Resources

The Resources System
The Resources system opens up a vast array of opportunities for players to improve their existing items or gain a variety of new items to benefit them within PlanetSide 2. As the player earns the various types of resources they can be used to upgrade, purchase, or build valuable items including Implants, Vehicles, Weapons (for the individual player as well as their vehicles), Equipment (for the individual player as well as their vehicles), Customizations (for the individual player as well as their vehicles), Grenades, Medpacks, and even other resources.

There are four resources, grouped into two types.

Currency Resources


The player can see how many of each type of resource they have by looking at their Profile Summary screen (hitting ESC on their keyboard).

Building resources are spent to create items or vehicles at equipment or vehicle terminals. The currency resource, auraxium, is spent in the game’s store. In addition to purchasing items like weapon sidegrades and implants, players can also purchase building resources with auraxium in the store.

While PlanetSide 2 uses the term Building Resources, it isn’t the crafting system many MMO players have come to expect in game. Building resources are simply used in the purchase and delivery of several items. For instance, when a player selects a vehicle at the vehicle terminal they are ordering nanites to build a vehicle using the building resources the player has at hand. Another example includes when a player clicks the “resupply” button in the grenade slot of their loadout, in that instant the player is using 10 Alloys to make that grenade and it will subsequently appear in the player’s inventory. The difference then between the Auraxium currency resource and the other three building resources is that the Auraxium items the player can buy are more persistent, like weapons, and the Building Resource items are more transient, one-time use objects, like grenades and vehicles.



Players earn resources several different ways. There are two general ways to earn resources while playing PlanetSide 2: periodic region control rewards and facility battle rewards. Each region has a resource type assigned to it, which determines what kind of resource rewards players receive from that region from both reward sources. The region resource types can be seen on the map by turning on the resource icons.



Periodic territory control rewards are given every five minutes. When the rewards are given, players receive resources from regions their Empire controls on their current continent that are connected to their warpgate by other regions they own. The connection factor is called a “supply line” and if players do not have a supply line to their region, they do not receive resources from the unconnected region. The following image helps to visualize the concept.



A player can see how many periodic territory control resources are incoming by looking at their map (hitting M on their keyboard).



Facility battle rewards are granted to players throughout facility capture events as they accumulate score points, which are based on the experience they earn. For instance, say the Terran Republic and the New Conglomerate are fighting over The Crown region. As players earn experience, that experience is tracked as points and once the player accumulates enough points, a unit of The Crown’s resource, alloys, is awarded to the player. Scoring more points will result in another reward of a unit of alloys – this repeats until the capture event is complete. The resource players are rewarded during facility capture events are the same type of resource that is given for that region for the periodic resource rewards.

All experience gained during a facility capture event period will be counted as points, it does not matter whether a player is hacking a terminal, guarding a control point, or running around the area killing other enemy players. There is bonus experience players can earn during facility capture events however, for instance, killing enemy players near capture points, destroying vehicles in the area, re-supplying players in the facility area, etc.

There is a specific relationship between the experience, points earned, and resources rewarded for a facility capture event. The formula diminishes the returns over points, which reduces the incentive to continue long stalemate fights and also helps normalize some of the effects of player skill on rewards. The initial point score needed to trigger a reward grant and the scaler that modifies how fast the reward is granted vary based on which region the capture event is taking place and the estimated difficulty of capturing the region. Overall, the formula for points per resource unit follows this:

Y = ( I + P + ( P * ( R / (R + 1) * S ) ) )

R = Reward grant count

Y = Score needed to trigger reward grant

P = Previous score needed to trigger last reward grant (zero for the first calculated grant)

I = Initial score needed to trigger reward grant

S = Scaler that modifies how fast the reward is granted