End Game Idea: Quest

[fdinst]

You put the satellite into the rocket and blast it off...

...in order to perform an orbital scan of the planet, to scan for deposits of rare minerals which are necessary to launch a properly habitable space vehicle, with the specialist near-FTL propulsion drive that can get you home.

The satellite beams back comprehensive data about your surroundings, filling out your map, and pinpointing, at an extremely remote locale, a site which, if mined, will provide you with the desired minerals.

Between you and the minerals, however, is a vast expanse of teeming red, and several lakes of otherwise untraversible blue.

Now your entire factory, which has up until now been geared towards achieving spaceflight, must slowly be completely restructured towards this final, singular, last-ditch mission.

Cut out all of the unnecessary production. Streamline all of the main processes. Gear everything towards a single, impossible purpose.

Cross the yawning ocean, traverse the biter's waste, find the rare minerals, fortify an outpost around them under a relentless onslaught, mine them, and bring them home.

Only thus can you finally make your way back.

[fdinst]

Perhaps the satellite does not beam back the data initially, but progressively, by corresponding with the radar you have already built, expanding the radar range at a single square at a time, just like the radar, just at a greatly enhanced rate.

Duties are necessary while this process is carried out.

[ssilk]

Added to the list of endgame ideas viewtopic.php?f=80&t=24090