The framing of the achievement makes it feel like workshops aren't an organic part of the colonies systems. As it is now one look at one's production, stockpiles and free space and decide whether you can go in on workshops. There is no real marginal benefit between having 1% and 39% of the colony in workshops.
To solve this workshops need to produce some sort of resource. However this doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to produce some sort of drone carriable cube. (set your drones to prioritize "self-fufillement cubes")
There are roughly 3 categories of resources in the game:
- Grid resources- power water and O2- produced at a rate & not importable
- Tangible resources- cubes that drones can carry- raw materials as well as finished goods. Almost all of these can be imported.
- Intangible resources- Money & research
(there is a fourth set of quasi resources in labor, living space, working space but their feedback loops are a bit more complex than X metal+ Y power -> Z machine parts. As such, they will be gently ignored in this post)
If one had an enough time one could make a flow chart that shows how each of these resources turn from one to another. Which is exactly the problem with workshops. They don't add anything back into the system.
This is definitely by design and even in many respects a good thing. Workshops exist to drain resources. The point is that culture is the ultimate culmination of society but requires intense material upkeep. But because they drain resources and produce no benefits no vaguely efficient colony will spend on them. Regardless of how a colonist might feel about self expression, from the colony manager's (read: player's) perspective they serve no purpose.
To solve the problem the colony could stand to have another intangible resource. Call it something like prestige.
Workers in workshops produce prestige (Resource+ labor -> prestige). But then also add into the existing set of systems. Add a repeatable tech that increases prestige (Research -> Prestige). Make prestige a possible benefit from anomalies. Add a second type of tourist (e.g. dignitary) acts as tourist except pays in prestige instead of money. Unnatural Colony deaths decreases prestige as well as remove from the colonist pool.
(All of these things need to be tested and balanced of course.)
Then for the achievement add points based on how early a certain prestige level is reached. X points for achieving prestige Y and then Z scaled by time and difficulty. This means that there is no punishment for having a workshop that is not employing 40% of people. The challenge then is examining the colony and finding how much labor can be devoted to prestige as opposed to research or food or machine parts. A score hungry colony wants to get into the self fulfillment racket as early and as often as feasible.
And because I am nothing if not fair, some criticisms of a prestige resource:
1.It would diminish the role of money. Money is already the abstraction of "benefit to earth". Momma Terra only cares about Mars in so much as it can entertain (i.e. Celebrities & tourists), can produce adoptable ideas (the two IP techs) and can give it the rare materials it craves. This is also why some of the anomaly choices give money. But Earth doesn't care about self fulfillment or prestige. There is some tension in making interactions with Terra, especially rover events it the early game, feed into a prestige value. (There is a separate problem that the marginal value of money ->0 as the game progresses.)
2. Narratively workshops are the apotheosis of Surviving Mars. It is saying that the colony has reached a point where decisions can be made that are downright silly from a survival perspective. Why would the colony allocate resources for art when those could be used to fix the factories and the domes?
By creating a resource, however loftily it is conceived, the player is brought back into the efficiency mindset. If an art space produces "prestige" it is no longer about the colonists self fulfillment but rather about contributing something to the colony.
(To an extent we already to do this with workshops. The space v. worker slots requirements force people to be self fulfilled through VR because that is the most efficient use of space. ("What if I don't find self fulfillment in VR?" *cracks whip* "I don't care. Find self fulfillment more efficiently!"))
3. "The rules are made up and the score doesn't matter". Many of the Paradox Development Studio games are technically played for score. In CK2 this is the sum of accumulated Dynastic prestige and piety. In EU4 this is the culmination of military diplomacy and administration ratings over time. But the rub is that the overwhelming majority of players play for non score objectives. Players want to paint maps or do weird dynasty things and have a rather good time doing just that.
In many ways Surviving Mars has the same problem. Personally I acknowledge that score exists but outside of knowing my score modifier I don't know if my score is any good. I have no metrics to measure a good score. And so score is something to get to... eventually. If prestige exists as a resource for scoring it may be quite easy to ignore if you are playing a game where your personal objective something else entirely. There is still a merit in research if the goal is to be self sufficient or reach an unnecessary and impractical amount of money in a way that there isn't with prestige.
