Text-based game. Sort of related to base building but sort of not.
Separated into two sections, the Mundus and the Astra.
The Mundus is exploratory -- gather resources, scan (with magic) Terra tiles and move around.
The Astra is more of a base building exercise with some tweaks.
Mundus Mechanics
A world is a collection of terra tiles arranged randomly. You start with a few terra tiles and can buy more at a Genesis Machine in the Astra.
Each terra tile has a set of properties like what other kinds of terra tiles it can connect to and what it can contain (and probabilities accordingly). These properties are recursive and can be altered eventually.
You have multiple terra tiles corresponding to different biomes. The biomes will connect at appropriate types of terras that form a bridge between them.
Every time you start up an exploratory session, all the tiles are randomly shuffled as well as their connections, so you get a different world every time. Resources gathered only persist on each session, and because of how probabilities work you may not get them every time.
You have two limiting factors for exploration:
Chronos -- a stat that determines how much time you have to explore before the session ends. Chronos goes down every time you go to a different room. If you run out of Chronos, the session automatically ends.
Equos -- a stat that determines how much you can carry. Items have random weight that isn't really based on logic but is based on their name/properties.
Both chronos and equos can be improved in various ways with modules added to Astra.
Anima
Once per session you can extract the Anima of an object in the world. The probability of this working depends on the object in question.
If it works, it grants you a Potentia in the class corresponding to the class of the object. Potentiae are basically lab unlocks that expand the featureset of the game.
The Nexus lies between the door to Mundus and the door to Astra. When you arrive there from Mundus (it requires confirmation), your Mundus session ends and everything in your inventory gets transferred to your Astra inventory.
The Nexus lies at [0,0] of Astra and is essentially part of Astra, however this room cannot be altered in any way.
The Nexus has a few fixtures:
Mundus Door -- The door that creates a new Mundus session and sticks you inside of it.
Genesis Machine -- allows you to buy new Terra tiles with Aether. You can only buy tiles that can potentially connect with tiles you've already unlocked. You get a random tile from whichever biome you select. An upgrade will allow you to pick several options, and this maxes out somewhere.
Extractor -- allows you to turn anything in your Astra inventory into Aether. Values range basically based on rarity and are based on the name. Later on there are better ways of extracting Aether but this gets you started at least. I'm thinking you might be able to also manage anima/potentia here rather than as a separate world mechanic.
The Nexus also contains the usual four doors that other Rooms in Astra do.
Astra is a set of interconnected rooms built on the Astral Plane. Each tile of the Astral Plane has a set of properties that dictate the room that will be built there, like the amount of fixtures it can hold, bonuses or other restrictions. Each astral plane tile is a bit different and leveraging them is key.
Each Astra room (including the Nexus) has four exits that go in one of the four cardinal directions on the Astral Plane. If there's a room there, you'll go to the room accordingly. If not, you'll instead see a list of the tile's properties and have the ability to build the room for Aether.
Fixtures
Rooms that aren't the Nexus allow you to place fixtures in them. You can only place a fixture in a room if you've unlocked the Potentia for it (or it's been unlocked adaptively). Additionally:
Rooms have volume limitations (based on the Astral tile), and fixtures have a randomized volume that they take up. There might be bonuses here based on other things you've added to Astra or the Astral Plane tile itself.
Fixtures require resources to build and sometimes require Aether as well. The actual resources needed use the Adaptive PGCS (more on that in its section).
Fixtures either do something when you interact with them or instead grant passive bonuses. Either way, they take up space.
You can remove fixtures from a room, gaining back all the resources used. If there are no fixtures in a room, you can reclaim the room, however you'll lose 25% of the Aether spent on it.
I should be able to draw the list of materials from the trading game (or Lachesis more generally). No sense overcomplicating things.
Terra tiles of a specific type will have a certain amount of resources they can spawn (along with probabilities). There are a couple of other mechanics here based on what the type of resources it spawns are (like Fishing) but that's the gist of it.
However, it won't spawn them until they meet the probability and actually spawn. Until then it'll be a ???.
Obviously this means that the full list of resources is palletized -- however there are special fixtures that allow you to alter resources of specific terra tiles, pulling it away from the abstract terra tile clone class accordingly.
The PGCS (used in creating Fixtures) pulls from the list of available resources, and will also create refined products sometimes. If it does so, the fixture that refines things will automatically be unlocked, and it's set up so that refineries will always go down a level of refinement so you don't hit paradoxes.
I'm not sure what the limits of refinement are, but it's definitely a thing that snowballs over time as you unlock more Potentia.
Refinement itself costs both the precursor material and Aether. The amounts here (and input:output ratio) vary, but there are various ways of gaining bonuses.
Unlock all biomes. This will then allow you to unlock the Volcano Biome.
The volcano class of potentia are:
One that unlocks the ability of terra tiles to have Meteor fixtures.
Modules that improve the rate of meteor spawning.
Meteors can be gathered for Meteor Cores.
Meteor Cores must be taken to a special fixture on a Volcano terra tile where you need some amount of them to unlock a special potentia.
This potentia costs a bunch of resources (at the highest level of refinement) and aether but wins the game.
The hard part here is that you have to actually have Meteor Cores in your Mundus inventory and they're kinda rare so while you can sorta Seer it you need Chronos and Equos upgrades as well to accomplish this task.
Seering is an ability granted from the first Seering class Potentia unlocked. It allows you to see a terra tile in mundus' connections to other terra tiles some length out. With an upgrade you can also see what's actually there, not just what's potentially there.
Starting out you can only Seer once per session, will only see potentials, and only see one layer of connections. Potentia will improve this.
There are several resource gathering mechanics. They're all available from the outset.
Basic -- you just collect the object. Very easy.
Anima -- destroys the object but (maybe) grants you a potentia. Might actually happen at the Extractor.
Fishing -- happens at still water (pond, lake, etc) terra tiles. There's no limit to the amount of fish resources you can collect, however your chance of catching fish starts out low and each attempt costs Chronos.
Mining -- Similar to fishing, but rather than remove chronos directly, it instead makes a random cave terra tile cost more chronos to move through. This kinda forms a network at the base of where you're mining, so it'll hit the tile you're on first, then adjacent ones, then adjacent to what's been put into the network, etc. It can also make an existing tile worse. The values and probabilities here depend on *what* you're mining -- some are harder than others. Mining happens in Cave terra tiles.
Panning -- gives a low probability of gaining minerals on a moving water tile. Waterfalls are a bit better, but they're rarer.
Hunting -- animals might spawn on this kind of tile. If you hunt them successfully you get their resource. Otherwise they run to an adjacent tile. An upgrade will let you see which one. Additionally theres upgrades for hunting efficiency.
