# Picotéras
by Fuchikoma71
Introduction:
As Eriban, fellow Pico-8 developer and code optimiser extraordinaire (very much unlike me) once observed, I have a habit of creating the completely wrong kind of Pico-8 games: slow-paced, physically accurate, complex and austere simulators. Picotéras is the latest in this slowly extending line of misfits.
I have long held the ambition of creating some sort of 4X analogue in Pico-8. However, it quickly became obvious that compromise would be necessary to make it playable. I ended up keeping the gigantic scale, every game spanning centuries (or even millenia) and dozens of star systems, but simplifying the core mechanics of the genre.
So instead of controlling some galactic power, the player is in charge of a single orbital habitat capable of interstellar travel. By way of analogy: you are leading a nomadic tribe of eXplorers, not an eXpanding empire.
Accordingly, eXploitation involves keeping your orbital alive by harvesting the necessessary resources on your interstellar journey, while eXtermination consists in defending it against hostile robotic swarms (possibly through pre-emptive strike).
The name of the game is obviously a wordplay on Voltaire's “Micromégas”, which could be described either as an 18th century space opera, or as a playful treatise on the relativity of scale.
Universe:
By design, Picotéras is meant to be as open-ended as possible, allowing the player to write their own civilisation's history. However, there are inevitably some constants imposed by the game's mechanincs (or by the limits of my imagination, take your pick).
First and foremost, the Picotéras universe has periodic boundary conditions, which means it is donut-shaped: traveling to the “east” simply causes you to re-enter from the “west” and vice versa (the same applies to “north” and “south”).
Second