Mechanics, Phase I
This will have six months per turn in game time, with each turn having departmental actions. You will be able to choose to prioritize two of the action options each turn, and can allocate personal attention from your Director to an action category that allows it, thus gaining another prioritized action in that category or doubling down on an action.
I say this is
prioritized because the bulk of actions are also being worked on by the people already assigned to those tasks. Outside of certain categories that I will elaborate on below, actions may slowly resolve themselves if the circumstances permit – your people aren't stupid and they have every incentive to work to fix things. What prioritization does is allow you to personally affect the outcome of an action – by accelerating its completion/improvement, by enhancing or modifying the outcome, or by keeping the morale of the crews in that section steady.
Acceleration of completion can be done for actions like extraction of aluminium and ethane for Venus, ensuring that there are adequate stockpiles for the supply runs back to Venus and a healthy reserve. For these actions I will roll a d100 if they are not prioritized, 2d100 if prioritized, and 3d100 if doubled down on.
Improvement or modification of the outcome can be done for actions such as maintenance or rationing – in this case allowing the players to choose an outcome or direct things more closely, and potentially improving things above and beyond the baseline. If these actions are prioritized I will roll a d100 to determine the extent of improvement. Some actions like dome repair can cost personnel and hence morale, and prioritization of these actions can also allow Dr. Khouri to take actions to keep the working parties' morale steady.
The departments are as follows:
- Life Support, dealing with food, water, air, and waste recycling, along with all the machinery that is required for these tasks.
- Maintenance and Repair, dealing with the maintenance and repair of critical infrastructure on Titan. This is something that needs careful attention, as turn events can require a response from this department.
- Logistics, dealing with supplying Venus and requisitioning supplies from Venus on the six-months one-way runs to and from Venus. I will also fold extraction and refining of materials for Venus into this category.
- Personnel, dealing with the morale, skill development, and general inclinations of your colonists. This is highly critical.
- Major Projects, which may or may not appear each turn depending on circumstances. Into this I will fold such things as research projects, dome expansion, and orbital infrastructure buildup.
- Personal, which is Basira Khouri's character-centric action set. I will choose one action and the players will choose another, to give the protagonist some independent agency. The players' action can be burned to give personal attention to one action from another department. Given Dr. Khouri's background, that usually will translate to her acting as an enabler rather than a straight up engineer.
Again, each department can prioritize two actions with Dr. Khouri able to take command of up to one more at the cost of a personal action.
You will have the following resources to manage, each one affected by the above action categories:
- Food/Water: This is self explanatory. Its stockpiles will allow rationing to go on for multiple turns while the shortage in production is addressed. More than one turn of shortage will be highly suboptimal. A shortage threshold will be provided each turn.
- Technical Material: This is spare parts, electronics, production substrates imported from Venus, and other such hard to replace things. They are used for repairs, maintenance and upkeep of the station as well as setup of new production chains on Titan. Again, a critical parts shortage will be highly suboptimal, just as with food.
- Morale: This ranges from 0 to 100, and is capped due to colony wide effects such as the death of Earth. Morale below 20 will risk a mutiny, morale below 40 affects productivity adversely, and morale above 60 has no ill effects. High morale may have benefits.
- Requisition: These are points that one can burn for high technology and support from Venus. Venus will be affected by what you requisition, so be wary of taking too much in one sector of production. The Logistics action category allows for requisitioning as a free action.
These are mechanics for Phase One (Survival) of the quest. Additionally, I will be rolling random events each turn.