Smiles1557

Interesting ideas.
About Nukes, yeah i would use them, if only just once to see what it does.
 
But your idea is good, let us design weapons, maybe indeed have limitations but it would be good to be able to build and develop and research weapons. 
If i want to build a planetary mass driver that can shoot down an incoming invasion ship that would be a huge accomplishment, and i can sell it probably with a nice profit.
 
About SE, you have a good point. there i can even build bombs of [hidden]blocks and just let them fall out of my hangar deck to totally destroy a base i fly over. 
 
The thing here is, anyone who invests time or currency in these strange weapons should be able too. If you program planets to have no impact by weapons or crashes you are still fine although i would love to just incorporate it. Yes a death star is overkill, but then again how defendable is it during building? And how costly to make?
 
 

i am only talking about space fighting.
i think it would be a missed opportunity to not allow ramming damage and building your own missiles. the effect of these would just be that the people would need to build very versatile fleets and would have to adjust them to the specific era and enemy. let's take a look at space engineers, which doesn't have these limitations. people built incredible machines and weapons, though with differencating usefulness, it still is amazing what things players invented. here some examples:
saw missile
orbital cannon
grappling ship
now, i can understand why you chose to not give players the opportunity to build weapons by themselves, there is the chance that players will invent a weapon of mass destruction, and as you noted before, you don't want a planet killer because it just would be unfair living independently on that planet and just getting nuked. Even though you maybe could invent something like an atom bomb, i don't think it will get used, because a, the mere cost of such a weapon, and b, it wouldn't be worth it bombing away so much just to destroy one single enemy faction. it would be a move just to show power, something a warmongering faction would do, and till now, to my knowledge there aren't any communities that aren't rather civilized.
 
Now i come to my second point, turrets.
in the past you said you would let bots control the turrets and let them shoot. again, i can see your point, with the small ships simply being to fast. my idea is that there are different types of motors/thrusters. there are the normal ones, which are more sensitive and explode easier, but are faster, and the war motors, which are slower and more expensive, but can take more pressure.
if that isn't enough, my additional idea would be that warships radiate a special energy field that makes ships with normal motors slow way down (except allied ones who've been given the allowance to fly with  regular speed). the ability to place a lot of war motors on one small ship could be limited by them getting really hot so placing them next to each other would also make them overheat and explode.
 
I apologize if i said anything stupid, after all, i am not able to play the alpha right now,
and i apologize for my weird writing style, English is not my native language.

So I hope I word this discussion in a way where you understand the vague concept I'm attempting to talk about. Lol
 
Ok so a huge concept to this game is player creation, economy, and government leaving alot to become possible. But my theory with the economy is this. Limited variety of resources leads to limited economic opportunity. Once players find there "niche" in this game all resource prices (S&D) will stabilize. only be affected by the organization that controls most of the "stock" in that resource or holds key positions in goverment or in-game events. 
 
Would it be possible to mabe hold events every that allow players to draw up concept and ideas for new tech to be used in the game. If the event is held for example say once a year. Players would make tech that would fit in with the growth and development of the game. Of course dev's would have final says on the possibility and practically of the tech. Since it has the games physics to work in to. It would be like adding variety that would change -ore demand and prices-  goverment rules-  and orgs responsible and actions. And aspects of the game that remain unseen.
 
I love this game I'm not hating just a idea or fun discussion!!

Terraforming a celestial body is a complex scientific feat. With our far advanced technology we have the ability to tarraform the ground, but terraforming by definition includes the manipulation of much more than just the dirt; the atmosphere! 
 
Manipulating the ground has harnessed some interesting results, from building a super tall beanstalk all the way up into space, to large flat landing areas covered in snow to aid visuals. There are lots of kinds of non-precious materials you can pick up and redeploy where ever you want. It's been fun (and pointless) to bring grassy soil to a desert planet and begin to truly terraform it. 
 
Some things are missing though - some I'm sure could be easily implemented - some I'm sure will be very complex. 
 
We should be able to plant flora. We can take trees down, but how do we put them back up? I'd love to see player made jungles, with interactive fauna among them. 
@IEYESI built a beautiful greenhouse, fit for a botanist - it would be great to see it have a purpose some day. 
 
When atmosphere matters to survival, an oxygenated planet will home to most, and those on barren planets will need to use lots of power in order to supply their oxygen needs. But what if you could build an airtight construct and plant flora in fertile soil? Over time producing free oxygen for those within the airtight enclosure. 
 
