The Mandate

Latest community Update
about 7 years ago – Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 01:37:14 AM

Dear backers,

In March we went through difficult times, the team size was reduced to only a core team since January, as consequence of the still ongoing negotiations with our publisher about the remaining funding. We have been working on securing more fundings since the end of 2016. It is still a work in progress and we will follow up with you in upcoming developer's updates when we have managed to close a deal.

Despite having a smaller team, we have focused our efforts on improving the space combat.

Survey

Within this context we would like to invite you to answer this survey:

https://goo.gl/forms/8cllWWWhLbvnd1yT2

so we can collect more feedback from your side for our next iterations of space combat. The other aspects of the game will remain in our vision for the Mandate. Because of team size constraints, we can only tackle one big chunk at a time. Crew and missions aspects of the game had to be put on hold temporarily, but once space combat is more advanced, resources will be reallocated to work on these aspects of the game.

Roadmap

We currently have several hypothesis for the timeline and depending on the fundings we will refine our roadmap which will be shared with the whole community including the milestones for playtests, alpha and beta versions.

Forums

We aim to have a regular update every month. Please remember to direct your comments to the forums instead of the Kickstarter page as this is where we can best get back to you.

http://www.mandategame.com/article/update-67

Keep in mind that it's always best for us to communicate with you using the forums, this is where we collect your comments and feedbacks and can best direct your requests, so add the page to your bookmarks if not done yet :)

Promising Kickstarter projects

We have not done a Kickstarter shout-out for a while so this time we would like to mention a very interesting RPG project: Sacred Fire. They just met their funding goal, but there are some nice stretch goals to reach!

Sacred Fire is a narrative psychological RPG about revenge and loyalty, where you develop your inner strength in a tactical choice-driven RPG inspired by Caledonia, featuring Doug Cockle, the voice of the Witcher.

Next Update

Part of our next update we will do an open questions/answers session. You will be also able to see the progress in the space combat.

We are very grateful for the core community being still supportive for such long time.

The Mandate dev team

Latest community Update
about 7 years ago – Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 10:36:40 PM

Hi guys, 

We've posted a community update for you on the forum page. Please have a look, http://www.mandategame.com/article/update-67 it'll give you access to our ongoing survey on space combat which will close on April 19th. 

We would very much appreciate your participation and we'll share our results with you once we've had time to collect and analyse them.

Keep in mind that it's always best for us to communicate with you using the forums, this is where we collect your comments and feedbacks and can best direct your requests, so add the page to your bookmarks if not done yet :)

The Mandate: Dev Talk
over 7 years ago – Wed, Nov 09, 2016 at 10:51:14 PM

Hello everyone,

this is less an update in the "traditional" sense, but more of a community drop!

We had Amelie (User Experience Researcher and Writer) and Greg (3D Environment Artist) sit down to talk about The Mandate! They're going to tell you about how the art and the story influence each other in creating the universe of The Mandate! They also give a sneak peak at some of the newest features that the team has been working on.

A comic, Q&A and what's currently going on in the office
over 7 years ago – Fri, Oct 07, 2016 at 01:15:57 AM

Greetings everyone!

It's time for another update on what’s happening on our side. It's not the longest one, but it is still packed with a lot of information that is surely interesting to you! In this update we’d like to talk about:

• A web comic set in the Mandate universe
• A Q&A we had on our forums
• Parts of the game that are currently being worked on
• A promising Kickstarter project

Web Comic

The universe in which The Mandate takes place is huge! Although the game takes place in space, we should not forget about the people on the planets and the politics that drive these forces as well. In order to introduce this aspect of the story, Amelie, Jan, and Garret sat down and created a web comic!
The series is called “Shadowplay” and will consist of four short episodes.
HERE you can get the first episode “Fringe Connection”!

Let us know what you think!

Questions and Answers

At the beginning of September we set up a Q&A on our forums that focused on the new vision that was presented along with the roadmap for production. (We opened the floor for other questions but wanted to focus on vision and production questions).

