Build-A-Base Workshop 13

[QP Evergrande]

I'm not too sure about the 24 hour round reset timer though. I think the players ought to have some form of control over it, especially if the earliest settlers in a new round somehow manage to screw up royally in a way that makes progress impossible.

If that happens (and if so, wow) a simple adminhelp to restart the round should be enough.

I thought of a few more things.

10. What if APCs in this mode powered objects in a certain radius around them? If the radius overlaps, have the closer one take priority. Because having to wire up everything, including every light, sounds like it would take forever. Certain things, like belts and cargo routers, could also spread power to adjacent spaces, to allow for long, winding belts without needing to have several APCs to power them. If that's not feasible, then I guess I have to ask, how difficult is it to change the APC power map in the middle of a round?

11. Docking beacons. Deploy them on a space tile, and they'll signal things to dock there. To make sure you put them in the right place, you'd deploy them twice. The first time, they briefly project a holographic image of the size of the object they'll call, and the second time they become locked in. We'd have one type for merchant shuttles, one type for the escape shuttle(s?) and maybe one for an arrivals shuttle, in case something happens to the survey shuttle. Maybe you could use something similar to set up buy/sell points, if needed? Stick a beacon on the side of the station, just beyond the end of the belts, and it designates the point at the edge of the map facing from that point?

12. If possible, an interesting thing to put in the stat screen at the end of the round would be the cost of the station. That would be the price of whatever structures are initially present, plus the total value of all materials used in manufacturers and ruckinguer kits, or bought from the cargo bay.

13. Let us build the station on top of asteroids. Like, have the area initially be just filled with asteroids, which we can stick floor plating on top of. But if the floor is destroyed, it'll be space underneath, not asteroid, so the field will be gradually cleared away as the round progresses.

I keep harping about power, because it's important. In order for this game mode to reach its full potential, we can't just gain access to everything right from the beginning. It'll be so much more satisfying to actually earn the equipment. That means having some kind of restriction, and power is one of the ways we can be restricted. We start out with furnaces, then after a while we can move on to solars once we have the resources needed to make enough of them, and after that the thermoelectric generator once we have enough money. In the meantime, we move on from relying on dim lights (light tubes, but more energy efficient ones, that just don't light things as well) to regular ones. And as for the mining magnet, it should be a supplement for other asteroid mining, but if it is built too early it should be a major drain on the station and take a long time to charge (I talked about this during the last round of station power discussions in the main SA thread, where I said the magnet's recharge time should be variable in some way depending on how much power is fed into it).

And like I said about the solars, resources should also be a limiting factor. At first, the station should be dependent primarily on selling ore to make money to fund the construction. But over time, new methods of making money should open up. I'm just going to link this old thread about the station economy for ideas about that.
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2290

Once we don't need to rely on ore so much any more, that's when things really open up. Solar panels and SMES units should require claretine to construct, and obviously plasmastone is needed to fuel the thermoelectric generator. Any kind of teleportation equipment should obviously require telestones. The smelter should take bohrum, and so on.