In EVE Frontier, the space survival game from Fenris Creations, manufacturing has been rebuilt around a new system called Digital Chemistry. Equipment now performs according to the properties of the raw materials players mine to build it. Digital Chemistry is part of the game’s mid-cycle update.
Crafting used to run on fixed recipes, so every item made from a recipe came out the same. With Digital Chemistry, one batch of a material can have a different density, conductivity and strength from another batch of the same material. Those differences pass through the manufacturing chain into the components and modules players end up with.
What changes for players
Fenris illustrates the system with mining equipment. Mined silicates have properties that shape the optics built from them. The optics go into a lens, and that lens then affects mining output, operating cycles and energy requirements. So two players whose equipment looks the same could see different results, because their components were made from different materials.
Fixed blueprints have been removed. In their place are schemas, which take any input that meets a set of specified characteristics. A manufacturer can replace one material with another if the substitute’s properties meet the requirements. When a material becomes scarce or expensive, production can continue as long as a suitable alternative exists, but the switch may change the finished product.
The studio has not introduced universal quality grades. A property that helps one component can be the wrong fit for another, and a material with high density, for example, is not automatically better. Buyers may shop for specific specifications instead of picking the top tier or the cheapest option. Manufacturers may specialise in components built for particular activities or customers.
Location, transport and risk
Fenris plans to spread wider material variations across the universe. That could give some regions an advantage in making certain equipment. In the studio’s example, exceptional silicates support better lenses, and the lens’s final selling price also reflects what it cost to ship.
Players will need to ask more than whether premium equipment performs better. The extra output has to be worth the cost and risk of obtaining it. This matches the game’s broader economic design, in which fuel consumption gives weight to movement and activity. Hauling valuable inputs uses up resources, and cargo on dangerous routes can be lost.
Alliances get a chance to connect resource discovery, extraction, manufacturing and transport. A strong deposit could be worth more to a group that also has the expertise and infrastructure to turn it into equipment other players want.
Also in the update
The mid-cycle update also brings:
- the EREV exploration ship
- the VATRA hauler
- three-dimensional module fitting
Fenris has full modular shipbuilding planned for Cycle 8, and as the system expands, the studio intends material quality to affect ship sections.