Notes
Outlandish Steam-Powered Contraptions will be a 4X… or a 3X… maybe without Xploitation. Or maybe with! The feel of the game should be that of desperate adventure as you roam a desolate (but lush) planet Earth, trying to survive, fending off hostiles, exploring derelict vehicles and buildings, scavenging what you can, navigating random events.
The primary resource management should be steam (wood & water) and energy for the bots.
There should be several paths to victory. Upgrade your vehicle, upgrade yourself and your crew, generate electricity and fuel cells, find traces of humanity.
Backstory
The year is 4267.
You are MedBot, a military robot designed and programmed for the health and well-being of humans. The last time you saw a human — 1583 years ago — you were programmed with a set of orders to seek out human life and help it thrive. You continue on your mission to this day.
The last century and a half have been rough, and your neural networks have adapted to prioritize your own survival; that’s the only way you might fulfill your mission. Over the years, you’ve learned that leveraging G.R.U.B.s (General Resource Utility Bots) to perform physical tasks saves you precious energy, as well as wear and tear on your parts.
Your greatest concern is energy to power your computers and maintain your memory banks. Solar panels kept you and your G.R.U.B.s powered for centuries, but eventually they all broke or degraded into uselessness.
With humanity’s departure, the wilds have reclaimed the earth; forests, farms and cities alike. It became apparent that the most efficient means of generating the power required to search for human life would be to utilize renewable resources: wood and plant matter. Using G.R.U.B.s, you constructed a vehicle capable of locomotion, resource gathering, and self-defense, all powered by a steam tank.
Now you and your band of derelict G.R.U.B.s roam the landscape in your outlandish steam-powered contraption, seeking out human life, and scavenging for wood, water, parts, and — most critically — fuel cells.
The vehicle is capable of generating small amounts of electricity with the application of an alternator, but your advanced technology cannot be fueled by the kind of output a steam tank can generate. It is has proven more efficient to scavenge fuel cells from the fallen bots littering the landscape.
Rooms in the vehicle
Boiler room
Repair room
Cockpit
Energy room
Storage