Captain

First of all, according to the devs, there are only two forms of propulsion in the game right now, hover engines, which will let you get up to 1km off the ground, and your normal thrusters that will take you into orbit. There are no wheels or other "ground based" vehicles. You will be flying, hovering or walking. I see no reason why you couldn't build a large mining vessel like described above to work in atmosphere. And from the sound of things, you're going to need something like that early in game, because you're not going to log on, mine for an hour, and be in space. You're going to spend some time on the ground before you rocket off into space. And as far as fuel costs.... if you're in a mining vessel, and fuel is mined like Uranium or Ice in Space Engineers.... doesn't it make sense that you would be mining fuel too? Wouldn't you then be fueling yourself as you go? Bam. Fuel problem solved. This does bring up one question in my mind... if everyone starts off in the same arcship and has to mine.... at what point is the arcship the only thing left on the planet? Does the server reset all the mined areas of the planet, like EvE regenerates asteroid belts? Because you know there is a carebear organization out there somewhere who's only goal in life will be to mine an entire planet. And if so, how does the game differentiate between a massive hole dug solely for mining purposes, and a hole I dug to hide my base in, but I ran out of time to place a structure in there before the server reset all the mined areas.... I'm glad I just play and comment on the games. lol.

Pay to play is the way to go. I can't think of a cheaper hobby than 15 bucks a month to sink endless amounts of hours into. You make a game worthy of my time, and I will gladly hand out 15 bucks a month to play. Plus, it gives me 4 months to figure out if I like the game before I reach the $60 amount a new game goes for these days. EvE Online has sustained itself for 10+ years on this model, and I hope DU will do the same.

As long as it is more advanced than Space Engineers, I'm happy.

I like the way you think good sir. This is exactly what I was thinking, and hoping for with this game.

I have no problem with refueling a ship with say, uranium, like in Space Engineers, as long as the fuel is fairly easy to obtain and doesn't get used up ridiculously fast. I agree that dealing with minutia can get very tedious, but it also adds to the emersion of the game. Finding a good balance between the two is what makes a great game. I also have no problem with AI cores taking up more energy that if the system was operated by a human. There has to be a trade off between automation vs. player controlled, be it power consumption or effectiveness of the system, or else you risk knocking the game out of balance.

Okay, thanks, I hadn't read up on the LUA scripts and DPUs yet. I think that really helps sort out the problem in my head. And I assume a skilled human crew would be able to handle the controls better than a script.... that's an interesting design choice too. Man, the possibilities with this game are endless!

Hey all! I'm curious as to the functionality of larger ships and the ships systems. I've seen in the videos put out by the devs so far that large stations will have control rooms and each display will show certain ship systems readouts on them. My question is this... will large "Capital" ships be able to be controlled by one person, or will the larger ships and stations need to be manned and controlled by multiple players. For example, can a single player control piloting the ship, shields, weapons, engines, etc. or do you need a gunner, helmsman, engineering, etc.? tldr: will ships have AI to run ships systems or are players required for each system? In my opinion, you should have to have a player assigned to each major ship system, if not each turret, on the ship. This requirement will keep "mega organizations" (like Goonswarm used to be in Eve) from bringing hundreds of large ships into a fight and being able to do whatever they want whenever they want. Instead, they'd be able to bring a smaller number of ships with greater functionality to the battle, thus giving smaller organizations a chance. (think rebel alliance vs. the empire) Your thoughts?