Better Future

****Better Future**** is the fifth corporation in TerraTech and one of the two end-game corporations at V.1.3.3, the other being Hawkeye.

They aim to supply off-world miners with luxury items. They are usually categorized by their high aesthetic value and moderate functional value, and as such their equipment is often much more expensive than other corporations' counterparts. As with other Corporations, they also manufacture certain blocks that offer unique tactical advantages over other Corporations.

**Better Future** focuses on futuristic design and offers prospectors blocks suitable for making speedy hovercraft, planes and racers.

It is also an environmentalist organization and offers clean energy sources such as solar panels, as well the Plasma Furnace Generator, capable of burning ALL resource chunks.

**Better Future** has a focus on speed and hovercraft in its missions, with Venture ground/air racetrack-like hover/anti-gravity courses to complete. As such, their blocks are ideal for creating stable hovercraft and anti-gravity sky bases.

Its other products include malevolent weapons that are safe for the user to operate, but are less effective than the specializations of each corporation, as the vast majority of them inflict energy damage, which do not fare well considering the abundance of shields.

## Lore and Information

Better Future builds high end luxury futuristic vehicles. Its corporate philosophy is that form must always be as important as (if not more so than) function. Although it might seem an odd choice to build off-world mining vehicles from their expensive technologies, people that start using its products swear by them and will often refuse to use items made by anyone else. They also offer a free Hover Training Program to anyone who holds a valid license.

## Rationale

"*Design geeks creating ultra sleek, minimalist, desirable objects have turned their styluses to developing a range of green, carbon negative, enviro-harvesters.* *These secretive hype-teases are selling us the opportunity to prospect the new world in style, for a luxury fee.* *They're changing everything, yet again!"*

## NPC

**Better Future**'s corporation-specific NPC is HublHubl is the third Corporation-specific NPC that appears in several missions, after Crafty Mike and Sergeant Smash. Unlike most others, he can be interacted with, in a similar fashion to a Payload Terminal. Hubl Appears during the License Acquisition Mission, and the other two introductory missions (to their hover/anti-gravity technology), where he offers to sell sample techs that the player can use to complete the objectives. He is also an instructor of the Better Future Hover Training Program.

## Missions

Grade 1:
 Hover Race Track
 Hover Training Program (11 missions)

Grade 2:
 Anti-Gravity Time Trial

Grade 3:
 HUBL, BUBL & TRUBL!

Repeatable missions:

* Capture Enemy Base
* Seize Enemy Outpost
* Tech Gang
* Supply Drop
* Runner

## Trivia

* In Chinese, Better Future was translated to "New Eden".
* Better Future is the only Corporation whose license can (and must) be acquired via a Purchase.
* The License Acquisition mission name is a reference to the eponymous film in 1985, which is a pun on the corp's name.

## History

**Better Future** was formerly a planned corporation. Its style seems to be largely influenced by IT companies and clean white laboratories, as well as futuristic technology that makes form meet function. These elements are similar to Aperture Science from the *Portal* franchise and Apple Inc.

* Explorations into **Better Future**'s aesthetics, made very early in TerraTech's development.

### Hinting at release and reveal.

On the 5th of November 2018, Payload Studios initiated a publicity-stunt community puzzle which hinted at its soon arrival and gave spoilers of blocks and equipment **Better Future** would have in-game. The puzzle was advertised on the official TerraTechGame Facebook account, Twitter account, Forum, Discord server and also in-game in the home screen newsfeed.

