Velenka

I agree that it's morally dubious at best, but that's not my point. When I brought up automated defenses instead of automated mining my point was that there shouldn't be a mechanism implemented that prevents scripts from working when the player goes offline. That would be a good solution to prevent abuse of an autominer, but it would prevent another perfectly valid implementation of automatons working when you are offline. Assuming that full automation is possible, and that shutting stuff when the player goes offline isn't reasonable, how would NQ go about implementing an anti-autominer mechanism? Withdrawal of mining API access would do it, but then that prevents the kind of semi-autonomous mining that would probably be considered OK. So that doesn't work too well. Complexity is something I mentioned before, but that's not a guaranteed indicator of illicit botting. Perhaps something called validation time. You have to "log on" on each DPU every so often. Higher tier DPUs allow a greater amount of time between validations. But stuff randomly shutting down or popups could get really annoying. No easy answer unfortunately.

Welcome! Good to see more people taking interest. We'll see you around the forums and eventually in game.

So anyone who makes automated defenses is botting and should be banned? NQ have stated that they expect that automated defenses will be built. If I go offline, then what? Do they shut down? If they do, then there's next to no point in building them in the first place. If I am expected to shut them down before quitting, I'm in the same situation; there's no reason to make them. They should run when I go offline, and I should not be punished for doing so, rather, rewarded if I can sell it. Certainly a case-by-case judgement can resolve the issue of fairness vs cheating, but with a large player base, that's not going to work. An anti-cheating mechanism would have to procedurally evaluate each automated construct. So whatever mechanism NQ uses for automation, it has to keep in mind that there are some automatons are legit and should not be stopped.

I know that what I said was physically impossible. Like I said above, if we only go with real science, we get ISS Simulator 2018, and none of the other impossible stuff that the devs have already stated will be in the game.

I would be against preventing anybody from using/creating/building/placing everything forever, but that's where the skill system comes in to balance that. With skills, some people can handle some equipment better than those without. The same principle could work for science/tech research too. Do the science, and your effectiveness increases. If one person has the skills with mediocre equipment and another has no skills with advanced equipment, they would be able to keep up each other. This way, with both high skills and advanced equipment, you would have the "best" advantage over others. For example, I'm trying to make a simple sword. I don't have the skills to make a very good one, but I do have some advanced high-carbon steel that the other guy doesn't have. The other guy, though, is an expert sword-smith so he can make a very good sword. Compare the two swords. Mine would be useful because it was made with advanced tech, and the other guy's is useful because it's a well crafted sword. And both should be relatively balanced, with X progress in skills taking about the same amount of time and resources as X progress in science or research.

On top of that, it would be great if we could target certain points on an enemy construct. Something like a clip in ST: Nemesis (1:08:27 or so) you see Data selecting targets on the Scimitar. For example, I see their huge engines at the rear, so I target those to prevent their escape. Or I see that they have a large, windowed section on top of their ship, so I target that, thinking it's the bridge. Or I could take a guess at where their reactor is, so I target that. This would give rise to a "Tactical" station where the crewman at tactical relays coordinates to the turrets rather than having them shoot at the centroid of the enemy construct by default.

That would make NQ the biggest hypocrites if they were to call that cheating. For giving you the tools for automation, then punishing you for it. Automations certainly shouldn't stop or shut down if you were offline. There are other uses for automation, specifically automated defenses which you wouldn't want to stop working once you went offline. Or consider a case where the owner goes offline and other right-holders still need the automation to work. Regulation of automations will have to happen some way other than stopping when you go offline. SE's programmable block claims it can measure "complexity" so perhaps something similar could be used here. I do like your idea of tiered DPUs, so maybe that's the way to go. Don't know how it can or should be done, but the idea is a start.

This would be best. I just don't see how opening a ship menu, scrolling down, selecting a turret, and clicking the fire button requires any skill from me, a human. But when codified it makes sense, and gives a greater sense of immersion. I just don't want to see skills being a hindrance by being a grind, or easily obtainable/easily maxed out. This may sound easier said than done, but that's what's needed.

I'm not an expert and you seem to know a great deal about this subject so I'll take your word for it. But it has no bearing on the game mechanics. It doesn't need to run according to true scientific principles (at least not all the time). This is Sci-Fi, so we just use technobabble that sounds right to the average Joe and then move on. Star Trek used antimatter. Stargate had a non-existent super element. And they were both great to enjoy even though they had nonsense science.

Perhaps as a very expensive and top-tech energy generator, there could be an energy-mass converter. It would simply convert mass to energy, but at a fairly low efficiency. It would be a very powerful piece of equipment, but it would be balanced by perhaps a very large size, large material cost to build, very heavy, top of the tech tree, and low efficiency such that would place it as the king of power, but not by too high a margin.

