Game Projects

Basic Stuff

Text-based, session-based time. Advancing time is definitely one of the main mechanics here, though it also serves another purpose.

Largely a management simulator in the vein of dungeoneer and starwright crew mechanics. Also has some farming and fishing and similar mechanics -- this gives you resources and advances game time, which gives your people time to do whatever they're doing.

Very very simplified rooms -- instead of lofty descriptions and content, they're instead just lists of how they're useful and what you're currently doing there. *Definitely* applies to things like caves and dungeons.

As mentioned, it's a management simulator. You hire people based on their aptitudes and then adjust the layout of your HQ to make sure they're happiest so you can optimize their performance. People have all kinds of crazy procedural preferences, and getting them all to live together can be quite tricky.

Resources

The game is governed by resources. Building out different rooms in the HQ, fixtures and decorations takes resources, feeding your crew takes resources (and this is a constant thing), powering machines and stuff takes fuel-type resources. Giving them the tools to do their job effectively requires -- you guessed it -- resources.

As the Operator, you can go out and collect resources yourself, but it makes more sense to send your Crew out instead. You can also form Teams which compound aptitude bonuses, provided the team members don't hate one another (or there'll be a productivity decrease).

Resource processing is also something you can do yourself or get Crew members to automate for you.

Resource gathering (usually) depletes the resources of that particular tile. There are exceptions though, like harvesting stone from a cave which is boundless. Depleting a tile makes the yield go down and/or the time go up until it's eventually exhausted.

Town Mechanics

Towns appear sporadically on the Map, and you start out with knowledge of where one is. Towns connect to one another as well, though it's pricey.

Towns do several useful things:

They offer people that you can hire for a variety of roles. This is kind of an essential mechanic -- in addition to doing existing work, Experts are the pathway to Lab unlocks.

They offer shops where you can buy and sell resources, fixtures, etc. This can be done manually by you or can be on an automated Contract for a price (and some Legal stipulations).

They offer Quests which with the right kind of Crew member or Team, can earn you additional money and/or resources and/or Reputation.

Courthouses allow you to adjust Legal mechanics. More on that in that section. It's basically a form of upgrades though.

They offer Libraries which (for a cost) give you information about other Towns. Basically scanning services. You can also kinda sift through libraries manually and get procedural information accordingly (as well as pass Time).

They offer (pricey) transport to other Towns and also local POIs as well. This keeps you from having to find them manually, which is particularly annoying due to the Scouting mechanic and also even more annoying without a Cartographer working for you.

Town Layout

Town Skeins are subdivided into Districts, which offer various types of town houses.

Inns and Residential houses are good ways of finding new Crew members.

The Map

The Map is an "infinite" grid full of several types of tiles:

Resource tiles -- offer resources via various mechanics.

Towns -- obvious what these are.

Wild POIs -- can be explored by Crew Members provided they have the aptitudes and tools/etc they require.

Legal POIs -- can be explored by Crew Members as well, but you have to have some kind of Legal contract. Things like Mines, Quarries, etc. Generally better resources than wild POIs, and tend to have transport from towns as well so you don't have to find them.

Scouting

You're not initially able to just explore the world freely. You're instead locked to the tiles you've already discovered. To get around this, you need to Scout in a cardinal direction from a tile you've already Explored. You can either do this manually or via Scout Crew Members.

If you Scout manually, it's something that takes real time but also passes game time. There's probably some kind of minigame involving machetes and shovels (which are tools that Scouts also require) and/or building bridges or whatever.

Cartography

Starting out, you don't have a Map of the world and have to kind of remember how tiles connect together and what you havent explored yet. Hiring Cartographers will do several things:

Allow you to have a Map fixure that maps out everything.

They can explore tiles more thoroughly, uncovering rarer resources.

They can discover hints of what surrounding tiles offer. Basically a form of scanning that makes your actual Scouts more effective.

You can make a copy of a current Map and use it as you move around. It doesn't update in real time like the fixture does but it's useful.

Logisticians

Normally, to assign a Crew Member to a tile or town function you have to actually go there.

With Logisticians, however, you can assign them from the Map fixture directly. Obviously you can't hire a Logistician without first hiring a Cartographer.

Getting a Crew Member to a specific tile takes game time, which obviously cuts their productivity down by however many hours their commute is. Logisticians can improve that stat. It's even worse for Teams, and same deal there.

As far as Town stuff goes, Logisticians can make town transport cost less if you go that route when sending Teams/CMs out, which is a very good idea so commute doesn't take as much time if a POI is very far away. This can also cut down on the costs (and productivity loss) associated with Camping (more on that later).

More advanced ones can also plan arcane town routes that are more cost effective than the ones you manually pick. Lots of handwaving there, or maybe just horse rentals or something.

Base Storage Mechanics

There are two types of rooms associated with Base Storage:

A Dumping room where you (and CMs) can just dump resources until it fills up, though it has a pretty high storage capacity and these are easy to make.

If all the Dumping Rooms are full, productivity by CMs that are moving resources around will stall.

A Crystal Room, where resources can be Crystallized and put into storage usable by the Fabricator tool.

Crystal Rooms categorize item types and there's a fixed amount of Crystals that can be in a Crystal Room, so you need more than one, particularly as the amount of item classes grows over time.

Thankfully actual storage is infinite. Nothing annoying to worry about there.

Janitors

In the beginning, you'll be moving items from the dumping room to the crystal room manually yourself.

However you can hire Janitors that will do this for you. The only stat here that's important is how long it takes them to move stuff that appears in the Dumping rooms.

Janitors have additional roles as well.

Food

As a crystal being, you yourself don't have to eat thankfully. However CMs definitely do.

CMs can have food preferences as well. This is generally more of a food class kind of thing rather than specific foods, although if a specific food that they really like is available they'll eat it and get some kind of bonus accordingly.

There are several things associated with the food mechanic:

A Larder room will store food items in various fixtures for general use.

