Instead, I opted to store the food that the colonist is supposed to eat, and if eating fails, I withdraw the item and amount that I had previously stored (and I had to implement this in a way that was consistent with various circumstances where the colonist was carrying something). This would be a poor solution, because eventually we want colonists to store food and other items in their inventory. The simplest solution would have been to query the colonist’s inventory and drop everything. Recently, I implemented a change so that colonists would drop their carried food if they failed to eat all of it (this could happen if they passed out, died, got distracted, whatever). This mindset forces us to consider how every small back-end change will affect the entire game. We literally rebuilt Starmancer from the ground up after our Kickstarter to make it flexible, extendable, and moddable. The game should be extendable, and this extension should be simple. Maybe the Ore Refinery can be upgraded so that it produces extra metal or so that it doesn’t require electricity.Įven colonists can be upgraded through biological research and mechanical implants. The player should be able to “upgrade” existing objects. This has an enormous power output (and an enormous risk if it explodes). The player can use this uranium to build a nuclear reactor. The player should have a sense of progression and choice.Ĭolonists should occasionally find “rare” objects, items, blueprints, and resources.Īn asteroid miner might return with some uranium. So you could move all of your ice into a room and make a freezer.īy the way, there’s many reasons that ice lowers room temperature: it forces the player to plan, it teaches the player about the temperature system (including that pirates can be damaged by extreme temperatures), and it makes it simpler to create a cold room for the player. Ice thaws in warm rooms, but in the process, it also cools off the room. When combined, a clever player can create a giant “freezer” for all of their perishable food.Įven more separately, water is acquired by mining ice from asteroids. Separately, the player can control the temperature of a room. The player should be able to combine unrelated mechanics in order to create a solution to their problems.įor example. (This is why you grow humans in bio-tanks) Where the station is persistent, but the colonists are dying and replaced frequently. We’re designing Starmancer to be slightly rouge-like. You might lose your entire colony because of 1 bad decision. Untrained farmers might accidentally kill your crops.Īnother part to this pillar is that it’s okay for the “bad stuff” to be very punishing. Poor station defense will entice pirates to attack. Treating your colonists poorly will lead to rebellion. Your colony will not randomly rebel against you. The core idea of “Cause and Effect” could be summarized as “actions have consequences”. You shouldn’t need to watch a tutorial before you play a video game. You shouldn’t have to play multiple times in order to understand what to do. There are advantages in specializing your refinery, but nothing bad will happen if you want to “place and forget” your machines. Doing so will adjust the conversion to create only fuel or only metal. The player can select the refinery and change the active recipe to “Fuel Only” or “Metal Only”. By default, 1 ore is converted into 1 metal and 1 fuel. Micromanagement will be available, but it will never be forced on the player.įor example, the Ore Refinery is a machine that converts raw ore into metal and fuel. The Starmancer issues orders, and your colonists (hopefully) obey. We have 5 rules that govern every aspect of the game-from the smallest balancing tweak to the largest feature.īy understanding these pillars, you’ll understand the type of game that we envision for Starmancer. It’s completely single-player, although we’d like to have multiplayer eventually (a really long time from now). But hey, if you fail, just regrow a new batch of colonists. There’s also the vacuum of space, enemy factions, diseases, starvation, murder, and space dementia. If they get too upset they’ll stop working or completely rebel and attempt to destroy you.
At the same time, you have to keep your colonists happy.
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