Video Game / Mindustry

Mindustry is a Tower Defense Factory-Building Game hybrid wherein the protagonist must fend off waves of increasingly lethal enemies by mining materials, refining products, researching tech, building turrets and units, and making massive supply lines.

You start off as an abandoned core on a desolate, seemingly-dead world. As the game progresses, you must fend off waves of enemy reinforcements, research and refine new materials to be able to defend yourself from increasingly powerful enemies, and capture new bases, so you can finally work towards leaving the planet...

As of Version 7.0, the game is split between two planets, Serpulo and Erekir, each with their own tech trees and separate resources, making them effectively two different games with the same core mechanics (though it is possible to play with both tech trees at once in a custom game). Serpulo is the original planet, has the most development and content, and is currently the one most trope examples are based on as of this writing, while Erekir is more streamlined, less reliant on Procedural Generation for its maps, and generally more beginner-friendly.

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This game provides examples of

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • All power lines have no maximum power input or output, so that players won't have to deal with building massive numbers of power nodes to supply power from their source.
  • Conveyors, Mechanical drills, and lots of other early game equipment don't need power to run. This is presumably both to allow a more natural method of progression involving power and prevent the player from getting bogged down with power nodes and generators.
  • Ore patches never run out.
  • Ammunition limits only apply to turrets; units can fire for eternity. Once again, supplying units would make the already difficult logistics required to maintain supplies and turrets into a positive nightmare.
• Achievement Mockery:
  • Placing two routers side by side, an inefficient setup that doubles as an Ascended Meme here, grants you an achievement titled "Heresy".
  • If you die to the shockwave at the drop point when an enemy wave spawns in, you're awarded with the achievement "You Should've Listened". The game already gives you a few hints to get out of it, including an outline of the kill area and an on-screen warning when you're at risk.
  • "Bad Idea" is granted for using blast compound to power a combustion generator, which can quickly cause it to explode.
  • You're awarded the "Inefficency" achievement for building a Water Extractor on water instead of just using a water pump.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Conveyors don't need any power to function. This is presumably because having to deal with power logistics to just transport items from A to B would be needlessly irritating and boring. The only conveyor that does need power is the phase conveyor, but that one requires late-game materials and it basically functions as a medium-range item teleporter.
  • If for whatever reason you lose a level, rather than start from scratch, you spawn back at the same point with your previous structures in various levels of decay/destruction, allowing you to quickly reconnect and rebuild your old supply lines. While units are always lost, the amount of building destruction varies depending on how you failed. If you died to an uncooled thorium reactor right next to your base or other such method of inadvertent self-destruction, most of your expensive structures will still be standing and you'll probably only have to rebuild a few conveyors, power nodes, and drills. On the other side of the spectrum, if you lose to the regular units or guardian(s) of a sector, expect to see most of your base up in flames. Losing to regular units, while harsh, will still keep some of your important structures, but a guardian loss will outright guarantee that you're going to be missing a lot of important materials.
    • Note that the above is only true on Serpulo. Erekir makes you to start with a blank slate every time you start a sector over, whether it was through self-destructing or being overwhelmed. On the plus side, it means any of your designs that didn't survive contact with the enemy last time can be done over instead of saddling you with design debt.
  • Erekir's tech tree is designed so that most new techs are unlocked by simply touching down on a sector, rather than capturing it like on Serpulo. That way, even if the player fails on the first try, they can complete the research using resources from sectors that have already been captured and practice with it before putting it to use on the next attempt.
• Apocalypse How : In the planets past, seemingly of the Class 5 (all multicellular life is extinct) variety. The lead tooltip even outright states that all the lead that you're dredging up would be toxic to life, if there was any left.
  • Further supported by the Biomass Processing Plant and Spore Pod descriptions.
    • The spore pod tooltip states that it 'emits gases toxic to organic life' and is extremely invasive.
    • The Biomass Processing Plant states that it was the orginal spot where the spores were bred and cultivated, but when the plant was breached, they quickly escaped into the surrounding environment and outcompeted all other life.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI has no idea how to build a base, and on maps where the enemy has a base established and is allowed to build structures, it won't do anything more creative than rebuild whatever it started with after you destroy it first. As a result, if you attack again and interrupt it, you'll often find random bits of rebuilt infrastructure strewn about, doing nothing.
• Ascended Meme: The Router block has several jokes about it in-game. It's called a "necessary evil", chaining together two routers gives you the "Heresy" achievement, and there's a language setting that changes every single word to "router".
• Awesome, but Impractical :
  • T5 units in general fit this trope. Sure, they have enough firepower to singlehandedly crush most enemy bases and even one of them can shift the tides of battle. On the other hand, they consume a truly ludicrous amount of resources, are really slow, and can be annihilated if the opposing team is prepared for them.
  • Swarmers or Cyclones with high-tier ammunition like Surge Alloy or Blast Compound. They can deal absolutely ludicrous damage, with even one of them being able to fight off tier 5 units and win. On the other hand, they also consume ammo at equally ludicrous speeds, making supplying them impractical unless stockpiled with vaults or having a dedicated, powerful supply line.
