Fracking

[Erlend Åmdal]

Fracking could serve as a late-game solution to acquire gas from areas that are already depleted of resources. Fracking would require a large supply of fracking fluid, which would be a mix of water and sand, possibly gravel, and something to serve as a thickening agent. It could also require energy.

To make this interesting, fracking should exhaust the surrounding environment, perhaps by causing irrepairable damage to the soil, making waste water, and breaking down the underground stone and the caves in it. Maybe even seismic activity and vertical displacement of the terrain could be added if we manage to! When the area is exhausted, it should no longer yield any resources for the fracking well.

Each fracking well should have a fracking pump and the well itself. The well should be dug and built by the player, then the fracking pump is placed on top, possibly as a multiblock structure. Some kind of tap has to be attached somewhere to this structure in order to extract gases.

The fracking pump must be supplied with fracking fluid, either directly as a fracking fluid resource, or by supplying the pump with the individual resources required to make fracking fluid.

Some artistic freedom could be allowed. Perhaps the player could be given some parameters to adjust the output of the process, such as using different types of fracking fluid and/or different fracking pressure to yield different types of gas.