What Cobnuts simulates

103 systems, in plain language.

Advantages and Traits	Every colonist is born with traits, which are permanent strengths or weaknesses. One colonist may be strong. Another colonist may heal quickly. A third may be good at talking to people. A strong trait is called an advantage. Traits make certain jobs easier for the colonist who has them.
Animals (Wild)	Wild animals live on the map and are not owned by anyone. They walk around looking for food. Predators, which are animals that eat other animals, hunt the smaller ones. Herd animals stay close to each other. Every animal gets hungry, grows from young to adult, and slows down with age.
Artifacts	An artifact is a rare item with its own name and unusual powers. When your town owns an artifact, it can unlock new research. The game also records the history of that artifact, including who made it.
Beds and Bedrooms	Every colonist needs a bed to sleep in. Two colonists who are married share one bed. The game looks at the furniture inside a room and decides what kind of room it is. A room with beds is a bedroom.
Blight	Blight is a disease that attacks crops. A crop with blight stops growing. The blight spreads to healthy crops planted nearby. A colonist has to walk over and pull out the diseased crops by hand.
Bosses and Guardians	A guardian is a large monster that protects one place, such as a ruin or a cave. The strongest guardians are called bosses. A guardian sleeps until a colonist comes near, then wakes up and attacks. If the colonist runs far enough away, the guardian stops chasing and returns home.
Calendar and Seasons	The calendar is the game clock. It counts hours, days, and four seasons, which are spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Each season brings different weather. The season also decides which crops will grow.
Caves	A cave is an open space inside the rock below the map. Caves connect to each other through tunnels. A few caves have an opening at the surface, so colonists can walk down into them.
Chronicle	The chronicle is the written history of your town. It records the day you founded the town, the first baby born, and the start of every year. Important events give your colonists points that you can spend on skills.
Civilizations (Rival)	A rival civilization is another town far away on the map, run by the computer. Each rival has its own money, food, and research. A rival can run out of food and starve. If the leaders of a rival treat their people badly, those people rebel.
Class Consciousness	Class consciousness is how aware a poor colonist is of being poor. Going hungry raises it. Watching a rich colonist eat well raises it faster. Once a colonist has enough class consciousness, that colonist stops accepting the situation quietly.
Class and Inequality	A class is a group of colonists with similar wealth and similar work. The game sorts your colonists into classes. Inequality is the size of the gap between your richest and poorest colonists, and the game measures it.
Climate	Climate is the normal temperature of a region across the year. Each region of the map has its own climate. The temperature rises and falls with the season and the weather. Cold regions freeze in winter, and warm regions grow more plants.
Cohorts	A cohort is a group of colonists tracked together as one unit instead of one at a time. Colonists who walk past the edge of the map become a cohort, which keeps the game running fast. When they return, the game turns them back into individuals.
Combat	Combat is fighting. The game calculates every attack. It works out where the attack landed on the body, whether the defender blocked or dodged it, how much damage the armor absorbed, and how deep the wound is. A fighter who becomes frightened runs away.
Construction	Construction is the work of putting up a building. A colonist carries material to the site one load at a time. Once all the material has arrived, a colonist builds the structure. The game remembers which material went into it and how well the builder worked.
Continents	A continent is a large mass of land with ocean around it. The edge of a continent is uneven rather than smooth. The ocean near shore is shallow, and the ocean farther out is deep.
Corpses and Rot	A corpse is the body of someone who has died. A corpse keeps the name of the colonist. Rot is the slow decay of that corpse, which ends with a skeleton. Colonists who walk past a rotting corpse become unhappy until someone buries it.
Criticals and Fumbles	The game rolls dice whenever the outcome of an action is uncertain. A very high roll is a critical, which means the colonist does much better than expected. A very low roll is a fumble, which means the colonist makes a serious mistake.
Day and Night	One day in the game runs from morning to night. The map grows dark when night falls. Colonists work more slowly in the dark.
Death Spiral	A death spiral is a wound that keeps making itself worse. The colonist loses blood, and the wound becomes infected. If no other colonist gives treatment, the wounded colonist collapses and then dies.
Deterioration	Deterioration is the slow wearing out of a building as time passes. A colonist has to repair a deteriorating building before it breaks.
Diplomacy	Diplomacy is the relationship between your town and the rival towns. Every rival has an opinion of you. Trading raises that opinion. Killing their people lowers it. If the opinion drops far enough, that rival declares war.
