Halo381

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

As I currently understand it, Stargates will be usable based on having the proper permissions or something along the lines of a key. The Stargate owner can collect fees when people use the gate. This is a nice system; it's simple, but I think it can be easily expanded. I think a system that can be based on the mass of the ship will allow for more emergent gameplay around stargates. People could of course choose to just have a flat rate, if that is what they prefer.
 
I propose three additions: 
The ability to charge a fee for using the stargate based on the mass of the ship. The ability to set different tiers of mass that have different tax rates. The ability to crate different "keys" or permission levels that have different tax settings.  
I will now go into more detail why I think this is good system and why it should be very easy to implement.
 
First, taxes based on mass: why? Well, it's more fair. Why should someone who is flying a tiny shuttle pay the same fees as a space trucker who is hauling millions of kilograms of goods? How do you balance the two if you can only charge a flat tax? A mass tax helps solve that. If you charge one Quanta per 10 kilos and the shuttle is 1000kg, then that person pays 100 Quanta whereas the massive freighter of, say, 10,000,000kg pays a million Quanta. The freighter can easily afford a larger sum because it will make money off of the cargo it is carrying and it is just a cost of doing business. The pilot of the smaller ship will be happy because their fees will be low, since they don't have to pay some middle ground, one size fits all rate. The stargate owner is happy because it let's them collect more taxes overall while still remaining competitive. How difficult would this be to implement? It shouldn't be too hard based on what we know. NQ have indicated that ship and cargo mass will be taken into consideration by the physics engine, so they data already exists and all that has to be done is some basic multiplication. The plus side of this is that since cargo is also already accounted for, an empty cargo ship pays less fees than one that is fully loaded
 
Mass tiers, this is where it really starts to get interesting. Users should be able to set "tiers" of mass that have different rates between them. For example, perhaps the rate for ships between 0kg - 10,000kg is 0.1 Quanta per kg, 10,001kg - 50,000kg is 0.5 Quanta per kg, and 50,001kg and up is 1 Quanta per kg. In this way, the large ships get the more they have to pay. Consider three ships:
Ship 1 is 5,000kg and pays 500 Quanta.
Ship 2 is 30,000kg and pays 15,000 Quanta.
Ship 3 is 120,000kg and pays 120,000 Quanta.
 
Why would you want to do this? To dissuade larger ships either for market reasons or military reasons. Or perhaps there is the theory that the bigger the ship, the more money the owner has to burn. That's up to the gate owner, but the true power of the mass tiers comes out with the third point.
 
Different keys. The tax settings should be tied to each key and not to the gate itself, allowing for different keys with different settings for different people. There are many reasons that people travel and this would allow the fee system to be better suited for each person. I will give an example. Perhaps someone is coming to tour an empire, or apply for a job or whatever, and they need to get around but don't want to spend a ton on fees. Naturally, the people who live in the region don't want somebody who may not be fully trusted dumping a ton of goods on the market to compete with local businesses or bringing in a large battleship and causing trouble, so the tourist is given a key designed to meet these needs. The key could be set so each use under 2,000kg is only 20 Quanta but over 2,000kg it's 20 Quanta per kg. So if that tourist tries to bring in a 20,000kg freighter they are going to be smacked with a 400,000 Quanta fee. More taxes for the gate owner and it strongly discourages that tourist from bringing in larger ships or a lot of cargo. It's emergent and not set in stone. You could also raise the price even further to really discourage large ships. Maybe over 10,000kg it's 500 Quanta per kg! That's 10,000,000 Quanta for that same 20,000kg freighter! Good luck turning a profit on that. So long as that tourist follows the guidelines of their key, they can avoid paying much in fees, but if they try to do stuff that they are not supposed to they will pay the price, literally. 

WEIGH STATION
NEXT RIGHT
OPEN WHEN FLASHING
 
That was my first thought anyway.   What you're suggesting is a logical way of going about it. A little one-man craft shouldn't pay the same as a 5 km long supercarrier, that's just dumb. You can fit thousands of one-man crafts on a supercarrier. However, I think there would be different aspects to take into consideration besides mass, and that is the number of players. You could have two ships that look identical and one has three players on it and a mass of 10 million kg (mostly ore), while the other ship has 200 players on it and a mass of 0.5 kg (lots of players, not much cargo). Should the ship with all the players getting a jump across the galaxy pay a tiny fraction of the cost that the other ship has to pay? I have a feeling there will be a lot of situations where an organization will worry more about the number of people coming through their gate rather than the amount of goods.
 