A Cafeteria room will allow CMs to eat. The amount of tables you can place in each cafeteria is limited, so if limited, CMs will instead kinda eat on the go which decreases their happiness.

Fridges can be placed in individual CM rooms, giving them a supply of foods they specifically like. These do consume power but they're better solutions than Larders, which are generalized.

Kitchens have fixtures that allow you to prepare combination foods. These can then be stored back in the Larder or Fridges. Combination foods grant bonuses above their individual ingredients. You can also hire Chefs to do this automatically and they have various stats that improve the bonuses or even do things like make unpalatable food classes more palatable.

Various fixtures will allow you to refine foods into other forms, like turning milk into cheese or fruit into alcohol. Again this can be automated.

While Food can be stored in Food Crystals, they have to actually be in the Larder to be usable. Janitors can help here.

Food Supply

Food can be gathered via resource gathering mechanisms -- either manually or by a CM.

It can also be Farmed -- the set of mechanics here are unlocked as soon as you hire a Farmer CM and they have various bonuses and can help automate farming as well.

Resources

Resources are highly shatterloopian in the way that they're used -- however they're handcrafted and have distinct properties because all the procedural nonsense instead comes from CMs.

Plant matter: Summary

Trees -- Wood, Bark, Nuts/Fruit

Saplings -- Branches, (some) Bark

Shrubs -- Fiber, Berries/Beans, Sticks

Herbs -- Tubers, Spices

Plant Matter

Wood -- A structural material and used in Furniture. Comes from Trees.

Branches -- used in making torches, various tools and early weapons. Comes from Saplings.

Bark -- processed into Paper. Paper is a consumable used for all kinds of logistical stuff and is also used to make magical Scrolls. Bark comes from Trees and also Saplings to a lesser extent.

Nuts -- food source. Comes from Trees.

Fruit -- food source. Comes from Trees that don't contain Nuts.

Fiber -- can be woven into Twine, which can then be processed into Rope and Cloth. Comes from Shrubs.

Berries -- food source. Comes from Shrubs.

Beans -- food source. Comes from Shrubs that don't contain Berries.

Tubers -- food source. Comes from Herbs.

Spices -- food source conjunct, also Potion ingredient. Comes from Herbs.

Sticks -- used in smaller tools and Wands. Comes from Shrubs.

Animal Products

Meat -- food source. Comes from animals of all classes.

Fat -- food conjunct. Also used in Torches and as a fuel source for Lanterns. Comes from fatty animals of all types.

Eggs -- food source, also a source of Calcium. Comes from bird nests. Also farmable.

Feathers -- used for making arrows, wands, dusters, wings, etc. Comes from birds. Farmable.

Milk -- food source, also a source of Calcium. Comes from mammal nests. Also farmable.

Bones -- used in making tools, also a good source of Calcium. Comes from all types of animals in differing proportions.

Dye -- different ones here than the ones that come from insects. Dye is used in making decorations and Paint and such via those mechanics (which tie into CM preferences and also sellable Crafts). Dye here comes from Reptiles.

Fish Products

Fish meat -- food source. Tends to play a role in CM food preferences.

Bones -- less than from animals.

Fat

Scales -- Used as a component for various machines.

Fish Teeth -- used for puncturing type tools.

Insects

Bait -- used for Fishing. Also used for Farming Fish.

Dye -- used for adding color to various things (decorations and such use this mechanic).

Another source of Potion ingredients.

Misc Overworld Resources

Stone -- structural material, also used in making really basic tools.

Clay -- used in making Pottery, which is a form of Containers and also a Craft. Also pretty essential for Metalworking.

Limestone -- The best source of Calcium.

Brimstone, Saltpeter -- ingredients in Gunpowder.

Soil -- used in Farming.

Sand -- used in Glassmaking. Glass isn't used as a functional container (that's what pottery is for), however Lenses and Mirrors have a variety of uses, especially in Machines and Decorations.

Cave Resources

Metal ore -- processed into metal which is essential for all kinds of stuff, particularly better tools and weapons.

Crystals -- necessary for crystal storage, crystal communicators, portable crystallizers, and wands/scrolls. Probably other stuff as well.

Petroleum -- once refined, a better fuel source than burning organic matter.

Precious Metals -- used in making Jewelry, which functions in machines, acts as a magic spell source and/or is a highly valuable Craft.

Magnetite -- very valuable for machines.

Obsidian -- upgraded puncturing/cutting tools.

Mushrooms -- food source. Also useful in magic-themed machines.

CM Entertainment

CMs require free time and some form of their preferred entertainment choices or their productivity drops rapidly and cumulatively.

Social -- this one's easy enough to fulfill. Just have more than one CM, make sure the other one isn't antisocial, and there's generally alcohol involved. You'll need a Lounge room.

Games -- There are a variety of tabletop games with plausible-sounding names. The game boards can be quite expensive sometimes, and poor quality ones can be damaged, particularly if copious amounts of alcohol are involved. CMs will have preferences for specific types of games, and fulfilling it requires other players that like those games to also be CMs, and for them to not completley hate one another. Friendships and relationships are likely here. Alcohol preferences vary wildly and generally players will need to be at least somewhat compatible.

Music Gems and Dream Gems -- these play music and induce specific dreams respectively. CMs generally won't get bored of these that quickly, and they don't require a Lounge, but they do require a Library.

Books -- procedural plausible names in various genres. CMs into books require more reading material based on their reading speed. This can add up quickly but thankfully Books are relatively cheap and abundant. Requires a Library.

Alcohol -- some CMs just want to get drunk a lot. This is generally social in which case it requires a Lounge and other drinkers in some capacity. Either way though they'll go through alcohol pretty quickly.

Crafts -- some CMs like to do Crafts. In this case you need to provide them with a way of doing it (either in their room if they prefer doing it alone or in a Lounge if they're more social). Some prefer collaboration, in which case another CM needs to have the same set of preferences. You can't sell their Crafts unfortunately, and still need to provide them with the materials and dyes they require. However, they obviously have Craft aptitude so can be assigned to those kinds of roles.

