Site-172

Premise

A 2d side-on base building game where you build and manage a Foundation Site. Contain anomalies, manage your scientists, Mobile Task Forces and D-Class personnel. Fallout Shelter, the base building sections of X-COM and a bunch of Foundation lore.

You are tasked with fully constructing a new containment site, Site-172 to accommodate the increasing number of anomalies appearing world-wide. You start with the very basic facility (functionally, a single management office on the surface), with your starting MTF returning from a mission to retrieve an anomaly. Build your initial containment chamber for the object before the team returns with it, then train your teams and recruit more, perform research using your scientists and d-class personnel, receive missions to retrieve more objects and to perform other containment duties while continuing to expand your facility.

Containment

The core of the game is containing anomalous objects/lifeforms/whatevers. These objects are randomly generated from a pool of keywords and broad categories. Each of these keywords will alter the containment requirements of the chamber they are housed in. For example, a reality-bending effect can be countered by adding a Scranton Reality Anchor to the chamber, living creatures will probably need finding so some kind of feeding and cleaning procedure should be established.

All objects need to go into a containment chamber; they aren't going to sit in the loading bay forever (and if you do leave them there, they will inevitably breach containment). Placing objects in chambers that don't have sufficient methods to contain them will increase the risk of a breach, which can have a number of damaging effects on your facility and its personnel.

Object classes will play a role in how hard the objects are to contain; Safe objects will be easy enough to deal with as once they are placed in a sufficiently equipped chamber you can basically ignore them forever. Euclid objects will require occasional interaction of some kind (for example, cleaning, feeding, equipment maintenance), and Keter objects will require significant levels of containment and interaction to keep safely locked up. Thaumiel objects will be rare, but will aid in containment of objects on your site and/or will provide other buffs to your facility.

Cameos of popular articles are a possibility - allowing people to retrieve and contain 173, 049 etc and build their own containment facilities for them would be a nice little feature, though not the focus of the game.

If an object breaches containment and manages to escape your facility, a time-limited mission will be generated to go and retrieve it using one of your MTFs. Failure to do so will negatively impact your site in some way (maybe some kind of grading system).

Construction

View-wise, the game is 2D and side-on, meaning you can functionally see a cross section of your facility and the ground below it. Facilities can be built both up and down, and these choices will have an effect on your containment options. Building above ground is obviously easier as underground facilities will require excavation first, but underground facilities will be more secure in the case of a containment breach.

Structures will be built on a grid system, with the player able to designate the size and shape of all the structures they want to build. Once the base structures are in place, facilities such as containment chambers, research labs, d-class barracks and MTF barracks and training rooms can be built within. Containment chambers will be able to be equipped with containment methods both inside and outside of the room, and will obviously need to be large enough to accommodate the object that will go in it.

Giving every single containment chamber every single possible security option will be prohibitively expensive, especially early on, and some containment requirements may be mutually exclusive in a single room. Note that this might not be the case on the generated objects - a single object might require both of these mutually exclusive methods, requiring some creative containment solutions.

Additionally, construction of all of these things will require time, meaning some amount of forward planning will be required. Retrieval of objects will have a timer before the MTF returns, giving the player a clear window in which to build the required facility, but these things can be done somewhat ahead of time by, for example, ensuring there is ample free space available.

Mobile Task Forces

The player will start with a single basic mobile task force currently in the process of returning with their first basic object in need of containment. This team will be small, and have the most basic equipment and training (relatively) and largely inexperienced.

Over time, the player will be able to increase the size of their MTF, recruit new teams, train them in specific fields to increase their odds of success in the field, give them better equipment and even perhaps apply some anomalous effects to them using thaumiel objects or other methods.

These teams will be the primary way in which the player interacts with the world outside. You will receive tips and reports of potential anomalous objects (and in some cases straight up confirmed reports/emergency situations) that will require deploying your MTFs to deal with them. In unconfirmed cases, they will investigate and confirm whether or not there is actually something anomalous there, and if so will attempt to contain it (unless you recall them if the team you sent is a bad match for the object).

When your team successfully retrieves an object, the chance of which will be based on the object itself and how well equipped they are to deal with that object, the team will inform you of the specifics and then return with the object, which is to then be contained in your site.

MTFs can also be kept on site for the purposes of containment procedures, if the player chooses, though this will probably be a pretty inefficient choice.

Other Personnel

In addition to MTFs, your site will require scientists, d-class personnel, standard on-site security guards and general worker personnel (for construction and maintenance).

Scientists will perform your research, both in a general sense and on specific objects. Researching specific objects will give you a better understanding of them, perhaps revealing more effective ways to contain them and generally giving more info on their properties. Additionally, they can perform tech-tree research, using the points gained from experimenting on objects, to unlock new containment methods, better equipment and new techniques for both containment and further research.

D-class personnel are more or less exactly what you expect - the fodder you use during your testing so that your researchers arent exposed to dangerous objects directly. The penalties for losing them are low, and although they aren't infinite in number (you can run out if you waste their lives), they are replaced frequently via deliveries from other Foundation sites.

Security guards are also fairly self-explanatory. They help keep your facility secure by keeping the D-class personnel in line, aiding with containment procedures that require armed personnel and trying to shut down objects that are breaching containment. They can aid in research as required (for example, if something needs shooting as part of a test) or be stationed around your facility.

Workers are your bog-standard construction people. They excavate basement levels, build your structures both above and below ground, and install any equipment throughout your facility.

Scientists, security personnel and d-class will all gain experience the longer they are in your facility. The more experience they get, the more effective they will become at their jobs. Scientists will research faster and/or become experts in specific fields, security will generally become more effective at their job and gain bonuses when it comes to keeping stuff in line, and d-class will become more experienced handling anomalous crap, giving them boosts to their survivability and usefulness to you and your site.

Progression

To start with, your resources and available equipment will be limited, and the anomalies coming your way will be Safe and generally easy to deal with. As you expand your site and contain anomalies, your site grading will increase. This will result in you getting more funds and having progressively more difficult (and therefore valuable) anomalies showing up in your mission lists.

You'll also be gaining research, which you can put into the tech tree. The tech tree gates a lot of the more useful and more specific containment options available to you, forcing to you pick and choose what you go for at any specific point. A probable outcome is that you might not have one or more of the technologies you need to fully contain a new object, meaning that it isn't perfectly contained.

As you progress further down the tech tree, you'll be able to specialise in certain areas. Specialising gives you more advanced and effective containment options for specific types of anomaly, access to new types of equipment and access to specific personnel type suited to that specialisation. Specialisations wont necessarily be exclusive, but gaining one will significantly increase the cost of gaining further specialisations.

Victory and Failure

While there are no specific victory conditions for the game - anomalies aren't going to stop needing containment! - it will be possible to fail. If enough objects escape your site, or your Site Director (who personifies you as a player) is killed, its functionally game over.

The general idea is that the longer you play, the more difficult it becomes to manage your site. This becomes especially true if you are containing a lot of Keter objects - your site becomes a precarious house of cards in which mistakes will cost you significantly. Victory is impossible, and failure is ultimately inevitable.

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