Below is a list of all of our current ideas. Please note these are not on the wiki yet. We are also waiting for some feedback on GUI issues:

1. Building Information: Each building has the following information

---Name - The name of the given building. Used for naming references, as needed.

---Model/Texture names - Used so the right content can be loaded for each building.

---Footprint - Used by squaring the number to determine the square area of the Building for the grid. May not be required if we base sizes on the relative size of the models.

---Required Unskilled/Skilled workers - This is the requirement for the building to function correctly. If the number of skilled or unskilled workers is not met, the building with either function at a degraded level or not function at all.

---Costs - These are the costs for the building. This denotes what resources the building will cost and what amounts of those resources.

---Upkeep - These are the upkeep costs for the buildings. Each turn, this is how many resources the building will be required to consume to stay functional. If the Building does not meet its upkeep, then the Building will either function at a degraded level or cease to function.

---Passive Storage - This is used for the Resource Management part of the Colony. The tubes that connect buildings and the buildings themselves are used to aid in the transport of resources through the Colony. Each building has a passive storage that is hard coded which is used for passing resources through the Colony, to those that need Upkeep or are currently Building.

---Upgrade Info - This denotes the name of the Building that this Building can upgrade to (basically a reference to the definition for the next level of the building).

2. Building Types: To be better defined, we have placed buildings into these distinctive categories

---Residential Building - Building which houses the inhabitants of the Colony. Each has a recommended and maximum population. Whenever a building of this type's population exceeds the recommended population, overcrowding occurs which will lower Colony happiness by some amount. The maximum population is used to determine the building and the colony's maximum population. Each of these buildings also has a quality value, which also affects colony happiness by some amount. Upgrading this building increases the recommended and maximum population, as well as possibly the quality of housing.

---Entertainment Building - These buildings are those which offer comforts and entertainment to the Colony inhabitants. These buildings only have the value of affecting colony happiness by some amount, based on the level/quality of the building. As the building upgrades, the happiness factor increases as well.

---Industrial Building - These buildings are used to construct "tools or units" for the Colony. They help by increasing the number of units available for Gatherer buildings or other various buildings which utilize tools or units to do work. Each of them has a set of tools or units it can construct, that increases or improves as the building upgrades and technologies are researched.

---Science Building - These buildings are used to research new technologies for the Colony. They require specialized workers called "Scientists" on top of normal skilled or unskilled workers. Each has its own technology list that can be built, only allowing the technologies that are currently available on the technology tree to be researched. Upgrades to this building can improve the research rate and give access to more technologies to research.

---Gatherer Building - These buildings are the "mines" of the Colony. These have the ability to mine a specific set of resources from asteroids and other associated resource containers. They have their own list of viable resources that can be mined and a set of units for mining which affects their mining rate. Whenever the Gatherer collects resources, it then transports them to Refiners which can refine the resource for use. Upgrades to this building can increase the number of units it can have, can increase the base rate for mining resources of each internal unit, and can expand the types of resources the building can handle.

---Refiner Buildings - These buildings are the "refineries" of the Colony. These have the ability to take the raw resources taken in from the Gatherer buildings and refine them into forms which can then be sent and stored in Storage buildings. These buildings have a list of resources they can refine as well as set rates for refining the various resources. Upgrades provide faster refining rates and possibly a broader scope of resources that can be refined.

---Storage Buildings - These buildings are the "storage" of the Colony. These have the ability to store various resources up to a maximum amount per resource. Each building has a list of resources it can store and a cap on the storage of each resource. Upgrades typically will either increase the maximum cap of storage for each resource, which the Colony uses to determine the maximum resources, or can increase the number of different resources that can be stored.

3. Population Information

---The population may be broken down into Children, Unskilled Workers, Skilled Workers, and Scientists. These are the different worker types for the population. Children cannot work yet. Unskilled Workers are the lowest level of worker. Skilled workers are the next level of worker and can work in both Unskilled and Skilled positions. Scientists are the highest level of worker and can work in all positions. Note that whenever a worker works at a level lower than their level of expertise, there will be a small happiness penalty.

---Later, when factions are implemented, each person may have a faction alignment as well (Neutral, Environmentalist, Industrial, etc etc).

4. Mission ("mini-game") Selection

---We would like to take an approach that both allows the user to choose mini games to play as well as make them play mini-games. This approach will use a special timer that runs within the game that measures a number of turns to play a given mini-game (the mini-game will be pseudo-randomly selected by the process that uses this timer, to ensure that all possible mini-games have a chance of being played). If the player plays a mini-game prior to the timer going off, it will delay the timer by some amount (only a very small amount). If the player happens to play the mini-game that the timer is waiting for, then the timer will reset and choose another mini-game. This will give the best random appearance for playing mini-games, as well as maintain the scientific approach to the game by "gently forcing" the player to play mini-games, giving them the illusion of "choice". Keeping the player feeling that they have choices in what occurs, even with the choice of mini-games, is extremely important, as it can influence the level of immersion the player has.

---Another alternative is to avoid forcing them to play the mini-games altogether (allowing for the greatest degree of choice for the player), but based on their previous mini-game plays and their "position in the world" allow or disallow certain mini games to be played. This goes with our world map idea, as given below.

---Lastly, we feel that each mini-game should offer a unique resource, which is only available in that mini-game (or if there are 50 mini-games, maybe 5 special resources, with each only being available in 10 of the given mini-games). This gives high incentive to play the mini-games, especially if the resources are used to build buildings which are very unique aesthetically, as well as functionally.

5. The World Map

---The world map idea is basically an idea which allows the player to "move the Colony". This allows the player to go to different positions in the world to gather resources for their Colony and perhaps offer different mini-games to play (see the above comment). This just adds mainly an aesthetic attribute to the game.

---The world map idea takes into account that it should be somewhat randomly generated, allowing for different placement of asteroids and other resource containers, etc. For this, we would probably pseudo-randomly generate this so that it takes into account to generate so much of different possible resources and other items in the game.

6. Gathering Resources and Resource Management

---The process for gathering resources, as currently defined, is as follows:
1) Move the Colony to the cluster of asteroids, etc, that we want to gather resources from, in the World Map
2) Select the Gatherer Building that will be used to gather the resources.
3) Have the Building tractor onto the asteroid or whatever the resource container is.
4) The Gatherer Building gathers resources based on its inherent speed and number of mining units and their speeds.
5) Gathered resources are sent to Refiners to be refined.
6) Refiners send the resources to Storage to be stored.
7) Resources are moved from Storage to wherever needed, based on the Supply and Demand of buildings in the Colony, through the Tubes connecting everything.

---As a resource container (asteroid) is depleted, the number of rate that resources can be gathered will be slowed as well. For the sake of simplicity, an Asteroid will never run out of resources. However, it will have states, such as Rich, Standard, and Depleted, which indicate the available resources it has. Each also may have a different size which affects this value as well. Once depleted, the rate will be slowed. Hence, it is in the player's best interests to discard depleted asteroids and to find new ones to mine resources.

---Also, at any time the player should be able to discard an asteroid, allowing them to pick a new asteroid for that building or allowing another building to grab it. However, once discarded, the asteroid will begin to move away from the Colony, until it cannot be recovered. We aren't completely sure if it should disappear yet or if it should just float around, till you move on. It can also just stay at that location on the World Map.