The Mars Resource Chain aims to be the foundation of an active, ever-changing strategy game that simulates a vibrant, self-sustaining economy on Mars.
The greater a player’s understanding of the science needed to manage a Mars base and how the systems all link together, the greater their potential for accumulating resources. Players will need to manage their deck of NFTs and the associated resources to take advantage of any opportunities that may arise.
The colony will require various resources in order to survive, thrive, and then expand. The general concept for resources is as follows: each item type requires differing resource inputs and produces corresponding resource outputs.
Some of the more complex items will require a larger quantity of a wider variety of resources to function efficiently, leading to what is called a resource chain. This resource chain (for items up to and including Mission 5) is visualized in the poster below.
Download the high-resolution PDF here.
Green = Outputs/Production
Red = Inputs/Consumption
Green/Red: The Botanists require Food as an input but if properly fed will yield additional food output (based on their work in the greenhouses).
As can be seen, there will be 16 different resource blockchain tokens at this phase of the colony’s development. The items in the poster are listed in the specific order that the resource calculations will take place.
For example: A player has a zero in-game balance for Power tokens but does have Solar Panel Array and Ice Mining Rig NFTs. As per the order in the poster, the Solar Panel Arrays will be calculated first, generating Power token output, which in turn would be used as input to the Ice Mining Rigs within the same hourly payout calculation. This creates a cascading effect within the resource chain.
If the player has a sufficient balance of the required resources in their in-game balance, then they will be consumed automatically. At any time, players can withdraw resource tokens from their in-game balance to their wallet.
Resources come in five different categories:
For detailed information of the Mars resource chain, read this walkthrough.
Mars is a dynamic, hostile environment that will pose many challenges. A settlement will need to respond to hazards frequently in order to keep things operational. These hazards can disrupt supply lines, reduce the effectiveness of equipment and vehicles, and require astronauts to take additional downtime to recover from both mental and physical issues.
In order to simulate this important part of living on Mars, a dynamic hazard system has been built into the strategy gameplay of Colonize Mars. Hazards are randomly generated events that disrupt normal operations on Mars. Hazards damage the health of Ownership/Sponsorship Cards and deactivate certain Base Cards depending on how severe they are.
Players can repair damage, reactivate cards, and mitigate the risks of hazards, but everyone must remain vigilant to keep the colony (and their NFT collections) at peak production efficiency.
In order to understand hazards, it is important to get a quick refresher on the basic premise of how NFTs are utilized within the game. There are two categories of NFT cards:
Players can choose which Ownership/Sponsorship Card to support with their Base Cards, as long as the Base Cards are the same item type or astronaut gender and speciality of the Ownership/Sponsorship Card. All card types (including Ownership and Sponsorship Cards) produce resources based on the card’s earning power, which is basically a factor of how rare the card is.
It is important to make this distinction between Ownership/Sponsorship Cards and Base Cards because both card categories get affected differently by hazards.
Learn more about the various card types here.
Every hour, there is a small chance of a hazard. Initially this works out to be around 2–3 hazards per week. All hazards are generated on the blockchain using a random number generator (RNG) to ensure fairness and transparency.
Once a hazard is generated for a specific hour, another RNG roll determines the type of hazard. The percent chances for each hazard type can constantly change to reflect the different weather conditions and seasons. Over time, additional hazard types may be added or removed due to new threats or methods of mitigating issues.
Each hazard is generated with a unique intensity value, with more powerful and intense events increasingly likely to cause damage. Intense hazards are able to damage and deactivate huge portions of the colony which will cause significant disruption to the resources supply chain, while mild hazards are likely to only affect any neglected cards. This system rewards players that stay vigilant in maintaining their cards.
In a nutshell, this sequence happens every hour:
Along with a Health %, each Ownership/Sponsorship Card also has a Resistance %. Resistance is important for hazards because higher resistance values directly benefit both the owner and those supporting the card by reducing the chances of a hazard inflicting damage on them.
Each Ownership or Sponsorship Card has minimum and maximum resistance values specific to that card type. Resistance % follows a curve that typically looks like this:
Cards with nothing assigned to them will start at the minimum resistance value. Maximum resistance is reached when an Ownership or Sponsorship Card has exactly its fair share of Base Cards supporting it. If the collective earning power of the Base Cards supporting it goes above this threshold, then resistances start to rapidly decline again.
Example: If there are 3 Rovers and they have 30% min resistance, 90% max resistance, and 2,000,000 earning power of Base Cards possible, then at 0 earning power supporting a Rover, it’s at 30% resistance; at 666,667 earning power, it’s at 90% (max) resistance. Beyond 666,667 earning power resistance drops from maximum until it's back at minimum.
This is to simulate that if too many people begin using a single item in the colony, they can overwork it, leading to a resistance reduction and more susceptibility to damage.
Resource gameplay introduces two new repair token types: Medicine and Repair Materials. Medicine repairs Sponsorship Cards and corresponding Base Cards, and Repair Materials repair Ownership Cards and its corresponding Base Cards.
All Ownership/Sponsorship Cards automatically repair a tiny fraction of health per hour, and Base Cards which have been deactivated automatically reactivate after 48 hours of downtime.
Ownership/Sponsorship Cards can only be repaired by the player that holds the corresponding card. Players that have Base Cards supporting the Ownership/Sponsorship Card are unable to pay to repair the card. They can, however, spend tokens to reactivate their Base Cards instead of waiting for the automatic reactivation time. This cost is proportional to the time remaining until automatic reactivation and is also based on the earning power of the cards requiring reactivation.
Players can examine the status of each Ownership Card in the colony at a glance via the 3D map.
Whenever the item has been damaged by a hazard, its appearance changes to display the most recent hazard which has reduced its health.
Items at full health have the default appearance with no damage showing.
Hazards will be a fun, dynamic feature that encourages players to consider different strategies to effectively maintain and repair items in the colony. We believe that this feature accomplishes multiple goals for the game:
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