Taelessael

With the immanent reduction of available cores, it may be a good idea to consider releasing XL-Static cores and XL-Space cores to the players. Many artistic structures contain few if any functional elements, but are composed of several L-cores to allow them the area needed for relatively simple things such as runways, parking areas, enclosed L-core construction, stadiums, or monolithic towers of world-domination. These aren't complex structures up close, they're just big, because they need to be. If the core-count is reduced some people will leave, this cant be helped, but if they are given the opportunity to move their constructs to XL-cores first then fewer players will be lost, and future players will turn to using these cores for such constructs (and limit themselves to their area) instead of maiming several hexes worth of dirt to achieve the same structures using a medium that still takes server-space but doesn't eat in to their core count.

Personal slots are very much involved, even if they aren't changing. Players don't have enough personal slots to lay down all their mining units, they use org slots for that. Unless MU are rebalanced to reduce the number of cores needed to reasonably run them (since you can practically put all of 2 on most outer-world hexes), a lot of players are going to have a private org, maxed skills, and next to nothing to share with their group-org (people they are supposed to be playing with because this is an MMO) because they are using over half of everything they have between personal and org slots combined just to avoid feeling like they are missing out on their MU-ore.

Welp, there goes org-constructs. Under the current tile/skill values it isnt hard to toss up 25 constructs just for running mining units, with personal constructs dedicated to a few stations with landing pads to store stuff for bulk movement in space, some ships I use, and a couple slots for ships/structures I am designing... Max skills wont allow players to contribute much to group projects/structures, so you may need to do something about that. -I'd advise at least doubling the ore in all hexes (and the hex-tax to compensate) so that people are tossing fewer of their constructs in to mining platforms and can spend more on cooperative play. -I'd also suggest just generally having a higher cap (perhaps via more skills or limiting this cap specifically to static/space core structures without industry/programing/container elements), as this limitation may just strait out invalidate a lot of larger artistic structures.

Scroll up dude, second line of my first post on this thread. The question now is incentive... what reward would provide sufficient draw to pvp players without destroying the game's economy. Better hexes would obviously draw large orgs with the manpower to maintain control over them, but how do we entice the medium and small guys to make what is likely to be an at least mildly expensive trip in to an area where they'd need to be self-sustaining? My first thought would be sizeable surface-rocks, at least t2 stuff so the small guys could ninja-mine to maintain their fuel and ammo supplies they'd be using in their inevitable raids on larger orgs...

That section called "job forum" in the missions window seems exactly like what you are asking for already minus the third party adjudication... something people could easily just use an alt for to circumvent if they want to abuse the system... Perhaps you could be more specific in what you want to do with contracts so we could work out how it could work?

Missed the part about gain rate. Gottchar's idea was to have the same number of miners with less frequent calibrations, this update will instead encourage the placement of additional MU.

Much appreciated in all areas. I must however ask, will mining units be capable of operating on un-paid HQ hexes like all other industry units?

To be fair, the suggestions I typically got after you for in the past were all either ones you quite blatantly made in the hopes of entirely driving pirates and/or pvp players from the game, or ones you quite blatantly made in the hopes of entirely driving pirates and/or pvp players from anywhere pve players would conceivably want to go. It also didn't help that your counter-argument to anyone poking holes in your ideas was almost always just insults, trolling, and blind accusations (like calling anyone that disagrees with you a pvp player/pirate) instead of trying to come up with solutions to the problems they'd point out. Make no mistake, pirates will always go after easy prey regardless, but if a pvp system exists where they can reasonably obtain better rewards than they would by hanging around the starting system, then a sizeable portion will go there, and you'll have that many fewer to worry about everywhere else. More to the point... CoyoteNZ's idea is to give players significant warning and practice well ahead of safe-zone removal from any pre-existing planet, and while I suspect based on things I've heard that they will just add a new pvp system instead, if NQ ever decides to remove the SZ from a pre-existing planet then CoyoteNZ's idea is a good one.

They have some lights, yes, but those are for seeing the runway while maneuvering when the plane is already on the ground, and for making themselves visible to other aircraft in the dark. As I said before, if ya want to land like a real plane in the dark, put lights on your runway. Deep-sea exploration and maintenance subs have lights to see, but they are not that powerful because water disperses/absorbs light too much for high-powered lights to be practical. They instead rely on a variety of other environment/location-detection hardware to navigate, and just use the lights to look at things up close. If you want some sort of terrain-detecting radar for night flights that doesn't cripple the game with lighting calculations while still providing you the vision you desire, you should make a thread for that, I'd support it.

