Blast Tactics Game Design Document

Blast Tactics is a rogue-like tactical RPG. The user creates and names a character with various attributes like strength, dexterity, and piloting skill. Using a turn-based 2.5D roguelike tactics engine, the player's character explores interstellar space and conducts various combat, research, and espionage missions. The main story line is embedded throughout the game and woven together with procedurally generated maps and missions. Drivable vehicles protect the player, enable high-speed aerial combat, and are the primary means of traveling between different parts of the game. Spacesuit EVA (extra-vehicular activity) is available for indoor maps. Destructible environments and hostile conditions (heat, vacuum, radiation) add strategy to the game. The goal of the game is to complete missions, upgrade your character and ship, while managing resources like fuel and money. This non-linear RPG combines a main story with "sandbox" and varied mission-style gameplay.

Play occurs in a two-dimensional grid where each square can contain a stack of objects. Each object is represented onscreen by a 16x16 pixel tile, and where objects stack the tiles are overlaid. The player can inspect a stack of tiles and choose which to pick up or act upon.

All movement and combat are turn-based, with actions using up a resource called AP (action points). Turn order is determined by a character's speed rating and AP reserve. Both melee and ranged attacks are supported.

The game's procedurally-generated universe is composed of a set of arbitrarily interconnected 2D maps. Maps can have different scale factors, so one map may represent a star sector with several stars to visit, while each star may have its own map with planets to visit, all the way down to the corridors of a planetary base.

Non-player characters (friend or foe) can speak and emote with onscreen balloons or animated icons.

The game can be controlled with the keyboard and mouse, or via common USB gamepads. Users can configure the controls, and presets are included for common gamepads like the Playstation 3 controller and various Logitech models. For keyboard users, both QWERTY and DVORAK layouts are available, among others.

Blast Tactics is presented in high definition for PC screens.

It's 2061. If only there were enough endurium!

It's been known for decades that Humanity's reach within the Milky Way is limited only by the supply of endurium, its rare and precious fuel. As endurium was first brought to Earth at the advent of the present Droid Plague, its discovery came indeed at the cost of billions of human lives. But the living space and vast resources of the Milky Way, and indeed possibly those of the Universe itself, beckon to us with their promise of the renewed expansion and survival of the human species.

Early attempts at control and regulation of endurium met with initial success. The space-faring nations—Russia, China, India, Japan, and the United States—along with the ESA (European Space Agency), could quite naturally claim endurium for themselves. But economies of scale and espionage in spaceflight technology eventually brought smaller deposits and endurium dust streams throughout the interstellar neighborhood within the reach of multinational corporations and various non-state actors. The largest of these formed what they called a "sovereign" but otherwise open and successful market in endurium, spaceflight technology, and various otherwise-controlled materials. The split between the Spacefaring Nations on the one hand, and the United Nations on the other, threatens to break into full-scale interstellar war; as Earth's environment continues to decay, and as the Droid Plague appears to be with us for the long run, the demand for endurium has reached a critical point.

The Biosilicates are silicon-based lifeforms who have assimilated human microprocessor technology in an attempt to amplify their species' intelligence. But the result of this fusion is less than organized; a hive's vast mentality is the sum of thousands or even millions of conflicting sprout minds, each with many gigaflops of computing power. Still, hives have been seen to act with more intelligence, even working in concert on some occasions. Some researchers believe that the biosilicates are adapting to their new symbiotic environment.

These hives grow raw biosilicate plant material from pollen deposited by drones. When encountering these gargantuan, gelatinous hive sacs in space, one must puncture the outer membrane to gain access to the putrid world within.

The green sprouts in grow for 6 generations, and then die. The generation number is incremented whenever the wandering sprout finds food (in this case, Biosilicate pollen.) At generation 3, the sprout becomes stronger (more HP) and also spawns a baby sprout. The result is a busy, but not explosive growth and propagation of cells as they consume food and move on. Places with plentiful food tend to form dense clumps of material, masses of plants which emergently extend tendrils of plant matter toward the player whenever he approaches.

On December 23, 2019, a Chinese probe in lunar orbit observes an irregular black spot on the side of the Moon that permanently faces away from the Earth. As the probe was designed for high-resolution multi-wavelength imaging of the Moon's surface, scientists debate in secret whether the material is natural or artificial in origin. Although rivers and eddies of this coal-black, smooth material are visible, shifting geometric patterns are observed, with some groups of triangular features persisting for days or weeks. The black spot grows rapidly, prompting the NASA/ESA/Chinese working group to attempt lowering the satellite's orbit in order to take a closer look.

The rest is history; the satellite's approach is interpreted as a threat, and before telemetry is lost, millions of pyramid-shaped drones are seen emerging from the blackness. A year later, humanity had shrunk to an estimated 1 billion people. The Lunar Black Spot is eventually destroyed by carpet-bombing it with nuclear warheads, and the immediate droid presence around Earth is brought under control, but the planet is decimated and the species on the verge of real decline. The manufacture of an estimated 4 billion drones during the war consumed 0.0002 percent of the Moon's mass and altered its rotation and orbit, wreaking havoc on Earth's climate.

The mineral Endurium is used as fuel by the Black Metal and by the drones it manufactures. The discovery of this vital energy source, and the faster-than-light travel made possible by Droid technology, have utterly transformed the prospects of the human species. The entire universe is now ours to explore, populate, and exploit—if the Black Metal can be contained in the long term.

Thus far the droid plague has not been connected with any known purpose, but researchers believe that the Black Metal is artificial in origin and may in fact be a kind of liquid supercomputer. Radio decay dating techniques show that some deposits of the metal are as old as ten million years. The artificial nature of this computing substrate taken together with its extreme age led scientists to postulate a race of "Ancients" who created the Black Metal and either fled or were wiped out by it. It is unknown whether any other species have inherited the technology left behind by the Ancients.

Researchers believe the Black Metal is dispersed throughout the galaxy, and it is believed that some larger deposits harbor a form of consciousness.

Eventually the player discovers a supermassive star encased in a shell of Black Metal. The sheer volume of the black metal and the star's incredible energy output combine to create a terrifyingly vast intelligence that has observed the universe for 11 billion years.

This is the overall setting of the game, and (unbeknownst to the player) the location of the Black Planet.

These hot nebulae are sources of free fuel (though sometimes only in small amounts). Ancient artifact containers and other sundry curiosities may be found here.

These are described in the Story section above. Hives serve as a source of biosilicates, which may be either sold or manufactured into ammunition or other supplies.

Early in the game, the player must enter the droid-overrun Zeta Base and take it back by eliminating them all.

The player must leave the vehicle in a spacesuit, with an oxygen supply and gravity boots, in order to explore these dark environments. Droids designed for capturing freighters

Some freighters are used by droids for reproduction, and these can never be fully cleared of droids. Sometimes more powerful droids are being manufactured in a given freighter, and this may result in player death, so each freighter should be taken carefully. Limited lighting and careful use of sound will create tension.

Freighters are a source of human supplies (medkits, upgrades, stim-packs, weapons, ammo) and in order to fully explore some freighters, the player must make use of oxygen tanks and even recover oxygen from dead crew members. (Some crewmembers are zombies and attack the player.)

These ships also figure into the storyline, in that the huge increase in human shipping and exploration activity in the Antares sector awakened the Black Planet and caused it to begin using freighters as eggs for its "children".

A busy frontier-town that has grown rapidly, this is where the player will do most of the buying and selling of resources. This is also probably the only place you will be able to save the game.