Musicians -- they need their musical instrument of choice. Can be either personal (room) or social (lounge + other musicians). Having musicians in a Lounge increases the entertainment potential of everyone assigned to the Lounge. You can also farm performances to make music gems.

Actors -- similar mechanics to the above. Item requirements are pretty wild, and you need a Stage room. Can be farmed for Play Gems, and additionally it will cut down on the usage of Play Gems by CMs that prefer that.

Writers -- supply them with paper and ink and they'll churn out books. Very useful to have around, especially as full-time entertainers.

Entertainers can be assigned full-time free time if you want to really farm books/e-gems. Just depends on how useful they are otherwise.

Money Management

CMs that you hire are paid weekly. At the end of every week you either pay them or their productivity drops to zero until you pay them again (and yes, they'll annoyingly still freeload). They each have different wage requirements, with more skilled ones requiring more.

Bills will also come due at the end of the week -- this typically involves shop contracts and other legal instruments. Pay them or suffer the consequences until you can pay them out.

Injuries, Doctors and Communicator Crystals

Injuries can be sustained when CMs do anything whatsoever. They might have tendencies one way or another, which should be factored in. If injured, a CM needs time to heal, during which time their productivity will drop to zero. They'll still freeload.

Hiring Doctors will improve recovery rates of various injuries and they can also even grant preventative bonuses.

Potions can also be used to heal or prevent injuries, and having a CM carry a potion they might need is a generally good idea.

CMs on expeditions to Caves and Dungeons are required to have a Communicator Crystal. If something goes wrong, you can make a choice for then about what to do with the injured team member (assuming there are others). They can press on, which risks worse injuries, or escort them back to HQ (which consumes valuable time), or leave them behind which decreases the CM's happiness but doesn't cost time or risk worse injury.

There are also other choices you'll need to make, which have varying consequences.

Crafts

Crafts are a good way to make money. Each CM that can do a craft has a particular proficiency with it (that increase the item's value) as well as a time it takes to actually make a piece. Balancing the two is essential.

Making crafts requires a steady supply of materials. This can be wood, clay (for pottery), paper and paint (for drawings), cloth (for clothing), etc. There will also need to be a range of paints/dyes or the quality will generally drop.

You can get a feel for the colors a craftsman prefers by the colors of their output, and adjust the supply chain accordingly.

Shop Contracts

While you can buy and sell items in person (or send a CM to do this task for you), it's more efficient to have a contract with them. This lowers the price of bought goods and increases the sale value of sold goods. Contracts require some amount of money as upkeep (thankfully relatively cheap) which is paid every week.

They basically work like delivery nodes in shatterloop -- you go to a shop, take on a contract and then buy and sell remotely from your HQ.

The amount of Contracts you can have is determined by Legal Instruments (next section).

Legal Instruments

There are several things in the game that are capped somewhere:

The amount of CMs you can hire.

The number of shop contracts you can have active at a time.

The amount of money you can keep banked.

Your total Power production.

The amount of Rooms your HQ can have.

The amount of Farming you can do.

The non-wild POIs you can send an expedition to.

The amount of Legal instruments you can file at a time (starts at 1).

These are all tightly regulated. Going over on, say, money, will stall whatever process is generating money so you're not going to explicitly lose money but you won't gain it either.

You can adjust your legal standing at a Courthouse. These upgrades take both money and game time, and you can file as many as that particular Legal stat allows (upgrading it is obviously a good idea, but it's expensive and gets moreso over time).

Different Courthouses at different Towns will offer different money/time rates.

Combat

Combat is completely handwaved, however it's definitely something that comes up in the context of Expeditions and Quests.

Weapons

There are three classes of weapons:

Short-range like swords. Doesn't require anything whatsoever but has no range.

Bows -- has a good range but requires arrows as a consumable ammunition. This can be problematic on longer expeditions, so it's important to source a Bowman with some kind of backup or they won't pull their weight.

Magic -- requires Jewelry (for permanent spells) or wands/scrolls for breakable/consumable magic. Spells use mana which recharges over time. If a CM doesn't have the right amount of max mana they can't use a specific spell, period. Wands/scrolls are exempt but have other issues -- Wands break with repeated uses (but can at least be repaired), scrolls are consumed altogether.

Armor

Armor protects against specific types of injuries. Different armors will do different things, and the enemy selection of different POIs is variable, so knowing what they're up against is useful. Cartographers can get a sense of what's in a POI before an expedition goes there, otherwise the information is updated when the enemy is encountered.

Potions

Potions heal injuries and restore mana. They're unfortunately consumed and take up weight.

Natural Resistances

Some combat-roled CMs will have natural Resistances to certain types of injuries. These don't stack if they're part of a team but it's helpful in their specific case.

Enemies

Enemies have some kind of name (probably pulled from a big bestiary somewhere) and have plausible injury types assigned to them as well as overall health. They also have a range -- fliers in particular can't be attacked by melee fighters. These are the only properties that are important. There are also procedural varieties that make mild adjustments to the stats here.

POIs will have a palette of several enemy types. You don't know what a POI contains before a team encounters one, unless a Cartographer scans it for you (or you find the information in a Town Library).

Actual Combat

The actual mechanics here just compare the properties to each other and the chances of injury. Injuries are healed automatically if severe enough and there's a potion available for it. Injuries can range from mild to severe depending on the amount of attacks done on them. Severe injuries will add debuffs and if bad enough will incapacitate a CM altogether.

The communicator Crystal will give you a readout of how combat goes as an expedition is underway (more on that in the Expedition section).

POIs have a percentage stat of how often Combat happens, and so those events will happen that often.

Expeditions

There are four types of Expeditions:

Caves -- combat is highly unlikely but can still happen so some kind of combat CM is needed. Doesn't have to be particularly strong as the enemies are weak. Caves give you Cave Resources.

Dungeons -- Definitely unsafe.

Semi-inhabited POIs -- require a legal instrument. Combat encounters might happen, but not as often as in Dungeons (but more than in Caves).

