The RTSC Guide to Startopia
Part 15 States of Mind

At the end of the day, once you've addressed all the essential needs for your customers and employees, entertained them with your fabulous array of Station pleasures and turned the Bio-Deck into a second Eden, there's only one set of character points in a Peep that can make or break you: Mind Points.

Probably the best way to think of Mind is as an approval rating of your part of the Station. Everything that happens to a Peep during its stay affects its overall opinion of the Station. If it had a bad time and your Station was poorly managed the Peep winds up with a depleted Mind score. If things get too horrible for it and Mind becomes minimal, they'll promptly leave (or resign) and make for the nearest Port. Nothing at this point will convince them to stay on the Station. Peeps may get terribly bored terribly quickly, but losing all your Fun points is nowhere near as severe as losing all your Mind points.

There's no one facility that can replace Mind points; everything affects them and the process is perpetual and ongoing. Its happening every second of the game for every Peep; even when they idly stand around, or having a chat, or using facilities or apparently doing nothing taking in the sights of the Bio-Deck. There's several important things you need to keep in mind to encourage Mind, and lots of minor, minor details that can accumulate into big outcomes. Common sense tells you that when things go wrong, rooms fill up, queues are forming, facilities are dirty or damaged, there are dead bodies lying about, etc. etc. then you can be sure things are working against you.

Race Relations

Not all species of Peep get on with each other. Some species are easygoing and get along with everyone; others can be finicky. As mentioned earlier, each of the alien races in the game represents a general theme that illustrates their character and make the game readable. For example, the Sirens are sexy hedonists, and don't get on with the religious Zedem Monks, who find it harder to enjoy themselves. In building your Startopia, race relations is something you will have to deal with, although its not really life or death situation. Most of the time, race relations are expressed as a Peep's preferences: e.g. Salt Hogs don't use Palace Galacticas all that often, and Gem Slugs never, ever use Sleeper Berths. You'll never see a fight or a riot break out amongst your population. People simply leave if they don't like who's around, and even then they have to do a fair bit of interacting before that can happen. Racial differences only seem to come into play with conversations and admiring the racially specific statues that you can build. All other "racial" effects are hardwired into how each species reacts to various Station facilities and environments on the Bio-Deck. You can look them up in the moods in.txt and moods out.txt files found inside the \missions\00 subfolder inside your Startopia install. This is basically where most of this Guide's numbers originate.

So first up, the obvious stuff in Peep racial relations: conversations and statues.

Conversations

Conversations are one of the driving social forces of everyone on board. All over the Station there are pairs of Peeps stopping to chat with one another. Sometimes they'll talk if there's nothing better to do, and - unless I'm imaging things - they might perform a little pantomime to show their feelings, so you can get some idea of what they're thinking and talking about. Talking to one another does wonders for their little minds. Every time two Peeps stop and chat, they each stand and talk, performing occasional little pantomimes such as jumping for joy, laughing or perhaps revealing their pressing most need with an emoticon.

Peeps generally count most life-forms encountered on the Station as being intrinsically worthwhile. They'll completely ignore your Scuzzer force (unless being arrested, of course) and despite the racket some packs of Scuzzers make as they hurtle around the Station they don't appear to upset and annoy anyone. They pet Memaus and even talk to Space Vermin.

Statues

Statues are a good way to improve the Station's attractiveness and reputation for Visitors. Apart from conversations, they're the major feature that epitomises race relations. Peeps will gravitate around a statue and "admire" it. Civic art gives them something to do and for the most part most Peeps like most artwork. Usually everyone appreciates art regardless of where it hails from. If the statue happens to represent their kind then they'll love it to bits. Some Peeps will really dig the works of others, while some may be curiously unaffected by them. When it comes to races who don't like each other in the first place, then they'll stand there "admiring" it in a rather hateful sort of way and Mind points will be lost.

You should think carefully where you put your statues, although for the most part you can stick them pretty much anywhere and things will work out well for you four times out of five. More specifically, you can use statues to fine tune certain areas of the Station, enhancing areas you've set up to attract certain species with. For example, placing one or two Furies statues near Palace Galacticas and Gem Slug Apartments always seems to work for me...

Not only should you think of strategically placing statues, but also buildings and facilities to create little zones for various species. But sticking the somewhat intrusive Kategukhat in the middle of a pleasant grove filled with Sirens and Karmaramans tends to undermine that's area's effectiveness as a Siren and hippy jaunt. Once again, its all pretty free-wheeling and no one is really going to get hurt or that upset, unless you bury the Station in statues and venues they really hate. Multiple statues tend to multiply the effect by virtue that there's more to do and see in the spot you've artied up. Once you've worked out which aliens are which, strategic statue placement becomes fairly easy.

Rooms and Buildings

This is a frequent source of happiness and angst for any Visitors or Residents onboard, and you can make fairly direct adjustments about how Peeps might react and respond to your Station. Most of these suggestions would fit under the tweaks category: but tweaks are what can set an exceptional Station apart from an average one.

Like many sim management games, travel times can be an issue. If you want things to resolve themselves quickly an easily, placing the right buildings close together can do wonders for you. Weary space travelers need some basic sleeping, eating and toiletries close at hand - don't make them hike halfway around the Station to get to them. I usually cluster things together and try to keep a species' theme as consistent as possible so that Peeps usually have a short path to travel. That is, if I wanted to impress the Gem Slugs, I'd put their favourite Bio-Deck environment right above a mid deck segment with their favourite upmarket entertainments, below which might be some essential Engineering Deck facilities with the Salt Hog's Recyclers and Factories kept a little way away. Then its just a simple walk to and from a lift for them to get anywhere. You can sort of "zone" your Station to reasonably good effect. Sometimes, I've fluked the right combination of Bio-Deck environments and almost emptied the Entertainment segments near it...

Building placement can be a bit touch and go occasionally. I've positioned Rooms such as two Research Labs side by side, only to find one constantly empty and one constantly full, simply because one was closer to essential services and Turrakken haunts. Even equipping the empty one with better facilities did little to solve the problem. It became cheaper to simply demolish the empty Lab and reposition it a few segments away where it could become its own point of focus. Sometimes, you'll find a Lavatron with groups of waiting customers, while just a short distance away another Lavatron is completely empty. Peeps will prefer to queue at the nearest loo rather than walk the extra distance. Some struggling facilities simply need a few complementary attractions near them to get them going, achieving a sort of commercial "critical mass" by being in a group.

Death and Destruction

The the effects of combat and violence in general on the Station can be seriously harmful to everyone, even to those not directly involved. However, death is a fairly common event in a large population, and destruction and disasters sometimes strike. Attend to them promptly and ensure you have sufficient Scuzzers to quickly clean up and repair and damaged buildings.

Minor Details

Here's a short, quick list of all the minor details than can adversely or positively affect a Peep. Most are negative, since they are the results of mismanagement or disaster.

That's it. We're gone!

Past the point of no return, when Mind finally zeroes, Peeps resign and/or leave in a huff. At this point there is nothing you can do to stop them: they're off and that's it. But there's one more thing you can do to really mess with them...