DecoyGoatBomb

Wallet feeling a little light lately? Get ready to remedy that when the Panacea update hits, bringing with it two lucrative, quanta-producing possibilities: space wrecks and inactive asset requisitioning (IAR).
 
SPACE WRECKS
 

You’re going about your business, flying through space from one market to another or heading out to join some friends when your radar unexpectedly reveals something. Curious, you move closer to investigate and find wreckage. There’s no indication of who left it behind or why. Finders keepers, right? It’s yours now. And you’ve got some choices to make.
 
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
Will you: 
salvage the ship for materials and elements? tokenize and sell the whole ship? sell the information about where the wreck is located? create a mission to get someone else to salvage it? The decision is all up to you.
 
RADAR AND RARITY
No special equipment is needed to locate these space wrecks, your standard radar is enough to detect them.
They will spawn randomly throughout Helios. There are five tiers of rarity, with lower-tier wrecks with low-value contents spawning at a higher frequency. The highest-tier wrecks will be harder to find; those who discover and harvest them will be rewarded with high-value materials and elements.
 
INACTIVE ASSET REQUISITIONING
 
This system is being introduced to address one of the chief complaints we’ve heard from Noveans, namely abandoned constructs cluttering up the universe, especially in public markets.
 
The purpose of IAR is to:
create salvaging opportunities for players around the game world. ensure cleanliness and performance around markets and other Aphelia zone hot spots. clean up older, unowned constructs.  
In other words, IAR has the potential to create a less cluttered environment for everyone and a fatter wallet for you.
 
ABANDONED CONSTRUCTS DEFINED
Players with a subscription, even if they have not logged in for a while, are in no danger of having their constructs flagged as “abandoned”, with the exception of constructs parked in Aphelia territory as noted below.
 
In effect, constructs belonging to unsubscribed users and not on their owners’ sanctuary zones will eventually lose their ownership, putting them in an abandoned state and making them vulnerable to be salvaged by other players. Likewise, constructs owned by an organization will lose their ownership when the org’s last remaining legate ends their subscription.
 
During the unsubscribe process, players will be reminded that their constructs will be in danger of becoming abandoned. When the constructs lose ownership, a blueprint will be placed in the owner’s inventory should they choose to return to Helios at a later date.
 
TIME’S TICKING 
When an account becomes inactive due to a canceled subscription, a countdown will begin on all constructs belonging to that account. After a period of time, those constructs will lose their ownership and other players will be able to salvage or capture them.
 
Then, all unowned constructs will have a countdown timer and it will count down from the moment it is unowned, regardless of why they are unowned (PvP destruction, IAR, abandonment, etc.) At the end of this timer, the construct will simply be removed from the game world.
 
The ‘ownership’ timer for unsubscribed players’ constructs is three months (90 days/2160 hours). The timer is the same for organization-owned constructs and begins when the last active legate of the owning organization’s subscription expires.
 
Each time a construct is unclaimed, whether due to an owner’s inactive game account or if abandoned via PvP, a one-month countdown to decay is set and is visible to everyone. If no one salvages the construct, it will be permanently removed from the game.
 
As with most newly introduced systems, this is subject to change in the future depending on the metrics we see as time passes.
 
SPECIAL RULES FOR MARKETS 
A modified version of IAR will be used on Aphelia territories, including all market zones.
Regardless of whether or not the owner is an active subscriber, all constructs on Aphelia territories are subject to IAR. As soon as a player exits their construct in Aphelia territory, a 168-hour (seven-day) abandonment countdown will begin for that construct. This is considerably shorter than the default IAR timer. Once that countdown reaches 0, the construct will lose its ownership. A new countdown timer of 48-hours (two days) before deletion will start ticking.
 
HAPPY HUNTING
 
Will you be among the happy scavengers scouring the skyways and byways for wrecked ships and abandoned constructs? Join the conversation about this devblog here.

