ERP: The Shelter's Command Center
ERP. Enterprise Resource Planning. In Korean, it's called comprehensive resource management. It's a system that integrates and manages resources scattered across different departments in a company. Take factory operations as an example: sometimes the boss wants to know the overall status of materials, production volume, inventory, and distribution. With ERP, he can grasp everything in real-time from his office computer without summoning department heads. In that sense, the Shelter absolutely needs an ERP system. Even the air here is a resource. Depending on the situation, corpses can become resources too. Every element has to mesh perfectly without waste, or if even one part falls short, it collapses like dominoes. All resources and consumption follow strict plans! But errors always creep in for various reasons, so future plans must be revised constantly. Only Artemis can pull this off perfectly on a city-scale. The overall map, viewed from a slightly tilted top-down angle, looked just like the UI from a typical management sim game. But unlike ordinary game cities, it was divided into upper, middle, and lower zones.
If this were a real game, players would've complained about the view. The structure burrowed diagonally underground from inside a massive mountain, making it impossible to fit the whole thing on one screen.
I know exactly what you're thinking right now. You think it looks just like a game, don't you?
"It's too similar. If we showed it at E3, everyone would think it's a new game."
Thinking about events that would never happen again made me a little sad. I clicked into the construction tab, and there were tags for various categories: security, research, resources, production, disaster prevention, housing, leisure, and more—buildings grouped by city management needs. It showed required resources and construction time for each. Up to here, it was game-like, but this was reality. Plenty of differences too. For starters, unlike games, you couldn't just plop them down with materials alone; heavy machinery and power consumption were factored in.
"Ah, can't build here."
I tried dropping a Pilates studio from the leisure category inside the camp, but it turned red and wouldn't place.
Building it there would mess up the sewer pipe slope. And the exhaust duct would cross through city space.
Placement was tricky due to infrastructure integration. Kids piped up while browsing religion facilities under leisure.
Whoa, there's even a mosque?
"One of the investors was a Middle Eastern tycoon."
I recalled the turbaned VIP I'd seen in construction reports. Scrolling further, I spotted unbelievable stuff.
Oh!
Ah...
Wow!
"...Hold on, Artemis. You had stuff like this too?"
The leisure tab included pleasure district buildings and facilities, escalating to mind-blowing levels as I scrolled.
They're not built in the city yet, but the blueprints are ready.
Artemis said it with genuine chills. Beyond construction, there were tabs for exploration, diplomacy, policies, and more. Exploration supported gathering info, resources, and tech from outside, like the MetaCraft lab trip. Diplomacy managed relations, trade, aid, and mergers with survivor groups—unused so far, and maybe never. Policies were the system's alpha and omega.
It covers vast desires and ethical issues defining human life, so it's enormous. This is already condensed.
It set detailed rules for residents' lives.
For example, you can decide how far to allow specific luxuries for residents.
Selecting the policy tab brought up dozens of categories; picking "Luxuries" spawned countless items. Artemis selected one: cigarettes. The icon showed a V of index and middle fingers with a cig between.
Cigarettes
I'm going now. Please, don't smoke anymore.
— Yul Brynner (passing from lung cancer)
A big game-like title and blurb appeared. It felt malicious, but tobacco ads are like that. Like sim games, policies had illustrations: women in groups smoking at work sites, with butts and packs littering the ground, cellophane fluttering like leaves, a glob of spit arcing silver.
"Hmm."
I eyed Artemis suspiciously, but she showed no reaction. Below were all cigarette-related stats: "Banned" in red first—no cigs distributed in the Shelter. Then inventory, production lines, consumables stock, daily output, quality upgrades.
Hover over the 'Banned' part.
Hovering showed buildings needed if enabled, plus pros and cons.
Pros
◇ Relieves residents' stress.
◇ Can partially substitute for currency.
◇ Slightly helps prevent stomatitis.
Cons
◆ Requires building and maintaining multiple smoking booths.
◆ Exhaust purification filters degrade faster.
◆ Increases internal medicine consumption.
◆ Increases surgical medicine consumption.
◆ Increases dental medicine consumption.
◆ Increases radiation exposure for all residents.
◆ Pollutes cityscape with ash, butts, plastic, packs.
◆ Lowers long-term recyclables quality if recycling allowed.
◆ Causes ongoing production halts for smoke breaks.
◆ Greatly increases fire risk.
◆ Increases drain and sewer clogging risk.
Very on-brand for our city. It approached from resource/cost ops angle, not smoker health. Clicking filters or meds gave details.
"Feels biased, though?"
I glanced at Artemis beyond the screen; she was unfazed.
What?
"You analyzed the whole UI and pros/cons, right?"
What?
"Just admit you hate ash and smoke floating around the city."
With her personality, seeing smokers spew pollutants everywhere would be intolerable. But if I approved as manager, she'd have to allow it. So she rigged it to kill my mood, using the tutorial as an excuse.
No exaggeration or distortion—100% accurate. 'Cigarettes are all harm, no benefit' isn't hype. I even scraped for those meager pros to balance it. Appreciate my effort instead of accusing me of biased lobbying with personal feelings.
"Got it. Calm down."
I soothed her rapid-fire defense. Biased or not, those lopsided pros/cons were irrefutably funny.
"I wasn't planning to make cigs standard issue anyway. I don't want that filth scattered in our home. But I do plan limited smoking in designated reward spots."
Anything aiding control gets used, especially with warehouse cigs rotting away. Survivor groups for bartering? Unlikely.
...For stress management, I'd recommend loosening alcohol instead.
Her tone softened. Alcohol tab: crossed can/bottle icon, illustration of a sleeveless worker woman gulping beer in the break room—sweaty clothes, toned muscles dripping sweat, bobbing throat. Provocative without explicit exposure.
"Predictable, huh?"
I pointed to a quantified resident psych change: stress, happiness, loyalty. Alcohol rations cut stress sharply, boosted happiness/loyalty.
Quantifying that in reality?
Possible here.
She popped a graph classifying drinkers/non/smokers/non by alcohol/smoking.
Full surveys on drinkers, non-drinkers, smokers, non-smokers let precise predictions of policy approval percentages. And more.
Medical checks, daily behavior, chats analyzed craving levels meticulously.
Vast observation data predicts individual desires and cooperation from providing them.
She pulled random resident profiles: mugshots, biometrics, personality, health, relations. Magnifying glass let policy input for predicted reactions if allowed/banned. I was speechless. Shelter surveillance rivaled Big Brother, but this precise?
I designed an intuitive, simple UI for at-a-glance city status. Intuitive and simple are game devs' virtues too.
As she said, the ERP evoked construction sims.
It may look game-like, but remember: this isn't a game. No save, no load. A few finger moves can upend countless lives instantly—from petty daily joys to irreplaceable great ones.
"Don't worry. I get what you're saying."
Ex-military here.
"One gesture or word from the boss, and we'd crawl into death pits amid bullets and shrapnel. Later, I gave the same orders to my men."
That wasn't all.
"Drone strikes: thermal maps showed enemies crawling like ants, vanishing like mirages."
No real sense of killing multiples at once.
"A casual flick decides lives and fates. I know the weight and responsibility."
That's enough.
That day, with AI assistance, I reviewed key policies. "Policy" sounds rigid, but her tools were intuitive and granular. Mostly optimal defaults, so little tweaking needed. Just pondered upcoming ethical issues like corpse handling or guard force limits. Deliberated carefully, checked off one by one, put some to vote. The most cautious day since Shelter reclamation passed like that.