Space Management Game

No, this isn't about Business Simulators played in the cold dark vastness of the stars (though it can be sometimes). The idea behind a Space Management Game is for the player to figure out how to make the most out of as little space as possible.

"Space Management Games" is the collective name for a respectable number of Simulation Games which all share the same principle: The player is the head of some organization or business, and receives a set amount of money (or points) with which to construct a facility - be it a business place, a secret lair of evil, an amusement park, even a city. The objective of the game is to maximize the efficiency of this facility by learning how to make its individual parts (usually called "Rooms", "Buildings" or "Zones", depending on the scope of the game) as compact as possible and placed to ensure the most efficiency, within a limited environment. Regardless of the theme involved, some of these rooms will need to be placed close to one another to cut the time required to travel between them, others will have a set minimum size and therefore be difficult to place properly within a confined space, and so on.

Inevitably, the facility will be inhabited or visited by a large number of staff and customers (often referred to as "Denizens") who spend their time traveling between these different areas, and the further they have to travel to reach their desired destinations within your facility, the less efficient the entire facility will be. If the denizens are your customers, you need to make sure that they spend as much money as possible in the facility before they leave, don't have to wait long in queues, and be generally happy about their experience. If the denizens are your minions or employees, you have to make sure that every area is easily accessible so that they don't have to travel long distances as they work, allowing you to hire as few of them as possible to make the whole operation run smoothly.

Space Management Games are often characterized by the ability to check out various stats for each individual working at or visiting the facility, often tracking their mood (or loyalty), as well as other stats. This serves as a tool to gauge whether the facility is really efficient or whether it makes the lives of its denizens too complicated or tiring. A non-efficient facility will end up with displeased denizens leaving en-masse or simply not producing or earning enough money to sustain its operation.

Some interface traits are common to all space-management games regardless of their age. These games will almost always feature a grid-like environment, which assists players in calculating how large each room should be, where passageways for the denizens will go, and how far one room is and should be from the others. Occasionally, there will be several "floors" to work with, but in that case each floor is still a grid-like surface. Aside from its obvious benefit for planning, a grid design also makes it easier for the AI to figure out routes between the rooms and corridors, since it's going to have to calculate routes for dozens, possibly hundreds of characters simultaneously. Real Time with Pause functionality is virtually always included, as well as the ability to pick up stray denizens who happen to be in the wrong place and drop them elsewhere.

Expect the game to be split into "missions" or "levels", where the first missions give you ample amount of space and money to work with, and later ones requiring you to cram more rooms into smaller areas. Often, missions also set a certain monetary goal, so the facility needs to generate a certain amount of something within a limited amount of time in order to complete the mission, thus requiring it to run as efficiently as possible.

Some companies have specialized in creating such games, and whole series of Space Management Games have come and gone over the years as a result. This created several "branches" of the genre, with each branch having its own special rules within the genre. Other games quickly followed suit, placing themselves neatly into one or more of these sub-genres:

Mayor Game:

• Beginning with Sim City, these games put you in the shoes of the mayor of a more-or-less realistic, modern city. You'll have to place down residential zones, provide employment in industrial and commercial areas, connect areas with roads and electricity, provide services like water and education, and generally make sure that the city is attractive to new immigrants. Money is the chief commodity, so it's important to stay in the black. The laid-back nature of city-building is usually supported by open-ended gameplay, although "scenario"-type missions are also sometimes included. There may or may not be any visible denizens at all - Mayor Games tend to treat them as a statistic rather than as individuals.

Commodity Game:

• Similar to Mayor Games, you'll be constructing a city or other bustling living area from the ground up. However here, the focus is on your economy, and the denizens who come to live in your city will need to produce raw materials from the surrounding area, deliver it to craftsmen, and eventually process it into consumption goods (required to keep the denizens alive) and trade goods (to sell for money). Expect having to conduct diplomacy with other cities, and possibly even raise an army to defend your land from them. The first game in this genre was probably Caesar, set in the Roman Empire, which launched a long series of sequels set in various periods throughout human history.

