[Forgive the wall of text - it can be found in game by going to INFO->"Terraform"->bottom article. If you haven't seen it this is the Perpetuum Manifesto written by the developers. A guiding document like this, that provides a clear vision for the games future is one of the big things that gives me faith in PO

The world of Perpetuum is one which we’ve constantly been working on for the past 5 years. During this time the concept of our game evolved quite a bit - we basically went from a simple isometric game concept to a full blown persistent 3D world. This process was slow, gradual, and came very naturally to the game and the team. During these 5 years we got to experiment with many ideas which resulted in a complex set of rules we call Perpetuum Physics. These rules serve as the foundation for our game and govern everything in the game world. We tried to mimic the real world with these rules as much as possible, with some limitations here and there that made the game feasible for MMO gameplay. As we’re continually developing Perpetuum we always make sure that new features we implement don’t break any of these governing principles.
In this article we’ll explain some of the concepts behind the rules that govern the Perpetuum world, what the current results are and where we’d like them to take us in the future.

==Global game concepts==

Perpetuum is a complex, highly social game. It was always meant to be one - we want players to be dazzled by all the things they can do in the game world. We want them to find out new ways of doing things even after playing for a long while. We want them to form alliances, pool their resources and strategize how to use, protect and expand them. We want them to populate an alien planet with huge robots.

==Level playing field==

When it comes to character progression, we employ a very strict level playing field policy. This means that each and every character in the game progresses with their skills at the same rate, no exceptions. This way older characters will enjoy a unique versatility of playstyles as they fully learn certain skills, but in no way means that newer characters won’t be able to catch up to them in areas of their choice. The level playing field concept guarantees that older character means more versatile character.

==Game systems==

===Inside the terminals===

In Perpetuum, most of the economics, industrial and community action takes place inside the terminals where you manage these aspects of your character. This gave us the opportunity to make these systems as intricate as we needed.

'''Economy'''

One of the most important aspect of any MMO where player interaction is essential is the sharing/trading of resources. Perpetuum features three main systems to exchange resources and items between players: direct trading, corporation storage and a centralized market. The first two are pretty straightforward whereas for a market system one could have a whole number of solutions. What we decided to do was to look at real life Internet trading sites and imagined how they’d look like if delivery could happen instantly instead of snail mail. Of course most of these sites also have an auction system which we might also implement in the future if the need arises from the player community.
Every system in Perpetuum is designed to rely on systems of other player activities. This promotes trading between players of different specializations and creates a real, working economy powered by the players themselves.

'''Industry'''

We knew that creating a complex crafting system would be one of the key elements of Perpetuum as we wanted players to be able to immerse themselves in this aspect of the world we’re creating. For this we tried to imagine how humans would behave in a situation where they are met with highly advanced alien technology - of course at first they’d want to take it apart to learn how it works, and then reproduce it for their own goals. This is exactly what you can do in Perpetuum - items you find in the wild can be reverse engineered, and the resulting template can be used to configure factory lines for mass production. The flaw of this system is that items that can’t be found in the game world can’t be produced by the players - this is why we also have a prototype system: players can create prototype items using only the amassed knowledge of their characters, as an analogy of understanding the alien technology enough to create it from scratch. Players can increase the knowledge of their surroundings by examining information retrieved from defeated enemies. In the future we intend to use this knowledge base system for several other purposes, including to introduce new, high-end items into the game elegantly without the need to artificially introduce these items into the game world as loot or on the market.

===The outside world===

Most of the real action however takes place outside the terminals in the real game world. Our aim while deciding on the rules of the outside world was to have the most dynamic game area possible. As our player base grows, we’re going to expand the area available for exploration and exploitation.

'''Materials and plants'''

The minerals in the ground and the vegetation all around are constantly influenced by the players and the physics of the world. If left alone for a while the natural plantlife spreads, but dense forests of plants can be reduced to empty fields by battles while players seek cover behind the plants.

'''The terrain'''

One of the core ideas behind the terrain of Perpetuum is that players will be able to form it to their needs. The gameplay aspect this affected most was getting around on the terrain. As we wanted the terrain to become a tactical part of battles we decided to limit the slope on which each robot can travel. To avoid exploits using the terraforming feature (such as a bunch of players blocking off a passage), we had decided early on not to have collision between players. Currently the terraforming feature is not included in the game yet for a very simple reason: it will only have a big part to play once players can claim certain areas of the world for themselves and build their own settlements.

'''Territory control'''

We know how players love to have a sense of big achievement and we think that carving out your own territory and holding that ground against other players is one of the most exciting aspects of a persistent sandbox world like the one in Perpetuum. We introduced territory control in the form of Intrusion events where players can take control of outposts in certain areas of the game - however in the future we intend to give our players the possibility to build new settlements with complex infrastructures. Combined with the terraforming feature that will be added along with player built settlements, the Perpetuum world will be uniquely changeable by our players as they see fit. We expect the combination of these features to give rise to interesting and never before seen gameplay scenarios.

'''The robots'''

The robots in Perpetuum are all made up of three parts: legs, chassis and head. We decided to go with this setup so the robots can be modular - for now players have access to a certain set of predetermined robot setups, but later we intend to open up this system for what we call Hybrid Robots. This will allow players to mix and match the different types of robot parts we already have in the game and create custom built robots on their own. With named robot parts and new robot tiers in mind the combinations number in the millions, and that’s not counting any equipment.