This post is intended to provide you with an overview on what we are planning for Perpetuum during the remainder of this year. Before we venture into the realm of tl;rig (too long;read it goddammit), some general notes:

Our goal is to do smaller but significant updates, and a lot of them.

The list that you see here is in no particular order. We still have to prioritise it, and we also consider your feedback on what you would like to see first. UPDATE: We now have a poll for this.

The listed features and changes are in varying states of development. Some have a pretty solid concept that only needs to get done, but there are some where details are floating in the air. I’ll point these out individually and probably take them for a spin on the forums.

The list does not mean that we won’t do anything else if something more important comes up, nor that we won’t take any of these ideas back to the drawing board if some serious concerns arise. Your feedback is very welcome.

I’ll try to be as concise and to the point as possible because this is a long list. When we select to do a batch of these or make any progress, we’ll have detailed individual posts about them. If any particular feature or change catches your interest and would like to know more about, feel free to post a forum topic and I’ll try to answer it the best I currently can.

New features & significant reworks

NPC reworks

Static spawns will be replaced by free roaming spawns of roughly the same sizes everywhere

A few larger caravans will probably stay too, if they are not interfering too much

We will make good use of the random NPC system developed for assignments here

Alpha 2 and upwards will have red (aggressive) NPCs only

We are looking into the possibility of enemy NPC groups fighting each other on the islands

Loot rework

The current loot table system in unmaintainable

We are developing a new random loot system

This will also bring some significant loot balance changes, like drastically reducing the amount of “trash” items dropped, and a rebalance of kernels

Distress beacon rework

Distress beacons have caused a lot of headache for us which have resulted in the introduction of some pretty nasty mechanics

The new system would start with the introduction of “alien teleport anomalies”, which would periodically spawn and despawn in random locations on all islands

These anomalies would be visible objects (no scanning needed), and distress beacons (which would be repurposed into “teleport hijack beacons” basically) would need to be deployed and activated next to one of these. They wouldn’t work anywhere else.

Activating the beacon will spawn in the enemy NPCs just like now, and close the anomaly (so one beacon per anomaly)

Currently existing beacons can be used in the new system, you don’t lose anything

Multiple anomaly types that limit which beacon can be used, to be able to differentiate alpha/beta/gamma usage

Makes us able to remove the “no loot when NPC is destroyed by explosion” and “NPC teleport” mechanics

Artifacts rework

The current artifact scanning mechanic is not intuitive enough, a lot of players struggle with it

The new mechanic would be a bit similar to directional scanning

Instead of the artifact result list showing distances, it would instead show you realtime bearing indicators (the small compass thingies that we have in the landmarks list too)

These would lead you directly to the scanned coordinates, you only need to keep your compass straight while moving

The catch is that depending on your scanning efficiency and your distance from the artifact, the scanned coordinate might be somewhat off, so once you arrive at your result, you’ll probably have to do another scan, and repeat this process a few times

This mechanic will always have a certain amount of inaccuracy, to not make it too easy

You’ll probably be required to find the exact tile, being just near to it when scanning will not spawn the artifact like now

Field rescue

Losing robots once and for all is a bit too hardcore

We’d like to introduce a mechanic that would allow you to keep your robot when it’s destroyed

It would stay unusable, unless you repair it using either materials or NIC

The robot would keep track of the number of destructions, and each repair would be more expensive than the previous one, up to a point where it’s not worth to repair it anymore and scrap it for good

Basically “number of lives” for robots

Makes insurance obsolete

Industry concerns: given that this would probably make players take more risks and encourage PvP, ultimately the number of robots lost for good and consequently manufacturing demands should not change significantly

Details still need to be worked out, especially what would happen to modules

Syndicate supply drops

Big loot containers dropped in random but pre-announced times and locations

Probably beta islands only, to encourage PvP events

Loot will have a relatively large spread regarding value and volume too

Plot twist: you can only loot it while you’re not in combat

Possibly could work on Alphas too if the location is not preannounced, but instead putting a visible beacon on the location that can be seen from afar

Geoscan result sharing

Automatically share your tile-based geoscan results with squad members

We’re looking into the possibility of each mining cycle updating the results on the terrain, so you would only need to scan initially, or when you move to another location

Steam trading cards

Trading cards, profile backgrounds, emoticons, the whole package

Helps with game discoverability

Buddy program

If you invite someone and he/she buys the game, you both get extra EP or credits (to be decided, maybe both)

Account buddy-linking and confirmation will happen ingame due to Steam not having support for this before/while purchasing

Field terminal courier services

Get your items sent instantly from a remote field terminal storage anywhere in the world to the terminal you are in

Convenience service - pay with credits

Price is based on volume and distance - sending a full Scarab load of goods across the world instead of actually using a Scarab will be expensive

Tier 5 modules

Completely new tier of items

Production only - randomized module stats on manufacturing, using predetermined min/max stat values

Resulting modules are NOT always better than lower tiers due to the randomness

3 new gamma-only minerals (1 for each faction), 3 new commodities using the new minerals plus epriton and colixum, required for the manufacturing of tier 5

If the system is a success we will consider reworking all tiers like this, of course all using different min/max values and spreads

New market system

The current market system works only with uniformised modules, this won’t work with tier 5

A new, auction house-like service is needed, which will allow the trading of unique items

Current market system may be removed once this is done

Syndicate robots

Hybrid robots “lite”

We were never really able to turn the idea of hybrid robots (mixing around different robot parts to create new robots) into reality due to balancing issues

Basically the story is that over the years on Nia, the Syndicate was able to research alien robot technology, and create a new line of custom robots using various parts, combined with Earth technology

Literally a fourth faction - a whole line of new robots, but using existing robot part models

Specialized roles - better in something, worse in something else, you know the drill

Obviously bonus for machine guns

Only way to acquire them is through the token shop, by purchasing CTs

Still very early in development, ideas for roles are welcome

Syndicate News Central

What’s going on on Nia and with the Perpetuum Project - at a glance

Statistics, player and corp level toplists

Advertisement space for players or corporations

Intrusion event news

Helps promoting the feeling of being part of something big

Robot paint

One of the oldest items on our todo

Still intend to do it

Really

Balance & smaller improvements

Industrial facility balance

There is not enough difference between Alpha1/Alpha2 and Beta terminals, so we’ll dive into the balance of facility efficiency points and make some changes

Robot speed balance

Robots received a large speed boost in the past, now with the teleport and highway network changes we’ll revisit this, and probably reduce base speeds a bit across the board (about 10%)

Mechs and heavy mechs will receive special attention here, as their current speed capabilities are somewhat more than it would be warranted for their class

Mineral field balance

More mineral fields on Alpha islands, but with reduced mineral amounts (we won't remove any mineral types from Alphas though)

Intended to cut back large scale mining operations on Alpha without hurting newbies or casual players

T1 prototyping

T1 modules are special because they don’t have prototype variants, but prototyping them still employs the heavy material multiplier, which doesn’t make much sense

We’ll remove that multiplier for T1 items, but still make sure that mass-producing them stays a bit more efficient than prototyping

Corporation production folders

Much requested feature, you’ll be able to select source and target storages/folders for corporation production processes

Financial divisions

The other much requested corp feature, to be able to create multiple corporation balance divisions and manage member access to them

NPC restricted areas

Due to the switch from static NPC spawns to free roaming ones, we’ll create areas where they won’t go, to prevent nasty surprises when deploying or arriving on the zone

This means mostly the vicinity of terminals and teleports

Note that this will only prevent them to pick a roaming destination inside these areas - if you aggro them they will still follow you inside these areas

Gamma turrets vs NPCs

You’ll be able to set gamma turrets to shoot NPCs

Note that when turrets are set like this, NPCs will also attack them

Relevant forum topic

Squad assignment issues

We’re aware of the squad membership issues regarding assignments, where you always have to leave your squad if you don’t want to get the negative relations from others

Our solution is that we’ll try to modify reward distribution so that it will only include the members who actually contributed to the assignment in some way

Module diminishing returns

Look into ways on how we can battle the current trend of cookie-cutter fittings like 4 tunings/4 ECMs/etc.

Lighting reworks

Some visual updates to lighting, make it all look a bit more pretty

Possibly update the skydome too

External main terminal usage

Make it possible to use main terminals and outposts externally, like field terminals

Storage/assignments/equipment change

Remote market transactions

This depends on how exactly the above mentioned new market system will be implemented, but the intention is to make you able to create and modify market orders remotely

Intrusion changes

Pair up intrusion times, so selected outposts/SAPs will always open at the same time

Makes controlling multiple outposts much harder for one corporation

Possibly make intrusion times public for everyone, remove intrusion scanning - feedback needed

Relevant forum topic

Specimen processing SAP rework

You hate this

Rework it so that it would require you to deliver items from the SAP to a randomly chosen item delivery point nearby (or the other way around), similar to transport assignments

Equipment in killmails

Include robot equipment in the killmail API

Log pagination fixes

Fix the pagination of various logs and stop the “click through endless empty pages because nothing happened” silliness

Item linking in chat

Be able to link items into chat for bragging rights or referencing

Closing

So this is it for now, our plans for this year - although some of them could seep into 2016 already, we’ll see. We hope there are many things in this list that make you excited for the future, we certainly look forward to them.

Again, feel free to open forum topics for any of the features or changes above, voice your concerns, make a suggestion, or simply express your approval - your feedback is important.