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I like such aspects like building up your base to give your commando-squadron a specific drive depending on the way you invest your ressources. I would prefer to have it not to be too easy in normal mode or higher, because otherwhise many people will lose interest in it. Something like a "KI" would be better, or a mode where you switch it off and get just a random income every few days / weeks Whatever the solution may be, skipping this part of the game should yield worse results than if you are managing it yourself to encourage playing it .

I think making something easy, because some people do not get along with it, ruined several games that started out quite nice.

Well the solution is simple, just play it in Hard mode then
(You might not believe it but SOME people had still trouble with PS1 playing in Easy mode! )
Anyway all is just talk for now, but when I get to the beta testing, based on players feedback will tweak the difficulty. Probably what you say makes sense, both RPG and colony sim difficulty should be similar, and the colony sim shouldn't be simplified. But I need also to see how it will integrate with the game, might just be as you said that skipping/doing a poor job in the colony sim could make the RPG battles harder.

It should also change the atmosphere in the story a bit, hopefully. If you have a decent colony, a character might suggest that you go for some coffee ... if you have a terrible colony, you'd scrounge for clean water.

Haha I like that idea, really good

You could also combine the state of your colony with the availability of NPC's for your squadron or side-quests, but that will be a huge mountain of work to do for the writers and programmers

But as aleema said, it would be interesting if you feel the mood. If the artist is not too busy, he could set up different backgrounds for the location.

Or you implement a "morale"-statusbar, that depends on the state of your colony. It could simply work in the way, that if your colony is shabby, your fighters will get a malus on hit, dmg and armor and respectivly a bonus if your colony is in good shape. This is just a factor that will be applied to your combat stats and should might not be too much work.

Oh and Jack I believe you, that there are people ou there who have problems with games in easy mode ( I totally suck at Street Fighter ).

BTW: a "KI" is an "AI" in english. Sry english is not my main language

Colony? *perks up* Oh man, reminds me of those days when I played Red Alert 24/7. Epicness is epic Fun times.

I was browsing DevArt yesterday, and found This Gem. After, er, getting over the badassery of it I thought to myself, "Man, this music would totally suit something like Planet Stronghold."

Back to the colony thing.

Is managing a colony going to be a huge part of the game, or is there going to be an "off-mode" for those that don't want to? :O And yes to more interactivity. Maybe besides losing/bad management of said colony could affect scenes? Like how the people react and stuff, maybe. Though that would mean more work - here, cookies *gives trays of cookies*

The colony, depending on management, could give the party/protag a fixed amount of income/resources to invest/upgrade equipment.

Aleema's comment have me picturing protag/party accidentally drinking bad water by accident, leading to, er, unfortunate incidents (it is the future, you don't know what it could've been possibly mixed with...unintentionally). Oh dear.

I have all the soundtrack for the game done already, by the same musician who did Heileen 3, but he's very talented and can do a variety of music (piano, rock, pop, etc). There's a mix of rock, a dance music for the pub, some "epic" music inspired by ME3 title music, and so on
The colony sim itself is at good point, but now we need to integrate it with the story and deciding how will affect it, and how the story will affect the colony sim

Jack don't hate me for asking this but... any idea when PS2 will be out ? I checked the first posts and they're before Christmas 2012... ? So I thought by now there should be already a good amount of the plot written, right? I want to play it this Summer!!

I hate nobody
Well, about the coding, Anima is working on the battle engine. Is taking longer than I thought, I'm not hiding it. But the fact is that the new framework will be much better than previous ones, and with some changes could be reused for Loren 2 and other future RPGs, so definitely worth it!
About the writing... hehe, I just sent a motivational email to Aleema with some great ideas (ahem well at least I hope ).

I'm sorry for the delay. Unfortunately I won't be able to finish the framework before summer, simply due to course workload.