I don’t think a
player who has spent months or years gathering supplies should lose everything because they stop playing for a bit it should be packed up and put in a special inventory they can be reclaimed when they start playing again as far as salivate it sounds like a good idea but if I’m required two fly all over looking
i think fuel consumption needs two be reduced fuel use is Riley bad in this game in my opinion 

i just opened another thread just before this Q/A was created...
Ok, usually i am not negative but the balance of Demeter on the PTS server has some severe problems.
 
1. Territory costs of 1m per week:
this will lead to almost nobody claiming any tiles any more outside of the sanc moon unless the territory can produce some serious income. so all "player made content" will disappear after some time
 
2. Scanning results do not get deleted and show l/h for mining units
this will lead to ALL really valuable tiles being claimed within the first 24h after demeter goes live, as it is really easy to identify  the most powerful tiles for mining units if you have containers full with scanner results.
so after day 1, the fun is over and the "mega tiles" will be claimed by those players/orgs that have all the existing scans.
 
NQ, as demeter is balanced on the PTS, it would kill the game if it goes to the live server
 
- New players some days later would not have a chance to find income opportunities despite missions.
- earning quanta will be a lot harder, so people would stop spending.. this would kill industrialists workflow.
- the imbalance between experienced players/orgs and new players would get worse and even more players would demand a wipe or simply not enjoy the game

please reconsider your decisions.
 

I love the idea of this but I think the timers are a bit harsh. As with taxes it isn't about the design concept it is just about tweaking the numbers.
 
One thing that may help mitigate this is having some sort to of "impound" mechanic. This may be a down the line thing but having an element that allowed you or a service provider to store a ship essentially giving the ability to compactify any dynamic into a specialized element. There would have to be some cost associated with  each compactification and could only be unpacked in range of the impound element. This would avoid world clutter/data cost but also not take away player progress. A player could run this as a parking garage type of service. 
 
I am also so happy about the salvage and shipwrecks coming in! I love that you have to manually go out and find them with a radar. Please though make them somewhat plentiful as the last version of land based shipwrecks were so few and far between it was barely more than a fleeting novelty. We want more ways to play consistently. I would love it if someone could use  salvage and shipwrecks as their core gameplay loop.
 
One thing that may help with this is bringing in the Upvote Website feature of Recyclers being able to recycle elements and honeycomb for pure or parts (only partial values put into making the original item). With this you could also bring back environmental damage to elements taking away element "lives".  I say this as a major issue with the game right now is there are almost no elements being taken out of the game thus no one has the need to buy new things. If you have fully "Broken" items popping up on shipwrecks and on markets then a salvage player (with high recycler talents) could get high yields out of things that normally would just be deleted. This takes resources out of the game slowly but also adds a new way to play outside of mining or manufacturing. 
 
I do not have a full degree in game design so obviously take what I say with a grain of salt. I also really hate to being so prescriptive in this post but at this point I just want to be as direct as possible with feedback. 

I love the idea of this but I think the timers are a bit harsh. As with taxes it isn't about the design concept it is just about tweaking the numbers.
 
One thing that may help mitigate this is having some sort to of "impound" mechanic. This may be a down the line thing but having an element that allowed you or a service provider to store a ship essentially giving the ability to compactify any dynamic into a specialized element. There would have to be some cost associated with  each compactification and could only be unpacked in range of the impound element. This would avoid world clutter/data cost but also not take away player progress. A player could run this as a parking garage type of service. 
 
I am also so happy about the salvage and shipwrecks coming in! I love that you have to manually go out and find them with a radar. Please though make them somewhat plentiful as the last version of land based shipwrecks were so few and far between it was barely more than a fleeting novelty. We want more ways to play consistently. I would love it if someone could use  salvage and shipwrecks as their core gameplay loop.
 
