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This topic isn't meant to be a complaint, it's just my ideas of what could be done to improve on the existing planets' designs. I realize that bast isn't working very much on new content and I support that, since what he is doing now is better for the game than making new content. I just figured that I would cover all of the planets for my planet-hub topic. That way people can get my opinion of all the planets.


earthlike Planet specific ideas:

earthlike planet summary: I think that this planet is fine as it is. It's supposed to be a training planet that gives the user the perfect conditions to build a colony, so I think it should be left alone. There are some ideas that I have regarding all planets that also apply to this planet, but I don't have any ideas regarding this specific planet. I do believe that every race should have this planet type so the player can learn to play this race under the best conditions, with the exception of zolarg because they already have a world with the best conditions to grow, their just a harder species to manage overall. reptilians and LIS get the abandoned world, which is earthlike but doesn't have any ore.

Waterworld specific ideas:

Waterworld summary: This planet is really fun to play because you have to be carful how you design your colony layout. I wouldn't chancge anything about this planet and I'm not going to suggest anything because all of the ideas that I have bast is already going to implement soon. There are other ideas that pertain to all planets that apply here, but no specific ideas come to mind when thinking about this planet.

red planet specific ideas:

Red Planet Summary: I really like the simplicity of the map, and I like the laid-back feel that you get when playing it. I also like how quickly it allows you to grow your colony. There is not much more that I would like to see added to this planet aside from the general ideas that I have below that don't apply to any planet. This planet is very well-designed.

red badlands decorations: I think that the red planet map should generate decorations that resemble badlands structures, or weird rock structures that form because wind wears it down into awkward shapes. This should make the map aesthetically pleasing.

generated lake-bed rivers: per the dry lakebed tile idea below, i think that rivers of those tiles should be generated on red planet maps. This allows the red planet to become just like an earthlike planet once terraformed, with rivers that produce infinite amounts of water. It gives the map a more dynamic feel.

Dust storms: These planetwide storms can last for months and would make it more difficult to see your colony. Solar panels would stop working, but you could implement a windmil to take advantage of the storms and it would produce more during these storms than normally. You already have added the ability to block out light by subtracting alpha from an overlaying object to simulate night time. You could create another overlay object for storms and give it a reddish-tan hue. Then just add moving particle affects and wind sounds and your done. These should disappear once the planet is terraformed. There shouldn't be a damage factor to these storms as the dust is too fine to really wear anything down.

Dynamic Terraformation: I think that this planet type specifically could benefit from dynamic terraforming and should be the first to receive such a feature if added since it's one of the most played maps.


Lunar specific ideas:

Lunar Summary: Lunar world is my favorite map because you can jumpstart your colony before you even get your first immigrant. I like the fact that it's terraformable and the regolith challenge is fun as well. There are a few features that could be added to make this world more immersive though.

Jagged rock decos: Since a lunar planet has no atmosphere, it has no wind on it's surface to smooth and erode rocks, so you should see some really jagged rock formations. I think this would add some aesthetics.

craters: I think that large circular patches of darker terrain tiles should exist on the map. These terrain tiles would act the same as lakebed tiles in that they will become water tiles as atmosphere increases. Craters should be random sizes and distances between. I would even have them generate partially off of the map and across region maps to give a very appealing region view. This may might that craters could envelop most or all of some maps, and some maps might get no crater tiles at all, but that's the beauty of it. the player should also have the option to fill in a crater tile or water tile using regolith where they would otherwise use ore on other planets. The player should be able to turn regular tiles into crater tiles as well with the cost of money.

meteor showers: these showers would pummel structures below periodically. Any that land on empty tiles could generate regolith nodes and could have the chance to generate mini-craters that would fill with water upon terraforming, this is why I think we should have the ability to turn crater tiles to regular tiles, and vise versa. The damage from these meteors shouldn't be catastrophic, but it should cause some damage depending on the structure. These meteors should stop once atmosphere is above 1 mil.

Atmosphere leach: Since most planets like the moon aren't big enough to keep an atmosphere forever(there are exceptions), there should be a significant drain on atmosphere that must be compensated for. It could also be a benefit if a colony's atmosphere is too high though. A drain of 5k per minute would be a challenge at first, and you would have to beat that mark in order for condensors to operate.


Forest Planet ideas:

Forest Summary: I don't have much to say about this world, it's pretty straightforward albiet annoying at the start. Not really a big benefit to this world aside from the fact that you don't have to mess with the atmosphere at first until you get bigger. I'd honestly play abandoned before forest any day. Here are some ideas I have in mind though:

Rivers: this should be an addition. Any forest world requires lots of water in order for trees to grow.

mega trees: i think that mega-trees should generate on the map at first and begin to spread. Players could try to preserve these so that they'll have a huge supply later on. Once they they're gone, they're gone.

Asteroid planet ideas:

Asteroid summary:
I like the asteroid world. It's just like lunar, but harder since you don't have alu nodes. I used to play this world back before we had ways to get infinite diamonds. Might take a crack at it again to see how far I get. I have a few ideas regarding this world.

craters: the same concept as the lunar planet.

meteor showers: the same concept as lunar planet

Extreme atmosphere leech: asteroids are definately not large enough to keep an atmosphere for long. Because of this, they are drained by 50k per minute. 100 minutes is all it takes for an earthlike atmosphere level to drop to 0. Major benefit later in the game though when atmosphere is increased rapidly by pollution.

Awkward rotation: An asteroid has a very randomized shape in real life. it can be elongated, flat, and even spherical. Because of this, days and nights on this planet last for random times. Short nights lower colonist energy. Short days reduce happiness. long nights can increase colonist energy and long days can raise happiness. This amount increased or decreased would only apply if the length of a night or day goes past the minimum or maximum limits. if a limit is exceeded, the same amount of energy or hapiness is taken away or given, no matter how far past the limit a day or night is.

Abandoned World Ideas:

Abandoned Summary: I really like the abandoned world map, but my idea for a twilight themed abandoned world would add a mystic and ancient feel to the map. I'd like to see a much darker themed map than the light and cheery theme that it has now.

Rivers: aside form the twilight idea I would love to see rivers on this map.

Ice planet ideas:

Ice summary: I like the ice planet because it's a challenge to get through the crystalline bottleneck. I do have some ideas though:

glacial/ crystal decos: a slew of icy/crystalline decorations would look good for this planet.

unstable melting: When you heat up an ice planet, there's no telling where the oceans and rivers will form and where the actual land will be. Ice melts very unpredictably, so there should be no indication as to whether each tile is a lakebed or regular tile, but they should both still be there and have the same texture. It should be set up to where rivers will form as if randomly and instantly. This would be part of the real-life challenges of terraforming an ice planet, so would make sense here. Sometimes your colony gets destroyed just like in lava world, sometimes you get lucky.

Underwater crystal farm: This new building would need to straddle water and land and would be four-way rotatable so it can be placed in any orientation as long as the front 4 tiles are on water and the back 2 squares are on land. It is a 3x2 structure, and it consumes moderate amounts of water, crystalline, and alcohol to constantly produce large amounts of crystalline. The concept behind it is that some crystals grow faster in a water solution with the nutrients it needs to grow. Water also allows the crystals to grow much larger because gravity is much weaker in water as we all know. The fact that the structure would have to straddle land and water means that the planet will need to terraformed before a player can place on of these and get rid of their green crystals.

desert world:

desert summary: I don't have much to say about this map, haven't played reptilians that much. I do think that it could use some aesthetics though, just one flat plane of land is nothing to get all excited about. But here are some of the ideas that I have:

Yellow badlands decos: weird yellow rock forms, crackly ground, rough patches, and some shrubbery and cacti. These should randomly dot the landscape and would really up the aesthetics on this map.

Tar(oil) pits: instead of water flowing through the map, tar pits would give it a more desert feel, as you find these pits naturally in deserts. just like rivers on the earthlike planet yield infinite water, these pits should yield infinite oil. The major downfall with this benefit is that you need workers to collect the oil, and that can be pretty tedious and may slow down performance.

raise the atmosphere: Since deserts are supposed to be hot, we should raise the atmosphere to above earthlike. This also corrosponds to my thermal idea below. In addition to this, I would recommend adding a fully terraformed stage where atmosphere is reduce to between 5 mil and 15 mil. I'm not saying that deserts don't exist when atmosphere is at perfect levels because the saharrah wouldn't exist if that were true. It's just that since bast still hasn't added any thermal or moisture level factors to terraforming, I thought that lowering the atmosphere was good enough to simulate raising the moisture level and lowering thermal levels to make the planet cooler and wetter.

dry-lakebed tiles: I think that the dry lakebed tile idea would particularly help this planet as once it is terraformed from dessert to earthlike, you'll have rivers flowing through the landscape.
Sandstorms: Not to be confused with dust storms, the storms are much shorter, yet can be devastating to colonists and buildings. These storms should cause colonist sickness, slow down movement, and accelerate the decay of structures by a certain amount for the duration of the storm. Depending on the direction of the storm, walls placed on the map will block the storm from getting into your cities. It's best to surround your cities with walls so that you get as little exposure to the storms as possible, just an extra challenge. These storms should cease once atmosphere is reduced to earthlike and life is brought back to the planet.

Lava planet ideas:

lava summary: I liked this planet at one point, but I think it's rather pointless to play being that it doesn't have an end-goal and you're colony is never safe no matter how far down the atmosphere goes. My list of lava ideas on my planet hub topic should cover all of the ideas that I have for this planet, and they all still stand.

Fissure vents: These gigantic cracks in the planet spew forth ash and toxic gas into the atmosphere. Because of this, atmosphere is increased by 2 thousand atmosphere a minute, even if the atmosphere is reduced to between 5 and 15 mil, atmosphere will still pile up, requiring you to build more buildings that use up atmosphere to balance it out. The only thing that would need to be added is a passive loop that continuously counts down 60 seconds and then adds 2k to the atmosphere number value. Good luck terraforming this planet.

ideas for all existing planets:

Dry Lakebed Tiles: I've suggested this a few times, but basically dry lakebed tiles should replace water tiles in low and high atmosphere planets. These tiles can be built on, but watch out, because when atmosphere goes over 250k or falls under 30 million, these tiles will turn to water and any buildings on them will be destroyed. There should be an apparent difference in color shade or texture between regular tiles and the dry lakebed tiles. remaning Ice deposits should also turn into water deposits at the same atmosphere level.

Dynamic terraforming: I've mentioned this a couple of times too. It's simple, if atmosphere goes too low, the terraformed planet becomes barren, just as if it were a red or lunar planet; if atmosphere goes too high, then the planet becomes hotter, becoming first a dessert and then eventually a lava planet, with all the eruptions and lava spreading we know and love. . I also think that atmosphere requirements for all atmosphere stages for region games should be multiplied by the number of tiles on a region. This gives the player a longer playthrough and also encourages them to develop cities on every tile. I think that downside is worth it and it would be a fun challenge to work towards. I think that aside from the tiles changing texture, trees should generate across the map on empty space once atmosphere either rises past 5 mil or falls past 15 mil. I also think they should disappear while outside of those ranges.

Thermal factor: I feel like there should be some sort of challenge regarding keeping your colonists at a good temperature. Perhaps you could add a meter in statistics that indicates thermal level of the entire colony. Too hot or cold and your colonists will become sick and loose energy and hapiness. An earthlike planet, or any planet that's been terraformed to between 5 mil and 15 mil, will not affect the meter at least, but too much atmosphere and the meter will start to go up and too little atmosphere will start to subtract heat from the meter. You should be able to build coolers or heaters to supplement the loss or gain of temperature. Currently most planets start out at no atmosphere, which means that they will start out cold. Lava is the only planet that would add the the thermal meter at this time but I think that the desert type planet should have high atmosphere so it can add to the meter.

Regions acting as mc campaigns: Now, some people would disagree with me on this, but I think it's totally fair to call region mode and sort of "campaign mode." This is because with regions, you get a longer playthrough and it takes longer for you to develop the space given to you. I also think it's fair that region mode requires premium, as most well-developed apps offer a free trial(single map mode) and full version with campaign mode(region mode). Some of yall might disagree. but here are the main ideas that I have in mind:
- design random mandatory goals to have a chance to pop up for each tile a map occupies that grant the player money, research. civics, happiness, or other resources, kind of like quests. But these would be more like story-line quests. a medium map would contain four of these quests. These should take a decent amount of time to complete and should make the game progress slower.
- design smaller optional side-quests that pop up randomly occasionally and grant smaller bonuses.
- each tech should require a certain number of complete story-line quests before being unlocked, even if you have enough research. There would be only one quest per tile so this would encourage players to develop all the tiles to complete all of the available story quests.
-Make individual map progression depend on the completion of story quests. For instance, you can add a population cap that unlocks after the quest is complete, and for medium maps with four quests, you could increase the cap in increments to allow the player to develop further after each quest, but not indefinitely until all quests are complete.

Overall I think that these ideas for campaign mode should add a very interesting element to regions mode and would make it more worthwhile and entertaining to play and a player might be entertained for a very long time before becoming bored.




But anyway, those are my ideas. I wanted to go over each planet so that everything was covered in my planethub topic. I'll paste this link so yall can access it easily. Let me know what you think and which ideas you like/dislike.

This idea would change the method of colony organization by maps for region colonies. Default style colonies with just one map would continue to be shown on the map as normal. Note that this idea is solely for premium features and would not impact the free to play aspect of mc.

I imagine a map with planets, not one planet per colony, but one planet that houses many colonies.

ONLINE PLAYERS:

For online colonies, when a player starts a new colony, their choice of planet type will determine what planet they get added to. Each planet would have a square planetary map with procedurally generated oceans, land masses, mountains, and other terrain features that bast would like to add. The terrain features would be spread naturally across the planet. The planet would have a grid that would split the map into sections/regions that would house many colonies per planet. The player would be able to choose a region based on it's position to certain terrain features, and once they choose a region, a new region colony is formed. They will not be able to chose regions occupied by other colonies.

Yes, this means that multiple players would be able to make colonies on the same planet. All region colonies would contribute to the same atmosphere level, but their civics, power, research, antaura, money, and other resources would not be shared with other region colonies on the same planet.

This would pose a challenge for region colonies that would balance the game out and prevent paid gamers from having more of an advantage than free gamers, because they would need to work together in order to ensure that the planet is terraformed. So by working together, players will ensure that all players on a given planet are able to advance through the game. The advantages to this would be that each region colony would be able to set up trade routes with other colonies and regularly ship products to each other without the cost of civics, and would be able to communicate with each other without the communications array.

However, there is one setback that could happen with this idea. What if one of your fellow region colonies on the same planet doesn't play nice, refuses to contribute to the team, goes inactive indefinitely, or decides to isolate themselves from the rest of the regions. what do we do then? This is where the idea of exiling comes into play. All of the region colonies on a planet can vote together to remove a colony from their planet to free up a region for another colony to come in and take over.

However, exiling should take time to do, and the colony in jeopardy would have lot's of time to act and repent before they are exiled. I propose a merit system. Each colony will have a merit score that will go from -250 to 250. Everyone starts with a score of 0. Each day, that colony will be able to go through all of the other colonies on their planet and either add a +1 or a -1 to each colony's score. Since there would probably be about 36 region colonies to a planet, that means that the most that any one colony could ever be demerited in one day would be -35 points per day. That means that it would take a little over a week for that colony to be exiled.

The exiled colony would be moved to an orbiting moon of the same planet, and would still be able to trade freely with the region colonies on the planet, would still keep their terrain, and would still be categorized under tha planet in the galactic map, but would have to build up it's own atmosphere(albeit the amount of atmosphere needed would be decreased as the moon would be smaller.). Each planet can have infinite moons, and they wouldn't show up under the planetary map view, but would be hidden until a player wishes to search through them for an exiled player to trade with..

OFFLINE PLAYERS:

Now for offline players. I imagine a more campaign-like gameplay to keep things interesting for offline paid players.

Upon creating a colony, the player would need to pick a race. Once the race is picked, a solar system would be generated which would contain all of the planet types available to that race. The player must then choose where to establish their first colony in this new-found solar system. They would do this be selecting a planet, selecting a region of that planet to develop as the first colony based on the terrain features of each region, and then proceed to build up their first region. Once their first region is well established, they can proceed to colonize other regions and establish trade routes between each region of the same planet.

All regions of the same planet would share research, civics, and contribute to the planets atmosphere level. However, they will each have their own money and resource supplies, and the player would only be able to operate in one region at a time, and only in one map in that region at a time. So you can see how involved a player would need to be to make sure that their planet prospers.

Eventually, once the regions of the planet have been well established and have declared independence(civics requirement should be raised significantly to require the contribution of all regions on a planet). The player can proceed to colonize other planets. They will need lots of civics to organize the movement and research to develop new technologies, and they will need startships to be produced in order to send colonizers, and of course, with any good space endeavor, lots of money is involved.

Each planet would be able to set up trade routes with other planets, but with a regular cost of civics and money, and a very small but regular cost of starships. The resources of each planet would be able to be produced while on the solar system screen, albeit estimated and not real time. These would be based on the production rates of the entire planet right before the player last exited the planet. The downside to this would be that you wouldn't be able to tell if one of a planet's regions is starving just by looking at the solar system view. That is unless you add a small symbol that appears next to the planet name that would indicate that some parts of the planet are starving.

Through this feature, the player would be able to set up an empire that spans an entire solar system of planets. But if you wanted to take this even further, you could implement the use of multiple solar systems. This would be crazy in-depth. However, I doubt that any player would ever get to that level. It is a long process to develop a single region now, so an entire planet of regions would take ages, and a solar system of planets would take ages of ages to develop, so I wouldn't implement multiple solar systems unless you can come up with a way to let the player auto-generate cities on each map based on the player's needs, and then eventually autogenerating cities in every map of a region based on the player's needs, and then tying both of these to certain techs that would need to be researched. This would help the player to quickly be able to splash some resources at a region and completely develop it in a few minutes time, but only after they've spent lots of time developing their empire to be able to do that.

Just as a reminder, this would all be for premium players that play offline only.

I hope that this idea is understandable and helpful to the developing of my colony.

This post is basically like my old post(link below) but some of the ideas below were outdated and had to be refined, so here we are.

https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=3932

Firstly, before I present any new ideas, I want to say that I am supportive of bast's focusing on game quality over content. I also don't expect any of these ideas to just be copied and pasted into the game as is, although it would be nice. The main reason for why I create these posts full of ideas is so that bast has a lot of ideas to think about and gain inspiration from when developing his own ideas for mc. I'm going to try my best to generalize my ideas without trying to name specific buildings and units to be added, as it's bast's job to think of the specifics. Now with that out of the way, let's begin.

The rigidity of MC's atmospherics:
My colony is one of my favorite games to play, so I mean no offense in saying this, but I have to say it. My colony is very rigid when it comes to how the planets respond to terraforming. For most planets, you get from 0 to 5 mil atmosphere and then the planet is fully terraformed, and stays that way even if you run out of atmosphere or accumulate 500 mil atmosphere. There's no consequence for failing to manage the atmosphere, and the terraformation process is very short, in fact, it's so short that you can terraform the planet relatively quickly just with industry alone. You should not be able to do that, and the journey of terraforming a planet should be much much longer than it is now, especially for regions. In real life, it takes hundreds of years, an unimaginable amount of money, and countless workers to terraform a planet. While I'm not saying it should take hundreds of years to terraform a planet in mc, I do think a significantly larger amount of effort, resources, and time should be required than what is now. Also, another way that mc is rigid is that it only takes into account atmosphere when there are other factors to consider, like heat, moisture/sea level, gravity, radiation exposure, Planetary core condition, ozone level, etc. This thread will discuss all of these factors as well. Now, with all of that out of the way, let's talk about some general atmospheric dynamics.

General Dynamics:

Step one: In order to get a good start on smoothing out the rigidity of mc's atmospherics, we need to start by raising the atmosphere requirements for each atmosphere stage.This elongates the journey of terraformation. For instance, stage -2(microbial stage) could be at 1.25 mil atmosphere, stage -1(plant stage) could be at 5 mil, and stage 0(earthlike) could be at 25, so we would be making the process 5 time longer. Now some would say "but that's boring, if it lasts longer, we'd just be doing the same thing for much longer," and I would agree with you. That's why I've come up with some ideas of different features to add to each stage to make each stage feel like a giant leap for your colony, but we will talk about those later.

Step two: We need to add upper limits to each stage that must be met in order to be in that stage. The upper limit for each stage is equal to the lower limit of the stag above it. This ensures that if you drain your atmosphere, you will also digress through the stages until you eventually end up with a barren planet, no matter what planet you start on. if you have any buildings that require a certain stage greater than -3, those should deactivate once their requirements are no longer met. This is what I was talking about regarding consequences for not managing your atmosphere, but since industry always aids in increasing atmosphere, and since the stages are much further apart, it would also be 5 times easier to maintain that it currently is, and currently it's very difficult to keep atmosphere between 5-15 mil in end-game, however, keeping atmosphere between 25-75 mil is a different story.

Step three: add the upper stages. These stages determine what happens when atmosphere get's too high. Stage 1 could start at 75 mil and would cause any buildings with stage 0 requirements to shut down. Stage 2 would be at 150 mil mil and would cause any buildings that require stage -1 requirements to shut down. Stage 3 is the highest atmospheric stage and could start at 500 mil and would shut down any buildings with stage -2 requirements. So think of the stages as a bullseye, with nested rings. the closer you get to the center, the more buildings you can build and the more earthlike a planet is, but the farther away you are to each side, the more barren a planet is. So all buildings will have 1 out of the following four requirements: -3 or 3(barren stages), -2 or 2(microbial stages), -1 or 1(plant/fish stages), and 0(animal stage/earthlike). Additionally, the upper stages could add haziness in increasing density to simulate a dense atmosphere. So you could tell the difference between a barren planet with no atmosphere and a barren planet with too much atmosphere.

Step four: add in special effects. Each stage should look different that all of the others. In a way, mc already does this by changing the ground texture, but I believe that more differences should be added. For instance, the dry lake-bed terrain that I've spoke of several times could come in handy here. in stages -3 and 3, these tiles will resemble dry lakebeds, but in any other stage, these tiles turn into water. it's the same for water that is already added to some planet types, if you were to drain waterworld of its atmosphere or overload it with atmosphere, the entire map should dry up and leave you free to walk about and build where the water used to be. In stages -2 and 2, plants cannot exist, so trees would disappear and most farms would become inoperable. upon entering stage -1 or 1, trees could be generated around the map and would be left to spread around the map. That's really all that I have for this step for now, but I have an even bigger idea coming up soon.

Heat:

This section discusses ways that we could implement a heat aspect to the terraformation process to make reaching an earthlike state more challenging. I'd like you to remember the bullseye example that i talked about earlier, but now instead of a 1D line, going from left to right(atmosphere), add a second line going up and down(heat). This system creates an imaginary grid that your planet's status is on. Not only can your planet be hot and high and low pressure, but it can be high heat with low pressure, or low heat with high pressure, or vice versa. This greatly increases the factor of choice when it comes to terraforming your planet. This illustration is just to show you how these two factors of terraforming can be tied together.

The combination of heat and atmosphere exponentially increase the possibilities for new planet types. There would be consequences for not maintaining heat as well, along with rewards for keeping heat and atmosphere at an optimal medium. New structures would be needed in order to manage heat levels, as well as buildings that take advantage of colder or warmer climates. In fact, heat could also be a biproduct that's released by all buildings that release atmosphere as a biproduct. This would simulate a more accurate global warming effect. As for special effects, I wouldn't go too far out, but maybe give the lighting a dark red hue that grows denser as heat increases, and a light-blue hue as heat decreases. Obviously these should have limits, or else the entire screen could turn opaque red if too much heat is gained. Maybe some black particles for ash can be seen falling on hot planets at a certain heat level, while snow, which already has its own particle effect, could fall on cold planets at a certain heat level.

If atmosphere is low, heat will slowly decrease, if atmosphere is high, heat will slowly increase.


