Colonize Mars recently announced that players will need Martia tokens to buy the next supply packs. The Mission Three supply pack sale will take place on the upcoming in-game marketplace and contain entirely new NFTs. The team also announced the introduction of Hazards, which will encourage players to continually check on their assets to keep earning Martia. In addition they announced Resources, allowing players to build decks for maximum output.
Wax-based Colonize Mars is an economic strategy game in which players will work together to build a self-sustaining colony on Mars. Every building, person, vehicle, or machine is an NFT and players need those to start playing.
The current state of the game allows users to log in and allocate their base NFTs to ownership NFTs in order to generate Martia (check out this post for the difference between the NFT categories). Once allocated, players will passively generate Martia based on the rarity and type of their cards.
All you can do right now is logging in to see how many Martia tokens you’ve generated. Players can claim them at any time and there is no penalty for doing so, nor is there a benefit to leaving them in a claimable status.
As evident by the activity on Alcor before the latest announcement, plenty of people were just dumping their coins. The price dropped consistently after launch, which is entirely sensible considering there was no in-game utility for them and sparse information about near-term usage.
That all changed with the team’s latest announcement that contained important details about future uses for Martia and the direction of the game in general. Let’s go through both near-term and long-term uses for Martia that we now know a bit more about.
Ways to use Martia in Colonize Mars
A new in-game store will launch in December 2021, and this store will exclusively use Martia to facilitate transactions. Selling Mission Three Supply Packs is the only purpose for the in-game store at launch. However, it’s easy to imagine they may integrate common features such as NFT markets and other types of asset sales. Keep in mind, this is a glass ball prediction, and speculation at best.
Early 2022 will see the introduction of hazards and resources. These updates will build upon the foundation by adding a Martia burn mechanism and introducing strategy when building your collection.
Hazards will burn your Martia
Hazards will randomly occur throughout the colony, such as dust storms, asteroids, and volcanic activity. These hazards will affect both Ownership NFTs and Base NFTs by reducing their payouts. Base cards even have the potential to deactivate when taking too much damage.
Players must repair both types of cards. Players will pay Martia to repair their NFTs. More importantly, Martia spent on repairs will be burnt. Burn mechanisms are important to reduce a supply and create scarcity. It’s great to see one introduced so early.
Of course, the secondary purpose is to encourage players to check on the colony regularly to ensure they don’t need to repair anything. Ownership holders will risk losing stakers, while base cards could stop earning entirely.
Resources add new depth to collection building
The introduction of resources is the second update to expect early next year. The update will define the specific roles of the NFTs that we’ve all been collecting.
NFTs will have specialty uses throughout the colony that will generate resources. The specific example they give is an Ice Mining Rig consuming power and producing water. You can imagine the various resources that might come into play when a specific NFT generates them. Each of those resources will play a role in future developments.
Where’s the depth? You’ll need to intentionally build your collection to provide boosts to Martia generation, experience gain, and other unknown bonuses. There’s no further information about this, but clearly, the mechanism is intended to create an element of strategy to which cards you buy.
The goal of the current phase of Colonize Mars is to become a self-sustaining colony. At that point, additional elements will be introduced including land ownership, construction, and exploration. Resources will undoubtedly be heavily involved in upcoming updates.
What is Colonize Mars?
Colonize Mars is a strategic colony simulation game currently in development on the Wax blockchain. Players use their NFTs to aid in colony development and eventually create land expansions and build player-owned hubs. Players stake cards and maintain them at regular intervals to receive Martia tokens as rewards in the first Phase. Later phases will include expansion, expeditions, and discovery.