#### Phase 1

The first step of the puzzle was a simple code that 'Sergeant Smash' requested prospectors to help him translate into English. The code had been published on all the official community outlets but led to the Discord server in the end, and the puzzle could not be progressed without the usage of the Discord server. The code was relatively easy to crack, as it was a basic replacement code and it was solved within the first day through trial and error. The code read when translated:

> *LISTEN UP PROSPECTOR. WE HAVE INTERCEPTED SOME STRANGE DOCUMENTS AND WE NEED HELP UNDERSTANDING THEM. I HAVE SENT YOU THE FILES SECURELY. GO TO YOUR DISCORD CONSOLE UNIT AND ENTER THE CONSOLE UNIT AND ENTER THE COMMAND "!PROJECT-\_\_\_\_\_\_" LZZZZT* *PROSPECTOR! DID YOU GET THAT? I SAID !PROJECT*-
>
>

The coded message instructed prospectors to go to the channel in the official Discord server called #discord-console (now renamed #better-future) and type the command '!project-(unknown)' The command was later ascertained to be 'project-planet' through random attempts substituting six-letter words ending in t, which the encrypted message hinted. The correct command '!project-planet' prompted 'Tony' (a bot) to paste the link 'https://imgur.com/a/zvJk1bP '. It was later discovered that the key for the code hinted the word planet. The key for the code was:

As such, it can be seen that the first six letters of the alphabet (abcedf) in the encoding corresponded to 'planet' in English.

#### Phase 2

The Imgur gallery linked by Tony contains a number of different pictures of computer screens or sketches most of them with some form of distortion. Many of them contain data which is related to TerraTech, such as sample 1 mentions 'off-planet resources', sample 3 shows a **Better Future** promotional image with the logo (unknown at the time), sample 4 shows nets of some **Better Future** blocks and sample 5 seems to show a GSO document.

While the photograph of the **Better Future** promotional image might have hinted at the puzzle's outcome, the pictures were mostly irrelevant to the puzzle's progression. The importance of the Imgur gallery was the small sections of QR code next to most of the pictures. When the pieces were put together, they formed a QR code that linked to http://project-planet.tech/. Phase two was completed in the same day as phase one.

#### Phase 3

At the time of the puzzle, http://project-planet.tech/ was locked by a username and password which could not be cracked. As a clue, 'Sergeant Smash' posted another gif the next day to advance the puzzle. The gif's importance was further strengthened the next day by the presentation of the same data on a notebook titled 'TOP SECRET' by Matt Guest, the TerraTech Community Manager during a developer livestream. Matt's notebook included additional data such as 'sounds' and 'colours' crossed out, the two being dead ends the community had followed. The one lead that did seem to yield results was the translation of the data in the gif from Hexadecimal to decimal. The hexadecimal values were replaced by their decimal values and incremented by their place in the order of the list e.g. (61, the first value, has a decimal number of 97, which added to 1, it's place in the order, makes 98.) The list afterwards was then translated to ASCII to form the phrase 'build-better'. This was discovered the day after the gif was posted. The username for the website was later confirmed by 'Sergeant Smash' as being something that 'Some guy called MATT pinned' which was a message saying 'project-planet'. Using 'project-planet' as the username and 'build-better' as the passphrase, http://project-planet.tech/ was successfully logged into.

#### Aftermath

When successfully logged into at the time of the puzzle, http://project-planet.tech/ showed a timer countdown which counted until 17:00, November 9th, 2018 GMT, two day after the website's login credidentials were discovered. The countdown also ended just after a developer stream ended that day. Towards the end of the livestream, the developers started instead streaming the end of the timer (possibly to benefit people not in GMT as there was an issue with the timer not accounting for different timezones.) When the timer expired, a clip (viewable here) was played confirming that **Better Future** was coming soon. After that, http://project-planet.tech/ no longer showed the timer, instead showing spoiler images of **Better Future** content. An hour after the timer ended, a blog explaining and spoiling **Better Future** content was posted on the official TerraTechGame website. It also included details about when certain content would be released for certain platforms

## References

1. ↑ https://www.terratechgame.com/blog\_BF\_Announcement.htm
2. ↑ According to a Loading Screen Tip, Hubl is the lead sales representative of Better Future
3. ↑ 'LZZZZ' is likely a null, showing the code isn't mentioning what those letters are. The letters L and Z do not feature elsewhere in the code and are therefore untranslatable.