  • Phase Walls. Sure, they can occasionally reflect enemy bullets back towards them. But the chance of this is low (10%) and more importantly, phase walls have terrible hp for their material cost, making it more likely that the enemy will just destroy the wall before it can actually reflect anything. Also, it can't deflect laser projectiles or bullet fragmentaries, meaning units like the Eclipse, Quasar, Omura, etc will just be unaffected.
  • For Erekir, Flux Reactors. They produce up to 7200 units of energy from heat (second only to the Neoplasia Reactor), though they also use cyanogen as a stabilizer to keep from exploding. The problem is, of the four main heat sources on Erekir (oxidation, electricity, slag and phase fabric), only the last two produce enough heat to make Flux Reactors worthwhile, and both have better ways to produce power. If you have slag and arkycite (a requirement for making cyanogen, anyway), then you can use Pyrolysis Generators which are much more compact, have no risk of exploding, and produce water as a useful byproduct. If there's no slag available, then you can't build Flux Reactors anyway because they require Surge Alloy to construct. Phase fabric allows you to build the aforementioned Neoplasia Reactor which (while it has its own issues) also consumes arkycite and produces even more power (plus excess heat, which ironically means the Neoplasia is one of the best ways to heat up a Flux Reactor if you really need that much power).
• Boring, but Practical : The Mono. It doesn't have the massive hp pool of other units, it has no weaponry and can't defend itself, and it can't even be used like the Crawler to help impede enemies. What makes up for it, is that it can automatically mine copper and lead veins, and is very cheap (30 silicon and lead in an Air Factory). Due to this, it can be easily spammed to ferry back massive amounts of copper and lead to the Core, allowing you to ignore those supply lines and resources altogether and focus on other, more pressing concerns.
• Difficult, but Awesome: On Erekir, it's possible to weaponize ozone containers into bombs by picking them up with your core unit and flying them into enemy territory, which the AI will then attack (thinking it's a building you don't want destroyed) and blow themselves up with it. However, picking up items with the core unit forfiets your invincibility, so the enemy will try to shoot you down before you can drop the payload if they aren't distracted by something else. You also need to find an open space to drop the bomb, and dropping anything precisely with WASD keys is hard enough even when you're not under fire. Additionally, core buildings project a "no-build zone" around them that prevents this tactic from being used to take them out.
  • On Serpulo, Combustion Chambers loaded with Blast Compound or uncooled Thorium Reactors can be used similarly, but since Serpulo Core Units can't carry buildings, you'll need a Mega, Quad, or Oct to do the heavy lifting, depending on the size of it. These options also have the property of detonating themselves instead of having to trick the enemy into doing it, but the hard part is getting them not to detonate while they're still in your territory.
• Easy Logistics: Zig-Zagged. While the actual logistical effort of supplying your base and turrets with materials is immense, it is surpisingly easy to supply and deal with most resources. For example, power nodes have infinite throughput, surges and related issues don't exist, moving highly flammable and explosive materials via high speed conveyor belt next to lava has no issues, and so on.
• Having a Blast: The aptly-named Blast Compound applies this to turrets that accept it as ammo. It combos with freezing attacks like a Wave or Tsunami primed with cryofluid. On Erekir, Titan turrets also have the Blasted effect, but it's mostly cosmetic since Erekir currently has no way to inflict freezing to take advantage of it.
• Mighty Glacier : The Lancer and Foreshadow. Slow rate of fire, massive ammunition and power consumption, large footprints, weak against fast targets, and of course; having enough power behind each strike to vaporize enemies off the timeline.
  • The Reign and Toxopid units also qualify as this. They have massive health pools, massive damage, an ability that makes them near-unstallable (Reign has fast-firing high-pierce bullets that cannot be stopped by plastanium walls, and the Toxopid is capable of stepping over obstacles, annihilating whatever it steps on, and sapping nearby turrets to weaken them and heal itself), and are generally terrors to behold and deploy. Their one downside? They are absurdly slow, allowing Foreshadows and Cyclones to decimate them if not properly supported.
    • Partially subverted by the Toxopid, because it is the only tier 5 unit that can be picked up by Megas and Octs, allowing them to be ferried almost right over the enemy defense, where they can quickly crush the entire defensive line and leave it open for other units.
• More Dakka: The Cyclone, Swarmer, and Salvo all enthusiastically fit this trope. The salvo starts by firing fast-paced bursts of ammunition, the Swarmer rapidly fires salvos of homing missiles, and the Cyclone fires swarms of explosive, fragmentary bullets.
• Playing with Fire: The Mace, Atrax, and any turret that uses Pyratite or Slag for ammo can inflict burning on enemies. Slag and the Atrax have the added effect of melting enemies, too, reducing their health for the duration. And of course, dousing them with oil beforehand can cause them to burn even harder on top of the usual slowing effect.
• Shock and Awe : Lancers, Meltdowns, and Arcs both use power to charge up devastating electrical attacks.
  • Surge Alloy also has this as a fundamental property; any unit, building, or projectile that carries it will explode into electric arcs upon being destroyed. Electric attacks also do bonus damage to units that are wading through or soaked with water.
  • Erekir has the Afflict, Smite and Malign turrets. Afflict uses Surge Alloy for construction and Smite uses it for ammo, while Afflict and Malign are notable for having no ammo requirements besides electricity and heat (which can be produced with electricity).
• Spider Tank: The upper-tier units in the Crawler family, like the Spiroct, Arkyid and Toxopid, are these (and fittingly, they're named after spider genera). Unlike regular ground units, they can walk right over walls without stopping. Erekir's equivalent units are more "crab tanks," but have the same ability.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Enemy base cores can unload infinite resources and don't need to waste time worrying about actual supply. This can very quickly turn infuriating as the enemy core builds an impenetrable defense without a single supply chain while you have to carefully manage yours.
• Weaksauce Weakness : The Support Ground tree. Capable of firing dual-purpose piercing laser weapons that can both devastate swathes of enemy defense and repair allies, making them absolute terrors against a normal base. Completely countered by a single plastanium wall, as plastanium blocks laser weaponry.