Writing a Game

Space Miner

Space Miner is an online synchronous game. You are competing with all other players to harvest energy from Dilithium deposits buried deep underground.

To extract radiated energy you control the position of a remote satellite harvesting drone. You position your drone over the deposits and, once per time epoch, it will extract all the energy underneath it's collection array. The collection array of your satellite is a grid of (5x5) units.

You have a detailed map of the deposit densities, and these are displayed on your control panel. The brighter the colour on the scan, the stronger the deposit, and the more energy you will extract if your array is over that location.

If you were the only miner in the quadrant, this would be an easy optimization. However, all players are trying to harvest the same resources. If competing arrays overlap, the energy extracted is shared amongst the satellites. If two satellites are harvesting a grid location the energy extracted by each player is 50% of that grid. If ten players are harvesting the same location, they each only get 10%!

This creates a dilemma; but also allows for strategy. Do you position your array over a poor density location and extract 100% of a meager yield?, or boldly harvest a high yield area, knowing you will share your bounty? Maybe you'll take a middling strategy?

As the game progresses, more players will join and send in their satellites; efficiencies will decrease with the congestion. All players are able to move their satellites between harvesting epochs to a fresh location, so it's a moving shell game of Nash equilibria. In a previous epoch you might have been in a congested area; do you move to a potential new virgin location, or do you think everyone else will be thinking the same thing, so you should just stay put and reap the benefits of their defection?

You can move your satellite as frequently, or rarely, as you wish between harvest epochs without consequence. However, when the clock ticks to the end of an epoch all satellite positions are frozen, the harvesting happens instantaneously, the bounty divvied up, and control is released again.

If you do not move your satellite between epochs it will remain on station at the same location.

To assist you, your scan shows the location of your last harvest (in silver), and the red reticle shows the current location of your satellite (where you will harvest on the next epoch).

At the bottom right of the scan is an indication of the theoretical yield from your satellite array, if positioned over that region with no other players competing. Drag the red reticle around then hit the button to 'Lock Coordinates'.

At the end of each epoch you are able to run an analysis to see how efficient each grid of your array was, the bounty obtained from that grid, and the potential. This will give you feedback of the congestion and hints on how to manage where you elect to harvest on the next epoch.

When a player first joins the game, their satellite will be initially positioned at a random location. Satellites are autonomous, unmanned, and will remain on location even for inactive players (so if a player joins, plays, then never logins in again, their satellite will remain on-station at the last location they left it, creating an ever congested, but static, background drain).

Currently, time epochs are approximately once per Earth hour (this may change as the game develops).

I plan to run the game for about a week at time, see the results, then reset the entire database and start fresh with a new game.

The aim of the game is to be the person who extracts the most energy at any epoch. At the end of each epoch, all players are ranked ordinally. In this way, players who join in-progress can still play competitively against players who started the game earlier.

Harvest well, Space Miner!