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[Andres]

I think I've come up with decent lore for moon stuff. Let's say the year is 2106 but feel free to suggest another date.

Ok, so the moon's been colonised and a mine for He-3 has been constructed. The other materials are found on Earth and it's cheaper to get native variants so mining for anything else there isn't really a thing. Fusion reactors don't use much fuel but they're very expensive to build and maintain so there aren't many, meaning the singular mine was enough to supply the reactors. The mine itself has been running for a few decades which has caused it to suffer wear-and-tear. It need constant parts and maintenance and was due for refurbishment soon.

Enter Hell. Some of the miners went crazy, parts stopped coming in so things just started to break, miners died, food stopped coming in, all miners died, the mine broke even more, and now only a small part of the mine can be used for mining. The players can choose to activate the mine and get fuel from it but they'll have to spend resources to keep it operational.

As for resources, satellite-harvesting can be done with the right tech or a decent luck roll. The ship the players are on doesn't have very good sensors so they'll have to be relatively close to them to harvest them. Asteroid-mining is downright impossible, though. The tech just doesn't exist that allows for flight to an asteroid to be quick, reliable, and cheap enough to allow for asteroid-mining. The ship the players are on don't even have good enough sensors to find them, anyway.

[Parsely]

Asteroid mining is also possible in theory, but practically extremely tedious, and who knows if our crafts can even reach that far. ;3

That cloud sounds like it might have a hefty upkeep of magical nature. Maybe some missions could deal with disrupting whatever magi-nations keep it up and running over certain areas... Obviously the clouds ought to break at the outer edges of reach of such an installation, making that one hell of a mission - pun intended.

Spacecraft have infinite range, but if you don't have enough re-mass it'll take years to get where you're going.

Yeah maybe you have to take down the magi towers that keep the defense up to unlock areas to battle for, and as there become fewer, the enemy's forces become more concentrated and it gets harder to take them out.

I think I've come up with decent lore for moon stuff. Let's say the year is 2106 but feel free to suggest another date.

Ok, so the moon's been colonised and a mine for He-3 has been constructed. The other materials are found on Earth and it's cheaper to get native variants so mining for anything else there isn't really a thing. Fusion reactors don't use much fuel but they're very expensive to build and maintain so there aren't many, meaning the singular mine was enough to supply the reactors. The mine itself has been running for a few decades which has caused it to suffer wear-and-tear. It need constant parts and maintenance and was due for refurbishment soon.

Enter Hell. Some of the miners went crazy, parts stopped coming in so things just started to break, miners died, food stopped coming in, all miners died, the mine broke even more, and now only a small part of the mine can be used for mining. The players can choose to activate the mine and get fuel from it but they'll have to spend resources to keep it operational.

As for resources, satellite-harvesting can be done with the right tech or a decent luck roll. The ship the players are on doesn't have very good sensors so they'll have to be relatively close to them to harvest them. Asteroid-mining is downright impossible, though. The tech just doesn't exist that allows for flight to an asteroid to be quick, reliable, and cheap enough to allow for asteroid-mining. The ship the players are on don't even have good enough sensors to find them, anyway.

This all works really well I think. Starting out with the mothership and then capturing the moonbase and using it for steady income and as a shipyard would be neat, of course you need the manpower to run installations, and then you need more resources to keep everyone alive. If you have a moon base with atmosphere you won't need to train the common people you rescue from Earth how to EVA, they can just stay at the moon and work. Eventually you can work up to just colonizing reclaimed Earth territory.

[Andres]

That cloud sounds like it might have a hefty upkeep of magical nature. Maybe some missions could deal with disrupting whatever magi-nations keep it up and running over certain areas... Obviously the clouds ought to break at the outer edges of reach of such an installation, making that one hell of a mission - pun intended.

Yeah maybe you have to take down the magi towers that keep the defense up to unlock areas to battle for, and as there become fewer, the enemy's forces become more concentrated and it gets harder to take them out.

The clouds don't allow for demonic presence - all they do is damage whatever flies through them and disrupt communications. Even if you got rid of all the clouds, Hell's forces would remain on the Earth. Getting rid of the clouds will allow for more places to fight for but it won't affect the demons in the slightest. Difficulty will increase but I won't say how.

This all works really well I think. Starting out with the mothership and then capturing the moonbase and using it for steady income and as a shipyard would be neat, of course you need the manpower to run installations, and then you need more resources to keep everyone alive. If you have a moon base with atmosphere you won't need to train the common people you rescue from Earth how to EVA, they can just stay at the moon and work. Eventually you can work up to just colonizing reclaimed Earth territory.

As implied before, the moon base can't be used for steady income. It needs lots of parts to remain operational and it's not very quick at doing its job. The only good thing about it is it doesn't need a lot of manpower to work.
Building a shipyard on the moon is possible but considering the distance between it and the Earth it's cheaper and quicker just to build one in space, or just have Engineering do all the work (remember that this game is XCOM-like).
Terraforming is nowhere near advanced enough to make the moon habitable in the slightest. All habitable areas will have to be built using resources.
Colonising Earth? That's possible. It'll require lots of tech, lots of fuel, lots of resources, a large military, and literally constant fighting, but it's technically possible. It's not recommended, though.

[Parsely]

The clouds don't allow for demonic presence - all they do is damage whatever flies through them and disrupt communications. Even if you got rid of all the clouds, Hell's forces would remain on the Earth. Getting rid of the clouds will allow for more places to fight for but it won't affect the demons in the slightest. Difficulty will increase but I won't say how.

