Project Terran September Update

It’s been a while since we issued any official updates to Project Terran, but that doesn’t mean that we have been sat on our hands. Far from it, we have been busy under the hood and today I’d like to discuss a few of the recent changes that were rolled out yesterday. Plus a few we have in the pipeline.

Combat Respawn
Over the last few months, we have been monitoring chat and the forums to gauge how the game is shaping up and what areas need more balancing.

One of these areas is a frustration with the respawn rates in Asteroid fields. These are the primary locations in the game that players have to ‘visit’ to mine the much-needed resources.

The lower you go in law levels the harder that task gets. Also whilst we have a respawn system that’s intelligent, it was using the same code for all locations.

Yesterday we rolled out a new section of code that enables us to treat asteroid fields differently. (in fact, we could if we choose set different spawn rates for all unique space entities).

So what does this mean for you ‘The Miner’?

Well, we have created a respawn that is more suited to Miners and their ‘escorts’. In its simplest terms, you will find that the respawn in Asteroids Fields no more 1 per minute ‘every minute’ to the max of the field. It’s now based on a special sliding scale that will allow for a more ‘realistic’ respawn.

You should find that ‘over all’ respawns in Asteroid fields has dropped to a more ‘manageable’ rate. You should now get opportunities (short and long) to do what you came for ‘Mine’ :slight_smile:

Sure we could have gone for a 'clear the asteroid field and get ten minutes uninterrupted mining, but we felt that would make life far too easy for organised groups. This new method during testing produced a range of respawns that kept us on our toes but was far more manageable by single and team based players.

You will need to test it out for yourself, but some of you I know have already started to experience the change :slight_smile:

Salvage Loot
OK - so you are used to collecting the current Salvage loot (limited that it is). And this loot you have been collecting from any wreck at random in ANY law level.

Well over the next weeks and months you will start to see this Salvage loot list grow. The lower the law level the more choice of salvage loot.

This will allow us to expand the Salvage loot and for you to have to salvage deeper and deeper into the lower law levels to gain these rarer resources.

These new Salvage loots will begin appearing in the next few days and as I’ve alluded to will continue to grow as the weeks and months move on.

Character Select Screen
Yesterday we also added the ability to see your Character Points on your Account from the character select screen. This is displayed over on the right of the screen.

Hover your mouse over the Unlock button and it will also tell you how many points you require for the next unlock.

We have been working on things to add to the list of things to spend your Character points on so this will not be the only place they will be used eventually.

New Refinery Plant
We have been looking into adding a new Refinery plant. This one would refine ‘Planet Based Harvested Resources’ The process would be simple and based on a sliding scale of return using Skills. (no surprises there).

This would mean that ALL the base planet resources will be able to be refined into ‘refined versions’ of themselves.

We are working on this at the moment and I will post more when its ready for release.

You can expect a few more skills adding to the ever expanding list and for your schematics to begin to incorporate these new resources.

Platinum Insurance
As I said earlier in this post we have been taking note of chats and posts and direct PM’s. One of the areas that are of concern is the Insurance for ships.

The current system allows for you to take varying levels of insurance and pays out a set figure based on the ship you are insuring.

We are working on a modifying platinum insurance to pay out in the form of an ACTUAL SHIP. The lower level insurance will remain a financial payout but platinum insurance will pay out a ‘Replacement Ship’ based on what you insured when you took out the policy. We will also be increasing the policy cover period.

PLEASE NOTE: This is being worked on and WHEN this change is made live we will inform you here in the forums.

Personal Note: It should be noted that we are NOT considering and never will, insurance based on fitted items. This is simply not practical and would not work based on how the economy of Project Terran operates.

Keep your eyes on the forums for some of these changes to move from development to release!

Coops

Hi Coops,

The Platinum Insurance ship change is big improvement for the insurance mechanics. It tackles the concern that after a money pay out, the crafting of the ship would still be a lot of effort.

I also understand that it will never be possible do insure any other item but ships.

Still I have the concern that the ship is only a small part a the lost value. Therefor I wanted to make this suggestion for platinum insurance (or possibly for a platinum+ insurance): together with ACTUAL ship also one or more random piece(s) of equipment is rescued from the hull breach.
This principle could be like
tier 1 ship: 1 piece
tier 2 ship: 2 pieces
tier 3 ship: 3 pieces
tier 4 ship: 4 pieces

Sometimes you may be lucky and get back a high value equipment and sometimes it would only be that low value civilian equipment.