I'm not going to start talking about what might happen if you covered a barren celestial body in flora, which could produce enough oxygen for the whole planet - because then we might need to start thinking about magnetic cores to hold the atmosphere in XD 
 
Oh and you should be able to 'mine' water and be able to redeploy it somewhere else. We could create waterfalls! 
 
If there is ever dynamic weather, we could see flowing rivers and deltas!

This is actually really important, so you may already have a plan for it, but if not, it is an important thing to consider.
 
after the game has been running for years the terrain will be chewed up with tunnels and ditches, and buildings abandoned no longer used will scatter the landscape.
It happens in every game like this that is a persistent world, and it is easy to handled, but rarely is handled other then with server resets, that  always get someone upset.
 
Also since worlds are algo generated, the size of the change file on top of the generated terrain will continue to grow to 'difficult to layer over' algo generation sizes.
 
All that has to happen is for each change to the environment to have a durability, and stamp of last time it was maintained.
For tree squares, and ditch squares it is easy, any 'changed terrain' next to algo terrain(unchanged) begins to change back.  Different for each type, sand faster then soil, soil faster then rock.  And trees grow back.  All you have to do is look at the time stamp of the change voxel that shows its date of change or last maintenance, and if it is next to a unchanged square and every x amount of time move its durability.  As durability goes down, land gets smoothed, when it reaches 0 durability the change to that voxel is removed.  The removal happens from unchanged territory towards changed territory, so it is like the original land organically grows back over time (and is realistic actually)
 
This means that if a person digs a tunnel, 1 voxel wide, it will go away say in 2 days, unless they add to the voxel a 'support item'  (made from wood and/or rock/cement, giving reason for those items.)
so if someone is tunneling to get dirt, or to get to some location they won't return to, they don't care about keeping it open, and they don't spend the time to reinforce tunnel, and it closes, if they have it as an entrance to a base, they must put up timber or masonary walls to support a tunnel, and easy crafting item, but some extra work.  This is so you don't have ditches everywhere, if they put a frame in the ditch it stays open, and actually looks nicer with a texture that covers walls, then the ditch or tunnel wont shrink in as fast because it won't be sand time, or soil regeneration time, it will be frame supported sand regeneration time.
 
It is really easy to do, simply remove changes, if they reach durability 0, and paint them with different texture if they at 75 50 or 25. 
 
The time scale to revert back is design decision, but it will keep the terrain looking good, and keep weird stacks of sand from littering the landscape.
 
Also any player made structure should require a maintenance bot machine that uses fuel, and can be connected to fuel tanks.  The base bot would be a unit that covers some area dimensions.  A tunnel version would also exist that would be put in an alcove.   (animation would be optional)  Device would report areas it keeps up to date, and fuel cost based on number of items in the area.
As long as a player wants to provide fuel, the repair bot keeps his base from deteriorating, but if he doesn't fuel it, pieces start to deteriorate, when they reach 0 they disappear.
that gives both a resource sink, and makes it so that players that move on to other locations on other planets don't leave hundreds of buildings unused across the landscape,
and if they want to use some building they have to at least supply it with fuel, a low cost but basically gives player the decision to keep or let decay a building.
 
It really solves the clutter that will have to happen when thousands of players for years are digging up terrain, or if some group decides to cut down every tree in some area or dig up every beach.
 
without this mechanism, one days game play of a beach digger can remove the landscape beauty for years, and that is not balanced, and is why you see many games reset there servers.  This method puts the reset into a simple algo that is checked a few times a day, and changes the terrain automatically simply by running through the changed terrain file and modifing a value, or removing the changed terrain making the voxel have its original algo determined look.
 
Change removal would be put on a que, and would only occur when no players are within a certain distance, there is no rush, it is not time critical, and could even be a simple worker thread, since if it reverts an hour late because someone around there thats fine, but if it is that close, the walls would show it with cracks and discoloration, and same with sand or soil walls in tunnel, the texture at 25% would have large cracks in it.  The mechanism to remove a change is to both remove the previous item from the 'change file for an area' and the notification to be a 'change' order that is also removed, as an add of a new change object that does exactly that, so it removes it from client, when downloaded, and is not added in next time server updates the area for client.   That should make sense.
 
The selection of the texture based on durability would be client side.
 
This should make sense, and it really is much benefit for a little added mechanism.
 
Just thought I would share the idea after seeing so many persistent MMOs with large areas that looked great for three months that were ridiculous when they needed to continue to build a client base going into 6 months and a year since release.   If you add change to terrain, there has to be a slow change back mechanism, and persistent MMOs been missing that part for years.