I am most definitely not a new player, so I don't exactly have a great perspective on how well the game informs them of its available features for advancement, but I was under the impression that the fastest (solo) method was: -Claim a sanct hex and throw down MU and a can bought off the market, -Run the tutorials for quanta and talent point rewards, -Run the Air Delivery Challenge in the surrogate stations (accessible at any market) for piloting practice and more quanta, -Use amassed quanta to buy or build a ship suitable for atmospheric delivery missions (pay isn't amazing, but it is more piloting practice and money), -Upgrade, build new, or buy a ship suitable for space-travel, and practice such with hauling missions to moons or between SZ planets, -Save up and obtain via method of preference a ship suitable for asteroid hunting, pvp-space hauling, or whatever other thing the player desires to do. Old players are still here, and they will continue to still be here after brakes are played with. Every time a major mechanic is updated that cripples old designs, people complain, and then they adapt, and relegate said old designs to art and history. The brake mechanic is no different. Unless I missed a post somewhere, this is still a good ways off. People want it, but NQ still needs to work out atmo-combat before this can be a thing. Tile-taxes are helping the little guys by keeping the old business-magnates and money-loophole-exploiters from just claiming land to claim land (and subsequently stopping new-guys from having anything decent). The system isn't perfect, and NQ knows and is working on it. Agreed. Asteroids need improvement (more rocks, shorter spawn cycle, search system that isn't just picking off a list of everything in the universe and following the waypoints, ect...), and the old org-site stuff is barely functional on a good day and needs to either be reworked on or shut down so interested players can replace it.

Such mining would need to be instanced rather than just a km down, as the tunnels load in to some degree from several km away. In so far as instanced mining goes, there'd be an eventual buildup of useless data again in the servers. It wouldn't bother most players because they wouldn't be loading it, but NQ would still need to save it somewhere, so it would be diverting money away from other areas that could use it more. Probably better if they just improve the asteroid system since they can wipe that clean whenever they cycle the asteroids.

I recognize that the idea of pvp players getting any reward/loot/income at all while playing the same game as pve players is abhorrent to you, but you may wish to consider the fact that if they have a pvp only planet/system, then they are more likely to be there and less likely to be anywhere else you want to be.

You may find it worth noting that in real life, large vehicles don't typically use a spotlight to see far ahead, they just put lights on the runway and each-other. Use luminescent glass to make landing-lights on your runway and warning lights on your buildings so you don't hit them. As far as the inevitable "But what if I am landing in an empty hex for the first time in the dark like a helicopter in real life?" argument, helicopters can hover and descend slowly. Build to do the same and throw a mix of headlights and L vertical lights on the underside of your craft and you will be fine.

Last I heard, this was already the plan for when they add a new solar-system (along with atmo pvp). As for incentive (seeing as you could lose statics to pvp in this scenario), moderately better ore and no taxes would probably work. Players couldn't exactly go ninja-mine now that sub-surface ore is gone and you can see claimed hexes on the map, so they'd probably have to add some major surface rocks if they want said planets to be anything other than major faction only. Or they could come up with a system where by hex-taxes are paid to a faction that has somehow claimed the planet, with the implication that said faction will defend hexes that are up to date from pirates (perhaps they get notifications when a static is attacked on a planet they own?).

Large vertical lights put out a lot of light, but spotlights that illuminate "for miles" is just asking to cause excessive lighting calculations and subsequently lag. If you wrap your piloting seat in luminescent glass, you'll find you can oddly see a fair ways in 3rd person (I don't fly in 1st, so I don't know if it works there too).

How odd... I suppose it could be for issues involving item duplication via latency? So to circumvent it you'd need some transfer units and a second container... possibly a programming board with a script to control the transfer units so as to keep the containers' contents roughly equally divided between the two cans...

To put it simply, it would be nice if there were different options for shield colors and effects (one of them making the bubble totally invisible when it isn't suffering weapon impacts) as it is more difficult to clearly see and enjoy designs people come up with when trying to look through a visual effect that may clash with the construct's color or geometry.

