- Earth And beyond is the only game that actually gives the players the oppertunity to carve out virtual lives for themselves in the finest Buck Rogers tradition, Building their own spaceships , fighting for or against good, amassing enviable fortunes, and exploring the most distant reaches of the far flung universe.

- The game takes place in 23th Century.

- Humanity is still living in a state of cold war, still recovering from a nearly catastrophic conflict that took place some 100 years previous

- Three dominating factions in the game : The Voraciusly Capitalist Terran alliance holding earth, The science and discovery minded Jenquai living on one of the jupiters moons, and the progen republic who are warlike colonists genetically engineering warriors on mars.

- While earth & beyond might look like a space sim joystick jockey's dream, its actually a very solid RPG

- Three possible trades available for anyone(fighter , warrior or merchant trader), and the skill bonuses each planet confers consequently creates a pool of 9 potential roles.

- Anyone can do any thing(merchanting , combat etc) but his specific role might not be as suitable for it(example a merchant is not as cut out for combat as a warrior).

- You can pirate , hijack convoys and trade in black market goods.

- Gamers will start with 2 or 3 basic skills and gain more(probably up to 15-20) as they accumulate experience. Skill system will NOT be use-based so gaining experience is crucial.

- List of skills hasnt been finalised yet, but westwood is planning on having literally 100 or omre, including diplomacy , crucial hit and various weapons skills.

- Leveling up will allow you to add more skills or train to improve existing ones.

- Homeplanet limits will help determine how high skills can go, and probably 4th to 5th level for skills will require some epic quest to be completed.

- The spaceship is a physical expression of your character class and level. Sure you will have an avatar to roam around in stations, but 99 persent of your presence in the game will be as your ships captain

- Every race has a specific ship style, and every trade a specific baseline ship, so space should be filled with a huge variety of craft. Specially since players will be able to pick their own shiop colors and decals. Ships will be easily distinguishable upon glance and it will be easy to assess its level, class and abilities. So in essence you are roleplaying a spaceship

- The designers really wanrt you to go on quests. And hope is that the quests will add more substance and narrative flow to the game than just constant random fighting

- There are 2 types of quests - crafted and personalized. Personalized quests are obtained thru quest generators found on space stations. These generators give you quests according to your characters level etc. The crafted missions shlud be more compelling , advancing the storyline and often requiring you to get help to complete them. These quests can be as straight forward as assasinating an NPS , or as epic as tasking you to construct a squadron of fighters within a week and then take out an enormous capital ship.

- The quests will not all be conflict oriented however. Explorers can expect to go on quests to discover new planets , stargates, space creatures and more.

- Quests are saved serverside with your character, so only you will get credit for completing it. Forexample if you have to assassinate some NPC , and some spoilsport comes along and kills him, he will get experience but not reward and the NPC will respawn soon. Then u can take it out and get experience + reward.

- Players wont be able to hog all the good quests since you can carry no more then 4 quests at a time.

- 'Twinking', the practice of artificially buffing up your character, is going to be nigh onto impossible. Most twinking is done by having a high-level character load up a newbie with super powered items that he could never get by legitimate means. E&B's tech tree twarts that by having your ship incrementally gain new tech levels. So if your vessel's engines are at level 2 , its impossible to slap a ninth-level engine on it.

- No Joysticks, combat is realtime but mouse driven with invisible die rolls, based on such attributes as skills and weapons, determining the outcome.

- The sence of scale is immense. Even the biggest player ship is tiny compared to a space station, capital ship, or many of the creatures(!!!).

- You will be able to buy and sell items online but out of the game

- Westwood is hoping to integrate fan fiction into the game in the form of players participating as reporters in game events, which could become an actual role to play.

- Death is not permanent. You will get one free death perday; after that you will respawn at your starvase at 70% health with the option to pay for a full repair.