One thing that may help with this is bringing in the Upvote Website feature of Recyclers being able to recycle elements and honeycomb for pure or parts (only partial values put into making the original item). With this you could also bring back environmental damage to elements taking away element "lives".  I say this as a major issue with the game right now is there are almost no elements being taken out of the game thus no one has the need to buy new things. If you have fully "Broken" items popping up on shipwrecks and on markets then a salvage player (with high recycler talents) could get high yields out of things that normally would just be deleted. This takes resources out of the game slowly but also adds a new way to play outside of mining or manufacturing. 
 
I do not have a full degree in game design so obviously take what I say with a grain of salt. I also really hate to being so prescriptive in this post but at this point I just want to be as direct as possible with feedback. 

Hope NQ lets us submit ships we created for consideration to be placed into the pool for salvage. That would be really cool and give the community further engagement. 

Love these changes.  These wrecks are how their low-browed terrestrial cousins should have been. And the salvaging is long overdue.

My only suggestion is to extend the "salvagable" timer on aphelia owned tiles from two days to a week before full deletion.  Players will clean those up quickly.

For every well meaning DarkHorizon there are twenty market spammers with horrendous advertising and lag inducing sales pitching constructs.  I am still against having Aphelia run markets at all (power to the players, players run markets, advertising run by players) but this is still a good step in the interim.

Around the markets etc. this is a great idea but if you're going to do that to territories and constructs the time limit on that should be long imo. Life happens sometimes you don't play for 1,2 or 3 months. It happened to me between sept and dec. Making the world volatile where you can easily loose assets is toxic and could do you more harm than good. However getting rid of those AG towers would be a great idea while you're at it lowering the AG minimal height would also help with the out of control towers littered in the game. Enabling builders to build shorter towers would easily make them less of a hazard. 

The Dual Universe roadmap has been expanded with the Panacea update, which is currently in production and brings with it a plethora of new features, tools, and improvements that will be particularly interesting for builders, scavengers, and Lua aficionados.
 
WHAT’S IN IT
 
A follow-up to the changes introduced in the Selene and Demeter updates, the Vertex Precision Tool will provide a powerful, intuitive way to fine-tune your builds. Particularly for those who are new to voxelmancy, this tool will be invaluable. Watch this video to get a taste of what it can do.
 
The introduction of shipwrecks in space will open a variety of lucrative opportunities for players who seek them out. Sell them as-is, salvage them for parts, create missions for other players to bring you the ship or its parts, or simply fetch a handsome price by selling the location information.
 
Other new features and improvements include: 
Camera Lua API: get access to information about the in-game camera Talents UI improvements: a more efficient way to view Talents RDMS UI polish: a cleaner interface for the management of RDMS  
To reduce clutter and keep Alioth beautiful, we are implementing inactive constructs requisitioning, an automated system for the abandonment of constructs owned by unsubscribed players and organizations to aid in keeping overcrowded public market areas clear.
Organization construct ownership (construct slots): a new way of assigning available construct limits to organizations. Disabling element stacking or overlapping: the final step in preventing the element stacking exploit.  
WHAT’S IN A NAME
 
Choosing the name for this update, Panacea, the goddess of remedy, is a reference to our renewed dedication to taking player feedback into greater consideration.
 
In reflecting on the aftermath of the Demeter release, we recognized that we fell short in this area. We read your feedback but did not make the adjustments we could and should have. We pledge to be better about working hand-in-hand with the community by implementing a plan to increase two-way communication and making some important tweaks and balancing to the game that will address some of the pain points as much as we’re able.
 
As a first step, beginning January 12th, we will postpone the next territory upkeep pay period for two weeks. This will allow the Design team time to revisit the tax rate, which many community members said was too steep. The purpose and functions of the upkeep system go beyond limiting “landgrabbing” and are more complex than they may appear on the surface. Many factors and interdependencies need to be taken into consideration.
 
