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Elements are normally built and unmovable, and mostly associated with buildings.
All the elements in the cells and edges of the terrain will combine to form buildings and structures essential for survival.
The various characteristics of the elements that make a building will give it specific features, for example:
- Walls, windows, doors and roofs provide insulation. The total insulation provided compared to the volume of a room will give the amount of energy necessary for cooling or heating up the room.
- The transparency of elements (like windows or doors) will determine how much artificial lighting is necessary to have more or less enjoyable lighting conditions which will impact people's work efficiency, mood and even health
- The flooring material will determine how clean a building is
- etc
All elements have properties that are set at the time they are created. Some are mandatory (e.g. where is it valid to place the element), other can be optional (e.g. amount of electricity generated).
- Name
- Level: N/A, Ground, Floor, Roof
- Place on: Edge, Cell, Element
- Element: if the above is "Element", indicate on which element(s) to place
- Size: how many cell/edge it occupies
- Life span: How many days (years) the element can exist before being degraded to nothing. This could also be a half-life (how much time before the element is degraded by half)
- Strength: How much damage an element blocks
- Insulation
- Transparency
- Requirements: specific conditions that need to be met. For example, a roof must be within 3 cells of a structural wall or beam.
- Tags: e.g. "Inner wall" , "Structural wall"
- Material: Hard wood, ply wood, tin, plaster...
- Buying cost: The base cost to buy this element in a store
- Building cost: A list of materials necessary to build this element. Materials are obviously used up as part of the building process.
- Building tools: A list of tools necessary to build this elements. Tools are worn out but not destroyed in the building process. Some tool can have an impact on building time (e.g. a power drill reduces the building time needed by 25%, while a manual drill does not)
- Building skills: A list of skills needed to be able to build this element. Each skill has a minimum required level below which the element cannot be built. Advanced elements not only require skills, but the actual knowledge to build them specifically, in the form of a blueprint. Compared to similar games, Beyond will place more emphasis on the acquisition of blueprints than just resources.
- Building time: The base building time is improved if skills are above the minimum needed (when your level is X times better than the required level, you spend X times less time to build the element)
There are also transient properties that can change with time or are specific to an instance of an element, in other words, this kind of property can vary from one element to the other:
- Day of creation
- Wear, tear & damage: The percentage of the element that is worn out or damaged. The life span will determine how much can be repaired. Past an element's lifespan, it cannot be repaired above 0% and will stop functioning/crumble. This could affect the strength of the element.
Vegetation is made of elements as well, though they are not normally built. For example, a tree is made of roots in the floor layer, a trunk in the ground layer, and branches in the floor layer that can extend farther than the cell in which the trunk is located. A bush would normally only be made of one element at ground layer, for example.