The whole Q&A is way too big to post in this update - click HERE to read it for yourselves. (You'll find the answers in the middle of the thread)

What we are currently working on

We're completely focused on the Early Access version of the game. To give you guys a polished experience to enjoy is our number one priority. We have four teams working on different aspects of the game: the Engine Team, the Space Combat Team, the Mission Team and the Sandbox Team. Here’s what they are currently working on:

The Mission Team:
They are currently detailing the story-missions for the clusters in the Penrose Enclave, which consists of five different systems. They are also working on adding new event categories to the event system, which will be distributed later in the game. The new events that we now have cover everything from unique encounters to run-of-the-mill ones. They can be accessed via POI’s (you’ll learn more about them later). There now are a total of 50 event-lines, allowing for over a total of 500 unique dialogue-nodes and options (and more will be written! ;) ).

The Sandbox Team:
On a side note: We now have our great artists Garret and Greg here on site for the next couple of months. This speeds up communication and iteration immensely!
They are working together with the Sandbox Team on creating and integrating assets. In the Mission Team section we mentioned the POIs (Points of Interest).
In order to trigger events, you need to access them via Supply Crates or Information Logs. They are currently floating in space and can be found by the player.

 Also new asteroids for Space Combat were created.

 The station docking interface has been revamped. You can now access Trading, Refitting, Missions, Recruitment and the Bridge from one window, which makes it more convenient. Also ship modules can now be bought and equipped!

 Trading also got a nice little feature that makes it a bit more exciting: You can bargain and try to buy items you need cheaper than expected, depending on the trader’s mood. This gives you a certain percentage of success on the transaction outcome! This will allow for a really dynamic economy in the game.

The Engine Team:
They are working on performance upgrades and the integration of the audio-engine we use for the game. Although these are two short sentences, they mean a lot for the game.

The Space Combat Team:
The Space Combat team is working with very fast iteration and testing to redesign all the factors we don’t consider fitting for the overall experience. This approach is super helpful to achieve our goals.
To the already existing core prototype we added more granularity by being able to target the enemies subsystems (Weapons, Engines, Shields), which brings different damage consequences to the game, e.g. slowing down enemy ships.
Additionally there are Officer / Player Skill that affect parameters in the game. The Space Combat Team is also creating base maps for the game to show off possible different scenarios for story missions and pirate hideouts – boom!
The next steps are to implement multiple units for the player to command during Space Combat, to have deeper and more tactical decisions.

** Please note that everything shown in the pictures above is not final quality and work in progress. **

A promising Kickstarter project

We have not done a Kickstarter shout-out for a while but we thought we should mention a very interesting project this time: Dual Universe.

Dual Universe is a Civilization Building Sci-Fi MMORPG, where everything you do matters!

• All the players share one centralized and unique persistent universe
• Everything in the game is player-made
• The gameplay allows player-driven economy, trading, territory control, politics and warfare

Have a look at their E3 teaser below:

 Do you like what you just saw? If so, click HERE to check out their Kickstarter project and support them.

You can also have a look at their website and the forums!

- Perihelion Interactive

The Mandate Producer's Letter #2
over 7 years ago – Tue, Sep 06, 2016 at 10:59:15 PM

Hi guys,

two weeks ago was Gamescom and it was super nice meeting some of you. Unfortunately, I was still busy during the afternoon but I really want to thank Mr. Seeker for his commitment and his engagement in the community – he took the time to meet Josef and Iain at Gamescom. In the evening we had a nice dinner with some more members, which we really enjoyed (despite some hard questions). Thank you for coming and thank you for the good conversations :)

I am using Netflix. I mostly watch TV series but sometimes I get interested in a movie and start watching it. My usual behaviour is that after a while I stop the movie, go to Wikipedia and just read the synopsis. I know that this is a stupid behaviour but I seem unable to stop doing that. That’s part of my/our problem right now when it comes to features or even more intricate story and lore for the mandate.

I know that you want the information and to be honest we also want to tell you much, much more about our game and why we are excited to do it and what cool feature we are working on right now.