Inhabited POIs -- completely safe. Requires a legal instrument and a pretty hefty one at that.

Dungeons and other POIs give valuable items, decorations, rare resources, and depending on the type (like mines) maybe large amounts of regular resources.

Expedition Requirements

All expeditions require a Crystal Communicator, a Camping Kit, and Food. Food must be in a nonperishable format. Food preferences can play a role in decreasing productivity of CMs. Thankfully there's nonperishable versions of all food classes via fixtures such as a Smoker or Cannery.

Caves require Torches, Ropes and Gunpowder. The expedition stops when one of those runs out, and after the first expedition you have a better idea of what's required. Rope and Gunpowder usage will go down over time.

Unsafe POIs don't explicitly require combat supplies, but not having them will cause everyone to get severely injured at the first encounter.

If you're harvesting resources, you need to equip your people with tools that do that. If they break, they can't harvest them anymore.

Weight Concerns

All items have a Weight, which influences the amount *you* can carry but also the amount that CMs can carry. Carry capacity is dictated by the CM itself.

For Loot, a portable fixture known as a Crystallizer will crystallize loot into weightless forms. The downside is this costs Power, scaling by the total amount of Weight that's compressed. Portable power can be provided by Batteries, but unfortunately Batteries *also* take up weight. POIs can sometimes contain batteries, which will be added to the team inventory if there's space for them.

Expedition progress and the Crystal Communicator

Expedition progress happens in game time. You'll get readouts of how things are going with your own Crystal Comnunicator item. If you need to make some kind of choice, you'll instead get a more visceral alert which is available regardless of where you are, and you can make decisions accordingly from there. Obviously you need a crystal communicator yourself too or you can't launch Expeditions.

Readouts will tell you the effects of Combat, various stats of CMs where relevant (like injuries), what happens at Camp, the status of the team inventory, and items gained as loot. You can end an expedition at any time. They'll also end on their own for various reasons.

Each expedition decreases some percentage of how much a POI has been explored, based on the complexity of the POI (a numeric stat which is always available along with the percentage) and the amount of exploratory (non-combat, non-camp, etc) events that have happened.

When a POI has been fully explored, no more expeditions can be performed there.

Expedition Ending

Expeditions can end for several reasons:

Expeditions that reach 100% exploration will end automatically.

Cave expeditions will end if all harvesting tools break. If there's a repair machine, this won't happen unless the team is out of batteries.

Cave expeditions will end if the team runs out of Rope, Torches or Gunpowder (and more is required for further exploration).

Expeditions will end if all team members gain injuries that make them incapacitated and there aren't Potions available.

Expeditions will end if all team storage is full and if there's a Crystallizer, it's run out of power.

Expeditions will end if the team inventory runs out of Food. Food can be found in POIs but the team isn't willing to take that risk.

You can also end Expeditions manually yourself.

Camping

Expeditions require Camping supplies. Camping allows CMs to sleep on extended expeditions, use fixtures, and heal minor injuries. You can manually tell a team to Camp if you're trying to specifically do that -- they will however consume Food and do other consumable Camping tasks.

To Camp, the team needs the number of Tents corresponding to the Tent capacity (usually around 4 though there are upgrades through various systems) and a sleeping bag for each person.

You can add additional (optional) Camping supplies:

Fire kit -- Allows a Camp to start a fire. Fires will protect against cold issues and heal cold/wet types of injuries. They also allow for Cooking.

Cooking supplies -- increases the happiness of CMs and maybe adds additional buffs.

Repair Machine -- a portable fixture that repairs tools. Consumes Batteries.

Grindstone -- repairs weapons and consumes batteries.

Spirallizer -- recharges Wands and consumes batteries.

You can assign a ratio of stuff to do on camps so they're not just using power willy-nilly. If you request a camp manually, you can do specific tasks.

Crafting

There are various recipes associated with crafting Tools, Weapons, Armor, etc.

Crafting requires two things:

The resources required in the actual recipe. Supply chains and inventory space aren't required thankfully, it'll just pull from crystallized base storage.

A table and Extruder. The Extruder pulls the items out of crystallized base storage.

Depending on what kind of recipe it is, it might require either a high table by itself or a low table and chair.

A bin to hold finished products. Multiple bins can be attached to a crafting table, but it still runs into Room Volume limitations.

Processing tools, which form the basis of the crafting process. Better tools will craft things faster, particularly automatically. Processing tools also lose durability. If there's something automatic going on and a tool breaks or the durability limit you've set to the task is exceeded, a new tool will be pulled out of the Extruder if one exists.

Manual Crafting Mechanics

You go to the specific table that operates on that specific class of recipe and can craft things accordingly. Manual Crafting takes both game time and real time, though thankfully not much real time. Better tools upgrade the real time angle of this.

If a tool breaks, you can pull out a new tool manually.

Finished products and broken tools get transferred to attached Bins automatically. If the Bins are full you can't craft anymore.

You can pull items out of Bins manually into your personal inventory for storage or to transfer into your crystal rooms. Or other places you might need them.

Janitors can also pull items out of Bins automatically.

Processing Tool Durability

Processing tools lose durability and eventually break. With less durability, either the properties decrease somewhat or the amount of waste goes up (recipes require more of the resource in question). With zero durability crafting can't be performed.

Automatic Crafting

CMS with an aptitude in Crafting can automatically craft stuff according to their specific skills (different recipe classes are represented here).

Their stats are a yield on the specific product (over game time) and a debuff stat on how many extra resources they waste making duds.

You go to the appropriate crafting station and assign them their task, and they'll do it during their work hours. You can tell them when to stop (an amount) and what kind of tool durability to look at for replacements. With a lot of resources, allowing them to work until the tool breaks makes a lot of sense.

If you assign the station a crystal communicator, then they'll tell you when they're done or can't work anymore and you'll also get a readout of what's happening.

