Ships: Purpose

I've been stuck with a terrible case of creators block lately. I'm still kind of in the middle of it, but I've decided that rather than wasting away playing EVE, I'm going to confront it head on. Since I'm obviously not going to be in the mood to run down a thousand mile feature list, I'm just going to go for creating something I know well. In this case, that will be an Escape Velocity clone. There are going to be some differences obviously, but overall, I'm just going to go for that basic style and see what comes out.

Mostly, I just already know mostly how to create that game. It doesn't require collision detection, and movement is all vectors in 0G which is easy enough. Systems are just text/xml files. Interface is simple enough, forward, backward, left, right, fire, fire special, dump cargo, jettison escape pod. Art assets are splash screen, UI, planets, stations, ships, modular customizations. Dynamic assets can be limited to trade developments, randomized mission availability and semi-random in-system events.

Finally, I have a good finalization moment. A point at which it is working well enough to release. A ship in every ship class, fighter, shuttle, frigate, light hauler, destroyer, medium hauler, heavy destroyer, heavy hauler, cruiser, escort carrier, battleship, carrier, super carrier. At least 30 systems, a task that is not as daunting as it sounds just a bit tedious at times. Two story lines need to be completed, along with a wide selection of random mission parameters. Once all of that is ready, it's release ready, everything afterward would just be for my own fun or to keep polishing it to my liking.