Water:

This section talks about a sea level feature. This third element adds a 3rd dimension to the bullseye diagram, creating yet exponentially more options and outcomes. Bast can choose how to display or organize these three factors. It really doesn't matter how they are displayed, even if it's just in the form of three separate status bars, the bullseye illustration is just to show you how all three of these elements tie together

The basis for the effect that sea level has on a planet revolves around 3 additional terrain types, high ground which is mountainous territory, middle ground for hilly territory, the main mc ground that we build on now would be known as low ground, which is optimal sea level. And finally, when sea level depletes, a new lower level is revealed, called the dry lakebed level, and the water eventually disappears, leaving a ground of dried lake bed in it's place. However, if sea level grows too much, it'll become level with middle ground, then high ground, and then eventually the entire map/region will be covered in water. When water covers a level, everything on that level is utterly destroyed except for any buildings that are supposed to be in the water, and vice versa, if a water building is built on water, but then the sea level recedes, and the tile that it was built on becomes land, it will also be destroyed.

Obviously we would need buildings that can manage sea level and buildings that can take advantage of high or low sea level. If heat is low, water will become ice, if heat is high, sea level will slowly boil off and recede.

Gravity:

Gravity should be a less-important feature to mc, but I still think it would enhance the terraforming system. Each planet starts off with the same atmosphere, heat, and sea level depending on planet type, but regardless of planet type, gravity should be randomized upon planet generation, creating a different result for each new game. This simulates how planets can be of the same type but vary greatly in size and mass. Too much gravity reduces colonist tolerable commute distance and increases heat due to more volcanic activity, not enough gravity will lower colonist maximum health and slowly drain the atmosphere. Certain buildings cannot be built when exposed to certain gravity levels, and some end-game solutions to undesired gravity level should be available.

radiation, core condition, and ozone levels:

Radiation should be fixed in it's amount depending on the planet type. This could allow for more planet type varieties. Radiation isn't like all of the other factors; instead of there being a happy medium for radiation, no radiation is good, so in perfect conditions, a planet has no radiation. Radiation at any level will damage colonists over time. Now, there are two ways to solve the radiation proble, and both methods are naturally used on earth:

Raise ozone level: In real life, the ozone layer of our atmosphere protects us from some radiation, but not all types of radiation. Perhaps you could add buildings that consume atmosphere and other resources to produce ozone, and then the higher the ozone layer, the less radiation exposure you have.

Secondly, in real life, our molten iron core creates a magnetic field that gaurds from most kinds of radiation. You can accomplish this in mc simply by adding more buildings that benefit from the deep digging tech and consume heat and steel to increase core health. The high the core health, the lower the radiation level.

Whichever way is simplest to you. Just know that certain buildings shouldn't be available when radiation goes over certain points. higher radiation should leech away atmosphere and increase planetary heat.

biospheres:

This section will be more complicated than the former sections. Biospheres adds a very dynamic feature to terraforming, and this feature makes each stage of terraforming feel like it's an accomplishment. First off, let's do a quick description. Biospheres is all about living organisms and how they interact and support each other and the environment. This system would allow you to create and customize(to an extent) the appearance and abilities of the organisms and have them spread over the map. The system would have two main categories, land and sea, and would have four sub-categories under that for microbes, plants, herbivores, and carnivores. Each organism produces support for the next tier of organism based on the abilities you give it, and can also be given abilities to affect the environment in certain ways. Each creature has a maximum amount to the abilities that you can give it, and the more abilities you give to an organism, the more support it requires from organisms from the tier below. Some organisms will be hardier than others, and some will need more support than others. The support system goes like this:

Microbes don't need to rely on support and provide support for plants.
Plants need support from Microbes and provide support for herbivores.
Herbivores needs support from plants and provide support to carnivores. Carnivores need support from both herbivores and other carnivores., as their support adds to the same type as herbivores.

The way that we will apply this system to each stage will be by requiring different atmosphere, heat, and sea levels for each catagory of organism. Seeing unique looking trees and grass spreading across the map and seeing creatures roam about the land would be amazing, especially if it happened in stages.

In stage -3 and 3, the planet is barren, but in stage -2 and 2, you can start utilizing microbes to produce many different resources and terraform, and in stages -1 and 1 you can start using plants, which opens up many different possibilities for resource production, since you should be able to farm your own custom plants for different resources. Then in stage 0, you gain access to animals, which you should be able to farm your own unique animals for different resources.

each organism, whether on land or in the sea, needs to be maintained. You must have enough land slots in order to create a new land organism, and the same applies to sea organisms and slots. Slots are given by structures that maintain the organisms, and more advanced structures have more slots. This prevents a player from easily amassing creatures that can quickly produce a certain resource or terraform the planet quickly. Each organism also has a health percentage that determines how well it's species is doing. If the percentage reaches 0, the species goes extinct and it's slot is freed up for another organism, but the higher the health percentage, the more support a species produces, the more effective you can be at exploiting it for resources, and the more effect it has on the planet. The health percentage has no upper limit, but it depends on how much support it has and how suitable the environment is for it.

Hopefully I've described this system well, but i believe that this system can bring life to mc and make it a more dynamic game and should increase it's value as a game.

Conclusion:

To wrap this up, I think we all have witnessed how rigid mc's terraforming system is and I think that these ideas would expand the possibilities for more planet types and would make the game more of a journey to terraform than just a waiting game. I hope everyone else feels the same, but once again, I don't put these ideas out there just for people to agree with me or for every detail to be copied and pasted into the game, I do it to provide ideas for bast to think about when he runs out of them.

#MyColony2 #VoxelPaint #VoxelModel #CommunityContents #MagicaVoxel #Scroll3D

HELLO GUYS!

Some months ago, inside the secret lab in the deep mountains.... Wait, wrong script.
Just a few monthes ago, our dev @bastecklein got hands onto creating a (sort of) next generation engine for upcoming games of Ape Apps. With some computer magic and pretty much hard efforts, the brand new engine Scroll3D was born, a new engine comes with elevation in terms of dimensions, from 2D to 3D.

The detailed story about creation of Scroll3D can be found in this post.

The currently under development My Colony 2 (MC2) is created using Scroll3D engine. So how it would look like? Here are some demonstrations from the recent in game footage.



Currently, the Scroll3D engine is capable of the followings, compared to the older Scroll2D engine:

• More realistic light rendering.
• Light emitting objects!
• A better representation of height and elevation.
• Diagonal movement of objects.
• 3 dimensional details for objects.

You can see the 3D models are very blocky in shape. This style is called Voxel, which every model are built up block by block. In other words, you can say it is low pixel graphics but it is in 3D.
The reason bastecklein adopted this style is because voxel models are generally easy to make. This is a good thing for people who would like to contribute to the graphical designs of game objects in game development, or create mods for the games - that is also one of the major features of My Colony 2.

Games using Scroll3D engine, including My Colony 2, use .vpp files for object graphics in the game. So how you can create the voxel models?

Bastecklein has also created another app for creating voxel models in .vpp format - Voxel Paint.
This is a dedicated app for creating .vpp models for any Ape Apps games using Scroll3D engine. A simple and easy-to-use app, it allows you to create simple, small voxel models. More importantly, it is available on many platforms, from your desktop computer to your mobile devices.
You can try out the app a bit on the embed window above.

Voxel Paint can work in conjunction with another popular, totally free open source software that is also for creating voxel models, MagicaVoxel. MagicaVoxel, compared to Voxel Paint, has more convenient and advanced tools that can help making of voxel models easier, especially when you're trying to create larger models that would take days to make on Voxel Paint. However, it is so far only available on PC devices.
This is their official website where you will find the latest download version, and their Github page: https://ephtracy.github.io/
Models created using MagicaVoxel is in format of .vox, this format cannot be used in My Colony 2, it requires conversion in Voxel Paint using the Import .vox file function and then save it as usable .vpp files.
This is a screenshot of the user interface.


At this moment, the standard unit of a tile in Scroll3D engine is 16×16 voxels. Hence, when you're creating voxel models, please set canvas size/base area parameters as multiples of 16 (16×16, 32×32, 48×48, etc.) for proper designs.


Any voxel models in .vpp format you have created can be submitted on the Ape Apps forums, which upon submission of the post/comment the .vpp model preview can be rendered.


Just a few hours before this post, My Colony 2 reached v0.2.0 with a few basic gameplay features implemented successfully. It is far from completion, and some buildings need better models. However, there is also plentiful of space for adding shiny new good stuff and refining the current details, this is where bastecklein will need more cool thoughts, amazing ideas and fine suggestions from us. Of course, better or new voxel models!

As always:
You can help by EXPANDING IT.

I'm just wondering if there will be any new and interesting terraforming dynamics to MC coming up.

I know that the main terraforming factor that we use now is atmosphere, and that affects what we can build and even how colonists feel, but once each planet's atmosphere gets over 5 mil, the planet stays in an earth-like state, no matter how much atmosphere it has, which is unrealistic. Will you eventually make it so that the planet changes for the worse if atmosphere grows too much, perhaps even turning into a lava world?

Also, I was wondering about the other factors of terraforming. Atmosphere is an important factor to terraforming, and I know that when you first built MC, your intent was focused on red planet since that was the first planet that you made, but you can make other world types with new and interesting challenges if you were to add thermal level and sea level planetary stats to the game and have each planet change according to those levels. For instance, a dessert world would have a very low sea level, and the challenge would be to reduce heat and increase sea level. Or on red planet even, you could add additional challenge by making it so that the player needs to add heat as well as atmo, since mars is cold and has almost no atmo. Or on an ocean planet, the player could start on a small piece of land surrounded by water and work towards reducing the sea level and revealing more land. As you can see, several more planet types would be apropriate to add if these features were added, and it would not only prove a challenge but would make the game more alluring to terraformation fanatics like myself. When you only have the pressure statistic, you are cutting out planets that could be added that don't have atmosphere as their main issue. For instance, a dessert planet wouldn't make sense to add and terraform because we have desserts on earth now that have the appropriate amount of atmosphere but lack moisture. And an ocean planet would have the right atmo level but too much moisture.

It would take a lot of work, but if you were to make it so that each planet could dynamically change when exposed to different levels of pressure, heat, and water, it would drastically increase the value of the game and it would pay off big time. It would take a lot of work to develop all of the ground textures for each planet, but once you do that for all of the planets that you have so far, you will have less work to do when you add each individual planet in the future.

A good example of what it takes to terraform a planet in real life is a mobile game that is based off of terraforming, called terragenesis. You choose a certain planet and start off small and work your way up through researching new techs, increasing your income, and terraforming the planet. Each planet has it's own issues that you have to overcome. Eventually, you get the planet to the point where it can support life, but to get there, it's a long and complicated road with many challenges.

When I first started playing the game, I was hooked becuase of the level of detail the developer put into the terraforming elements of the game, but I got bored eventually because while it excels in it's terraforming elements and dynamic planetary effects, it's not a city building game, and it's not a very interactive game. MC just so happens to be a city building game that is very interactive, and it also has great potential in the terraforming and planetary dynamics area, even though it's not quite there yet. I really would like to see a game the excels in both the terraforming and dynamics side of things and the city building and interactive side of things, and I'm hoping that MC will eventually be this game because I think that MC is an awesome game. I'm not saying to copy his ideas, that would be a very very bad idea, and wouldn't be ethical, but use it as a source of inspiration in your quest to make MC reach it's potential, if you can. I'm not mentioning the game for the sake of advertising it, it's just a suggestion.

But yeah, that's just my take on things. Hope my suggestions help, and hope to see MC reach it's true potential.

cry8wolf9 said:Well maybe not so quick.
Since your taking a look at models.
Are you keeping the same model for structures? Like entertainment, government, ect.
Also what about the races? Same or are there going to be different ones? Would this be a good chance to suggest new ones?
Any lore ideas yet to base the buildings and builders on?

Sorry cry, but you might get more than you bargained for with my reply.

So I am not exactly sure what you mean by "models," but I don't want the design of the game to be limited by what was there in MC1. There might be a tendency to think "well this is just MC1 with just 3d versions of the landscape and buildings," etc, but that is not my thinking at all. There is no reason that the tech or building tree has to mimic what was in MC1, and the buildings don't just have to be 3d versions of their MC1 counterparts. There is no reason why MC1 needs to have a lander, silo, solar panel, greenhouse, refinery etc, unless they make sense in the context of the game. Same thing applies to Rovers, which is why I continue to raise the question as to whether they need to exist in the same form as they do in MC1.

This is not to say that existing MC1 stuff does not belong here, what I am trying to say is that this is an entirely new game, there is nothing wrong with starting on with a new slate.

In terms of lore/races/civs/etc. My thought is that MC2 would be on one hand smaller in scale than MC1, but at the same time much larger.

What does this mean? So My Colony 1 basically encompasses a large area of the galaxy with thousands of planets and the three principal races. And all of the races are still official "lore" for the game, of course. Additionally, a "planet" in MC1 is basically limited to a small plot of land, and you can go from a lander touching down on a dead empty world to a booming metropolis in a matter of days.

I want MC2 to feel completely different, like when your lander touches down on the Red Planet (or whatever world), you are just a lander and two tiny colonists alone on a massive, dead, empty world that you must tame, and all of the resources you need will not just be sitting there waiting for you upon arrival.


Here is how I sort of see it in my head. All lore for the game universe comes principally from the following titles: Colony Wars, Colonial Tycoon, Death 3d, My Starship, Deimos, Deimos 2 - End of the Earth, Deimos 3 - High Noon, and Sarge. If you wanted to put the story in a chronological order, I think it would go like this:

• My Colony 2
• Deimos
• Sarge
• End of the Earth
• High Noon
• Colony Wars
• Death 3d
• My Colony 1
• Colonial Tycoon
• My Starship

I see MC2 as taking place during the first human exploration and settlement of other worlds. The Deimos series (plus Sarge) takes place in the early days of United Earth, where they have just a couple of settlements. The LIS is starting to form, but is not officially recognized yet, and has not yet broken off from U.E.. Colony Wars takes place shortly after the events of Deimos 3, where the LIS formally declared independence (in the form of a surprise attack) and fights to break away from United Earth, which they are eventually successful at with eventual aid from the Zolarg finally tipping the war in their favor. Death 3D takes place during the middle of the LIS war, and features the demise of some of the Deimos-era heroes, along with the United Earth Presidency, where power is moved over to the General Assembly instead. My Colony 1 and Colonial Tycoon are both post-LIS war, where the three civilizations and also the Alpha Draconians, which are now known to humans but have been known to the Zolarg for a long time, are all branching out and colonizing this part of the galaxy. And My Starship takes place somewhat later, where much of this part of the galaxy has been colonized and commerce/war is going on as usual between the various factions.

So that is a general overview of the MC Universe lore. The nature of My Colony 1 and 2 make them harder to place firmly on a timeline, since a game can last "years" and span throughout the whole timeline. But I do like to see My Colony 2 start at the very beginnings, not to far from our present day, because I think it would be neat to see the original few lonely colonists roughing it in hard times on a barren world, which is what going to Mars is going to be like in real life.

It has given me some ideas for some changes VS MC1 though.

In MC1 you are like a mayor or a governor starting a city. In MC2, I see the player as more of a company landing on part of a new planet for fun and for profit, but mostly for profit. You begin with a certain amount of money, and initially to get more colonists, you have to finance another launch from Earth, which results in another Lander showing up with two or three colonists. The Lander can be broken down for scrap parts once it arrives. I think you will also be able to order up a supplies lander from Earth for a lower cost, which has no colonists but whatever materials you need to order, or foot/water etc. However if another player is also on that planet and there are already colonists nearby, they may join your settlement instead of having to bring in new people. You get more money by exporting resources back to earth.

Eventually your settlement grows into a city and the nature of the game changes from one of having to ship materials to Earth for survival to a self-sustaining colony. But I think it will be a slower, more drawn out process VS MC1.

Having multiple players on a planet will also allow for a planetary economy to grow, where trade networks between settlements are made and colonists move from one player to another. Eventually a planet can be built to a point where Earth is no longer required. In MC1, each player has his own planet, but in MC2 I would rather see all players on the server on the same planet, with the planet itself being near infinite in size, with different resources and terrains on different parts on the planet. There will of course be support for multiple planets on a server, but I do not think the game will be as fun if everybody starts with their own planet, as on MC1. On MC1 it was needed because a planet was, at most, a few square miles in size. In MC2, a planet is like an actual planet.

I don't know if there will be terraforming as in MC1, or if so it will be way, way slower.

As for other civs, my plan is to just have Earth/Human. If somebody wants to create a mod with another civ built out, they are free to do so. If it's really good and they want it included in the base game, I will consider it. But it's not a part of the initial plan.

On update 84 Bast mentioned that he was going to be adding more resources that would be unique to only one type of planet. This is because he wants people to have a reason to use gbt. He may already have his mind made up regarding which resources he wants to do, but it's always good to have backup ideas. If you can think of any more resources that could be added that I haven't included here, please feel free to post your ideas in this thread.

Asteroid planet:
Iridium: it's a known fact that a large portion of asteroids have large amounts of iridium in their composition. Iridium in real life has an ability to withstand intense heat, which is why people make crucibles with iridium that can melt other metals like iron(which acts like lava when it melts). This resource would be perfect for the lava world, as you could add dark versions of later-game structures that require iridium and obsidian and would be impervious to dangers of the lava world. Shouldn't be a royally expensive or hard to obtain, but it's the fact that millions of units would be required to make a lava colony safe from the lava and eruptions, and even more as the colony grows. Another use for iridium would be to make more efficient trash incinerators, and you could make the alien steel refinery, alien ura enrichment pants and advanced alu gens, and human triantanium plants require iridium. This means that each colony will either have to do some importing or trading to progress to the current end of the game.

Ice Planet:
Liquid nitrogen: I've talked about this before, but an ice planet would be so cold that liquid nitrogen rivers could form on it's surface. This resource could be the best resource for reducing the atmosphere. Since mc has no thermal element to terraforming, removing atmosphere would simulate removing heat, and you can add a very efficient atmosphere reduction plant that consumes this resource, and I guarantee that almost every late-gamer will buy into this resource. Once the ice planet is terraformed, however, those rivers of nitrogen should be replaced with water, so it's bast to leave this planet cold and barren. I would replace the water with nitrogen again if atmosphere is reduced back to under 250k again though, just to prevent the player from permanently loosing their reason for playing on a hardcore map. I imagine this resource being expensive as it's being gathered on a hardcore planet and it would mainly be used by late-gamers who should have that kind of money.

Lunar planet:
Titanium: Scientists in real life have found that the moon has 10x more titanium than earth does. This titanium is very strong and very flexible, even more than iron, meaning that it can be used in the construction of very tall buildings. The tall structures and tech and even the drone and turbo drone could require titanium to be built. This makes it so that titanium is needed in order to progress through the game, so I wouldn't make it too expensive, but still, it should cost a pretty penny. Deep mines would have to be dug in the ground to obtain titanium, so the deep digging tech would need to be researched before a player can produce titanium, and I would make it so that the planet needs to be terraformed as well before titanium can be obtained. But once you start getting titanium, you can start making lots of money.

Forest Planet:
Animals: I've thought long and hard about this one, I think it makes sense. a forest planet would have it's own ecosystem of animals ripe for the picking. Lots of different types of buildings that already exist could use animals, and this resource also opens up the possibility for more structures. for example, wool farms and fish hatcheries could require these to initially stock themselves. A slaughter house could be a mid to late game food producer that primarily relies on constant consumption of animals. You could build an aquarium on water with animals that brings in tourism and money. For production, I would start out with a hunterbot's shack, and then progress toward a ranch, and then a full-blown breeding factory where animals are crammed into closet-sized cubicles(you could make that building consume money due to constant lawsuits from PETA, joking of course, I too hate the abuse of animals in real life).

I imagine this resource to be a relatively inexpensive commodity that most mid-level colonies could afford in decent amounts. While I wouldn't make them vital to progress through the game, I would make them a way to make your progression easier, and with it's wide array of uses, this resource would definitely see some profit.

Desert Planet:
Glass: In real lafe, a desert is a glass-blower's paradise because of the unlimited amounts of sand you have available to you. Glass could be harvested directly from the ground without needing sand to be added as a resource though. You could implement melteries that take glass from the ground directly. Reptilians could also have the technology to turn crystalline into glass at astounding rates, but only on the dessert planet. Glass would melt too easily on a lava planet and crystalline doesn't exist on abandoned worlds.

Glass can be used to make many things, from antique glassware shops that produce money while consuming glass, to ship windows(make ship factories consume glass as well), to fishtanks and aquariums. I think glass could be used in several ways. Glass could be consumed by the alien microchip factories, as silicon is the main material used to hold the circuits in microchips together in real life. Glass is just a less pure form of silicon. Plus, it also makes things interesting if humans need glass for many of their structures and products, they have to get it from the reptilians. Although some things should be the other way around as well, humans having what the reptilians need. I see glass as being a very cheap commodity, albeit a human colony would need to constantly supply millions to their colony for expansion purposes.

water world:
Pearls: This commodity is mainly a tourist resource, but you could still implement uses for it on other planets. For instance, you could implement a large jewelry story that consumes diamonds, gold, and pearls and makes tons of money.

Leather: The abundance of salt in the water of this planet allows for the process of tanning animal hides on this planet. Once the colony gets large enough to trade, they'll be able to produce leather from those animals. A leather factory would consume water and animals to produce leather and food.

leather can be consumed by the advanced clothing factory(since you can make leather jackets, belts and boots), and you could add an IKEA warehouse inc. factory that would make money by consuming leather, wood, wool, plastic, and steel to make furniture.




Well, those are my ideas for now, I'll add more when I come up with them. Let me know what you think.

There is a life form out in space that threatens to devour the entire universe. Inspired by the infectious Phazon planets in the metroid prime series, I give you the "living planet". It's sole purpose is to grow giant spores that travel to other planets and infect them, slowly turning the entire planet into another living planet.

The most basic material that makes up all of the living planet is, for now we'll call it "corruption," but I'm sure bast could think of a better name. This corruption can exist in many forms and eats rock and metal alike to produce more corruption. This is how a planet is converted eventually. Any living thing that comes into contact with this material will ether quickly be consumed by it, or in some rare cases, transformed by it into horribly mutated, feral creatures, also known as the "turned". These creatures will then attempt to drag colonists away and expose them to corruption. Corruption also can't be stored in containers made of anything but plastic or Steel, as both aren't natural materials and can't be broken down by corruption.

The way that we would apply this to My colony is this: Create a map composed of two terrain types, ground, which consists of solid corruption, which isn't harmful to colonists and can be built on, and then for the second terrain, pools of corruption should be generated on the map. This terrain can be traversed but not built on. Corruption can be collected by corruption bots, which can't be harmed by the material, and then that corruption can be converted into regolith(rock), crystalline, gold, aluminum, and uranium. Ore must be obtained via regolith the old fashioned way. Colonists that venture into the pools of corruption are either killed immediately or turned. These turned would then seek out other colonists and drag them into the pools of corruption. The only way to stop colonists from venturing into those pools would be to put up walls around them, but that would also prevent you from harvesting the resource. Even if no colonists become turned, I would still spawn turned creatures on the map from time to time. And I would spawn more depending on the gdp of the colony. as colonists start taking from the planet, it gets angry and sends it's hordes after them(factorio inspired this idea, since you get attacked be biters for polluting the air).

In order to combat the turned, I recommend implementing security turret walls that fire at them, and a mobile bot that fires atthem as well. Bast can decide if the turned could fight back against these and damage them, but I think it would turn that planet into more of a zombie apocalypse map than an mc map if you constantly had to worry about maintaining defense. Stronger versions of the bot and turret could be added for late-gamers as well.

In order to kill corruption efficiently, you must apply ether. Otherwise corruption has to be electrified to convert it back to rock and metal, and the process is very slow. Ether and corruption annihilate each other to produce the rocks and metals once consumed by the corruption. A lot of pure energy is released as well. You can actually terraform the planet into an earth-like planet as well by injecting ether into the planet. The ether would spread towards any corruption left inside the planet and destroy it. But this would require many millions of ether and you wouldn't be able to obtain any more corruption from the planet. Certain buildings could use ether to more efficiently turn corruption into certain resources, and since pure energy is created once the two resources annihilate each other, you could make a pretty potent power plant that uses the two and generates massive amounts of regolith as a biproduct, and this could be done on other planets as well, making corruption and ether high demand resources in gbt.