Disease and Infection	A disease is an illness that a sick colonist can pass to healthy ones. An infection is a wound that turned bad because nobody cleaned it. A colonist with medical skill can cure both.
Elections	An election is a vote to choose the leader of your town. The colonists cast the votes. The game counts every vote and saves the result.
Elevation	Elevation is how high a piece of ground sits. Ground with high elevation is colder. Water flows downhill and collects where elevation is low.
Emigration	Emigration is a colonist leaving your town for good. An unhappy colonist can decide to go. On the way out, that colonist takes a share of the food and money.
Equipment	Equipment means the weapons, armor, and tools a colonist carries. A good tool makes work faster. Good armor helps a colonist survive a fight. Heavy equipment makes a colonist walk more slowly.
Expeditions	An expedition is a group of colonists sent far from town to work somewhere distant. The game checks that the expedition still has a route home. You can order it back, or send more colonists to help.
Factions	A faction is a group of colonists inside your town who share the same beliefs. Different factions argue with each other over who should lead.
Family and Kinship	Kinship means family ties, such as parent, child, or cousin. Colonists court each other, marry, and have children, which creates those ties. When a colonist dies, the surviving family grieves for a long time.
Filth	Filth is dirt on the floor. Colonists carry mud indoors on their shoes and drop it. The filth builds up until another colonist cleans it.
Fire	Fire spreads from one tile of the map to the next. It spreads faster when a tile holds a lot of material that burns easily. Weather changes the speed too. Fire destroys buildings, kills plants, injures colonists, and leaves burnt ground behind.
Flora	Flora means all the plants in the game. Plants grow larger over time, and good soil and weather make them grow faster. A plant lives a set number of years, produces fruit, and dies. Plants stop growing in the wrong season.
Food and Nutrition	Nutrition is how filling a piece of food is. The game measures your food supply by total nutrition, not by how many items you have stored. That number decides whether your colonists have enough to eat.
Forest Regeneration	Regeneration is a forest growing back on its own. Mature trees drop seeds nearby, and new trees grow from them. The game caps how many trees a region can hold, so the forest cannot cover the whole map.
Frost and Seasonal Ice	Frost is the damage cold weather does to plants, and it can kill them. Seasonal ice is water that freezes hard enough for colonists to walk on. When the weather warms, the ice melts and the water returns.
Government Forms	A form of government is the system of rules your town runs on. You choose which form to use. Changing it changes who holds power and which colonists are allowed to vote.
Grass	Grass grows on ground that suits it. It first fills the tile it started on, then spreads outward to nearby tiles. Cold weather stops grass from spreading.
Grazing and Foraging	Grazing is animals eating wild plants off the ground. Foraging is colonists gathering those same wild plants. Grazing makes the plants shorter, and a short plant feeds an animal less than a full grown one.
Holdridge Life Zones	A life zone is a type of landscape, such as rain forest, grassland, or desert. The Holdridge system decides which life zone a region gets, based on its temperature and rainfall. Height above sea level matters too. This is why rain forests appear in warm wet places and deserts appear in hot dry ones.
Hunting	Hunting is sending colonists to kill wild animals for meat. Some animals require research before colonists can hunt them. The game records whether an animal died from a hunter, a predator, hunger, or a collapsing roof.
Husbandry	Husbandry is the care of tame animals. Colonists can tame a wild animal and keep it at the town. A tame animal can be trained and kept in a fenced pen. Tame animals have babies and supply milk, wool, and eggs.
Incidents and Storyteller	An incident is a problem the game sends at your town, such as a raid or a fire. The storyteller is the part of the game that picks which incident comes next. It watches your wealth, your population, and your dead before choosing. Some incidents arrive as a series of connected events.
Injury	An injury is damage to a colonist's body. The game records each injury on the body part that took it. Injuries bleed until treated. A colonist with medical skill can treat them. Some leave a scar, and some cost the colonist an arm or a leg.
Inventory and Hauling	Hauling is carrying an item from one place to another. Items rest on the ground as real objects, and a colonist can pick one up and haul it. Each colonist can carry only a limited weight. An inventory is the set of items a colonist is carrying.
Jobs and Work Priorities	A work priority tells a colonist which kinds of work matter most. You set the priorities, and after that colonists choose individual jobs themselves. A colonist standing closer takes the job instead of one standing far away. A fire interrupts every other kind of work.
Landmarks	A landmark is a location on the map with its own name.
Legends	Legends are the recorded history of the whole world, not only your town. They cover famous individuals, wars between towns, and where rare items came from.