Along with that, I imagine organizations will work out their own systems as they see fit. They'll give people and other factions that they like discounts, or perhaps offer anyone the chance to have an up-front discount per use; a season pass sort of thing (pay 1000 quanta to use the gate once, pay 9000 quanta to be able to use the gate ten times).

"
We did say we would be reaching out to some organisations, no? 
 
Well, we did and are currently doing so. In celebration of successful negotiations with the Chuckling Casket, I decided to release this piece of graphic art. 
 
So, how do you seal a swashbuckling deal with a Chuckling Casket? The answer is simple to the savvy:  
 
 

 
 
Aether Eterna; 
 
Always and Forever.
 
Picture by adamkuczek. Text effects and graphic enhancements by Aetherios.
 
"

Thank you, Novaquark team, for yet another highly informative DevBlog.
 
One item that was not mentioned (or I missed it) is whether an action taken by an individual will be added to an audit log of some kind. Whether there will be functionality to enable such audit logs or script our own using LUA. Of course, this is probably better as an opt in feature, but still immeasurably useful.

(Posted Friday 31th of March 2017 on the DevBlog)   
  Hi everyone!  
Today we are going to talk about the organizations in a more detailed way!
 
As usual, keep in mind this is how the organizations are planned to be implemented for the official release of Dual Universe, not for the Alpha. As it is still work in progress, some mechanics might change based on community feedback and/or for technical reasons.  
For the Alpha (currently planned for September), we will most likely have a basic version similar to what we currently have on the Community Portal*. Veteran MMORPG players will undoubtedly be familiar with the basic concepts of guilds and clans from other games so some of this information might feel like a review to you. However, we wanted to give a complete overview of Organizations so that even players new to Massively Multiplayer games would understand what Organizations are, the benefits of joining one, and why you might choose to create one. If you have friends who like building games but haven’t ventured into MMORPGs yet, then they might be interested in this Blog post.  
(*we are talking here of the current version on the Community Portal + an update scheduled to add a Super-Legate rank and many changes for Members and Legates rights)
 
 
What exactly is an Organization in Dual Universe?  
It’s a Moral Entity able to:
- accumulate “Quanta” (the in-game currency)
- own Assets (Items and Constructs)
- gather Player Characters under the same flag for a common goal.
- create a hierarchy, with ranks and roles for all Player Characters gathered in it.
- be a member of another Organization, just like a Player Character.
 
 
What are the purpose and benefits of an Organization?  
- It enables players to accomplish greater goals than what a player could do alone: 
The ability to pool resources and in-game currency will help a lot.
 
- It consolidates the continuity of a long-term project:
Players can enter and leave an organization without heavily impacting long-term projects supported by the group.
 
- It gives a political dimension to the game:
Rights & Duties can be transferred from one Player to another, and Powers are decided by the Legates through a vote (if the Organization is a democratic one).
 
- It legitimizes conflicts between several group of Players: This will enable members of different Organizations to fight between themselves and kill each other, without being the target of reprisal mechanics (like bounty hunting) if a war has been declared between the said Organizations.
 
 
RDMS (Rights & Duties Management System) in an Organization:  
- Different actions can be done on each Asset: each possible action is defined as a Power.
- Access to a Power on an Asset is given by a Tag.
- Each Power has a list of Tags associated to it.
- Each Player Character has a “wallet” of Tags.
 
Here is a quick example illustrating the system:  
 
 
 
Here we have an Asset having 3 Powers: Use, Sell and Edit. The Organization is composed of 3 Player Characters: Alice, Bob and Warren.
 
In this situation:
- Only Bob can edit the Asset.
- Only Warren can sell the Asset.
- All three can use the Asset:
 
1) Alice can use the Asset through the Tag “alice”
2) Bob can use the Asset through the Tag “bob” and “squad1”
3) Warren can use the Asset through the Tag “squad2”
 
But that’s not all: you will be able to create more complex administration rights by creating a hierarchy between Tags!  
 
 
 
Let’s say “stock_management” is the parent Tag of “ammo_management” and “raw_materials_management”. If a player has the Tag “stock_management” in his wallet of Tags, he will be able to use or manage any of the Organization’s Assets having the Tag “ammo_management” or “raw_materials_management” depending on which powers are associated with those tags.  
 
