Logistics, Production, Resources
Going from chopping trees and mining ore to equipping troops and building palaces
Axioms sort of mixes mmo/rpg crafting with city builders. Every world is generated with Star Wars Galaxy style random quality resources which are then spread across appropriate biomes and geographic areas. Woods, metals, rocks, crystals, plants, etc. Some metals and woods may conduct mana better, some may take enchantments better, some might be resistant to various elements. Different values of weight vs mass vs strength, etc. Resources are first processed into products and then built into items or buildings. Buildings sometimes contain items as well. Items can also sometimes be components of other items. Items include military equipment, production equipment, larger stuff like forges or alchemy stations and so forth.
Location, Location, Location
Characters, populations, resources, products, items, and buildings as well as subsections of intelligence networks and other things all exist at a defined point in the world. If you want to build a fancy palace you have to move all the people and resources to construct it to the relevant province. I considered and rejected sub-province locations for performance reasons. One of many things saved for a potential sequel.
Roads and other potential transport networks options are very key to Axioms. Portals, magitech-railroads, animal labor, river transport and ocean transport all combine with the basic roads of most semi-adjacent games. While provinces are technically all one “point” you can have stuff like armies moving around and other stuff. This will use a sort of event based system with percentage chances, terrain, stealth capabilities and so forth. I’ll detail this in a later post.
Having a well organized and highly resourced transportation network is just as key as real life. This network also ties in heavily with your communication and administrative capabilities. Messages rather than materials but same general idea. Armies will also have supply considerations. You’ll have animals and wagons and so forth and carry food and equipment on top of combat gear. Maybe you’ll have special units of artisans or something for gear repair. Cooks for various bonuses as well? Not sure how far I’ll end up taking it before I decide to wait for the sequel. I’d like to release in early December 2022 or earlier if possible so no room for feature creep.
In early phases of the game if you choose not to take the defaut 4000-8000 year history starts you’ll need to make important decisions on where to build things. You’ll have actual slightly abstracted versions of city builder type extraction and production facilities. You’ll take a minimum of one and possibly more turns based on distance to move things to a production area. Only when the extraction and processing are in the same province will you be able to use resources immediately. Haven’t settled on a base transport speed. Either 1 province a month or 1 province every two months unless I have a strong reason to increase it.
Processing And Refinement
From raw extracted materials to early processing to creating products into items into composite items into buildings into artifacts there are around 7 levels of processing for top tier stuff. Of course many things can be used after 1 or 2 refinements.
Plants can be processed into food or alchemy components and some including trees can be used in construction or Amenities. Alchemy will have multi-step refinements for some stuff. Potions, salves, item and building components, etc. Food will have raw to refined and then there may or may not be meals. Not sure exactly how deep I’ll go. In the current code raw to processed is one step and the food appraisal code just looks at how many processed foods are available.
Metal is used in all sorts of stuff including alchemy, equipment, magic items, and construction. No food though. Crystals are pretty much the same as far as processing and usage goes. Timber and rocks and mud and clay and such are almost entirely construction. Maybe some fancy earths can go into alchemy.
Product and Item “recipes” take classes of material and the results depend on the materials supplied. So “healing” can be a property of many different alchemy ingredients and the specific potion result depends on what you use. Think of something like a more complex Morrowind system. A sword can be made of a variety of metals for specific purposes. I’m still nailing down the exact nature of weapons and armor and how they’ll interact. I may set up character vs population equipment with characters getting more detail and customization options.
Modules are what I’m calling composite items that connect to buildings. It is pretty simple in current code. I’ve been considering a system where buildings provide “services” that are requirements for modules. Getting the AI to understand the system effectively is key so I’ll probably tinker with it a bit.
Item Creation
A typical magic spear will take something like a haft and a blade and maybe a focus. Then it’ll have enchantment slots based on the materials and the focus. A weapon will have speed, reach, weight, etc. Combined with the character or population statistics you’ll get some combat results.
I’m debating how detailed to make combat. Every complexity devoted to combat is a part of the player’s mental energy that can’t be spent on other stuff. Currently there’s a non-visible “battle” that has positioning and ticks and some simple tactics and stuff. I want the equipment to matter and for characters to have a real impact but also face risks. I imagine it is somewhat sad for players not to have at least an observer of combat type thing like Dominions but I have to ration my time for developing.
Aside from stationary “modules” I’m also considering “constructs” for magitech trains or mounts and gliders and so forth. Also battle golems! Magitech vs purely magical golems and elemental pets and stuff is a consideration. Perhaps for industry I’d attack golems or constructs to buildings for a bonus or maybe they follow a mage who animates them and has to be assigned.
Items can be pretty diverse, especially when you count magical stuff. An item with appropriate attributes can be made to cast nearly any magical effect in the game. Weapons, farm equipment, looms, engines, lathes, etc.
A lot of the ability to make items is influenced by the research/knowledge of a particular province as well as “practice” basically. I’ll describe this system in a future post, either the next one or the one after that. I haven’t decided on capping some technologies through a discovery system or just being lazy and using item quality modifiers. I’ll probably do discovery but maybe I’ll need to cut it till an expansion.
The Means Of Production
Currently I am designing the game systems so that people can own buildings in a province evenif they don’t control it. Whether that is centralized control with a ruler building in vassal provinces or a more free trade/trade guild situation where in nations with appropriate laws any character can build and own buildings and use them to make stuff. I’m also tentatively sketching out a system where populations can own non-land capital.
Owning trade ships or caravan wagons is also a consideration. Could a character run a logistics company instead of a mercenary company? I’m really working to make mercenary companies with up to 5-digit numbers of troops and followers possible especially after a few thousand years of simulated history. That should allow for other non-state actors like magical academies or just mages guilds as well as transport and trade guilds and industrial guilds. The code for religious organizations should also cover some of these use cases already.
My goal is after a couple expansions or in the sequel the actual player can run a mages guild teaching magic, enchanting items, brewing potions, maybe doing some adventuring and hiring out to mercenaries and other potentates and have that be relatively fun. Player mercenary captains would be amazing as well. The game currently has locations like dungeons so perhaps the infamous adventurer/dungeoneering guilds could make an appearance or a cultivation sect. I’ve been thinking either the first major “magic focused expansion” or the sequel could implement a pretty detailed cultivation system. But I’d like to lock down just the fancy politicals DIP stuff first.