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ZarTaen

Alpha Team Vanguard
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  1. ZarTaen

    Weather

    Yeah, for a start, it could be nice to locally have cloudy days and sunny days. Right now the clouds are mostly just "there" and fairly temporal. Similarly with fog. In reality, based on the time of year and biome, its normal to have morning fog for example that starts appearing during the early morning, etc. The basics for this should be in the game iirc, all it needs is to adjust how they are used. The next step after that, when you have cloudy days, could be rain, It would take some time, but it doesnt even need to be ground breaking. Creating some wetness textures overlays over everything (differentiating between inside and outside of voxel constructs might become a harder issue to solve) would add to it, but a simple rain effect could do wonders to add a bit to the feeling of having weather. More than this will definitely take more work, such as winds etc., but it can be an incremental thing.
  2. Its a step. I dont know where yet, but a step. From what I gather, this will greatly push advantage to players with alts again though by making it all that bit more necessary if you want to have many cores. Im not particularly against it, but I would have loved a system based on active player effort instead.
  3. I really really love this, it is basically everything I wished for. Gonna be a bit confusing calculating exact angles at first with some of the stepping, but I think we are gonna be fine.
  4. This is gonna be a long one. Skip to the end for tl;dr. Introduction Territory Warfare in Dual Universe has to happen at some point. Cool, I'm here to talk about everything but the act of warfaring over territory. One of the "complaints" that some players mentioned is the lack of reason for war once Territory Warfare would arrive. This is what I am trying to address here with my idea. Territory Claim vs Tile Ownership First of all, I suggest splitting tile ownership from territory claims. I legitimately think this is a necessity. Not only are planets and moons too big to actually own it all, but having to own the tiles directly, taxes and all, would greatly inhibit the aspect of waging war. Reality does not have a cost associated with claiming some plot of land as territory (other than conflicts over it), so it should not be for DU either. This means that some lonely industrialist could own a tile that changes territory claim ownership, and possibly would not notice a difference. However. this does not mean the nation should not be able to take ownership either. My suggestion is as followed: A Nation owns territory claim A Nation can seize tiles, but not own them directly A Nation can decide a new owner for a tile This could be limited in some ways or carry a cost for the nation An approach like this would allow for vastly different ideologies between nations and a result of loyalty or indifference for actual tile owners. It would also foster possible ways to "force" loyalty by asking for assistance when trying to take over territory, or "else". "But what would a territory be for then?" Tiles have taxes, right? Those might as well go to the occupying nation. Whether this happens fully, or partially can be up for debate. Yes, unowned tiles are not mentioned, see next chapter. Reasons to have Territory With territory claims and tile ownership split, what is the point of claiming unowned tiles? For this I suggest a couple of things. 1. A nation should be allowed to assign tiles as nation specific safezone, based on a value related to territory claim, holding time and possibly other metrics. Such a safezone should be restricted to non-border tiles only and have a limited number The nation should be able to assign who this safezone applies to Assigning a safezone should have a cooldown or carry a substantial cost This must be transparent to every player playing the game, by looking it up on the map 2. Nations should have a set of policies that can be chosen and improved. Policies could be inspired by strategy games Imagine stuff like "Robust Building" which could increase health of all items produced in the nation, at a slightly higher resource cost Should not be free of course 3. The strategic aspect of creating a bridge to an enemy nation. A nation shouldn't be able to attack another nation unless tiles are adjacent As a solution to planet wide warfare: footholds A foothold would be a tile or group of tiles by a nation away from the big national blob "capital" that is held for long enough. This would allow srategic invasion preparation of nations across planets but also take time and preparation Adjacency rules apply to footholds as well and they can be "destroyed" After some conditions are met, the "capital" tile could movbe to a sufficiently big foothold, at a price of cost/time or both Not a Nation for Everyone So, lets assume a nation has a big territory, and some policies should not apply to the whole nation. There are reasons why one would want to subdivide a nation into zones. A zone could be named and be an arbitrary