Mars is the red planet because of rust on the surface, right? Rust is just oxidised iron. So, if there is so much iron, why no magnetic field?
Also, is there a way to de-oxidise the iron to get a source of building material?
I was mistaken in my original description - Mars does have an iron core, it's just not molten. A giant superheated spinning ball of iron produces a lot more magnetism than a cold solid ball. All the rust dust on the surface is another matter. Mars is probably about as iron laden as the Earth, but the dust comes from millions of years of iron-heavy meteors vaporizing in the atmosphere. That's probably entirely wrong, but I'm the GM so I'm going to say it's right.
Turning iron-oxide into useful iron shouldn't be too hard. You just have to separate the oxygen out and melt- Ah, wait. That's you folks' responsibility.
I believed Simon had crashed to Mars in a just larger than man sized terrarrium, which was why I was using the mud. Must have missed the module part. Not that I'm complaining, mind you 
I was confused on that as well. I decided a lab module with a bunch of cases in it made more sense than a giant fishtank falling out of the sky.
I wonder, since such overarching goals require many years, and we go by a maximum of... 1 day per 2-3-4 days? Yeah, this might take a while. 
That's just until the emergencies die down.
Once a semi-permanent base is up and running, to include semi-replenishing food/water/air supplies, I imagine the turns could be a month at a time, or more.
I've been thinking a lot about this, and I've got a few answers - I should run this by you all now to see what you think.
As the colony gets properly established and builds some actual infrastructure, it'll take some constant effort by a few people to maintain. Botanists to tend the greenhouses, mechanics to repair jury-rigged machinery, etc. Meanwhile, groups will head out to do other missions like mining ice, or
investigating unknown things.
I hope to keep it somewhat tight and interesting by handling activity in a episodic, multi-plotline way. Like: Turn 14.1 - Pitor, Harry, and Vlad dig for ice. Turn 14.2 - Faris, Sean, and Louise hunt down radio signals. Turn 14.3 - Roy, Strife, and Squeegy fix odd equipment failures.
The obvious implication here is that most of the time, a few people will be out having fun and dealing with immediate decisions, while everyone else is back at base doing chores. There will be updates, probably consecutive ones, where some players will stuck saying "Yes, I'm still throwing playing cards in a hat" as their continuous action.
The dramatic irony in this is that it's characters doing chores that really keeps everyone alive, but the players stuck doing them will be bored. This is an outlet for people who would rather only check in once and a while, but means that the vital stuff is in the hands of players most likely to drop inactive, leaving their characters to go berko and put everyone in jeopardy. It's gettin' all meta-gamey in my head, but I'm sure you'll all surprise me.
I'll do my best to generate weird problems to deal with, and rotate the skills needed to give every character something to do, but there will be slow patches, and I don't want the situations I throw you in to sound contrived. Of course, so far we've got riding from orbit in refrigerators and turning carbon nanotubes into a planetwide terraformer, so I don't know why I'm concerned about contrivance. Between my ideas and yours, I'm sure we'll keep ourselves entertained for a while.
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Topic: Angry Red Planet - Totally And Completely Dead (Read 48151 times)