Logisticians will allow you to assign multiple tasks to a CM (the amount here is dictated by the Logistician stats). When they finish a task or can't do it anymore (and you get to assign which conditions trigger) they'll move onto the next task automatically.

Janitor Influence

Janitors can pull finished products and broken tools out automatically. They can actually go put the tools on a repair station or maybe even repair them themselves if they're good enough and then crystallize them to send them back into circulation.

I should probably do a section on Janitors in general.

Janitor Mechanics

Janitors basically move items around.

So far I've mentioned that they can move items from dumping rooms or crafting bins to crystal rooms, but they have other roles as well and I haven't mentioned how they work or what their stats are.

Janitors are assigned to specific Rooms, which they'll always operate within.

If it's a dumping room, then they'll move items dumped there to the appropriate storage crystal in game time according to their movement stat. They can have bonuses for specific classes of items. They can move items you've dumped here manually as well. Neat!

If the Room has a Boiler and an Extruder, they can be told to move some set of items from the Extruder into the Boiler. This is quite fast and the item class stats are kinda irrelevant.

If there's an Extruder and a Scrapper, they can scrap items and then move them to the storage crystal. Item class stats play a role again.

Janitors can move broken/damaged tools to a repair station or with aptitude can repair them themselves. Note however that finding a Janitor with a repair time/efficiency stat as high as someone with that actual role is very unlikely.

They can pull finished products from a crafting station and move them to the appropriate storage crystal. This happens with manual crafting too. Neat!

Same deal with storage in farming rooms.

They just do their assigned tasks automatically. No micromanagement needed. If you want to though you can set various conditions where things would be ambiguous otherwise. The conditions apply to the room janitor team as a whole, not individual CMs.

Janitors in a room will compound (in the code) and basically fuse into a new janitor that accumulates their stats. Team synergy mechanics also play a role here -- if the CMs are friendly with each other you'll gain buffs, and if they hate each other's guts you'll gain debuffs.

Material Processing

Material processing is identical to Crafting, except with a couple differences:

You're turning materials into other materials, not making finished products. This should be obvious.

Processing requires Power.

The roles for automatic processing are a different class of CM but otherwise function identically (aptitudes in different recipe classes, the stat breakdown, etc).

Instead of having processing tools, you instead have Machines. They can lose durability but the system is a bit different:

Machines

Processing machines require the same setup as a crafting station (tables, an Extruder, etc) but instead of processing tools they have a Machine, which is composed of various crafted or refined components. Generally metal as well.

Machines will break down over time, gaining debuffs accordingly such as power and resource waste.

With a crystal communicator you can be informed when a machine breaks and set parameters on how bad it has to be, etc.

You can repair them manually -- you need repair tools (which can also break lol) and then you get a list of components and subcomponents and have to find the ones that are broken and repair them in both real time and game time.

Machine Repair Automation

You can hire CMs to repair stuff for you. To do that, you need a Tool Room with an Extruder in it where the tools can be kept and you need enough tools to match the requirements based on the number/types of machines and the amount of machine repair CMs.

You'll also need to set up a crystal communicator on those machines and assign one to each machine repairer as well. Can get kinda expensive here.

They'll then automatically repair machines as they break, and pull tools out when theirs break, putting the depleted tool in the depleted tool bin (also a requirement). If they don't have the tools they need to repair a machine or the depleted tool bin is full, they'll stall out and send you an alert.

Janitors can work with the depleted tool bin the way they work with crafting bins.

Different machines require different sets of tools, which have to be crafted or bought. The full toolkit is required for machine repair of either type regardless of which components are actually damaged.

Machine repairer stats involve how fast they go through tools and how long it takes to repair certain types of machines.

You thankfully don't have to actually manage machine repairers, they'll just go where they're needed and will idle if they aren't.

Fuel and the Boiler

The Boiler fixture turns fuel sources into Base Power. Each one takes up almost an entire room, and generates both Smoke and Noise (both of which CMs don't like living near).

There are two main fuel types:

Organic materials like wood. These can be burned as is or refined into better forms.

Oil materials like gasoline. These have to be refined.

Each material has a set amount of fuel that it generates as well as the amount of game time it takes to burn it. If you want to power some crazy projects you need to either wait for materials to pass through it or have multiple Boilers. Making better fuels is generally a better strategy.

Fuel is used in game time, and fuel is replenished from boiler activity also in game time.

Boilors

I'm pulling this role from Janitors.

Boilors are a CM role that can feed a boiler automatically. They're still assigned to a specific room and have the same set of optional constraints.

Their stats govern how tightly they can pack specific types of fuel classes in a boiler. Very useful to pull out more power output.

You can also manually fill a boiler but you're not as efficient as good Boilors are. It does however pass Game Time.

The Battery Station

Batteries can store fuel. This is useful on expeditions and also a way around Legal fuel limits.

The battery station is a crafting fixture with those constraints. It uses metal and Acid/Electrolytes which are refined from rocks and plant products.

Crafter CMs proficient in this area can eke out more power, decrease battery weight (useful for expeditions), and have the usual time/materials stats.

Harvesting Tools

Gathering resources from the overworld or caves requires harvesting tools, which are your normal collection of Axes, Pickaxes, Scythes, etc. If you're doing it manually you need to have the tool in your personal inventory or CMs doing it need to have the items in *their* inventory.

Tools lose durability and break. Durability loss impacts productivity. You can set conditions on durability if you're doing this automatically. It makes sense to send CMs out with multiple tools to bypass this.

Manual Harvesting Minigame

Manual harvesting is a minigame which is a table where the resources are randomly placed as are breakable tiles of various strengths. Making a cut cuts that specific tile and has effects on tiles with a lesser durability. Each cut decreases tool durability. The goal is to have a resource chit have a path to the outer edge of the table, in which case you gain it.

Chit distribution and breakable material concentration/properties are dictated by the resource node. Different types are assigned different names, and you get a selection. Breaking a node replaces it with a new one. You can kinda figure out what descriptions do different things and learn accordingly.