This map would be a very hard map to play, possibly death level, but maybe just brutal. The most dangerous factor is the turned. If you are building ample security then you should be fine, but the don't think you can just build a huge colony without defending it, because you could get quickly overwhelmed and wiped out. Once the planet is terraformed into an ether planet, the turned die out and rivers of water should replace the pools of corruption.

This planet has a vast landscape of ruined cities built by a long-extinct race that were likely responsible for rendering the planet uninhabitable. The history of this race is long-gone, probably degraded by the torrential downpours of radioactive acid rain and the ever-churning acidic oceans that would dissolve even the largest of marine vehicles within hours. Most races in existence today avoid this place like the plague and treat it like a dumping ground, jettisoning toxic and radioactive waste into the atmosphere from space with their waste transport ships, so waste of all sorts can be found here, even the dangerous kinds. Will anyone dare attempt to return this planet to it's life-giving state? Will the mistakes of it's former inhabitants ever be undone? Only time will tell. But for now, the glowing green planet will remain desolate, inhospitable to all life that we know.

This map idea was inspired by the toxic planet in starbound, where oceans of toxic water exist with an entire ecosystem of creatures adapted to live in the toxic water. On that planet, you can also see ruined cityscapes in the background as you traverse the dangerous planet. The radioactive element was inspired by the fallout series, which many of you probably know about.

Instead of ore and gold nodes dotting the map, ruined towers and skyscrapers would dominate the landscape, creating an ancient cityscape. Each tower would provide a large amount of ore, steel, and gold. Eventually the player will be able to build ore fracking plants, gold labs, and steel refineries. These towers would not be removeable without harvesting them. This means that you can't destroy them with the bulldoze tool and there is no option to remove in the options menu. These towers should be an obstacle to the player's attempts to expand and organize their colony layout.

The map should contain generated rivers of glowing green water. The land itself is not dangerous, but the water is. When waterbots try to collect water from the rivers, they end up collecting defiled water, just like my previous map idea(The Bog). Colonists will drink regular clean water when they can, but when they run out, they'll get despeate and start drinking from your defiled water reserves to stay hydrated, which should ultimately result in severe to fatal illnesses. This poses a challenge in that you need to make sure that you have plenty of water for the amount of people, because your colonists would likely be better off going without any water at all then drinking defiled water, since drinking it has a high chance to cause illnesses that rapidly reduce health. The same concept applies in real life to salt water, which when drank rapidly dehydrates the body due to the excess sodium in the salt water, ultimately leaving the drinker worse off than they would've been going without water. Any water vehicles and structures should take damage over time and explode when out of health. This also includes structures straddling water and land.

Another thing to watch out for is the radioactive waste dumps that dot the map. Colonists and organic workers should accumulate radiation when they stand near these. Their radiation percentage is directly subtracted from their health and will be fatal when 100% is reached or sooner if the unit is already damaged by sickness, starvation, or another factor. Hospitals should be able to slowly reduce radiation levels in an organic unit. However, these areas can be harvested with uranium rover to collect large amounts of uranium. Even after these area ares depleted and start disappearing from the map, uranium fracking plants can be dug into the earth to harvest uranium indefinately from the endless waste buried below. In fact, if you have a waste reclamation plant, it should be able to produce all kinds of random resources by extracting waste from below and refining it.

Acid rain should be a thing, and it should rain every now and then, doing decent damage to buildings and causing organic unit's radiation levels to rise slowly. Always inspect your buildings to make sure that their damages are repaired so they don't explode. That is until you get a consulate, where you can auto-repair buildings. Always build plently of hospitals as well to provide radiation treatment for your organic units. For draconians, their inability to care about their insectoid slave workers means that they will constantly be replacing their slaves, since it is against draconian law to admit insectoids into their hospitals. For zolarg, you may want to build better hospitals. The insectoid carapace of the zolarg people are impervious to acid, but aren't impervious to radiation, so watch out for that.

meteors of radioactive waste should fall to the ground on rare occasions, providing random resources when harvested but also destroying buildings in a small radius and causing radiation damage to every organic unit in the vicinity. This should be added because as I mentioned before, trash is jettisoned into the planet by waste transport ships and falls to the ground. This is why there is so much radioactive waste. As you play, those ships won't even notice a colony on the planet at first, but as you terraform the land, those bombardments will slowly reduce in frequency. If you wanted to leave the planet in its toxic state, but you didn't want the bombardments to continue, you could implement a beam beacon that can be seen from space in order to let ships know not to drop anymore waste. That beacon should be a late game thing.

On top of all of this, the atmosphere should be several times thicker than earthlike levels. This is to simulate the immense industrial pollution in the atmosphere that rendered the planet toxic in the first place. This would require colonists to wear their astronaut suites to avoid breathing in the toxic air.

Just like my previous map idea, this map should be terraformable as well. Once the atmosphere is reduced to earth-like levels, the map will become and earth-like map, with the same ground texture and with trees generating in the free spaces of the map(s).Thus, the planet is returned to it's inhabitable and life-preserving state. It may not be feasible, but I would make it so that any planet that reaches above a certain atmosphere level should become a toxic planet, where any water becomes toxic water and snow and rain are replaced with acid rain.

Those are my ideas, I'll try to come up with more in the future. Let me know what you think.

Greetings!

Around 2 years ago I've created this post which is about the unofficial timeline for the world in My Colony.

Since then, our favorite dev @bastecklein had referenced a lot of things in that post when expanding the actual lore of My Colony, eventually My Colony Universe is officially born which connected various My Colony spin-off games together.

Now I've reviewed my long and old post which isn't really something refined (and somehow grammatically terrible), I've decided to create an revised version of it. While refining and altering some context and contents, there will also be few new major events as new additions.
Another major change is about events during the Old Earth era and the time transitioning to United Earth, which I would like to make them slightly more reasonable, though the progress would still be relatively accelerated compared to reality.

Enjoy!

The unit of time measurement is based on Earth calendar.

---

Time of the Ancients
(Uncertain, estimated to be billions of years before Alpha Draconians)

Once upon a time there was an thriving civilization ruled over the Milky Way Galaxy, which now they are called The Ancients. Even in the Royal Libraries of Alpha Draconians, not much documentations of their unimaginably long history has been recovered, but many of them become legends and folklore among various old and elder civilizations across the Milky Way. The following events are what known to the present-day Milky Way.

👇Just click the text with dotted underline to see the entire section.
Time of the Ancients

The Old Holy Galactic Empire
The oldest trace of The Ancients that can be found in present-day.

Some artifacts from this period reflected worship of pure energy entities, which its sophisticated pantheon have shown distant relationship and influence to cultural and religious beliefs of some races of Milky Way.

Titan War
Perhaps the most well-known conflict in the Ancients' period, it took place around the late Holy Galactic Empire period - A legend of two dominant galactic powers battle for their total domination of Milky Way.
The Titanis was the sole opponent of the Old Galactic Empire at that time, it is a collective of races under the rule of Titans, a race of colossal entities. However, unable to surpass Empire in terms of the ability to manipulate raw energy and matter, the Titans end up defeated and extinct after the war.

Various wartime relics form both Empire and Titanis are discovered. However the reliability of several Titan relics (particularly some Titan remains) are doubted by modern historians and scientists (and even some New Galactic Empire scholars) and the debates still goes on today.

Grand Division of Pharan Empire
Phara was the largest ally of Old Galactic Empire and strongest of the minor powers during the Titan War. However, after a chain of internal political events, the Pharan Empire split into divided Dynasties ruled by their respective Grand Houses.

Most ancient Pharan documentations were permanently lost during the event.

Dark Galactic Empire
The period after the Old Galactic Empire crushed their sole rival of the galaxy and achieved galactic dominance.

For some reason, the Old Galactic Empire abandoned their belief of energy entities, instead, near-fanatical dedication exploring ultimate possibilities of dark matter becomes the major feature of this period.

Despite it is the period after the Holy Empire, unfortunately, information of this period is relatively more scarce - The multidimensional complexity of their relics keeps information in them highly difficult to be discovered and extracted.

Reptilian Exodus to the Milky Way
The first records of Reptilian immigrants into the Milky Way from another galaxy was during the Dark Galactic Empire period. From some documents of Alpha Draconians, Reptilian ancestors started as nomads with only mostly low tech equipment when their "primitive" intergalactic transport landed on the Outer Rim Region.

Empire-Reptilian Conflict
While Reptilians tried to make themselves a new home at Outer Rim Region, Old Galactic Empire was unwelcoming towards the continuous immigration of the Reptilians. As a result several conflicts broke out, but none never end up into a major war.

After several head-on confrontations and negotiations, Reptilians signed permanent truce with the Old Galactic Empire and earned their space of survival, however, the Empire barricaded all the remaining immigrants from entering Milky Way, which the fates of these immigrants remained unknown.

Second Pharan Empire
After millenniums of internal conflicts, Pharans barely reunited themselves, the Second Pharan Empire was established and maintained relative cohesion and peace between Grand Houses for the long period afterwards.

Vanishing of The Ancients
One of the largest mysteries in Milky Way history, which the entire population and objects of the Old Galactic Empire, vanished.
There had been many hypothesizes trying to explain the event, the most popular one being The Ancients successfully achieved certain breakthroughs in science and transcended into higher beings unrestricted by physical plane.

Radioisotopic raw ether are discovered at planets that were once Imperial settlements, which seemed to be remains of physical biomass of Ancients, or a by-product of the process causing the entire vanishing.

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Interbellum, Rise of Reptilians and Draconian Era
(4 million years ~ 2 million years before human history)

After the vanishing of the Ancients, over 80% of the Milky Way became unoccupied and abandoned. This is the period many young races rose to reshape the galactic balance of power, but only the Reptilians became the most successful - From the foundations and physical legacies left by the Ancients, Reptilians thrived as the new superpower of the Galaxy, the Alpha Draconians.

Rise of Reptilians

Early Atlanians and Kingdom of Aqua
Atlanians was an aquatic race that managed to civilize themselves during the Interbellum, and evolved into amphibious creatures that has strong adaptive ability to both dry land and aquatic environments.
Kingdom of Aqua was the first period of Atlanian history they begin space exploration and primitive extraterrestrial colonization.

Reptilian Kingdoms
As the scout ships returned bizarre news that the Ancients had ceased to exist, the Reptilians saw their long waited opportunity expanding towards the Central Vortex. Deeply inspired by the Old Galactic Empire, many Reptilians dreamed of building their own powerful interstellar regime. As a result numerous Reptilian Kingdoms with relatively primitive organization were established, completely replacing their original nomadic society within few decades.

Great Reptilian Expedition
After years of preparation, various Kingdoms launched their expedition to the deeper regions of the Galaxy, returning with generous amount of salvaged bounties from ancient ruins and locations of the abandoned Ancient cities.

Later, Reptilians colonized the Ancient cities as their new settlements.

Bowuland Insectoid Hive Tribes
The earliest form of Bowuland Insectoid (Later Zolarg Insectoids) civilization known. Before the period of Zolarg Empire, Bowuland Insectoid breeds were relatively mild and much less invasive, and achieved developing a society with great self sufficiency and sustainability of food, with knowledge of primitive metallurgy.

With no ideas and ambitions beyond their home Gaia World planet, Insectoids of the period had never entered process of industrialization and space exploration.

Unity Movement of the Atlanians
According to an Atlanian legend, conflicts between Atlanian colony Kingdoms were very common, until inspired by the idea of balance and peaceful coexistence started an peaceful unification movement which led to founding of the present-day Confederation of Atlanian Kingdoms.

Age of the Warring Lords
Reptilians had shown great interest upon the relics and artifacts they salvaged form Ancient sites, and discovered the unimaginable potency they hold. Impressed by the power of ancient technology, it gave rise to Reptilian ambitions of interstellar conquest.
Seek to destroy other potential internal rivals, Reptilians entered a long period of most merciless infighting, just to control the Ancient artifacts they have yet to understand how to use them.

Reptilian Unification War and founding of Alpha Draconians
Kingdom of Draconis had long been one of the weakest kingdom among the Reptilians, until the time of the genius leader Lord Alphari - Draconis strength and influence rose to new heights, on par with the strongest Reptilian Lords. Lord Alphari defeated all other Reptilian Lords just in 10 years, successfully achieved true unification of the entire Reptilian race for the first time in Milky Way Reptilian history since the immigration.
As the unification had completed, Alphari crowned himself as the first Overlord, establishing the Reptilian empire of Alpha Draconians which marked the beginning of Reptilian golden age.
National motto of Alpha Draconians, "Rising from the Harshest to be the Strongest", was also given by Alphari himself, as an reflection to his early life struggles and success.

First Successful Decoding of the Ancient Artifacts
The Ancient Alien research was one of another most impactful achievements and legacies of Overlord Alphari during his reign, for he had greater insight over the usage of alien artifacts. Alpha Draconians was also among the first ones establishing an dedicated and successful institute studying Ancient artifacts and relics, which Overlord Alphari also personally participated in it in addition to providing material and political support.
From the further understanding over these ancient gadgets, Alpha Draconians effectively reverse-engineered Ancient advancements for their own purpose. The absolute technological supremacy of Alpha Draconians gained from Ancient knowledge effectively turned the Reptilian empire into the sole and most brutal galactic superpower of the time.

Reptilian Galactic Conquest
The next and the largest conquest of Reptilians took place during the reign of fourth Overlord Ks'khip, the infamous Scourge of the Galaxy who led the Draconian legions spread destruction across half of the Milky Way galaxy.
Many of the territories conquered by Overlord Ks'khip formed the foundations of core Alpha Draconian regions in Milky Way Galaxy. In addition, the subjugation of various alien races including Bowuland Insectoids which provided Alpha Draconians productive slave laborers for millenniums.

The conquest was an important point of history which Reptilian power and influence reached its peaks, the time when Reptilians began call themselves ‘the descendants of the Ancients’.

Mystic Galactic Domination Doctrine
While Overlord Ks'khip ruled by brutally asserting direct Draconian dominance over half of the Milky Way, his successor Ka'kropp had a completely different idea, advocating a complete different doctrine of ruling the Reptilian empire.
In a more secretive and unsuspecting approach, Alpha Draconians maintain control over conquered territories with minimal public personnel and have most of the actual administration and enforcement done covertly. Through asserting the ideas that Alpha Draconians were unreachable and all-powerful deity beyond their intellect, subjugated objects and vassals would never dare to resist and defect.

Disassembly of Second Pharan Empire
While the Second Pharan Empire remained relatively unchanged and peaceful since its establishment, many aspects of the Empire itself declines day by day. Eventually, the Pharan Empire officially dissolved themselves.

Pharans are permanently divided into hundreds of independent tribes and scattered across the stars, rapidly degenerating into theocratic medieval civilization technologically and culturally.

Reptilian-Atlanian Conflicts
Years since the Great Conquest, Reptilians had several attempts throwing invasion on the aquatic homelands of Atlanian Kingdoms, however heavy local resistance of Atlanians turned most of the attempts thwarted and to no anvil.
At the end of this series of conflicts over the millennium, Alpha Draconians withdrawn their forces from Atlanian territory and never mentioned invading Atlanian planets since after.

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The Revival of Insectoid Civilization
(Parallel to 19th~20th century of Human timeline)

Ever since the Alpha Draconians subjugated the Bowuland Insectoids, the history of being enslaved for millions of years was the darkest history of Insectoids. However, from countless of torture and survival struggles, Bowland Insectoids had evolved into highly expansive and adaptive breeds of wide variety. Meanwhile, years without significant challenges or greater ambitions had also turned Alpha Draconians internally corrupt and indolent.
Parallel to the 19th to 20th century of mankind, an slave uprising in Alpha Draconains marked another major turning point of Milky Way history.

The Revival of Insectoid Civilization

Draconis-12 Uprising
In the distant slave farm colony of wetland planet Draconis-12, to no Reptilians' expectation, the Alpha Draconian colony was overthrown by a planetary-scale Insectoid slave uprising led by an enlightened Insectoid named Zolarg, all Draconian personnel either purged or missing.

The first group of freed Insectoids renamed the planet to Zolarg Prime after their leader, which became the new home world of the Insectoid civilization. At the same time, the uprising leader Zolarg himself was crowned emperor for life of the people of Zolarg Prime, and Zolarg Empire is established.

Insectoid Uprising Movements
While Alpha Draconians attempted to cover up the incident, words of Draconis-12 uprising spread quickly among the Insectoids of other Draconian slave colonies.
Encouraged and inspired by the Zolarg's success, other Insectoids followed similar path. Though not all had been successful, the series of uprising movements successfully took over large numbers of Alpha Draconian colonies and cities. Most of the Insectoids who earned their freedom joined the Zolarg Empire's cause in the sacred war toppling their ancestral enemy.

Insectoid Revival War
Soon Alpha Draconians took retaliatory actions against the uprising movements, attempting regain control of the slaves by sheer might of regular military forces. In this 27 year long war of attrition, both sides took heavy losses, however, despite technologically superior, Draconian forces never managed to outmatch Zolarg forces in numbers and replenishment rate. Eventually, Draconian forces were forced to withdraw from Zolarg-controlled territory to regroup after local war reserves had been depleted.
The War ended with Zolarg victory. Zolarg Empire earned their needed time and space to redevelop their civilization, while the internal declining of Alpha Draconians were exposed to the galaxy.

‘Groot Opwekkingsplan’
This period was also known as the ‘Great Revival Period’, the period when Emperor Zolarg formulated the policies and plans for early Zolarg Empire focusing on reconstruction, redevelopment and expansion of the Insectoid civilization, with the ultimate goal acquiring capability to confront Alpha Draconians head-on.
Combining sheer workforce volume of Insectoids, rediscovered ancestral knowledge and industrial knowledge acquired form Alpha Draconian machines, Zolarg Empire quickly established their industrial and technological foundations and rose as a supernova of galactic power.

Declaration of Insectoid Liberation
After the ‘Groot Opwekkingsplan closed with stunning success, Emperor Zolarg made a declaration on behalf of Insectoids to Alpha Draconians - the Zolarg Empire, will liberate the remaining brothers and sisters under the unrightful Draconian slavery at all costs.
The Declaration officially established the ultimate objective of the wars against Alpha Draconians.

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The Old Earth Era
(Year -2051)

The Old Earth Era is defined as the period before United Earth in human history. The late Old Earth Era is the time when humans begin exploring the deeper space and other stars, as well as beginning extensive colonization beyond Earth.

The Old Earth Era

Jameson Theories (2027)
The quantum physics scientist Professor Lob E. Jameson published a paper about theories associated with space continuum mechanics which provided basis for future development of long range space travel between systems.

First Practical Fusion Propulsion Engine (2031)
As the first commercial-use fusion reactors achieved success in the late 2020s, it provided valuable experience for developing further uses of nuclear fusion power, including the innovative idea to use it for propulsion. First practical fusion propulsion engine for spacecrafts was built in 2031.

First Probe exiting Solar System (2033)
USP Discovery was the first successful probe that traveled beyond boundaries of Solar System and reached another star system (Alpha Centauri). It's launched from Earth at 2033, returning valuable data of planets of Alpha Centauri system starting from 2037.

Space Colonization Race of Solar System (2032-2047)
With long range space travelling became more possible at the time, it kickstarted a space race at larger scale. It was one historical milestone for humanity - first attempts of an extensive space colonization in history.
Both directly and indirectly, at least 65% nations of the world participated in it. Among the governmental bodies and independent organizations in the race, some seek for wealth and influence, some seek for opportunities and a new start, some seek for knowledge and discovery.
At the peak period of the space race, colony activities could be found around and on mainly Moon and Mars, and to certain extent, Venus and Jupiter.
However, the space race came to complete halt around late 2040s, hampered by instability on Earth caused by Earth Resource Crisis.

Earth Resource Crisis (2039-2057)
Catalyzed by political and commercial rivalries on Earth, the space race had escalated to higher levels within a decade. Various parties increased their bets and investments into their colonization projects, leading to resource consumption increasing to unprecedented levels for the following years. Worries regarding depletion of known resource reserves on Earth arises starting from mid 2039, and became actual problems in the 2040s.
In the meantime, uncontrolled industrial activities of the space race had also accelerated climate change which catastrophically turned Earth much less habitable. The climate impacts were strongly associated to occurrence of famine and abnormal morality in major countries starting from 2043.
At 2047, by the severe shortage of various resources, social instability on Earth reached critical levels.
The crisis seen no sign of alleviation until 2057.

The Grand Collapse (2051)
Severely affected by the Earth Resource Crisis, major governmental bodies on Earth lost their economic and political capability to maintain basic functions on an nation, end up either overthrown by displeased mobs of starving people, or disband themselves under pressure. In a chain reaction, similar events happened to nations all across the globe, which all turned into lands of anarchy and chaos.
This event is often referred as the end point of Old Earth era.

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The United Earth Era
(2051-Present)

Right after the Grand Collapse, on Earth was the absolute chaos of no law and order where civilization degenerates and anarchy scourges the world. In the meantime, colonies outside Earth were left stranded without contact and support, struggling survive on their own.
However, the end of an old era is also the beginning of an new greater era - This is the era when United Earth rises to power and reunify humanity, and elevating human civilization to the greater levels, to beyond Solar System, to the distant stars.

The United Earth Era

Dissolution of United Nations and Formation of United Earth Movement (UEM) (2051-2052)
Without any existing members at all, and at the edge of ‘bankruptcy’, the United Nations officially dissolved, with most of the assets sold and transferred to a group of political aristocrats and plutocrats. The group absorbed the functions and assets of United Nations, and ambitiously rebranded it into United Earth Movement (UEM) during early 2052, which aimed to unify the entire humanity, and restore prosperity and order of the Old Earth era.

Earth Reunification War (2054-2055)
During the 2 years of preparation, UEM rallied manpower and resources from around the globe through black markets and government fire sales, while gaining stable bases of operations by assisting reestablishment of government on mainly Western Europe and Eastern half of North America.
At mid 2054, UEM officially initiated their military campaign with superior (but still rather limited) reserve of resources, rapidly brought major cities under control in the early months, then the cities were used as staging grounds to drive resistance of warlord and anarchists out of the region, ultimately encircling and destroying them.
Near the end of the 1.4 year long war, UEM controlled over 74% of the world. With no hope to topple a rising power, remaining resistances surrendered to UEM one by one, and generally accepted annexation in the post-war negotiations.

Official Establishment of United Earth (2056)
Few months after the Earth Reunification War, United Earth and its official governmental structure was established. United Earth took the form of a presidential republic, which the governmental body and the executive body is lead by President of United Earth, General Assembly responsible for legislation and directly responsible to the President.
The General Assembly is the decision-making centre of the United Earth, composed of representatives from different administrative regions to show a certain extent of democracy. However, the President still has absolute power to intervene or even alter the decisions of the General Assembly, in addition to a series of exclusive powers.

Earth Recovery Program (2056-2060)
While Earth became relatively stable in political conditions, as Earth Resource Crisis was still an existent and urgent issue, economic, industrial and environmental recovery became absolute priority of newly-established United Earth. In late 2056, United Earth initiated the Earth Recovery Program which involved habitat reclamation, industrial and economic reforms, prospecting new sources of resources, and reestablishing contact and activities with colonies outside Earth (to integrate external resources to assist recovery of Earth).
Under the effective and efficient coordination of resources of United Earth, only one year later, basic recovery had successfully been achieved, effectively alleviating and roughly neutralizing the impacts of Resource Crisis with no excess burden to space colonies and people on Earth.
At 2060, the economy of Earth had achieved recovery and development to beyond mid-21st century standards, the Program concluded in success.
The successful example of Earth Recovery Program also provided early basis of future terraforming research.

Reinitialization of Space Colonization Programmes (2061)
United Earth reinitialized most of the colonization projects from the Old Earth Era starting from 2061, with changed made to enhance efficiency, facilitate administration from United Earth government, and change of objectives.
The Old Earth Era plans were generally rebranded and integrated into "Earth-Sphere Development Programme (ESDP)", aimed to construct a larger socio-economic body in Solar System centering Earth. Under ESDP, Moon was developed into logistics center composed of shipyards and spaceports, while Mars became the new major industrial center. Large space stations were also built to support distant colonies on Venus and moon colonies around Jupiter.
With breakthroughs in interstellar communications technology, United Earth also set their ambitions to colonize stars beyond Solar System. Newer generation of long range space probes were also sent to other distant stars in search for new unhabited planets for colonization and exploit undiscovered resources

First Reformation of Security Council (2063-2065)
The national security agency of the United Earth, Security Council, went under a series of reformation from 2063 to 2065, improving and fostering the efficiency of peacekeeping missions on Earth and foreign colonies.
The reform included controversial establishment of military police force CLEI (Colonial Law Enforcement Initiative, nicknamed "clay") and associated high pressure security regulations over colonies.

