Oborion

I read through this announcement and found it to be very underwhelming. It's a collection of some planned, trying to get working and a reason for why the Repair Unit wasn't updated as promised for 1.2. To me NQ NEED to pull something decent out of the hat and have new features in place before September when the 12 month subs expire to encourage people to spend more money. There wasn't even any update on being able to buy cosmetic items such as the costumes in an online shop which they said would be in before Christmas. (I hope this also includes cosmetics like forcefield colours that are currently locked behind multi-year RAF bonuses). I am really concerned for this game's future and am hoping that NQ will really be able to deliver some compelling content that will ensure the future of this game.

This system seems complicated and doesn't really change anything much. I would've like to have seen some energy put into the following: 1) Some components not needing schematics 3) Schematic prices reduced 3) Recycling and Component Upgrading implemented: Manufactured items can be recycled to release materials. Upgrading would be if you want to make a T2 engine it uses a T1 engine with additional components. A T4 would be made with a T3 plus extra stuff. If you wanted to make 50 Tier 1 through 4 engines you've need to manufacture 200 T1 etc.

Question regarding Sub Price increase: Given that Alpha Backers aren't currently paying subscriptions does that mean at launch we get the sub for the current rate or the Increased Demeter Rate?

Airbrake Compromise: As a suggestion in light of the Airbrake Clearance test which has been delayed for now. Since you guys have an 'appearance' setting for items how about enabling an INVISIBLE MODE? That way items can show as an outline for ship builders and show for item repair but the rest of the time they are not seen. This would allow ship designers to have the required number of items/clearance to satisfy the requirements to get the ship to fly as well as being ascetically pleasing. Also, I think it would help out if you stepped up to the plate with making larger Atmo Engines (and different types of engines) etc and this would go a long way for designers not having to make ships with huge walls of engines and their associated tanks.

Would like to say that I have serious concerns about ore distribution when the terrain is reset. As one example. I checked over 100 scans from SInnen and none of them showed any Acanthite. In the current game with underground mining neighbouring tiles may have lowish levels of acanthite but still worth mining and 3 adjoining tiles might yield 50-60kl. While this isn't a huge amount is a decent drop to top up a factory. If you need Acanthite currently while it's not easy to find mega nodes there are at least trace amounts in a reasonable number of tiles. The new system seems to be more binary and something is either there or it isn't and the number of tiles with the isn't seems to be far greater and the concept of 'trace amounts' has been thrown away because now with not only need to find a tile with a particular resource, but it has to be there is sufficient quantity to warrant the territory tax, cost of miner, and mining charge to extract. With seeing how the distribution 'seems' to have emerged I think it needs to be stressed that @NQ you will get one shot at this and it NEEDS to be right otherwise creating even more of a scarcity will have serious ramifications for the players and the economy. My fears for the future of this game are reinforced by the fact that the PTS has gone live for the 2nd time WITH the same rates/values etc as previously used and nothing has been tuned. The only real difference is that you turned off the air brake collision detection that you were testing. That 'implies' to me that you intend to take the current PTS iteration and apply it to Live with little to no changes. I would also like to add that while I get frustrated with the current mining some times and do other things instead I am at the same time going to really miss it! For all it's faults and frustrations there is nothing quite as satisfying as getting to the bottom of a mega-node you've just cleared out and looking up at a massive cavern that you've created. Sorry, but asteroid mining really pales in comparison to that.

2 Thoughts/Questions: 1) Sorry if I missed it but is there anywhere else you can see the number of mining charges you have available apart from when you click on a Mining Unit? 2) Since NQ are wanting to reduce unnecessary data transfer and are doing a terrain reset. I have to wonder if removing surface minerals from all Planets and ONLY leaving them on moons has been considered? Just an opinion but may have some merit/support but they are improving the looks of biomes but I personally find the surface minerals to be a bit incongruous and think the game would look/run better if those surface rocks were reserved for moons only.

Sone Observation/Comments 1) I have 3 miners in this tile all reporting a production rate of 86.34L.x 3 = 259.02. If you look at the pool of 301 then there should still be an available balance for extraction of 41.98L but it says 0 available 0/301. 2) Maximum of 10 charges and a rate of 1 charge for per 4.25 hours (with talents) if it was a fresh tile and the person started with 0 charges and a tile needed 15 miners (as an example) that is 63.75 hours to get all the miners going. Degradation of charges starts after 48 hours and we are only looking at 1 tile. 3) Ore extraction rates of 100L. There are rocks around me on the ground and they each yield 20L. I'm not going to do the maths but I can pick up a hell of lot of those in an hour in comparison and this even pales compared to the amount minable from an asteroid in an hour or just the current underground mining. 4) When MU's were first mentioned I thought they were going to provide a small supplemental supply of ore to just bring in some of those tier 1 items that are needed for manufacturing. I thought they were going to be additional to current underground mining. There are only so many hours in a day and if a higher tier resource is valued at 900q then mining that product for an hour is obviously a better return than an hour spent mining something worth 50q. The market to me suggests the health of a game and it is fair to say there are MASSIVE ore shortages currently with prices gradually creeping up. It wasn't long ago the ship builders who advertised on DU-Creators a badass M core hauler for say 150m and they could turn a profit and prices were stable enough. If you look at what's happened one by one from the smallest solo builder to the largest suppliers the narrative has changed. If you want to go and buy a ship now the response is its going to take days to get the parts AND we aren't sure of the prices. I predict that the amount of ore available to manufacturers will be a LOT lower than is even currently in the system, especially while the replacement to underground mining gets under way. One example of inflation the Alioth price for Warp Cells used to be down around 9k each now they are 32.5k In view of your technical issues with holes in the ground and planets being turned into swiss cheese perhaps a good balance may be to have the holes refill after a month for unowned tiles. That would mean underground bases would remain while also provide a renewing amount of mining resources without the need to store the huge amount of data as is currently the situation. Scans could remain current for untouched tiles but those that have been mined the scans could be flagged as expired and require rescanning.

Sadly, the answer for me is that I am already sick of the mining mini-game and if I stop and think about how the hell I'd keep track of which miners had been recalibrated and which hadn't it just makes my head spin

So it looks like after the preview video you snuck in a resource pool. If this continues to Live I would just like to say that I think having a tile become empty after spending all that effort to do the slow painful extraction process is REALLY REALLY annoying and I personally find it EXTREMELY discouraging.