🚀Aerospace

Coming December!

Aerospace - Gateway to the Solar System - But First! - Bring Spatiality to the Red Planet!

This profession is amazing! This is THE elder-player facing profession - where grit, determination and smarts are demanded - and rewarded!

Aerospace is not for the faint of heart - fabulous riches of the Asteroids are ripe for the taking, however with great rewards there are also great risks!

The ultimate end of the Aerospace Profession crafting chain will take us years to fully develop. The players will be able to construct Starships, Space Stations, perform Asteroid Mining, travel to all the great destinations of the Solar System and ultra end-game content, make space elevators, harvest CO2 from Venus and travel to the icy moons of the gas giants. Farther down the road 3-5 years out we can play with fusion drives, light sails and world ships and send players off into the local parts of the galactic arm.

Get to own your very own asteroid all to yourself! Just like HiRise and the DTM data the asteroid belt is mapped out to 10,000s of asteroids in the system - with their orbital periods and their composition correct from the catalogs.

Near Mars Asteroid Mining and Deep Asteroid Mining

Divided into two basic techniques - “scoop and bag” and a more traditional mining operation with more of a fixed structure. The fixed structure mining - especially on the larger Asteroids should be a later game release. The vast bulk of the asteroids do not have their spectral classification and so a natural path would be to build and launch your own asteroid observatory so you can identify the prizes. Who would share the prize data with others? Magnetic Mesh Scoops - think very fancy garbage bags Ultra-Low-Gravity Drilling Rigs

Aerospace is not just about the rest of the Solar System, Aerospace is critical to exploring the Red Planet - both with crewed Hoppers, robotic Darts, and constellations of cube Satellites and large Observatories. We will develop the Resource Layers

With Aerospace we will also start to lay out the roadmap of where you are on Mars matters - the different resource layers, the solar irradiance, water ice deposits, known rover missions etc.

Tons of adventuring of the Red Planet - who can resist taking a Hopper to a Lava Tube on the slopes of Olympus Mons and explore those dark tunnels for native Martian microbial life?

Aerospace is the apex predator of engineering - as it is the synthesis of ALL of engineering - civil engineering, electrical engineering, software, materials science, robotics, thermodynamics, mechanical engineering - the whole enchilada!

Ideally Aerospace drives group play with all of these thirsty inputs and it should feel overwhelming for a solo player to build their own space port, starship and capture their own asteroid.

Aerospace will be very thirsty for CH4 and O2 and will compete with the long-distance rovers that are using Methane Fuel cells for Extended Range Missions.

Why do Aerospace: The largest rewarding systems will be out on the other side of Aerospace (the meta shifts) Achievements - many achievements and Server first Achievements Hoppers to get to the Starbase and take a Starship to go do Near Mars Asteroid Mining and Deep Asteroid Mining Hoppers to unlock Away Missions Hoppers to unlock the connection of Settlements Hoppers to unlock the Contested DTMs Only access to Glitter is through PvP and Aerospace deep systems

Gameplay of Aerospace:

Launch Pads - required to travel to Hopper Away Missions, to travel to Duskworks Landing and Waterloo City (and access to Near-Mars Asteroids), required component to create a public Refueling Station, required for connecting DTMs and Settlements

Cryogenic Fuel Tanks - obvious, thirsty use case! Perhaps add a fun recipe or two for a Cryogenic Fuel Tank, Fill a Methane Fuel Cell for Rovers. Strategic placement of Launch Pads and Fuel tanks across Mars and maybe someone can corner the market on “Gas Stations on Mars!”

Ground Control and Avionics - scan the surface of Mars for Hopper Away missions (the network of Pirate Radios and Ground Control stations “listen for missions”, scans for Near Mars Asteroids, and this is one of the early buildings from the Aerospace crafting chains and will be instrumental for the grinding Aerospace EXP between levels 20 and 60!

With those three buildings we have the basic Hopper Station - but there is more!

Hangar - the hangar is awesome, this is where you can store and repair your Hoppers. But in addition to storing them, a Hangar is the building that has the penultimate recipe to CRAFT the Hopper, and to modify the hopper with accessories! Without owning your own Hangar, from time to time you will need to fly your Hopper to a Settlement or Duskworks Landing or Waterloo City and get your Hopper repaired. Players who invest hard and deep with the Hangar should be able to make some lucrative trades as they are the gatekeepers for Hoppers. Roadmap item for a bit later is for players to be able to upload any image they like and apply it as a decal to the Hopper and it updates the NFT. (Obvious nods about moderation requirements - but the basics are abuse this feature once, and soft banned against using again unless you pay a 1000 Dusk fee)

Rocket Fuel Factory - Hoppers and Starships use CH4 and O2 - everyone knows that! But, it needs to be purified and liquified (expensive on power!) to be clean enough to be burnt in these full-flow velociraptor engines! Rocket Fuel will be purchasable on the Marketplace - but later down the road - where you are on Mars will matter, and where the fuel is will matter even more. But in the meantime, players will still need to fill their Cryogenic Fuel Tanks from a Rocket Fuel Factory.

Engine Factory - a dedicated building for the creation of Velociraptor engines. And leading up to the Velociraptor engines are the intermediate parts - Combustion Chambers, Turbo Pumps, etc.

Vulcan Metal Works - A huge sized building that is a combination of Smelters and Machine Shops and more stuff powered by Thorium Reactors. Consumes lots of metals and regolith and produces the key components of the Hopper Frame and Fins, but also the large metal sheets to create the Hangar.

The full set of seven buildings is a Deluxe Hopper Complex!

New Locations: With location beginning to matter with Aerospace and the layout of actual places on Mars! Duskworks Landing - beginner friendly shop - regular supplies, C-R starter blueprints - not an overwhelming number of tabs, this is where the Duskworks Accommodation shop lives Waterloo City - More of the Regular shop, weekly sales, Cantina Coins, Bazaar Coins Phobos Station - more special weekly sales, more exotic hardware, advanced professions gear Gateway Station - really high-end purchases - special stuff - get stuff earlier than Armstrong’s Leap - the city on the moon