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facemywrath

Alpha Tester
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Everything posted by facemywrath

  1. I'm sure people have done this to death but I have an idea that I haven't seen floating around. Obviously people want a way to get schematics without buying them. Some people want them to just get rid of schematics but I think they do have a place in the game. So first off I propose a Schematic Research Unit which is a element that gets placed and linked to an industry unit. Based on the industry unit it is linked to, it has different recipes within, equal to the recipes made by that unit. Each schematics is made by sacrificing a certain amount of the element itself. For example, getting a basic screw schematic might take sacrificing 300 basic screws to craft. The time taken to craft the recipe itself would then be based on the time taken to craft its recipe items. So a basic screw schematic would take 30x the time taken to craft 10 basic screws. The amount needed to craft a schematic would be predefined by the developers, and then they can include talents to increase research time, reduce the requirements, etc. This would create multiple new talents as well as creating a way to get schematics that's not super easy. It also adds a reason to salvage beyond just getting elements. I did like the idea of duplicating schematics with another unit but I think this alone makes it easier but not too easy. Duping them infinitely would be op. At least with this you can still get unlimited of them you just need resources to do it.
  2. So I will start this thread by admitting I haven't really played DU in over a year. Circumstances withheld, given the option I would like to go back eventually. So bear in mind with this post that I may be out of date or misunderstanding some current mechanics, though I think my ideas would be very prominent either way. So first off, from what I understand, the function of a radar is, at base, to allow the user to target and locate constructs for the sake of PVP. I do like that, though I feel its... limited. It makes PVP just a find and shoot game with no stealth or anything. The bigger and better ships almost always win. Now, I'm not dismissing that better ships should be the victors, but rather that there could very easily be more involved combat and better options included. For example, the transponder. From what I've been told, transponders as they are now are built in signaling devices from the core that are used via a secret code, to identify allies from non. This also allows for LUA functionality through the radar that isn't normally available for unknown vessels. I do like this concept, but it feels like a barebones start to it. My thoughts are that the transponder, and receiver to receive said transponder codes, and the energy sensor described in the title, as well as the life sign Detector, should be the things that the radar uses to detect. Radars should be responsible for targeting, sure, but actually finding and identifying things should be for other systems, linked to the radar directly. Let's start with the transponder and receiver. The transponder, in my scenario, is an element linked to the core, which has a list of settings. You can modify it to give a "default" broadcast, or create more specific ones for specific tags. So your transponder will listen to the tags of the nearby ships, if they have any, and respond with a list of given information as denoted by your setting. So you can create a setting for the tag "BOO" that sends everything from ship size to your trajectory to your pvp power, even a detailed list of elements and their hp, etc. Allow for a list of checkboxes bound to each tag, so if you find a ship with an enemies tag on it, it won't be getting all of your info, whilst a ship with a specific tag of an ally could get SOME info. Basically make it so you can determine what info each ship receives from you, which would then be sent to your receiver to be parsed. Now some people might just choose to turn off their transponders, making them virtually invisible to the radars receiver. There should be some fallbacks to rely on. An energy sensor could find cores with active elements for the sake of the radar to target with a very wide range of scanning. This allows you to find ships in the vicinity that are currently "invisible" to your receiver, so long as they're active. From their your radar can allow targeting and voila, pvp. Now if you turn off all systems then you can still be invisible to your enemies. Allowing for an extra step to be taken to avoid combat if you're desperate enough. My third Detector for the radar is a Lifesign Detector which, though self-explanatory, looks for nearby lifesigns. It has a much shorter range than the energy Detector but can allow you to find ships even if they shut everything off. You could forward the lifesign to your radar and allow a shot to be made. Now, I'm not quite sure how PVP is presently coded, so I don't know if this one would work as is, or if it would require a base recode. It's possible that shooting at an individual may not actually hit the ship unless the ship is targeted directly. These options would make PVP more interesting. They would open up options and strategies whilst also giving players more of an option to avoid it altogether. My only final thought is that there should be a manual target mode that, if within a certain range (maybe 1km) allows you to manually target and lock on to a ship regardless of sensors. The only hole left from my previous ideas would be that if everyone logs off and the ship is turned off, you wouldn't be able to target it. This would fix that so long as you could find it. Leave your ideas below. I'd love to hear what you guys think!! If you like these ideas blow this up and get their attention!!! EDIT: I forgot I made an old post about transponders with the image below. This isn't quite the level I'm thinking of now but it might be a good reference for my idea. Picture this but where you have a drop down of tags, each with their own assigned set of checkboxes like this.
