Diplomacy, vision range, and survival mode are implemented. This concludes phase one of the project where all major game features are implemented in at least rudimentary form. Two weeks ago I wasn't joking about the phase getting nearly over.
Once you get the other player (ship or colony) in your vision range the diplomatic contact is established. From that point, both parties can select the desired relation toward each other. Relations are war, peace, and alliance and the effective one is the worst one the involved parties have selected. If one side has selected peace and the other side wants alliance then the peace will be in effect. So war is the easiest to declare while the alliance requires the will of both sides to ally.
By default, players are at peace and it takes a declaration of war to be able to do any combat action. For now, alliances don't force any relations and military action to third parties. They are purely a peaceful way to end the game. Once every player is in an alliance with each other, the game ends. It sounds cheap but remember, there is a ranking system involved and not everyone will want to end the game while they can still improve their standing.
Once the game ends the player is rewarded with qubits and has an option to start survival mode. Yup, there is a premium currency in the game, and I promise to play nice with it. In the survival mode players fight increasingly stronger waves of enemies coming outside of the map and the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. Also, in this mode qubits can be spent on additional bonuses. For now, the bonuses are bigger industry, ship attack, and ship defense multipliers per technology level.
The next step is phase two, of course :). In the second phase, I'll work on improving the quality of the game, do the preparation work for publication on Google's Play Store, and at the end of the phase have the game available for beta testing.
