Crafting And Colonization in Parsec Frontiers
Happy Easter to the people who celebrate Easter. We’re really excited to share more information about the game and what we are planning for crafting and colonization.
Crafting
Any object in Parsec Frontiers except raw materials are crafted by players. Resources are turned into small items or components, which again often can be used as a part for a more complex crafted object. An example could be raw metal which together with polymer and the correct blueprint can be turned into a control board. The control board could then be combined with other objects to craft an engine, which again could be used as a component to create a vehicle or a component for a vehicle. Certain objects can be crafted by simply having the materials and recipe available. Other more demanding projects however require a construction facility which can be built on habitable planet plots they control.
The recipe for each item is contained in templates. Once you have obtained a template for a specific object, you need to gather the components necessary to craft it. Many templates give the players a choice of components. A “metal” requirement may for example be filled with copper, iron, aluminum or other metal types, each with unique stats that will affect the stats of the crafted object. Players can thus greatly customize the objects they create by finding the ideal composition of components for them.
The largest projects are massive undertakings and often require the combination of several players and a significant investment of time to complete. The blueprints for large objects such as high quality ships are not easy to come by. Players can secure the exclusive rights to craft these blueprints, and either keep them to themselves, or distribute them to a selection of players for a fee or for mutual benefits. The game will continue to release blueprints for new objects as humanity rebuilds and expands their technology base.
Colonization
Our knowledge of planets outside of Sol is limited. But as our knowledge grows, we find that there is an almost infinite amount of them, some of which are likely to have the parameters to support human life. In Parsec Frontiers, habitable planets are a scarce and valuable resource. When players stumble across data suggesting a likely candidate, they can move in closer to do more accurate scans. Should the planet prove to be habitable, it can be claimed by the player for a fee, or the information about its whereabouts can be sold to someone more capable of colonizing it. Only planets that can naturally sustain a human population can be claimed.
Each planet has a few different plots that can be populated, and these all have individual deeds, meaning they can be owned by different players. The planet itself has properties that determine the types of plots it’s likely to harbor. But the plots also have individual characteristics, making them suitable for different purposes. Some will have rich resource contents, making them very profitable if the owner uses it to build extraction facilities. Others may have soil and vegetation that gives good yield of food production. Or maybe it has surfaces that make large refining or construction facilities cheap and fast to produce.
Since different plots generally will have different owners, location is also key. A ship production facility is nearly worthless in a sector without ample supplies of metals and pilots, and a grand chain of farms won’t be utilized unless there are nearby human populations large enough to consume most of the yield. Players have to coordinate their efforts and plan ahead, like real world investors predicting the future development of a city. We’re looking forward to seeing how, much like the real world, this open economy will unite and separate players and create a living breathing game world.
Disclaimer
Parsec Frontiers has an open development, which means that we share much more information than what is typically viewed as standard in game development. For a blockchain game where the network owns the game, we feel this is the way it should be. We also think it is an exciting and more productive way to make games. But this also means that we will potentially share things which we later have to change, adjust or that are just plain silly. If we were not open for changing and iterate on ideas, then open development would just be a bluff.
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