Plan of Action

A high octane top-down 2D strategy game about fighting an Unstable government.

Overview

Real Time strategy with spaceships and easy to learn hard to master mechanics? Yup.
In Plan of Action you play against the computer each starting with just 5 ships
As quickly as possible you want to build up funds and start building new ships - the ones you are given are not exactly the best ;)

WEBGL NOTE: Scrolling is really wonky on WEBGL - I'm working on it!

One short notice:

At the start of the game there is a 'tutorial' which amounts to a crappy wall of text and later on some icons informing you of basic controls. These were added post jam if you think that a tutorial affects gameplay so much that including it after the fact is a breach of good faith, X out of the textbox immediately and complain in the comments ;)
(No, I am not being sarcastic! I really do value people's opinions on what is and isn't important to be done during/after a jam)

A quick note on theme

While I had a (decent) idea for how to integrate the theme it was always an 'extra' feature, as time ran low I focused on core gameplay and knew I would add the theme on if I had time. Long story short while I had some time I wanted to spend it on much needed polish and felt any attempts to add in the Unstable mechanic would feel tacked on because of the amount of time allotted.

Regardless I join LD to improve my skills! While I know this isn't the jam winning idea, and may even be a stain on my record because of the difficulty in correctly executing a strategy game that can't be achieved in a weekend. Regardless I really challenged myself in making such a complex game so quickly and go to learn/use some brand new (to me) design patterns. Success in my terms!

What does that even mean?

I don't expect to be scored well on theme, if I could go back I would opt out of it but it seems that feature to opt out of categories after the fact is gone? Either way, please don't allow your view of my connection to the theme cause you to rate the rest of the game/gameplay worst, unless you believe theme is integral to every LD game of course, I won't judge.

TL;DR Wish I could opt out of theme, please don't let it affect your scoring of my game on other categories. Thanks!

Gameplay

Ahh so much text! If you hate this sort of thing keep going but if you need help refer to this.

Game loop

To advance you need to harvest asteroids, capture and hold drydocks and build newer, better ships.
I'll go over each step in detail now.

Harvest Asteroids

First, there are two types of asteroids, normal and rich. Rich asteroids are worth much more than normal ones but have take significantly longer to harvest meaning they are a bad option early game.
To harvest an asteroid simply order a ship to move nearby it and it will automatically engage when in range.

Capture and hold drydocks

Hopefully the first time you zoomed out on the map you noticed the giant "thing" to your right, clicked on it and saw it was a drydock. Similarly to asteroids simply send your ships to the vicinity of it and they will engage. Once it get's to 0 health it will become yours and new UI options will become available for building ships. Drydocks start out at 10k health but once they are captured get up to 50k health to aid you in holding on to them.

Build newer better ships

Select a drydock you own and you'll see 3 buttons, click one and wait up to 25 seconds for the ship to be built. Defend your drydock in this time! Once it's done building it will simply pop out and you can use it as normal. Now go capture other drydocks and destroy enemy ships.

Controls

Camera

Pan

To pan the camera use either left control or right control and left mouse button drag, middle mouse button drag, right mouse button drag.

Zoom

To zoom the camera use the scroll wheel. Scrolling with your mouse on the top half of the screen will scroll towards or away from it depending on whether you are zooming in or out?

Unit control

Select one

Simply left click!

Select multiple

Two options: shift + left click to add, shift + left click on already selected units to deselect them while maintaining the previous selection, or left mouse button drag to select several.

Move orders

With units selected, simply left click on empty space or an enemy unit to have them move there

Attack orders

With units selected simply left click nearby or on an enemy unit and your ships will attack while in range.

How to Win/Lose ;)

You win or lose when you destroy every enemy ship and they either have no drydocks left to rebuild or do but don't have sufficient funds.

A quick note on difficulty:

Default difficulty is '2' this is how many seconds between each of the AI's decisions. Turn this up to make things easier and down to make things harder. If you have previously changed difficulty and you simply go with the default it's uh, not gonna change it. Click in and put a random number then put it back to 2. Sorry!

######## Another tiny note here: While I don't believe in the sort of "follow for follow" type things I always try to pay back everyone who leaves feedback on my game by doing the same for them - it's the least I could do. If I forget for someone let me know ;)

Media

LD RATINGS: USE THE 'PRODUCTION' OPTION ON WEBGL VERSION