  3. I agree for sure, probably rightclick and have a change core button that lets you select 1 from your inventory. It should remove the old core though.
  4. Sorry that was a very ambiguous title. But effectively I just... ITS REALLY HARD DIGGING OUT AN AREA FOR AN UNDERGROUND BASE. Not because it takes time, no, because of the little bITS. Ya'll gave mining a fun little tidbit where it gathers resources around the mining circle if there's little bits left. I think that would be a very VERY good addition to digging as well. Otherwise having a big base underground will be virtually impossible.
  5. I was thinking tonight at work about how me and my org might end up digging out an entire territory and how it would take an hour for each of us to get 2km down with just a regular tunnel, let alone digging out the entire thing. Then I thought about how Grimmstone mentioned to me: and my brain went towards the future of this game. If the endgame goal is the potential for massive organizations of thousands of members owning entire planets, and perhaps even solar systems, then shouldn't it be at least a little easier to terraform a single hex territory? Then I went onto thinking about how to make it cost effective and not overpowered and the balancing of the whole thing and... well here's what I got. A Territory Terraforming Unit could be placed as a ground element, and requires being pumped up with Terra Cells (patent pending, not really) that would cost an exponential amount, based on the total work being done in an operation. How it would work is you interact with it and it would load you into a separate simulated environment of your hex territory, showing a rough estimation of the ground in it. Then you could have tools such as "raise ground" or "lower ground" or "change ground material" etc. You put in these operations and the more work you want done to the territory, the higher the cost. When you click apply, it saves the information to your computer (not to the server, yet) until it can start the process. Then you must feed into it the given amount of Terracells, and press start. This process could take up to a day, depending what all is changing, but would still be so much faster than doing it by hand. The balancing of T-Cells (HAHAHAHAH) depends on what you would want them to cost. If this is a far-late-game item, make it exotic or rare elements. But ultimately I'm expecting a pricing system close to how warp cells work.
  6. I'm hoping RDMS is having some changes because some of it isn't very easy to look at or use. This post, is about that. I think ships shouldn't have their own tags on creation, but rather it should work like the player-lookup system where you can add organizations as well as players. Allow for a search block that lets you look for ships as well as tags, instead of just making ships have their own tags. As well a modified drop-down could include ships and tags being separate from eachother, in their own categories. Next is the rights menu. I find that as RDMS expands into more aspects of the game, the Rights menu is likely to become even more of a pain to navigate. It might need some fancy little UI change to make it work more like the crafting menu. Elements > Containers > Retrieve contents from container, View contents in container, Put items into container Territory > Terraform > Mine in territory Territory > Cores > Place cores on territory Etc. That way, once more and more things are added into the rights and an org has more control over who can do what, it won't just be disgusting to deal with.
  7. The way I see it, Dual Universe will eventually have three primary means of transportation. Impulse (aka regular engines), which take an average of 3 hours between planets, Warp, which takes an average of 27 seconds between planets, and Wormholes (Stargates?) which, may be instantaneous (unclear yet.) I've been working on crunching some numbers to make warp a good amount more balanced with what Dual Universe seems to be attempting to do. Now, I recognize these numbers may not end up meeting your expectations or visions, and that this may have been all in vain, but I do hope you gain insight and ideas based on this post. The first things I would like to focus on is the distance cap on warp drives, as well as the warp speed. Warping through the primary solar system as is, you could find yourself needing to have an extra stop just to end up where you need to go. Jago to Lacobus? That's almost twice the distance a warp drive can go at maximum. I think that if there's ever cross-system travel (depending on the distance you're planning between systems) that this would mean upwards of 20-30 Warp Beacons (or more) just to properly warp. I don't see that as a realistic expectation, though that may be the intent. I think that a goal of warping between systems taking as long as impulse between planets is a good deal. That being said, I don't think systems should, on average, be within warp range. 