GAME PLAY INSTRUCTIONS ARE AT THE END

Elon-zo Colony Management and Interplanetary Shipping

Two games for the price of One!

Have you ever wanted to run a colony on Mars? How about Venus? Well today's your lucky day, you have the chance to be one of the first people to Colonise the planets in our solar system. Not your cut of tea? Ok, I bet you want something a little faster? How about 10km/s? That's fast! Speed your way through the solar system delivering the much needed supplies that colonies need to survive. Be their lifeline or be the doom of their economy, the power is in your hands Captain.

The Game is set in our Solar system, and is a scale model. So each planet is the correct size in relation to the other planets in the solar system, and they are all the correct distance ratio from the Sun. However the universe has been scaled down to just a few million pixels.

When you start the game, you can take one of two career paths, you can either be a Governor and balance the production capacity of your colony (on the planet of your choosing) so you produce enough food for your inhabitants to survive (they can all die out). You also want to balance your economy so that you can import/export goods to/from other planets in the solar system (Open economy). Some planets such as Mars do not have any water, so you have to import that from Earth. However you can't just import with no limit, you'll run out of money and your people will die. So you have to also create an export so you can afford to keep importing goods.

Your planet has an economy as well, so if you start a colony on Mars, and other people also start a colony on mars, one colony can focus on producing Air, and the other colony can focus on producing metals, and you can trade between the colonies on your planet (closed loop economy) so that you can help each other. The second career is Captain you fly a cargo space-ship between the planets in the solar system.

Your goal is to supply the needed resources from one plane to another, and turn a profit for yourself. When you have profit, you can buy upgrades for your ship. This is currently limited to Engine Upgrades, Sensor Upgrades and Attitude Controllers (Turning speed). As a Captain, if you choose you can deprive an economy of a resource they need, or you can save a colony who is on the edge of collapse. Be a Hero or be a Villain, you have that power.

The game is MULTIPLAYER - you will be playing with anyone else who has connected to the server and whatever career paths you and others have chose. You'll be able to see other ships as they travel through space. Take advantage of the built in chat system to call for supplies that your colony will need in order to survive. Chat to your favourite Captains and export your valuable resources to help the Captains upgrade their ships - You scratch their back, they will turn a profit, and maybe they will scratch yours' too.

FEATURES: Multiplayer Real Time Chat Realistic Solar system (Sizes and distances are to scale, though your ships acceleration is really high! Layered Economy driven by your choices Ability to destroy the Economy of planets Two Career paths both with UNIQUE gameplay experiences

So Gameplay seems to be a bit difficult for the Captains, so I'm going to address that first.

Captains:

The idea for you is to fly between planets trading resources. You can turn a healthy profit flying water from Earth to Mars, among other health trades. Your ship has real physics, so when you burn fuel to accelerate, the amount of fuel you burn is proportional to the mass of your spaceship (look in the top left). Space has no friction, so when you start moving, you keep moving, fortunately through some wonders of science, you're always moving "forwards" so you don't need to thrust again to change direction, just turn your ship.

The Navigation arrow is not lagging, it's just updating once every 10 seconds because you need to buy upgrades for your nav computer to get a faster update rate. Fly to Venus for an upgrade, the more upgrades you buy, the faster the update will be. Check out the other planets for other ship upgrades that can make you a super captain!

Captains have an epic responsibility, you are keeping the colonies that are not Earth - ALIVE. If you dont fly air form Earth to Mars, the people on Mars will have no Air. Same with Water. So you're a key player and you hold the power to enable other players to colonise Mars, Venus or Mercury.

There is a giant economy underpinning the whole game, but read at the end for more details on the Economy.

Governors: Governors run Colonies on Planets, sounds simple but it's really hard!! (unless you're on earth, then you can at least survive on your own).

So the basic idea is that you are a Governor of a colony, you need to provide your people with the 4 basics of life, Water, Air, Sugar and Protein (I before E except after C a?) On Earth this is easy because you produce everything that you need on the planet, but on Mars it's hard because there is no water for your factory to collect, there is no Atmosphere for your planet to refine into breathable air.

If you keep your population alive, they will pay you taxes, you can use those taxes to upgrade your factories and produce more of these basics of life. However, you have another option, and this is key to the game, you can decide you don't want to produce the basics of life, you want to import them instead and focus your time on more valuable endeavours, like harvesting Iron from the surface of mars, export the Iron and buy the basics that your people need for life! Sounds great right?

You're going to need to work with Captains to achieve this though, since Captains will probably only bring you what's valuable to them, unless you can strike a deal with the, like they bring you Water, you sell them Iron. If they don't bring water, you won't sell them your Iron. Seriously the economy is good enough that you can make that deal, especially planets other than Earth!.

The Economy - Wow I can't believe how complex the economy is, and this is complexity that appeared from what was really simple ideas and really simple code.

THE ECONOMY ON EARTH Earth is the only self sufficient planet in the solar system. You can create your own factories, you can feed your own people, you don't need to export anything. So Exporting from Earth is there only because you WANT to support the colonies that exist on other planets! Or you're wanting to import something from the other planets.

THE ECONOMY NOT ON EARTH

Every other habitable planet needs resources from each-other, or from Earth. You can produce cheap Iron on Mars, but you need air, so you have a good economy already, mine for iron, export it to Earth, and import Air from Earth. Simple right?

The BIG picture. Someone on Earth does not need to trade, but they will chose to trade because other planets can bring them the resources they need cheaply, and that will help the person grow bigger quicker, earn more Tax and make their colony bigger.

On all of the planets you can trade with other colonies on the planet, so on Earth you could have a colony that has focussed on producing Water, and a colony that has focussed on producing Air, and the two colonies can sell their excess to the main market on their planet, from which any other colony on the planet is able to buy resources, and the captains are able to buy as well. When a Captain Buys a resource, it's being exported off planet, when a colony buys a resource, it's exported on planet. When a Governor buys a resource, it's either an interplanitary import (like Air on Mars) or a local import like Water on Earth.

Economic war If your a Governor or a Captain, you can enguage in warfare with your economy!. You're on Mars, everyone needs Air, but you have lots of spare money, so every time a captain lands, you're watching, and as soon as he sells off his cargo of Air, you're going to snipe and buy all that air for yourself! That's warfare, you have just taken the air from all the (Word limit reached ffs)