Projects Overview

We’re seeing more engagement with the Project system, which is great!  Because we’ve gotten a lot of questions I wanted to release a quick primer to help everybody know what we want to do with this system and how we expect it to work.

Projects vs. Other Shaping

Firstly, here’s a breakdown of what a Project is versus another use of Shaping, and the role we want Projects to fill.

Shaping bid - something random I need to happen right now

Shaping Design - something that was random, but I do it all the time and worked with staff to make a formula for it.  I can reproduce the formula, and other Shapers may want to trade formulas.

Shaping Ritual - I need to do something sudden, possibly on a large scale.  Things could go wrong, so I will use a particular set of actions to “input instructions” so that this turns out OK.

Shaping Project - I want something to last, and I will spend time to make that happen.

So Projects are about time and scale.  We capture this by using a different resource set.

Labor and Resources

Labor is a resource that we use to incentivize cooperation.  Each person can only get one labor per stormbreak maximum. Here’s how (this is a change):

Exchange your 5 potentia attendance reward

Take an NPC shift

We’ve removed the free labor from Shaping.  The idea behind that free labor was to be a stopgap until we had more things for Shaping to do.

Labor is spent mostly on projects, but you can also use it to harvest when you have access to resources.  Lumber is fairly easy to harvest, Stone and Metal are harder. In Crashpointe, we treat Lumber as a public resource so long as it is available and nobody has made a stink about it.  If you harvest too much (we’re gonna peg this at something between 10-20 units), you will need to secure a new lumber yard (a mod, codexers and a few others cleared one last event). Sometimes a mod may also result in an Opportunity, which is loot that requires Labor to collect.  An Opportunity will be given as a tag that states the labor cost, the reward, and an expiration date. In the future we may also release trade related Opportunities with different costs.

Recommended and Basic Structures

There are some buildings we expect to be basic stuff when building an outpost.

Basic Structures and the basic economic loop:

A Farm/Greenhouse can exchange 1 labor for 2 food once per event

Housing can exchange 1 food for 1 labor once per event

Other locations allow you to expend labor for materials like Lumber or Stone.

When the Outpost grows large enough, you will steadily encounter maintenance issues such as areas coming under attack, vandalism, weather damage, etc.

You can build “defensive” buildings like walls & watch towers to help protect what you have built, but defensive buildings can also require maintenance or staffing.

The intended basic loop is that food and housing are used to support a populous that performs work.  You will also need to attract people to live in the Outpost through the story of the game, and issues of social unrest can occur if people are dissatisfied.

If you finish a structure project, we treat it as complete at the start of the next event, this gives us time to confer so that we can keep track of what you have.

Crashpointe and Expansion

Crashpointe has 4 districts, one of which is the “lab”.  The 4 are roughly tavern/housing/farming/lab. Each district is partially forested, which restricts space but keeps the environment set the way you want it.  Not counting the lab district, Crashpointe has three Farms, three Housing patterns, the Tavern, the Landmark, two Fresh Water patterns, two Roads, and twelve slots that are either open or forests.  Daz has also finished work on a Distillery that is either in one of the open slots or in the lab district.

An Outpost is kept knit together by Landmarks, and Crashpoint has two.  One is owned by Cynwrig, the other is in the lab district. Landmarks work like Bond Commanders, and Roads are their followers.  A road is placed in another district to connect it to the Landmark. A location without a road will tend to be moved by the storm.  You can prevent the location from being lost or reoccupied for one Stormbreak by placing a Claim. This is a basic application of Construction that will require potentia relative to the familiarity of the location.  Claiming forest for Crashpoint is very cheap. Claiming a Volcano is not cheap. Claiming a forest that belongs to a man-eating squid-fungus is not likely to work.

Sample Blueprints

Essence value printed on a structure card is an approximation of the materials used to create the structure. You can’t buy these cards directly. The value helps with tracking how much potentia is invested into the buildings in an Outpost, how much attention that may attract, and how much value one can possibly extract by attacking the structure.

As a reminder, essences are grouped into Substantive, Elemental, and Ephemeral.  When we list those types as the cost, you can pick what to use within the subset.  So a project that costs Substantive essence could be built from petrified, or scrap, or verdant, or a mix.

Housing: 3 Lumber, 1 Stone, 2 Substantive R1 Essence, 3 Labor

Farm: 2 Lumber, 1 Verdant R2 Essence, 1 Verdant R1 Essence, 2 Labor

Nondescript Building (no mechanical effect): 2 Lumber, 1 Labor

Shrine (give offerings to “something”, no explicit rewards): 1 Lumber, 1 Any R2 Essence, 1 Labor

Tavern (cooking proves half again more servings, you guys already have one of these): 4 Food, 4 Lumber, 1 Stone, 1 Metal, 2 Igneous R1 Essence, 2 Glacial R1 Essence

Landmark (per road): 1 Tempestuous R2, 1 Echo R2, 1 Petrified R2, 3 Labor

Road: 1 Lumber, 1 Stone, 3 Substantial R1, 3 Ephemeral R1, 2 Labor