Overview

Mars is a dynamic, hostile environment that will pose many challenges. A settlement will need to respond to hazards frequently in order to keep things operational. These hazards can disrupt supply lines, reduce the effectiveness of equipment and vehicles, and require astronauts to take additional downtime to recover from both mental and physical issues.

In order to simulate this important part of living on Mars, a dynamic hazard system has been built into the strategy gameplay of Colonize Mars. Hazards are randomly generated events that disrupt normal operations on Mars. Hazards damage the health of Ownership/Sponsorship Cards and deactivate certain Base Cards depending on how severe they are.

Players can repair damage, reactivate cards, and mitigate the risks of hazards, but everyone must remain vigilant to keep the colony (and their NFT collections) at peak production efficiency.

Hazards Affect Different NFT Card Types

In order to understand hazards, it is important to get a quick refresher on the basic premise of how NFTs are utilized within the game. There are two categories of NFT cards:

1. NFT Ownership Cards and Sponsorship Cards correspond 1:1 to unique items and astronauts in the Colony—Fuel Generator One, Solar Panel Thirteen, John Alves (Engineer) to name a few.
2. NFT Base Cards are 1-to-many for each item or astronaut type. Examples of these are Dark Matter Solar Panel Array cards or Shadow Female Scientist cards.

Players can choose which Ownership/Sponsorship Card to support with their Base Cards, as long as the Base Cards are the same item type or astronaut gender and speciality of the Ownership/Sponsorship Card. All card types (including Ownership and Sponsorship Cards) produce resources based on the card’s earning power, which is basically a factor of how rare the card is.

It is important to make this distinction between Ownership/Sponsorship Cards and Base Cards because both card categories get affected differently by hazards.

• Ownership and Sponsorship Cards have a health value between 0%–100% which represents the efficiency of resource production for the item or astronaut and all of the Base Cards supporting it. The player that holds the Ownership/Sponsorship Card must repair the card using resource tokens in order to get the health back to 100%.
• Base Cards, once they have been assigned to a corresponding Ownership or Sponsorship Card within the game UI, have 2 states: Active or Inactive. Active Base Cards produce resources for the player, and Inactive Base Cards don’t produce resources. Base Cards can become Inactive from hazards based on a few factors which will be explained below. Base Cards can be reactivated using resource tokens.

Learn more about the various card types here.

How Hazards Are Generated

Every hour, there is a small chance of a hazard. Initially this works out to be around 2–3 hazards per week. All hazards are generated on the blockchain using a random number generator (RNG) to ensure fairness and transparency.

Once a hazard is generated for a specific hour, another RNG roll determines the type of hazard. The percent chances for each hazard type can constantly change to reflect the different weather conditions and seasons. Over time, additional hazard types may be added or removed due to new threats or methods of mitigating issues.

Each hazard is generated with a unique intensity value, with more powerful and intense events increasingly likely to cause damage. Intense hazards are able to damage and deactivate huge portions of the colony which will cause significant disruption to the resources supply chain, while mild hazards are likely to only affect any neglected cards. This system rewards players that stay vigilant in maintaining their cards.

In a nutshell, this sequence happens every hour:

1. Damaged Ownership and Sponsorship Cards regenerate some health automatically.
2. RNG to determine if hazard hits.
3. If yes, RNG to determine which hazard type.
4. RNG to determine the hazard intensity.
5. Compare intensity to current resistance of corresponding item types.
6. Reduce the health of the affected Ownership/Sponsorship Cards, and deactivate the affected Base Cards.
7. Repeat next hour.

Ownership and Sponsorship Resistance

Along with a Health %, each Ownership/Sponsorship Card also has a Resistance %. Resistance is important for hazards because higher resistance values directly benefit both the owner and those supporting the card by reducing the chances of a hazard inflicting damage on them.

Each Ownership or Sponsorship Card has minimum and maximum resistance values specific to that card type. Resistance % follows a curve that typically looks like this:

Cards with nothing assigned to them will start at the minimum resistance value. Maximum resistance is reached when an Ownership or Sponsorship Card has exactly its fair share of Base Cards supporting it. If the collective earning power of the Base Cards supporting it goes above this threshold, then resistances start to rapidly decline again.

Example: If there are 3 Rovers and they have 30% min resistance, 90% max resistance, and 2,000,000 earning power of Base Cards possible, then at 0 earning power supporting a Rover, it’s at 30% resistance; at 666,667 earning power, it’s at 90% (max) resistance. Beyond 666,667 earning power resistance drops from maximum until it's back at minimum.

This is to simulate that if too many people begin using a single item in the colony, they can overwork it, leading to a resistance reduction and more susceptibility to damage.

Repair and Reactivation

Resource gameplay introduces two new repair token types: Medicine and Repair Materials. Medicine repairs Sponsorship Cards and corresponding Base Cards, and Repair Materials repair Ownership Cards and its corresponding Base Cards.

All Ownership/Sponsorship Cards automatically repair a tiny fraction of health per hour, and Base Cards which have been deactivated automatically reactivate after 48 hours of downtime.

Ownership/Sponsorship Cards can only be repaired by the player that holds the corresponding card. Players that have Base Cards supporting the Ownership/Sponsorship Card are unable to pay to repair the card. They can, however, spend tokens to reactivate their Base Cards instead of waiting for the automatic reactivation time. This cost is proportional to the time remaining until automatic reactivation and is also based on the earning power of the cards requiring reactivation.

Damage Visuals

Players can examine the status of each Ownership Card in the colony at a glance via the 3D map.

Whenever the item has been damaged by a hazard, its appearance changes to display the most recent hazard which has reduced its health.

Items at full health have the default appearance with no damage showing.

Hazards Summary

Hazards will be a fun, dynamic feature that encourages players to consider different strategies to effectively maintain and repair items in the colony. We believe that this feature accomplishes multiple goals for the game:

• Adds more realism to colonizing Mars by simulating some of the potential challenges astronauts will face on Mars one day.
• Creates more engagement by rewarding players that log into the game consistently to maintain their items and update their resource supply chains.
• Adds another resource token utility by encouraging players to spend Repair and Medicine tokens to keep their NFT cards well-maintained.
• Encourages upgrading cards because players who craft higher rarity cards will be more resistant to hazards.

Explore the different types of hazards by clicking the links below: