Surviving the Abyss News

Greetings Overseer!

And welcome back to the Surviving the Abyss development blogs. This week’s topic is Resource Management.

Resources can be found in abundance at the bottom of the ocean, collecting them requires mining infrastructure, and the means to locate them. The primary ways to acquire resources are through mining submarines and the use of specific extractor buildings.

There are three main resource categories in Surviving the Abyss:

• Building Materials - Resources needed for the construction of buildings: concrete, quartz, iron, steel, aluminium, and copper.
  
• Fuel - Resources needed to maintain power production including coal and oil.
  
• Food - Low quality food & high quality food, used to sustain the crew.
  

Building Materials and Fuel resources are located throughout the map in varying densities. The starting biome has a good variety of resources to aid in the initial setup of the research facility; however, these resources will soon become scarce.
Finding Biomes that contain an abundance of a given resource, and establishing a base there, is crucial to the continued success of the mission.



[h2]Resource Deposits[/h2]
Resources are generally found within two types of deposits:

• Small Deposits - Contain small amounts of a resource that is extracted through the use of mining relays and mining submarines. These deposits can be found in abundance, but they will rarely last long.
  
• Large Deposits (Extraction Points) - Contain much greater amounts of a given resource. These extraction points can be exploited through a variety of extractor types that are unlocked as the research facility expands.
  

[h2]Mining Relays and Mining Subs[/h2]
You can gather resources from Small Deposits with the use of Mining Relays and Mining Submarines. Before you can assign a Mining Sub to gather a particular resource, you first need to build a Mining Relay in that area. Relays have a small Area of Effect, which will show the resources that are available to be collected in that location. Once the Relays have been placed, you can then assign the Mining Subs to begin extracting resources and delivering them to your stockpiles.



Small Deposits are finite and will run out of resources within days or weeks. They are extremely useful to get out of a tight situation and to bolster dwindling supplies of resources but require considerable attention from the overseer to ensure Mining Submarines always have resources available. Finding larger Resource Extraction Points is crucial for the long-term viability of the facility.

[h2]Resource Extraction Points[/h2]
Larger deposits of resources are referred to as ‘Resource Extraction Points’ The only way to collect resources from these larger deposits is through the construction of Extractors, directly on the resource deposit.



Extractor buildings vary in gathering rate, yield, and the amount and type of staff required and have a slower gathering rate in contrast to Mining Subs. Extractor buildings must be provided with crew, oxygen, and power to function. The small infrastructural investment in their operation means they are a relatively stable yet slow source of building and fuel materials.

[h2]Resource Production Chains[/h2]
Some resources are much rarer than others. Steel is needed to construct most buildings in Surviving the Abyss and there will be a limited amount of scrap steel deposits scattered across the map, and no Steel Extraction Points. Thus, the amount of Steel that you will be able to gather will be finite. Iron, however, can be discovered in large deposits in many biomes. This raw iron can be harvested and processed into Steel within an Alloy Furnace building.

Iron ➞ Steel is the first resource chain to be included in Surviving the Abyss, with more resources and more complex chains to be added during our Early-Access development.

Next time on Surviving the Abyss:
In the next developer blog, we’ll be discussing Environments & Biomes and how this influences the gameplay and visuals. See you next time!

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Greetings Overseer!

This week we are going to talk about the Crew Management system in Surviving the Abyss.

The crew is a vital part of your research base, providing the labour essential for research to progress and to keep the survival infrastructure running smoothly. As the Overseer, you are in charge of managing the crew and making sure that their basic needs are met.

[h2]Crew Relations[/h2]
First, we are going to talk about how you can keep track of your relationship with the crew and their general well-being. The crew relations bar monitors your performance as the Overseer on the base from the perspective of the crew. The crew status is determined by the combination of positive and negative occurrences on the base and the actions made by you.



This ranges from settling crew conflict to providing food and shelter. Some instances, such as crew death, may take immediate effect on relations, whereas other happenings may present themselves as emergent crew events, with your response determining the resulting loss or gain of relations. You have a number of approaches you can take in providing for the crew and solving problems on the base.

Not every occurrence can be accounted for through planning and preparation; the crew will make requests that you may not want to or are unable to fulfil, necessary actions may upset certain crew members, and an external threat still looms beyond the light. As such, crew relations will inevitably fluctuate even with the most proactive approach.

[h2]Specialisations and Employment[/h2]
There are four types of crew members that you are able to create through the cloning process:

[h3]Generalists[/h3]
The most common type of crew member. They are the easiest to clone and are able to work at almost all buildings which require crew, however they do not provide any extra benefits.
[h3]Scientists[/h3]
Specialised crew members that are able to work at all scientific buildings, such as the Research and Cloning Labs.
[h3]Engineers[/h3]
Those who are primarily responsible for the power generation and resource gathering buildings.
[h3]Explorers[/h3]
Crew members in charge of all expeditions and increase their success rates.

Scientists, Engineers and Explorers are considered to be Specialist crew members. Specialists are valuable parts of the crew, increasing efficiency and giving functional access to mid and late-game buildings.



The primary purpose of a specialist is to boost a building’s efficiency more than a generalist and fulfil any role requirements of an advanced building. Buildings that require a specialist role cannot operate without them being present. Outside of their specified job role and associated building, specialists function as generalists.

[h2]Health[/h2]
Each crew member has their survival requirements and can have negative experiences on the base which can impact their mental and physical health. Health is primarily affected by: O2, Food and Labour Accidents.

You can utilise Hospitals, to reconcile the negatives accrued by these factors and provide treatment to crew with declining health. Crew whose health reaches the threshold of requiring treatment will cease working and be admitted to a hospital, granted there is available capacity; crew will remain in treatment until their health has fully recovered. Crew without access to Hospitals will eventually succumb to their ailments.

The nature of the environment and the depth the base is situated at places the crew in a precarious position. As a result of this, crew can die through various situations that arise on the base, whether as a result of mismanagement or through labour accidents

The impact of crew death can be felt with varying degrees of severity across the base. Death transpiring as a result of mismanagement, whether that is by your action or inaction, accrues the Crew Death critical status and has an immediate negative effect on crew relations. This has typically the most severe effect on relations as the Overseer is failing in their role of providing for those on the base.

Crew death can also occur through equipment malfunction and workplace accidents in the form of emergent events. These events are more out of your control and as such, are not as detrimental to crew relations (though it’s still affected), however your response to them is important. Crew may request having new buildings constructed or may request repairs to damaged equipment, costing resources. Refusal of these requests will increase the negative effect applied to relations.

[h2]Recreation, Housing and Life Support Systems[/h2]
Like we talked about in our Population blog, there are several factors that affect your crew, other than their employment and health. Keeping the Life Support systems running is the most important aspect of keeping your crew alive. Making sure that they have consistent access to clean oxygen and food, stable power to keep all the buildings on, as well as providing your crew with a lit environment are your main priority when it comes to managing your crew.



Additionally, if crew members are left without housing and recreation, it will negatively affect your relations as well. Building living quarters and recreational buildings will ensure your workers comfort and thus provide you with an efficient crew.

[h2]Next Time on Surviving the Abyss[/h2]
In the next developer blog, we'll tackle the topic of Resource Management and take a closer look at how to best balance your needs versus your supply.

Also, before we sign off for today, the team here on the Surviving the Abyss team want to wish you very happy holidays and New Year! We'll see you next week for Dev Diary #6!

Greetings Overseer!

Today's topic is buildings, their functions and efficiency, and the octagonal grid system in Surviving the Abyss.

[h2]Octagonal Building Grid[/h2]
While deciding on which system of building grids we use may seem like a mundane one at first glance, it is an important consideration during the design stages of the project. Building restrictions, levels of freedom, and catering to playstyles and building styles are all important aspects we have to consider as it is - literally - the very foundation of the game that you will be experiencing. We initially explored 3 types: Square Grid, Hex Grid, and Gridless.

Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. We knew we wanted a complex tunnel system in the game, so it was quickly decided that the ‘gridless’ option was a non-starter. The hex grid seemed like the obvious choice but during playtests and reviews of this system, we found it lacked the granularity we desired for the tunnel and building systems.

In the end, we opted for a fourth option. We utilised a square grid with the additional caveat of allowing buildings to connect at 45-degree angles, and for tunnels to be constructed at 45-degree angles. This is essentially an ‘octagon grid’, and provides quite a unique building experience.



[h2]Building Design[/h2]
There are a number of aesthetic and technical challenges involved with designing the architecture for an underwater setting in a city builder game. All of the buildings must follow strict technical guidelines, such as tunnel door placement rules, in order to be functional in the game; these limitations served as our canvas for each building design. We spent many hours balancing the various aspects of our chosen design language with the aim of exemplifying as much as possible from the Brutalist and Nautical themes of the cold-war era, whilst sprinkling in some ‘mad scientist’ design language as well.

Being in a dark underwater setting, visibility is an important factor, so buildings needed to have some way to be easily seen and recognised. To that end, we decided that the windows would be large and glowing, and many would have various other glowing elements to aid with visibility. This design decision pushed the aesthetic farther from realism and more into sci-fi, but not so far as to be a typical sci-fi design language. This, coupled with dark materials and darker lighting, helps ground the visuals in a dark sci-fi tone that we feel fits the setting.



