Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
building blocks
The first prototype has only one building block: stations.
Figure 9.11
illustrates
this building block. Mining stations act just like way stations with one exception:
Mining stations can pull resources from the board. The mechanics for this building
block fulfill the requirement that it can hook up with other blocks in the game in
several ways. However, in the initial prototype, all the stations function in more or
less the same way. The player needs to think about where to place stations to ensure
that they are all close enough to one another to permit transportation. The only
other consideration is which stations to expand. In general, the best choices for
expansion are the stations that are close to ice and (to a lesser extent) close to ore.
FIGURe 9.11
The mechanics for
a station in
Lunar
Colony
With effectively only one building block, there won't be much variation in the way
players build up the economy. What the game needs is more types of stations to
give the players more interesting choices.
To improve the game, we've designed three new stations:
puriiers
,
refineries,
, and
transporters
. This second version of the game now requires two additional colors
of tokens to represent purified ice or refined ore, respectively. We also changed the
rule that states that the number of actions available is determined by the number
of stations that a player has. Instead, every player starts the game with two actions,
but one of our new stations will change that during the course of play.
Figure 9.12
shows the new types of stations (note each has a different color token placed
under
the player's color):
FIGURe 9.12
new types of stations
in
Lunar Colony
n
Purifiers
take normal ice and turn it into twice as much purified ice by expend-
ing energy. Purifiers can't be built from scratch or at the beginning of the game.
Instead, they must be converted during the game from existing size 1 stations. To