WHAT’S NEXT
 
A series of devblogs will be published soon to reveal more information about the Panacea update. Additionally, we will be sharing a new roadmap soon. We hope that you’ll like what you see, and we encourage you to share your constructive feedback about our ideas as you read each article. 
Let’s chat! 

I believe the main thing that will push this game and allow it to stand out from Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, Starbase and Space Engineers is to flesh out the civilization building aspects which have barely been implemented into the current game. Star Wars Galaxies and WURM, games from the early 2000s had more civilization building game mechanics than this game has currently. The dev team chose to focus on mining, building and manufacturing which are very common in many games. I understand these are fundamental to the game design but much of the civilization building mechanic development would be UI and systems design but would add exponential depth to the gameplay experience. I hope into 2022 NQ will pivot to refine current mechanics and implement more organization and territory based mechanics as these are what make the game unique. 

Everytime I fly around the game it looks great until I get low enough for the rocks to load in and my eyes burn. I can't emphasize how much these rocks destroy the look of the game. There are so many ways to make this not the case. Like in your pole... why do they not just glow when the tool is activated or use the same green outline mechanic as undergound mining if the desire is to make them standout from the background. Plz change this NQ. 

Everytime I fly around the game it looks great until I get low enough for the rocks to load in and my eyes burn. I can't emphasize how much these rocks destroy the look of the game. There are so many ways to make this not the case. Like in your pole... why do they not just glow when the tool is activated or use the same green outline mechanic as undergound mining if the desire is to make them standout from the background. Plz change this NQ. 

They added awesome looking rocks and boulders in Jago. Those should act like your "surface rocks". Add a cooldown to them that's visible when the tool is equipped, or something. But right now, it's a total immersion killer, especially on snowy planets. Rainbow Lacobus anyone? Eww.

Also reduce the number of rocks, they are way too dense. Then just give them more liters each.

Remove emission from rocks.
Remove that nebula.
Leave space alone.
 
Give @Eternal his landscaping business back. I worry about his commute.

I believe the main thing that will push this game and allow it to stand out from Star Citizen, No Man's Sky, Starbase and Space Engineers is to flesh out the civilization building aspects which have barely been implemented into the current game. Star Wars Galaxies and WURM, games from the early 2000s had more civilization building game mechanics than this game has currently. The dev team chose to focus on mining, building and manufacturing which are very common in many games. I understand these are fundamental to the game design but much of the civilization building mechanic development would be UI and systems design but would add exponential depth to the gameplay experience. I hope into 2022 NQ will pivot to refine current mechanics and implement more organization and territory based mechanics as these are what make the game unique. 

Everytime I fly around the game it looks great until I get low enough for the rocks to load in and my eyes burn. I can't emphasize how much these rocks destroy the look of the game. There are so many ways to make this not the case. Like in your pole... why do they not just glow when the tool is activated or use the same green outline mechanic as undergound mining if the desire is to make them standout from the background. Plz change this NQ. 

100% agree. At the very least, I'd say reduce the brightness to a fraction of what it is now, and maybe reduce the amount of rocks as well. They're so abundant it shouldn't matter if the spawn rate was limited to, say, 1/3rd for example.
 
They also lessen diversity and uniqueness among planets and moons in my opinion, as having such a large portion of the area around you be covered with these rocks makes all the planets feel just that little bit more the same.
 
Here's another gorgeous shot just to add:

I like immersion.  DU's asthetic is supposed to be scifi but more on the side of realism.  The glowing rocks simply arn't realistic.  Now there are certain rocks that do glow under certain lights but not nearly to the extent depicted in DU 
 

 
Idea: These rocks should look like normal rocks except when you have the harvest tool equipped then it they look like this.  This makes them easy to find when you want to harvest but doesnt look terrible when you don't.
 
What say you?

Greetings Noveans,
 
Upon popular request from players, we will be holding a live, written Q&A session with the Novaquark Game Design team on Wednesday, December 1st  at 15:00 UTC. 
 
