Exploiting Mars
Last updated
Last updated
To produce or upgrade Buildings, Transports or any Equipment player need to have the following:
The required Technology available on the respective Land (provided by the Land Governance System)
A blueprint of the respective Building/Vehicle/Equipment
The resources that are specified in the chosen blueprint
Sufficient Colonist skills to produce the blueprint (the requirements for which are listed in each blueprint)
Precious resources are found in nodes and veins across Mars. Some of these resources are shared between the Mars Control Center (MCC) and the 3D Game as mineable NFTs. Colonists will have to explore the vast lands of Mars and look for Ore nodes that contain various resources such as:
Iron (Fe) - Iron is one of the most useful and prevalent resources you will be able to find on Mars. Iron is found inside mineable rocks and will need processing. In Iron’s case, this is mostly a matter of purifying it as steel is simply an iron alloy with much lower carbon content. It is mostly used for machinery and building construction.
Aluminium (Al) - Aluminium is a lightweight silvery-white metal. Its lightweight properties and high thermal conductivity make it an extremely useful material. Aluminium is found in mineable rocks and is one of the resources that require processing. Aluminium will be a highly required material used for base building, machinery.
Titanium (Ti) - Titanium is a silvery-grey metal that is commonly held to be twice as strong as Aluminium, though in truth its performance regarding tensile strength, yield strength, machinability, and more are not so clear cut. Titanium is found inside mineable rocks and will need to be processed. Titanium is often used for prosthetics due to its low conductivity and high corrosion resistance and is used in colonists' tool arms as well as machinery / equipment creation.
Lithium (Li) - Lithium is a soft, silvery metal. It has the lowest density of all metals. Lithium is found in mineable rocks and is able to be used in its unprocessed form. Lithium will be required to craft Energy cells, later on in the game's creation it will be used for medicine and ceramics.
Silicon (Si) - Silicon is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic lustre, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. Silicon is found inside mineable rocks and will not require to be processed. Silicon is used for building component creation such as doors, windows and ceramics.
Perchlorate Brines (CIO-4) - Perchlorate salts are chemical compounds defined by the ion of the same name. They have an affinity for water molecules and can collect water vapour over time, turning into a brine with a very low freezing temperature. Brines are found in the sand while digging and will be used mostly for electrolysis machines in order to create hydrogen fuel.
Hydrogen (H) - Hydrogen is the least-dense element. It is colourless, odourless, tasteless, non-toxic, and highly combustible. On Mars hydrogen will be mostly used to power the hydrogen cell charger.
Methane (CH4) - Methane, although detectable on the Martian surface, is chemically unstable on the red planet and will require its own industrialised production to make use of this chemical.
Regolith - Regolith is a blanket of unconsolidated, loose, heterogeneous superficial deposits covering solid rock. It includes dust, broken rocks, and other related materials. It is present on Earth, the Moon, and Mars and is found across the red planet in plentiful amounts though will require refining to obtain useful materials.
Martian Clays - The term Martian Clays refers to the mixture of minerals and clay-like substances extracted from the planet’s subsurface. One of the more common Martian clays is Glauconite. These clays will require refining to obtain more useful materials from them.
Nickel (Ni) - Nickel is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. On Mars nickel will be used for turbines, wires and engines as its key purpose is in the production of alloys.
Sulphur (S) - Pure sulphur is a multivalent non-metal, abundant, tasteless and odourless. In its native form sulphur is a yellow crystalline solid. In nature it occurs as the pure element or as sulphide and sulphate minerals. Sulphur’s primary use on Mars will be involved with creation of fertilisers.
Chromium (Cr) - Chromium is a lustrous, brittle, hard metal. Its colour is silver-grey and it can be highly polished. It does not tarnish in air, when oxidized it forms the green chromic oxide. Chromium is unstable in oxygen and immediately produces a thin oxide layer that is impermeable to oxygen and protects the metal below from further oxidization. Its main use is in plating other metals to prevent their oxidization.
Gold (Au) - Gold is one of the higher atomic number elements that occurs naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal in its pure form. Gold is one of the least reactive chemical elements and is solid under standard conditions. Gold often occurs in free elemental (native) form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, veins, and alluvial deposits. Gold is a key component of modern electronics.
Uranium (U) - Uranium is a hard, dense, malleable, ductile, silver-white, radioactive metal. Uranium metal has a very high density. When finely divided, it can react with cold water. In air it is coated by uranium oxide and tarnishes rapidly. It can be reacted with steam and acids. Uranium can form solid solutions and intermetallic compounds with many other metals. Uranium gained importance with the development of nuclear power.
Copper (Cu) - Copper is a metal with a face-centred cubic crystalline structure. It reflects red and orange light and absorbs other frequencies in the visible spectrum due to its band structure, giving its reddish colour. It is malleable, ductile, and an extremely good conductor of both heat and electricity. This, coupled with its significantly cheaper cost than Silver explains the prevalence of Copper in all modern wiring.
Manganese (Mn) - Manganese is a pinkish-grey, chemically active element. It is a hard metal and is very brittle. It is hard to melt, but easily oxidised. Manganese is reactive when pure, and as a powder it oxidizes extremely easily. It reacts with water (which rusts it like iron) and dissolves in dilute acids.
Ice (Frozen H2O) - The low pressure and low temperatures of Mars do not allow water to be stable in its liquid phase. Therefore, water on Mars is usually only stable as ice on the surface and as vapour in the atmosphere.
Dry Ice (Frozen CO2) - On Mars the seasonal polar caps are composed of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide). In the springtime as the sun shines on the ice, it turns from solid to gas and causes erosion of the surface. Dry ice goes directly from solid to vapour, unlike water ice which melts into liquid when it gets warm.
Tungsten (W) - Tungsten is a lustrous and silvery white metal. The bulk metal resists attack by oxygen, acids and alkalis. Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal. It is used in filaments in incandescent light bulbs, in electric contacts, arc-welding electrodes and is prevalent in microchip technology.
Ore nodes contain a wide variety of resources in differing amounts. However, their composition is not immediately clear to Colonists who will benefit from using a scanning tool to figure out the quantity and quality of resources present in the node. After using the scanning tool, mining an ore is handled simply by hitting it with a mining tool which reduces the total health of a node. Once a node’s health is reduced to 0, it will be destroyed and will drop materials for colonists to pick up.
In addition to mining, colonists can also dig into terrain to obtain different types of resources (such as clays, dirt or perchlorate brines) as well as lesser amounts of mineral resources.
The materials colonists find are all unprocessed and to make the best use of them they will have to process or refine them.
Materials are refined through the use of machines created by colonists.
These processes form deeper production chains that form the basis of the Mars internal economy.
For example: A colonist would need to use electrolysis on perchlorate brines to obtain hydrogen which can be used to fuel a hydrogen energy cell charger, providing charged Energy cells.
