Building a Colony That Actually Works

Development update. The systems described here are in active development and details will change.

Nova Eridani is a colony game, but it is played in first person. That changes what the colony needs to be. If you can walk up to any building and any worker, the simulation cannot be a set of numbers hidden behind a menu. It has to be happening in the world.

The rule: nothing teleports

The core rule of the economy is simple to state and awkward to implement: resources are physical. A log exists at a location. It got there because someone cut it down, and it will only reach the sawmill if someone carries it there.

That one rule produces most of the interesting behaviour. Distance matters. Layout matters. A pile of logs growing beside a woodcutter station is not a cosmetic detail; it is the colony telling you that transport is the bottleneck.

The first chain

The first production chain we are building is forestry to timber:

1. Forester plants and tends trees in a designated zone.
2. Trees grow in the world over time.
3. Woodcutter fells mature trees and produces logs.
4. Transporter carries logs to where they are needed.
5. Sawmill turns logs into timber, with an operator.
6. Storage holds the result, at a real location with real capacity.
7. Builder takes materials to a construction site and uses them.

Schematic

Each link can fail, and when it does the failure spreads downstream. If the sawmill's output store is full, the operator stops. Logs pile up. The woodcutter keeps cutting until there is nowhere to put the logs either. Eventually the builders are waiting for timber that is sitting, quite visibly, in the wrong place.

Robots as workers, not icons

The first workforce is mechanical. Robots receive a role and a workplace, walk to their job, and do it with their hands. They drain their batteries as they work and travel, return to charging points, and wear down over time.

We are deliberately keeping them physical. A transport robot takes time to cross the settlement. Two robots trying to use the same workstation have to wait. A robot with a flat battery is not doing anything until it has recharged. These limits are what make the settlement feel like a place rather than a spreadsheet.

Talking to your workforce

Because you are on the ground, the game is designed around direct interaction with your workers. Development includes contextual conversations and direct commands: walk up to a robot and ask what it is doing, why it has stopped, or send it somewhere else. Detailed management is still there when you want it, but you should be able to solve most problems by going to look.

What is next

The forestry chain is the testbed for everything that follows. Once it is solid, the same rules will carry over to new resources and new roles. We will write more about robot condition and maintenance, and about fabricating new robots, once those systems are further along.