Velenka

Absolutely. Although I'll mention that it's always easier to destroy than to conquer intact. Like Dragoon says it's also possible to conquer via extermination. It provides another reason why enemies would not want to simply bombard your base from orbit. Perhaps they want to capture it instead.

Can't wait to see you guys in action. Sounds like Cinderfall Syndicate has got quite the party going on!

I found this comment by NQ on the PVP dev blog article: It would appear that they do want to add in some added protection for defending bases. Here's what I think: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again. meaning that it is always easier to destroy something rather than putting it together. Even when carefully disassembling something, it always takes longer to put together. Why should DU be any different? If a base is apples-to-apples outgunned, it should be destroyed. The dev blog article says that something to the effect of mutually assured destruction being the intended form of protection. "If they destroy our base, we'll destroy theirs." The fear of losing their base will keep yours safe. And on the other side, making alliances and growing the ranks/expanding an organization will make you stronger. Perhaps this 24 hour safe zone should apply to newly claimed territories where an organization first needs to build something before being immediately attacked.

Sounds like an interesting player project rather than a suggestion to builder mechanics. Of course some people will try to do this or other massive projects. Not to be overly pessimistic but I can see most of these ending due to lack of interest or PVP asshats who do useless things for no reason. It will probably be abandoned/destroyed before it gets anywhere close to being the cause of the War of the One Ringworld. Not to say that I hope they don't succeed. I just don't think it's likely.

Some kind of mix might be better. Disappear into thin air when you log out. When you return, you have to option to respawn where you were, as you were (with all your stuff in your inventory) or at the cryopod nearest to you, with a blank inventory. If you were killed when trying to combat log or w/e, then the resurrection node mechanics would take over instead. No ragdolls. (better for servers and for heavily populated areas)

I really like Cornflakes' idea. It's both realistic and allows for interesting game mechanics. Although perhaps such a mechanic should be constrained to a single element so that it's not too computationally expensive for hundreds of thousands block ships. It could be called "EM Wave Dissipator" where the player could actually set what the absorption spectrum graph looks like, while the game constrains the graph to have the same area given a certain power input. More power= more absorption. This way it achieves the same effect without being computationally expensive. It is also balanced in the way that if it uses more power, it will output more IR and so you would also have to compensate by either reducing power or reforming the graph to cover more of the IR in the EM spectrum. With bigger ships, this should be a situation of diminishing returns to a point where if you want to completely cloak a ship of a certain size/power, you need to turn everything but the Wave Disspator and power generators off and then turn absorption up to 1.00 in the IR spectrum. IOW, a break even case. I also like this3ndup's idea of an endgame sensor "Quantum Sensors." These should also be big and really heavy in addition to being expensive. You wouldn't want everyone in a high-tech corporation to be able to put uber-sensors in their fighters, corvettes, and frigates. Perhaps even large and heavy enough that it's too much to be put in a ship, limiting it to stationary constructs.

Yeah something like this would work better. Extreme cosmetic changes could be available at character creation, and perhaps some sort of independent skill point distribution where you would start with some skills at a higher level than others, like Skyrim. That way, people could be a different race in everything but name.

I really like that idea. It allows for technological development to occur at first on an individual level, then rising higher through a player hierarchy until it is free knowledge available to everyone. In addition to this, perhaps anyone who leaves a corporation with certain advanced research would not be able to continue to benefit by that research, but anything done personally by that player or that is commonly shared by the universe is still available.

Ah what a shame. I was looking forward to targeting all turrets to one point on an enemy's ship to try to cut it in half. Or to build my own ship-killing torpedos to absolutely destroy any ship smaller than a cruiser. Oh well. Maybe they'll find a way to allow player made weapons of that nature somehow but it doesn't appear that way. For DU this is probably the best seeing as how any decently sized battle would rip the servers' CPUs to shreds.

You both make a good point. Why have a research mechanic at all? The advanced technology already exists, so why not use it? It would certainly make the player's race to the top of the tech tree as short as possible by having everything available from the start. Although I do recall that there was some sort of technological progression at the end of the short story. It was something like the main character appeasing nature then nature gave him some kind of new reactor. Albeit this is not at all research, but it does show that there may be an intended progression of tech, from old and simple to new and powerful.

@CaptainTwerkmotor I didn't mean to imply that a cookie-cutter or an EVE-esque point-and-click adventure was good, nor that a weird voxel based future technology physics system was bad. I only meant to point out that if we go with that quirky physics sytem, then it could allow a sort of "universal" research, where research is done for everyone everywhere. It would allow a situation where it's possible a newbie can implement advanced technology that was intended to be at the top of the tech tree. That isn't balanced, and I don't think it should work that way. A way that a quirky physics system could work is by creating a tiered system in the mining and industrial processes as well. (ie a newbie cannot mine platinum to begin with, perhaps only iron, nickel, cobalt, zinc, etc) This way there is no shortcut to advanced technology. Though there would have to be some additional mechanic somehow to allow constructions made with simple materials to lead to obtaining more advanced materials and so on. As mentioned above, I like the idea of a fail-and-try-again approach. Perhaps when trying to move on to using those advanced materials, you try to create some object. The object may work well, or it may not. I am reminded of Reactors and Turbines from FTB in Minecraft. Their power, efficiency and such are completely dependant upon overall size and the shape of the core. Simple iron blocks were terrible for Turbine efficiency. You had to spend a lot of time obtaining "shiny" platinum blocks in order to get a better reactor efficiency. But that's a matter of obtaining materials rather than knowing what to do with them. It's also a good example of people decomposing the Reactor/Turbine dynamics down to a few equations, optimizing and then immediately using the best design from the beginning, all based on others' research. Perhaps there could be some sort of UI interface where the internals of an Element could be configured to try to increase efficiency. This would create a kind of "manual" research. Certain configurations would work better than others and you you (as opposed to the character) would possess that research data. But again this leads into situation where this information could be given to other players and immediately they jump up the tech tree. I don't know that it's possible to create this configuration mechanic that would allow for infinite improvement.

