The blueprint system – Fixing the micromanagement problem



The blueprint system:

Each planet will have one capitol colony from which everything is managed. This is where the important buildings like factories, defensive structures and research labs will be built. The capitol colony’s buildings will be arranged on a grid, and when you’re managing the colony down at this level you’ll be able to place buildings into a build queue by putting them on the grid.  The arrangement of buildings on a grid, and the order in which to build them, can be saved as a blueprint. New colonies can then be built using this blueprint, and they’ll automatically build all the recorded buildings in the specified order. A mock-up of a colony is below:

The clever part is that the blueprints will be updatable; Add a new building to the blueprint and all colonies using that blueprint will start producing it. So if you’ve just researched a new building and want it on every production planet, you can just edit the blueprint and add it. The area marked out by blue squares in the image above (including the ones currently occupied by red and green ones) is reserved for the colony’s blueprint, so you can’t manually place buildings there.

The squares around the outside that aren’t part of a blueprint can be built on manually, allowing customisation of a colony even though it’s following a blueprint. For example, you might have a “production colony” blueprint, and if your planet is close to enemy territory you might want to use the squares around the edges for defensive buildings like turrets or shipyards. If your planet has more mines than usual (if it’s mineral rich), you could build extra factories in these squares too. Blueprints could also contain population percentages assigned to particular jobs, spending decisions, and anything else a colony might need.

Maintaining control

This system solves the micromanagement problem by turning dozens of repetitive colony management actions into one single action and then propagating that decision across your empire. But because every action done to a blueprint is manually chosen by the user, he is still in direct control of every decision. There’s no AI calling the shots, blueprints are literally just a productivity tool to make control of an expanding empire much simpler. It’s also a completely optional system, I intend to let people play the game without ever using the feature, but I don’t really see a down-side to using it.

About Brendan Drain

Director @ Brain and Nerd
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Hi, your gemedevelopment looks promising so far. may i ask why you aren't at indiedb or provide a forum? don't get me wrong, i (and surely more people) would love to more easily find you and your project and also talk with each other about it :). + 1 follower :)


I had never really thought of providing a forum or listing the game on IndieDB. I'll have to sort this out soon.