Time to reveal some EXODE mysteries!
As we are nearing technology release, making it closer every day, we wanted to share with you more information.
TECHNOLOGIES
While waiting for our gameplay release of our technologies we wanted to share with you many more details about upcoming Techs giving you most of the starting Tech Tree.
I thought about "sharing all of it", but then I noticed the size of this article and the fact that you have critical information to understand first. So I focused on many examples, all our starting discoveries, and a lot of information.
The objective: that you can anticipate some priorities and prepare your teams accordingly!
Ok... but why technologies?
As explained in our previous post we believe the technology system makes everything come whole in EXODE:
Before the colony can produce things you must construct new habitats for your citizens, new production centers, storage buildings and so on.
There are so many options: you can switch between sending away teams, recovering from injuries, studying new ways to survive dangers, analyzing new creatures, repairing some ship modules, making new designs, producing and trading to name just a few areas!
To organize all this, you have to unlock items incrementally so as to handle your colony progression in a neat way and to not feel overwhelmed by all your options.
But also, as this is EXODE:
We want you free to do whatever you want with the resources at your disposal and to organize your own priorities and progression. We also want players to have varied situations and needs and decisions.
Technologies work together with gameplay and give a purpose to your citizens and ways for you, as a player, to make important decisions and choose the resources you dedicate to them.
SEVERAL SKILLSETS REQUIRED
Technologies sound like the special thing for scientists, of course. But our concept of technologies goes further.
We have several profiles and invention domains. Most are in engineering, some are in science, but others also in cultural, medical and organizational domains to help refine the customs in your colony.
In truth, the future may progressively include more and more Cultural content as your colony and the game will progress.
Maybe your citizens will one day receive a trait specific to your planet!
WHAT IS COMMON TO ALL TECHS
There are several elements common to all technologies and these common features help a lot in understanding how this works:
All technologies are researched by a research team. It can be a team of one, but a team must always be assigned.
All technologies require a Research Time.
All technologies have a designated difficulty (such as 30, 40, 50 or 60).
The team will make "progress" toward the research time.
Once progress is complete, you have learned the technology and can use its designs, enjoy its bonuses (including in Knowledge, see below) and research the technologies it adds.
If the technology is more difficult to research, then the team should have higher skill values to "progress faster". Otherwise, it will still make progress, but a bit slower.
This means that rare/epic/legendary cards will progress faster once inside the proper teams, and you can tinker with the system and have an efficient colony. But there is still no true "power play" here and "paywall": even starter characters can research everything. Yes, you can still do all of EXODE with 10 USD!
Knowledge is Power
EXODE introduces a game concept about "Knowledge".
Every technology has several related "knowledge domains" such as space, ship construction, planet knowledge and so on.
Every time you have acquired a knowledge score in a given domain, you also increase the research speed but also the production efficiency of anything related to it.
So you definitely WANT to increase your knowledge.
Knowledge can be earned by technology, especially thanks to the rarity system that can increase the knowledge provided. But not only. Activities, quests, characters, character levels may also give it.
We also find it proper to actually propose to give special "permanent knowledge points" as Legacy Rewards, giving a boost to future games.
PREPARING A TEAM
Teams are made of 1 leader and 1-3+ assistants.
Players should begin with 2 assistant slots (but we are considering making it 1 slot though), and more slots will be allowed later thanks to better teamwork research.
One citizen is always the Leader and the other are Assistants.
Technologies belong to a specific domain and allow some roles to be the "Leader" of their research, and others to be "Assistants" of their research. Sometimes the same role, such as Engineer, can be used as Leader and/or as Assistant.
It depends on the technology domain. Some require engineering, others require medical profiles, or even colony leadership or administration, or pure scientists as leaders or support.
IT ALL BEGINS WITH A DISCOVERY...
We usually call "a Discovery" the first step of any technology tree.
When you begin a new colony, you should have about seven of them available. You must study these, so you must assign a team to one and research it completely to unlock its rewards (and reveal its next technologies).
Here are your starting discoveries so far:
1. Ship Analysis
This Discovery adds the Repair Ship quest, which once completed (by repairing all of your ship), will allow for Recolonization. It also unlocks the ship construction and repair technology tree.
Ship repair and construction mostly relies on Engineer roles.
2. Analyze This Planet
This Discovery adds the Explore Planet quest, which once completed - by exploring all regions and many sectors in them - will reveal an entire new region on your planet and add new content to it.