I would suspect the primary use of such an element would be to give quanta in exchange for an item, but one that gives one item for another is also an idea. You could always just set up a second dispenser linked to the same container with what it gives and takes reversed if they did ever finally add in reverse-dispensers.

You may want to just set up vr at them all, it makes it makes it feasible to keep going while doing stuff on other planets. As for connecting the mini-game to a phone app to remote calibrate, not a bad idea, though potentially quite a bit of work on the developer's part to make work, and possibly requiring an element similar to a vr unit that would itself be linked to the MU.

Sub-surface mining wasn't removed because of realism, it was removed because it left a million abandoned mining tunnels running through all the planets and the data-storage/loading was becoming an issue. Surface rocks are ugly though, and it would be nice if they'd trim them down a lot (perhaps cut the number down to a 10th and make 'em give that much more ore and take longer to harvest to compensate?)

MU are meant to be afk-income for people that can't do much during the week but still need something to pay for their fuel use on their weekends. Making the people with IRL commitments that take priority most days worry that their MU is going to hit a methane pocket and explode while they are offline probably wont be great for the moral of said casuals. I'd also say output isn't too low, as it is mostly just there to give people a starting point, not to build an empire around or fuel a major factory with only a few tiles. Also, prices are already low at market because everyone is selling, some of the market-bots you can sell ore to have even started to run dry. People may not get a lot of it individually, but ore is extremely plentiful right now. As for taxes, they may be a bit high, but dropping them to a quarter or an eighth of what they are now would probably be a bit much, again for the same reason MU output is fine, and basing them off of anything players deploy on a tile is just asking for a return to the old issue NQ had of people claiming dozens or hundreds of tiles they weren't really doing anything with. I can however very much get behind both longer increments between taxes, and tossing that silly mini-game out the window in favor of just having a skill set how many MU you can have going at a time (much like how architect skills skills work for cores).

You are perhaps over emphasizing both the output of MU, and the role of giga-factories as they are now. Mining units do most definitely make things easier, but their relative output is quite small. I'm not an industry player, so I cant translate directly from ore to ships in value, but if I recall the approximate value of my ships correctly and the general value of decent t1 tiles, it requires around 2 tile-weeks worth of t1 output (after taxes) to afford the parts for 1 "disposable" xs fighter. It isn't much, and one player could manage a few a week under ideal circumstances, but those aren't the current meta. PvP ships of the current meta use a lot of the most expensive hardware on the market, easily valued at well over 100 tile-weeks worth of parts, meaning that without a very sizeable group working together it would take months to amass the wealth for a single ship. As for giga-factories, they are a rather substantial investment now, requiring people to gather up exceptionally expensive schematics if they aren't just making basic stuff, and often needing ore well beyond what a single player or small group of players can effectively access now that MU have replaced conventional planetary mining. Quite often asteroid mining or market-purchases are needed to obtain the high-tier ores that, while not needed in enormous quantities, are still required for many of the higher-tier items. As far as other stuff goes, we are short on complexity everywhere. -Miners should have more asteroids that spawn at smaller intervals, that aren't just visible to the whole universe (ya should explore to find 'em, not just pick 'em off your list) and are found with something more complicated than a "follow the waypoints" game. -Explorers need more interesting environments they can travel, and possibly rare treasures to find. -Mission-Runners need more randomized mission lists that change things up so they aren't just running the same 2/4/6-mission loops. -PvP players need more to balance than just hp, damage, and speed. -And a lot of other players need a lot of other stuff, but it is late and I don't feel like pulling an Uncle and adding a dozen or more "one more thing" to this post. So, I'm going to say the first thing on NQ's to do list should be fixing stacking-detection, because that keeps going off inconsistently and on elements that are well clear of even touching anything, But after that where would you think they should work next? My vote is (again) heat or power management.

So far as building cities goes... A single large shared industrial structure would provide a group's manufacturing, and a few ships would probably easily manage their cooperative utility-needs, while the rest of it goes toward the actual most important purpose of the game: hanging out with other people and making/doing something cool. MU didn't change that, they just removed the need for players to go on mining expeditions so they could fund the other stuff.

