Fallen Earth: QotW #6: Follow-Up Questions!

Question of the Week 03-14-07

This week we're taking it a bit easy due to recovering from GDC and thus batting cleanup on follow-up questions that previous Questions of the Week have brought up. For those who are curious, GDC was great, and you'll be seeing lots of interviews and other news bits over the coming weeks from it. Acropolis is busy so I'm handling posting duties today.

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Equipment:

When you say very valuable items cannot be traded, will this only cover things such as story/quest/mission related items? Or does this include items with some useful or important functionality?

Beyond mission-related items, the items that cannot be traded are primarily very rare or unique components that can be used in crafting a very powerful item, which can itself be traded. For example, if you have to recover an PX-22 experimental pistol barrel from a pre-Fall research facility to make an advanced auto-pistol, that barrel is a unique item that cannot be traded. Likewise, if you had to get the thighbone of the mutant beast known as the Bone Taker to make a CHOTA Axe, that thighbone is a unique item and cannot be traded. Once you make the item, it may be traded as normal.

Additionally, player-driven research cannot be traded to other players without making use of the Teaching tradeskill. If you spend a lot of time building an experimental engine that you can use to better understand engines, only you can benefit from the research.

Faction specific gear can only be worn or used by those with a sufficient faction rating to earn the gear. Characters disguised as members of other factions will not have a high enough faction rating to use such gear. Faction disguises just get you in the door, they don't make you an officer.

Most items that cannot be traded are marked so that you can only have one of them on you.

There may be other items further down the line that cannot be traded, but they will be rare.

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Factions:

So is 'knowledges' a catch-all for skills/tradeskills/mutations, or does it refer to what we'd call abilities/spells/attack moves in other games?

A knowledge is a single activatable ability gained from skills or mutations, or a set of recipes. Each knowledge must be learned separately and requires levels in various skills. For example, learning Light Rifle, a Ballistics knowledge, requires a Ballistics of 75. It teaches you how to make Light Rifle Barrels, Light Rifle Actions, and Light Rifle Bodies, and how to combine these parts into a number of different rifles. If characters max out their respective skills, they can learn knowledges ten levels higher than their level. So if Light Rifle is a 25th level knowledge, a character could learn it at level 15 if they max out their Ballistics skill (and thus their Intelligence and Perception attributes). NPC opponents generally drop items equal to or below their level; thus crafters are the best source of equipment, since they can make things above their level.

Factions teach knowledges at different points and require faction ratings as well as skill levels. For example the Light Rifle knowledge is a 25th level knowledge, meaning it is used to make items that are statted out to be used by 25th level characters. It will require a Ballistics skill of 75. Light Rifle will be available from the Enforcer instructors at 15th level, as the Enforcers are good at making rifles. It will be available from the Travelers at 25th; Travelers are average at making guns. The Lightbearers will not find an instructor for Light Rifle within their own faction until 35th level, since they are rather poor at making guns (though they could theoretically learn it from their allies, the Enforcers, at a lower level if their faction ratings are high enough). Alternately players could learn from 3rd party teachers, probably around 30th level, or learn from other players using the Teaching skill.

Was the list of skills included in the thread on stats/skills not exhaustive?

No, it was only half of each of the good/average/bad lists, and mutations were not listed. Factions like the Enforcers, who don't do much with mutations, only have one mutation they are good at, whereas the CHOTA and the Lightbearers have 3 favored mutations. In factions that do not concentrate on mutations, like the Enforcers, most characters will have few mutation paths, if any. In factions like the CHOTA or Lightbearers, most characters will have several mutation paths.

Is it possible to remain neutral? Are there quests that do not involve faction standings?

Yes, lots of them. In each sector there are approximately 20-25 towns. Of these:

a) 1 is a barter town that is neutral and has lots of the trade infrastructure like auction houses, banks, etc.

b) 6 are faction towns, one for each faction. These towns will attack enemy faction members that come close to their town, but will not attack neutral characters.

c) 5-8 are conflict towns that players can battle over.

d) 5-8 are neutral towns that have no PvP or faction dependent content.

So as you can see neutral players will be able to visit a good number of towns in each sector. About half the missions in the game have no faction requirements. We're also planning to have some missions that involve neutral factions, like the mail-carrying Franklin's Riders, that you can only do if you have remained neutral.

I'm concerned about this system as a Traveler. Enforcers and Vistas shouldn't necessarily be enemies of the Travelers. Wary, yes... but everybody except the Lightbearers deals with us to some extent.

Enforcers and Vistas may trade with Travelers in barter towns or in some of the neutral towns, but Travelers who are seen around Enforcer bases are often assumed to be CHOTA spies (or if seen near a Vista farm, Tech spies). They do occasionally deal, but they are certainly not friendly and do not trust each other at all.

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Tradeskills:

Crafting Offline

First off, we've had to make a change. You do earn experience points for crafting offline. Not much, but some. Basically we couldn't come up with a good way to determine how much time is spent offline versus online, so players logging off partway through an item posed a difficulty. So you do get experience points for items made offline, but a reduced amount. There is a limit to how much you can queue up at a time, so players won't be able to make massive lists of items and then leave for a week. Even huge things like cars will be built from multiple components, so players will have to check in regularly time and form new queues if they want to keep crafting.

If you use a tradeskill to make an item close to your level, you earn experience points (based on your level compared to the level of the item) and the tradeskill goes up, usually by one point. If the item is not close to your level, you get no experience and the tradeskill does not go up.

Are tools, factories, or fabrication devices elements of crafting?

Each tradeskill has its own tool kits that are needed to make items. These kits come in multiple levels, so higher-level items require higher-level tradeskill kits. Crafting facilities decrease the time it takes to make an item. We hope to have factories in some form, but that has yet to be worked out.

Now as I can craft simple items while doing whatever I like, and get XP for it, wouldn't that suggest purely-fighting-powergamers should pick up crafting and have it run in the background, just to maximize XP-gain ?

Crafting items of significantly lower level than you will earn you no experience points. Players who craft items of a level comparable to their own will spend time or money in finding the resources to make items, so we hope it all balance out. Most players will have some crafting work going in the background while playing, and we have scaled the experience gain for crafting accordingly.

Will we need to rely on other player crafters to make stuff, or can each person craft all parts of an item?

You could do it all alone, but it would be hard. Technically, one character could master every tradeskill, but the time involved in doing so makes it unlikely.

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Skills and Advancement

So...Willpower is only useful for mutants?

It affects Stamina, so if you want to throw around lots of special attacks or fight for long periods of time, it is helpful. Also, Willpower affects your resistance to mind-affecting attacks. But it is exceptionally useful for mutants.

What are the functions of Dodge and Evade?

Dodge and Evade modify damage when compared to the attack skill (Pistol, Rifle, or Melee) of an opponent. For example if someone attacks you with an attack skill that is higher than your Dodge or Evade, you take extra damage. If your Dodge or Evade is higher than their attack skill, you take reduced damage. Dodge and Evade never make you miss completely and have a cap on how much they can reduce or increase damage.