Earth 2 Draft Paper: Part 4 Economic Components

Now this is a part 4, Economic Components of the Earth 2 draft paper, part 1 covered the introduction and statis, part 2 covered the Earth 2 player, and part 3 covered economics. Feel free to go check those out. 

Draft paper Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ34HAM8P8s&t=104s

Earth 2 Draft Paper Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dplKXDJ_YEk

Draft Paper Part 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuPAskb9qeU

“ECONOMIC COMPONENTS

4.1 THE MENTAR

The Mentar is a building that is essential for the gameplay in Earth 2. They detect E-ther when it evaporates from the land on the property they are built on and turn it into Essence.

Mentars also have the ability to be slotted with Jewels. The bigger the property, the larger the slot range on the Mentar. Slotting Jewels on your property improves its performance of production of Resources and Essence through the Jewels’ modifier effects.”

If you don’t have your mentars yet, be sure to get those built and start collecting your essence. There’s a step by step guide to getting your mentars and collecting essence on my channel if you need it.

“4.2 E-THER 

E-ther is an unstable, difficult to detect and somewhat mysterious matter that evaporates from Player-owned land inside Earth 2.

Theory has it that when virtual land is claimed and a Player’s presence is recorded in the binary code of that land, the land itself commits to improving its own environment to the will of the Player who owns it. E-ther cannot be captured or stored naturally, but can be detected by a Mentar, and if processed quickly enough by that Mentar, can convert into the very storable and collectable Essence.

Enough is not yet known about E-ther but it would seem that not all E-ther is identical, which is evident in the varying E-ther to Essence conversion yields. We know that when captured early enough, E-ther always yields some Essence, but never more Essence than E-ther.”

The varying essence is likely referring to Tier 1 vs Tier 2 land, I have a separate video on that, feel free to check it out but ECD or promised essence as this tends to have higher conversion than organic essence too.

“4.3 JEWELS

Jewels have a certain chance of spawning on a Player’s Property at varying rates and must be claimed within a limited period of time, after which they vanish again. Jewels are distinguished by Tiers and each Tier has additional levels of quality, which all affects the Jewel’s value.

Players can collect Jewels, craft them into higher tiers and quality levels, slot them into their Mentars and use them to improve and better target their EcoSim production. Jewel utility will expand into other areas of the Earth 2 Metaverse as new features and products are released.

Depending on the size, tier, and tile class of a property, the Mentar will have between 1 and 15 slots that can be slotted with Jewels. Jewels have a number of effects on the EcoSim of a property, and the effectiveness is dependent on their color, tier and quality attributes. 

These include:

• Increasing the effectiveness of producing a certain Raw Material;

• Accelerating production of certain Building Blocks;

• Increasing the chance of E-ther detection rate;

• Increasing the yield of Essence when reaching certain stages in the EcoSim;and

• Reducing research and/or construction times and costs.”

Personally, other than unlocking all the recipes and creating some to make the jewel crafting videos I’m just holding onto my tier 1 jewels and slotting them as they come. That way I’m increasing my overall E-ther detection. But It also means I have a huge stock of base jewels to craft whatever I need later in development, instead of crafting tier 2 or 3 now and then potentially realizing maybe these aren’t the jewels that suit my type or gameplay or plans.

“JEWEL CRAFTING

Jewels have a crafting system that allows Players to experiment with combining them to create Jewels of higher tiers. The quality and tier of a crafting outcome will depend on the quality and tiers of the jewel used in the crafting process. Over time players will discover new recipes they can use to ensure the quality and accuracy of their EcoSim production.

There are undiscovered effects from not so obvious recipes which may create a single Jewel with combined effects that otherwise would use a higher number of slots. Such jewels require an explorative mind to find them and will carry the name of their discoverers in the future. These recipes will be part of an ongoing design effort as the EcoSim develops and matures.

Crafting is available as a tab in the Jewel Storage Window. With this feature, players are currently able to:

• shatter Jewels into Shards;

• improve Jewels with Shards and Essence;

• craft new Jewels using Shards or multiple Jewels from their Inventory, and

• discover, unlock, and browse Jewel Recipes.”

