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On Schematics and Blueprints
The new building pattern for Aerospace Buildings
With the Aerospace expansion we are pushing gameplay hard.
As Million on Mars is a build-in-public project, it was sensible for us to start with a simple blueprint model, where a player buys an NFT and installs it - and then starts crafting.
As we have brought on-line fundamental game systems such as upgrades, professions, player minting of blueprints, and now Glitter - we are ready to take this up a notch!
Each Building in Aerospace now has these five phases:
1. Obtain the Schematic
2. Craft the Schematic into a Blueprint (using Glitter)
3. Install the Blueprint onto a plot of your land
4. Complete the one-time Setup recipes to ready your new building for crafting
5. Upgrade the building via Shards to unlock new recipes and abilities
The Setup phase has been introduced with the Thorium Reactor and the Composter where these buildings unlock their power after the player performs a one-time setup function. These Setup recipes allow us to deliver more lore around the experience of the building as well as an opportunity to sink commodity resources and drive the overall game economy. With the Aerospace Expansion each of these buildings have 2-4 Setup recipes that will challenge you and your fellow settlement members to unlock these new buildings.
The Schematic is our latest innovation to balance the knowledge represented on how to make an item vs the item itself. Learning a new recipe to craft an item is always such a good feeling in an MMO, but it is tricky to get the balance right. Make it too easy to obtain the recipe and it cheapens the experience. Make it too hard to get the recipe and you make the game frustrating for many, and perhaps over balanced for the lucky few that have managed to get the recipe. With Schematics they act like a scroll in a fantasy game, where once you use the Schematic it is consumed in the process of making a Blueprint. This allows us to have schematics be a bit easier to obtain, and yet not leave an item on "BRRR mode". In lore you can think of a Schematic as the digital plans and key parts from Earth to craft one of a given building. Schematics are sellable in the marketplace.
Glitter is an input component to turn a Schematic into a Blueprint
The seven new Aerospace buildings all share the pattern where a Schematic plus Glitter plus one of Core Set or Factory Expansion Blueprints are required to craft the Aerospace Blueprint. This is keeping in-line with our design goal that Glitter is consumed for low-frequency and higher impact events and events that interact with a blockchain. Creating a Blueprint is an absolutely perfect use-case for Glitter. For those of you without a Founders Token or a Martizen, you may currently obtain Glitter by purchasing Wrapped Glitter being sold by another player. As the Glitter Treasury fills up, we will begin to introduce gameplay systems - especially inside of Aerospace to win Glitter through gameplay.
Aerospace Shards & Upgrades
Aerospace has a robust roadmap planned, and compared to earlier expansions the Aerospace Shards will be more challenging to obtain and we will be releasing additional abilities and recipes overtime to reward the players who invest in their buildings.
Last modified 3mo ago