I've made a video (with voice-over) of me showing what I've got so far with "Scott's Space Game". For some reason YouTube won't let me upload it to the 'Scotts space game' Channel I made especially for this sort of thing, so I've put it on my 'personal' youtube channel for now. Enjoy!

Haven't posted in a while, just letting you know I'm still here. I've had to make a big overhaul to the game, as I found after a while of building a huge factory, it got very laggy, narrowed it down to the conveyor belts and tubes, so I remove all that, as the game is set in the future and conveyor belts do seem a bit old, so instead items are moved around by "Tesla Beam", matter-transporting. This is only good for short distances though, so still have the mag-lev shuttles for long-distance transport.

Another change will be as well as building a rocket to go back to Earth, you also will have the option to stay and build a colony, then invite people from Earth to join you (when habitats have been built). You'll then need to provide food/oxygen and drinking water to a lot more people than just yourself!

I'll make a you-tube video in a few days to show what I've got so far, but still a long way to go!

It takes quite a bit of titanium to build a rocket, so recently added the production chain needed, which follows real-world production fairly accurately. You mine up Rutile ore, which you may have to go looking for, as it won't be on your doorstep. This then goes through several processes before you end of with Titanium plates, which can feed into the launch pad to start building the rocket! Here is the various machine producing the titanium...

You need chlorine to make Titanium, so here you can see one Mag-Lev shuttle bringing in the Rutile ore and the other bringing in salt-water ice, you melt the ice and then use electrolysis to get Chlorine (and hydrogen which can be used to fuel the process!), so pretty accurate chemistry going on here! Mostly.

Not quite yet, but I've just started adding all the 'end game' stuff, building the rocket that will get you off the alien planet and back home.

The Mag-Lev has been improved since my last post too, you can now build them at 4 different levels, with the lowest level being just high enough to walk under it, which makes world navigation a lot nicer. Having the 4 levels means separate lines can overlap. The only limit is they need to stay at the same level, so planning is everything! And, as I think I mentioned, they are point-to-point transport lines, not a network, this is for two good reasons: One, it's easier for me to program and two; train signals, deadlocks and routing nightmares will be avoided, just simple pick up, drop off points along the track.

So, the rocket... You'll first construct a launch pad, which has a conveyor in-let, you'll need to feed it all the parts to build the rocket and then feed it rocket fuel, then you jump on board and wooosh! But it will take a while to make all those parts.

After a little more play-testing, I found it was a bit of a drag having to walk/run long distances. So I've added Mag-lev track (10 metre long tracks that snap together), and stations where you can load/unload items and the shuttles themselves that follow a particular route. All working well so far. I plan on adding a "Logistics pod" that uses the same code, but is smaller and intended for medium-range transport, from one side of a sector to another. The Mag-lev is designed to be used over kilometer range, rather than short hops. Then for very short-range, you'd use conveyor belts. Here's a video showing it off...

You start off drilling ores using a hand-drill, then you get a "Mine-O-Matic", a semi-automatic way of mining ore from the surface. When your ore needs exceed that, you'll need to bring in the big machinery.
The Core drill. Very expensive, large, but mines up "core fragments" that will need further machinery to get the useful ores from it.

All resources whether they are solid, liquid or gas are represented as a cube that can be placed on a conveyor belt, dropped on the ground and kicked about. Here's a slideshow with the latest game-play features...

I don't want to sound racist, I have several American friends :-)
Here's why I don't think [stereotypical] Americans will like this game...
There are no guns or weapons, no bombs, no mass-shootings. It seems you're enjoy these things.
There is no combat of any kind, it's a peaceful, somewhat relaxing game, there is an urgency to acquire food and something to drink. There is also no need to rush through the game and complete it faster than anyone else...competition, another thing you seem to like.

The aliens are good guys, which is completely against Hollywood Scripture. When real aliens make themselves known to us on Earth, they might just be good guys here to help us, not land and suck out our brains.

The economy in the game is somewhat Socialistic...which you probably think is pure evil. Instead of the cost of items being whatever price the greedy capitalist thinks they can get away with, prices in the game are fixed based on what they are actually worth, so some stone you pick up is cheap and near-worthless, but put it in a granulator to turn it into silica sand, add some calcium oxide and drop it in a furnace to make glass, and your stone turns into something with value. Eg. The more effort a thing takes to manufacture, the more expensive it is.

So. there. Please don't take this too serious, this is just a few thoughts I had when thinking who would like playing this game. If you want a space game where you blast aliens all day long, look elsewhere, there are 1000's of those, I'm just trying to do something different. There are also no zombies in the game for the same reason.