[h2]Categories[/h2]
There are a wide variety of different buildings and structures that you can build in Surviving the Abyss, with many more to be added during the course of development. There are 8 categories in the building menu, all of which are responsible for different gameplay systems:

Resources
Structures for gathering, extracting, and stockpiling resources.

Exploration
Structures that provide you with tools to expand your base and inform you about resources and objects in the darkness.

Power
All the buildings related to power and power management for your base.

Life Support
Oxygen production, food production, and hospital structures.

Population
Buildings to house your crew and keep them entertained in the vast darkness.

Research
Research labs, and a variety of modules you can attach to them. Used to increase your ‘Research Data per Day.’

Genetics
The purpose of your mission. Genetics buildings allow you to harvest genetic material and create genome sequences to clone humans.

[h2]Building Performance and Efficiency[/h2]
The majority of buildings will need a constant supply of power, and for crewed buildings, a supply of clean oxygen. They will need to be physically connected to oxygen-producing buildings with the use of tunnels, and have a connection to power-producing buildings utilising power lines.



Many buildings require a number of crew to operate. Crew slots in a building are divided into generalists and specialists. Only specialist crew members can operate in a specialist crew slot.

Crew are the means by which building efficiency is determined, with the mix of generalists and specialists required to fully maximise a building's potential.

Most buildings throughout the game will have a varying number of crew slots for either: generalists, specialists, or both. As buildings advance, they require more specialists for operation, pushing you to improve the cloning process to meet demand and reap the benefits of maximised building efficiency.

You will also be able to unlock better performance upgrades in the tech tree and build additional modules to augment and improve the functionality of some of your buildings.

Buildings also have an integrity scale which through a number of factors can drop to the point of being inoperable and even being destroyed. Damaged and destroyed buildings can be repaired to return their functionality.

Most structures must be built in lit areas of your base and if your Light Towers lose power or get turned off, the buildings left in the dark will no longer be functional. The only buildings that you are able to build in the darkness are the Light Towers and Outposts, which will make the expansion of your base a challenging experience.

Next time on Surviving the Abyss:
In the next developer blog, we’ll be discussing Crew Management. We hope to see you there!

Finally, whether you celebrate the holidays or not, we will wish you an amazing close to the year and hope that the next one will be fantastic. We will still continue to add developer blogs here, but it would be criminal of us not to thank you for your interest and wish you well!

Best wishes,
Surviving the Abyss Development Team & Paradox Arc

Greetings Overseer!

Today we will be discussing the population & cloning systems in Surviving the Abyss.

[h2]Crew members[/h2]
You begin with a crew of 12. These workers are just enough to set up a base of operations and begin establishing the power, oxygen, and food production infrastructure.

In the early stages of the game, the only way to get more crew is to complete the goals set out by the command station above the surface, a number of these objectives result in a new group of crew members being sent down to aid the mission.

As the base expands, you will quickly find yourself having to juggle the crew between different roles to keep the power on and the oxygen flowing. To continue expanding the base, and grow your crew you must turn to the task at hand. Human cloning.



[h2]Cloning[/h2]
Human cloning is a fledgling scientific field, fraught with danger and failure. This experimental process requires DNA from various forms of wildlife to be fused with that of humans.

First, however, you are tasked with locating and capturing a variety of rare wildlife for use in the cloning system.

[h3]Aquatic Life[/h3]
The genetic material required for cloning can be found in great abundance on the seafloor. The highly adapted species of the deep sea are perfect specimens for our experimentation.

Habitats are located throughout the map, they vary in rarity from Abundant, Uncommon, Common, and Rare. Habitats are distributed throughout the different biomes in Surviving the Abyss, and the player will need to locate many to fuel the cloning process.

Once discovered, habitats can be used as a source of Power, Food, or Genetic Material, depending on the type of building constructed on it. In this blog we’re concerned with cloning; a Fauna Trap will begin to capture genetic samples from the species within the habitat.

[h3]The Cloning Process[/h3]
With genetic material harvested, the next step in the puzzle is combining them into a sequence, which can be used to produce clones.

Each genetic sample has 4 properties:

• Type: What type of crew this genome produces, Generalist, Scientist, Engineer.
  
• Potency: The chance of a clone being produced.
  
• Uses: The number of clones this genome can produce.
  
• Mutation: Affects the lifespan of the clones produced. A higher mutation rate reduces the lifespan of the clones produced.
  

The genome effects stack, so the genetic sequence you produce has an overall Potency, number of Uses, and Mutation level.