As implied before, the moon base can't be used for steady income. It needs lots of parts to remain operational and it's not very quick at doing its job. The only good thing about it is it doesn't need a lot of manpower to work.
Building a shipyard on the moon is possible but considering the distance between it and the Earth it's cheaper and quicker just to build one in space, or just have Engineering do all the work (remember that this game is XCOM-like).

Terraforming is nowhere near advanced enough to make the moon habitable in the slightest. All habitable areas will have to be built using resources.

Colonising Earth? That's possible. It'll require lots of tech, lots of fuel, lots of resources, a large military, and literally constant fighting, but it's technically possible. It's not recommended, though.

Uh, yeah, that's pretty much how I understood it to work. The clouds are a shield, you get rid of the clouds, operating in the area they covered becomes possible.

Engineering couldn't be on a habitat on the moon? A lot of machinery requires gravity to work properly.

Of course you can't colonize the moon. It's a satellite, it can't even hold an atmosphere. I was talking about artificial habitats.

Yeah cool. Sounds like a late game thing, like alien bases in XCOM. You can't bring back every human you free as well, if you give the people you leave behind weapons they could cause trouble for the demons.

[Andres]

I don't know, having access to the moon at all seems to be bringing a lot of problems. It makes going down to Earth a lot less necessary which is the whole point of the game. Having another cloud field between the Earth and the moon would solve a lot of the problems in designing this game and the only problem with it is that it seems contrived. Maybe I should just go with it?

[Parsely]

Building on the moon requires a ton of resources to build a secure, pressurized habitat, and then you need either a shitload of gas for breathing which you take from Earth in pressurized containers or some kind of magitech that produces breathable air. It'd be simple to make the requirements be a midgame thing, since you control the players' access to stuff. Building on Earth is cheaper since the materials for construction are already there and a structure doesn't have to be pressurized or sturdy or anything, but obviously far more dangerous since you're vulnerable to raids. Leave it to the players to weigh the risk.

E: Early on you'd just be fighting out of the mothership, then you build little satellites for storing things which grow into small space stations, you build large docking frames for constructing support vessels and attack vehicles for invading Earth. Eventually you accumulate enough resources and enough ships to make building on the moon worth it, which unlocks more stuff for research since machines become simpler and more efficient in gravity and you can take in unskilled labor who can't handle themselves in null G and train them, you can also finally build efficient hydroponic farms which need gravity (because fluid sucks to mess with in null).

[Andres]

First of all, there will be no magitek. That is something I am not willing to budge on. Secondly, the whole 'Earth technically being habitable' thing wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It wouldn't be 'vulnerable to raids' so much as it would be constantly - and I mean constantly - under attack by Hell. There won't be a single second where a horde of demons won't be trying to destroy it. It would be like endless survival mode at the highest difficulty setting with no time in between waves.

I really really should've mentioned this earlier but artifical gravity has been invented and is in use on the ship. It needs energy to run and thus fuel. Because of how it works, though, it works a lot less well when the effects of natural gravity are felt.

You can't bring back every human you free as well, if you give the people you leave behind weapons they could cause trouble for the demons.

Wait, do you think that people are still alive on Earth? Even if there were, they'd already have weapons and everything else they need to prevent getting killed by demons, otherwise they'd have been killed by demons.

[Parsely]

Everyone's dead? There's no resistance? What hope does a small group of people in space have then? They'll slowly run out of people and die.

[Andres]

It's not just the players that are alive in space - I'm thinking at least 2,000 people are in space with them, maybe up to 5,000. This game will take place over years rather than months as XCOM has. By the way, I'm talking about XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I haven't played the other games.

[Parsely]

It's not just the players that are alive in space - I'm thinking at least 2,000 people are in space with them, maybe up to 5,000.

If the entire human race is dead, defeated by these creatures, why should 5000 people be able to retake Earth? They have no way of getting more manpower.

[Andres]

The goal of the game isn't to retake Earth. There are four win conditions that I've thought up that I won't reveal here but none of them involve retaking Earth. Well, technically it is a win condition but it's not a viable win condition in the slightest, at least as far as I can tell. Maybe the players will find a way. As for getting more manpower, natural reproduction should take care of that on its own. Remember, this game will play out over years, not months.

[Parsely]

We're not retaking Earth? What are we doing here at Earth then?

[Andres]

Resources, tech, and maybe figuring out the plot. There's more stuff you can do there but I think I'll keep that secret.

[Andres]

I have three more things to work out for my game. One is a crunch problem, another is fluff, and the last one is kinda both.

Crunch
In XCOM, players have to wait at the base for missions before they can send their troops out. It's the same in this game, except I don't know how to decide how long before the players can go on a mission beyond arbitrarily choosing so. Any ideas?

Fluff
A reason why the moon isn't an option. Solar flare? Radiation? Grey goo infestation? Furry colony? I'd just like to hear from you guys on this.

Kinda Both
In XCOM, the player actually plays as the Commander who sends out troops on the battlefield. I was wondering if I should give a single player control of what to build and who to send on missions and stuff. This can let more than 6 players play at once (they're characters get rotated through missions) and if we go the YAK route they can serve as a second GM so that more than 6 players can actively play at once. That's the crunch. The fluff part comes from whether I should have the commander chosen by the council (myself) or the highest-ranking player. Thoughts?

[Parsely]

Fluff
A reason why the moon isn't an option. Solar flare? Radiation? Grey goo infestation? Furry colony? I'd just like to hear from you guys on this.

Unless the mothership was formerly some kind of mining vessel, they won't have the equipment necessary to make mining the moon worth it.