Sorry, but I've been finalizing the Outpost mechanics and am retconning the Commander abilities. Base Commander's free action can be in
either Construction or
Production - now seperate categories;
Maintainance and Repair is now simply called
Repair because maintainance implies routine.
I am also renaming the "Powered Exo-skeleton Constructor Units" to "powersuits", because I like the name much better.
Speaking of mechanics:
I'm not entirely happy with some of the explanations; go ahead and ask any questions there are now to avoid future problems.
This is the real beginning of the Outpost phase. Each turn will now last only one month, unless there are interrupts for some reason. During each turn, a number of actions can be taken. Most, but not all, of these fall into one of several categories:
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Construction - This includes the building and unbuilding of structures. From salvaging the ship itself, to making rooms and supports in a cavern, to carrying a piece of equipment from the cargo bay and assembling it, these actions generally involve heavy things and somewhat less than fine precision. They also include major hauling projects. Most construction projects can be done with sufficient manpower, but they can be quite large and difficult without heavy gear.
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Production - The more refined counterpart of Construction, Production actions are for making things to put into the built spaces. These generally come from a factory of some sort, though they can be done by hand with greatly varying levels of inconvenience. Production slots stack the best - it is easier for two factories to build parts of something than for two teams to be digging in the same place.
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Mining - These actions deal with all sorts of digging and mining. They can include things like moving around the product of the mines, and shoring up the spaces opened, to some extent. These, except for minor surface projects, are quite difficult or impossible to do with a Manpower action.
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Repairs - While general maintainance will be done in the course of normal activity, some things require more time and effort. If a powersuit is damaged, or a reactor is brought down for maintainance, or the air filter gets full of algae, these actions will be when repairs are made. These can almost all be done with Manpower actions, and tend to be easier for it than things like Construction and Production.
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Engineering - Production falls into an obvious category, but before things can be made, they must be designed. Engineering handles the implementation of technology, designs/prototyping of new things, or modifications of existing machinery. It is also relatively easy to force other tasks into the Engineering category (with some inefficiency). Engineering can always be done with a Manpower action, but tend to be quite difficult as such. Engineering slots don't stack very well.
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Science - While Engineering is the application of knowledge to making things, Science is finding out that knowledge. Science equipment tends to be specialised to a certain type of science. It can be done with Manpower actions, but generally anything above the level of recording visible effects of physical actions will be extremely difficult. Science slots hardly stack at all.
The oft-mentioned Manpower Action simply means to do something with general handtools and other common equipment. It tends to be less effective, though some actions are perfectly suited to them. Generally, there will be a lot more people assigned to these than there are to other actions.
Actions are used, generally, to complete
Projects. A Project has a number of attributes: at least its cost, its modifier, and its workload. The cost describes the resources needed to complete it, described in numbers of units. The modifier represents its difficulty - most science projects have a strong, constant negative modifier, certain easy projects have positive modifiers, and doing things without the appropriate tools will incur a hefty negative modifier. Workload represents how much work something takes to complete - the roll for whatever Action(s) are applied to a project have the modifiers applied, and be added to the current progress. When progress exceeds workload, the project is considered complete.
For example, take the following:
Construction Project: Water Electrolyser. Size 2. 80 point project; takes .1 units Basic Parts and .3 units Common Materials. Uses 3 power. Turns water into oxygen and hydrogen (which may or may not be retained) at a 3:2:1 ratio, max 3 units of water per month.This project is Construction, because the electrolyser can be built from stock parts and sheet metal, cement, or whatever else is on hand. It will consume .1 Basic Parts and .3 Common Materials from stocks when started. Suppose the a Powersuit unit is used to build it. There will be no modifier because the tools are appropriate - here, even better than needed. If, say, a 30 is rolled, the project will advance by 30+0 points to 30/80 progress. Next turn, a team of 3 workers with handtools (Manpower Action) is added to the powersuits to help make sure it is completed immediately. They would add their roll to the powersuit's roll, at a moderate malus due to inefficiency and their being not ideal - though not bad - for the task. If this whole system seems terribly subjective and arbitrary, that's because it is.
The result of the project will be a "Water Electrolyser" structure which takes up 2 space (a Small building or cavern), and consumes 3 power and a variable amount of water to produce oxygen and hydrogen.
Generally, a project's modifier cannot cause critical hits or fails, and a negative result due to modifiers won't actually remove progress.
Projects now take
Resources. Resources refers specifically to expendable materials stocked in limited quantities - economically scarce if that is helpful. They tend to be pretty vague.
- Common Materials. Refined metals and ceramics, used as material for most production and making Basic Parts. Also used as stock for building and such.
- Basic Parts. Made from Common Materials; used in making things with complex parts which are not prefabricated, and provides a bonus to appropriate production tasks due to skipping intermediate production steps.
- Advanced Parts. Needed for production and repairs of Advanced technology. Made from a variety rare materials, and will probably need a considerable production base to make.
Resources also includes things like fuel, food, water, and so forth. The list will expand to any scare resource which comes into play.
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Topic: Outpost 5 - Suggestion Game - Update 26 - June 2091 (Read 36038 times)