[h2]Crew Vitals[/h2]
[h3]Health[/h3]
Crew members' physical health needs to be a top priority in the research facility. Injured crew cannot work, so the efficiency of your base depends on your crew’s health.
[h3]Hunger & Food Quality[/h3]
There are two types of meals, high and low quality. Higher-quality food will be harder to produce, but more beneficial to your crew. Eating only low-quality food will eventually lead to your crew becoming malnourished and at greater risk of becoming incapacitated or dying.
[h3]Oxygen & Air Quality[/h3]
Your crew must be provided with a consistent supply of clean oxygen. Lack of oxygen will cause the crew to suffocate and low-quality oxygen will negatively impact their health.
[h3]Recreation[/h3]
Everyone needs some rest and a distraction from their daily routine. Providing your crew with some recreational activities will ensure their stable and healthy mental state.
[h3]Housing & Employment[/h3]
Providing crew with a place to sleep, and a job that fits their specialist type will keep them happier and healthier.
[h3]Light[/h3]
When buildings fall into darkness, the crew inside will become distressed. Do NOT let this happen!

[h3]Crew Relations[/h3]
Your responsibility as Overseer means providing as much as possible for your crew to ensure they can work efficiently, and happily. Your ever-expanding roster of crewmates requires consistently increasing amounts of clean oxygen, quality food, living quarters, and recreational facilities all within lit areas to maintain their health and contentment. However, in the desolate depths, can the cost of providing be reconciled with the cost of progress?

The crew relations bar allows you to measure your performance, from the perspective of the crew. This is influenced by a myriad of factors, from the completion of milestones in the journey to perfect cloning to the decisions made in settling disputes and requests. Your choices are scrutinised by those who live under them, and your crew will have little trouble letting their feelings be known.

Should relations with the crew fall low enough, they may offer an ultimatum - meet their demands or prepare for a revolt. A successful mutiny will see you removed as Overseer, having failed in your mission. It is imperative that this does not happen, so a careful balance is required while overseeing your mission on the seabed!

That's all from us for this week's developer blog, but be sure to come back same time next week for more deep-dives into the mechanics of Surviving the Abyss, and be sure to wishlist on Steam ready for our Early Access release!



Next time on Surviving the Abyss:
In the next developer blog, we’ll be discussing Buildings & Grids. Sea you there...

Greetings Overseer!

This week we will discuss the light, dark, and exploration in Surviving the Abyss.

In the deep ocean, no light is present, and darkness rules.



Lighting our way through the darkness is an integral theme of Surviving the Abyss. The darkness acts as a fog of war, obscuring most useful information about the surrounding areas as well as prohibiting you from building and gathering resources there.

The map extends far beyond the starting area and spans multiple biomes. There is much to discover, which brings us to the exploration tools and strategies within Surviving the Abyss.

There are several ways to navigate and explore. There's short-range exploration, which will allow you to explore your immediate surrounding area, and long-range exploration which will enable you to set up additional bases in new biomes to expand from.

[h2]Short Range Exploration[/h2]
The most direct way to reveal what is hidden in the darkness is by building ‘light towers’ which will illuminate the surrounding area in a small radius. Light towers can only be built within a small distance from another lit area, so their construction is more suited to short-range exploration. Light towers are also resource-intensive and their power consumption means they can be a costly investment in the early game.



Blindly trying to light the darkness with no indication of what lies beyond may be too costly. The Sonar Tower can help you see in other ways through the dark. You can scan your surrounding area to pinpoint areas of interest and the best direction for the expansion of your base. You can choose to scan for fuels, resources, habitats, and points of interest.



[h2]Long-Range Exploration[/h2]
With the research facility established, and local areas explored, attention will soon turn to longer-range exploration.

You will be able to send out exploration submarines to points of interest further from your base. However, long-distance exploration will require a number of crew to operate the submarine, along with fuel and food to keep them sustained on their journey. Additionally, not all expeditions are guaranteed to be successful, and you might risk losing your crew and resources if you don't prepare for the voyage well enough.

Once the exploration sub reaches its destination, it drops a flare that will illuminate the area for a short period of time, which you can use to set up an Outpost.



[h2]Outposts & Docks[/h2]
Outposts help the player establish a new base of operations, separated from the central hub. They include a light tower and produce a small amount of oxygen and power from which you can start building. To allow crew members to move to the new outpost, a dock building is required.



The crew will be automatically transported as required between 2 docks buildings. This allows you to separate your tunnel networks and move crew over long distances to new outposts.

Next time on Surviving the Abyss:
In the next developer blog, we’ll be discussing Population, Crew Vitals & Cloning.