Hunting Mechanics

Hunting is how you gain animal products. You'll need a Bow and arrows. It works kinda the way it does on terra tiles. You'll see animals occasionally and they'll flee to adjacent tiles if you miss. There's a moving target kind of mechanic for determining whether you miss or not and better bows improve this. Bows lose durability.

CMs that do this obviously need a Bow(s) and arrows. They hunt animals according to their stats (varied across different animal classes) and also find Nests. You can't find Nests on your own, that's CM-exclusive.

Fishing Mechanics

Fishing works similar to other harvesting tasks. Fishing rods break, and Bait is also consumed. The actual mechanic requires real-time waiting. It's a good game time sink though.

You get a kind of table that represents the pond with rocks/etc. Different fish have different terrain preferences. Once a tile is fished you cant fish it anymore, and you can move around to other pool tables. Movement requires a Canoe and decreases Canoe durability. Starting to fish also requires a Canoe and decreases durability.

You can fish without a canoe, but are locked to the edge of a pool table. Thus those tiles don't decrease canoe durability.

Leaving and coming back will procedurally generate a new set of pool tables.

There's still cumulative limits to how much you can fish a pool tile.

Obviously the automated version of this process highly simplifies everything.

Game Time Mechanics

Game time dictates every automatic action in the game, as well as when alerts appear, etc.

Time is divided into Hours. There are 24 hours in a day. You can go into Stasis between 11pm-7am and days "begin" at 7am.

Passage of Game Time

Game Time passes in the following turn-based ways:

Moving around

Doing actions manually.

Picking up and dropping off items.

Different actions pass different amounts of Game Time, which should be in 5-10 minute increments or something.

Work Shifts

CMs can be assigned a work shift. They'll generally want to work 8 hours or less. Giving them more work time makes them unhappy. You also have to pay them more (daily salary rate/8)*(hours worked).

Additionally, you can assign them a specific set of hours (7a-3p, 3p-11p, 11p-7a) to keep your production running throughout the day with limited machines and crafting stations/etc. However, this too has consequences:

CMs tend to prefer to work starting at 7am. There are exceptions, with 3pm being less likely and 11pm being *really* unlikely. If you assign them a shift they don't like, they'll be unhappy according to whatever the priorities are there.

Social behavior definitely gets impacted. CMs can only have leisure time in the shift after work (the third one is sleeping) and they won't be able to see people that are working or sleeping during those hours. *very* bad for relationships.

Days off

CMs will occasionally and randomly request Days off according to the stat there. This won't happen if they're on an Expedition.

If you fulfill it, they won't do anything on that day but their ability to withstand unhappiness will go up for a little while according to that stat.

If you reject it, they're neutral.

If you reject a bunch of requests, their unhappiness will build cumulatively.

You can also give CMs a day off manually, which will prevent day off requests and can also increase happiness or productivity bonuses, but the bonus there is capped. If you do this with people in friendships or especially relationships, the bonuses will increase.

Work Assignment Mechanics

CMs will do whatever task you've assigned them during their work shift. This can involve commute, which is factored into the time unfortunately.

If they exhaust a task, like fully fishing a pond tile or meeting their crafting quota, they'll let you know. You still have to pay them for idle working hours. But at least you can assign them a new task.

Cartographers (for tiles) and Logisticians (for HQ tasks) will let you assign new tasks remotely. Very useful if you're out exploring and can't be assed.

As mentioned, they have to be paid every week or they'll freeload. If you keep this going another week they wont have to get paid for that week but they'll still freeload until you make good on the money you owe them.

Firing CMs

You can dismiss CMs from your service altogether, in which case they respawn in whichever town location you found them in.

This does have consequences though -- lost friendships to other CMs will decrease their happiness for a while. Additionally, if a CM is in a relationship with another CM, they'll both get fired and will disappear from the world altogether.

Good working relationships will cause some unhappiness as well, but not as extreme as friendships.

As a side note, towns can sometimes contain existing couples, and you have to hire them both. On the plus side, you only need one dorm room for two people and they'll stay in that relationship for the duration of their stay at HQ.

Food Usage

Food has a certain amount of calories associated with it. They'll eat whatever amount of calories they want per day (varies). Calorie spread is equal throughout each meal, but they'll round up and water calories if they can't find an exact match. Obviously food preferences play a role in happiness/productivity depending on their preferences.

They tend to eat 3x per day, which for a 7am-3pm shifter would be 7am, 12pm and 5pm or is otherwise in 5 hour increments. Some will instead do 2mad, skipping one of the meals. A rare few will do OMAD.

During their eating hour there has to be space available in their assigned cafeteria or they'll be unhappy. They'll also start to form friendships with whoever is in there.

They'll take food out of their dorm room fridge first, and then from the Larder if it's empty. This is all automatic and they dont actually physically move around or anything -- they just pull items instantly and exist in the cafeteria for that hour.

CMs out doing stuff on overworld tiles will instead bring their lunch with them if they eat lunch. They'll still be in the cafeteria at the start of the shift and also with their evening meal. Additionally they pull their lunch out when they grab food for breakfast.

CMs on expeditions only eat during camping, which is an OMAD that normally happens 11pm-7am. Shift time preferences dont play a role here thankfully. Manual camping will cause them to eat more calories, around 1/4th their daily ration per camp, because they're fucking hungry or something I guess.

Teams and Team Synergy

Teams can form in the following ways:

CMs assigned to a room together will naturally form a Team. Obviously different Teams will form as they move around.

Teams can be assigned manually for Expeditions and doing stuff with towns and overworld tiles.

Teams will compound all the stats of the individual members where that makes sense (overworld stuff).

There's also a synergistic effect from teams that have people that get along well (or the opposite if they don't). This will either add bonuses/debuffs to the team as a whole or the individual members depending on what's happening exactly.

People in a team can form good working relationships with one another if they don't hate one another's guts from the outset. This increases synergy over time. Friendships can also come out of this.

