Hi there!

We've got two very different short questions this week for you to enjoy.

Q: How much do we (as players) affect Organizations in the game?  Will our actions affect how much the Nathurians hate the Codiax (or Red Dragons vs Syndicate)? Are we able to shift their power to get more and/or better stuff?  Or are these groups more static and unchanging?

Initially the relationships between organizations are designed to be static, but at some point players may start to see a shift in these standings that they will be able to influence. Regardless of any systems put in place to allow this shift and flow in an organization’s relationship with another, players should keep in mind that unlike alliances between players that can shift overnight, the organizations of Enterra have had long and varied histories with each other that mean changes might appear to be a bit slower in nature due to this, the natural influx of new players, and events within the world itself.

Q: It is known that the exoskeleton mechanoids have various tasks. How many exoskeleton mechanoids can a player resp. a guild own? Which tasks will they take over (apart from guarding the natural resources e.g.) and will we be able to buy upgrades for the exoskeleton mechanoids?

Players can own as many exoskeleton mechanoids as they can afford. Driving such combat machine would require serious investment in learning skills, as well as providing fuel and maintaining the machine, which is a very important consideration given that everything in Earthrise wears out and even when properly maintained, eventually breaks and becomes unusable. Mechanoids will be used for harvesting natural resources in biohazardous environment, transporting huge amounts of inventory due to their increased capacity, as well as combat. Mechanoids will not have upgrades that the owner can install in it, but rather it has to be built with certain options (Designs) that make it more suitable for specific actions; such as special devices, weaponry and programmed Abilities. This gives power to crafters to create Mecha builds, advertise and sell them rather than make them utility manufacturers who just provide the end user with a set of tools.

Feel free to comment and ask away, below.
~m.

very interesting about the future possibility of unstatic factions.

Also, the fact that crafters will wield so much power, almost makes me want to drop my gun and pick up engineering  .

I wonder how much effect will be allowed to take place, the shifts might be slower than player diplomacy but, will it be possible to effectively turn a faction in a completely opposite direction rather than just slight shifts.

I'm sure it would have to be small shifts, or we might end up with groups that were indepenent of each other (at launch) being too tightly allied.  However small shifts would still be way more player influence on the factions than most games.   Even if it is slow and somewhat storyline limited, I think it could be huge.  Just being open as a future possibility is pretty cool.

Good answers: one clarification though: will mechs be totally static after construction then?

While on the one hand that's kinda cool, and well, makes a lot of sense as no doubt there's realistically a lot of hardwiring and construction that would go in to such a thing: it makes it somewhat more difficult to deploy them.

Say my combat mech is rigged for a certain role on day X, and i bring it in and devestate a battlefield.  Now whoever I killed knows that, unless I'm exceedingly rich, whenever I bring that mech out it's specifically able to be countered (as they know from the first time it fights what abilities and equipment it's been hardwired with). I feel like that will over time reduce mechs to specialized roles... people will, say, ONLY build mechs to siege bases, because any other use will be obsoleted very quickly by the more flexible foot soldiers.  Perhaps this is what the devs had in mind, if so, that's fine, just worried that they're intended to be high-end but not unusable, but inflexibility will very quickly limit their roles and applications on the battlefield.

aye, that seems to be specifically what he was addressing as NOT being what they're implementing, which led to my post above...

Hopefully it'll balance out correctly in the end.

I can agree with you the the Mecha should be Modular in design with interchangeable parts, but I think that the end user should be able to change the different modules unless they have enough points put in to engineering to be able to do the parts changes themselves. The Mechas should have to be taken to an engineer to swap out parts, if the player doesn't have the required skills.

I'd agree with this but then I'm planning to be a crafter anyway, lots of repeat business :-)  However you could have the ability to allow somone to swap out a part with minimal skill with a like for like replacement wiht a low chance of damaging both the part and the mech but allow them the option to try more complex swap outs but at a much increased risk of damage.  This way there is the opportunity for them to keep their mech on the battlefield even if a "qualified" engineer isnt online