The Rights and Duties Management System is also used to create the Functions. A Function will contain various Tags defining an assignment. Let’s say that Warren gets the Function “President” in the Organization “MyOrg”. Now his Tag Wallet in “MyOrg” looks like as follow:  
 
 
 
 
As the President, Warren will have the ability to declare war to another Organization. A Treasurer will manage the Organization bank account , a Gunman will be able to use some (or even all) weapons and military Elements to defend the Organization, etc. Of course, we will provide standard, ready-to-use Functions such as President, Treasurer, Miner, Industrialist, Gunman, and Military Officer to save time and allow players to quickly get their Organization operational.  
 
Acting in your name or in the name of an Organization:  
A Player Character can be a member of several Organizations.
 
Therefore knowing whether they are acting on their own behalf or on behalf of an Organization (and which one) is very important. We call “Role” the state where a Player Character represents an Organisation (or just himself). By default, a Player Character has at least the Role where he can represent himself. Under each role, the Player Character has a Tag Wallet. When a Player Character is accepted into an Organization, the Player Character automatically gets an additional Role where he can represent the Organization. While under the Role representing the Organization, all the actions can affect the Organization. For example:  
- Receive Quanta on behalf of the Organization: Quanta are transferred to the Organization - Craft an Element: the Element is owned by the Organization (not the Player) as a result.
- Harvesting resources: The resources are owned by the Organization (not the Player) as a result.
 
Example: After declaring a war that displeased most of the members in “MyOrg” (which has a democratic system), Warren has been demoted from his function of President and kicked out (Warren, what have you done? You should have consulted your guildmates before doing that!). He has now joined a new organization, “Corpo1”, as a miner and has just discovered he can act in the name of “Corpo1” or act just for himself. In the windows where he could choose his active Role for the time being, it will look a bit like this:
 
 
 
 
However, keep in mind this is a simplified view of the Tags: as it will probably become quite common to have the same name for a Tag in different Organizations, the Tags will be “scoped” to avoid conflicts. Let’s say Warren is accepted again in “MyOrg” and gets the Tag “miner”, just like in “Corpo1”. To avoid conflicts, the Tags will be scoped as follow:  
 
 
 
Political Action (Vote) in an Organization:  
Only Legates will be able to vote.
 
Votes could be used for administrative decisions like:
- Accepting a new Member in the Organization
- Excluding a Member from the Organization.
- Giving a Function to a Member
- Changing of the Vote rules
 
Of course, the list of administrative decisions above is far from exhaustive. A Legate can also give his/her ability to vote to a representative (another Legate)
 
 
 
 
Above, the Organization “MyOrg” has 5 Legates: Kim, Bob, Alice, John, Steve. John and Steve give their right to vote to Alice. Alice now counts as 3 votes. However, she will be absent for the next vote so she delegates her right to vote to Kim. Bob also gives his right to vote to Kim as he trusts her completely. In the end Kim will have all the votes so she will be able to make important decisions for the Organization without involving the other Legates. Big responsibility for Kim!  
We hope this has given you a better grasp of how an Organization will work in Dual Universe. Not all related game mechanics have been explained as it’s still currently in development, so there will be probably a second part later. As always we can’t wait to read your feedback of what we’ve discussed so far!
 
 
The Novaquark team  

"
I promise I won't be a killjoy here, but...why is this necessary? 
 
According to the lore, everyone came from the Arkship, no? Binding player initial spawn points to the organisation's HQ or Res node will, to a degree, hamper the social interaction.  
 
It's one thing to limit the interaction of your members with the outside world, and another thing entirely if your focus is for the ease of the players. Players should be the ones to make the journey to your HQ, or, if you will, just place a res node at the Arkship area, or a star gate...or an outpost. When there's a need, it's wonderful to innovate something to fill that need. 
 
But, your suggested method needs some more explanation in my opinion. Why is this necessary for everyone? What problem do you hope to solve? Is this how it should be solved? Is this the best way to resolve it, and why do you think so? 
 
Cheers.
"

Would have been crazy if we had started on the first day of February and ended on the last day

At the GDC event, when JC showed a tech demo of the game to a small group of fans. Someone asked what the currency would be and he said it would be 'Quanta'.

You can probably make a small-ish drone and program it to follow you and only you. I wonder if you can program it to receive your PM's and upload them to a monitor fixed to it's front end....

