Missions and Pressure Cracks

Not so long a chase as I thought before the next update (this is always the way with me, I talk about doing something in a backburner sort of way because other projects are further up in the queue, then can't help put move the backburner project to the front for a while).

ASCiaLC now has an additional five pages: two example missions each for Assault, Resupply, Rendezvous, and Advance missions as well as some barebone schematics for how missions are built in the first place. I want both of those to expand. More of each kind of mission, maybe a total of six for each type, and more comprehensive How To Build And  Run Your Own Missions advice. For now, though, decent sampling. 

Each mission has a Difficulty Rating assigned to it, as well as a number of successes the Fleet needs to get in order to complete the mission and get its reward. So you can adjust the Difficulty Rating when designing a mission to say how difficult any given thing is going to be, and adjust the number of successes required to change how short and sharp or how much of a slog the mission will be overall. You can also be on multiple missions at once, like needing to launch an Assault mission while also trying to finish an Advance mission to dangerous levels of Enemy Pressure.

This does have me taking a hard look at Enemy Pressure increasing Difficulty, though. It's... oof, it could get really rough really fast, between needing to get, say, six successes and the difficulty for everything rising as high as 10-12 as Enemy Pressure increases, and then you need to launch another mission to try and stop the bleeding.  Granted, getting all the way to the end isn't supposed to be easy, but I'm worried that the combination of factors will lead to players needing to get bogged down in Assault mission after Assault mission after Assault mission. I might go with my gut and yank that part of the wiring out, or maybe (*gasp*) see about getting some playtesting done.

On the dollarbucks side of things, the Sprinting Owl Bundle Club has chopped $20 so far off of what I need to get someone else to do the game's cover art, and the Ind of the Year Bundle will go live in less than a month. I'll probably pull the plug on the sale if it hits the goal one way or another to keep things neat, and I'm thinking of hiring someone else to do the layout, so that would be the focus of the next sale. Oh, and with more Value Added to the game I popped the price up by a buck. It'll probably stay there a good long while, although I also think it'll rise up again as the game becomes more of a finished product.

Next steps for me are more missions, more mission guidance, and  more advice on building the setting, the Fleet, and the Enemy!