Light	Light comes from the sky above and from lamps your colonists build. Light grows dimmer with distance from its source. Colonists work more slowly inside a dark room, and they sleep poorly there.
Logistics	Logistics means moving goods without a colonist carrying them. Conveyor belts and mechanical arms pass items from one place to the next.
Market Prices	A market price is what a good costs to buy or sell. A good that is hard to find costs more. A good your town has too much of costs less. Wealthy rival towns charge higher prices, and food costs more during a famine.
Mental Breaks	A mental break is what happens when a colonist stays unhappy too long. During a break, that colonist may wander away, refuse to work, or destroy nearby objects. A colonist who stays happy for a long time instead produces unusually good work.
Mining	Mining is digging ore and stone out of rock. Colonists mine with picks or with powered drills. They can also cut a ramp through the floor to reach the level below.
Mood and Thoughts	A thought is a single thing that made a colonist happy or unhappy, such as a fine meal or a cold room. Mood is the total of all the thoughts a colonist is holding. Pain, sleep, money, and grief all feed it. A low mood causes a mental break.
Needs	A need is something a colonist must have, such as food, sleep, or company. When a need runs out, the colonist collapses and can die. Some colonists grow bored or lonely sooner than others.
Pathfinding	Pathfinding is the game working out the route a colonist walks to reach a place. A route can cross the map and climb up or down between levels. When something blocks the route, the game finds a new one.
Politics and Values	A value is a belief a colonist holds about how the town should run. Politics is what happens when colonists with different values argue. Colonists who share a value work together, and the town follows the outcome of the vote.
Pollution	Pollution is waste that spreads from one tile to the tiles around it. It can also fall through a hole in a ceiling to the level below. A town that makes more pollution suffers more harmful events.
Power	Power is electricity. Wires carry it from generators to machines. When your machines need more power than the generators make, some machines shut down. Generators burn fuel, and a colonist has to carry more fuel to them.
Prisoners	A prisoner is a captured enemy locked in a cell. A colonist assigned as a warden brings food to the prisoner and talks with them. After enough conversations, a prisoner may agree to join your town.
Production and Crafting	Crafting is making an item at a workbench. You place a production order, and colonists first carry the required parts to that bench. A colonist with the right skill then makes the item. You can order a fixed number or let the bench keep going.
Prosthetics	A prosthetic is an artificial replacement for a lost body part. A colonist who loses an arm or a leg can receive one. Some prosthetics work as well as the original part, and some work better.
Quality and Mastery	Quality is how well a crafted item turned out. A skilled crafter produces higher quality than an unskilled one, and an unskilled crafter cannot reach the top grades at all. Mastery is that high skill. The best result creates a rare item with its own name.
Raids	A raid is an enemy attack on your town. The raiders steal items, damage buildings, and carry off wounded colonists. They leave once they get what they came for, or once they become too frightened to keep fighting.
Realms	A realm is a large named region of the map. The map is divided into realms.
Recreation	Recreation means entertainment and rest. Colonists need it, and they need variety in it. A colonist can stop an activity partway and finish later. Repeating the same activity every day makes it less enjoyable.
Relationships	A relationship is what one colonist thinks of another. Conversation, gifts, and shared danger raise the opinion. Theft and begging lower it. A conversation that goes badly can turn into a fight.
Research	Research is study that unlocks new things. You choose the subject, and your colonists work on it. Finished research unlocks buildings, recipes, and rules. Colonists also learn some subjects by doing the work itself.
Research Directions	A direction is the overall path your research takes. The subjects you choose shape the town over time. A town can end up focused on learning, on manufacturing, or on warfare.
Revolt	A revolt is a strike that turned violent. Angry colonists first refuse to work. If conditions do not improve, they take up weapons and attack property. Killing one of them makes the rest angrier.
Rivers and Lakes	A river is water flowing downhill toward the ocean. A lake forms where that water collects in a low area with no way out.
Rooms	A room is a space that walls enclose completely. The game finds rooms on its own and scores each one on size, appearance, and dirt. The furniture inside decides what the room is used for.
Schedules	A schedule is a colonist's daily plan, covering sleep, work, and free time. The schedule influences what a colonist does, but it never forces it.
Sites and Dungeons	A site is a place of interest on the map, such as a ruin. A dungeon is a site full of monsters. The game remembers which sites your colonists found, what treasure they took, which monsters they killed, and which traps have fired.
