Sorry your browser is not supported!

I'm in the process of making a Mars Base Simulation, and while thinking upon this question, I decided I needed some more opinions beyond my own. In game, I plan to, in an attempt to limit how much one could build up intially, create some form of structure limit that only increses when certain criteria are met, but I'm unsure of which criteria to use.

My first idea is to use a command center type structure, and due to the frontier nature of the colony, only a certain number of structures is allowed. However, as research is compleated and materials are mined and stored, one is able to upgrade command, incresing the amount of structures allowed, amongst other things.

Idea two is to use some form of a population limit, where you can only build a few sturctures at first, then when you reach a certain popualtion number, your colony becomes capable of supporting more facilities.

I apologise if this was the wrong forum to post this type of question in. Seeing as how all the others are more concentrated on the coding aspect of things, I did not wish to anger anyone there, and this seemed the best place to post. Thanks everyone.

I think a combination of required buildings per population count would work ok in the farm vs food vs mouths angle.

so 1 farm per 10 people

the next thought is to use a principle like this as well for the mines.

Each mine has 150 jobs for people so when your population grows and theres no jobs for a few hundred over say 4 rounds the people could riot.

this is just a simple example to help govern your games rules and procedures.

It depends on what kind of simulation you want to make :
Totally Sim-city like or either Settlers or "Age of" style ?

Damonkles: At this point in time, I'm thinking a Turn-Based of the likes of SimCity. Tile-based screen, thus the buildings being So many squares large. If you've ever played something like Moon Tycoon or Outpost, it's that type of managment.

indi: What I plan on doing with the population, and how they interact with the buildings is going to be... different than most games. In fact, just so I can get an opinion on this as well, I might as well as say something about it.

I'm going to create some form of a system where for every, say 50 people, you can create a "team" that is dedicated to a certain purpose, such as a farming team or Maufacting team. Each building can support so many teams. The reason I most want to do this is that it opens up the posssibility of doing team-specific things, such as training, and it would allow for easier control of what your population does.

Any other questions will be happily answered, jsut ask!

For some stats you shall use RND(), that way, there is less possibility that somebody can win the game allways, once he found how the calculations are made.

Think about this.

Every certain period of time modules comes to the colony from earth. Moduels and a few people more. the better you manage the colony the more people will arrive.

Have a space station to accept and send this trafic to Mother Earth.

From place to place (tile to tile) you can only send engineers with space suit for walks.

When the structures are done the sites are connected with a tube (mroe trafic)

They all look like domes...

Ideas that come from ceasarIII and Dune the building of a dynasty.

Also it limits the need of graphics. Few sprites to do the mars walk and maybe a MarsBagy... and then just animated tubes realy!

What you want to do it make a draw of what you want to see and post it on your walls. This is good focus aid.

Then think in arrays. make a hyerarchy of structures building and draw dependencies. and on the lines put a when.

so have:

Platform (no dependency)
Worksite (dep on Platform)
Powersite (dep on platform and Worksite)
Living Quarters (dep on PwrSite and Platform)

And then make attributes
Prosperity (dep on worksite) applies on Living Quarters
Population (dep on Prosperity)
Resources (reduced on Prosperity / population)

All that will make your head spin and give a headache... Look at the posters on your room and take an aspirin!!!!

GOOD LUCK