Colonization of Alpha Centauri (2064)
The long-range colony carrier UES Ark-3 was launched from Moon shipyard at 2062, reaching Alpha Centauri and established colonies at year 2064, it was the first time in history mankind send people beyond Solar System.

Establishment of Space Marines (2068)
In order to protect foreign colonies and Earth from potential Alien threats, United Earth Space Marines (UESM) was established.
Space Marines gradually replaced Peacekeepers of the United Earth as part of the official military and security forces.

Autonomous Movements of Frontier Region (2068)
For years, colonies of frontier regions presented their concern and discontent towards the heavily bureaucratic system and excessively strict security policies of United Earth, but were never taken notice by authorities on Earth.
The situation turned into several prolonged region-wide protests demanding exclusion from the oppressive policies, after the 7th time Secretary of General Assembly refused to include the issue into agenda of next General Assembly meeting.
Refused to give up interests, United Earth attempted to pacify the discontent colonies by simple tax exemption and reassigning new colony governors, and never tried to lift the policies the colonies asked to remove.
Further angered by the "disrespectful" attitude of United Earth authorities, protests turned into anti-UE movements advocating decentralization of power form Earth. Eventually, United Earth was forced to grant few colonies status of autonomous territory to put the political crisis to end and made promises of reforming administrative and security polices on colonies.
While the movement seemed to achieve the objective to free from oppressive policies, some anti-UE movements foresee United Earth will eventually go back on their policies and unreliable promises, believing only liberation through true independence would free colonies from oppression of Earth supremacists - Which lead to founding of several underground radical anti-UE organizations.

First Official Contacts with Minor Alien Civilization (2069)
An newly established United Earth colony discovered an underdeveloped alien civilization on the planet Haken-35. United Earth officially contacted the Hakenduzians, establishing the first diplomatic relations with an alien race.

Alien Membership System (2071)
Upon discovery of more minor alien civilizations, there were opinions of establishing a proper system to handle alien diplomacy in smooth manner, while United Earth also saw an opportunity of wealth and influence. In order to convince them sharing their resources with United Earth, the Alien Membership System was established, allowing alien member states to enjoy a series of benefits including protection provided by Space Marines and preferential treatment on trades. In return, the alien member states had to pay yearly membership fees to sustain the privilege.

First Shuttlepod MK-I Entered Service (2071)
Martian Industries (MarsCorps) completed the first commercial-use model of the legendary multipurpose line of starships capable of fast long range trips, atmospheric take-off and re-entry - the Shuttlepod, which entered service in 2071.
The various innovative designs of Shuttlepod became standards of next generation starships of the following years.

Deimos Events (2072)
It was a legend of the legendary Space Marines elite squad led by Sarge, a story to save Earth from an evil artificial intelligence - though, with some confidential details which United Earth decided to keep it highly classified, rumored to be time travel to erase history of a parallel timeline.

Discovery of Terra Nova and Terra Nova Colony Rush (2074-2080)
Year 2077, a space probe discovered a planet having more than three times surface area of Earth, which its characteristics are also surprisingly extremely similar to that of Earth. Later the planet was named as Terra Nova to commemorate the remarkable discovery, it was the first earthlike planet discovered in human history.
The value and promising prospects of colonizing this planet were soon taken notice by United Earth authorities and other parties in United Earth. Soon as United Earth had officially begun the preparations for colonizing Terra Nova, largest corporations and major non-governmental entities presented their petition to participate in the project for a of major share of the planet's resources and interests.
As the United Earth authority was unable to balance the interests and requests of various parties, United Earth decided to turn this colonization project into an open competition (which United Earth end up as one of the competitors), which the shares of Terra Nova would only be granted to those who create groundbreaking achievements or shown excellent competitiveness.

Wormhole Navigation Technology (2075)
A set of technological advancements in space navigation technology allowed safe traveling of wormholes, which the wormholes act as a great shortcuts and highways of space travelling.

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Human Civil War
(2087-2089)

Despite most part of the war were centered on conflict of two forces of humanity, United Earth and League of Independent States, the war had seen involvement of other major civilizations of the Milky Way Galaxy, Zolarg Empire and Alpha Draconians. Having great impacts on the history and future political situation of Milky Way Galaxy, it was considered one of the important historical events that contributed to the beginning of New Galactic Era.

Human Civil War

Independent Terra (2068)
Independent Terra is the foundational ideology adopted by League of Independent States (and its predeceasing entities).
In the years since the Autonomous Movements broke out, explicit forms of independentist ideas were given rise in the frontier regions, some branches were eventually developed into radical ideologies adopted by anti-UE entities, including the most well-known ideology of "Independent Terra", which advocates independence revolution against centralists and Earth supremacists, ultimately liberating mankind by overthrowing United Earth and re-establish a new true liberal government on Earth that respects human rights and treat individual colonies as equals.
As colonists were often considered to be the far lower echelons of society than native residents of Earth, the ideas of Independent Terra were even openly welcomed by some colonies beyond frontier regions that were also dissatisfied with authorities on Earth.
Discovery of Terra Nova, the first earthlike planet discovered by humanity in outer space, in 2074 applied an significant impact on the core ideas of Independent Terra ideology, which led to an ideological split within - Pro-revolutionist which continued the original idea of uproot ruling class on Earth, and Second-Terra-ist (SeT-ist) that suggests rivaling Earth influence by establishing liberal government on Terra Nova.

Independence Coalition (2072)
The potential instability associated to the spread of independentist ideologies during the Autonomous Movement were not left unnoticed by United Earth government. Immediately identifying such ideologies as dangers to governmental and political interests, the Security Council increased CLEI presence in frontier regions and colony sectors with high risk of ideological infiltration, to completely outlaw anti-UE entities.
Soon the anti-UE organizations and Independent Terra supporters found operating campaigns became increasingly difficult under the close watch of CLEI secret police.
In 2072, representatives of anti-UE entities of mainly from the frontier region secretly gathered at Terra Nova, forming the Independence Coalition - the predecessor of League of Independent States, establishing cooperation of running campaigns against UE under the nose of United Earth.

First Contact between humanity and Zolarg Empire (2077)
While the first official contact between United Earth and Zolarg Empire took place at 2080, the actual initial contact took place 3 years earlier (2077), during an encounter in uncharted regions between a black market convoy and a Zolarg prospection ship.
The rumors of the encounter spread quickly in black markets, eventually the piece of intel reached the Independence Coalition. Intrigued, the Coalition concluded with an risky decision - sending a secret diplomatic dispatchment to the Zolarg Ship via the black market vessel, in attempt to establish early relations which could help obtaining crucial support for future military campaign against United Earth.
In 2079, the dispatchment returned with cooperation agreements and an unofficial-and-non-disclosed diplomatic and military cooperation pact from Zolarg Empire, which the Coalition offers human technologies to Zolarg scholars in exchange for material and possible military support of Zolarg expeditionary forces.

The Alpha Draconian Conspiracy and Invasion Plan (~2085)
Since the Insectoid uprising events, Alpha Draconians had been in a difficult situation. The economy over-reliant on expansive and expendable insectoid slave labor had been severely hampered, while the reptilians began questioning the faith and pride of their "all-time invincible" empire.
Taking the Insectoid uprising events as the greatest shame to Alpha Draconians, on Alpha Draconis the dissatisfied reptilian lords and nobles urged Overlord Betah'an taking the responsibility to address the crisis.
To the Lords of Inner Circle (who power, ambitions, cunning and brutality were second to only the Overlord), it was a sign of weakened Overlord. Seeing that as an opportunity to seize the Overlord's power rightfully, the Lords of Inner Circle schemed to remove Overlord Betah'an form the throne.
To Overlord Betah'an, the most effective way silencing his political opponents form the Inner Circle and regaining support from nobles while addressing the crisis at the same time, was to start another conquest. The Overloard carefully selected the most suitable target of conquest - United Earth, which was industrially and economically developed but militarily inferior, non-aware of Alpha Draconians' existance, and possible sowing of internal conflict which allows minimal military efforts to eradicate further resistances.

Terra Nova Incident and Battle of Terra Nova (2087)
Burdened by outrageous taxation set by United Earth over the colonies outside Solar-Sphere region since 2079, Terra Nova was the first colony openly boycotting the tax policies of United Earth, refused to deliver tax payments to General Assembly. General Assembly responded the boycotting by enforcing embargo over Terra Nova, followed by immigration interdiction and military blockade, however all failed with little effect on this almost self-efficient colony.
The Independence Coalition, after years of covered military preparation, saw the incident on Terra Nova provided a narrow but the best opportunity to start what they had planned long ago - a revolutionary war to liberate colonies from tyranny of United Earth. Before the military blockade was enforced, the Coalition sneaked additional military personnel to their branch in Terra Nova.
Heat of the debates over follow-up actions against rebellious acts of Terra Nova lasted for months in General Assembly, politicians arguing the effectiveness of measures used to force Terra Nova giving in, while anti-UE organizations on Terra Nova kept provoking United Earth by rallying local people protesting around governmental administrative facilities. Eventually in 2087, with support of politicians who worried Terra Nova incident would evolve into a copy of of Autonomous Movement in 2068, along with manipulation by Alpha Draconian covert agents - By reason of "open revolt against United Earth", President Ronald Tracy issued order to mobilize Space Marines 35th Regiment for military occupation of and martial law enforcement on Terra Nova, marking the outbreak of Human Civil War.
Main forces of Space Marines occupied the capital city of Terra Nova and dispersed protesters with minimal resistance within 2 hours of operation. However, few minutes after the complete occupation, the main forces were ambushed and encircled by local militia forces led by commander Beuford P. Tots in the city. By element of surprise and home turf advantage of militia forces, the well-equipped Space Marines in the capital city took a heavy casualty rate of 63% and were forced to retreat by escaping to troop ship in planetary orbit.
Other militia forces on Terra Nova driven Space Marine and UE garrisons of military facilities into defeat in the subsequent skirmishes over the week. Gaining control over majority of surface-to-orbit defense weapons on the planet, Terra Nova militias forced complete withdrawal of Space Marines 35th Regiment and blockade fleet from Terra Nova at the end of Battle of Terra Nova.
After the battle, the colonial congress replaced the original colonial government. The congress officially sent an formal declaration of independence to Earth, which declared Terra Nova is no longer a chartered colony of United Earth, the once "second earth" was then renamed "Independent State".

Founding of the League of Independent States (2087)
Following the stunning success in Battle of Terra Nova, Terra Nova became the common symbol of freedom and liberty. The rest member organizations and entities of Independence Coalition, along with colonies of neighboring colony sectors inspired by the incident, followed by overthrowing local colonial government and sever ties with United Earth.
The independent colonies and members of Independence Coalition then officially founded the League of Independent States on Terra Nova.

Terra-to-Earth Campaign (2087-2088)
With support of Beaconburg Fleet and arms supplier BSA from Independent State of Beaconburg (previously Autonomous Colony of Beaconburg), mercenaries recruited from black markets and volunteers from liberated colonies, the newly founded League quickly launched the first military campaign against United Earth - the "Terra-to-Earth Campaign" (In United Earth perspective, "The Defense of Solar System"), targeting core territories of United Earth around Solar System.
Despite United Earth ordered nationwide general mobilization against LIS offensive, the mobilization progresses at sluggish pace. This had left LIS gaining most of the strategic initiative and speed advantage in the early to mid stage of the campaign, the scattered and underprepared United Earth forces were being wiped out by LIS with relative ease.

Zolarg Entry into War (2088)
In late 2087, United Earth completed the strategic defense planning, finished preparations of constructing solid defenses by concentrating majority of military assets in sectors near Solar System.
LIS forces launched the Ragnarok Offensive in early 2088 spearheaded by veteran units form the earlier stages of Terra-to-Earth Campaign, in hope to break the defense lines. However, outmatched by United Earth in terms of superior quantity of troops and supplies, the warfare of attrition eventually blunt the LIS offensive, which LIS forces took significant losses.
Knowing crippled forces stood little chance against possible full strategic counterattack of United Earth, LIS urgently needed to delay United Earth from taking initiative. Shortly after the setback, LIS decided to play their trump card - their secret ally, Zolarg Empire.
Using the missile base (deployed with newly built IWSM which its strike range can reach and cover the entire Solar System) established by LIS and (unexpected) assassination of United Earth President Ronald Tracy as distraction, Zolarg Empire responded to LIS call, sent a full battegroup of Expeditionary Force attacking the other side of United Earth territory, forcing United Earth to fight a war of two fronts.
Despite the two-front strategy did divert pressure from LIS, however, as neither side held major advantage over another, the war turned into a stalemate.

Barracuda Blues Event and Preludes to Alpha Draconian Invasion (2088)
In the heat of Human Civil War, Alpha Draconians sneaked groups of pioneer probes into human territory, constructed portal gates in the unnoticed corners where strongholds were set up for preparations of Overlord's surprise invasion plans.
Lords of Inner Circle had been trying to foil the Overlord's plan from the beginning. By a margin of rare opportunity, one covert operative affiliated to Lords of Inner Circle managed to sabotage the cloak device in secret base on planet Barracuda Blues, exposing the dormant portal and droid battlegroup at the site to United Earth and LIS military.
Upon the discovery of the unknown alien facility on Barracuda Blues, both United Earth and LIS dispatched their own task force trying to seize the alien technology that could change the tide of battle. Violent skirmishes broke out between two sides, contesting control of the facility.
As the news on Barracuda Blues were delivered to Zolarg Expeditionary Force. Familiar with Alpha Draconian cunning strategies, the Insectoids immediately identified the alien facility an Alpha Draconian invasion base. The Zolarg Expeditionary Force then sent their urgent message to LIS ally, warned that such discovery was a curse rather than blessing, and presented worries of this war involved orchestrations of Alpha Draconians, the greater evil they were yet to know.
Already at the edge of dishonoring the reptilian ancestors, the sabotage in invasion base on Barracuda Blues and earlier unexpected entry of Zolarg Empire into the war had left Overlord Betah'an with no choice other than launching a premature invasion.

Battle Against Alpha Draconians (2088-2089)
Caught off guard by surprise, near half of the human forces were obliterated by superior war machines of Alpha Draconians during the initial stage of Alpha Draconian invasion.
With a common enemy, military and political representatives of United Earth, LIS and Zolarg Expeditionary Force met on Earth. Shortly, ceasefire agreements were reached, and an temporary alliance against Alpha Draconian invasion was formed.
The alliance organized several joint operations to strategically delay Alpha Draconian invaders with varying outcome, buying time for LIS and United Earth to replenish losses and regroup respective fighting forces.
In mid 2089, United Earth finished reconstruction of the space armadas, later achieved decisive victories in several space battles against Alpha Draconian warfleets, regaining the space superiority and the tables turned to alliance's favor.
With support from United Earth fleets and exploiting the weakness of long replenishment cycle and inferior quantity of Alpha Draconian forces, alliance forces successfully overwhelmed Alpha Draconian forces, storming major invasion bases. The destruction of the largest but last portal gate stronghold during Battle of Barracuda Blues marked the decisive defeat of Alpha Draconian invaders.

Continuation of Human Civil War (2089)
As Alpha Draconians called their fleets back to home territory and aborted control of droid armies following the defeat at Barracuda Blues, the temporary alliance finished its purpose and was then dismissed, both sides returned to status of conflict.
However, exhausted and tired of war, it was impossible to continue the war at the original massive, interstellar scale, both sides came up with conclusion that the war must be ended by an decisive battle as soon as possible.
Zolarg Empire then exited war by signing a white peace with United Earth weeks after the alliance had been dismissed.
At last, remaining main forces of United Earth and LIS coincidentally met near the strategically important wormhole highway node, over the planet of Kaiserground. After a week of fierce back-and-forth battle on the planet and in the orbit, United Earth gained complete control of the planet, setting LIS forces on a full retreat, concluding the final major battle in Human Civil War.

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New Galactic Era
(2089-Present)

Following the end Human Civil War, marked a major shift in geopolitical patterns of the Milky Way Galaxy - Division of human civilization, decline of Alpha Draconian dominance, rise of the mysterious New Galactic Empire, various smaller civilizations began playing important roles in maintaining galactic balance......
Increasing importance of galactic-scale affairs in this era had reshaped the Milky Way Galaxy, which once again after billions of millenniums, the Milky Way Galaxy thrives under the interaction between civilizations.

New Galactic Era

Armistice of Hoxton (2089)
The Armistice of Hoxton officially ended the Human Civil War, despite an armistice in nature.
The armistice defined the United Earth-LIS border in the future, which the border line was known as the Hoxton Line.
To conclude, nobody achieved total victory in the Human Civil War, however, each side had their objectives completed respectively - United Earth won a tactical victory which LIS could no longer threaten United Earth territory, while LIS achieved their primary aim of independence and establishing a liberal, decentralized government.

Official establishment of League of Independent States (2089)
The main body of the League of the Independent States, the League Council, was officially established 3 months after the Armistice of Hoxton was in effect. By the Joint Declaration of Independent States based on the core ideas of Independent Terra, The League promised fairness, respect, autonomy and freedom to member states.
The League of the Independent States had no actual leader in power. Instead, each member state cooperates under the common principles and shared pacts, bearing the common responsibilities protecting the free people of the League.
Though the establishment of LIS was officially recognized by their ally Zolarg Empire, the United Earth General Assembly declared they would never accept any form of human regime other than itself, the League being an unlawful existence that would threaten the unity and prosperity of mankind.

The Midnight Coup (2089)
With the total defeat of invasion campaign, the core Reptilian society of Alpha Draconians lost all confidence in Overlord Betah'an. Shortly after the end of invasion the Overlord was assassinated by Inner Circle covert agents.
Following the death of the Overlord, the seat of supreme power of Alpha Draconians was then empty. Yet as every Lords of the Inner Circle wished to claim the ultimate trophy of power, political crises escalated to uncontrolled levels by the internal conflicts of the Inner Circle, which later spread all across the administrative body of Alpha Draconians, rendering all but basic administrations of the reptilian empire non-functional.
Catalyzed by the the absence of Overlord and internal political instability, order in Alpha Draconian society was barely maintained, leading to high crime rates and decreased domestic productivity in the following decades.
As a result, dominance of Alpha Draconians began to decline.

Emergence of New Galactic Empire (2089)
Several weeks after the Midnight Coup which had thrown Alpha Draconians into the tarpit of neverending political infighting, control and dominance over the foreign territories of Alpha Draconians were loosened which allowed several vassals and colony broke away with no immediate consequence.
However, majority of these territories were then annexed by another power, which emerged from the Central Vortex region of the Milky Way Galaxy - The New Galactic Empire.
Calling themselves the true descendants of the Ancients, they claimed themselves bearing the destiny to bring the entire galaxy under their grace, a mission of revival to bring the once lost glory of Old Galactic Empire back to life.
Despite lacking the dominating power to contest other major civilizations, the New Galactic Empire had actively been expanding their sphere of influence, and rumored to have unprecedented capacity harnessing the powers of the universe beyond the Ancient technologies.

Bradley's Military Reform (2089-2094)
The new head of the United Earth Security Council, Bradley the Grand Marshal (which was the supreme commander throughout the Human Civil War), threw up a massive military reformation aimed to maintain superiority over the military capabilities of LIS, including expansion and reorganization of Space Marines, modernization of United Earth space fleets, introducing newer professionalism elements in military while maintaining the traditional expansive nature of United Earth military, and incorporation of newer doctrines derived from recent experiences in Civil War.

League Guild of Black Markets (2090)
As United Earth denied LIS from formal foreign trade outside the League territory by blockades along LIS border, LIS had to resort to black markets to maintain crucial supplies of high-end materials and economic activities, given different post-war difficulties suffered member states.
In 2090, the League Guild of Black Markets was established under the League Trade Authority to coordinate external trade beyond United Earth blockade, and management of domestic black market networks.

Restoration of Overlord (2110)
Tired of political turmoils and displeased with absence of powerful supreme ruler, traditionalist nobles on Alpha Draconis collectively put pressure on the Inner Circle for restoration of Overlord, or risk denounced and outlawed by defiling the ancestors.
Fearing the wrath of ancestors, the Inner Circle reluctantly brought Delta'an the exiled brother of Betah'an back to Alpha Draconis, crowning Delta'an the next Overlord.
Despite an Overlord, Delta'an was merely a puppet of the Inner Circle, however, did brought relative stability to disorganized Alpha Draconian society at the time.

Zolarg Scholars Journey to United Earth (2113)
A team of scholars from the Zolarg Empire, led by the Imperial High Scholar Abbamber, set off to United Earth for friendly diplomatic and scientific mission.
Scholars and scientists of the United Earth and the Zolarg Empire exchanged each other's technological advances and cultural knowledge. While Zolarg scholars earned precious knowledge which could help the technological development of the Zolarg Empire, the trip had also ceased the tensions since the Human Civil War between Zolarg and United Earth.

Insectoid Mind Network Technology (2116)
A breakthrough in neuroscience research in the Zolarg Empire had led to an innovation - the Insectoid Mind Network, designed to foster understanding of consciousness and thinking mechanisms, and enhancing advanced, direct communication and coordination within Insectoid society.

Cyberonic Transcendence (2119)
A private United Earth research institute Transcendent Technology successfully prototyped Neuro-microchips (NMC), which were compatible with human neuro systems, small in size, but ten times more efficient than average human brains.
Such inventions initiated a new technological revolution in human civilization in artificial augmentations, impacting all aspects of life.

---

Who knows what the future holds?





Note that these are just my own interpretations over the events, it is not official reference, but hopefully enhance your understanding over the My Colony Universe, and had fun reading it.

Thank you for reading!

High atmosphere effects on colony:

Bast has already developed penalties for high atmospheric levels but hasn’t turned them on yet. Hopefully my ideas are mendable with the penalty system that he has already put in place. Here are my ideas for high atmosphere penalties:

-Buildings damaged twice as fast once atmosphere is over 15 million. There is also the chance that once the structure is under 25% health, it has the chance to implode instantly for each 1% health lost after that point, regardless of whether the structure had remaining health. This is to simulate the fact that a structure under immense atmospheric pressure could just suddenly implode if part of it’s structure was weakened, even if that was the only part that was weakened.

-rovers have health and are damaged by the intense atmosphere and must be parked in shelter in order to be safe from the atmosphere and to repair damages. Rovers lose their health 5 times faster than structures. I would suggest that small, medium, and large rover/worker shelters be implemented for all races to replace the parking command on the rovers/workers. On other worlds, rovers/works could also have health that can be damaged, but only half as much as on a high atmosphere planet.

When a planet’s atmosphere is too high, a new resource, tallorium, will be the first step in massive atmosphere reduction. Tallorium is a (fictional) specific blend of superheated and super compressed metals that fuse over long periods of time and become stronger and harder than diamond. Tallorium will be naturally occurring on superheated, super atmosphere planets such as my planet idea below. In planets that don’t have naturally occurring Tallorium, the resource would appear as a higher tech resource that can be fabricated by blending other resources together, such as antanium and gold, or triantanium and uranium. Tallorium could also be used to make next gen buildings that are more advanced than alien buildings.

The second step would be to consume atmosphere to produce a new resource, Gas Canisters. One canister = 1 atmospheric unit. A high tech gas canister factory on a world where Tallorium needs to be fabricated would consume large amounts of atmosphere and small amounts of Tallorium to produce the canisters. These canisters could be used to produce h3 and water and can be used as a power source. These canisters could also be tradable and could be released in low atmosphere planets to raise the atmosphere at a fast rate. The canisters should be a very pricy product on GBT and should not be readily accessible to beginner colonies unless they are given gas canisters by their commonwealth. This aspect would allow those who have super advanced independent colonies to develop sub-colonies without the long hassle of terraforming each sub-colony. The gas canisters could also provide a way for a red planet colony to produce h3 without having to buy it. If you don’t like the idea of a red planet producing h3 on it’s own, or the idea of using gas canisters to raise a beginner planet’s atmo level rapidly, the Tallorium and gas canister system will still work without these two aspects.