Agreed, though again we need something more complex than just hp/damage, lest we find the top dogs in every battle just being the ones that can field most optimally-sized anti-grav death-bricks. We'd also need some better resources (or something else of value, such as no tax) on pvp-tiles to make them worth fighting over, lest people not bother due to the greater safety and identical rewards of of non-pvp tiles. An easily understood concept, although personally I'd suggest dialing back mass a bit there (for iron pure armor) as you exceeded the mass of a solid block pure iron almost 600kg ago. You underestimate what absurdity players are willing to get in to. Cubes of the past were xs because radar lock ranges were all relative to target core size, and because weapons could be mounted to any size core. Solid gold cubes were a thing, they weren't fast, and gold was still rare-ish so they weren't common, but they'd drive almost everything else from the field easily enough. The current SNES meta is all large cores because of the core-weapon-size cap, but the ones I've seen are still all built roughly to s-core dimensions. With the armor you are talking about adding, someone would work out how its math works in to ccs, and we'd see a bunch of L core bricks/spheres at approximately the size where ccs-math says optimal is used in areas where they didn't need to be the fastest, such as with the gravity-net, or in atmo where they'd stay afloat with anti-grav and worry less about top speed because everything has a speed-cap there resulting from air-resistance/atmo-heating. You do make a solid point there, though as planetary combat is to be a thing for when NQ finally adds another solar-system (last I heard, quite a ways off), I might advise their next focus involve additions relevant to all players, such as power or heat management.

I'm still having fun, but I do suppose it is probably just annoying everyone else at this point with this thread continuing. My apologies for that, I will wrap up my part and we can let better ideas bury this one at the bottom of the list. Which counter your are referencing? Is it the one where you ignore any reason anyone else gives you about how this is a bad idea and claim that you deserve a WMD to 1-shot other people's ships with because you don't want to fit other weapons? Or the one where you call someone a pirate without any regard to their actual engagement in piracy because you think they don't like being called that? The second was me leading you in to showing that you know the first is wrong, and that you'd rather insult your opponents until they go away because you cant properly refute their arguments in a logical manner. This thread is well past done, and I won't play with you in it any more because it has occurred to me that its continuation is just annoying other people on the board, but if you want to keep posting, you may as well take the time to clarify which counter you are referencing. I will admit, you got me there, I let auto-correct adjust things to say "play your employees" instead of "pay your employees". I will correct this in the post you referenced. Food for thought though, you obviously know what I meant or you wouldn't have called yourself an employer, you should probably also try explaining why you cant pay in-game employees to defend you from pirates instead of just trying to distract from that concept by pointing out spelling/grammatical problems. We've been over this, it is called risk. Greater risks bring greater reward, and it is entirely your fault if you choose to give them that reward without that risk. You should ask that question again while looking in a mirror. I am a mission runner, the person that pirates are trying to blow up and take everything from. If this were about me wanting something for myself, should I not then agree with you? I've considered this quite thoroughly, probably a lot more than it deserves, and having looked at it long and hard from every point of view I could think of I've concluded that there is no way this idea as you have described it isn't a bad one. But since you insist on my selfishness: I have flown more than 150 missions through pvp space, never once having fired a shot, never once getting shot at, all of them so clear of any pirate interference that I have on occasion flown them at low and easily catchable speeds just so that I would have the time to go to work, or to movies, or to run errands for hours on end. Your wmd wont affect my gameplay directly either way. It will however affect it indirectly by alienating the pvp crowd, chasing off players that I could enjoy interacting with, and that would subsequently stop paying subscriptions that help keep the game I like going. So, I can't say my intentions are totally and absolutely clear of self-interest, but of the two of us I seem to be the one that doesn't want to drive out an entire section of the game's player-base just to remove a small bit of risk from my own gameplay, so maybe you should go have a chat with that mirror again. You don't need a weapon who's only purpose is to take other players fun out of the game just because you don't like them playing in a way they are supposed to be able to play. Your initial post asks for a weapon that guarantees instant 100% loss on the part of all parties, no salvage, no loot, no recovering your ship later, the weapon just deletes everything in its blast radius from the game without regard as to what it was doing or how it was or was not involved, hostile or otherwise. Both PvE and PvP players have told you how and why this is overpowered, unnecessary, and bad. Its only purpose is malicious and you know it, and you are wrong for continuing to push it as you have, not that anyone will do anything about it. So, much fun as I am still having, we've annoyed everyone long enough with this thread's continuation. Make your final post if you must, I'll still read it, but it is long past time this bad idea stopped distracting from better ones and was left ignored at the bottom of the thread list, so don't expect a response.