World

Map Decided

Procedurally generated, but tuned for fun rather than pure randomness.
A persistent, shared, long-term map (see player-and-platform.md).
A square grid; 1 tile = 4 m × 4 m Decided. A Harvester takes one tile, a large truck one or 1 × 2, and a Depot that houses three vehicles is 3 × 3 (12 m). On screen, distances are always in meters, never tiles; the design docs count in tiles.
Spawn protection zone: generation guarantees effectively zero aliens within about 150 tiles of the crash site.
Small hives near the start, big boss hives far away. The difficulty gradient is generated on purpose.
Generation must guarantee, near the start:
- Small Basalite patches within about 15–20 tiles of the ship.
- Reachable Calcified Evolite with no dangerous hive on top of it.
- All four basic resources (Basalite, Ferrite, Cuprite, Colite) within early scouting range Tentative.
Nothing within the starting Scout Drone’s range can shoot the sky, so the starting drone can’t be lost Decided. The range is 75 tiles out and back Tentative (tier0-proposals.md).

Basalite is common, in relatively small patches Decided. That forces expansion for fast building, but doesn’t slow the very first builds until the nearby patches are saturated.
Deposit edges are irregular. A 2×2 harvesting or mining footprint may cover 4, 3, 2 or 1 resource cells (see units-and-missions.md).
Basic deposits don’t deplete [Decided — latest]. Capacity is limited by space (how many footprints fit) and by distance. A perfectly balanced factory can run forever.
- Earlier in the conversation the designer agreed to Factorio-style very slow depletion (around 18 hours of play per good patch, never one or two hours). The final statement was “patches don’t deplete.” Recorded as an open tension in open-questions.md.
- Either way, the game can’t be finished on one starter base in a reasonable time (it would take about 1,000 hours). Expanding for more production capacity is required.
Calcified Evolite deposits are small (room for one or two drills) and currently never run out.
Live Evolite = hives. They can be cleared completely (see noise-and-aliens.md).
Underground Evolite exists everywhere at a baseline rate. Richer underground pockets exist but only show up after the underground scanning unlock (see resources-and-economy.md).

Unexplored map is fogged. You can’t build in fog.
Exploration is done by Scout Drones, and later radar.
Every building has a vision radius (default around 20 tiles, placeholder). Vision is not additive: overlapping circles don’t extend range. Noise is additive; vision isn’t.
Exploit to prevent: spamming tiny cheap structures to reveal the map.
- Proposal: walls and unpowered/passive structures give no vision; powered or operating buildings do Tentative.
- Proposal: some buildings may only be built inside bases Tentative.
Radar comes later (Tier 2+). It’s much more powerful: wide area, automatic enemy detection. Withheld early on purpose.
Noise layer display: when the noise overlay is on, fog that falls inside the noise zone is drawn hatched. That marks “you are making enough noise to attract something you can’t see,” the most dangerous unknown.

Do trucks drive freely over terrain, with roads optional speed boosts, or do routes require roads? Raised but never answered.

Creatures are more docile by day and more aggressive at night (“survive the night” horror vibe).
The noise radius doesn’t change at night. What changes is how creatures respond. A small hive inside your noise radius may tolerate it by day and attack at night.
Seismic disturbance (the big drill) angers them day or night.
Ordinary noise angers creatures if they are deep enough inside it, under the right conditions, and much more likely at night.
Strategy this creates: drill 12 hours a day safely, or risk the night for 24-hour output. Shut exposed operations at night, or automate their schedules later.
Rejected: “light pollution” (night raising the radius because it’s really a light radius). Too convoluted.
Introduce it just after the first alien encounter Tentative.
Solar arrays and battery banks tie into day/night Tentative.