From not so obvious recipes hmmm. That’s a big one, to me that implies there’s undiscovered recipes that were not showing on the missing recipe list. Although it does then go on to say they will carry the name of their discoverers in the future. Does this mean the jewels aren’t out yet or there’s just none named after those who discord them yet? What do you think?

“JEWEL SLOTTING

The Slotting tab of the Jewel Storage Window is where Players can slot Jewels from their Jewel Inventory into their properties’ Mentars. As mentioned previously, Slotted Jewels will affect a property’s E-ther detection rate, resource production, and other property related production, in the future. The Jewel Slotting window also shows critical information needed for Players to make decisions on what Jewels and Jewel combinations to slot into their properties’ Mentars.

4.4 RESOURCES

Forget all you know about how Resources are mined on our physical Earth. Inside Earth 2 they are no longer dug up, snatched from a pillaged soil or stolen from an exploited Earth, as there are no more mines!

The first set of Resources to exist will be:

• Oil

• Coal

• Gold

• Limestone

• Freshwater

• Wood

• Sand

• Iron

In Earth 2, Resources are replicated – not mined- into Raw Materials. This process requires Essence as a critical source of data to complete successfully. Raw Materials are replicated from the core binary code that is found under or on the soil of a Property – or from what grows on it. Mentars process the E-ther that evaporates from the ground and turn it into Essence. The Weaver, located inside the Mentar, evaluates the binary representation of soil around the Resource contained within the captured Essence, and uses that data – if compatible – to replicate the Raw Material.

The more advanced this technology is, the smaller the amount of a particular raw material can be whilst still being readable and replicable by the Weaver. Everything is woven primarily from hydrogen, but also contains carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases. Hydrogen alone makes up about 3% of the mass of the Earth’s crust. In total, the Earth is estimated to contain about 1.8*1018 tons of hydrogen (it would take the world’s 2011 concrete production 500 million years to equal that amount). But lessons have been learned: technologies to restore hydrogen from waste are already under development. Hydrogen should not become a finite resource.

Raw Materials are a core part of what everything is built from in Earth 2. Almost every type of building developed inside of Earth 2 needs Raw Materials for construction. They have a fixed place in both the production chain and the economy of Earth 2.

Raw Materials are copied from the existing Raw Materials of a property. Once they exist in their pure form, Raw Materials can be traded and used for other types of production. In fact there can be no building production without Raw Materials in their pure form present in the location where the production is taking place. While Raw Materials will mostly be used to construct EcoSim

Buildings and produce Building Blocks, they will also be necessary for research, upgrades and maintenance.”

So there we go. That’s a new name, I don’t think we’ve heard of the weaver inside the mentar before.

The raw materials needing to be present in the location is a little bit of an odd read. I don’t think it means you can’t build in that area unless all materials exist there, even though that’s kind of how it reads. But instead I’m going to take it as we need to move resources there before anything can begin, instead of resources being consumed from a central location whilst building. Maybe we need to prepare and transport first.

“RAW MATERIAL TIERS

The diversity of Raw Materials used for the EcoSim will grow over time in technological tiers.

There will be 8 Raw Material types to begin with, but over time it is planned for this number to grow into the 2-digit numbers, and possibly beyond. Raw Material tiers serve a number of different purposes:

• introducing a development hierarchy into the building component of the Metaverse,

• supporting early diversification and specialisation,

• supporting the development of a special class of Players who will have the opportunity to work their way up until they can afford their own land and assets without the need to outlay any initial funds and without running the danger of being exploited and held asset-poor and dependent, safeguarding this Play-to-Earn opportunity.

A more simplified initial gameplay will be introduced in this specific area, teaching Players how to play the game during the first technological tiers, and then widening the possibilities significantly so as to increase the complexities of managing larger landownerships by a single person, thus creating a need for cooperation and collaboration on Earth 2.