shape based on tiles inside the territory A policy can apply to a zone or nation wide. Zone specific policies would overwrite nation wide policies. Implementing a policy has to cost time/currency/asset for every implementation of the nation. So while zones allow policy specialisation per region, the policy cost to make it worthwhile compounds per policy implemented across the nation Only one policy ber zone "Okay, this might be neat if its given more thought, but what about membership?" This is where opinions might vary a lot. I legitimately think that an organisation must not be a member of a nation. Yes, you read that right. A nation has citizens and organisations are not. Sure, there might be a Madistani organisation that happens to have 100% Madistani citizens, but the members voluntarily chose to be Madistani at some point and were not forced to be by the organisation. Additionally, it should not be possible to change nations at will. Once you join a nation, you can forfeit citizenship, but then youre bound to have no citizenship for a while. Another nation might accept you earlier, but only as refugee/immigrant, which doesn't give voting rights The Govern(mental) This is where a lot of leg work would have to be done to make the implementation by NQ a smart one. As we already know, organisations themselves are fairly restrictive when it comes to roles and hierarchies. This is an absolute no-go for a nation and possible government structures. My hope/dream would be a diagramm based "coding" of voting processes and government structures. This is no easy feat and would have to allow for democracy of various kinds, monarchy, dictatorships, and everything inbetween. Some of it should be malleable, but only when the conditions, as defined by the nation founding, are met. (This almost sounds like duties of the RDMS...). For example, let us take direct democracy with a minimum amount of representatives. It should be possible to assign enough representatives, for example per active zone, x amount per active zone, etc. However, every citizen has a vote when it comes to deciding matters, policies etc. Representatives would not be able to execute them unless the condition is fulfilled: enough people voted for it. They might however be able to suggest what is being voted on and are being voted on come election time. The election process would also have to be definable. Ultimately, the purpose of such a system is to do the enforcement of the government as it is supposed to be. Of course, this is only my proposal and we could also go into metagaming and simply do it the way we handle organisations outside the game. But this removes some of the fun and participation as well as transparency for citizens and ultimately leaves enforcement to nobody. Planetary Domination So a nation managed to dominate the planet: Do we want this to be legitimized by the game? What should this look like? Planetary taxes? Planetary policies? Interplanetary warfare? Intersystem warfare? Intergalactic warfare? At this point we reach a point of strategy that can probably wait a while until more important stuff is implemented. TLDR: Introduce Nations as separate thing from organisations Split tile ownership and territory claim Nations should be able to claim territory without needing to touch tile ownership, but they should be able to if they want Allow creation of nation specific safezone that is configurable for who it affects (other nations, players without nationality, etc.). Border tiles would not be eligible. Policies assigned and improved by the nation Zoning of the territory for several policies and possibly other stuff (names for example, geography, etc) Territory should *usually* be connected together. However, a foothold system is necessary. Think colonisation, but near the enemy territory as possible forward base, or otherwise. One capital per nation. Losing a capital is *bad* Organisations cannot be citizens. Only players can be citizens and organisations can have members of various nations. Nation membership isnt decided willy nilly, it needs a proper membership procedure with immigration/refuge. Yes, this would become an ingame racism simulator. System of the government should be "codable": customizable enough to allow everything conceivable. From dictatorship to direct democracy, we should have it all. I think these need to be discussed and clear before we talk how war is waged. This is by far not everything and I am sure I forgot something I already discussed before on the discord.
  5. NQ, with this editor you got a winner. This will be easy to use and straightforward for new players, while still allowing all the shenanigans (up to the complexity limit in the future) and gives blocky ships no excuses anymore. Feels like christmas to see this video and cant wait to build ships with it
  6. Why did you decide on the current docking mechanisms where you can seamlessly fly in and out of the area, without an optional lock into the docking area for constructs? With such a lock, leaving the docking area would become explicit, allowing some on-the-move shenanigans that are not possible now or before.
