Wow, a surprising QOTW. I was expecting that there'd be more unique resources. 24ish mats shouldn't be too hard to keep track of.

One thing that interests me, you mention metallic and organic resources retrieved both from npcs and the market. Are there any basic resources that can't be acquired from either the market or npcs (i.e. do all basics mats have two sources?)

Does this also mean that you aren't implementing any of those additional harvestable material nodes you guys were considering?

Also, what about the only currently harvestable material, Xlyte (Xcelyte, etc) which requires harvesting mechs. This QOTW doesn't refer to it in any way. Is it still in the game?

Muchas gracias for the answer!

About two dozen seems like a great number of resources. Enough to create a lot of market fluctuation in prices, but not to such an extreme that would cause rarer resources to be more or less "worthless" simply due them not being used enough to cause a demand large enough for guilds to bother to defend lawless areas in order to mine them.

It also allows for guild-wide crafting strategies. That is, specialization by the guild crafters in items requiring the materials that can be mined on guild territories. The more materials in the mix, the more specialized those strategies can become. Great stuff!

Damn a very nice economy QOTW indeed, many thanks Moll.


So to recap we have 24ish resources broken down into two categories of rare and common with about 12 resources each. Yep easy enough to follow and not too cumbersome.


I really think that with this quote from moll: “Basic resources will not have rarity levels - they will be acquired from the global market, their price modified by the current condition of control of mines that provide it” That it should read non-organic materials coming from the mines whilst organic materials should be “harvested” through combat.
I would hate to see too much hand holding and have these items come from an NPC source and not the players themselves as it will flatten the economic market.


Hmm good question Kole would be nice to have a solid answer to this. I don’t think that we will have lost out on Xcelyte harvesting as everything we’ve read to date suggests it’s a very powerful, if not the only, power source on Enterra ( used to power the cloning vats). As such it would make sense for MHS to leave it in game as a harvestable nod to be used to fuel our own very large and power hungry player built structures and maybe the biggest energy weapon based siege mechs (Gawd I hope wee have such mechs, large salvo firing ones work as well =D ). 

-Ironfield

True, that was always labeled simply as a fuel source.

I wouldn’t worry so much about the number of resources Annxii. I may sound like Xyleya, but here it goes: In EVE we have 16 types of ore and a further 12 different types of alloys which are either harvested or refined into 8 different types of minerals to be used in the construction process of ships, stations and their related components. It seems to have lead to a very vibrant and strong player driven economy. So whilst the resources are even smaller than the two dozen proposed I think we can alleviate some of your concern.

If we had too many it might become encumbersome and more prone to pointless materials never being used in the construction process. As you’ve stated and Moll, MHS are trying to focus on making all resources in their usage balanced within their crafting roles.

In addition:
I wanted to point out the above highlighted. In the Earthrise model Moll mentions approximately two dozen (24) types of resources in Earthrise, distributed equally between Basic and Rare. In affect there could indeed be more than or slightly less than (glass half full, glass half empty) the mentioned 24 resources come release of the game.

-Ironfield

Edited to add you last concern.
 No, the resources themselves will not have quality differences. However the components manufactured from the combination of resources, the type of factory used and the players skill level will affect the quality of the finished good. Same goes for recycling components and breaking them down into their original state. The raw materials in there base form will not change in value however the quantity returned will be less, significantly so if you do not have very high skills in recycling.

Edited again for spelling and grammar

... although, it is after all the components made from the resources that's the real interesting part so no quality on the resources themself might not make that much of a difference. Regardless, I'm looking forward to trying it myself! No final judgement to be made without having tried it personally

It entirely depends on what the "resources" are. My personal impression was that they might not be like the ore's and alloys in EVE, that is, raw resources that needs to be refined into minerals, but rather some two dozen of "pure" resources used as the most basic components in any crafting activity. In which case there would be roughly 3 times as many combinations of resources compared to EVE. (Fair enough, they added 20+ more with moon mining and other stuff later, but that would just have been completely mad to have in the game from the beginning anyways.)

My guess is that those 2 dozen of resources might create a complex economy anyways.

And remember that you don't want a too complex system in the very beginning, it is better to add more resources after the economy has been established and the crafters are ready to specialize further.