Skills and Attributes	An attribute is a basic quality of a colonist, such as strength. A skill is trained ability at one kind of work, such as cooking. You spend points to raise a skill. An untrained colonist can still attempt the work, and a colonist who enjoys it learns faster.
Sleep	Sleep removes the tiredness a colonist built up during the day. Noise from nearby colonists wakes a sleeper. Working long hours leaves a colonist more tired.
Soil Fertility	Fertility is how much goodness the soil holds for growing crops. Farming drains it. Soil left unplanted slowly recovers, but only after your colonists research soil science. Weather changes how fast it recovers.
Solidarity and Strikes	Solidarity is poor colonists sharing their frustration with each other. A strike is what happens next, when enough of them agree and stop working together to demand better treatment.
Spoilage	Spoilage is food going bad. Food decays after a set amount of time. Storing food in a cold room slows the spoilage down.
Succession	Succession is the way burnt ground grows back in stages. The ground is bare soil at first. Small plants appear next. The original plants return last.
Support and Collapse	Support is the rock and walls holding a ceiling up. Remove too much and the ceiling collapses. Colonists and items standing there fall to the level below, and anything underneath is crushed.
Temperature	Temperature is how hot or cold a place is. Every room has its own. Heat escapes through the walls. Rock deep underground stays the same temperature all year, and a fire warms the area around it.
Terrain	Terrain is the material a tile of the map is made of, such as soil, sand, or stone. Foot traffic, frost, and fire can each change a tile from one terrain to another.
Thermal Injury	A thermal injury is harm from being too cold or too hot. The longer a colonist stays exposed, the worse the injury gets. It heals once that colonist reaches a comfortable temperature.
Trade and Caravans	A caravan is a group of traders that walks to the edge of your map. Each caravan stays a while and then leaves. Your town rules and your treaties decide how much you can trade with it.
Traffic Wear	Traffic wear is the path that appears when colonists walk the same route over and over. The path fades once they stop using that route.
Traps	A trap is a device that fires when a creature steps on it. The trap wounds that creature and holds it in place. A trap that has fired stays useless until a colonist resets it.
Visitors	A visitor is a traveler from another town who stops by for a short time. You can invite a visitor to join your town, or order them to leave.
Wages and Surplus	Surplus is the goods your town produces beyond what it needs right now. Wages are the share of that surplus paid to the colonists who did the work. The rest goes into storage, and you set how much goes to each side.
Weather	Weather is the day to day condition of the sky, such as rain, snow, or clear skies. The temperature decides which kinds are possible. Weather affects plant growth, soil recovery, how fast fire spreads, and how fast colonists move outdoors.
Worldgen	Worldgen is short for world generation, the step that builds your map before play starts. The game builds it from a single number called a seed. The seed decides the land, rock, caves, rivers, plants, and ruins. The same seed always builds the same world.
Zones and Stockpiles	A zone is an area of the map you mark for a purpose, such as farming or cutting trees. A stockpile is a zone for storing items. You choose which items belong in each stockpile, and you can assign an owner to it.
Catch Up	Catch up is the game working out what happened in an area nobody was watching. Plant growth and food decay still continue there. The game calculates the result directly, and it matches what would have happened if it had run the whole time.
Chunk Streaming	A chunk is one square section of the map. Streaming means the game keeps only the chunks near your colonists loaded and stores the rest. A stored chunk comes back exactly as your colonists left it.
Content Pipeline	The content pipeline is the step that loads the game rules. It reads every data file and loads installed mods in a set order. It then checks that no rule points at something that does not exist.
Determinism and Replay	Determinism means the game has no hidden randomness. Entering the same seed and making the same moves always produces the same world, which is what makes a replay possible.
Drift Oracles	Drift is when a fast shortcut slowly stops matching the correct answer. An oracle is a check against that. The game recalculates the answer the slow way and compares it to the shortcut.
Headless Mode	Headless means running with no picture on screen. The whole game world can run this way, which is what makes automated testing possible.
Save and Persistence	Persistence means keeping your game between sessions. Each system writes its own portion of the save file, so no part of the game is left out.
Snapshots	A snapshot is a copy of the world handed to the display so it can draw the picture. The display can read a snapshot but can never change the world with it.
Spatial Index	A spatial index is a record of which objects sit near which other objects. The game uses it to answer questions about nearby things quickly.
Watchdog	A watchdog is a check that notices when the game stops responding. It records which system is running at each moment. If the game freezes, that record names the system responsible.