Hello Sea people!
Next in our Dev Diary series is here, and this time it's about Environment system, beautifications and how to make the best out of it, with least resources.
First of all - what is the Environment system? Well, Environment is one of the categories that makes the broader Happiness score of your citizens. In the early game, your entire population will be happy with only the bare necessities - food, fuel and a place to live in the pressurized domes. As your colony grows and expands, people will start demanding more from life. And that's where the Happiness categories come in. There are numerous categories here: safety, religion, education, environment... Each category has its own points and different mechanics of how to increase these points.
In today's Dev Diary we're talking specifically about Environment points, since it has arguably the most complex calculation. But it's really pretty simple once you get the general idea.
Environment includes everything that impacts your dome lifestyle: what amenities it offers, how appealing it is to spend time in. Remember that people didn't just choose to go live underwater, they were forced to. And now, they will expect you to offer them a lifestyle as similar to their previous life on the Earth's surface as possible.
How do you do that? Through the beautification building panel. The availability of various beautifications will increase as you unlock them through the research tree. And each beautification object (fountains, trees, plants, monuments, benches, street lamps, parks etc...) awards a certain number of environment points. Not all beautifications award the same number of points, and even the same beautification object can yield different amount of points depending on where and how it is placed.
This means that you can't just unlock the simplest beautification object and stamp dozens of them in one place to gather a bunch of needed points. You need to combine them, plan how to use them and where exactly to place them. In essence, you need to have an idea of how you want your domes organized, not just randomly placing beautifications around. Each object grants some points, but the exact amount depends on proximity of some other beautification object. When placing them, a highlighted number will be shown of how many points that object will give at a specific location. So, feel free to play around with it a bit before deciding.
Note that, in some cases, if placed in a completely meaningless way, beautifications can even yield negative points and decrease the overall Environment standing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twyaqDdUjbg
In our Diary video, you'll see how this calculation works and how you can maximize the Environment score in any given situation.
Well, that's it for today, hope this is helpful!
Until next one!