Friendships in general increase synergy beyond working relationships, and actual relationships increase it further. Having a team consisting of like two or three couples that are all also friends with each other makes this compound drastically.

Breaking up teams doesn't impact any of this (and they keep those kinds of interpersonal ties for later), it just alters the synergy bonuses for obvious reasons.

Friendships, Enemies and Relationships

CMs can form friendships with other CMs in various ways:

Cafeteria assignments when they're both there.

Leisure time in their assigned Lounge depending on their mutual proclivities. Games go a long way here.

Dorm closeness.

Working together in Teams.

Friendships will only form if neither CM is a loner, or they both are. Loner friendships will grow faster, but they have a lower amount of friendships they can have at a time. Loners are more rare but also generally tied to Experts.

Friendships increase happiness and overall productivity, especially if that's a priority. Also very useful for team building. Friendship is a stat that increases over time based on them spending time together and the rate it increases is determined by their sociality as mentioned but also the amount of common ground they have (basically a matching of every single personality trait, weighted by their summed priority scores).

If two friends are in the presence of someone who's a friend to one and an enemy to the other then the friendship meter won't increase. There's useful bonuses to the enemy meter though (see below).

Enemies

Something similar will happen if two CMs don't like each other for whatever reason. Proclivities towards friendship or enemyship is based on how similar or different (with priority weights) their personalities (not aptitudes or hobbies) match. Sometimes it's just straight up racism or "I don't like X kind of person".

Works the same way as friendship except with debuffs and in reverse. Close working relationships will accelerate this.

If two enemies have a mutual friend who's in proximity to them then their relationship will either be static during that time or can actually rise if the friendship is valuable enough to both parties. It won't ever turn into a friendship, but it can go to neutral.

You can kinda camp this by assigning all three days off together for solving particularly bitter rivalries.

Friendship limits

CMs have friendship limits, with loners having more of a limit. This can be Trained however (though there's still a cap).

Relationships

CMs have romantic preferences:

Attracted to males attracted to them

Attracted to females attracted to them

Attracted to either gender attracted to them.

Homosexually is rare and bisexuality rarer still, but homosexual relationships increase friendship meters more quickly.

Relationships part 2

Relationships can form when the friendship meter goes high enough for both parties and their sexual preferences match. If there are multiple choices they'll pick whichever one is higher or randomly.

Relationships grant a big bonus to happiness and also some additional stuff:

Each member of a relationship will absorb some aptitude traits from the other. This unfortunately doesnt happen with existing couples that are hired. This goes up to 50% which is considerable.

Obviously additional bonuses if they work together and debuffs if they never see each other.

If you fire one member of a relationship you have to fire them both and can't hire either one ever again.

The relationship meter acts like the friendship meter. If it goes high enough, they'll eventually request a marriage. This requires money and a day off for both them and all their friends unfortunately but it has some perks:

Another big bonus to happiness.

They can share a dorm room and their preferences for everything there will drop by 50%. Very useful.

Trainers

Trainers are a CM role that allows them to increase aptitudes of other CMs. They have a set of specialties they can train (specific aptitudes/stats), a maximum amplitude, and a time stat.

Theyre universally social and don't have any tendencies towards hating anyone. Unfortunately CMs can still hate *them*, in which case the training won't work.

Trainers have a stat that dictates how many people they can train simultaneously. This can *also* be trained, but aptitudes can't be trained beyond 500% so it caps out.

You assign them CMs to train and assuming they're compatible, the aptitude will rise over time.

In addition to making a skilled worker more skilled, they can also add aptitudes to existing CMs without them -- however there's a 75% decrease with this until they reach some cutoff percentage with their training.

Dye Mechanics

Dye comes from Reptiles and Insects and is split between the two:

Reptiles provide black, orange, green, red.

Insects provide white, yellow, blue, purple.

Secondary and tertiary colors can be formed by mixing colors of a similar hue together or with black/white/gray (itself formed from black+white). This happens at a dye crafting bench and can be automated.

In total, the amount of dyes is 6 hue primary, 6 hue secondary, 2 grayscale primary, gray, brown, and any hue + black, white or gray (the total here is 12*3, 36). So the grand total is 16+36=52.

Paint

Dye can be used directly in cloth-based crafts. Other crafts require Paint. Paint can be crafted from dye + powdered rocks of various kinds corresponding to different crafts. Metal powder can also be used, as well as precious metal powder to create high-quality paints that increase craft value more than the value of the materials. Creating metal powder and imbuing paint with it takes game time though.

Transportation mechanics

The world is an "infinite" grid that goes out in all directions. Towns are scattered throughout.

Towns have a radius based on the town size and if two radiuses intersect the towns will be connected. POIs within the radius will also be connected to.

The algorithm here looks at the maximum possible radius size and then looks at all towns that fall within (current town radius)+(maximum radius). The town is connected to if the D to the scanned town minus the town's radius is equal to or less than the centerpoint town's radius.

If the D between the towns is 2 of the smallest town radius or less then they'll be connected normally. If however a bigger town is pulling all the weight it'll be a different kind of transport similar to city connections in Shatterloop.

Nothing more complex than this needs to happen. This game is deliciously complex as is.

Libraries

Libraries are town buildings that contain useful information:

A Librarian is basically a scanning device for anything whatsoever. The services here cost money though.

Books also exist in the library and are grouped into sections. Each book of a certain type will offer information about local tiles in that scanning area procedurally. You can sift through them manually to maybe glean useful information or maybe not, but otherwise will pass Game Time.

Potions

Potions cure injuries and that's their sole purpose.

Potion ingredients are sourced from Spices and Insects. You combine potions together at that kind of crafting table with shatterloopian mechanics. You don't know what a potion ingredient does until you successfully make a potion with it, in which case you learn that specific trait of the potion.

You can automate potion making and you can also automate potion experimentation, with the chance of success being a stat of that CM. Granted they're dumb probability machines and will go through ingredients faster than you would if you did it manually.

Tool Durability

All tools have durability. If it runs low it'll cause debuffs and eventually it'll break and all properties will drop to zero.

