the training begins with a fun game. there are 3 colleagues in my team: Brett, mike and me. the game is something like this:
every team starts from the home base and will spend max 25 days to the gold mine and return safely. everything in the home base is free. but going into the desert will need water and food to survive.
there are villege in the desert. you can buy extra food or water at the villege, but cash only. there is also dival tome that usually has very bad weather. there is oasis that usually has clear weather and free water. the most other places you will stay is desert.
further, water is $25/jug at home base, and $50/jug at village, and each jug weighs 50lbs. food is $10/basket at home base and $20/basket at the the village, and each basket weighs 10lbs. you can buy shelter (comes with 3 pieces, i.e. you can use it 3 times) for $400, which is only available at home base. shelter weighs 60lbs. you can also buy compass at home base only, cost is $100 and weighs 10lbs. each piece of shelter protects you from one day of sandstorm. each compass also protects you from getting lost. without a shelter or a compass in a sandstorm, you becomes lost and cannot move for three days. if you get lost, your daily usage of water and food doubles.
weather changes in the desert and different weather condition has an impact on daily consumptions. here is the break down:
Usage on clear days: 1 jug of water, 1 basket of food
Effect of sandstorm: 2 jugs of water, 5 baskets of food (4 destroyed and 1 consumed)
Effett of superheat: 3 jugs of water, 1 basket of food
Effect of being lost: 2 jugs of water, 2 baskets of food
**if you have shelter, you can use it during the sandstorm. shelter will allow you to use normal daily consumption (i.e. 1 water and 1 food). compass also provent you from being lost but did not save you the daily consumption.
** shelters and compass do not protect from super heat.
-Gold mining yields 50 lbs per day in the mountain.
-mountains and villages rarely affected by sandstorms or superheat
-maximum weight capacity = 1000 lbs
-each team is given $1000 to spend
wow, sounds pretty complicated. but actually it is simple, you need food and water to survive, and you need to make it so that you get the most gold mined, and return safely.
our team missed the hint of the old man info. this is the information that we may use to plan our venture, but both me and mike missed that information, brett said he heard the old man story but he did not take it seriously since it says the old man may or may not be true.
otherwise, we started on the right track. we feel it is best for us to bring enough food since, it is pretty cheap and it only weighs 10lb. water is expensive, and it weighs 50lb, more over, you can get free water at the oasis. so we decided to bring $25 days worth of food and only bring water enough for us to reach the oasis. we bought 1 shelter and 1 compass. that leaves us $150 cach. we feel we probably need it when we get to the village and do some exchange.
at the beginning of each day, the weather condition will be anounced. based on that info, we decide what direction to move. and camel man run to the bank to exchange good and capacity. each 3 min represents a day in the desert. every day the location of the team is labelled in a big map in front of the class, which puts pressure on teams who do not move quick enough.
we end up spending 21 days in the desert, stayed in the mountain mined for 7 days. we ended up being the number 1 team in terms of the final profit. there is another team mined for 7 days but they used all the money. that $150 made the difference.