- Since colonists could not survive walking around outside in a very high pressure atmosphere(since they would be crushed), even with their space suits on, I would create new avatars for them for going outside in a high pressure atmosphere. Perhaps they walk around in metal environmental suits and require a very small but constant supply of tallorium in addition to the water and food that they already require.

The Tallorium and gas canister system may be implementable before the penalties are turned on and before any high atmo planet types are created, and this would allow for players to get ready for the penalty activation since this system would lower atmosphere at a very high rate.

The heat terraforming aspect:

Adding a heat aspect to terraforming will make terraforming a more in-depth part of the game and the user will now have to handle controlling planetary heat as well as atmosphere. This will also open the door for new planet types and structures that take advantage of the planetary heat levels. However, it would prove to be a big change to the way each planet looks as it is terraformed, since now you would have to worry about what the soil looks like when heat is high and atmosphere is low, or vice versa. However, it would be well worth it in my opinion. Here are my ideas of the effects that high and low heat would have on a given colony.

-The optimal heat range would be between 5 mil and 15 mil, just like atmosphere. 0 heat means that the planet is at absolute zero, so I wouldn’t start any planets off at zero, maybe 500k or something.

-High heat would cause colonists to consume twice as much water. Any structures that require near-earth conditions will be destroyed and colonists will be less tolerant of long commute distances when the heat level is outside of the optimal heat range(too low or too high). Structures would also consume 1 water unit per 30 seconds in high heat. Structures and rovers/workers are damaged twice as fast and will need to be repaired more often.

-Low to earth-like heat is required for the growing of crystalline, while high to earth-like heat is required for the fabricating of Tallorium. So an earthlike planet could potentially produce crystalline and Tallorium simultaneously given the right resources.

-Low heat would cause colonists to consume twice as much food. Rover/worker and colonist speed is reduced by 1 and rover and structure build speed times are doubled. Resource production times could also be reduced by a reasonable amount.

A thermal energy plant could be used as a mid-level power supply and would consume a moderate amount of heat from the planet, whereas an absolute zero generator would absorb massive amounts of heat and power and would provide mid level research. A charcoal combuster would use charcoal to release heat into the atmosphere, while a nuclear agitation center would use the power of nuclear fission to produce massive amounts of heat.

The addition of the heat terraforming aspect is not required to implement the Tallorium and gas canister system.

Planet type suggestion: Hell
Atmosphere: 25 million
Temperature: 25 million
This planet will be for LIS and UE for now, but as bast adds races the planet might apply to them as well.
Difficulty: Medium for both human factions. Might be easier or harder for other factions to come.
-Structures and rovers/workers are damaged four times as fast as normal due to the stacked effects from high heat and high atmosphere.

-Instead of regolith, crystalline, or ore, Tallorium can be mined. Tallorium will be used to dig into the super compressed ground in search of ore, build basic structures at the start of the game, and is instrumental in gas canister production.

The player will need to use Tallorium to build a gas collector, which employs 1 person and produces gas canisters by sucking in atmosphere and consuming 1 tallorium for every canister made. The gas canisters can be turned into drinkable water via a structure called a water condensator. Then, a talloric greenhouse can be built with 150 Tallorium and an ore drill must be set up to mine ore through the thick and hard crust. The drill will cost 5,000 Tallorium and will indefinitely produce a small amount of ore at each interval, so many more drills will need to be built in order to jumpstart the colony. Once the planet’s atmosphere is reduced enough, ore fracking facilities can be built to supply a more efficient source of ore. Of course, in order to do all of that you need power, so a pressure turbine made with 500 tallorium would generate power, but would put air back into the atmosphere for each canister it opens.

After all of that is in place, the player can continue to follow the human path since they now have an ore supply as gold, aluminium, and uranium will still be present on the map.


So these are my ideas. Let me know if they are interesting are whether or not you want me to keep developing these ideas. I can't draw worth a crap but feel free to draw the structures, ground tiles, planet type symbols, and resource symbols that I mentioned on here if you think that at least some of these ideas should be added.

Amorphus said:These would All be excellent biomes for an earth like world. You forgot 3 important ones though:

Swamp- lots of water and clay. That’s the only reason people go there.

Taiga - an arctic forest. The trees provide more wood than forest trees but it’s harder to get water and food here. There’s also the fact that you can get natural sweetener from the tree sap.

Tundra - The coldest earthlike biome. Mostly Ice with sparse trees and rocks. Little to no resources but would serve as a good Hardcore survival area.

However, not all mc2 worlds will be earthlike, so let’s think of biomes for each planet. We also have to remember that the biomes will change into other biomes as terraforming happens.

I’ll go ahead and list some lunar biomes for a good example of how biomes can change with planet terraformation.

Lunar biomes:
Lunar plains - large areas of flattened lunar regolith. Great for building on a large scale. These will become grasslands When the planet reaches the habitable zone.

Lunar badlands - filled with craters and densely packed rock, this area wouldn’t be a worthwhile place to be if not for its large reserves of organic compounds used to synthesize oil. The densely packed rocky soil will prevent plant growth, while atmospheric winds will whether the crater formations into sand to create a desert once the planet becomes earthlike.

Lunar Frostlands- tiny pieces of ice are strewn all over this area. It will be a good place to start a colony as it contains lots of water And is relatively flat. Trees will start growing in this area once the planet becomes earthlike, turning this biome into a forest.

Lunar Iceland’s - filled with many large ice deposits, this Place would be a better place to start you colony with than frostlands, but will become a swamp after the planet becomes earthlike. The main benefit of this area is the absurd amount of clay than can be gather.med from it’s shallow ponds.

Lunar arctic - Sheer cold greets those who dare settle in this area, but the naturally growing crystalline is a valuable reward for doing so. The ground is completely covered in many kinds of ice, and it’s the composition of the ice that allows the gradual formation of crystalline over time. This area will loose its ability to spawn crystalline over time once the planet becomes earthlike, at which Point it will become a taiga biome. Imagine a taiga with naturally grown crystals, sounds almost like something out of a fantasy game.

Lunar glacier - the most extreme area on a lunar planet. No special resources, just ice, as far as the eye can see. It will still be all ice after the planet becomes earthlike, becoming a tundra biome.

Lunar crevice - a giant crack in the ground with many defined and sharp rock formations. This is oddly the best place to get regolith do to miners being able to build Down the sides of the crevice and strip mine outward from multiple elevations. However, it gets weathered away by want and flowing water when the planet becomes earthlike, becoming a canyon and attracting tourists.

Lunar lowlands - these are similar to lunar plains, but will fill with water to become rivers and seas once the planet becomes earthlike. You can build here at early game, but you’ll lose any buildings that get flooded at least halfway to their top by water

Lunar caves - a very rare Occitan ever. Often caused by exposed lava tubes and can contain small amounts of obsidian and uranium, but the lava has long since cooled. Will turn into a cave biome when the planet becomes earthlike, therefore losing any obsidian within.

Lunar mounds - natural mountains caused by tectonic plate movements don’t exist here, but the sides of giant craters will do. Will obviously turn into mountain biomes once terraformed.

Lunar wastes - an area containing garbage piles and deposites. Challenging to settle this area but will yeild lots of different resources, including aluminum And plastic most of all. It will become a waste dump once terraformed and will start spawning pools of mutagen, which can be used in genetic experiments.

Anyway, I hope I can get others to do biomes for their favorite non-earthlike planets and make them able to become other biomes at certain atmosphere levels.

There should also be similar types of biomes for non-lunar planets, for example “Martian Badlands” for badlands of a Mars-like planet. An alternative would be to drop the prefix completely so that the terrain would correspond to the name, e.g Badlands, and the type of surface would depend on the planet.

Here is a collection on concepts that I am leaning towards for My Colony 2 as of today (20200624). This is all subject to change and I can be convinced by the community of anything, so keep the suggestions and feedback coming. This is going to be a super long post featuring all of my thoughts on MC2 thus far. Feel free to criticize anything and everything here. My feelings will not be hurt and nothing is set in stone. This is a starting point for community discussion to help make MC2 the best game it can be!

Relationship to My Colony 1
MC2 is an entire new game, not an upgrade to the original, or a version 2.0. It may use completely different concepts. It will not be tied in to the same server. Game files will not transfer over, as MC2 will probably have completely different buildings/tech tree, etc.

This does not mean that MC1 will be going away. I will continue to support the original and the server indefinitely. I realize that a lot of people like the style of game that MC1 is and do not want anything to change, so the original is staying where it is. It may continue to receive new content as well as bug fixes, but I do not plan on any further changes to the gameplay mechanics or core engine going forward.

That said, as long as MC1 remains popular and people keep playing it and paying for it, I will keep the game going.

Business Model/Monetizing
This is the least fun part of development, but a necessary one in order to make creating a game feasible. The business model for MC1 was tacked on as an afterthought, and reflecting back I do not like the concept of certain structures and units being premium.

None of this is set in stone, but here are my initial thoughts on the business model. My Colony 2 will be a straight paid app on all app stores, with everything unlocked at the base price, no in-app purchases. No advertising anywhere. The exception is on Ape Web Apps and the Ape Market, where it will be free, everything unlocked, but with no access to multiplayer or custom content. Maybe only one map type available.

Current My Colony 1 is basically already like this on Desktop, with the mobile client being free with additional IAP, so this change just makes the mobile version match up with what is already on desktop.

Now, I do anticipate the dissatisfaction of Android players not having the free version in the Play Store. However, Android support for Progressive Web Apps is sufficiently advanced now that you can just install the Web version to your homescreen like an app and it's hardly any different. Same with iOS. And MC1 will still be available for free like it always has been.

No free version on the mobile app stores will likely mean less players, and I understand this. But I like the idea of just buying a game and having the whole thing, not worrying about IAP's and not having any advertising.

Client/Server Structure
The biggest change to MC2 is it's design from the ground up as a multiplayer game. This does not mean that you cannot play single player, but it is being designed specifically for multiplayer.

MC1 has limited multiplayer, which basically consists of chat and trading/gifting resources. You can play together on a multiplayer region, but all you are really doing is sharing atmosphere and seeing thumbnails of other players' colonies. Not really very multiplayery (is that a word?). The MC1 multiplayer is also global and centralized, meaning everything has to go through the global My Colony server.

My Colony 2 multiplayer will be decentralized, meaning no global server that everybody plays on. Why am I doing this, because it seems like a downgrade? Look at every game out there with real global multiplayer, not just chat and trading. That takes massive infrastructure, and you pay for it with either a monthly subscription or endless IAP's. That's the only way it's really possible, and I don't think anybody wants that if you really stop and think it through.

The only realistic way to add real multiplayer to the game without investing in a massive infrastructure and charging big money for the game is to decentralize it. And since I am not Blizzard and do not want to spend my whole life maintaining MC2 servers, I am adopting a decentralized approach.

What does this mean? My Colony 2 will actually be designed as two separate applications in one, the client and the server.

The game client will be fairly light weight. It's job is to receive data from the server application and render it to the screen, and pass instructions as to what the player wants to do onto the server. That's pretty much it, and it should be fairly performant. Even though the game is moving to 3d, I still expect it to perform better than MC1, simply because 3d hardware rendering performs better than 2d software rendering.

The game server is much more interesting and is where all of the game mechanics take place, but since the server does not have to worry about handling the UI or making drawing calls, it actually has a bit more overhead to work with than on MC1. The two most expensive operations in MC1 are the rendering and the pathfinding. In MC2, the server is eliminating the rendering, and I also want to greatly reduce the pathfinding, leaving more headroom for actual fun stuff, like game mechanics simulation.

So in MC2, the game relationship is between client(s) and server. Whenever you create a new game in MC2, you are creating a new server, and then connecting to it with a client. The server is saved and retained between plays, where the client only exists while it is in use, and is not saved. So the point I just want to get across is that the client is really not that important, the server is.

The server and client code are both included in the My Colony 2 game. You will have the option of starting a regular game or creating a dedicated server. When you start a regular game, you are spinning up both a client and server and creating a 1-1 connection between the two right on your device. You can also make your game joinable by friends or others on your local network for multiplayer.

You can also create a dedicated server. When you create a MC2 dedicated server, you will be presented with a special server GUI that allows you to be in full control of the game. The server will continue to process game data as long as it is running, even if no players/clients are connected. A dedicated server will be able to establish custom game rules and parameters, and have mods installed that will be transferred to any client who connects. You will be able to make a dedicated server open to the public, or by invite only, or by specifying a list of accounts who are able to join. It's up to the server. A dedicated server will be able to moderate it's players however they want, the server can adjust resource levels, ban players for cheating, or anything. It's all up to the server owner.

The game data is saved only on the server, and the server owner will be responsible for making backups. I expect game files to be a lot bigger than MC1, so I am not going to be implementing Cloud Sync, which is known to cause corruption on larger files anyway. The ability to export and backup data will be built right into the game as usual.

Because of the way it's designed, even if you only want to play single player, it still may be desirable to set up a private dedicated server. For instance, you could run a private MC2 dedicated server on your powerful home PC that is always on/connected to the internet. Then you can connect to your server from your tablet/phone/laptop/another window on your computer, wherever you are, and your game is always there waiting for you, and all of the processing is being done on the more powerful computer.

The Game World/Game Files
In MC1, the game world is divided into cities and regions, and each city is a separate game file. In MC2, there are no cities and regions, there are planets.

This is something I am aping from Minecraft. A planet is like a regular city file in MC1, except is extends out in every direction to infinity, so you do not have to worry about running out of space for your city. A planet can have multiple cities and multiple players building cities at the same time.

Planets will be procedurally generated, and new areas will be generated in real-time as needed. Each planet type will have different biomes like in Minecraft, so that different environments and different resources are available in different parts on the planet.

This system means that you will have to build up trade networks with other cities or make additional settlement outposts across the planet in order to bring more resource types back to your colony. In MC1, practically every resource in the game is available with a square mile of your lander. This doesn't really make sense. In MC2 you will have to go out and find resources, and then build up a network for bringing them back into your city.

Technically, the MC2 world is still a big 2d grid like in MC1, but each tile does have an elevation, a z-index, for varied terrain elevations. Different resources might be found at different elevations and in different biomes. You will also be able to adjust the terrain in-game, like building up dirt to level out construction areas. There will be flat areas good for building, low canyons, and hilly or mountainous areas.

Also like in Minecraft, the terrain is generated on the fly and only transferred to the client in "chunks" as needed. So your client will only contain the data for the area that you are currently looking at, and the immediate surrounding areas. As you scroll around the map, areas you are no longer looking at will be disposed from memory as new areas are loaded from the server.

Construction / Resource Gathering and Rovers
I would really like to get rid of Rovers completely and simulate everything. It's not that I hate rovers, they are so helpful and adorable. The issue is with the pathfinding. Just driving rovers around the map takes up a huge percentage of the MC1 processing time, for what is essentially a visual effect.

Pathfinding is both CPU and memory intensive on anything larger than a medium sized MC1 map, and in MC2 the map sizes are being expanded infinitely larger. It's not just as simple as "only path finding around a certain area from the rover." Before you can even calculate pathfinding operations, you first have to generate a pathfinding map and load it into memory. The maps will be more expensive than in MC1 owing to the introduction of terrain elevation, as there will now be cliffs to work around. Each time a new structure is placed the pathfinding map needs to be recalculated. With the game being multiplayer, this will have to be taking place on a larger scale. It is one of the features holding MC1 back, due to all of the CPU time that must be dedicated to solving rover paths.

The issue of course, is that everybody likes rovers. Even I like rovers. Would the game be less fun without them? I don't know. If you could just turn off Rover Rendering in the engine settings and you didn't even see them, but everything continued to operate as normal, would it make a difference to the game, or would it matter? Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't.

Everything a Rover does can be simulated for a fraction of the CPU and memory cost.

This is the largest part of MC2 that I don't have an answer to. I can't just remove rovers because that would be a blow to the fans of MC1. I also cringe thinking of all of the months wasted on optimizing path finding and the 1 star complaints about performance, all relating to a path finding feature in what is essentially a city building game.

There are options.

I could always just keep rovers in the game as they are and just keep working around the processing issues that come with it. In a single player game or a server with only a few active players at once, it probably wouldn't be a very big hit.

I have also considered just simulating rovers, sort of like colonists are just simulated in MC1. For example, you don't even have to build your own rovers. But when you place a new construction order, little rovers drive up onto the construction site and build your building anyway. These rovers do not exist on the server, but you see them building on the client. Same way for moving resources around. On the server it is just simulated, but on the client, you see a rover driving around doing all of the work. This would still require path finding, but each client would be doing their own path finding on the visual rover effect, and the player could turn it off if it became a performance issue.

If the client could just visually simulate things like rovers, colonists, police cars, busses, etc, they would all still be there visually making your city look alive, but the server wouldn't even have to worry about them.

Maybe there are other options too that I am not thinking of? All feedback on Rovers is welcome. I want the game to be performant, but I also don't want to go against the fans, so please let me know what you think either way.

Graphics
MC1 is a software rendered game using the HTML5 canvas element, arranging .png and .svg tile images onto a 2d isometric grid. Most of the graphics processing is done by the main CPU and not the graphics card, so graphics performance is largely defined by how good your processor is. This is why the game runs a lot better on desktop vs mobile, or even on iPhone vs android, and iPhone processors tend to be a bit better.

The problems is that the CPU also has to process the game, so trying to do everything at once gets expensive, especially on mobile devices.

My Colony 2 is moving to WebGL for graphics processing, which is a javascript based implementation of OpenGL that handles rendering on the GPU. This should lead to far better performance on most devices.

My original idea was to use Blender for all of the games building models. The graphics were going to be awesome. But when I dug into Blender and started working with it, I remembered how I am not actually a graphics designer, and it was going to take me forever to make all of the models for this game.

My other idea was to make blocky pixelated type graphics using my own Voxel Paint application (https://www.apewebapps.com/voxel-paint/). This means lower quality visuals but much higher output and probably better rendering performance as well. It's also so easy to use that anybody could make their own MC2 models, my wife even offering to help design structures for the game (she is a big Minecraft fan).

At the end of the day, My Colony 1 was never known for high quality graphics, but I thought that with MC2 I could really make it look great. After putzing around with Blender though, I have to acknowledge my own personal limitations. Basically, I can either spend months learning how to make great 3d models in Blender, or I can spend months working on the game code. I know which one I'd rather do. So I am probably going to go with the pixelated look, simply because it is something that I can actually do myself within a realistic timeframe, and it will also go well with the next point I'm about to explain, which is modding.

I know some people will not like a pixelated looking game. This is one of those areas where I have to say "tough," unless somebody is willing so supply me with hundreds of 3d models free of charge, which is what it is going to take in order to do this properly.

Modding
Customization is going to be huge in MC2 compared to the original. Given the global online multiplayer in MC1, custom content could not realistically be allowed in the game. The decentralized nature of MC2 changes everything though, and modding and customization, as well as all of the tools needed to make it happen, are going to be baked right into the client.

In MC2, the basic "unit" of the game is the building. Everything is going to be pretty much based on buildings, and their relationship to each other. This is basically how MC1 works as well, so this is nothing new. What is going to be knew is My Colony 2's build in Building Editor.

I am going to be creating MC2 using the games' bulit-in editor, and so the same editor I use to make the game is going to be available to all players.

Each building in the game is going to be stored as a building file, and the base game will ship with all of its standard building files, which will be loaded at runtime. This differs from MC1 where all building data is stored in a single JSON file that is shipped with the game, which cannot be easily edited.

A building file will contain three parts.

The first is the JSON formatted definition data, with information about the name of the building, what it does, what it generates, etc. All of the properties that a building can have will be stored in that data.

The second part is the model information, which will essentially be an embedded Voxel Paint file.

The third part is a small (maybe like 64x64 pixel) thumbnail or icon representing the building, which will show up on the construction sidebar and various places throughout the UI.

The three above parts are all packaged into a single file which can be added to the game client, posted online for easy sharing, or what have you. A dedicated server can include custom building files that will automatically be distributed to clients when they join the game. Each building file will have a unique UUID and version information, so if a client already has the same version of a building file that a server does, it will not need to re-transfer the data upon connection.

This system is actually a very powerful change over the original My Colony, and unlocks essentially limitless possibilities for the game. This also makes it a lot easier for the community to participate in development of the game. A creator who makes a great building idea can distribute it online where it is tested out and balanced by the community. If it works in practice and everyone likes it, the file can be included in the base game.

If you want to host a crazy dedicated server with a bunch of custom buildings that totally change the game, you can do so.

I have no idea what kind of buildings people will dream up, but including the content creation tools right into the base game will be huge, I hope. And I plan on making the process as easy as I possibly can, so that anybody can create a building. Using Voxel Paint, if you have an idea and the ability to build a house in Minecraft, you should be able to make it a reality. And being able to make something and then instantly import it into your game makes it simple to test out concepts and balance them right there on your own device.

It's possibly that nobody will care about modding or making buildings, but it still doesn't hurt to add the tools right into the game. If nothing else, it will still make it easier for me to create new content for updates, versus having to go through and edit JSON data manually.

However, it's also possible that everybody will be making custom content and the game takes off in crazy directions that we never even imagined!

It could even be possible to allow mod creators to somehow sell their mods in-game and get paid in real money, maybe through PayPal or something. That is a thought for another day though, and not a current actual plan.

Conclusion
These are my current thoughts on MC2 as of this day. Like I said, nothing is set in stone yet and everything is subject to change. I wanted to put everything out there so that the community knows what page I am on and where I am headed, and has time to stop me if I am about to drive over a cliff.

Remember that I am open to all feedback, so if you have ideas, please don't just be quite about it, or don't just complain about them in a Discord chat somewhere, because I probably will not see them. Part of being a game developer is getting hate e-mail on a regular basis on why my games suck, so believe me that your being critical of the above ideas will not hurt my feelings, and will be nothing new to me.

The whole purpose of doing all of this beforehand is to get real feedback from the community so that MC2 can go in a direction that we all like and we will all have fun playing. Once I start getting into the code, it gets harder and harder to make changes, so if there is something you don't like, now is the time to mention it. Think of all of the things I could not effectively implement in MC1 because they would require massive time-consuming changes to the entire engine. So getting ideas in right now is how we avoid that.

Like MC1, I'm trying to make something fun that I myself want to play, not a game that is going to just nickel and dime players with constant ads and IAPs so I can sit on a yacht somewhere. I think the new decentralized play model will allow the game to outlast the original. Basically, if I get in a wreck and die, the MC1 server will be forever down within a few weeks. With MC2, once players can make their own servers and create their own content right from within the game, what happens to me becomes more irrelevant, which is the way it should be.

Anyway, if you got this far, then thanks for reading my small novel. Please give some thoughts to where you want to see the game go, or discuss it with other players and really think about all of the concepts I laid out here. I want to start working on the game soon, maybe as early as mid-next month. I plan to start with the world-generating engine and the in-game building creation tools first, so people can start testing that out and seeing what it is like to make their own content.

So between now and then, if any of the above ideas are way off the mark, I need to know now. So think about it, let me know, and thanks for helping me create the follow-up to My Colony. I think it's going to be fun!

bastecklein said:Blender models look better for sure. My reasoning for preferring voxel models comes down to consistency of the look of the game and the amount of time I want to spend on graphics VS development. I can guarantee that the My Colony community will produce far less content in Blender VS voxels, due to the complication of the software. I could barely even get any submissions for MC1 content using .svg format and Inkscape, which is a whole lot easier to use than Blender.

Compared to voxels, the look of which can mask the skill level of the artist a bit, the player will be more likely to recognize a difference in artistic style and skill level of a model made in Blender. I think a janky model that I am able to throw together VS one a skilled artist produces will be obvious to all.

Which leads to my last point, which is my own personal skill level. I am not a graphics artist by any stretch of the imagination, I am no Blender expert, and after spending some time with the application, it is going to take a bit of effort to get my skills to a point where I can create the content for this game. That is time diverted from making actual progress on My Colony 2, not to mention all of the apps I have to support which pay for me to be able to work on games which are less profitable. In the time it would take me to create something basic in Blender, I was able to just create the Voxel Paint app instead and then move on to other things.

