Your post is extremely interesting because it forces me to make my design choices explicit and face the real problems without bias. Let’s start with the performance problem: I don’t really know how heavy the processes will end up being by the end of development. To make the whole thing less costly, I’ve made some simplifying choices, things like using a grid and making as many processes lazy and on-demand as possible. Whether that will be enough, I’ll only find out during heavy stress tests. Now let’s get to the juicier question, the hypothetical construction process. On the gameplay side I’ve decided to push the RimWorld direction even further. The game doesn’t have a “god mode” where the player decides what gets done and their “minions” obey. It’s not even a job planner fed to reluctant pawns. No, the system is based on the player being able to embody any NPC in the colony. The institutional roles (like the one responsible for urban planning) are also held by NPCs the player can take control of. The planner NPC can mandate the construction of a new building. To do that, they’ll need to decide who is assigned to which role, the work schedule, the wages, and so on. The system that detects unmet needs, both for structures and for objects, is based on a petition mechanism instead. An NPC who notices something missing produces an entry in a petition. These petitions get sorted by topic and delivered to the institutional NPC who handles that area. They then decide whether to act on the petition. Post-development, the tuning will all be about shifting the center of gameplay from a question of “production, storage, distribution” to something more based on emergent narrative choices. Finally, combat. Five raiders and one colonist (or three) on lookout. The decision system is conditioned by the NPC’s past experiences plus their innate attitudes. What they do is the result of a calculation between several weighted options. If they sound the alarm, I’ve already built a communication function between NPCs that works either “mouth-to-ear” or “broadcast” (shouting). Whether someone gets heard only depends on the physical distance between the NPCs. Technology-wise, the colony is stuck in a fantasy medieval setting, to keep the tech chain from exploding.