I wanted to spend some time discussing some of the newest mechanics in the game. Whats going on out there. Where is development going?
As I fill the worlds with more content it gets more and more complicated. First I wanted to talk about the economy.
Credits.
In games of old the developers usually dump currency on the players for any action they take. This causes massive amounts of inflation. Though not as much as Venezuela who's currency is currently worth less than gold in World of Warcraft. To manage inflation there are two ways credits enter and leave the economy. We call these faucets and sinks.
There are currently two faucets in the game. The first is for development and testing only. You can press escape and go to the ingame store and once every 23 hours. (Once a day with some mercy) you can add 1000 credits to your account. This is just to ensure testing players can repair their ships without having to go through the time consuming process of creating currency with the other faucet.
The garbage truck. The capital City has a garbage truck. Travel to this truck and you can destroy any object in the game for 1 credit. This will be the only faucet in the game at launch. It requires work from players, and will inflate the currency quite heavily in the beginning, but will auto balance with game theory as time goes on and it becomes much more beneficial to sell items on the market for more than 1 credit. Game theory at it's finest.
Sinks.
We currently have far more sinks than faucets. Which should create a deflationary currency. Listing an order in the market has a 3% fee. If you list 1 item for 100 credits it will charge 3 just to list. These credits are destroyed and do not go to the city.
Ship repairs cost an average of the materials required to build the ship. Whatever their lowest sell price is or 1 credit if not enough data. Repair costs should fluctuate with inflation and deflation and are separated from world to world. The space station uses data from verdant reach.
Crafting.
Currently we can only craft base items. But crafting itself will become more in depth.
Currently, you acquire a blueprint for the item you want to craft. You can view the available items by pressing the keybind p. Blueprints drop from NPC's in any city or space port. Be careful of aggression! Once you have the blueprint you can use a survey scanner to find and collect resources needed for the craft. If no cities are available to craft in, you can use the crafting station in the capital city.
Simple as that.
In the future more powerful weapons and gear will be available, include ship upgrade modules to make your ships more powerful.
All of it will follow these guidelines.
Base item. Has a blueprint. Uses materials extracted from the world that can be found with a survey scanner.
Prototype item. Blueprint must be created at a new building called a research laboratory. The building must be powered by fuel cells as well as a new item called a research document. Research documents will drop from NPC's in world events starting with the freighter. There is a 100% chance your blueprint will be upgraded to the prototype version.
The prototype version is more powerful and requires the base item. 50% of the base materials as the base item with an additional material meteoric ore.
Meteoric ore can be found in the world after a meteor shower.
Prototype blueprints can then be upgraded in the same facility into advanced blueprints. There is only a 10% chance for the upgrade to be applied. If unsuccessful, the prototype blueprint is destroyed. The more powerful Advanced item requires the same material cost as it's prototype counterpart, as well as it's prototype item.
Finally, there will be named blueprints. There is a small chance for specific NPC's to drop a named blueprint. Think "The Pirate Lords Pistol". This blueprint may only be used once, and requires the same materials as the advanced version of the item as well as the advanced item itself to upgrade it to the named version. These will be the most powerful, rare, and expensive items in the game.
Ship and armor upgrades are coming too. Each ship will have 4 upgrade slots with upgrade items that follow the same path and structure. More speed, more damage, more tank. So players will be able to upgrade their ships and claim their wayfare made the cinder run in less than 5 parsecs.
Aggression.
What is it? What does it do?
Whenever a player attacks a non violent NPC or another player they get a 5 minute aggression timer. Attacking a player who already has an aggression timer will not trigger aggression.
Players with Aggression are attacked by NPC's in Republic controlled worlds, including the orbital station.
Players on the ground are immediately attacked by any turrets or police. The capital city will spawn Police to come attack the player until aggression is gone or they are dead. Players in the wilderness who get aggression will be attacked by a QRF force of police who will come in a troop transport to hunt the player. Players in a ship will be met with a carrier who will spawn fighters to attack the player. Any world under republic control will spawn these systems in orbit as well as on the surface.
They are not very strong though. They will kill the player and can be annoying, but evasion is possible. They tend to push players out of cover and make them vulnerable to other players.
Worlds become Controlled by the faction that has all of the cities. If all cities have republic HQ's then the world is republic controlled. If there is a mix then the world is contested. If they are all independent HQ then the world is independent and republic police will not respond.
There is one world event where the republic will deploy an NPC carrier to blockade the cities. These NPC's react to aggression. The event can be thwarted by destroying the carrier. This event only occurs on republic controlled and contested worlds.