The colonists game shaft mine upgrade#
The colonists game shaft mine series#

Unlike on the surface, Waste Rock should be a major constraint on the player in the underground.

The colonists game shaft mine upgrade#

These upgrades should not be lost if the elevator is 'destroyed' (heavily damaged) by a meteor strike, or at least should rebuild without several upgrade rounds being required (the shaft is bigger and most of the machinery is in place). The elevator should start with a small capacity/slow speed but be upgradeable.This incentives early construction, incentivizes the player to build a relatively early elevator to use the underground resources for early exports to Earth, and slightly reduces early game dependency on getting a 'good' asteroid to be able to start building. On the order of 30-50 exotic minerals should also be discoverable by a sufficiently aggressive player. More 'surface' resources should be discoverable underground, including metal/rare metal AND a small amount of exotic minerals.Obviously, this change includes its own tradeoffs by making those RC vehicles unavailable on the surface. The availability of RC commanders, dozers, transports, etc allows the player to clear some obstructions earlier in the underground and make more progress mapping it out (and making discoveries) before investing in serious infrastructure.

At all times, the player should have the option to drop any RC vehicle into the underground through any un-elevatored portal.

Water caverns include more large caves and narrower connections between them. Lava tubes tend to be larger/wider primary tunnels with fewer natural caves.

At least two map types should be possible - 'lava tubes' and 'underground water caves' which have different art styles and different patterns of tunnel formation.

More interesting areas (more resources, etc.) should require clearing/tunneling, and there should be a few areas which will start fully blocked (cave-ins requiring tech to clear block those areas from the start). The basic progression of gameplay should allow the player to find at least one underground wonder (probably, the Jumbo cave, if it is not already mandatory on all maps) and several areas of potential colonial/resource extraction interest) without clearing.

The basic design of the underground should include more directly accessible 'primary paths' which do not require any clearing and which are wider than present.

Specific suggestions ('Strive'/General exploration):

A great 'disaster' experience should include situations like 'all our water comes from this one cave we just got cut off from' and 'we can't get machine parts from the surface because of a cave in and/or something bad happened on the surface.' The underground's disasters (cave-ins) should tie closely into the core challenge of the underground - acquiring life-sustaining resources in the first place, navigating a tunnel environment, and maintaining critical resource lines. More equipment underground means more austerity and/or more dependency on a tenuous lifeline to the surface.ДЈ. The player should have flexibility to choose the balance of surface vs subsurface infrastructure. Colonizing underground gives the advantage of many fewer disasters while also making it significantly harder to build up survival-critical resource surpluses and population (by contrast, metals/rare metals should be relatively easy to get, to incentivize the player to invest underground early, even though both are less critical for actual underground construction). It should be possible to explore a large portion of the underground fairly early, extract some resources from it and colonize it.Дў. Objectives for 'Strive' and 'Survive' Phases:ДЎ.

The colonists game shaft mine series#

This is part of a short series of posts which begins with the following: