GFI Commander: The CEO of ION Industries has asked that you know about an event they are planning on December 13th. Don’t have many details yet but this looks interesting…
Afternoon Update - 12/09/19
Hello Commanders!
Just ~12 hours left for the first Colonists Migration Global Event! Thanks to all commanders who have participated and congrats to those who have been very successful transporters!
As always with these events in our Alpha the primary purpose for us and our game designers is to test and see how our game design works with real players. The results from these events are extremely valuable and help us gauge / design future events. Thanks again for those who discovered new exploits in our new systems and reported it promptly without abusing them. After the event concluded we will be posting results and distributing rewards by the end of the week. Additional transport themed events will kick off later in the week as well.
Event Update
So lots of questions have come up on the Apollo Station colonist mission. :) Honestly didn’t expect this much heat from that game theory test, we expected another type that just didn't occur as much as we thought it would. So let me layout our thoughts and reasoning behind Apollo and this event overall.
First we are in Alpha, unfortunately this means bugs and tests like this will be common in all our events as we stabilize the game and the game design overall. Second, the Apollo Station Mission... There were several things we were doing by making this mission more attractive and there was a reason why it stayed as long as it did. I will go over those reasons in the following points.
1) We wanted to measure how long it takes for the majority of players participating in this event to discover and start doing a premium route. In this event that meant making 1 station unbelievably lucrative, and then seeing how long it would be before majority of colonist requests came from that one.
2) We wanted to see if some of our playerbase would see the other opportunity Apollo provided! Rigel is a PVP ON system, this means FTL pulses, EMPs and weapons can be used against other players. We recently introduced functionality that makes “pirate” like activity possible and we wanted to see how long it would take players to act upon such an opportunity. This station was picked because of the proximity to the battle arena, this makes the angle of approach LIMITED making it easier for players to setup blockades / FTL traps. We did see that some players did camp the gate, which was another outcome we were looking for. This information helps us gauge, the overall alignment of our player base (good, evil, neutral), and also helps us understand if the player base understands these more advanced modules and how to use them.
3) While all this was going on the last thing we wanted to see was how long players would commit to playing to complete such a lucrative route. What was the approx time spent, pre Apollo pricing and post Apollo pricing. How much did the pricing of Apollo effect engagement and gameplay time.
4) The last few weeks several players have profited well on GRP mission, but little to do with GRP other than private refineries. Instead we wanted to provide users with a way to take that GRP they earned and invest it into a game asset that would provide a % return for completing a in-game activity. The perfect opportunity for this was with our Transport Mission. While a few die hard players did get into the millions approx ~30 players, majority of players who participated were able to take that 30 - 50 k of GRP and trade it into 100 - 300 k with some hard work. The more savvy players who crafted or used TFC and jump drives got to 600k+ range. This event was designed to reward players for time in the game, at all levels. From non-eth users to hardcore CSC player, evenone had the oppertunity to profit.
It's also worth noting that GRP is Galactic Reputation Pips, it is designed as a medium of exchange between GFI and Commanders. It will be used to introduce new items, unlock station abilities, speed up some activities, and unlock reputation based mission. Millions of GRP wont allow anyone to corner the market, but it will let them skip some grinding for future content drops.
I hope this clarifies this Event and the mission questions we have received :)
Developer Update
- Ship Attribute Bonuses: Horizon and Oasis are the first ships in CSC that utilizes class specific bonuses, these ships are well suited to a specific role but lack abilities to perform well outside of that. We decided to start our live testing of our bonus system with these ships and plan to start rolling these types of bonuses for other Starships in the coming weeks. Similar to the advantage Transport ships have in this mission, expect event missions like this covering our other classes of ships (Combat, Cargo Transport, Mining) for GRP and community rewards.
- 0.7 Marketplace: Marketplace implementation is still pushing hard, we are looking to have an initial version live this month. This version will also include some P2P trading functionality and the start of Check-in enforcement for modules, and the requirement to use checkout gateway stations to move items out of the game universe to the public blockchain (this will be your home stations and select GFI controlled stations).
- Power Update: Power systems in the game are about to get a MASSIVE overhaul. In the next patch (either 0.7 or 0.6.X) power management will become more crucial to a Commander's success. Complete power loss will result in multiple downed systems and a cooldown time required for your power systems to reboot.
- Stacking Update: Another big change coming to the game will be the reduction of effectiveness of stacking. While stacking modules will still provide benefits, stacking the exact same modules multiple times will cause each successive module to be only 50% as effective as the last. This only applies to non-hard point modules. This is our initial implementation and we don’t expect this update to come in the next patch. So we are open to thoughts and ideas you may have regarding this change.
- Visual Skins & Buffs: Various ship skins are coming in Q1 2020. These items will be equipable onto a ship and change its visual apperare. These items won't be craftable but earnable and sold in the game ecosystem. Skins will be NFTs that can be traded. While skins won’t provide any buffs to the ship itself, they may provide bonus to user accounts such as XP boost or reward multipliers. Skins in CSC can affect more than just the paint job of a ship, some can also add additional 3D elements and effects to a ship. The introduction of skins will be one of our first steps to start moving away for direct item sales and lay the groundwork for a monetization system is Play-to-Win by 1.0.
That's all for today Commanders, fly safe!