@CaptainTwerkmotor In reality, you always put a battery with more than maximum possible power usage of the device when you create something. It would be the same here. Your logic also follows for reactors. You can't put a small 1 hp lawnmower engine inside of this and expect to "supercharge" it. As to solar panels, my suggestion was that the Dyson Sphere has the solar panels, huge arrays of them, not to have them on the ships themselves. Dyson spheres would be just a recharging station.

I'd say that in principle, multiboxing should not be allowed. But as stated before, there's not much that can be done to perfectly prevent that. Very strict regulation of IPs would not allow any kind of personal gathering of couples, family, or friends to play, whereas anything less will mean that it's still possible to multibox. I would agree with others above who have said that it's unfair or it's P2W. Multiboxing seems ethically dubious at worst, but work relieving at other times, such as mining materials. I think NQ should strive to make every player's chance to succeed more or less equal. PVP has been offered as a reason almost unanimously as to why it would be unfair, since a possible encounter between a normal player and a multiboxer favors the multiboxer. But there's also every other aspect of the game which they could effect. Markets would be dramatically effected by a huge influx of minerals gathered by a huge multibox army. A monopoly of information on surveys of planets might ruin exploration for others. On a genuinely large scale that NQ is hoping for, multiboxers probably wouldn't have much effect at all. A small group of 5,6 or even 10 to 20 wouldn't matter in a sea of organizations, each with hundreds or thousands of players.

On the topic of energy, why not include huge capacity batteries or even super capacitors to supply energy? Pack the physical part of the battery into some sort of container with the nanopack technology and boy do you have a lot of energy in a very small space that weighs very little. Some sort of Dyson Sphere could be constructed to harness stars' energies to charge these batteries and capacitors at a fast enough rate. But only fast enough.

That would work for design of physical constructs and the LUA coding, but I think OP is referring to the Elements used for constructs, ie FTL drives or stargates. Devices like those aren't something that you can "Git Gud" at. Elements like these need to be made available in a package element, like the cockpit in the video. Otherwise there would need to be some new nonsensical physics system where placements of individual voxels of certain materials causes FTL movement, which would be really weird. The only time I've seen something like that was in Starmade with the weapons and power systems. But even then, those game mechanics, even if they were kept secret from players, would only have been a secret for a short time before the dynamics could be resolved back into some equation for other players to use. So the question of whether or not research should be on an individual or universal scale could settle the physical implementation problem. Though I do think that advanced technology should be in the form of Elements with some sort of research mechanic. Some people don't like to wait, and some people don't like RNG, so why not combine them? For example John wants technology X so he begins at the research terminal. It will take Y hours by itself. However, John can walk over to the research lab and engage in a research action. This action has W% chance to remove an hour from the research time. John can activate the research action a max total of Z times. Perhaps there is another way to combine mechanics to make it less boring.

I don't think that disappearing ships are a good idea at all. Even if not in combat, it's not fair to those scum of the earth (galaxy) who would make a living preying off of sleeping players and their ships. It could be considered salvage even, if there's a lengthy period of inactivity. Also, what if there is another ship in the exact space where the ship was when it logged off? What would happen when that player logs back in? And what if the builder of a multi personnel ship were to log off? Whatever the case with a character log off, I don't think ships and stations or any other construct should disappear with the character.

If there was some sort of trading system implemented with a cyclic passive mode where every x time y currency transferred from a "bank account" to player z in exchange for a tag for the renter. This would interact really well for an organization with member roles that mimic jobs or careers or in this case, renting or leasing a home.

Hmm, seems like a problem without one best solution. I would suggest that using cryopod/cryobed to spawn in and out, while disconnecting for any other reason results in character death and then the resurrection is handled normally when logging on. It may seem unfair, but I get the feeling of having ragdolls everywhere isn't that good of a solution. Also, the cryobeds would work like the resurrection nodes where you spawn in the closest one, to avoid teleport abuse.

This is a very intriguing question, because as I see it, there are valid arguments for both sides. This game is intended to focus on higher levels of interaction with the outside world. That is, participating in some kind of geopolitical organization and the interactions between these organizations. Food and water would add another element to those interactions. War, markets, exploration just in the name of food and water would take place. I think if food and water were implemented to make that possible, it would fit in very well with the game. However, I don't think they should be included. Firstly, as far as I have seen in the forums and dev blog, food and water currently aren't explicitly planned for. In this case, the people who want food and water shoulder the burden of proof as to why they should be added, but I'm still going to say a couple more things. Secondly, I agree with the others who have said it would be a chore in-game to pander to this mechanic. If it were to be included, I would want as much of it as possible to happen behind the scenes, not needing any significant amount of conscious thought. Third, have you remembered the rule of threes? You can survive three minutes without air. You can survive three hours without shelter from rough conditions. You can survive three days without water. You can survive three weeks without food. I think that if water and food are being considered as a mechanic, then environmental conditions and oxygen should be considered first since they are more important to survival than food or water. After all, cold nights was one of the dangers faced in the DU short story. Having to combat radiation as a mechanic could be equally troublesome.

Hello everyone, I'm Velenka! Dual Universe seems to be an absolutely fantastic project and I hope to make some positive contributions here in the forum. I've come in from Space Engineers, specifically from a couple of TheXPGamers' videos. After seeing his video with the dev interview with Baillie I thought I would come in to check it out! Reading the dev blogs it seems like this game is going to get a much more solid foundation that SE but we'll see. Anyway, thanks for reading!