Will I be able to offer rewards other than just credits for these missions, e.g. paying somebody in aluminum?
TL;DRPaying in goods like aluminum is technically possible and could come once a trade system exists, but for now rewards are Alpha UEC, and the team wants goods to be physically moved rather than handwaved.
We haven't really talked about that. It's technically possible. It's not outside the realm of reason. We're dealing primarily with UEC, or Alpha currency, right now, just because that's what's in the player's wallet and that's how we do the transactions. But once we get the trade system in, where players can open up trade windows and stuff, there's no reason why we couldn't expand, like, hey, take me here and I'll give you a thousand of my units or whatever.
It makes sense to keep it to Alpha UEC right now because we're attempting to fine-tune how much UEC is really worth in the galaxy. We want the testing to be there. But it makes sense to me at least that at some point you're going to want to be able to offer, here are components, here's my personally tuned component, and whoever does this for me, I'm going to pay you in goods.
The biggest thing we have there becomes our interfacing. How do we provide that to the app becomes a big part of it.
Well, I think the tangible experience is interesting. In the game, we're trying to reduce as much hand-wavy magic as possible. Where is this gold and how do you give it to them? Normally, whenever you have a commodity, it's in your cargo grid. It's a physical thing. Now, I want you to take me somewhere and I give you gold. How do you get it?
Yeah, like you have to store stuff in a bank and you only do bank-to-bank transfers, that kind of thing.
Yeah, maybe something like that. Or maybe you have to have the other ship and it gets transferred, and they both get taken to ATC. I don't know.
CR's always been really big on the tangible nature of it, and he wants to see cargo being moved from one thing to another. So once we get the tractor beam in, which mining is kind of the first implementation of, the cargo mover is not going to be far off, so you'll be able to get your paw tool and move some boxes, or hand-carry them to somebody else's ship, assuming that it's a good that can be moved that way. And then items are probably not too far behind that, with just being able to physically move them. But I can almost guarantee that CR is probably going to be interested in that item being physically there for the trade to happen.