And one final thing, since the suggestion always comes up when I mention graphics, so I might as well get it out of the way. I cannot count how many times I have gotten over the years: "just hire some graphics artists, more programmers, etc," which is a fine suggestion, but I have also seen many times: "OMG $5 for premium and regions aren't even free, bast is turning into EA, I wont pay $5 for this!" There is a reason why games either cost $60 or are full of nickel and dime IAPs - because that is what it costs to hire staff and support servers. This is why I generally prefer to do things on my own and within my own skill level, to keep costs little to nothing for the player.

But those are just my thoughts on Blender. I am still not opposed and nothing is final yet, so if I can be convinced that I am wrong then I am open to that too.

I think we can all agree that models with high detail will take a lot of time and are not worth it, the only reason these models are high res is becuase they were simple to make and I couldnt resist making them look realistic (they were really easy to make, I spent the last hour of my day for the past 2 days using blender to make these) . Voxel models are definitely better for saving time, but they don't look as good. But I know of a way to get the best of both worlds, loy poly modeling. Low poly models can be made in minutes and look way better than voxel models, plus there are plenty of easy and short low poly tutorials for beginners. If you want to check out low poly modeling I would highly recommend checking out the Grant Abbitt channel on youtube, it has lots of blender begginer tutorials covering low poly modeling and other subjects. I would also recommend you check out the first few parts of the blender donut tutorial to get familiar with blender's hot keys, they will save you alot of time.

Here are some quick tutorials I would recommend checking out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mT4XFJYq-4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlnkGCdtGEw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrnSACiTJ4

Today, Basic Modeler has received it's first major update since becoming it's own app and moving to it's own domain (basicmodeler.com), and this update is fairly significant, so let's take a peak at what is new!


To begin with, Basic Models now support texturing, which is a huge improvement over plain color models. You can see an example in the image above, where an Earth texture was applied to a sphere. Adding a texture is fairly straightforward. There is a new Textures panel next to the code input panel, and each texture you add to the model gets a new variable name (ex $tex0, $tex1, $tex2, and so on). I will do writeups in the new Sharing and Examples forum soon with examples and instructions on how to apply textures to each different type of primitive shape that the app supports.

With this update, the #scroll3d engine now includes full built-in support for rendering Basic Models, so future games written using the engine will be able to use Basic Models for graphics, as opposed to (or along side of) Voxel Paint models. I am also in the process of overhauling the Death 3D engine (which also powers the game Dungeon Infinity) to use Basic Models instead of Sprites for game objects, which is a pretty significant undertaking, but was somewhat necessary to facilitate the support of full VR for those Death 3D based games, which I am also in the process of working on.

When I first showed off the Basic Modeler concept eight months ago, I demonstrated how the system could be used to create a basic Blockhead Token (the latest Token type from My Tokens), but the model was simple and non-textured. With the new enhancements to the Basic Modeling system, all Blockhead Tokens code is in the process of being migrated to the Basic Model format, and you will soon be able to export your Blockhead Token character to a Basic Model file (will be available in the coming My Tokens update).

I have added a new mobile-friendly layout to Basic Modeler in this release, so the application can now be "used" on a mobile phone. I still do not suggest using it in this way, but the possibility is now at least there.

Basic Modeler now has a new Add Object button, which will automatically create all of the primitive types that the system supports, as well as a few small example objects that you can look at to get a better understanding of how Basic Modeler works.

Finally, Basic Modeler now support full file type associating when installed as a desktop PWA using a chromium based browser (Chrome or Edge). If you install Basic Modeler as a PWA, you will now be able to simply double-click on a *.bm file on your computer, and have it automatically open up in the app.

What is the point?

So you may be wondering what the point of Basic Modeler is, what it's for, where it fits in the Ape Apps ecosystem, and why not just use something like Blender to make models?

The primary reason for the Basic Model system is to be able to quickly and (somewhat) easily generate 3D models in code, so that a future game engine of mine can automatically create new items/objects on the fly.

A game could, for example, have a sword, and the game package could include one base sword.bm model file, and through code, several different sizes, shapes, colors, and other variations of the sword could be generated by making simple small modifications, to where the game could include hundreds of different swords based on the same model script.

Anyway, I do not necessarily except anybody other than myself to be using Basic Modeler, at least not until a game comes out that uses it and supports modding, it is there to play with nonetheless, and is going to be an important part of content creation for Ape Apps games in the future!

What is coming next

The next major feature I need to add to Basic Modeler is model animations. You can already do animations in code if you assign your objects to variables, but I want a way to predefine them within the model file so you can automatically run them by simply setting a flag. So that is what is next for Basic Modeler.

So anyway, if you are on a desktop computer and interested in modeling, you can check out Basic Modeler today!

https://basicmodeler.com/

#basicmodeler

While yall may be wondering "what use would a campaign mode be, there's no war or conflict in my colony, so what would be the purpose," I assure you there would be a really big purpose for a campaign mode without involving any war or conflict elements at all.

Campaign mode would put the player into different scenarios that challenge their strategy skills and resourcefulness, would be a very fun adventure and storyline, and would teach newcomers how to play the game online. Honestly, I don't think that a campaign mode would be hard to make, I just think that it would take a lot of time to create and implement all of the content that is required for this to happen and I definitely don't expect this to be implemented anytime soon. Let me repeat that, I definitely don't expect this to be implemented anytime soon. @bastecklein is working on the rest of antiquitas and there are some features not yet but soon to be put in the game that would be required to make this happen. So if this does get implemented, I imagine it would be far into the future.

Anyway, here are my ideas for a campaign mode, although if bast makes a campaign mode he might do it differently:

1. Each race and spin-off race has it's own campaign series, starting with UE.

2. Each campaign would be broken into chapters. Each chapter is based on a specific planet related to that race. For instance, UE will have the planet mars(red planet), the earth's moon(lunar), and an exoplanet with alien wildlife(forest), while LIS will have the dwarf planet ceres(asteroid), Titan(ice), and a once inhabited exoplanet(abandoned). Each chapter would be unlocked by completing the one before it.

3. Each planet will have a global map that would show all of the playable locations on that map. Nothing fancy, just a map of the planet with a bunch of coordinates marked. Each of these locations/coordinates, when selected, will load a specific game file incorporated into the game. Once a file is opened, it takes the player to the normal my colony building field, which is pre-made and staged for a particular mission. Once all missions are complete for that location, the player is free to continue on playing the game, building up their colony normally, and trading with other locations on the same planet/chapter that have had their missions completed.

4. Some of those locations will need to be unlocked by completing missions in other locations, and there would be a few side-locations on each planet that don't have any missions but allow the player to build a Colony normally and send resources to the other locations. These side-locations would only be unlocked after the chapter and all missions are complete and after premium is purchased.

5. All locations would have an option to reset progress in case a player wants to replay a certain mission or restart a colony at one of the locations for whatever reason. This deletes the current in-game file that is in use and restores a copy from the backup version that is also integrated in the game.

6. Before adding any of this to the game, multiple terrain types would be needed. This is because if campaign were added now, there wouldn't be much difference between each location on the planet since we only have one terrain type, and it would be boring. Bast said that he is going to add multiple terrain types and a map editor, so I would wait until I created those before I worked on this, which is one of the reasons why I think campaign mode will be far into the future if added at all.

7. Terraforming aspect: Terraforming each planet would be done very slowly and would take multiple colonies/locations to generate or remove the needed amounts of atmosphere. Also, some other aspects and buildings for terraforming that would only exist in campaign mode could be added. For instance, in terraforming, you have to take atmosphere, heat, sea level, and oxygen percentage into consideration. Maybe add aheat aspect and create some buildings that reduce and generate heat based on what the planet needs. Or add a sea level and watch the global map fill up with water as the sea level rises and recede as it falls. You could do a lot of interesting things in campaign mode and it wouldn't impact the online mc universe. It might push the engine to it's limits though.

8. Research: research would be share by all colonies/locations on a given planet/chapter. Either research would be produced much slower or tech would require more research, but we want to make it so that all locations are contributing to the same research pool. Once a player moves to the next chapter though, the research starts at 0 again.

I think that this would be a very worth-while feature to put in the game. If any of you have any more ideas of how a campaign mode could be implemented, please include them here.

I have a bunch of ideas for this game but unfortunately I have no artwork. This is just a random dump of my ideas and feel free to add some, all, or none of these.

1. Wind Turbine: This would be a structure with power generation between the solar tower and nuclear plant. There is a pretty big drop off between the expensive cost of the nuclear power and the relative cheapness of the solar towers. I propose a wind turbine that would cost double the solar tower plus some microchips for better mid-game power generation.

2. In game federations: I have been thinking about how this could be implemented for a long time now. Federations would be created using the hall of congress plus a large fee of civics. The owner could add co-owners, change the federation from public to private, and manage the federation all from inside of the congress hall. Players could join federations from their capitols.

3. Desert planet: The desert planet would be a human planet with a difficulty of medium or hard. Many of the textures already needed are in the game already. (sand, sand dune, cacti, palm tree, etc.) This would be an easy world to just plop into the game.

4: Biodome: I dont have a lot of specifics on this, but it would be a large glass dome that provided entertainment and research.

5: Energy pavement: This would be an incredibly fast upgrade to dark pavement that would speed up rovers beyond belief. It would be black with animated neon arrows on it.

6: Junkyard planet: This map would be "hard" and would be accessible by the LIS and zolarg. At the beginning of this map you start with 20 million trash and 20 million atmosphere. You would have to use a detoxification plant, (more on that later) to get clean water for your colony. The upside of this colony would be that aluminum would be very easy to find early on and there would be many "Aluminum chunks" Scattered across the map to provide you with a large starting amount.

7: A way to destroy rivers: Not really that big of a thing to add, but on the earthlike planet the river blocks a significant part of the map and it would be really useful if the water wasn't infinite.

8: Alien planet: When humanity explores space not everything will always go according to plan. This alien planet would show the strangeness that could potentially be found beyond our planet. This map would have purple soil, thermal pools that would require a detox plant to get water from, and craters that would have random minerals in them. This planet would also have strange blue trees with more wood than fir trees. The starting atmosphere on this planet would be 1 million

9. Detoxification plant: This would be a structure to generate water on toxic worlds. The first tier would be 1x1 and generate a little water. The second tier would still be 1x1 but would produce 7 times the water. After that, you could use atmosphere condensers.

10. Living planet: This map would be medium to hard. It would take the form of a moon sized organism with an atmosphere of 5 Million at the start. You would need to use a detox plant to get water from the planet. This would offer strange resources early on that would be very valuable to different races. This map would be available to UE and Zolarg.

11. Natural Gas: A new resource used for mechanical buildings and massive rovers
Thanks for being patient with my ideas and the length of them. Again, i'm sorry there's no artwork or specifics about the buildings but there's a lot of ideas and I cant use Inkscape to save my own life. Be sure to leave a comment telling me what you think of these ideas

These would All be excellent biomes for an earth like world. You forgot 3 important ones though:

Swamp- lots of water and clay. That’s the only reason people go there.

Taiga - an arctic forest. The trees provide more wood than forest trees but it’s harder to get water and food here. There’s also the fact that you can get natural sweetener from the tree sap.

Tundra - The coldest earthlike biome. Mostly Ice with sparse trees and rocks. Little to no resources but would serve as a good Hardcore survival area.

However, not all mc2 worlds will be earthlike, so let’s think of biomes for each planet. We also have to remember that the biomes will change into other biomes as terraforming happens.

I’ll go ahead and list some lunar biomes for a good example of how biomes can change with planet terraformation.

Lunar biomes:
Lunar plains - large areas of flattened lunar regolith. Great for building on a large scale. These will become grasslands When the planet reaches the habitable zone.

Lunar badlands - filled with craters and densely packed rock, this area wouldn’t be a worthwhile place to be if not for its large reserves of organic compounds used to synthesize oil. The densely packed rocky soil will prevent plant growth, while atmospheric winds will whether the crater formations into sand to create a desert once the planet becomes earthlike.

Lunar Frostlands- tiny pieces of ice are strewn all over this area. It will be a good place to start a colony as it contains lots of water And is relatively flat. Trees will start growing in this area once the planet becomes earthlike, turning this biome into a forest.

Lunar Iceland’s - filled with many large ice deposits, this Place would be a better place to start you colony with than frostlands, but will become a swamp after the planet becomes earthlike. The main benefit of this area is the absurd amount of clay than can be gather.med from it’s shallow ponds.

Lunar arctic - Sheer cold greets those who dare settle in this area, but the naturally growing crystalline is a valuable reward for doing so. The ground is completely covered in many kinds of ice, and it’s the composition of the ice that allows the gradual formation of crystalline over time. This area will loose its ability to spawn crystalline over time once the planet becomes earthlike, at which Point it will become a taiga biome. Imagine a taiga with naturally grown crystals, sounds almost like something out of a fantasy game.

Lunar glacier - the most extreme area on a lunar planet. No special resources, just ice, as far as the eye can see. It will still be all ice after the planet becomes earthlike, becoming a tundra biome.

Lunar crevice - a giant crack in the ground with many defined and sharp rock formations. This is oddly the best place to get regolith do to miners being able to build Down the sides of the crevice and strip mine outward from multiple elevations. However, it gets weathered away by want and flowing water when the planet becomes earthlike, becoming a canyon and attracting tourists.

Lunar lowlands - these are similar to lunar plains, but will fill with water to become rivers and seas once the planet becomes earthlike. You can build here at early game, but you’ll lose any buildings that get flooded at least halfway to their top by water

Lunar caves - a very rare Occitan ever. Often caused by exposed lava tubes and can contain small amounts of obsidian and uranium, but the lava has long since cooled. Will turn into a cave biome when the planet becomes earthlike, therefore losing any obsidian within.

Lunar mounds - natural mountains caused by tectonic plate movements don’t exist here, but the sides of giant craters will do. Will obviously turn into mountain biomes once terraformed.

Lunar wastes - an area containing garbage piles and deposites. Challenging to settle this area but will yeild lots of different resources, including aluminum And plastic most of all. It will become a waste dump once terraformed and will start spawning pools of mutagen, which can be used in genetic experiments.

Anyway, I hope I can get others to do biomes for their favorite non-earthlike planets and make them able to become other biomes at certain atmosphere levels.

I’m thinking, and I feel like it would be cool if we not only had our one planet to colonize, but what if we had an entire solar system of linked planets that a player can spread to after they have started to produce starships. That could actually be a campaign, to colonize every planet and accomplish certain goals.

You could have three types of solar systems: one for “sol” or our solar system, which would contain all of our real planets, another for a pre-built fictional solar system Containing fictional planets like abandoned world, and a third Solar system that uses rng to generate a randomized system with any combo of planets, fictional or not.

As for the resources required to maintain multiple planets, I would suggest just treating each planet like you treat each map in a region and just process statistical data in all inactive planets. It’s inherently inaccurate as we know, but it gets the job done and adds to the gaming experience

As for the first systym, “sol”, i think adding a blastfurnace/mercury type planet, a Venus/high atmosphere type planet, and helium and methane has giants would be feasible. Asteroid planet would be Ceres, which is a dwarf planet in our asteroid belt, and ice planet would be Pluto.

I think you could use Europa for the underwater planet, and a Dyson sphere map would just be a special station that has to rely on power itself to survive. One other thing that would be cool would be titan. Sure, it’s a cold planet, but it’s not an ice planet. Most of its atmosphere is made up of organic materials like methane, and it has actual lakes of propane. Even that sand that covers Titan’s ground is made of organic compounds. You could give it a yellow-orange hue and make the planet your system-wide gas station. I can imaging it being as brutal to play as ice world.

Anyway, these are my ideas, let me know if you have questions.

This planet type is basically a Mercury-type planet. A rocky planet with a rocky core instead of an iron one, and a very close proximity to the sun. The sun beats down on Mercury's surface, cooking the day side to extremely high temperatures. Mercury turns at 2 mph so you can imagine the days and nights to be extremely long and to have drastic differences. The nights are very cold, while the days are hot and radioactive enough to cook a man/insect/reptile in his skin. For the sake of simplicity though, I wouldn't worry about planetary rotation or temperature change from night to day times. Instead we will focus on the radiation exposure that the colonists will get, and challenge the player to find ways to reduce and eventually deflect radiation from areas that are highly populated or traversed.

New colonist stat: Rads: This stat affects the max health and energy of the colonist. As this stat climbs, their max health and energy falls. Eventually, if the exposure get's too much, their max health will become 0 and they will die instantly. I don't think that this is going to violate any fallout/bethesda copywrite/trademarks because this is on a different planet and doesn't involve nuclear warfare. Radiation exposure would only happen during daytime and would subside at night.

New building type: electromagnets: these buildings will reduce the rate at which colonists gain rads in a certain radius. As the player progresses, he can get better magnets with better reduction power and better radius's. In fact, the alien magnet would completely deflect all radiation in a very wide area. These buildings require tons of power and possibly artifacts for the alien one.

New building type: radiation treatment centers: these would use the latest technology to reduce colonists rad count. The first center should be added very early in the game since outside of the rover, new colonists arrivals would have no way to heal since the first magnet type would not be very powerful and they would still gain rads at a fast rate.

Lander: The lander provides impervious resistance toward radiation for colonists while they are inside of it, and it heals these colonists once they come back in at a very fast rate, faster than the most advanced radiation treatment facility actually. This would be to ensure that at least two people would survive if everyone else died of radiation poisoning. Just be sure not to give them big commute distances. This is also to give the lander another fundamental purpose so people don't destroy it.

New resource: Magnetite: An untradable resource that will be used to build magnets that reduce/deflect solar radiation from certain areas. Magnetite is not found on the surface in the form of nodes, the player must create temporary mines that allow them to collect it. This requires a new tech called "Solar Wind deflection theory." Eventually the player will get the core driller, which would provide a steady stream of magnetite as a side effect.

New vehicle: mag rovers: These guys are used to build magnetite mines and gather magnetite from them.

New Tech: Solar Wind deflection theory: unlocks the collection and use of magnetite to build electromagnets to reduce colonists exposure to solar radiation.

New Tech: Core conditioning: unlocks structures that are used to dig down to and change the makeup of the planet's core, specifically to molten iron so that it can generate a powerful and permanent magnetic field.

New Terraforming stats: Distance to core and core viscosity:Distance to core determines how far down the core driller has gone and how much distance it has before it can be upgraded to a core filler. The core viscosity stat determines the base rad exposure rate that a colonist would be subjected to if they were to be outside the range of all magnets on the map. As this stat lowers, the base rad exposure lowers, until eventually both equal 0 and the planet now has a working and permanent magnetic field.

New buildings: Core driller and core filler: These two core buildings will be responsible for drilling down to the core and filling it with molten iron so that the planet develops a powerfull magnetic field of it's own.

Core driller: Has a change to produce massive spurts of either ore, gold, alu, or ura at the end of each worker round and would provide a constant supply of magnetite. The deeper the driller digs(based on the distance to core stat), the better chance for better resources and better amounts of resources. Subtracts from the "distance to core" terraforming stat. There can be only one core driller on the field at a time.

Core filler: once the core driller has reduced the distance to core to zero feet, it can be upgraded to a core filler. This building consumes massive amounts of iron and uranium to both fill and heat the core. The core filler decreases the core viscosity stat. Once the stat reaches 0, radiation comes a thing of the past and the player can now work on planetary atmosphere if they haven't done so already. The core filler can only be obtained via upgrading the core driller, it cannot be built on it's own, thus it should not be added to the build menu.

Resources: This planet contains all of the resource nodes that are found on Red planet. The only new resource that would be added here, and untradable(since it wouldn't be needed elsewhere) is magnetite. There should be no added difficulty regarding resources or any more bottlenecks than usual besides maybe a bottleneck concerning magnetite. This will be a planet that either UE or LIS can colonize. Since there is no atmosphere, zolarg are out of the picture, and so are reptilians since their slaves don't have space suits yet.

----------------

Right now this is just a concept that I am sharing with everyone. I have no images to help my cause on this one as of yet, and I don't have much time for now to draw anything since drawing takes me hours to do that I don't have. If you like this idea, please vote on it or send us some pictures that could be put in the game if this idea is even partially used.


.

The planet terraforming atm don't have much sense. Few hundred of heavy industries (like adv robot) should don't have the power to increase the atmosphere like a open faucet in a bathtub.

Is to easy to increase atmosphere, is far to ease to decrease atmosphere (but.. in region map balance the atm is a mess).

All concept below born for the necessity to decrease the atmosphere production, in order to require weeks if not months for increase the atmosphere in the hardest map, and be very very hard to decrease it artificial way, in order to require work "before" the situation become unmanageable.

Suggestion:

Gravity-dependent atmosphere

Maps with low gravity, should have a decrease atmosphere coefficient every min, map with high gravity should be very hard to decrease atmosphere.

Asteroid: no way someone cold build air in this condition.. at least without a big overlying shield.
Decrease coefficient 100% (all air produced disappears)

Lunar: very very hard to increase air, but.. in some moon (not earth moon), is possible with huge effort.
Decrease coefficient 50%

Red Planet: Mars don't have earth gravity (and other stuff, like a magnetic poll.. and other UV shields, even with air we will fry without suit), but with some effort is possible.
Decrease coefficient 20%

Earthlike planet (eartlike, forest world, sugarland, ice world, desert world, water world), all planet similar to the earth, should be just fine.
No coefficient, all the air remain on the planet


Abandoned world: i don't know why, but i am imagine this planet, like a huge planet
In this case, when the planet have more earth gravity, the decrease atmosphere building should have a penalty.

Lava World:
The worse planet, in this situation should be impossible to decrease atmosphere, since will be the planet in self to produce it.

Update for terraforming building:

All building with the ability to increase / decrease atmosphere should be decreased by at least 20/30 time (es: the Ancient Alien Condenser shouldn't be able to remove large quantitative of atmosphere , since should be able to remove just the water from the air..)

Insane. Atmosphere Gen
The easy way to increase a planet atmosphere, in theory, is to detonate nuclear weapons in the poles. I just suggest to change or adding a new building, with the ability to increase the atmosphere by nuclear detonation. Easy graphics, just a silos, consume uranium / steel / microchips and some rum for the propulsion.

Should be able to operate only until the atmosphere reaches 10/15 millions, not over

Large Atmosphere scrubber
For clean the air, we will need insane large / tall structure, not fans able to change the air in a pub.
Building like the Space Elevator, maybe 4 elevator group together, black or golden varnish, able to produce large quantitative of helium (the only gas in game), of course will consume insane power, like 500k.

Should be able to operate only until the atmosphere reaches 5 millions. not below


Atmosphere effect

For now.. something simple:

If the atmosphere is below 500k, colonists will not have enough air for breathe properly, move will become more difficult (increasing the fatigue), and they will consume more food.

If the atmosphere is over 15M, colonists will not have enough clean air for breathe properly, move will become more difficult (increasing the fatigue), and they will consume more food.

Hello everybody! Let me get right to the chase. firstly, this mod will be in pre-alpha meaning it will have nightly updates (hopefully). Secondly, all released files here will be demos, when 1.0 is released it will be done through the mod shop. Thirdly, some things I have ideas for will need to have functionality added to the modding API, so they may take a long time, or never come in the worst case scenario. If so, I will try to come up with a work around. Fourth and hopefully finally, this is a solo project, all assets will be made by myself (OilChan). So with that the quality of assets will be improved before or on 1.0 release.

Alright, with that introduction out of the way, let's us get into the nitty gritty of this mod. Firstly this is an overhaul, meaning there will be a great deal of content added and removed from the base game. Secondly, this will be a more crude, well-rounded and realism flavored mod. To explain further, Food will be harder to produce, and resources will be rarer than they are in the base game. There is a new planet and some returning ones, I'll start of with one civilization or Corporations as I will refer to them as from now on.

Content Ideas:
I will start with worlds:
-Abandoned Planet

Yes, this fan favorite will make an appearance in Advanced Manufacturing, but, wait there's a twist, I will make it from scratch for a whole new experience.

-Brown Dwarf

yes, colonize a brown dwarf, what could possibly go wrong, this gal will have a unique game play style, more on that in a future post though.

-Desert Planet

My favorite world type, it comes with 100% more sand per sand! stuggle against a inhospitable environment, but maybe you can strike a treasure trove of resources?!

