Physics

For a world to outlive its creators, it must be built on immutable laws that apply to everyone. It should reflect our physical universe, where we are governed by consistent, natural principles, while still able to build, shape, create, and find meaning within those constraints.

Conservation of Energy

Virtual worlds have long explored how various forms of matter, such as minerals, can be transformed into other forms of matter, like spaceships. This process, observed in games ranging from EVE Online to Minecraft, is typically governed by blueprints or recipes, sometimes influenced by factors such as time, waste, or probabilistic outcomes. In EVE Frontier, we take this further by introducing energy as a core concept, bringing the world closer to the idea of E = mc² by embedding the laws of thermodynamics, where energy is conserved, heat flows, and entropy inevitably increases. Thermodynamics becomes a more impactful element of gameplay as the Frontier is explored and conquered.

Energy manifests on the Frontier primarily in the form of fuel. The highly performant Crude Fuels required for advanced ships and structures are extracted from Crude Matter, which are mined from Rifts in space and time. Most actions that a player or object takes in the world expend energy through the use of fuel. This, in part, begins to equalize the agency that players and objects have in the world.

Because of how embedded the laws of thermodynamics are in EVE Frontier’s immutable digital physics, energy becomes a constant factor in every decision. Choosing to fly a ship through a high-risk system at maximum thrust can reduce the chance of direct encounters, but it may increase its susceptibility to detection due to the higher heat generated. In another scenario, a player may invest heavily in heat resistance and carefully manage energy throughout their mining operations to achieve greater efficiency and higher yields. Entropy introduces a dimension of base upkeep and efficiency losses, which forces players to adapt.

This application of realism never comes at the expense of gameplay. Enjoyment remains a primary driver in designing each element on the Frontier. For example, ships traveling at light speed may take an impractically long time to slow down, even accounting for physics, which would only frustrate the player base. Instead, the game is grounded in science, with deliberate design choices that preserve immersion without sacrificing pace. In that way, the universe feels consistent and believable while also remaining exciting and dynamic.

Probabilistic Outcomes

The deeper we explore our universe, the more we encounter probability distributions rather than deterministic outcomes. This complexity adds richness to our world, reflecting the uncertainty that humanity has long sought to understand and control, building predictive systems to navigate this inherent unpredictability. Yet, despite our achievements, we still struggle to accurately predict the weather!

In EVE Frontier, all actions, from players and autonomous agents alike, are fundamentally subject to probabilistic outcomes. Players have varying degrees of influence — direct, indirect, or none at all — over these outcomes. Probabilistic outcomes underpin all circumstances in the game, including manufacturing, combat, object degradation, and travel. How one adapts to these changing circumstances is a key point of superiority for human players over single-minded autonomous bots.

We anticipate that players will, at times, create new control mechanisms that transcend logic and evolve into cultural phenomena, much like what has occurred in EVE Online. As user-created structures are codified and more advanced tools are developed, increased pressure is placed on the system’s probabilistic outcomes and its inherent impermanence. This tension preserves the chaotic nature of the environment, even as human efforts to impose stability and order aim to facilitate patterned and predictable results. Despite these attempts, the unpredictability of the world will endure, ensuring that the dynamic and volatile essence of the Frontier remains intact.

To keep the universe engaging, its resource sources are designed to be dynamic. This ebb and flow of uncertainty in resource availability naturally leads to fluctuations in supply and demand, shifting the game's meta over time, much like the changing tides of an ocean.

The movement of these raw resources is governed by probabilistic distributions rooted in digital physics, making them impossible to predict. This unpredictability is a key driver of persistent market volatility, ensuring that the economy remains in constant flux. However, the market acts on its own — we do not impose external conditions with the goal of changing market operations.

Generating randomness for these probabilistic outcomes within the deterministic nature of blockchain is a known challenge; in fact, it is a challenge for all of computer science. Despite this challenge, we will provide a verifiable and transparent source of randomness that maintains integrity in all game outcomes. We do not exert control over how players exert their ability to influence the probabilistic outcomes, and we do not operate the randomization engine. This will increase transparency (and importantly, independent auditability) in how players interact with the randomized environment through the use of privacy-preserving protocols.

Rational Resource Distribution

The Frontier was designed with the vision of achieving 100,000 star systems. At that scale, the distribution of resources becomes a serious matter, as the future of civilization relies on it. The Hierarchical Resource Distribution (HRD) framework was designed to distribute resources throughout a game's galactic hierarchy, from broad sectors down to specific locations within a star system.

The HRD distributes resources based on the following stages:

1. Global Resource Budget and Proportions: The total resource mass for the game world is set, as is the proportional distribution of other resources. These proportions may vary over time based on galaxy-wide economic conditions, geological processes, or major in-game events. This stage determines the overall quantity of each resource type available in the universe.

2. Spatial Distribution: Resources are then distributed down through the spatial hierarchy: Sector → Region → Constellation → System. This is done using independent weighting for each resource type at each layer. The framework ensures that the total quantity of a resource is conserved as it's distributed throughout all of the star systems in the universe.

3. Local Placement by Architecture: Resources within a star system are based on the system's physical architecture, such as the presence of asteroid belts, Trojan points, or Near-Earth Object regions, and the specific placement weights associated with each asteroid type.

The weighting applied to resource distribution is calculated using various factors, including the physical characteristics of the region (e.g., system metallicity, age, stellar properties, temperature zones) as well as dynamic game factors such as player activity and the prevailing economic conditions.

The dynamics of resource distribution on the Frontier are non-deterministic, yet are governed by time and state-dependent distribution, resulting in a system that is neither uniformly random nor entirely predictable. The objective is to allow for the potential of resource speculation, placing greater value on exploration. As more data becomes available through exploration, players can use this to improve their models with the hope of improving their mining efficiency.