lucrative, since new players need to bring their products to the commodity exchange for sale and replenish their consumables in any case.
The maintenance release is now live, you can find the release notes in the forums.
Nick
Last week we had one of our latest influencer videos release from YouTuber Kokoplays MB. You can check out the video here. We think he did a great job at explaining the game to new players and highlighting what makes it special. I hope to get more influencers like this in the future that will put more time and investment into the game before doing a video.
In other news, there is a new Name THAT Planet poll where you can vote for your favorite unnamed planet to receive is own special moniker. If your planet is not already mentioned, just post a comment below and I will add it to the list. May the odds be ever in your favor!
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Happy trading!
New Coat of Paint - Development Log #369
Michi (molp)
I want to share the progress of our UI refresh project with you this week. As a disclaimer, please note that this is work in progress and by no means finished yet.
Have a look at this screen from the current version of the UI. It serves as a reference to see the differences between old and new:
And now the same screen with the new design applied:
You immediately notice that we moved away from the grey tones to a more blue-ish design. The tiles now feature a way larger title area with a focus on the actual commands. Tiles now have a gradient background.
There are a couple of things we already moved to the new layout: fonts and font sizes, primary and secondary buttons, tile context, section headers, progress bars and more.
The new UI still looks a bit off in large portions and that is because of what we haven't changed yet: if you take a closer look, all tables and form elements are still the same and use the old color scheme. Since forms and tables are a big contributor to each screen layout, we expect that the look and feel of the new UI will change quite a bit once that is implemented.
We already collected some early feedback from our supporters and took note of it. Right now it doesn't make sense to fine tune individual parts for the reasons just stated. Feel free to let us know what you think though, feedback is appreciated!
Nick
Last week I worked on getting a new trailer concept started. We haven't had a new trailer in a while, and I wanted to incorporate more of the actual gameplay into the next trailer and have it less stylized so players will know exactly what to expect when they start playing the game. It's still in an early concept phase and probably won't be finished for a while, but we are working on it. I also want the "story" of the trailer to be an actual scenario that can be done within the game that will help potential players understand what awaits them in Prosperous Universe.
Apart from that, I have a few more influencers that are being lined up for this month and next. Look out for those videos in the coming weeks!
As always: we'd love to hear what you think: join us on Discord or the forums!
Raise prestige and rise to prominence. Your chosen faction is depending on you to help build a solid network of reliability and influence. Complete crucial tasks that will determine the impact that your faction has across the universe, all while helping you gain valuable experience and increased profits. It’s up to you to decide which contracts to complete and which to ignore. Be sure to choose wisely…
CONTINGENT CONTRACTS
Everyone has an agenda. No matter if you are delivering supplies or running a political campaign for governor, your faction can lend a help hand. But nothing is free of course. While you carry out certain duties in order to help your faction rise to fame, you will additionally receive monetary funds, useful materials, and increase your standing with the faction.
FAMOUS OR INFAMOUS?
Reputation is everything. Build a repute for being reliable and business savvy and watch as your faction rewards skyrocket. If your reputation among your faction increases, you may find things a bit easier for yourself in the future…
PENNY BIDS BEGONE
Tired of all the penny bid wars for expensive commodities? Thanks to the new pricing mechanism, you won’t need to check your order book every second. Dynamic tick sizes will be introduced so more expensive items can no longer be underbid by one penny.