No, no it doesn't count. Bronies are no different than people who collect Power Rangers figures and watch all the seasons of the show. Furries are a whole new classs of "...what" on their own.
 
Funny story to illustrate my point.
 
Once in the town I attended university, there was a furry party going, the first in the city back then. I was unaware of it being that same night I was out. So, as I am returning home, on that friday night, having drunk a bit more than usual, two guys try to mug me. At that moment, unbeknownst to me, three guys come out of the nearby alley behind me, ones only the aspiring thugs could only see. Those guys were dressed in full on furry costumes, dressed as some weird WTF-wolf creature. Now, think about it. Dark alley, you see three tall figures with pointy ears, sounds heavy (cause of the masks they wear) and it's a full moon night. 
 
But no, wait, there's more. 
 
Those thugs start backpeddaling because ... three humanoid wolf-creatures came out of the dark alley.m making what seems to sound guttural noises. But even more as a cruel twist of irony, those 3 furries were meeting up with some local friends of theirs to head to the party the same night, so they took a detour through those alleys. As the thugs start going away, furry group B shows up heading our way from the direction the thugs were backpeddaling towards. Never seen thugs - with knives mind you - climb up a chain-link fence as fast as they did, into a building project going on nearby and cutting through it to the main road.
 
 
 
So yeah. Bronies can be made fun of, cause if you see one in a dark alley, you won't think "oh shit, I forgot my silverware at home".

Well, that's the problem with EVE though. That's what leads to the statistics of on average an EVE player has 5.5 accounts.  EVE's devs claim they have 500000 pllayers, in reality, I question if it's even 50000 players playing EVE. And the multiboxing is one of those thigns that drives people way.
 
When you can have 10 Dominixes, that slave their Sentry Drones to one frigate jacked up for maximum lock-speed at a gate, and the moment someone enters through the game, it's instalock lock, scram and "BOOM podded", the game becomes all about "who got the most alts".
 
I guess nobody wants THAT in DU - not even the Devs, given how much thought has gone into making the game as less passive as possible.

I believe it will be bound to your character. I also think I saw someone mention you will be able to wire money.

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

Not that I'm a big fan of dual boxing, I'd be pretty impressed to see a 1 man army operating a multi crew ship.
 
Direct comparisons to EVE dont work with DU.

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

Now this, is interesting. Welcome to the community. I'll be keeping an eye on yall. 

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

At the GDC event, JC said the in-game currency would be Quanta. As in, the plural form of Quantum. 

Ah, should have known leaving the battlefield would've resulted in a loss rather than a draw.
 
Oh well. At least you can't say I wasn't the apex predator of this game. I look forward to the next one. I intend to fully win it.

Hello folks! I've made a few small changes to the organization description, which will be detailed as such:
 
The Security Division section has been updated, and from this day forth, The Security Division shall now be known as The Chromion Industrial Navy, (CIN for short). Please, look over this section. If you like what you see, we'd appreciate some new applicants.
 
Also note that a the other two divisions have had a slight amendment. Previously, it was going to be left up to the Directors of each Division to determine exactly how the Division would be structured underneath them. For the sake of organization, time, and congruity, I've taken this section out and decided to do it myself. Chromion Industrial Navy is the only Division that retains this power, however that may change. The structure of the other two Divisions will be drawn up around the time Alpha starts, and the decision on whether or not the Commander of CIN will retain his chosen chain of command will be made around then.
 
That's all for today folks. Have a good one! 
 
 
Sincerely,
 
Halo381, Head Director

Hello folks! I've made a few small changes to the organization description, which will be detailed as such:
 
The Security Division section has been updated, and from this day forth, The Security Division shall now be known as The Chromion Industrial Navy, (CIN for short). Please, look over this section. If you like what you see, we'd appreciate some new applicants.
 
Also note that a the other two divisions have had a slight amendment. Previously, it was going to be left up to the Directors of each Division to determine exactly how the Division would be structured underneath them. For the sake of organization, time, and congruity, I've taken this section out and decided to do it myself. Chromion Industrial Navy is the only Division that retains this power, however that may change. The structure of the other two Divisions will be drawn up around the time Alpha starts, and the decision on whether or not the Commander of CIN will retain his chosen chain of command will be made around then.
 
That's all for today folks. Have a good one! 
 
 
Sincerely,
 
Halo381, Head Director