The Terraforming Titans

https://youtu.be/5YMbuaVdnNg

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O995kS7AhL1djaP-yGWlzCET03zDetEjANc77gEMfJs/edit?usp=sharing

Game Rules

In this game there are 2-7 players.

The game will last 25 rounds.

There are skyhooks for each planets (skyhooks are objects which can fling items into space and the objects make their way to other skyhooks which gets the item, it's a cheap way to transport items that use a lot of fuel for rockets).

Every round you get to choose either to collect more resources with a nearby planet.

Each planet will have 4 resources: 1 medium 2 low and 1 high (with the exception of mars which has 1 medium of each).

Players will use these resources to build their own Terraforming equipment or trade with other planets to receive the resources needed to build more and more complex terraforming.

Gameboard

There will be 7 gameboard maps, one for each of the planets. On these maps, there will be a description of the planet, the type of resources the planet has, and 4 areas to place terraforming cards onto. These resources are used to make terraforming equipment with the terraforming cards.

The 4 planet resources are:

• Water
• Atmosphere
• Metal
• Diamonds

The 4 terraforming options the game will be based around is:

• Atmosphere - changing the atmosphere so that it is not too thin or thick and that the gases inside are breathable by inhabitants of Earth
• Water - All known life revolves around water, by utilizing areas of the solar system that has high amounts of water and taking it to planets that have a lower amount of water, we can better replicate planets to an earth-like habitat.
• Temperature - all of the other planets in the solar system are either too hot or too cold compared to the temperatures of Earth and especially the living temperatures of inhabitants of Earth
• Biology - Life will most likely need to be genetically modified to better suit the environments that occur on other planets. Even if the terraforming is completely successful, there are still issues with planets that have a higher or lower amount of gravity compared to Earth, a reduced or increased amount of sunlight compared to Earth, and other environmental factors that might be too great to survive under without genetic modification of plants, animals, and human beings

Some of the terraforming equipment used is:

• Skyhooks - these pieces of equipment will be used for each planet and will the main form of transporting resources across the solar system. For sake of simplicity, all resources including atmosphere resources can be transported this way.
• Artificial Atmospheric Shell- One of the most expensive and best terraforming equipment pieces. With this shell, a planet is effectively able to create and hold its own atmosphere, control the temperature, reduce and negate solar radiation and winds
• Genetically Modified Bacteria and Plants - bacteria and plants can be genetically modified to handle extreme environments while also absorbing toxic chemicals and materials and turning them into habitable areas that can have some resemblance of life on Earth.
• Deflecting and Magnifying Mirrors- mirrors can be used to deflect sunlight away from planets too close to the sun or too hot and can also be used as magnifying and refracting mirrors for planets that are too far away from the sun or too cold.
• Molecular Extractors - these will be used to purify materials such as rust on Mars and turn them into oxygen and iron which can be used for atmosphere resources and metal resources to build more terraforming equipment

Trading Resources

Players can trade resources with other players to get the resources needed for more terraforming equipment. The upgraded terraforming equipment allows for even more resources to be produced per turn, increasing the amount of resources that can be traded later in the game and making terraforming across all planets easier as the game progresses. This game is team based and all players participate in the completion of the game.

We used several videos from YouTube and the solar system interactive web page created by NASA as our main starting points for developing this game. We learned a lot more about the solar system through these articles and videos and especially enjoyed the terraforming video for Venus and the Skyhook video which we used as our main point for resource transport. Some of the terraforming ideas that we were interested in were more based around articles that stated the problem than stating a solution. For example, there were a lot of articles explaining how hard it is to keep an atmosphere intact on a planet that does not have an active core or is too small to hold an atmosphere, and very few articles explaining what it would take to restart a core on a planet, or create an artificial atmospheric shell around an entire planet because of the difficulty to achieve something like this. We know that many of our terraforming ideas will not be achievable in the near future, but at the very least, they provide an interesting thought experiment for what it would take to terraform our solar system.

All of us enjoyed gathering information and learning more about terraforming. There were some really good ideas and interesting solutions that were provided in the information that had us talking about how to integrate it into our game. We were optimistic in trying to create a Scratch game where the player would choose one of the planets and a computer would control the other terraforming planets and trade resources in a simple manner to the player. All of us on the team felt like this was a great idea for the game and if we had more time to work on the project, that would have been our final goal. As it is, we simplified it to a board game and would have several players compete with each other to create a terraformed solar system.

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This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.