Better tools use metal and refined materials. In addition to increasing durability it can decrease repair costs or add other bonuses.

Repair is done at a Repair Machine. This costs base Fuel. An early-game Repair Station will also allow you or a CM to repair tools for half the materials the tool cost.

Productivity and Happiness

I think maybe the best way to do this is that anything a CM is unhappy with causes a 20% productivity drop, so you can eke out some production from them even if their situation isn't perfect but if they're unhappy about 5 or more things they become freeloaders. Or whatever percentage makes sense.

There are a variety of other mechanics that will add or decrease productivity as well as give buffers against unhappiness (which I guess is represented as additional "happiness hearts"). Marriage comes to mind here.

Farming

Farming requires a couple things:

Farming rooms

A seed extractor -- turns various types of resources into seeds with some probability. Farmer CMs can grant bonuses.

Similar stuff for animal/fish/etc farming.

All plants and animals in the game can be farmed much like in Shatterloop. The time for them is based on session time.

Each "plot" fixture can only hold a specific kind of plant. And they take up volume in farming rooms.

Different plants require different types of Soil and consume it accordingly. Different Soils can be harvested from the overworld manually or with CMs. They can also be made as a byproduct of animal farming mixed with generic dirt/silt/etc.

There's no Genetics -- this game is complicated enough as is. However Farmer CMs can grant bonuses to different crop yields or seed yields.

Planting Mechanics

You place some amount of seeds of a certain type into the Plot

And then click "begin farming" or something like that.

You can't adjust the amount of seeds in a Plot once the farm has begun, even if it isn't at capacity. This cuts down on the amount of work I have to do.

You can however cancel farming and collect the seeds again. This will cancel all farming progress on them but it allows you to replant with more seeds or a different kind.

Harvesting Mechanics

When a crop is ready, it'll give some amount of the product in question (not quite sure how plant resources work yet) and also at least one seed. If you're doing it manually, you'll need to click the "harvest + replant" option to do what you'd expect. Otherwise, "harvest" will collect both the resources and the seeds.

You'll need containers for both the resources and the seeds as part of the plot fixture making process. The item dump will go into the containers accordingly, which you can assign to Janitors.

Farmer CMs

Farmer CMs have different bonuses on different types of farming, as mentioned. They'll automatically harvest and replant crops when they're ready. They'll also add Soil if there's a container nearby the Plot that contains it.

You can assign Farmer CMs a "Rotation" if you have a Logistician skilled in it, where when some plant is harvested they'll swap the soils and grow something else.

Obviously if they encounter problems with either of these tasks, if they have a Crystal Communicator, they'll send you an alert so you can manage them remotely. Otherwise they'll Freeload.

And again, Janitors can move harvested products to crystals or anything else you specify (crafting tables for example).

Farming Unlocks

Farming is available when you hire a Farmer CM. They don't have to be particularly good at their job -- you can just do stuff manually until you get better ones.

Quests and Reputation

Each town will offer some fixed amount of Quests. You can assign individual CMs or teams to fulfill these, which give various types of rewards and take some amount of in-game time (and you'll need to provide food calories accordingly, unless the questgiver offers it as a perk of the Quest.

Quests will also increase your Reputation in that town. This does a couple things:

Gives discounts at shops, librarian services, etc.

Allows you to take on more lucrative quests since they're tiered.

CMs that are "local" to that town (roughly half of them, though this number goes down as the town size increases) can be hired on for less money.

Decreased town transport costs.

Decreased shop contract costs.

Anything I'm forgetting or haven't created yet.

The types/amounts of upgrades are random and procgen and you can see the status of them along your journey to 100% quest completion along with how many you have left. 100% quest completion will always offer multiple bonuses, but the rest are scattered.

Since it's procgen, the quest timeline for a town is a scannable service by Librarians or viewable randomly in Library Books.

Base Building Mechanics

Bases are modular Rooms arranged on orthogonally on a 2D grid. The starting room is at the bottom of the base map and has an entrance into the Overworld -- this is the only connection point to it and you can't build base rooms below that on the y axis.

Bases can have 1-4 exits from them, with the starting room only being able to have 3 because its southern exit goes to the Overworld. More exits increases connectivity obviously but decreases the amount of Volume the room contains. Volume is the stat that dictates how much of each type of thing you can place in a room.

Your Builder tool allows you to build new Rooms orthogonally adjacent to an existing room (provided there's no existing room there obviously). Rooms are Typed and require different resources. Thankfully the Builder pulls resources out of crystal storage remotely or your inventory so you don't have to worry about management there, provided you've got crystals set up.

The type of Room or Subroom dictates the fixtures and Subrooms you can place there.

Volume can't be upgraded -- I think this would make an already complicated game too additionally complicated.

Additionally, rooms are only 1x1 because the exits would be too complicated otherwise. Rooms can have drastically different Volume from one another and that's okay.

Fabricator

The Fabricator allows you to place fixtures/furniture/etc inside a Room or Subroom. It's also attached to crystal storage and your personal inventory.

If you have the fixture or furniture/etc already crafted and crystallized, you will use that store first, followed by crystallized materials.

Deleting a fixture will move it into the appropriate crystal storage automatically as well, unless one doesn't exist in which case it losslessly goes back into materials in crystal storage or your inventory if that doesn't work. If it tries to do that and your inventory is full you won't be able to do it.

Subrooms

There are a couple types here:

Cafeterias can have Larders and/or Kitchens subroomed out.

Dorms can have Bedrooms and Suites (some CMs are picky) subroomed out.

There are limits here, as Subrooms take up considerable Volume.

Volume

Each room and Subroom has some amount of Volume.

Subrooms contain volume equal to the amount of volume they take up.

Fixtures take up some amount of volume, so you can only place them up to the room or subroom's limit.

This gets particularly tricky if a CM has a lot of preferences of their bedroom -- it may be necessary to move them to a Suite or bigger even if they don't specifically want a suite to maximize their happiness.