Exactly four days ago, NASA graced us with its first official document finally structuring the construction of its lunar base, the final stage of the Artemis program. Enough to make any space fan and another category of space enthusiasts dream: the relentless gamers who have lost entire nights doped with RedBulleyes wide so as not to fall from fatigue in front of their space-sims préférées.
Le cécèbre Starfield (not really simulation, but let’s take it into account anyway), Surviving Mars, Space Engineers, No Man’s Sky or Oxygen Not Includedall of which have different ways of approaching the theme of space colonization and survival in a hostile environment. In addition to their playful aspect, they sometimes confront the player with difficult dilemmas while encouraging us to rack our brains to design habitable bases. But to what extent these titles, by their gameplayhave they correctly anticipated the challenges that the agency will have to face if it wants to keep its schedule until 2032?
Starfield et No Man’s Sky : fun above all
Let’s start first by sorting out his fate. Starfieldbecause it’s a name that comes up in discussions, and that it’s largely undeserved. If we are not going to go over all the failed aspects of the title, we will however focus on its outpost construction system: a barely disguised copy and paste of settlements of Fallout 4transposed into space without Bethesda having deemed it useful to ask whether a post-nuclear wasteland and a planet without an atmosphere posed the same problems to their occupants.
If you want to settle on Luna in the game (the nickname of the real Moon), you can do it without problem while watching an Arte documentary on YouTube at the same time as the gameplay mechanics are so simplistic. You land, you place your prefabricated modules on the surface in one click. You will then just have to install an extractor on any deposit, connect a generator, and the game considers that you have a functional space base.
Bethesda has well implemented a system of cargo links between bases, since you can connect multiple outposts to transfer resources automatically from one site to another… and That’s about where the logistical complexity of the game ends.. There is no mechanism for managing reserves of critical consumables, no redundancy system to design to prevent a single failure from rendering the entire base uninhabitable, no thought about the hierarchy of systems to protect as a priority.
The question of the long-term viability of a habitat in a hostile environment does not at any time touch on the game design. Atmospheric pressure, thermal cycles, oxygen management, lunar dust, none of this really exists. Starfield was developed as a light-RPG/FPSvery lazy on many gameplay loops, onto which Bethesda has simply grafted its basic construction system recycled from Fallout 4. It was never intended to be a real space simulationwhich is necessarily felt with the controller (or mouse) in hand.
No Man’s Skywhich has also integrated base construction since its updates Next et Beyondfalls into the same trap, but we will forgive him more easily in view of what he offers alongside. Hello Games’ game, if it is not a simulation, still remains a fantastic limitless creative sandbox, in which it is possible to get lost for hundreds or even thousands of hours. The title has recovered from its chaotic 2016 release to become one of the best games in the genre, and the studio is providing us with ever more ambitious updates that continue to enrich it.
It is possible to build modular bases freely, on any planet, which can be used to do almost anything you want. Relax after visiting an abandoned cargo ship or a toxic planet, build a museum with the animal bones you collect, a site to automatically extract resources or even an amusement park.
The construction system is very well put together even if it suffers from some ergonomic flaws, but here again, the key word is accessibilité. Just like in Starfieldspace constraints are simplified to the extreme or non-existent. And In a pinch, that’s so much the better: the title is intended to be a relaxed space epic and no one launches it to revise its basics in physics and thermodynamics. Some bases built by the players are truly splendid (see video below) and they constitute a vibrant tribute to SF culture, drawing their influences as much from Star Wars than in the visions of Moebius.
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Surviving Mars and the others: the real ones sims hardcore ?
Here we move into another category of game: still fun and satisfying to learn, but significantly more demanding in their systems, and above all closer, in their intentions, to a real simulation of an extraterrestrial colony. For example, Surviving Marsand city builder survival game developed by Haemimont Games, published by Paradox in 2018. Since the arrival of its DLC Green Planet, the game is even more credible : modular pressurized domes, water, energy and oxygen management, dependence on terrestrial resupplies, crew specialization…
Even if the game doesn’t take place on the Moon, today we can consider it as one of the most realistic titles (all things considered) if we compare it to the roadmap of the Artemis program. With the right mods and a few self-imposed constraints, it becomes a true crisis management simulator where a single planning error can decimate an entire generation of pioneers.
Let’s now move on to Oxygen Not Includeddeveloped by Klei Entertainment, a microscopic colony simulator released in 2019. Don’t be fooled by its cartoonish appearance, it’s a real RimWorld space and you will have to hang on to keep your colonists alive. Everything (or almost) is simulated: the diffusion of gases in your corridors, the atmospheric pressure room by room, the propagation of heat through the construction materials, the ambient humidity which condenses on the cold walls and ends up flooding your lower levels if you have not anticipated the evacuation of liquids.
Your colons consume oxygen, produce CO2 which accumulates in low areas since it is heavier than air, and generates body heat which gradually rises in your confined spaces until it makes certain rooms unusable if you have not designed a ventilation system capable of evacuating it. Here too, a bad decision that you will make in the first week can be paid for in cash and ruin your entire colony at 500ème jour. Terribly frustrating but addictive at the same time.
If the difficulty does not frighten you, Space Engineers may be right for you. Developed by Keen Software House and released in Early Access in 2013 before its final release in 2019, it is perhaps the only game to properly model the construction of airlocks, power grids and vehicles in a no-atmosphere, low-energy environment. gravity.
The game doesn’t have a tutorial that takes you by the hand and explains why your first base exploded. He will leave you to discover alone, like a grown-up, that the hull piece you used to complete a corner was not classified as waterproof, that your interior atmosphere was emptied while you were building the adjacent module, and that your occupants died of asphyxiation while you searched. where you put the airtight doors.
Punishing for the right reasons, it is very rough to handle, but will reward your efforts with a mental trophy that none of the other games mentioned above offer you: the satisfaction of a base that runs correctly because you have understood why it might not work. This link between the quality of your engineering reasoning and the survival of your installation is what makes Space Engineers the space construction simulator the most intellectually honest of this entire selection.
If NASA one day really sets up its base at the lunar South Poleit’s a safe bet that, among all its teams of engineers, at least one has sweated blood and water on Space Engineers or Oxygen Not Included. Even though they are not training tools, they share many points in common with the real constraints of space engineeringa characteristic absent from Starfield and of No Man’s Sky. If you wasted a few hours of your life on these two games while managing to build a solid, self-sufficient base, congratulations: you have, without your knowledge, solved in miniature some of the problems that NASA will have to face in the years to come. A feat, let’s say it, rather rare in the field of video games.
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