Progressively, we will introduce a very broad Raw Materials tree, which will make it very difficult for a single player to successfully produce all the different kinds of raw materials, especially ones of higher tiers. The specialisation of Players in particular areas will force trade to be a necessity in order for them to achieve the most out of the Earth 2 EcoSim. Creating a hierarchy of raw materials will encourage Player-to-Player trading and the development that will continue over years to come will involve Players in the process via voting rights, where possible.”

So there we go we’re going to be specializing in certain types of resources and it’s unlikely players will be able to cover them all, probably a whales only kind of area. I like that the’re going more into the free to play elements too with players being able to work their way to land ownership. I see this being appealing to a lot of potential E2 players as it’s risk free. No potential loss of revenue.

“MECHANICS

Weavers of a certain tier will use Essence to produce a set amount of Raw Material (measured in Storage Units) per tile. Let’s say, in tier 1, that amount is 100 Storage Units.

1. Each Raw Material exists in the ground in a relative ratio to all other detectable Raw Materials. This ratio is called “Occurrence”.

2. The respective number of units per tile will be turned into this Raw Material. For example, if a tile has 12% wood comparative to all detected resources, 12 Storage Units of wood can be produced if the Mentar has a Jewel socketed which primes the production of wood.

3. Each Raw Material is produced in various cubic metre amounts per Storage Unit.

4. All detectable Occurrences combine to make up 100% of the producible Raw Materials. Thus in a new tier the Occurrences must be added to the old tiers and then weighted to make up for 100% of the producible units.

5. A heatmap will display the distribution of raw materials that exist on players owned properties.

6. With each new technological tier the Weaver will need to receive an update to allow access to the Raw Materials in the new tier:

• Access to old tier Raw Materials will remain.

• These Raw Materials will be added to the possible ground yield in the Raw Materials heat map.

• The addition will subsequently alter the Occurrence of all other Raw Materials.

• The overall production capabilities of the Weaver will increase.

7. Once the research and construction of the next tier Weaver is complete, the Weaver can produce these Raw Materials according to their new Occurrence in the respective property.”

More about the weaver there and possibly more insightful than it sounds at first. We now know buildings are going to have ‘parts’ which can be upgraded and changed. So even though 2 players might have the same building, they might end up performing very different tasks or having very different production rates. If we’re already looking at stuff this customisable for ecosim launch, I can’t even begin to imagine how big the tech trees are and where this will end up years from now. Hopefully the learning curve isn’t too steep and it’s still an enjoyable process.

“INITIAL CREATION OF OCCURRENCY RESOURCE DATA (RESOURCE VALIDATION)

The magic and intrigue of the Earth 2 Metaverse is that the place where you stand on the real Earth is represented in the exact geolocation inside of Earth 2. This bridge between the two worlds is fundamental for establishing and setting the foundations and various components of Earth 2. Thus the accurate implementation of Raw Materials and Resource location was a crucial factor for Earth 2.

A significant amount of time was spent to ensure that the placement of key Resources was as realistic as possible. We achieved this both internally and via silent partnerships and have a base for Resource locations consisting of over 200 million datapoints measuring in over 500 giga-bites in size. But for us, this was still not accurate enough and the PRV program we have developed will allow Players to claim and validate real world Resource locations over a select period of time, strengthening the existing data implemented.

At a very high level this collaborative effort will see Earth 2 provide :

• A Claims Manager where players can see all Claims and create their own Claims

• A map representation where Players can see areas with open Claims

• An internal tool where E2 staff can monitor insights about claims, identifying claims with higher validations and reviewing for potential approval This will be one of the first Essence Reward systems where Players can earn additional Essence for correctly validating Player

created claims. Read more on this process here https://earth2.io/news/progress-update-on-resources and we will release further details once the validation process begins.”

So that’s it for the economic components section and I must admit I’m looking forward to seeing how the player validation is implemented and the rewards that come with it. Do you guys have any thoughts on this section? Anything I’ve missed? Feel free to let me know in the comments below.