Hi everyone!
So this is the first part in a series of “closer look” development updates. They are meant to give you a better understanding of the basics behind engineering 2.0. This time I’ll outline the principles of construction, production and research.

Engineering 2.0: Blueprints, Kits, Recipes and Fuel

This is a feature that adds modularity and flexibility to the whole construction and production system. It is split into multiple elements:

Blueprints allow the owner to – generally speaking – create something. They exist in two types: construction and production blueprints. They act like items and can be found, stolen or bought.

• Construction Blueprints: If you want to build a structure, lets say a sawmill, you need the blueprint for it. As soon as you have one you can add it your list of known blueprints in your inventory. From then on you can create a sawmill construction site. If you carry some of the required construction resources you can start building the structure. Alone or together with your team mates to speed up the process.

• Production Blueprints: Think about a normal cooking recipe and then split it in two sections. The first part tells you what you need (this represents the production recipe) and the second part how you actually cook the food (that’s the production blueprint).Therefore: if you want to produce items you not only need to chose the required recipe but also be in possession of the respective blueprint.

Structure Kits: So what I just told you is not always true. Some structures are just too small or primitive to justify a construction site. Lets say: a pipe segment for example. Such elements are simply placed. All you need is one ‘piece’ of it in your inventory. It’s simple: If you have 3 pipe segments you can build a 3 segments long pipe. You can also deconstruct such elements and take them back into your inventory and place them somewhere else.

Recipes: As described above recipes tell you what you need for production and what you get out of it. They don’t tell you how to actually produce it. That’s what blueprints are for. Recipes exist for operation, production and research purposes:

• Operation recipes define what is required that a certain structure operates

• Production recipes are (additionally) used in all producing structures

• Research recipes work like production recipes for research structures

Production and research recipes allow to modify the behaviour of a structure while operation recipes are bound to it.

Fuel is exclusively used by operation recipes: Primarily it means stuff that can be burned to heat up something else. Every item theoretically can be used as fuel but the amount of energy you get out of it differs. If you want to burn that metal helmet it wont do much. But if you want to burn your wooden shield (because you have no other fuel or bc you don’t like it) you can.

Engineering 2.0: Research

Your research is bound to certain structures which allow to spend resources on specific topics. A tech tree decides how you can progress.

The required resources are primarily used for research. Also they are rare enough to make them very valuable. The more you have the more you can improve your current technology. If you don’t find them you might decide to buy them with a reasonable amount of other resources. Or you sell them for good money while neglecting your current research progress.

Lucky ones: During research there is a certain chance that a related technology gets coincidentally discovered. This should reflects the true nature of research which is rarely fully predictable.

I hope this shed some light on what to expect form engineering. Next time I’ll show you more about building a working production infrastructure.

Thanks for reading and see you soon.