-Ice Planet

Those of you who have seen Interstellar will know what's up with this planet, Mann's planet. Rich will ice and uh.. more ice, you'll have a rough start, but I'll tell you what, maybe there will be something cool.

-Lunar Planet

Yes, I know silly name, but just give it chance, its like a moon but planet scale? isn't that just a planet, sure maybe!? It's here and staying!

-Red Planet

Yeah, its just Mars, not much to say though.

-Water Planet

Thankfully the Smokers will not make an appearance unless by popular demand, I shoot down their transit carrier and they're stuck here. How will you handle this tropical nightmare, who knows! not much but water down here :/

-Asteroid
Don't have an render because asteroids are hard :/
This gals neither special nor powerful, but they form the backbone of the economy, and with massive industrial capacity, you too, can become a sci-fi captain of industry
-Future worlds to be added here
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Other things here!

So, an idea I've been playing with for a while is having multiple starting vehicles/structures. This came to me, because I wanted extra flexibility with starting resources/production. Like having your lander + and Air Condenser or in what im most excited for is Using your lander to call in seed banks for extra seeds at the start of the game (farming is an important feature)(will be done just like how rovers are created but using structure ability like the mobile outpost) just one problem, there is as far as I know, no way to give resources upon build, which would have to be added as I don't want to give seeds as a production, as I want players to be able to purchase seeds as needed.

Artwork: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
https://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en
Alright I've said a lot for today so I'll this post as is for 11/6/23

Let me first start off by saying that I know bast is focused on finishing antiquitas and he probably will not consider another race until he has time to focus solely on my colony.

So here are my ideas for races that could be put in the game. I can only include six because the poll only allows for six possible answers.

1. Automations:
Description: A Utopian sentient robot society whose sole purpose is to terraform worlds into beautiful paradises. They need less care than organic colonists, they have no need for a government since greed, deceit, and violence are not a part of their nature, and they only produce what they need to terraform the planet and survive as they give the rest back to their planet. They prefer to be an isolated society but warmly welcome and care for newcomers from other races.

Difficulty: Very Easy-easy
Production potential: the least out of all races
Main building resource: ore
Terraforming Potential: the most efficient out of all races
Economic potential: very low
Governmental potential: the least out of all races
research potential: average
growth rate: very high
Tourist potential: very high
Food and water production: the most efficient out of all races
Micromanagement needs at beginning of game: very little.
Colonist eats: power and small amounts of oil, new colonists are built from ore.
Colonist entertained by: Work, walking around when planet is between 5-15 mil atmosphere, research.
Building method: buildings are built by vehicles, same as humans and insectoids.
optimum atmosphere range: 5-15 mil
Colonizable atmosphere range: 0-100

2.) Reptilians
Description: A society built on honor for one's neighbor and zealous loyalty to the theocracy. These people are known for their vast uses of crystalline since a viable source of regolith, ore, and gold couldn't be found on their home planet. They synthesize the purest crystalline out of all races. The reptilians need less governing, but they can still build a very strong government unlike the automations. A more advanced race than humans, the reptilians build structures that are more autonomous and require less workers. Their honorbound and zealous disposition often prevents them from asking important questions though, which limits the amount of research they produce, and their technology and society allow them to function very well in all environments, which hinders their motivation to terraform even though they would still prefer to live in a hospitable environment. Because of the reptilians tendency to colonize planets with hostile environments, not many people want to move to reptilian worlds. The reptilians are not know for their capacity for trading and economics as they serve a theocracy, but they do need money to survive and trading is a means to an end for them.


Difficulty: medium-hard
Production potential: very high
Main building resource: crystalline
Terraforming Potential: the least efficient out of all races
Economic potential: average
Governmental potential: the best out of all races
research potential: low
Growth rate: low
Tourist potential: low
Food and water production: average
Micromanagement needs at beginning of game: low to moderate.
Colonist eats: food and water
Colonist entertained by: religion, fighting arenas, human-like entertainment
building method: buildings warps are started and left alone to build themselves as the vehicle does other tasks. This slows down build speed though.
optimum atmosphere range: 2.5-30mil
Colonizable atmosphere range: 0-100

3.) Jellyfish
Description: The Jellyfish thrive in high atmospheric conditions as they do not live on the ground but build their cities in the sky out of floating structures. The jellyfish survive solely on atmosphere instead of food and water. The jellies pride themselves in their various uses of atmosphere, but this drains the planet of all atmosphere eventually, so it's a race against time to develop the technologies and resources for adding atmosphere back to the planet. On their homeworld, a gas giant, native plants and animals balance the ecosystem by producing atmosphere, but even that isn't enough to support a fast growing civilization. The jellies are creatures of curiosity, which fuels their motivation for research, and their society promotes a balanced governmental authority. They tend to be avid traders and economists and are very welcoming, but their high atmospheric environment is inhospitable to most races, hindering tourism and immigration. Their terraforming methods are very effective, but their needs for atmosphere always put a damper on any terraforming effects. When colonizing a low atmospheric planet, they build bubble-like structures on the ground that rise into the sky as the planet's atmosphere increases. These bubbles need to be attached to one another so that jellies can travel inside of them, because they lack the technology to develop environmental suits to walk outside on those planets. The jellies also use different animals from their homeworld to collect resources and morph into structures.

Difficulty: medium
Production potential: average
Main building resource: atmosphere
Terraforming Potential: high
Economic potential: the best out of all races
Governmental potential: average
research potential: very high
growth rate: very high
Tourist potential: very low
Food and water production: the least efficient out of all races
Micromanagement needs at beginning of game: depends on the planet.
Colonist eats: atmosphere
Colonist entertained by: regular entertainment
building method: worker animals are morphed into structures and cannot be helped by other workers, this causes a slower build speed.
optimum atmosphere range: 10-100 mil
Colonizable atmosphere range: 0-100

4.) Snowmen
Description: A younger race, the snowmen live in smaller tribes and work together to expand their reach. They look like yeti with thick white fur, but don't let them fool you, they are crafty. They thrive in taiga environments where wood and snow abound, but they have difficulty working and moving in warmer environments. They were uplifted and given space travel technology by this LIS, but they were never given the technology to colonize planets that aren't within the 1 mil to 15 mil range. Their tribal form of government makes it hard for them to form a strong government and they aren't recognized as advanced enough to be taken seriously by most space-faring races. Some people even keep them as slaves to do their work. As a result, the snowmen are cynical and inhospitable toward outsiders and have trouble accepting anyone of another race into their society. They devote all of their time to gathering resources and materials for building up the colony because they long to be recognized as an official space-faring race. Their mass production plans require many many jobs though due to their primitive machines and buildings, and this race has average growth, so progress through the game will be slower.

Difficulty: hard-brutal
Production potential: high
Main building resource: wood
Terraforming Potential: average
Economic potential: the least of all the races
Governmental potential: low
research potential: the best out of all races
growth rate: average
Tourist potential: the least out of all races
Food and water production: average
Micromanagement needs at beginning of game: high
Colonist eats: food, water
Colonist entertained by: primitive and human-like entertainment
building method: built by workers/vehicles like xolarg and humans build.
optimum atmosphere range: 1-10 mil
Colonizable atmosphere range: 1-10 mil

4.) Ancients
Description: Those purple buildings that you see in every advanced colony; yeah, they came from these guys. The most advanced race in the game, most ancients see all other races as inferior to them and usually won't trade with other races unless they have to. This god complex makes them too arrogant to see their mistakes or to try to improve their technology and they are more than willing to invite outsiders from primitive races to bask in the glory of their technology. As the most advanced race, they are inherently the best at resource production. Their buildings are more autonomous as well, but the ancients only mate once a year, so they are the slowest growing of all races. Their government is pretty effective due to the use of more advanced technology to enforce laws, but providing entertainment will be harder since these people require more intelligent entertainment that usually costs more. Every ancient would love to live in a paradise, so terraforming is a higher priority, especially since the ancient can only tollerate a 7.5-12.5 mil atmosphere range is required for ancients to survive without protection.

Difficulty: hard-brutal
Production potential: the best of all races
Main building resource: ore
Terraforming Potential: high
Economic potential: low
Governmental potential: high
research potential: low
growth rate: slowest of all races
Tourist potential: average
Food and water production: high
Micromanagement needs at beginning of game: low, but slow growth rate means that game progress takes the longest.
Colonist eats: food, water
Colonist entertained by: more intelligent entertainment
building method: buildings warped in like reptilians
Optimum atmosphere range: 7.5-12.5 mil
Colonizable atmosphere range: 0-100 mil

6.) Tallorians/rock men
Description: As Sulfur-based lifeforms, the tallorians survive and thrive in the hottest places of the galaxy. Their rocky exoskeletons protect them from any envorinment, but they prefer a hotter, higher atmosphere planet like their homeworld. The wildlife and spectacular views on rock men planets attracts attention from tourism and the rock men make a killing off of novelties. The rock men promote a balanced government, terraforming, and research stance and they have a stellar economy, but where they have an abundance of attention and money, they lack in production and growth.They have a somewhat similar technology to humans, but they use less resources as they are not a production focused raced.

Difficulty: medium-hard
Production potential: low
Main building resource: regolith
Terraforming Potential: average
Economic potential: very high
Governmental potential: average
research potential: average
growth rate: low
Tourist potential: Very high
Food and water production: very low
Micromanagement needs at beginning of game: medium
Colonist eats: ore
Colonist entertained by: human-like entertainment,
building method: buildings warped in like reptilians
Optimum atmosphere range: 20-40 mil
Colonizable atmosphere range: 0-100 mil

Ansom said:

Maps with low gravity, should have a decrease atmosphere coefficient every min, map with high gravity should be very hard to decrease atmosphere.

Asteroid: no way someone cold build air in this condition.. at least without a big overlying shield.
Decrease coefficient 100% (all air produced disappears)

Lunar: very very hard to increase air, but.. in some moon (not earth moon), is possible with huge effort.
Decrease coefficient 50%

Red Planet: Mars don't have earth gravity (and other stuff, like a magnetic poll.. and other UV shields, even with air we will fry without suit), but with some effort is possible.
Decrease coefficient 20%

Earthlike planet (eartlike, forest world, sugarland, ice world, desert world, water world), all planet similar to the earth, should be just fine.
No coefficient, all the air remain on the planet


Abandoned world: i don't know why, but i am imagine this planet, like a huge planet
In this case, when the planet have more earth gravity, the decrease atmosphere building should have a penalty.

Lava World:
The worse planet, in this situation should be impossible to decrease atmosphere, since will be the planet in self to produce it.

Hi @Ansom!
Really like your idea about it!
BUT very sure you’ll need something to resist the atmosphere penality in order to protect your colony...
So here I would suggest something here:
Electromagnetic AtmoDome Generator
Decreases the atmosphere loss penality by 20%.
Eliminates the self-atmosphere generation effect of the planet on the colony.
For Alpha Dracos and Insectnoids...
Atmo-Magnet
Atmosphere Trap Projector Node
They also do similar things.

Also, with something like a planetary gravity adjuster to 100% eliminate all sorts of atmosphere penality.

Hello @bastecklein !

I'm having an idea to have a civilization game in a My Colony fashion.

The perspectives will no longer be on one planet anymore, we're putting it into the galaxy.
YES, IN THIS SUPER-WIDE GALAXY!

It's kind of like My Starships game, except what you control is a superpower in the galaxy instead of a ship.
Players will play as one of the four major civilizations - United Earth, League of Independent States, Zolarg Empire and Alpha Draconians.
Like civilization games, we develop cities (planets), conduct researches, advance to the new era, explore the galaxy, and conquer new systems.

Except... You can only settle new cities on new planets.
And only three structures you can build in the open space: Extraction Outpost (on resource fields like gas reservoirs and asteroid fields), Spacestation (for defensive, sentry and fleet supply use) and Starbase (advanced Spacestation).

Resources are also featured in the game... AS USUAL!
City yields:

• Food 🌽 - for local population growth.
• Production ⚙️ - Industrial productions which are needed in all kinds of constructions locally.
• Credits 💰 - For maintaining some districts and all military of your empire. If you wanna shorten the construction time to one turn, this is also where you'll use them.
• Civics 🏛️ - Expands political territory in the space, as well as accumulated for implementing empire-wide policies.
• Research ⚗️ - What else a document of knowledge can do except creating innovations for your empire?
• Stability 🚩 - You'll always want your planets to be stable and riot-less.
• Energy ⚡ - Some advanced districts needs energy to keep running.

The next thing to introduce is the combat system.
Combats has two types. One being starship battle, another one being ground battle (on planet).
The former one would be (supposed) the most common battles you may encounter. The later one only occurs when you bring troopers to invade the planet.
To take over a planet, the fleet battle must be won first. If the fleet battle is won, troopers will deal with ground forces - that's the ground battle. If defender planet loses both battles, the planet will change hands. Of course, some districts are destroyed and some resisting population will die in the takeover.
If you only bring starships to intrude a planet, after winning the fleet battle, the planet will only get blockaded (trade route blocked), and the starships can only bombard the planet when told to. Bombardment kills population, and also have chance to kill ground forces and destroy districts on the planet.
Some defensive structures helps repel invasions. For example, global shield reduces bombardment efficiency, ground defense networks boosts defending troopers' ability, minefields and GSW (Ground-to-Space-Weapons) damages enemy bombarding ships as well as weakening incoming ground attacks.

Now let's talk about another gameplay concept - Empire-wide policies.
Policies costs accumulated civics to implement. They'll provide buffs, instead of unlocking items.
Such as, Free Thoughts policy provides extra 0.5 Research yields per 1M population, and Militias policy boosts ground defense by 10% per 5M population.

My ideas will end here, and hopefully this can bring you some help expanding Ape Apps game collections, or just simply helps!

Hello guys!

My Colony 2 (MC2) is currently under development which will utilize the brand new 3D engine.
In other word:
MY COLONY INTO 3D!
notes: It is a different game, not a direct successor of the current My Colony.


About the new 3D engine and Voxel Models
The first practical 3D engine utilisation was first tested in another game by @bastecklein, My Empire.
You'll found the models and textures in the new 3D engine looks quite blocky which the blockyness (...?) can be compared to Minecraft. The style is called Voxel.
One of the reasons for Bastecklein adopting voxel models is that it is easier for players to build their own model brick by brick, instead of entering hundreds of parameters to produce a single model.

This is a footage of My Empire. Looks promising, right?


MC2 and Voxel Models
One of the innovative change of MC2 over MC1 is the game supports more possibilities of modding, allowing players to customize their game from resources to buildings, from their attributes to their in-game appearance.
The render for colonists, rovers and buildings will also be voxel models - You can even use your own!

A demonstration of how the game could look like. Not an in-game render.


How to make your own voxel model
Bastecklein has also prepared an app dedicated for creating voxel models for new 3D games, including MC2, and their modding features:Voxel Paint.
Easy to use, it is accessible to anybody at different platforms, from your mobile to PC and laptops, either the web version or you can download the app if you wish to edit them offline.
Currently it is just a simple app, there are lots of rooms for improvement. If you think of something that can make Voxel Paint better, don't forget to drop your idea in the official Voxel Paint forum!


Hopefully you'll find this post helpful!

Hello guys!

Recently, I'm feeling there are some needs for simplifying the shapes of voxel models.
I was thinking if we have a full screen of models with complicated shapes, it might be eye-pain to users.
So for user friendly purpose, I'm planning on extensive modifications on my voxel models.

The main parts will be simplifying and smoothing the shape of the voxel models.


Only voxel models from me will be modified.

While working on My Colony 2, I used one of @GeneralWadaling 's .vpp models of a large shuttle landing pad which was a 7x7 tile model (112x112 in Voxel Paint). Importing the model into My Colony 2 on my computer (no slouch, a Ryzen 9 3900x) took almost an entire minute, in which time the game was frozen.

Obviously this is not going to work in a production game, so an alternative had to be found. If you look at the current beta of voxel paint, (v1.7.0 beta: https://www.apewebapps.com/voxel-paint/beta/, I have added a new option to precompile your model while exporting, found in the File menu. Precompiling calculates all of the models geometry data beforehand, compresses it, and stores it into the .vpp file. This process takes a minute, and greatly increases the size of the model (the above mentioned landing pad went from 450kb to 1.4mb), however for larger models, the size tradeoff might be worth the compile time.

After using the precompiled model in the game, the time required for My Colony 2 to render the landing pad went from almost a minute down to almost instantly.

I am still working on the precompiling information, for instance it currently does not work with the model color-replacement engine, but for large models, it will make sense to compile the data beforehand. On smaller models, I would recommend not compiling them and letting the game engine do it at runtime, since it gives the engine more control over the how the model is rendered. But for large complete items, precompiling will be the only way.

The size tradeoff is a big deal though, especially in My Colony 2, where clients download customized data directly from the server.

This are the current planetary and racial ideas that I have. The purpose of this list is to make it easy to find my ideas without having to go to each topic.

Toxic/trash Planet: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=29285
The Bog: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=28960
Space Platform/Dyson sphere: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=28843
Desert/arid : https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=14302
Twilight planet/ twilight idea for abandoned planet: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=25865
Blast furnace/mercury planet: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=15239
Blast furnace revamped: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=30528
Planet Terraformation ideas and venus planet: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=3932
lava world ideas: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=12913
Ice World Ideas: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=14299
Race ideas: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=5389
water body and sea level ideas: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=14672
Living Planet: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=30021
Jungle Planet: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=33448

Ideas regarding all of the existing planets, and some ideas that apply to all planets, both in existence and those in idea form: https://www.ape-apps.com/viewpage.php?p=29587

I'll continue to add more as I find my older topics or when I create new ones.

Hello Captains!

Here I am proudly presenting a fan guide for the starship game in My Colony Universe - My Starship.


Background of My Starship

My Starship takes place in the era that colonization of the 4 galactic powers - United Earth, League of Independent States, Zolarg Empire and Alpha Draconians, gradually occupied most corners of the galaxy, which the galactic powers will have more interaction between. Trade, commerce, diplomatic missions, or war.
The new era of new possibilities are providing irreplaceable opportunities for those who dreamed to own a starship. Now, you're one of them - How would you write your legend as a starship captain?

What you can do in the v0.14.0 version of the game

This game has lots of planned features but not all of them have been implemented yet. You can check the overall development progress of the game here.

In v0.14.0....

• You can accept contacts and missions (that could possibly change the galaxy) from planets to earn yourself primarily some handy cash... And reputation in a long run.
• Trade resources to earn profit - which will also boost the industrial development of the planets!
• If you wish to be a space pirate, here you goes - You can raid ships and plunder their cargos (if you can maintain the ship's integrity and they can surrender).
• Are you a collector? Why not have a full collection of ships from all corners of the galaxy!

Out of fuel? Advices on fuel management!

In this game, you'll always need to keep an eye on your fuel meter. Transversing over the galaxy will need quite a lot of fuel.
And what would be the fuel? Uranium.
If your ship is out of fuel, you are immobilized. But if you're lucky, you'll find some uranium tanker ships (yet only United Earth has this type of vessels) coming to solve your desperate situation, offering you some cheap fuel deals when they bypass.
If you planned on a long range trip, you'll probably want to buy a bulk of fuel just in case. Or you can also refuel along your trip route if the planets can offer the fuels.

Resources in the game

Resources are still one of the core elements of the game. They are not only goods to make wealth, your starship will need some of them too.
Raw resources are indicated by [RAW] here. They can produce without industries.

• Food [RAW]
  

  Who want some patties?

  
  Food, of course, are important - vital to anybody's survival. At this version, food is only a commercial good only needed by inhabited planets, but expect more in later updates - they will also be what your ship crews (and yourself) needed.
• Water [RAW]
  

  H2O.

  
  Like food, they are vital basic supplies. And yes, water will also be one of the necessities on your starship in future versions.
• Rum
  

  You jub?

  
  These strong alcoholic drinks are still popular in the galaxy. At this moment, a commercial good. In the future, starship crew happiness upkeep cost.
• Uranium [RAW]
  

  Let's just top off my fuel tanks with some fresh uranium today.

  
  Every starship in the game uses nuclear engines for powering the ship up, Uranium will be used as a fuel. Always keep an eye on the fuel meter, you'll never want your ship adrift in the dark space alone.
• Starship Parts
  

  Hey! Who have taken my hyperdrive away! That's reserved for a customer!

  
  Starship parts are necessary resources for upgrading your ship, as well constructing new ships in space docks of some planets.
• Ore [RAW]
  One of the most common industrial raw material. What else I can say?
• Gold [RAW]
  Gold. Not only they are valuable because they are shiny, but also a raw ingredient for creating modern electronic components.
• Steel
  Basically processed ore.
• Aluminium [RAW]
  A vital construction material for starting high tier industries.
• Oil [RAW]
  Though they are less common fuel nowadays, they are still important for creating plastics.
• Plastic
  In current version it is not yet used by any industries.
• Microchips
  One of the vital construction material for constructing any industries, as well used in high end products like starship parts.
• Spices [RAW]
  A recently added new resource with high price. Not sure what it is for.

Starships in the game

Every civilization will have different starships, from small cargo ships to military vessels. Here I'll introduce some concepts about them.

Let's begin with the statistics of a starship.

• Hull Plating is the raw hitpoints of a starship. It will not regenerate, so if your ship is damaged you can only recover by having some repairs at space docks.
  If your hull integrity reached 0, game over.
• Speed rating affects how fast your starship can travel, and also the fuel efficiency (since fuel consumption is counted by traveling time length instead of distance).
• Fuel tank capacity is a special cargo space for fuel (uranium) only. Uranium in fuel tanks will not occupy rooms of the main cargo bay on the ship.
• Cargo capacity shows the maximum cargo you can have on your ship, excluding fuel that are already inside the fuel tank.
• Shields are primary, regenerative protection barriers of your ship. They can absorb a proportion of damage in combats as long as the shield does not go down.
• Attack Rating refers to your attack strength in the combat.
• Radar Range defines working radius for detecting nearby ships.
• Communication Range defines how far you can recieve the rough information of the planet, primarily fuel availability on the planet.
• Hanger Bay capacity defines how many minor vessels your ship can carry. Not yet used in v0.14.0.
• Passenger Capacity defines how many guests you can carry in your ship - which affects the types of requests you can recieve.

Now, I'll introduce the special types of vessels.

• Government Ships are ships that represents and defends a planet, or the civilization of it belongs if it comes from the capital city of a civilization. If you saved them from adrift, you'll earn some reputation especially on the home planet of the adrift vessel. If you raided them, you'll have a bad name.
• Uranium Tankers are ships for primarily transporting uranium around the planets of its home faction. They will also respond to any adrift vessels they have spotted.

Last but not least, the special features of starships of each faction.
Ships of United Earth and League of Independent States usually have better hull plating than other factions, otherwise they have very average performance.
Most of Zolarg Empire's vessels may not have quality and requires more ship crews to run, however are more modifiable than others, and they can carry more cargo.
Alpha Draconian starships are small and lightly armored, but they are more nimble, equipped with more powerful weapons, and most importantly, all ships are equipped with regenerative shields. They are the least modifiable, though.


Industries on the Planets

The planets will build up industries according to primarily their available resource stocks and secondarily what they can produce at the moment.
Rum Distillery will always be built, however. No matter do they lack food and water or not.
If the planet produces ores, they will probably build a ore refinery to produce steel.
Some industries like Ore Fracking and Gold Synth. Labs can produces raw resources that the planet does not produce. Planets may choose to build them.
Sometimes they will try build other industries that they don't have the raw resources to run, but they are usually high tier industries.

The demand from the industry can affect the commodity prices on the planet.
Based on this, you can actually create extra business opportunities yourself. If you are able to invest some resources like ores, steel and microchips onto this planet, you can sell other resource on the invested planet for larger profit later when new industries have been constructed.


Time for some quests!

Doing contracts and tasks can be a good start. The initial cost only comes from the fuel, but you can earn big money if you can complete them on time and successfully.
Some quests can be unstable, though. There are possibilities of a additional follow-up quests, which it will be a good bonus additional. You'll also have chance to fail the quests as some accidents takes place. This can affect the fate of your journey - will it end it here with a death warrant, or there will be a twist?
The outcome of a quest will not be simply money payments. It will affect your relations with the stakeholders of the event, either positively or negatively.


