Devlog #1

This week, I've focused on two idle money-making mechanics.

1. There's the resource market simulation, which allows profiting from resource price fluctuations.

2. It's possible to rent out excess energy created by the ship's reactor. Activating rent contracts provides a passive income stream but drains energy, thus burdening other systems and increasing fuel consumption.

The hardest (and most fun) part of designing these little programs is figuring out how to fit them into the terminal screen, which is 28 characters wide. Implementing these two was a bit easier than I thought, and the end results look quite a lot like my initial pen-and-paper drafts.

It will be quite a chore to eventually balance these different elements of the game, though. But I try not to think about that too much at this point. My strategy is to draft all the main mechanics first, and only then start working on their interplay.

J