10,000,000 kmph means 500 SU every 36 seconds. If you wanted to reach the goal of a 3 hours flight to another system, you'd need approximately 300x that, which would be 150,000 SU. At impulse max, c, that would take approximately 41 days of travel time. This is the balancing you currently have between warp and impulse. Let's assume you DON'T want it to take 41 days of travel with impulse, but rather two weeks (as I heard approximated in a Q&A). Then you would need to multiply that 10,000,000 by (14/41) to get 3,414,634 kmph at warp max. Given that speed, three hours of travel would get you 51,219 SU away. I believe a balanced distance cap, would be 25000 SU, or roughly half the inter-system distance. The next point I'd like to make is cost. Let's use the current linear model (approximated) cost = su * tonnes * 0.00023 (Graph A.) This linear model seems to diverge from the standard model that Dual Universe follows, which is that more time means more cost efficient. This model is evident in things like the cost of Tier 1 Scrap vs Tier 4 Scrap, or things like spending more time crafting vs creating an entire industry. This model, however, would make it cost the same to split a journey into 20 trips, than if you did one trip with all of the cargo. Let's use an example. Say I want to haul 2000 tonnes of weight from Jago to Alioth (475 SU) This would be 475*2000*0.00023 which is 218 warp cells. If I wanted to take more time and make multiple trips, I could maybe make it 500 tonnes per trip and make 4 trips. Then the math becomes 4 * 475 * 2000 * 0.00023, which is evident in the math itself that that makes no difference. Graph A (Above) shows the amount of warp cells (z) increasing as distance (y) and mass (x) do. In a recent Q&A, someone mentioned making a exponential rate of cost. I had this idea, along with another.I had the idea of multiple sizes of warp engines and what they would entail. So currently as it stands the only warp drive is the Warp Drive L which weighs 31.36t, has a range of 500 SU, and goes 10,000,000 kmph. If there were multiple sizes of warp drives, we could easily skew up the statistics of them. The sizes would be S, M, L, and XL. Now I believe I heard JC say at some point that the goal is that small ships shouldn't be warp capable. Maybe? I think I heard that. However a small drive could provide some benefits but also some newer limits. I mentioned above a distance cap of 25000 SU. This would be limited based on size, and was just a rough estimate. A small drive, for example, could have a limit of 500 SU (as it currently is.) As well, a small drive would have a different formula for mass cost. Let's show some of my maths now. The formula I've come up with for how you could do the cost, for a standard large warp drive engine, could be cost = SU * 0.01 * 1.002 ^ tonne (Graph B\) Given the above example values of 475 SU and 2000 tonne, this would give a value of 258 cells, which is greater than the 218 above. Now if we decided to split it into those four trips of 500 tonnes, it would become 51 warp cells. However if we talk going max range of 25000 SU, that would be roughly 13,595 warp cells. If we split that into four trips you'd end up with 2715 warp cells. In short, it would make it far more cost effective to take extra time. Graph B (Above) shows the amount of warp cells (z) increasing as distance (y) and mass (x) do. Now, a small warp drive would want a different formula. That way you can't just use a lighter warp drive on a bigger ship to decrease it's mass. This formula would benefit smaller ships but be a detriment to bigger ships. cost = SU * 0.008 * 1.0023 ^ tonne (Graph C) With this formula, doing a 500 SU trip with 50 tonnes amounts to 4.48 cells, vs the 5.5 cells of the above formula. As well, doing it with 2000 tonnes amounts to 395 cells vs the above's 271. Effectively making this a pretty bad thing to use on a larger ship. Graph C (Above) shows the amount of warp cells (z) increasing as distance (y) and mass (x) do. The formulas can vary how you want, I just gave rough approximations and ideas of how it can work. So rather than doing M and XL in this post, I'm going to head over to my next segment: Warmup Time, Cooldown Time, and Minimum Speeds Just like impulse engines, warp drives should have a warmup time. However I don't think this should just be a t50, but rather an engage time to allow your warp drive to turn on and power to full. This would make it take time to actually engage warp, creating potential complications as an easy getaway. As well, warp drives should retain the current cooldown system, however it should be far more punishing. Warp is made to make it easier to travel quickly between planets. And as it stands right now, due to the 500 SU limit, the cooldown is left low to allow for the multi-stop system. However if the distance limit is increased it would deprecate such a low cooldown. I propose an average cooldown time of 1 hour. This way it's still faster to warp between planets, but means that if you accidentally go to the wrong place, you'll have to wait to use it again. This would also create a usage for multiple warp drives on one ship. Less cooldown, effectively. I personally loved how I was able to just create a dynamic core that was just 5 large containers, fill them to the brim, and just strap a warp drive onto it, but let's not kid ourselves here. No. I propose warp drives have a velocity requirement TOWARDS THE TARGET before they are able to be turned on. My approximation for what would be good is 8000 kmph minimum. These above values also add more fun for my next segment: Varieties Just like impulse engines, warp drives should have varieties. The ones I've currently come up with are: Lightweight: A regular warp drive except it weighs less and has fuel cost reduction, with a lower warmup time. Focused: A regular warp drive except it has increased range and fuel consumption, with a higher cooldown time. Hauler: A regular warp drive except it has decreased speed and fuel consumption, with a higher warmup time. These changes, as you can pick and choose what you want (or none at all) could potentially make warp far more useful in a variety of different ways. Instead of just being a flat costed fast travel that you can do whenever you want if you have fuel, it could turn it into a strategic choice between what kind for what ship, based on the desired use. It also gives a point to having multiple on one craft, and negates warp as a quick-escape from PVP scenarios. I hope you guys give this a look and perhaps think about some of these ideas. Thanks for reading all this nonsense!