  7. This is an addition we have long been waiting for. So many saltshakers in here thinking this is already how boarding will be forever, even for potential boarding gameplay..smh. (Ever heard of different results with different conditions e.g. boarding gear?) The argument of stowaways being a staple also falls flat once you realise the stowaways in this game cant be found before taking off when they are logged off.. All in all a very welcome addition, no more shaking down the parenting ship just to be sure something is docked on, hopefully no more random undocking during movement either.
  8. It saddens me that you try to paint a certain picture against Hyperion after accusing every organisation member as a cheater as one of the first few things you wrote. It also saddens me that you think it was a threat, when it was a copy-paste of the EULA section as a warning so you don't step over bounds you shouldn't, as others did before who ended up being punished for it. (As in openly calling everyone in Hyperion cheaters on a public platform, we thought you would be capable of doing so while being angry) Well, I would be frustrated as well in your position, so I understand your viewpoint. However, before everyone else here judges early and harshly, hear me out: Those that play PvP for a long time now (think Alpha, early few Beta weeks, and now) know of a common problem with the servers, especially for PvP, especially during weekend: Desync. What newer players do not understand is how severe it can be, as they simply do not have the experience yet, but also because this was improved a lot, so it is rarely even noticeable. These desyncs happen in excess of 100km at times. What I believe happened here was the Grizzly accelerating and a part of the game desyncing, resulting in a visible "jump" that might just have been a continuous movement, or the correction to the actual position (In this case many shots shouldn't have been possible to begin with because the position was "old"). On a sidenote: If there was a way to randomly teleport 100s of km in an instant, why would anyone do it during a fight, while people are recording? Why wouldn't they just avoid the fight and other ships to begin with? Nevermind that I don't even remotely have a clue how to do this on purpose. As I said, I get that you're mad. But believing we would blatantly exploit something on purpose that I can't even start to think about how it should work...it saddens me. And accusing a complete org as cheaters because of what I believe is fundamentally a desync without originally even showing us the video of how it looked to you is a bit impulsive as well.
  9. That is a lot of tinfoil hat right there. It is more likely that demand for space cores spiked because of the safezone confirmation (before that it wasn't even clear whether Alioth is staying safe) and the insane megaprojects some people plan on doing with over 100 cores for a single spacestation (I know of at least 5 of those from the top of my head, there are likely a lot more). So people bought those up, as well as some "investors" who try to make bank with it and profit off the situation. Everything else is supply and demand. But this is just another theory, just with a bit less "out there" 1+1..
  10. "A 28x16 block of gold that is then covered by an 8 voxel deep shell of steel" I think you mean 28x16x6 gold with a 1 voxel layer thick hull of steel, which makes sense. Well, I'm gonna go with that as measurements in voxels, not meters, so here we go: At 28x16x6 gold we have a volume of 42m³, which totals at an effective health of worst case, antimatter, 648.480 eHP (the point representing thousand, not decimals), and the hull of steel around it at 30x18x8 minus the goldblock inside is 25,5m³ with 145.962 eHP in the worst case, kinetic. As reference: The total weight of this alone would be 8106kg of gold, translating to 8,106t and 2025,75kg of steel, or 2,026~t, totaling at around 10,1~ish tons with 794.442 total effective HP. Doesnt sound too shabby. Now, you arent gonna shoot every voxel around it, only a portion, and that you ideally do from one direction. So lets go with the worst case of the shallow side, which is around 3 voxel layers of gold and 1 voxel layer of steel till it hits the core. Okay, so we can already straight up ignore half the volume if we ignore the spread range of the damage. Now, lets take a spread of, say, 10x10, which is awfully small generally and probably on the pessimistic side, and the enemy coincidently also somehow has heavy ammo. So for the math you roughly have a gold block of 10x10x3voxels per side, + 1 10x10x1 layer of steel at the front, with a fully skilled enemy with the worst case ammo for your armor, as well as worst case ammo type of heavy, with the worst case of every shot hitting exactly center and erasing all 10x10 voxels per layer (in actuality the radius is more like 15x15, but less total erasure, but youd also have spread, etc). Im also gonna choose the weapon with the most damage per volley, so its the worst of every conceivable worst case. This means you have 72.375 eHP of Gold, and 8943,75 eHP for