Player-Generated Economy: A major game feature.Definitely a case of the inmates running the asylum they have a loose view of regulations and building codes, and quite a few connections with independent contractors. Penal Colony: Reclamation Inc, the Scavenger corporation, are a corporation that take in employees with debts or questionable pasts and send them to Mars on a five-year indenture, after which their slate is wiped clean.This is because their standards are lax and their buildings are hazardous.
The final building is The Offworld Market, which sells a resource of your choice to earth for massive amounts of money. Gaia's Lament: Earth is in bad shape, depleted of its natural resources and necessitating the Mars colonies as a new way of getting the needed resources.Faceless Goons: Players can purchase a Goon Squad from the Black Market, which can defend a tile from attacks, reveal who did it, and give that attack to the defending player.Crippling Overspecialization: Possible if the player focuses on too few resources without cornering a market.Corrupt Corporate Executive: Each player is one.The exception is the Robotic colony, which consumes Power instead. Company Town: Each company is also a colony, which needs Food, Water, and Oxygen to survive, requiring more as it expands.Though to be fair sand isn't particularly common on Mars, which is mostly covered in iron oxide (rust) dust. It can only be produced by combining Silicon and Oxygen, which is technically correct, because glass is Silicon Dioxide, but its more commonly referred to as sand.
Common Place Rare: Glass is rare, valuable, and one of the "final" resources.Debt is, in fact, its own resource, though an unwanted one, that must be paid off regularly to avoid increasingly disastrous problems. You will automatically buy what you need and accumulate Debt instead. Furthermore, unlike 4X games, if you lack an Essential resource (food, water, oxygen, power,) starvation is impossible.Fiddling with the market (honestly or not) is a vital strategy. Every purchase by a player increases prices, and selling resources thereby makes the resource cheaper for other players. The economy is composed of the thirteen resources, and driven by player actions. Colonized Solar System: The base game is on Mars, expansions add Ceres, Io, and Europa as alternate locations.