Trade Routes

BYOVerse Trade Routes.

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Overview

Buying, selling and transporting your hard-earned resources to/from the market will be an important part of the gameplay in the BYOVerse, at least for people involved in harvesting, crafting, and land management. However, we don’t want this part of the game to be boring for you, so we have planned to spice things a bit. After all, we already have stressed how dangerous the BYOVerse can be.

First and foremost, it is important to stress the importance of your lands’ location relative to the towns and outposts in your Region. Towns are especially important as they are the places where most of the trading will occur. When you deposit new goods and resources in a specific town, they are registered and become tradeable tokens. However, these tokens will retain their location which means if you buy resources from a distant town, you will need to physically collect it from that town to be able to use it in-game (e.g. in your BYOLand). The same rules apply for selling purposes. You need to transport your resources to a town to be able to sell it as a token in the marketplace.

As a consequence, settling deep into the wilderness will provide isolation from other players. You will have a higher chance to keep your entire production and potential production spikes due to BYOEnergy,, at the cost of more difficult access to the town markets and higher exposure to Anomalies. On the other hand, if you settle closer to towns, logistics become simpler and BYOEnergy instability will be a smaller hindrance, at the cost of exposure to other players - which might be a positive based on your style of play - and lower but more stable production potential.

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Road Quality

Not only should you be cautious about the BYOEnergy stability level of an area you want to cross, as low stability levels might mean some encounters on the way, but you also need to ensure that the roads themselves are in good shape. Some of these roads are old, and were built a long time ago when the BYOVerse was shaped differently. Time has passed and roads don’t typically age well, especially in a place as dangerous as the BYOVerse. Therefore, the more roads are used the more they will deteriorate, and a damaged road means slower movement for your BYOCraft or other vehicles. On the other hand, with enough commitment from players, roads can be repaired or even improved above their standard quality to grant speed bonuses.

The biomes will also have different impacts on roads, so players will need to be clever and reactive to adapt to any situation.

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Quest/Event Hubs

The towns and outposts are important places in the BYOVerse network. It is in these places that players gather to trade resources, but also where missions and events can be initiated related to various activities, including trade routes.

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BYOEnergy Stations

These facilities can be found in each town and outpost and play a major part in the stability of the BYOEnergy field. They must be maintained in a functional state - and players can contribute to this - otherwise the level of instability will increase in the town’s / outpost’s area of influence.

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Expeditions Square

Usually in the very center of a town/outpost, the Expeditions Square is the place where local NPC characters will launch expeditions, calling for help from other players. Such expeditions will vary in nature based on certain variables such as the local biome, the overall stability in the area, and of course the status of roads connected to the town/outpost. Expeditions will usually follow similar steps:

1. Gather resources for the expedition: players need to collect and bring resources to prepare the convoy
2. Transport expedition convoy: players can escort the convoy and defend it against potential threats
3. Execute planned operation on site (if applicable): players can participate by manipulating resources, killing nearby monsters, etc.

As soon as information is provided regarding deteriorating road conditions connected to a town/outpost, an expedition will initiate in the Expeditions Square.Therefore, a player reporting such issues to nearby towns/outposts will be rewarded. Information is vital in the BYOVerse.

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Resource Convoys

Convoys are a cheap and practical way to move resources between different regions of the world. They allow players to move way more resources than they would be able to by walking or even riding a BYOCraft. In addition, they provide relative security as players can team up to protect a convoy they have resources in.

As long as roads are in good shape, towns/outposts but also players can send convoys. These convoys are prepared in the Expeditions Square as described above. Some convoys will be part of Town Expeditions, where players contribute to deliver resources to a destination for a specific purpose, while other convoys are simply resource transportation services that happen on a regular basis that can be triggered by players. Convoys can of course be ambushed (which can result in both PvE and PvP interactions, depending on the rules in the area) and although they will usually have a batch of NPC guards that escort them, players might want to also come along for extra protection.

As for resources being transported from players’ BYOLands,, they will have to find a way to bring them to the nearest town/outpost if they want to benefit from the convoy’s - relative - protection. Otherwise, players and especially Guilds will have the ability to build new roads and connect them to the main roads, which will then allow them to set up their own convoys after unlocking the adequate technologies. Player-made roads will also need to be maintained.

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Scouting and protection

If you are going to move a lot of resources, you might want to make sure there won’t be any issues along the way. That’s where scouting can become a valuable activity, and some players might want to specialize in that kind of activity. With that said, hiring other players to protect your precious convoy might be a good idea, as long as you are sure that you can trust the players you’re dealing with.

Some guilds might even want to specialize in scouting and/or convoy protection or management if they can find willing customers.

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Events

As already stated above, some events can be initiated from towns/outposts. However, there are also events that will cause issues with trade routes, such as, for example:

• Environmental Hazards: one or more parts of the road are broken and must be reconstructed; hazards will vary depending on the biome: flooding, lava flow, earthquake, etc.
• Monster Hazards: BYOEnergy instability has triggered a surge of creature activity, resulting in road occupation; again, the fauna is not the same in each biome and will interact differently with roads
• Rogue ambushes: NPC rogues set traps, mines, or other hindrances and attack convoys

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The teleportation shortcut

Of course, teleportation is a very tempting option to avoid the hindrances of logistics. Although we don’t want to completely shut that door, we think that exploring and moving into the world is the best way to make it feel alive. We want to avoid situations where players remain in their BYOLands for the majority of time. We also want to avoid situations where some zones become completely deserted, similar to some traditional games where starting zones feel empty as players move to “endgame content zones”. We intend to balance the game and create interdependencies between resources, ingredients and crafting that will keep all regions relevant regardless of their dangerosity and that will stimulate activity and movement between them.

So yes, teleportation will exist in the BYOVerse but will be limited. Rather than putting an arbitrary limitation to it, we want those limits to make sense. Teleportation will have a cost that is related to the amount of resources a player carries, and this cost increases greatly if you’re bringing more than what you can usually carry in your inventory. Moreover, teleportation will also have consequences - we could even say, a cost - in terms of gameplay: teleportation is a crack in the shape of reality, and thus will provoke an instability in the BYOEnergy field around you, both at your starting point and destination. Destabilizing the BYOEnergy field around you is not always the best idea, especially if you’re not there anymore to deal with its consequences (because, you know, you just teleported somewhere else).

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Transportation options