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FaurnsGoldberg edited this page May 9, 2022 · 8 revisions

Guide to the Persistent Economy

The following is proposed/in development features, documented here for the purpose of ongoing design discussion.

Making Money & Spending Money (Proposed)

Imports/Exports

Trade Beacons

Trade beacons are physical objects that exist on a zlevel and provide access to specific trade opportunities on that Zlevel and any Zlevels that are considered directly adjacent to it on the Overmap. The Trade opportunities are accessed through a program on modular computers, and they make use of a modified version of the merchant telepad that is built in to Nebula. The program can be linked to a network (faction) account, but also linked to an individual money account.

Some trade beacons represent permanent Import/Export opportunities that provide a consistent money faucet and sink for players as they can be relied upon as a way to make money and obtain resources. Permanent trade beacons may become strategic locations for space stations, ships and shuttles to park around. The expense on Imports and the profits on Exports should be very thin for these permanent beacons, to encourage Player to player commerce and people seeking out rarer, temporary opportunities.

Temporary Trade Beacon

As a random event, temporary trade beacons are generated on open tiles of the overmap. These temporary trade beacons could come with a zlevel so they could be physically visited, but they could also exist merely as an abstraction on the overmap. They provide a limited amount of rare items to purchase and import requests with much better profit margins.

Network Trade Beacon

Networks can construct their own trade beacon on board custom ships and space stations to allow them to list items and materials for other players to purchase. This forms the backbone of large-scale player commerce, suitable for large scale organizations mass purchasing and selling materials.

Opportunities

Every character will periodically be given tasks to complete that send them to the far corners of the System to fulfil objectives that are assigned to them based on their chosen skills. The design objective of these opportunities is to give new players a way to meaningfully engage with the world by giving them tasks that often require cooperation with other players. Smaller parties of players can progress their characters by collectively completing their assigned opportunities.

Exploration Opportunity

This tasks the character with visiting one or more data beacons spread across the planets and space installations in the Outreach Star System. The ruins where these data beacons are located are often infested with hostile lifeforms.

Bounty Opportunity

This tasks the character with hunting down a certain number of hostile lifeforms. Hostile lifeforms are often exclusive to certain regions in space, and so this may require traveling to a specific zlevel.

Trade Opportunity

The character is presented with a unique, small scale trade opportunity at one of the permanent beacons. This opportunity is only available and can only be filled by this specific character.

Making Materials

Mining

Surface Mining

Outreach has several underground mining levels where basic construction materials can be obtained. The following materials can be obtained through Outreach surface mining

List all available materials here.

Space Mining

Asteroids can be harvested for ice and ore of various rarities. These asteroids hold different materials in different quadrants of space.