Hopefully the guide can help you enjoying the game. Thank you.

Hi, guys! I would like the developer (@bastecklein) to work on a planet terraforming game. It will be in the My Colony Universe, and it will be titled "My Paradise". The title is not to be confused with My Planet, but it will be where you terraform a world to paradise stats, or within 5% of the goal. The goal is to build stuff while surviving on the planet. Here is the rationale: The player starts on an barren, randomly generated planet, with the following world types:
[*]Barren: All stats except temperature are 0. (45% chance)
[**]Will have a 30% chance to be cratered.
[*]Low Oxygen: Planet already has an atmosphere (0-2 bars), with an oxygen level lower than 210 ‰* (210K ppm). (15% chance)
[*]High Oxygen: Planet already has an atmosphere (0-2 bars), with an oxygen level higher than 210 ‰* (210K ppm).
[*]High Atmosphere: Planet has an atmospheric pressure over 1 bar (100 kPa). (7% chance)
[*]Native plants: Planet has an acceptable condition of the following:
[**]Water: 37.5% to 75%
[**]Oxygen: 120 ‰* to 320 ‰*
[**]Atmosphere: 0.1 bar to 1.9 bar
[**]Temperature: 252 K to 374 K
(25%
[*]Natives: May be these factions: Independent State, Zolarg Prime, Alpha Draconians. (25% chance)
[*]High/Low water: Water level is higher/lower than the ideal. (8% chance)
[*]Lava World: Has temperature of 1,500 K or greater. Very rarely has an atmosphere lesser than 5 bars. (4% chance [0.1% chance to have a lower atmosphere])
More will be shown later due to size! Thank you! Reply anytime! Later!

Prepare for a wall of text, throwing this to see what sticks, what doesn't.
As usual, the cost, speed, and other stats of suggested things can be and are up to the developer.

Bold names are whole Ideas, with underlined Names being each part of that idea if it has more than one.

More Reptilian Probes
The Reptilians, I feel, should eventually just move from slave labor to a mechanized workforce.
As a result, I'd like to suggest more types of Probes.

Ore Probe
Alt Name(s): Ore Mining Probe
Description: Those pesky Eruption Ores are no longer out of reach!

Purpose: To mine Ore deposits, main point of this though is that the Probe can move over obsidian and lava to get at ore deposits in the direct middle of lava planet eruptions.

Obsidian Probe
Alt Names(s): Obsidian Cutting Probe (Name is as such due to how Obsidian is irl "mined" and it's with cutting/scalpel and piercing tools).
Description: Clear lava fields of Obsidian with ease!

Purpose: To mine Obsidian deposits, like the Ore Probe, it's mainly more for going where bugs cannot.

Diabolic Probe
Alt Names(s): Crystalline Probe, Crystal Cutting Probe (I imagine Crystalline to be glass-like, only a bit tougher, but still capable of fracturing into shards and pointy edges.)
Description: Your bugs are doing a passable job. now do an amazing job of mining Crystalline.

Purpose: Again, mainly suggested for the hovering, but also this Probe will have a far higher carry capacity, to help accommodate for the fact that crystalline on lava planets eventually just gets out of control, or to help fill your storage even faster, depending on whatever PoV fits the reptilians best.

Aluminum Probe
Description: Harvest Aluminum in places Bugs can't go!

Purpose: Hovers, lets you harvest Aluminum after eruptions.

Gold Probe
Description: Collect that shiny, shiny gold in places too hazardous for Bugs.

Purpose: Hovers, can Harvest gold in lava fields.

Have a Probe for just basically every deposit a reptilian could ever need one for. I alos mention hovering, because it what Probes look like they do, even if they're probly more just flying. Probes can't do insectoid operations, however.

Faster Probes
Probes, IMO are too slow. I feel it should have the advantage of Pavement speed boosts, only all the time, since they fly. I'd like their main purpose to be an almost total replacement of your workforce for more efficient and better units. But in this process, they'd lose all bonuses for paths, save for...

Gravity-Controlled Lanes
I'd also like a special type of path that only works with probes and other Hover/Flying units, but doubles their speed, or something close to it, and infact works as an obstacle for anything that can't fly or hover, by reducing speed by just as much, with a max decrease in speed resulting in a total of 0.2 units of speed. but that's more just for consideration than a real wishlist item.
For visuals, it'd look like a purple tile with a blue glow coming off it. For stats, I figure it'd take like 50 power a piece, and would give off alot of light too. Or not.

Macrocondenser
Purpose: Literally just a 2x2 version of the Microcondenser, only far more powerful for water production, for those colonies that might one day just be building microcondensers like they're nothing.

Gold/Aluminum Grow Bed
Description: With the power of overpowered Science, placing ore, water, crystalline, and gold, somehow creates... more gold, but also aluminum!
Purpose: A combo of a gold Grower and an Aluminum Grower, but now it's either 2x2, or 3x3.

Water Pools resist Eruptions

I don't mean it'll STOP them, but it makes it less likely that an eruption happens within 8 tiles but only in locations where there's 3 tiles of water all around one tile of water.
If an eruption cannot happen because Water Pools are all blocking it from happening, the Eruption happens where the least water pools are located, the blocking effect is ignored.

Water Pools and Lava will constantly clash if directly next to one another and both are filled enough to visibly touch, reducing lava count, but also eventually destroying water pools to create obsidian.

Lava Repulsion Matrix
Description: After spending so long on such a hostile environment, robotics-enhanced and enslaved insectoids have finally created something to repel lava!

Purpose: Literally does what it says, repels lava, forcing it away rather quickly, but costing stupid amounts of energy, and it's 3x3, but has excessive range.
Or, dev, you can imagine it's a "build One" type of deal with less power usage. Sort of like a Capitol in a United Earth Colony, only it's not the government building.
Works on eruptions as well, preventing them within a smaller range.
Very Expensive though compared to everything else, and requires a large workforce, I'm thinking, someplace in the 1K-10K range of Workers.

Hell, it could be 5x5 and probly still be worth it imo, it'd be like a Wonder, takes ridiculous amounts of stuff to make, but gives you really good benefits.

Incomplete Artificial Planet
Difficulty: A Literal Nightmare.
Description: You know nothing of Difficulty.

Resources: Steel Mounds, Aluminum Piles, Circuit Cases.
Obstacles: Pits, 0 Starting Atmosphere, and a constant reduction of Atmosphere of 1 Billion/Million per second, Very little starting resources on even Abundant settings.

Factions: Only Reptilians, OR, a purely mechanical new faction later down the road (if that'll ever happen.) I'm thinking... some kind of race that salvages other tech and canonically feared by all, even the Reptilians, due to how they literally cannibalize technology and only live in ship graveyards, or remnants of gigantic space husks of abandoned super-projects.
This faction, in my mind, would be sorta like raggedy metal robot zombies, like maybe destroyed or malfunctioning robots possessed by souls of various other factions? Could even be a horrifying remnant of the "Aliens" faction referenced by alot of United Earth and LIS buildings.
The starting unit would probably fly, with all early and even mid-game buildings looking sort of crappy and disheveled, with the motto "It just works" behind all art design, until the late-game structures which look pristine and VERY chunky/tough.

Rundown: This planet can only gain deposits from meteors landing at purely random locations, with no real discrimination when it comes to map edges, meaning corners aren't safe, unlike in Lava Planets.
Everytime a Meteor lands, it creates pit randomly, but where it doesn't, it creates various metal-based deposits and purely at random. Sometimes none is created, and alot of Pit tiles are placed instead.
A Pit is a useless tile that represents that there's literally nothing there but darkness and space. it can be replaced, but the tile to do so is very expensive.

However, wreckages could also crash into the map, creating either absurd amounts of material of only durable goods and nothing raw beyond Oil, but having a massive range to the affected area, if anything, make it so it's always blobby-in shape for spawned material piles.

Pits would spawn like massive rivers to begin with.

The Size of the map as it currently is, will increase the likelihood of meteors or wreckages smacking into the map area. Reason I don't say wreckages wouldn't make pits, is because something like the framework for a planet to give it it's gravity, a ship or even station wreck crashing into it, would stick into said framework, since said framework has to be MILES in depth.
But the Pits spawn semi-frequently, but become way more common as you increase past say... a Small map size. Pits will spawn even MORE excessively if you expand the map border.

If it was possible, I'd have an ability for the base tile type to be changed, as if making a path, but without actually blocking building upon it. Purpose of this would be to make it so that you can repair the framework, complete the artificial planet, and then just create a death planet or something, I dunno, while more complete tile types would result in both faster movement speed, building ontop of them, AND resistance to pits forming to replace said tiles.

Forgot to mention, this planet will occasionally be hit by Asteroids, which will create Lava, that after a while, create pits, unless Water pools, at that point do as I suggest, and create obsidian at the expense of sacrificing lava tiles. Asteroids will create stupid large holes of pits, but they are VERY rare, with all sorts of materials forming a wall around said holes.

Strategy: The whole map would be about placing structures at random and scattered all over, while hoarding stupid amounts of resources as all kinds crash about, with really no real sort of safe areas coming along until far in the tech tree.

Purpose: For the Ultimate Difficulty. The place would look like the framework for a low-class artificial planet left to collect dust in space, but has since drifted to the very tips of the galaxy, or even universe, which is why Pits are a solid black color.
It's to test if someone can truly move on their toes and adapt to any situation. And to also make the stubborn and masochistic suffer. >:D

Note: If this does get added to a secret list of "Things I'd love to add" then I promise, I will contribute to most if not all of the art assets, you just worry about the actual operation of the thing. :3

Upgrade Menu
A button in the bottom left of the screen, always there, but not always filled via the menu that comes up if you click on it.

It's a scroll menu, with a bar ofcourse, and it only displays in each item the [Original Building] with an arrow next to it pointing to the [Upgraded Building] and a Button next to that for Upgrade One, with the resources indicated near or on/under said button, black text being that it's all good, you can upgrade fully, and easily, and red text indicating that you can't upgrade it fully
One more button next to that, the same thing, but for Upgrade All.

Purpose of this is to allow players a way of easily viewing upgrades they have tech-access to. This includes buildings they have no resources for.

You can start the upgrade building process even with not enough resources, but a dialog could warn you that it's a bad idea if the building is crucial and you can live without it until construction is done.

Allow construction of a building without the needed resources
I never got why I can't do this tbh, I can queue up more than I can build, if I have the resources to build only one of say... vehicles, workers, or buildings.

Multiple Levels for Reptilian Government Building
I forgot the name, Sorry ^^;

Uses for Lava
This isn't even an idea to only pertain to Reptilians, I feel any that have access to the Lava World relate to this.
I think beyond waiting for it to cool into obsidian, you could use it in the late-game to collect as a resource and convert it into other resources you can't get in a Lava World, but with a ratio of at least or at most 1,000:1 of Lava into any resource not mined on Lava Planets.

Lock Obsidiobugs behind Lava World Start tech
You can't get Lava in an Ice or Desert World.

Lava Worlds can't change Atmosphere
It's not possible to reduce it visually below 500 Million, since you don't need alot of condensers, at least not atm, but with eruptions going off basically all the time, this would make sense. This way, you also don't need to balance consumption of atmosphere of Lava Worlds for new buildings, although you'd have to take Desert worlds into consideration, unless Lava Worlds got their own specialized, more unhinged condensers past the Microcondenser if that is ever a thing.

Replace Landing Pod with Surface Habitat Vessel with Human factions on inhospitable worlds. If Humans will ever get that kind of treatment to be allowed onto Ice and Lava Worlds, this is maybe how you could do it.

That's all the ideas I can both remember, and think of at the moment. Enjoying the game even still, not been too active on here, mainly due to being a tiny bit busy/distracted.

I have started putting together an early concept for a new game I have been thinking about for a few years now called My Starship, which is loosely modeled on an old Android game I used to play called Star Traders RPG. In My Starship, you captain a ship and must make money by conducting favorable trades between colonies and by going on missions for the various planetary governments. The game map, planets, missions, and interplanetary relations are all procedurally generated, and no two playthroughs will ever be the same. You can find up to date download links at the following address, or try the game on the Ape Apps Launcher.

http://apps.ape-apps.com/my-starship/

The game is currently in a very early beta state, and as of yet, there is still not much to do. The purpose of this thread is to take comments and suggestions of things to add to the game. I will also keep this post updated with my current plans/to-do/progress list. I want to say up front though, that there are no plans to tie My Starship in to the My Colony server. I have decided that this would be better off as a stand-alone game.

The purpose of this early beta is to get feedback and suggestions on where to take the game, and also to guage interest so I can know how much time to put into development. The beta will be available for testing on Web, Android, Desktop, and Windows 10 at first, with an iOS release coming once the game is further along.

Current Build: v0.15.0

Current To-Do List (in no particular order):

• Save game progress.
• Choose your own starting civilization and ship, captain name, ship color, etc.
• Interaction with other ships, including trade, missions, battle, piracy, capture, etc.
• Captain skills progression, stats, leveling up, etc.
• Planet stardocks with ship upgrades, buy/sell new ships, ship repairs, etc.
• Resource harvesting on empty planets.
• Distress call when ship out of fuel, or:
• Escape pod when ship out of fuel or loses a battle.
• Attack, bombard, or blockade a planet.
• Capture, take control of a planet and it's industrial output.
• Hire starship crew, manage crew relations, keep them happy, prevent mutiny.
• Factories on planets which produce additional resources. Planets AI automatically upgrade themselves, conduct their own trades with passing ships.
• Military ships controlled by the main factions which patrol their own space, protect their colonies, respond to distress calls.
• Gamepad + Android TV/Amazon Fire TV/Xbox One support
• Local (LAN/Wifi) Multiplayer

So here you can see my basic idea, what I am/will be working on, and the general direction I see for this concept as of right now. Everything is subject to change based on player feedback. I am basically working on this game because it is something that I personally want to play. The purpose of releasing the concept is to see whether or not others want to play something like this as well, which will determine how much time and effort I want to put into the idea. This is similar to the approach I used when creating My Colony, and as a whole, I think that it turned out alright.

So anyway, this thread is the place for all things My Starship related, as of right now. I will be embedding a link to the thread from within the game, and will be keeping the top post updated as I make progress and updates to the game. If the idea gains any users or traction, I will upgrade it to it's own forum section, but it is really not necessary at the moment. I plan on working on the game every week or so, or whenever I have time. That will increase or decrease based on the reception (or lack thereof) of the concept. Enjoy!


Changelog

20210418 - v0.15.0
Added some Chinese translations
Updated menu icons to conform to ADL
Addressed "Cargo is Full" bug
Added Harvest Resources to the planet popup window on uninhabited planets

20200922 - v0.14.0
AI fuel tankers now have a chance to just get more fuel
Player is now warned if cargo is full while harvesting
Added Aluminum requirement to the Uranium Enrichment Facility
Started migrating ship stats screen format into a My Colony-like general stats window
New Resources Added:
- Spice
- Oil
- Plastic
Added Factory:
- Plastic Factory

20200508 - v0.13.0
You can no longer buy/steal goods above your cargo hold space
New Upgrades Added:
- Shield Module Mk2
- Torpedo Tubes
New Ships Added:
- Strut MkVI
- Torpedojager
- Draconian Destroyer
New Resource Added:
- Aluminum

20191118 - v0.12.0
Planets in comm range will show a fuel icon now if they have available fuel for sale
Added a 'Quick Refuel' option to planet options box
Expanded information on the Ship Stats screen
Ships can now travel at diagonal angles

20191010 - v0.11.0
Added Combat!
- You can attack anyship you come across
- Each attack turn you can Fight, try to Run, or attempt to Board
- Boarding let's you take their resources
Added Captain game object, each ship now represented by a Captain
Captains are pulled from roaming tokens from My Tokens
Player automatically assigned to their account default Token
Ships for sale at dock are now sorted by price
Docks now offer starship repair services
Planets now show civilization, contracts, and dock indicators
Civilization capitol now shows an indicator
When zoomed out, Map shows current ship marker and lines between civs
The Planet Stats popup now finally works
Added a pending contract display to the main hud

20190826 - v0.10.0
Planets with a Dock and enough money/parts will now construct new starships
Planets will commission new starships under their flag
You can now buy new starships from the Docks of a planet that has starship inventory
You can now only see other ships that are in your radar range
You can now harvest natural resources from uninhabited planets
- the AI ships will also do this
Ships out of fuel (including yours) will now send out a distress signal within their communications range
AI fuel tankers and government ships will now respond to distress calls
AI ships will now trade with each other
Added back button handling (for devices with a back button)
New ship classes:
- Galactic Freight Hauler
- Galactic Freight Heavy
- Space Jumper
New upgrade modules:
- Shield Module
- Laser Cannons
- Small Hangar Bay
- Guest Pod
- Improved Radar
- Transceiver Upgrade
Added Factories:
- Uranium Enrichment Facility
- Gold Synthesis Lab
- Ore Fraking Operation

20190301 - v0.9.0
Minor bug fix release

20180925 - v0.8.0
Planets will now build Ports when they have the resources
AI ships now conduct expanded business with planets
Fuel Tankers now purchase significantly more fuel from planets
Ships can now purchase upgrades from star ports
First upgrades are:
- Hyperdrive Upgrade
- Cargo Pods
- Hull Plating

20180825 - v0.7.0
Last saved game now appears on title screen
Added Factories, which planets will automatically construct when they meet certain conditions
First factories are:
- Ore Refinery
- Microchip Factory
- Rum Distillery
- Starship Parts Factory
Added Resource:
- Starship Parts

20180611 - v0.6.0
Games can now be saved/loaded
User now prompted to name ship at new game
Civilization governments now start with their own ship fleets
Changes to AI ship movement, destination selection
Government ships will not do quests, but will conduct trades between other government planets
Independent traders will now trade in other goods besides fuel, if the price is good
Added Ship Classes:
- Light Fighter
- Patrouilleschip
- Draconian Patrol
New Missions:
- Compromising Position
- No Laughing Matter
- Emergency Treatment

20180512 - v0.5.0
Implemented Gamepad control support
You can now interact with planets that are within 1 tile by clicking/tapping on them
Added new Ship Stats screen
You can now rename your ship
You can now change ship color
AI ships are now assigned a random ship color
Different ship classes can now start with specific resource overrides
Added Ship Classes:
- Klein Vrachtschip
- Draconian Cutter
- Uranium Tanker
New Missions:
- Conspiracy
- Proof of Loyalty
- Death Celebration
- Body Part Delivery
- Trojan Horse Attack
- Making Amends

20180507 - v0.4.0
Bug fixes
Engine now supports "Linked" missions
Contract timeout fails now work
Added 'Pending Contracts' option to main menu
Added Missions:
- Starvation
- Poisonous Revenge
- Wedding Delivery
Added Ship Classes:
- Delta Runner

20180503 - v0.3.0
Added Ship Contact screen when coming in contact with another ship
Can now conduct ship to ship trades
Global resource prices now slowly and randomly fluctuate over time
Raised the number of independent traders in the galaxy
Game ticks now keep happening when ship runs out of fuel
New planet type: Water World

20180430 - v0.2.0
Resource icon now shows up on trade menus
Changed the Fuel/Cargo readout bars on larger screens
Starting AI merchant ships are now picked from a random ship class
Added Settings button to the top UI bar
Added Resources:
- Ore
- Gold
- Steel
- Microchip
Added Ship Class:
- Draconian Sloop
- Ruimteschip
Added Mission:
- Rum Party

I was thinking about the abandoned planet for LIS and I thought of a brilliant idea. This idea was also inspired by the Protoss dessert planet Shakuras, which hangs forever between night and day. Of course, Blizzard didn't invent the word or meaning of twilight so their shouldn't be any worries of copywrite infringement. But the idea is to turn the abandoned world into a twilight world. It would give off a more mystic vibe that would go well with the abandoned world theme.

To pull off this effect, I would make the default settings for this planet a brightness that is neither as bright as day nor as dark as night, but forever in-between. I would also add a pinkish hue to simulate an eternal sunset, where pinkish, redish, and orangish colors abound and reflect off of every surface.

The never-ending twilight can drive your colonists insane and completely knock their internal clocks out of whack. A new unhappiness reason called "twilight sickness" could be added to the pie chart and would be one of the main setbacks for colonizing this planet. It could also be damaging to the colonists. To combat this, the player will have to build structures that combat this new type of threat. These structures include clock towers to help colonists tell time, solar chambers, which help colonists experience light levels similar to a day on earth while providing some entertainment, and sensory deprivation chambers, which simulate night time and increase the colonists IQ(as they have plenty of time to meditate on their thoughts.)

I would keep the earth-like atmosphere level, but I would change the color of sugarcanes to be black and call them shadowstalks(plants on a twilight planet need to be black to absorb as much light as possible in a dimly lit world). you would still get sugar from them though, but they would spread at a much slower pace. The ground would be a bit darker, but still maintain it's texture.

The abandoned buildings could play a helping role in staving off twilight sickness aside from some tourism and entertainment. Once the player reaches a certain tech, they could unlock upgrades to the abandoned buildings that would turn them into fully restored, newer-looking buildings that would function as they once did, staving off twilight sickness.

Of course, there is always the possibility of turning one of the other planets into a twilight planet, or just making a brand new planet for the twilight theme, but I think that the abandoned world could be drastically improved with the ideas that I described above, and it wouldn't take that much to implement either since you already have all of the engine functions and resource images to pull it off.

Planet Type: Shadow

Orbits around: black hole

day/night cycle: eternal night, but darker, solar energy non-existent.

Atmosphere: 2.5 million

Solid terrain features: a dark, almost featureless surface, very disorienting to look at.

Liquid terrain: Black water - a mixture of water and dark matter. Non-trade-able. Can be used as a crude heat source, but not for drinking. It tends to heat up quickly when in motion as dark matter tends to create pure energy when it's particles collide.

surface resources: gold, uranium, aluminum, glowing purple crystalline, ice

surface plant-life: luminous trees that provide small amount of light and lumber

Planet specific resource: Dark matter - a very powerful energy source once it is separated from black water. It's every civ's final energy source and can be used to power a large fraction of a region, but is very costly and would be very difficult to keep in stock. Dark matter is also healing to insectoids. They soak it up like a sponge and can gain powerful abilities from it, such as higher intelligence and more control over antaura.

Other features: This planet is darker than regular night, with barely any ambient light coming from the black hole's accretion disk. The player must rely on lights to be able to see their colony in order to manage it.

Races to inhabit this planet: Insectoids only.

Progression:

- a portable altar is built from crystalline. It provides only one job.
- water from ice patches is sacrificed on the altar(s) to produce a small amount of antuara.
- A black bug collects black water from black water bodies.
- An enlightenment chamber uses antaura to purify the water to render it drinkable, but the dark matter is absorbed by the insectoids, raising their IQ's, so it vanishes.
- crystalline is used to dig for ore.
- ore is used to make black water furnaces. A black water furnace mixes black water to create heat. That heat is in turn used to melt crystalline into sugar.
- subterranean sugar farms are built that automate sugar using water, requiring more enlightenment chambers and portable altars.
- After the player starts to build mining projects, then they are back on the regular insectoid's tech path, although they won't have another source of drinking water until they start to mass produce antaura, as black water is in the ground as well, so no wet mounds or cones. For mid game, another building called the dark altar can be used to separate black water into pure water and dark matter, although not all of the dark matter is preserved. The amount of water that is produced is much more than the enlightenment chamber.
- The player now has a small supply of dark matter. They can either chose to sell it, or they can use it in a couple of different ways. It can be used in new medical buildings as it is healing to insectoids, it could also be used for new research buildings that would study the strange material, or maybe it could have some entertainment and tourism uses.
- In later game, a shadow temple would be used to mass produce dark matter and water while consuming tons of antaura.
- Finally, a building called a spire of darkness would be the insectoid's best source of power. Except on this planet, they have an unlimited amount of dark matter. For other colonies, getting this level of power will come at a cost.

Other info:

I was thinking that since this planet would be darker than night, insectoids needs some new lighting. The insectoid glow lights are cool, but perhaps they could do with some better ones. Perhaps crystalline or ether could be used to make good lights. I'm suggesting a new crystalline steet lamp that could come in three different colors: blue(to fit in with ice world) red(for lava world), and purple(for shadow world)