  8. Adding people to contacts is fun and nice until you realize they can permanently find you. That's... yanno... gonna be troublesome eventually. I don't know your plans for this feature but my recommendation is adding a menu for finding and locking players in a sort-of social tab, but only players you have permission to lock via the RDMS system.
  9. When I go mining, tier 1 veins are generally close to the surface and there's only so many per hex. If I mine down for two hours and end up at -10km, there's absolutely no ores. Well what if there were layers to ores. Now I understand the issues of purely random generation. It's why ore depths are averaged out between their limits. 19-470? average depth of 240. But what if you take that range, and add another one just like it at 1247-1622? And 3534-4011? As well, have a slight increase (talking at most 100% 50km down) that increases vein size the deeper you get. Once resurrection nodes make you lose stuff and you can't just force respawn all the time, it will reward those who haul everything back to the surface. As well it would allow for more ore, which will be necessary as beta comes and player count skyrockets.
  10. Once you reach 2000kmph, you receive an aesthetic visual affect similar to the warping affect in star trek, where little lights fly by. But if you have a ship you can walk around in, those things end up INSIDE your SHIP and it's aNNOYING. They should work like light rays so that they are impeded by voxels or elements.
  11. I believe they explicitly said mining will never be done via ships because then it can be automated and just become a scripting contest.
  12. I've spent awhile wiring up machinery to make industry and I've thought of a minor QoL change that might help. An Easy-Link button as input or output. Select the target, and then just click multiple things to link them to it. Instead of clicking input1 - output - input2 - output - input3 - output you could just easy-link to the output and just click input1, input2, and input3. It would be especially handy for those of us who struggle to run this game as that just increases the frustration with such tasks. QoL all the way!
  13. Post-release, one of the things that caught my eye on the roadmap was "Dual Universe Mysteries: Is there more to this universe than meets the eye?" and it got me curious on ideas of things that could be fun for the community. One of those ideas would be PVE events that happen without warning. Such as an alien invasion like the borg or replicators, or something like that. With that you can have rewards that you give to only a few people, like a Jump Drive that lets you teleport an entire construct aNYWHERE but only two people in the game have it. O.O
  14. Well the territory scanner scans a specific hex and if you scan and don't lock onto things in that hex, then that number might never end up going down, making the territory scanners only useful for high tier things. If it tells me i have 26 kL of quartz, and I scan for quartz and get sent to another hex, it doesn't matter how much quartz is there.
  15. Well they are re-doing the talent system so we'll see how well that edit holds up.
  16. Besides Space Whales, one of the few things I've been wanting lately is new functional elements / cosmetic elements. "No more!" I beg! I propose having an endgame talent once you master an entire talent category (though I know you're redoing how they work, unsure how it will look so this may be dumb) such as Dredger or Avatar that takes a week or so to talent into, and allows you to get a new cosmetic or functional element that only you can craft / place. Perhaps it's a better / bigger / prettier type of engine! Maybe it's a launcher pad or a mini resurrection node. Could be a new type of voxel! The ideas are endless, but I think having them as a reward for talenting into things could be really smart / rewarding.
  17. The territory scanner is nice. Very nice. But the problem I've discovered with it is when you turn on your personal scanner, it doesn't always find things in your hex. "No more!" I beg! I propose a button on the personal scanner that can toggle the ability to only search for ores in your current hex. If you move hexes, it switches ores to the new one. This would allow you to focus on clearing out a hex without worrying it's trying to lure you away like a siren of the sea.
  18. facemywrath

    Pontoon

    I've been living on Jago lately. The main issue I've had to deal with is when i want to land around our seabase, ships fall to the surface floor! "No more!" I beg! My idea is having a flotation device that can be placed on a ship that works like hovers, but only while in water. They use some oxygen-related element as fuel with a pump as the fuel-tank. When activated it uses fuel, but not to remain activated. I think this would help sea-parking, if it allowed it to remain floating after they get out. Since physics don't continue very long, it'd be necessary to make it just freeze there probably.
  19. The ability to strike a ship with lightning, temporarily shutting off it's controls.
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