Railroads

[vyn-halcyon]

The Wild West wouldn't be complete without it.

There needs to be something between Medieval and Industrial, and that's Steam. 
It plays right into the whole Sci-Fi Wild West theme. Think Firefly, right?  

Building a railroad, connecting one settlement to the next. Pawns ride home on built track via Seesaw.  Building Railstations to act as Waypoints.

Starting out with a rail-seesaw and mine cart for short-range mining operations, carrying ores from the deep drill back to base, and evolving that to a Steam Locomotive for long-hauls and protecting that from bandits.

Railroads are static enough to be easily implemented, without much need for animations or complicated code. Have a train sprite slide across rail sprites, puffing translucent smoke sprites. It's great!