ATLAS Project — you are the Captain, not the ship [WIP]

[JulioP]

Hi again, I'm Julio. I introduced myself here recently and promised a proper ATLAS thread, so here it is.

I grew up with Battlecruiser 3000AD, Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific, and X-COM. They each scratched a different itch: systems worth learning, decisions made with imperfect information, freedom in a larger world, and mechanics interacting in ways that made the simulation feel believable. ATLAS is my attempt to bring some of those ideas together in a starship command game.

I try to guide the whole game by one idea: “You are the Captain, not the ship.”

I want you to be able to walk aboard, go to the CIC, see what your officers know, make a decision, and then see the consequences while the rest of the crew keeps doing its job.

The Captain shouldn't have a magical view of every system or personally perform every routine task. That's the experience I'm building toward. I'm still early, and I'm a long way from the complete version of that idea.

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Prototype / work in progress: the current in-game CIC visual slice. Not final art.

What I have so far:

The prototype has a four-deck ship blockout and a physical Captain who can move through it. There are 35 persistent named people, including the Captain, with personnel records and a Commander Tablet. The ship also has a thrust-gravity and coast/zero-G movement foundation.

The latest passed crew-life milestone added bounded needs and self-care, purposeful local work, physical travel, rest, and ownership of shared resources. I can walk through the ship and find people doing things for reasons. That foundation has been tested over and over again by me, but it does not mean every crew behavior feels right or that the living ship is finished.

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Prototype / work in progress: the Captain at a shipboard stair landing.

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Prototype / work in progress: a Deck 2 habitation and mess observation from the accepted crew-life candidate. Crew are in medical, recreation, and other local activities.

What I'm working on now

I recently finished the ship-time and watches milestone: a 24-hour ship day, Blue/Gold/Black watches, physical relief, and an Officer of the Deck who can keep the ship running when the Captain is elsewhere.

That milestone took several tries. I rejected playable candidates when watch turnover, crew movement, or what I was seeing as the Captain didn't feel believable, even when parts of the simulation were technically doing what they were supposed to do.

I don't want a technical check that can pass while the ship still feels like a database with legs.

Man, has this been a challenge. Getting the crew to move around and behave in ways that look natural and believable has been harder than I expected.
The current work is more structural. I'm redesigning the ship from the accepted four-deck prototype baseline toward a six-deck layout. The six-deck version is not the accepted live ship yet. I'm proving the geometry, routes, clearances, and existing gameplay systems before it replaces the current layout.

Where I want to take it

Longer term, I want command through officers and departments, incomplete reports, emergencies, flight and sensors, damage control, combat, and a campaign that gives the Captain reasons to make hard calls.

I want travel time to matter. I want crew fatigue to matter. I want orbital mechanics to matter enough that getting somewhere isn't just clicking a destination and watching a loading screen.

Much further down the road, I want the Captain to be able to take direct control when physically present, including taking a shuttle on an away mission.
But that should have consequences. If you're off flying a shuttle, you're not aboard your ship commanding it. Maybe your XO handles everything perfectly. Maybe that's the moment something goes wrong. That's the sort of tradeoff I'm interested in.

There are a lot of systems I want to build. I'm deliberately trying to prove them one layer at a time rather than pretend they're all already there.

There is no public build yet, and I am not promising a date.

I'm building ATLAS as a solo developer with a full-time career and a family. I'm building this in my free time. All of it. The images in this thread are genuine in-game prototype captures.

I am curious how other space-sim players feel about command information. Would you rather get an imperfect report from an officer and decide under uncertainty, or have the full simulation truth visible in the UI? Where should the captain's knowledge stop?

I will keep future ATLAS updates in this thread as the ship and game develop.

[GYUFORGE]

I'd prefer the officer reports, especially if there's a clear indication of how recent each one is. Incomplete information sounds interesting, but I'd want to know whether I'm acting on an old report or a fresh one.

[JulioP]

I'd prefer the officer reports, especially if there's a clear indication of how recent each one is. Incomplete information sounds interesting, but I'd want to know whether I'm acting on an old report or a fresh one.

This is very interesting, and I think it is a good idea. Operating with stale information inside and outside the ship itself should introduce a level of risk, but in order to know that, you need to know how much time has passed. Thank you for the idea and input.

One of the systems I want to build is a commander tablet that allows other officers to pass information while you are not in the CIC, but the information will be incomplete or perhaps stale. I am trying to create tension and a reason why the captain will want to be in the CIC, rather than in some shuttle doing an away mission.

[GYUFORGE]

That makes sense for the tablet. One small detail: "received just now" and "last checked 5 minutes ago" could be separate timestamps. Then a new message wouldn't accidentally look like fresh information, and you could decide whether it's worth asking for another check.

[JulioP]

That's actually a good idea; I'm definitely going to add that to the tablet. I can also see how this would be extremely valuable for mission updates. The way I envision the updates or new missions working is that you would receive them while out on patrol. Depending on how long it takes you to reach the area, the information might be stale, and the situation could have changed.

When it comes to the quality of information, I've been playing around with a view screen today, and displaying stale contacts is a part of it.

Please don't judge too harshly—this is a very early attempt at visualizing how these systems will work and look:

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[JulioP]

Another ATLAS update.

One of the stranger bugs I ran into recently was a watch relief that almost worked. In a controlled test, the incoming Sensors watchstander physically crossed the ship and reached the approach, but never actually completed the takeover.

It would have been easy to fake that by changing an assignment in the background, but that defeats what I'm trying to build. If somebody is supposed to have the watch, I want the simulation to know whether they physically arrived, whether the outgoing person actually left, and whether the station is really covered.

I eventually got that controlled exchange working with real travel and a real handoff. There was a brief uncovered period during the swap, and I'm okay with that because the simulation knew the position was uncovered instead of pretending somebody was there. That one test wasn't proof that every scheduled relief was solved.

