Drawing the Boundary of an Automated Logging Camp

Automation still needs a player decision

A Logging Camp is a Facility that sends a physical team into nearby Forest and brings Wood back to its own output storage. A Workday is one turn in which travel, work and logistics advance together.

The first version of that automation could simply look for the nearest eligible Forest. It made the Camp operate without repeated orders, but it left an important decision unstated: which part of the landscape was the player actually willing to consume? Building a Camp near several patches of Forest should not silently authorize all of them.

The Harvest Area was added to make that permission spatial. Instead of setting only a production switch, the player edits the Camp and paints individual observed hexagonal Cells on the map. Cells can be added or erased before approval. The resulting area belongs to that Camp and limits where its team may look for work.

Paint the area, then let the team move

Consider a Camp with one nearby Forest Cell and a second patch farther away. The player can begin with only the nearby Cell, approve the area and advance the Workday. Approval does not instantly turn trees into Wood. The Camp first chooses an eligible Cell inside the painted area and reserves that target so another logging team cannot claim the same work.

Its team then travels to the target, performs the cut and returns with the payload. The trip continues through later Workdays without requiring the player to issue a movement order for every leg. When the nearby source is gone, expanding the painted area can keep the Camp useful, but it also commits more land and creates a longer physical round trip. Leaving the boundary small preserves the surrounding Forest but may leave the Facility idle sooner.

That is the trade-off we wanted: the player chooses the footprint of automation, while the Camp handles the repeated execution inside it.

What this development record shows

This image records the game on August 5, 2026, before the Harvest Area was approved. The yellow target marker sits on the single painted Cell, and the workspace reports 1 authorized Cell. The unpainted Forest around it is visible but is not part of this Camp's permission.

The Forest model has since been simplified: old growth stages and cutting-policy choices are no longer part of the current design. The player-painted Harvest Area, exact target reservation and physical team journey remain, while their interface, timing and balance are still in development.