Unfortunately, this is somewhat counter­productive since after all we want to surprise you and give you the experience we think you will enjoy when playing the game. Also of course, in the past this behaviour led us to talk about things that we really loved but later figured out wouldn’t fit the vision or that it wouldn’t be possible to include for technical reasons.

That’s why we decided to do the following:

When it comes to features, we will talk about it in more detail only if we are sure that’s where we want to go and that we can deliver.

When it comes to story and lore, we are now incorporating the updates as part of the game’s narrative, as you will see when the first instalment of our web comic is uploaded next week. It will not be directly related to the player’s story but it will give you a feeling about the universe; and as it progresses will reveal some of the key players and cabals in the Mandate universe.

During our meet­up and also when reading the forums however, I see a lot of questions which are more high-level and asking about the general direction of the game.

Before I talk about what’s coming next ­ I want to answer a few of them.

We have had some questions concerning story driven vs. sandbox RPG. We are building a single player, story driven roleplaying game with a fair amount of sandbox elements. If anything the roleplay elements in the game have increased, as well as the meaning and importance of the story. When we reviewed what we had back in April, we saw a huge lack of player motivation and we decided that it is absolutely necessary to give you guys a personal reason to be out there.

Also we wanted to give the crew/officers a big boost. They won’t just be cannon fodder that you assign a name to and give you a tactical advantage in combat (basically a bunch of Redshirts if you think in Star Trek terms). We want you to be able to interact with the crew, to learn about their motivations, fears and points of view ­­ and if they trust you enough they might ask you for help, this means crew related missions. It is about forming a team out of a bunch of cutthroats :)

What can you expect in terms of “Sandbox”? Now, this is a huge word to begin with and everyone has a different definition in their head. In our game, what we describe as sandbox elements is, in my opinion, best described as player freedom. The changes concerning the universe are also tied to the player interaction, which means for example if you attack Romanov ships (which you can do) – they won’t like you and at some point hunt you. We want you to be able to be a trader or a pirate or just roam the galaxy killing pirates – if you like you could do just that in the game – for hours. When it comes to exploring you can find loot of course – but there will also be lore, trigger events and encounters to discover on the way.
There also will be resource extraction and some crafting elements. You are going to need resources to buy upgrades for your ship.

Boarding Combat
Later during EA we want to have ground combat/boarding combat. As explained above, right now, I don’t want to talk about it in any detail, but it will work similar to space combat.

Co­-Op
From a technical point of view, we have the option to do co­op but since that is not the focus of the game we aren’t planning to do it unless there is a huge demand for it and we don’t have any other priorities.

Clusters
During our GamesCom meet­up there have been some questions regarding the fringe clusters and how they are different from the “story­clusters”. I think here is some confusion – probably caused by me. The correct answer would be – there is no difference. From a world building point of view we have the core worlds, where the political force is relatively strong – based on the faction who owns these clusters and we have the outer edge of the Mandate universe. That’s what we call Fringe Clusters; everything can happen here. It is a de­facto lawless space. Houses might fight a secret (or not so secret) war with each other over these clusters. There will be a fair amount of cutthroats and pirates in these clusters as well. But of course they are officially claimed by someone. This is the edge of the Mandate space and a part of the main story will also happen in the fringe clusters. From a game design perspective, the fringe clusters will have a larger amount of sandbox elements.

Below you’ll find the roadmap, which describes how we want to move along until January. We are also planning some internal test and feedback rounds around November with some of you. This feedback will help us to fine-tune our systems and of course also somewhat depending on this feedback we will decide how to prioritize future elements of the game and when exactly we will start with Early Access.

Finally, I should also let you know that our Community Manager, Donna has left us for personal reasons. These aren’t related to the project and we are very sad to see her go. We wish her all the best in her future, and we hope that she’ll be able to return at some point. In the meantime, community updates will be the responsibility of Josef (Burian on the forums) until we find a replacement for Donna.

Cheers,

Michael