NQ-Kyrios, NQ-Entropy and NQ-Wave will be answering player questions during one hour on a dedicated channel on Discord. We encourage you to prepare your questions in advance, and discuss the hot topics that you have in mind in this thread, with the following caveats:
 
They will not be discussing future plans and upcoming features, as we are planning an update to the roadmap early 2022. The Game Design team will only answer questions in their field. So, questions about performance, bugs or the business of Novaquark will not be answered in this Q&A, for example.  The focus of the Q&A should ideally be on the latest release, Demeter, and any gameplay-related questions you may have following its release. Other questions on existing features may be answered, but Demeter-related questions will be prioritized. Our 3 game designers are very excited to answer your questions, but it goes without saying that the tone should remain courteous and respectful. It is in the interest of the community that these events, which we hope to organize more of in the future, stay well-behaved and that our employees feel a positive connection to our players.   
We realize that not everyone will be able to attend the event, so we encourage you to pass along your questions to your fellow Noveans. Pending unforeseen technical difficulties, our intention is to ensure that the content of the Q&A stays accessible for a few days after the event, so that absentees can still read it through. 
 
We can’t wait to hear your questions!
 
The Novaquark team.
 

Hi Noveans,
Thanks for the warm welcome! Since I've joined I've been amazed by the incredible job the Novaquark team is doing, working hard on delivering the dream of Dual Universe. I’m also very impressed by how you, our community, have been supporting the DU project from day one. Let's all keep moving forward together!
Cheers,
Nouredine

One thing that would have made this tax implementation go over a bit smoother is if this patch also introduced the Duties part of RDMS. At least in relation to territories. Meaning you could collect duties or sales tax from players that are not you or part of your org but have constructs on your territory. This on the surface sounds like just passing the buck but I see a big reason for the negativity against the new tax as is it punishes people for holding territory with any purpose other than mining. This would give non miners, solo players and small orgs the option to be on someone else's tile while paying a modest fee to the territory owner.
 
This also encourages/gives reason for players to group up, play together, create cities and communities. The flat tax without adding a function to make money from these types of projects hurts orgs and players creating community spaces for shops etc.  This is likely in the plans for the future but if that is the case NQ sharing this information would help the community see the logic behind your design and reduce the rage to seemingly haphazard implementation.
 
Another small way to make this less painful is add talents to org management that help mitigate territory taxes. This is a great example of giving people ways to play outside of mining, building or pvp. Many people come to this game for things outside of those three paths. Is DU still billed as civilization building MMO? 

I honestly think this is a problem across most ship elements as they are using size as a factor in balance. I would say large atmo engines are one of the worst offenders. You have a clunky elongated cube that is so hard to make look good in any design that is not chunky industrial styles. Most people bury them as best they can having only the tips poke out.
 
There has to be a rebalance of elements with some type of quantifiable limitation on the core. This would allow NQ to rebalance elements beyond "if it fits it sits". Small Core Dynamics have no reason to have the ability to functionally fit XL Space Engines, Large Shields and even a DSAT all on the same core.
 
The balance of the game will always be broken until there is some limiting factor to how many elements you have on a ship beyond fuel economy. You can brute force a ship by strapping on 50 engines of each type with 50 Large fuel tanks and do pretty much anything you want. This makes for terrible looking but highly functional ships. This is by far the biggest weakness of ship building and balance in DU and is somewhat easily remedied. 

I do not get the complaints over the brake change. They are airbrakes... Almost every ship of mine works just as well as it did before. A few brakes need to move but it is not that hard to rework your stuff. Did you think airbrakes where always going to be allowed to be buried in voxels? 

What is the benefit of a flat tax on territories. I love that it is now a weekly maintenance but the old exponential cost increase worked so well. Why was that system dropped? It worked so well to make it a manageable cost for solo players and small orgs but also did a pretty good job of reining in large orgs of taking over. The flat tax is just oppressive and a blunt instrument when we needed a scalpel.