## Dev Update #24: Dynamic Costs and Neutral Stars

Published on March 28, 2019 by Vas Vasinov

Build 0.16.0 of Eons of War is out on Steam!

This update introduces a long-overdue change to how action energy costs are calculated. Before this change costs didn’t take the underlying units into account. For example, the cost of a mineral transfer would be the same for one mineral as well as 20 minerals. This didn’t make much sense, especially considering that costs for weapons were dynamic, so we decided to change it.

Now, action costs for transfers and attacks depend on how many population units and minerals are involved. The final cost of an action depends on the number of units multiplied by the sum of all modifiers. Modifiers come from distance to target, star mass, research, race, structures, events, and factions just like they used to except now they are multipliers instead of cost components that get added and subtracted.

We also ended up replacing the All Action Costs modifier with more granular Transfer Costs, Weapon Costs, Attack Cost, and Hyperlane Cost. This allows for more strategic decisions regarding research and faction choices.

Another change that this update introduces has to do with locations that don’t belong to players. Before this update all non-player locations were unpopulated and whenever a player built a hyperlane to such a location it would automatically become theirs. Now, some locations have neutral civilizations that don’t expand or build structures. All resources around such locations increase every turn at a low rate and whoever builds a hyperlane to a neutral location will also have to attack it in order for it to become theirs.

Finally, we decided to add the ringworld structure to space stations, so they can grow population just like regular stars. The only thing that space stations can’t generate is minerals.

This update might seem small but it changes battles for the better. The fact that locations can exchange low amounts of resources on the cheap is very important. It also makes it hard to steamroll the battlefield in the endgame when supernovae go off and some locations on the outskirts have tons of population left that can be used to take over the battlefield. Now, the cost of doing that is prohibitive.