Basically, it's just a star map. There's 25,000 stars in a 20k by 20k pixel square. It's kind of entertaining. There's nothing in the way of "intelligent" generation, they're literally all random. Sizes and colors aren't realistic - they will be in the final game.
My next goal is to create an in-system gamestate (yup, using HUMP, it's a nice library, go use it), which is accessed by selecting a star and clicking a button in the corner or something labeled "Enter System". Or something like that, i really don't know yet. Maybe just double click. Anyway, in-system you'll see planets orbiting the star, and ships flying around between planets and stations.
The RTS part comes in with fleet management. You basically select a number of ships (each one has a power rating and fleets have a max power rating to keep the game balanced) and order them to form a fleet. They group up and you can send them to other systems.
In the scientific explanation sort-of area, every capital ship is equipped with a power emitter and receiver, as well as a jump drive. These jump drives require massive amounts of energy to travel, so single capital ships can only get maybe to the next system. However, large fleets can form a power array, and computer systems distribute power between the ships, allowing large fleets to travel much larger distances. There are certain ships that are basically just powerhouses, and adding them to a fleet can exponentially increase travel distance. But those are expensive.
I do plan to adapt this for multiplayer once I have some more of the basic game mechanics down. I'll add to this post as necessary.
Please hold the flaming - I'm now working much harder on the game and chances are most people aren't going to see this original post before I add on.
And now, a pretty picture!