I agree with you. Let the emergent mechanics handle slavery, if it will exist at all.

Forget tickets. I'm buying an entire car on the hype train!

And you are against botting in this manner? What do you think? The way I see it, if they give us the tools and the ability to have an autominer, then we should be able to. Especially since this is a sandbox game. I agree that complete automation is difficult and usually requires some human to manage things, but I don't think I should be artificially prevented from making that interaction as small as possible. If an army of autominers were able to cause problems for the servers, then I would agree that limitations need to be put in place. I would not agree to those limitations before knowing whether autominers/automations were going to cause issues.

Greetings. We do hope you have a fun time on the forums. See you around!

And if the devs like it enough, they might grant a +15% speed buff. We better get practicing! Another good one, EM drive. Star Trek uses impulse engines in which a fusion reaction generates plasma, then used in conjunction with nozzles to generate thrust.

^ this and sensor nets maybe patrols too. Borders shouldn't be absolutely impossible to cross, and only as strong as the force that the organization which established them can bring to bear. I think this could be implemented naturally by a significant amount of time required to cross interstellar distances via FTL. For example: We can't use their stargate and we don't have one in their system. Bringing a strike force for a 10 hour journey might not be possible all at once. But a strike force could make it given the proper infrastructure support, which would take time and resources to plan and carry out. Then there's the issue of how the enemy's borders are protected. We would also have to plan around those defenses to get behind the borders. Perhaps their borders are too well defended. Perhaps there's a weak spot. It depends on how the enemy has decided to protect its borders. With a natural balance like this, everyone is happy. I can go where I want and organizations can protect their borders with varying degrees of success.

You guys are getting too bogged down in real science here. This is a game. It doesn't have to satisfy real science, otherwise, this game would take place on Earth with current 2016 technologies. The point here is that it's fun and entertaining, not accurate. Zero point energy may in reality be unfeasible, but I would want that in the game anyway. Cold fusion might be unfeasible, but we can have that too. Recall from the short story that we may be using magic maple syrup to power our ships.

The problem is that there aren't cities or ships or bases. There are only constructs. One mechanic must apply to everything. What you said about taking more time if you're not the owner might work, but it would have to take a lot longer to be fair. Though it might be too much time for anyone's patience. Perhaps there could be some kind of a salvaging station which wouldn't be as slow. Without the rights to pilot a ship, nobody would leave it there. But if you tow it in, you wouldn't have to spend days with your nanoformer, but rather a few minutes or hours in the salvage station. For unmovable objects, a salvager might choose to cut parts off to ship to the salvage station. But as for claiming, there still ought to be a way to make a certain construct yours. Stealing a functional ship ought to be possible under the right circumstances.

^ this Perhaps, but trying to eliminate freeform travel by justifying it with real scientific claims isn't the way to do it. And I don't see very good scientific claims either. No reason an Alcubierre drive has to leave from a certain place, no reason that expanded space behind you would decimate a planet. So much of it is theoretical anyway. Elminating free-form travel would also impinge on the free nature of a sandbox game. Imagine if you couldn't leave a village's gravel path in MC. It's far too limiting. ^ this and sensor nets maybe patrols too. Borders shouldn't be absolutely impossible to cross, and only as strong as the force that the organization which established them can bring to bear.

They can if the devs make them fly. Also, fan based propulsion would be limited to environments with atmosphere. Though the hover engines shouldn't work above a certain altitude, but this should be high enough to warrant the term "flying."

I too would like to see SE-esque creative mode building in the VR mode. Where you can have planes of symmetry, fast traversal like SE's spectator mode, copy and paste. Line or plane building/deleting.

I would say there is a big difference between pvp combat and deconstructing someone's ship out from under them with no time to react. All combat would boil down to who has the fastest nanoformer. The griefers would have so much fun destroying a mega city in mere minutes. Obviously there must be build/deconstruct permissions to stop such rampaging. And if those permissions exist, then that precludes the idea of salvaging someone else's constructs, since you don't have those rights. So in order to make a salvaging mechanic possible I put forward the suggestion of a claim system.

TBF he does say "Antimatter propulsion" but in a different context. Another high-end energy source would be zero-point energy, but that's sort of energy for free, so not balanced at all. Perhaps an SGU star-skimmer type of energy gathering. Literal solar power.

As I have stated previously, If stargates were to become necessary for everyone to use then it would be unfair for a wealthy organization to hoard them. But they should not be necessary, rather, only an extreme convenience. ie aside from the initial exploration, traveling takes 5 seconds vs 5 hours. Would have been convenient to save 5 hours, but that's all it is, a convenience.

Everyone knows hoverboards don't work on water. For real though, however hover engines and water is implemented, they should work over water.