A large number of spacecraft are in orbit around Hephaestus, each carrying thousands of colonists from Earth. Each spacecraft belongs to a separate conglomerate, nation-state or wealthy Earth-based organization, holds a staff of robotics engineers and stores a limited supply of specialized colonization equipment, such as radio relays, self-deploying bridges and rudimentary remote-controlled robots. The robots, dropped from the ships to the planet surface, need to clear land and mine for resources in preparation for the eventual landing of the colonists.

Each organization is working separately and in competition with all the other spacecraft. Temporary alliances on the ground are common but are often short-lived, since the eventual goal is to produce and stake out as much habitable land as possible for the benefit of the colonists on each individual ship. The robots need to upgrade themselves and make do with the resources of the planet as much as possible in order to achieve this goal. Because of this, several enterprising, non-player organizations have set up automated installations in town-like collectives to facilitate surface trade, storage, information dissemination, robot upgrades and repair for a price.

Conceptually, areas might be broken down into the following categories:


a) Towns
b) Useless land
c) Paths/ Highways
d) Wilderness


It is expected that each region may be contested by players, although Wilderness areas should appeal to explorers and player killers.

Five towns will be spread throughout the world. Towns serve as the nexus for resources and communication, as well as a safe space. Areas with the most valuable deposits also have the most volcanic activity and lava surrounding them, so towns cannot be located near resources. Towns consist of the following areas.

  • Market place
  • recharging station
  • arena
  • compete for credits
  • Range of competition
  • Betting balancing mechanism...odds makers
  • News center "slashbot".

Arenas are spaces where robots can engage in safe competition. There are design tasks taken straight from past 2.007 Engineering courses at MIT and the FIRST competition in this area. Players might also decide to hold their own competitions here. Wagering for in game materials is permitted.


Copyright 2002, MIT.