Note: I'm currently working on the Item Quest Design Doc, covering all the aspects of the game save the Master Item List (MIL.. 'cause, like, there's a million of them), which is going to take a long while. I'll be cribbing from all sorts of places to fill that list (and not just from other video games, which I will steal from like the hack I am). I want to also want to bring some attention to Squidi's Three Hundred Mechanics thing he's got going on here:
http://www.squidi.net/three/index.php
I'll be posting nitpicks and suggestions in the forum until he gets tired of my backseat-designerisms and kicks me out. The dude's good at coming up with that stuff and, unlike me, he actually includes pictures. Which really do help.
So, this idea then. It's inspired in part by train simulators like Railroad Tycoon and an old PC/Amiga game called Transartica, which was a strategy game set in a post-apocalyptic future where the world is trapped in a nuclear winter in which rival train/delivery companies moved vital supplies over the frozen landscape to remote subterranean settlements. Like Elite, it involved buying goods you can trade off for a higher price at another destination and fighting off the various smugglers and pirates that attack you on your journey.
This game builds on that somewhat. It's the future, where intergalactic travel and terraforming technology exists, but is still in their respective infancy stages. In newly terraformed worlds, settlers are dropped in the just-barely livable conditions and are expected to make the best of it and develop the land. The game is set around one of these worlds, a planet close to Earth but in its initial stages: volcanic and often dangerous. You play a merchant who has travelled to this planet to use your knowledge of trading for the great wealth that is supposed to lie under the planet. As such, you've developed technology that will allow normal trains to run on nothing but steam and the various inexpensive minerals that the planet has in vast quantities. Developing a train route between the various outposts on the planet (which are pre-generated by the computer, as you only control the rail aspect), you slowly build up your rail empire and find new and better ways to develop your trains and railtracks for optimum trading opportunities.
Although you have regressed in technology from the space-age facilities of your home planet (Earth), you still have correspondence with the space-faring trade company your family owns. Occasionally, they'll provide resources and technology for you by delivering them via launched space-containers: This relatively inexpensive mode of travel is basically dropping cargo from nearby deep space, aiming various containers made of a hyper-strong and space-worthy material towards your planet, so that you may find where they crash and use them for your operation. Of course, as this technology is cheap and affordable (since it is just a cannon in space firing things at your planet), there are times when the containers are delivered somewhat off-course from your home base. Part of your journey around the trading routes will invariably involve finding and securing these containers. In return, you're expected to launch containers full of valuable mined material (received in trades from the mining outposts you deal business with) back into space for your relatives to find and sell back to interested parties.
The game works in stages, or, more accurately, eras. The planet only has a few outposts initially so your trading route is basic and newbie-friendly. You're introduced to new technology and challenges to overcome as the game progresses so the difficulty curve will be kind to you as you gradually learn the ropes. Eventually, should you fulfill all the trade requirements and goals in the current incarnation of your merchant empire, you'll skip ahead to the next generation (that is, your original character's children) about 20 years later. This new stage will have expanded your people's established civilisation on this planet, based on your success as the planet's driving merchant force, and will have bigger and more elaborate outposts in higher numbers. You'll be able to see how Earth's occupation of the planet is going over the years as you play. As you and your off-world company grow in wealth (what with all the successful trading), you'll have access to improvements in your train and rail technology.
Eventually, though you'll be dealing in meagre human trainrobbers and bandits in the first few eras, you'll meet a few rival alien merchants who have had the same idea and plan to usurp your valuable operation for the same important minerals to export to their own planet/empire. Some of these alien interlopers will be fairly harmless and fair, acting as rival traders eager for their own piece of the pie and friendly enough for you to trade with, since you're not always going after the same valuable materials (one man's trash is another man's treasure, so to speak). Others will be far more hostile, sweeping the planet for anything valuable and often attacking both trains and outposts alike for their mined treasures. Your trains will be able to upgrade themselves with weapons (like gun turrets and ground-to-air missiles) and even have passenger cars for small security forces with which to combat these hostiles. Also watch out that these same bandits/aliens don't collect the various cargo drops from space that you're relying on; you'll get prior notice of new arrivals but it won't help if the containers land too close to where an enemy encampment is and you're not there in time.
So yeah, this idea borrows from games like Transartica and Elite and the sci-fi epic Dune somewhat, but the core of the game is trade. Upgrading your train to be an unstoppable death engine full of turrets and soldiers is one route to take, but you wouldn't be able to hold much on your train if you did it and you sort of need those traded minerals for your business to stay afloat. Similarly, making your train too big or too weapons-light will make it an easy target for trainrobbers and alien menaces alike. Maintaining your age-old (or at least it will be age-old in the later stages) rail empire against increasing dangers for increasing profit is the goal and it should be pretty enthralling for train sim and strategy game enthusiasts alike.
NB: The name comes from what I'm expecting to be the game's major antagonist in the later stages of the game: A sentient alien train that usurps the same track system to attack your own trains for their trade goods. The engine out in front will just be a giant alien brain and face on wheels. Sort of goofy, I know, but then I was a big fan of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors as a kid.
