Re: In Game Resources/Resource Collection
Aurelius
In Game Resources are collected from depleting caches. When they are gone, they do not come back—at least not there. The purchase and usage is on another thread and is explained. The good news is that we are not going to force you into some grind to move stuff, most of it can be set up once and then set to auto…
Aurelius
The depletion does diminish to 0 eventually (it takes a long time), but there is a concentration value which determines the speed you mine and the quantity which is the amount in the mine. As for minerals, there are a lot of them with all sorts of rarities, geographical settings, etc. Our strategy guide which will be available for purchase in January (yes, before the gold release) will detail all aspects of the minerals and the key pieces of it.
The whole issue with "dead planets"…think coruscant…again, the trade routes become very important to both utilize and protect.
Aurelius
No—the information you need will be there. There are a lot of people out there that do not want to search the whole website…they want it in a book. The guide is just for that purpose. We have every anticipation that websites will show up everywhere of people explaining the game. In fact, once this beta gets cracked wide-open, we expect to see this proliferation of concepts to be player induced.
As for the payment, there is going to be a monthly subscription when we go gold. That is in the FAQ.
The niche for strategy guides is so that players who want the book at their side, will have it.
The instructions are fully described through the text and tutorials inside the game. We have gone to great length to make sure that everyone is on a level playing field for this. Information is one aspect of the strategy. How you come up with it and what you do with it, is certainly up to you. Remember in the movie New Jack City, when Chris Rock's character was explaining the operation of that building….he mentioned what they did with the stuff…they either used it, or went "enterprising".
As for fears, yes, have some. That is why this game is not published by Sony, THQ, or those… We can assure you, we have the mineral situation under control and as your empire's grow, so will your infrastructure to feed that empire. All the more that must be protected. Depletion in the galaxy will not occur, our economic modelling tools prevent it.
from the top of the post— There are about 100 minerals currently in the galaxy. When the beta begins, there will be plenty of opportunity to explain what you see to everyone. We do not have a plan to gag any of our testers for the "closed" beta with the exception of exploits. The closed beta just means that we have a limited number of seats.
As for charging for votes….WE will not charge.
Csaj
We plan to continue beta testing (closed then open) up until a week or a couple days before release (gives us time to reset the server and get ready for release). And since release is set for Spring of 2008 you will have a lot of time to play. There are downsides to playing betas and this beta will contain the usual list of those downsides, not all features will be implemented right off the bat, some will be implemented but turned off just to see how things work without them, there may be unexpected server reboots, and on very rare occasions server resets, and of course there will be some bugs and balance concerns to find and traverse in the game (that's the point of enlisting testing help). And the worst downside of the beta process is that you will have to communicate with me… bad, I know, but it is a necessary evil.
This does not mean that the game is unplayable or not enjoyable. In fact, one of the biggest goals of the beta for us is to make sure that Beyond Protocol is fun to play for those not ingrained into the creation process.
