Anfros

If we want survival mechanics I'd much rather they went the space engineers route, with oxygen and energy. If you are in a oxygenated and warm environment you don't have to worry but out in space... lets just say things are different.

@Thoger


The combat as far as they have described it, is going to be tab-targeting with cone of fire. And by what I gathered from everyhing I read, they intend for the ship to move WASD style, possibly Q & R for roll, A & D for yaw.


Concerning ground combat, the fact that gravity is a factor in the game engine, makes the high ground an even greater advantage (for obvious reasons). Plus, player-built cities. I mean, nuff said. Urban warfare taken to the ultimate extreme. Possible high-rises, apartment buildings and so on. And since the game is first-person, I can see ground combat possibly being dealt with TERA Online's lock-on, which treats your "attack speed" as your "casting speed" and your animation is the time to lock. Or they could go the first-person movement prediction combat, who knows. 


Plus, I have the impression that people will catch up to the fact that ACTUAL space combat is not Star Wars broadsiding combat, but literal starship-jousting. I can see people scripting their ships on timers to pivot their battleship's reinforced bowl to meet the brand of an attack. You know, shit in space flies fast. You need to pre-plan an attack to the last second before contact is made for some brief moments (the way Nyaltar explained it on the Answers thread), cause you won't be dogfighting a battleship, it's not the open seas and starships are not sailing on wind. Jet-fighters will probably have the benefit of being so agile, that lock-on will be difficult, due to their speed, so it makes jet-fighter dogfights viable for that class of ship, possibly going up to a Destroyer-class starship.


In such context, a Lock-On system for ships is functional. It makes sense you need to rely on lock-on for your weaponry. It's FutureSpace and shit. 



P.S. : Funny how Star Citizen's "realism" dictates that frigging battlecruisers in space dog-fight each other. Because you know, people mastered FTL, but advanced lock-on mechanics? Pfffft, ain't nobody got time for that.


 

The way I see it.


You get a sniper rifle.

You use the sniper rifle.

You get better at shooting shit from a distance.

You keep shooting things from a distance and getting better.

Congrats, you mastered the art of murder from 5 kilometers away.



Now, let's start with assault rifles.

Basically the crux of my problem with having a more traditional skill path in a game like this is that its a relic of older games that don't simulate things to the degree that Dual Universe will.
 
It seems like they want to lock technologies behind the skill trees so that everyone can't do everything at once. But I think the nature of the infrastructure needed for advanced technology and space flight will be enough of a barrier in of itself.
 
In Space Engineers for example you technically have the ability to build a jump capable spaceship as soon as you spawn. Except that you're on a planet, with very little refined minerals to hand. And you need a significant mining operation. And a lot of rare elements that take ages to refine. And the rarest elements for the best engines can only be found in space. So you have a long path ahead of you before you can even dream or making that first jump.
 
And that's without contending with potentially thousands of other players and their organisations.
 
As for skill specialisations. I don't think that handing out skill based stat bonuses is the way to go. You don't become the best fleet admiral in the verse because you have a leadership bonus +5. You get there through experience leading fleets of other players into battle. You don't need an arbitrary number to tell you because you are doing it yourself.
 
Likewise tech specialists, artists, and engineers will arise naturally if the crafting system is deep enough to allow for it.
 
For combat specialisation I think in a sci fi game your special abilities are better defined by your equipment. How well you fight (and the gods of ping) will be the real measure of how good you are in a fight.
 
Honestly this is what I think you need on your character sheet for a game like this:
 
Page 1
Bio (name, appearance, backstory etc
 
Page 2
Assets (money, controlled organisation ships/stations etc)
 
Page 3
Status (organisations, granted tiles etc)
 
Page 4
Contracts (buy/sell orders, jobs, alliances etc)

When we hand build everything, negotiate with other real people, and fight with our own reflexes, that's all we need.

I'm interested to see what the devs say on the matter when they blog about progression in more depth.

You know what's not fun? Wasting peoples' time because a small percentage wants to RP Star Trek during a screensaver animation playing for a mandatory time while travelling from system to system.
 
Fun fact, Stargates or more likely, gravitational weak points in a star system, are the way warp would work in real-life if we had the power to pull it off. Why? Because Warping near a planet Star Trek style, would obliterate the planet's atmosphere due to the spatial withdrawal taking place and basic newtonian laws.
 
So, hakuna your immersed tatas and don't ask for RP things to be at the core of the game please.

ground vehicles would be a must if planets have gravity, which I certainly hope they will. Flying vehicles have a limit to how heavy they can be before the fuel needed to lift them becomes to expensive to be practical. I hope any assault on a fortified planetside base will require the use of ground vehicles.

What people have to understand is that for this game to work basically all content (except maybe some cosmetic things, though I fail to see how there could be very many cosmetic things in the game given how we have voxel construction) needs to be available to all players which means the devs can't go around selling expansions like this was WoW, which leaves p2p as the only workable model.

While I am a huge fan of open pvp, that doesn't mean I want what the OP is describing. The way I see it, the game must guarantee that when you go to sleep your stuff will still be there the next day and that destroying something typically takes more effort than building it. The game basically needs to be balanced in favor of the defender.

@CaptainTwerkmotor

What part of "a sandbox game with Emergent Gameplay" did you not understand? ...
Is that what you are asking for? PvP without consequences? Cause if so, no, THIS game is not for you.
 
Read the title, it is asking for "balanced PvP destruction" ... IOW, if it takes a group of 5 players 40 hours to build something, a group of 5 players to shouldn't be able to take it down in 4 hours.
 
If this is going to be the "Mindcraft" of "EVE", then this game needs to have a balance on construction:destruction time frame. 10:1 (or 2, or 5) isn't balanced. "A sandbox with emergent gameplay" indicates nothing on this balance, or the lack of.

Banning multiboxing is basically impossible and as far as I'm concerned of very little importance. What is more important imho is banning the use of botting and input broadcasting meaning you would actually have to play each account individually, that way it is fair for everyone. Though if scripting will be as strong as they have made it out to be you might be able to accomplish many of the things people would normally use bots for ingame, I still think using software to give game inputs should be banned though.

Banning multiboxing is basically impossible and as far as I'm concerned of very little importance. What is more important imho is banning the use of botting and input broadcasting meaning you would actually have to play each account individually, that way it is fair for everyone. Though if scripting will be as strong as they have made it out to be you might be able to accomplish many of the things people would normally use bots for ingame, I still think using software to give game inputs should be banned though.

I'm against any mechanic that would make just standing around chatting with friends have bad consequences. If there is a food mechanic it should only affect players who are doing something.

Absolutely. We don't want to turn away either kind of player. What I think most people are worried about is the PvPers taking advantage of the PvEers protection mechanics in some way. I would say that the 20km safe area around the arkship and the VR solution are sufficient to protect everyone's interests. In an emergent society, mutual protection is one of the benefits. There is risk, but it's much less than in an "each man for himself" situation.

I think this would be very good for the economy, since atmospheric entry/exit would require specialized vehicles. This means there would be demand for more diverse types of vehicles.