Steel totalling at 81.318,75 eHP. Okay, so xs cannons can at least be in a group of 3 simultanously, so for simplicities sake im gonna go with 3. One cannon does 60k damage in 1 minute unskilled with 1 magazine, in the best case scenario. So 180k as base, for one full magazine of each cannon in this scenario with all skills and stars aligned: 556.875 damage. So yes, from the shallow side, the armor is gone in a moment, and the total armor is gone in around 2ish minutes for that block, if stars align of course. Stars aligning include being in sufficient range, and not being an xs core, both would otherwise be detrimental to cannons. For that you need to be at around 5000ish meters, with skills you can be further away, but the neighborhood for *xs* cannons is around that. But in reality, you have a hull of unknown size and material around that, you have elements that could soak up damage, you arent hit straight up from one direction with one shot on top of each other, you arent always in perfect range or at a perfect angle for the weapon, you arent always aligned with all weapons equally. While I went in to see whether you have a point or not, I realised that, realistically speaking, 10 tons of armor is nothing, but the measurements it takes up is quite something for so little effect. What defeats xs weapons is cross section, the bigger the better. Because of the low initial damage per xs weapon, regardless of type, and the nature of randomness, xs weapons are notoriously poor at "drilling" into enemy ships, minus some very skilled specific circumstances. NQ was aiming for armored ships to be really heavy, and 10 tons is microfighter territory armor, you know, those variations of it that have enough armor to last a few shots but are thrown away because they are so cheap. Of course I know you had more armor than that, but the hull would probably have lasted around 4-8 times as long, unless you got really unlucky, and coincidently, had a few shots that drilled in. In the end its the following tradeoff for voxel balance: Do you want 10 minute+ constant fire and constant hits required in a 30 min dogfight between microfighters, and have bigger size ships take many hours of constant fire to take down? Or do you rather want to have bigger thips that can actually be taken down in a reasonable timeframe, and require a lot more armor for smaller ships to feel armored. Remember how volume and cross section relate to each other if the size increases, essentially you cant balance it to one side and have the other side not be totally broken to hell and back. This is what I hope shields are for. While it doesnt sound like I agree with you, I actually do, but I also see weight as being a huge factor in all of this, as well as the randomness of the shots actually landing at a similar spot and think that what is off is the balance of health to volume, not weight. If focused fire ever becomes a thing, it needs to be balanced around small vs big weapons and the health of voxels need to be adjusted accordingly. (I imagine small weapons becoming better at drilling and bigger weapons being a bit less precise would be neat and give small weapons some purpose against well armored big ships) ------------------- Now to the wear and tear. Yes, we need it, we need it badly. I disagree with it being a fixed count of repairs, but I agree with it losing performance and it being a "soft" loss. My idea is as follows: Light damage would reduce performance almost to no degree but more than everyday usage without damage would. Usage would wear the elements very very lightly, think weeks of 24/7 use to see some effect on its performance. Being destroyed completely would more drastically reduce the performance, think 1-3% of the original total per total destruction, at some point the engine would barely work at full throttle, but this would happen regardless of pvp or impact damage. You could even make a maintenance minigame, that restores some max performance for the elements, up to a limit and with according material usage. This way you have a few effects: One, you wouldn't be immediately punished for being shot at a few times (its not always easy to place some engines exactly the same way), but over time you would feel the effects, and at some point think of replacing it. Two, you would have wear without being reliant on PvP. Three, you would end up with a "used ship" market with drastically reduced values, vastly easing the entrance for new players to get a ship that may be much more capable, albeit not like new. ----------------------- What Megaddd brought up is something that I think needs to come as well at some point, it would vastly increase the depth of how damage feels for each side, but it would also need to be *very* carefully balanced, otherwise railguns would oneshot everything. Essentially, every change of a fundamental mechanic like this needs complete rebalancing, so realistically it wont happen anytime soon, and if, then it happens with other changes at the same time.
  11. discordauth:k4R4heGcq2HPKMffB6IOFKPmT5FoW7cOkkN2n-cD7zU=

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