Exploration should be a quest that Navy decks can also accomplish or any deck with good survival fighters.
3. A Settler's Life
This Discovery took the name of our soon-to-be-famous-webzine and is about improving colony life and finding ways to make the life of your citizens (and their work) easier. It involves improving citizen sleep cycles, nutrients, learning to cook, travel paths, tools and teamwork and how to address dangers in a generic way.
This technology tree has many medical tasks (for Colony Doctors) and some organizational tasks which benefit from Administration and Leadership.
4. Collection Techniques
This Discovery may be the first of many adding colony actions. It will unlock new colony actions to train your citizens in all four gatherer roles (food, energy, materials and research). This is something users of past Away Team Challenge know well!
5. Ship Quarters
This Discovery improves the efficiency of citizens who work inside your ship. Which is everyone when you land to a planet (and until you deploy prefabs or design new buildings)
If you consider "not making buildings yet" and not to provide habitat to your citizens for now, you have to research this to improve research speed, resting bonuses, and everything else.
6. New Habitats
This Discovery adds a construction research tree, with new and larger habitats, starting with makeshift tents then adding makeshift dormitaries or better houses, and then continue with furniture or decorations for happier (and hopefully more productive) citizens.
This technology tree is again mostly an engineer domain as they are the ones making buildings, but some combine also welfare expertises with engineering and architecture.
MORE ABOUT TECHNOLOGIES
If we take the example of our first ship technologies: ship analysis gives you the repair quest, but also access to many other techs.
You can learn "New Essential Modules" if you want to create new modules. But if you just want to repair your ship and your existing modules, it is usually not required to make them.
So you can keep at Improving Repairs for instance which will already make repairs 25% faster (thanks to its related knowledge).
| Technology | Unlocked by | Adds Knowledge | Adds Techs | Adds Designs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ship Analysis | - | (15) +10 Current Ship +5 Ship Construction | 9 | |
| Deeper Analysis | Ship Analysis | (25) +25 Current Ship | ||
| Improve Repairs | Ship Analysis | (35) +25 Module Repairs +10 Module Construction | ||
| Materials Compatibility | Ship Analysis | (30) +30 Module Compatibility | ||
| New Essential Modules | Ship Analysis | (10) +10 Module Construction | 4 | 9 |
| New Detection Modules | New Essential Modules | 4 | ||
| New Shield Modules | New Essential Modules | 2 | ||
| New Amenities | New Essential Modules | 5 | ||
| New Weapon Modules | New Essential Modules | Later | ||
| Module Construction Methods | New Essential Modules | (20) +20 Module Construction |
MORE ABOUT ROLES AND SPEED
Now let's take a look at team roles and technology difficulty. Please note everything in this article is subject to change for balance or gameplay.
As you can see, engineer take all repair and damage report roles, and module design leaders only enter action if you design new modules ; but then become very critical.
Please note that the knowledge "Current Ship" is only related ... to your current ship in this game ;)
| Technology | Required Knowledge | Allowed leader roles | Allowed support roles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ship Analysis ( Easy ) | Current Ship | Engineer | Engineer |
| Deeper Analysis ( Hard ) | Current Ship, Ship Construction, Module Construction | Engineer | Starship Designer, Module Designer |
| Improve Repairs ( Hard ) | Current Ship, Ship Construction, Module Construction | Engineer | Starship Designer, Module Designer |
| Materials Compatibility ( Hard ) | Current Ship, Ship Construction, Module Construction | Engineer | Minerals Specialist, Module Designer |
| New Essential Modules ( Average, Long ) | Module Construction Space | Module Design Leader | Starship Designer, Module Designer |
| New Detection Modules ( Hard, Long ) | Module Construction, Space | Module Design Leader | Module Designer, Radar Officer (scanning) |
| New Shield Modules ( Hard, Long ) | Module Construction, Space | Module Design Leader | Module Designer, Shield Officer (scanning) |
| New Amenities ( Hard, Long ) | Module Construction, Space | Module Design Leader | Module Designer, Welfare Officer (scanning) |
| New Weapon Modules ( Hard, Long ) | Module Construction, Space | Module Design Leader | Module Designer, Tactical Officer (scanning) |
| Module Construction Methods ( Hard, Long ) | Module Construction, Space | Module Design Leader | Module Designer |
We hope you'll find this first batch of information helpful!