Gameplay · in development

Doctrine for a hungry galaxy.

These are design notes for Heavenly Baddies, not a manual for a shipped game. The four pillars stay specific to this fleet. Under them is the mix the game is actually aiming at. Every title named below is a design influence. This project is not those products, and it is not endorsed by the people who made them.

Generated concept of a fictional adult admiral setting a standard on a station deck, galaxy visible through the window.

Expand

A system is a berth you can walk.

Expand does not flood a hex map. A system joins your territory when an orbital berth connects it to a station you already supply. The fleet parks in the sky and keeps the approaches honest. The legal act is personal: a commander leaves the flagship, crosses the deck, and writes the standard into the station log.

Neighbors do not flip because they touch your color. Overreach is a supply problem. You can warp past the sectors you control, and then you suffer the shortage: raid, or go home. A glamorous arrival still needs fuel behind it. Promotions top out at seven battlefleets. After that, the command is delegation, not another portrait on the wall.

Generated concept of a fictional adult admiral in a shipyard of modular hulls.

Exploit

Yards, tribute, parade, FeetPics.

Yard throughput builds and repairs hulls. Tribute is collected from stations that have actually been walked. Parade upkeep is the alloy, escort time, and dress fuel spent to arrive looking untouchable. Parade raises oath stability and spends material that could have been armor.

The scandal ledger is FeetPics. In this galaxy, desire is a currency: traded, hoarded, and embarrassing on purpose. It is how the setting talks about hunger without pretending beauty is free. FeetPics are a design fact of the economy, not a store promise and not a joke pasted on a generic treasury. Neglect the yards and the gold on the collars comes off the hulls first.

Generated concept of a fictional adult admiral reading a dark ancient relay.

Explore

Rumors stay dotted until a seal is shown.

Scouts can mark a dark relay, a derelict chart-room, or a silent approach. Those marks stay unconfirmed. Probes come back with static. The relays answer to a command seal, and the seal travels with a person. Exploration finishes when a commander boards, reads the room, and brings the route back.

The map is allowed to wound itself. A sun can explode and leave a dead system. Ancient rooms point at “ascended” beings that are really the It’s Always Something system — a director wearing a relic’s face, handing out quests and branching paths. Confidence is allowed. Certainty is earned on site. Whoever unlocks the ancient secret can try to ascend and unify, or stay and subjugate. Victory can also mean owning a sky whose suns are already burning out.

Generated concept of a fictional adult admiral on a captured bridge, solar-system ships beyond the glass.

Exterminate

Break the line. Take the ground.

Combat opens as a formation fight: range, screens, and the geometry of a solar system rather than a flat icon war. The war goal in space is still the enemy flag bridge. A boarding decree spends elite crews to finish that crossing. Surviving crews can be sworn, the yards stripped, or the standard burned so the system goes quiet.

The surface is the other half of the pillar. Planetary defense and offense are a tug-of-war, with orbit able to reach down and the ground able to punish a fleet that only watched. Numbers are not final. Exterminate is decisive and expensive, and it is still in design.

The mix

Six influences, one fleet.

Named so the debt is visible. Heavenly Baddies is its own game. These titles are design influences only. They do not sponsor, endorse, or ship this project.

01 · Scale

Universe Builder

The intended scale is a universe builder: solar systems you can cross, supply lanes that stand in for geography, and catastrophes that delete a sky. The design notes take that living-cosmos sweep from Universe Simulator 2. Heavenly Baddies is not Universe Builder and not Universe Simulator 2. The influence is the size of the map and the fact that a sun can die.

02 · Hulls

StarDrive

Starships are customizable in the vein of StarDrive: power grids, weapon arcs, and armor placed on a hull you can actually argue with. Ship classes are supposed to offer different bonuses, not a palette swap. This is not StarDrive, and it is not a sequel, a mod, or an official follow-on.

03 · Ground

Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator

Ground combat aims at the scale of Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator: armies large enough to read as a mass, a tug-of-war for cities and terrain, garrisons fed by whatever the fleet overhead can actually land. Orbit is a weapon and a logistics problem. This is not that simulator, and the battles are still design, not a shipped mode.

04 · Space

Homeworld

Strategic space battles are meant to feel like Homeworld inside a solar system: formations, approach lanes, capital ships that take time to turn, fighter screens, and a sky with terrain. The fight is the system, not an abstract duel on a galaxy map. Homeworld is a design influence, not the engine and not a license.

05 · Opposition

Adaptive AI

The opposing mind is meant to retrain from the player’s own progression while the campaign is live. Not a hidden resource cheat, and not a single script that repeats. If you fight tall, raid convoys, or obsess over one class of hull, the campaign should notice and answer in kind. Personalities can sit on top of that — a commander who prefers a knife fight, a fleet that surrenders, a rival with bad manners — but the core is adaptation to you.

06 · Events

Left 4 Dead

Story events come from a director in the style of Left 4 Dead’s AI director: pressure, relief, and set pieces chosen against how the campaign is actually going. Involvement and the rate of dynamic events are scales the player can set, not a fixed sermon. Narrative beats, news, and quests can intensify as the war does. Left 4 Dead is the influence for that pacing brain. It is not the setting, and this is not a zombie game wearing a fleet.