Lair Game:

• In these games, you are constructing a fortress or lair for yourself and your minions. Unlike other Space Management Games, while money is still required to continue construction (and possibly to pay your minions' salaries), the main objective of most missions is warfare: destroying a nearby enemy lair, or defending your lair from enemies who arrive periodically to destroy yours. This requires hiring combat units, creating guard posts in strategic locations, setting up training rooms for your troops, and often the construction of elaborate traps to serve as your first line of defense against invaders. Traps, of course, take up valuable space, so placing them properly makes part of the challenge. Dungeon Keeper is widely considered the common ancestor for this sub-genre.

Service Game:

• With Service Games your facility is expected to give services and/or care to customers, who begin arriving as soon as you open the doors. Your customers will wander around the facility, paying money for the various services you provide. Generally, each customer will require different services and behave differently while visiting. Each has a certain amount of money they can spend, and will react differently to problems they encounter during their visit. Keeping everyone happy, and keeping the cash coming in, is your main objective. This is similar to Tower Defense games, expect you're trying to AVOID anyone suffering damage. Theme Park is probably the first game to codify this sub-genre.

Examples of Mayor Games:

• Sim City and its sequels.
• Sim Tower is somewhere between this and Service Game.
• Transport Tycoon and its many counterparts can be described as a remote version of this. Space Management becomes a function of travel times vs. profit, which deals very much with the correct placement of stations, tracks and roads in what can occasionally be a very tight space.

Examples of Commodity Games:

• Caesar, followed by three sequels. Caesar III is the trope codifier: the next three entries on the list were all directly inspired by it and played very similarly:
• Pharaoh and Cleopatra
• Zeus and Poseidon
• Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom
• Children of the Nile
• The Settlers (AKA Serf City) and its first three sequels. After that it becomes... different.

Examples of Lair Games:

• Dungeon Keeper and its sequel.
• Evil Genius

Examples of Service Games:

• Theme Park
• Theme Hospital
• Space Colony. Ditto.
• Zoo Tycoon
• The Movies can be described as this... without the customers.
• Jurassic Park Operation Genesis
• Rollercoaster Tycoon
• Prison Tycoon
• Sea World Tycoon

Examples of Multiple Types:

• Dwarf Fortress requires attention to all except, for now, Service.
  • Mayor: Carve or construct space to zone for residence or production, allocate traffic values for pathing between them, assign subsets of population to defined districts for work and living.
  • Commodity: Acquire and process raw materials for weapons, armor, trade goods, housing fixtures and, most importantly, booze. The 'Merchant Arc' currently in development will expand the role of commodities and economic power over the wider world. And the bigger a fortress becomes, the more stockpile management becomes crucial for all other aspects.
  • Lair: It's called 'Fortress' for a reason. Sophisticated defense systems can be installed, with a mixture of combat personnel, guard critters, and mechanical counter-measures. Currently defensive only, but the 'Army Arc' scheduled for development will enable raiding, offensive sorties, and ranged conquest.
  • Service: Currently most (all?) Fortresses are communist; booze and food are the only essential services, provided free by the state, so long as there are raws available. Earlier implementation of capitalist economies have been aborted; though a revamp may make Service relevant again, it'll likely remain an option most players won't choose.
• Startopia, a Space Management Game In Space, mixes Service with Lair gameplay.
  • Service: Your goal is to develop a recreational facility on a derelict space station, catering to a wide variety of alien life forms. These aliens show up, require certain facilities, and spend their heard-earned cash while you strive to keep them happy enough to spend it all.
  • Lair: It turns into a very difficult combat game whenever part of the space station is occupied by one or more other companies attempting to do build their own facilities. Massive doors separating the station's torus design can be hacked open, initiating combat between the workers of one facility against it neighbour; essentially hostile takeovers.
• Stronghold, while more of a Real Time Strategy, fits both the Commodity and Lair categories.
• Tropico, a Banana Republic simulator, is a mixture of Commodity and Services; foreing tourists arrive on the player's island and make use of dedicated facilities built to cater for their special needs. Also since the player has to periodically revalidate his power through elections or at least be able defend his regime against armed oposition or coups, the player has to service and care for his own citizens and/or military forces or they will turn against the government.