CIC from main view

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CIC from Captain view

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I've also been building the ship-systems side separately from the living ship: sensors, readiness, weapons and ammunition behavior, thermal behavior, and the information that will eventually have to reach the Captain.

I did that on purpose. It lets me prove the machinery by itself before I combine it with crew behavior, stations, six-deck geometry, save/load and everything else that can break at the same time.

The first milestone of that standalone systems work reached the point where I felt comfortable moving forward. That does not mean full combat is done or those systems are fully integrated into the six-deck ship yet.

The six-deck geometry milestone has since reached the point where I was comfortable moving on, with remaining problems carried into environment fidelity and asset integration. On the systems side, I'm still working on physical fitting. Full integration of those systems with the living ship comes later.

I tried to show all 6 decks, but the forum is fighting to load the files. Deck two is officer spaces

Deck 2 Draft

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This is the current plan for the decks:
Deck 1, Command: the CIC, with the watch stations and the Captain and XO desks.
Deck 2, Officers: the Captain’s cabin and bunk, plus the briefing room.
Deck 3, Galley and berthing: the kitchen, crew sleeping racks with lockers, and washrooms with 3 WCs and 3 basins.
Deck 4, Mess, Medical and lounge: 3 four-seat mess tables, the medical bay and a crew lounge.
Deck 5, Security: the brig with its bunk and briefing screen, the armory, and 8 lockers.
Deck 6, Engineering: the reactor, the workshop and ship services.

I'm really excited to show you more.

[JulioP]

ATLAS Design Dilemma: How Much Control Should the Captain Have Outside the CIC?

Alright, fellow space sim fans, I need your opinions. I'm stuck on a design decision for ATLAS, and I'd love some outside perspectives to help me figure out which direction to take. Apologize ahead of time for the long post.

When I first started building ATLAS, the entire concept revolved around the command experience.

I wanted the player to physically exist aboard a warship, command through officers, and experience the limitations of being an actual person rather than an all-knowing interface.

A big part of that was how information reaches the Captain.

When you're in the Combat Information Center (CIC), you have access to the latest and most complete information available to the ship. You're surrounded by your officers, consoles, and displays. You can make decisions and issue orders quickly.

But when you leave the CIC, things change. Information becomes more limited, reports take time to reach you, and your ability to command the ship becomes less immediate.

That was the original idea, and I still really like it.

But here's where I'm struggling.

As I've built more of the ship and spent time actually playing around in it, I've started feeling like something is missing. Almost like I've built the foundation for a really interesting simulation, but haven't quite figured out where the *game* is yet.

To be fair, I haven't developed much beyond the ship itself. Spaceflight, combat, missions, and the larger gameplay loop are still ahead of me. So it's entirely possible I'm trying to solve a problem that won't exist once those systems come together.

Currently, ATLAS has an F2 command menu, and individual CIC stations like Helm have their own menus for issuing orders and accessing information. It works with my original vision of commanding through the ship's officers, but I'm starting to wonder whether constantly navigating between menus will become more tedious than enjoyable.

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Original CIC command menu system

Last night, though, I was playing UBOAT, and something clicked.

The command bar.

That relatively simple interface along the top of the screen gives you access to important information and lets you issue commands without constantly navigating through menus or physically moving to different stations.

And I started wondering whether ATLAS needs something similar.

It would move me away from my original vision a little, but it could also make the game considerably more enjoyable.

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Command bar mockup

Here are the three approaches I'm considering:

1. Full commitment to the original concept

Outside the CIC, you have minimal information and very limited command capabilities. Reports take time to reach you, and if you want to directly manage ship operations, you need to return to the CIC.

This makes your physical location aboard the ship meaningful and reinforces the idea that you're a Captain commanding through people.

But would it become frustrating having to return to the CIC every time you want to do something?

2. A full command bar, similar to UBOAT

You have access to important ship information and can issue most commands from anywhere aboard the vessel.

This would make gameplay more accessible, reduce unnecessary clicking and movement, and let the player focus on decisions rather than finding the right console.

The downside is that it potentially removes one of the biggest reasons to physically be in the CIC. If I can command everything from my quarters, why bother going to the bridge?

3. A hybrid approach

You have a command bar available anywhere aboard the ship, but its capabilities depend on where you are.

Inside the CIC, you receive detailed, current information and can issue orders directly.

Outside the CIC, you still have access to essential information and can issue commands, but there's a catch. Information may be delayed or incomplete, and your orders have to be relayed through the Officer of the Deck (OOD) or other crew members.

You can still command the ship, but you're relying on your officers rather than directly managing everything yourself.

Originally, I intended the Commander's Tablet to handle much of this. But I'm beginning to wonder whether constantly opening the tablet and navigating through different tabs would become cumbersome during normal gameplay.

There's also another possibility I've been considering: making the command bar or HUD something you can equip, toggle, or put away. Players who want a more hardcore command experience could choose not to use it at all.

And that's my dilemma.

I keep going back and forth on what ATLAS should ultimately feel like.

Is it primarily a detailed starship simulation, something closer to UBOAT? Or should it lean more toward a command RPG, where physically being the Captain and interacting with the crew is the core experience?

I want ATLAS to sit somewhere between those two ideas, but the line seems to move every time I sit down to work on the game.

I don't want to sacrifice the original vision just to make things more convenient. At the same time, I don't want to build a game where realism gets in the way of actually having fun.

So I'm curious what you guys think.

Would you prefer the more hardcore approach where your physical location matters, a convenient command interface available everywhere, or something in between?

And perhaps more importantly, what would make you want to keep playing?

I'm especially interested in where you think meaningful command limitations end and unnecessary frustration begins.