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.  

I have never understood people who pay to subscribe to an MMO game just to play by themselves. It is counter-intuitive to break game features built for players who actually want to work and play together just to accommodate people who want to never interact with anyone else in the game.  
      They've said that the idea of having "billions of planets" is a nice marketing term but that's not really the point. They are more interested in having populated planets than they are giving everyone their own planet.
 
The idea of getting your own planet is for the people who made the effort to come together and put in the work necessary to get to one, either for resources or whatever number of possible reasons. And really, if they put in all that effort, they should get the fruits of their work. 
 
Coupled with the recent AMA response about how the skill system will work, time based like Eve Online, it doesn't really sound like new players will even have the exploration option open up immediately to them without first training the appropriate skills.
 
 
 
The "hate" on "freeform" travel is because it doesn't align at all with what we've been told about the plans for the game. What we've been told makes it unlike like any construction based space exploration game on the market right now, and it being different is why we're here.
 
There are already plenty of games out there that offer solo play and the ability to travel quickly around space and build whatever they want. Why try to change DU to be just like all of those games? I don't want more of the same thing, I want something new. Many of us do.

They never said anything about making it easier for later players to reach new stars (outside of stargates), what they said was:
 

"Flying from a planet to another should be a real achievement in our game vision. So it would not be available on the first day of the official release. If a player is here from day 1, it might be weeks, maybe a few months before the travel from planet to planet becomes possible. This is still a topic heavily discussed in the team. However, later on in the game, when the global tech level of civilizations built by the players will have reached a certain point, it will be possible for a new comer to simply buy or be given a ship to fly with as soon as he arrives in game (he will still need to learn a few skills to be able to fly it however, but the basic levels should be reachable between a few minutes and a few hours, according to the flying construct complexity). In short, the game experience for a player present from day 1 might be very different from the game experience of a player coming several months after the game has launched, also different from the game experience of a player entering the game one year after official launch (where many solar systems will be, without a doubt, already discovered and colonized)."
 
 
And on the topic of Stargates and travelling to distant stars they've stated it will take months for probes to reach their destinations before players can travel to them and construct the other end of their stargate, there was nothing stated about making it easier for new players to just immediately travel to distant stars without stargates.
 
 
 
Also, those "unfun" RP mechanics are the reason many of us are here, and have been so active on the forums, and why we've gone out of our way to make player organizations based on the little we know about the game.
 
How could you possibly say they'd be "really bad for the game if implemented" without knowing anything about the game as it is? You're applying that logic in the hopes that the game will be like Eve Online, which aside from some basic mechanics and the world being a sandbox, DU is going to be anything but Eve Online. 
 
Those of us who have been most vocal in our support of DU are the ones hoping for a feature rich game that is both difficult and rewarding, not a theme park playground where everything is given to us without much effort or patience. I can't see how having to work towards something and needing patience is "unfun", especially in a game where they expect it to take us weeks or months to even reach space in the first place. 
 
If I wanted a game where I could just jump into a ship and fly anywhere I wanted immediately without any effort or survival mechanics, I'd just play No Man's Sky. 
 
I want a game where people have to work together to create amazing structures in space, where trade and the economy are a core part of the game dictated by players, where establishing a new planetary colony is something to be proud of and not something anyone can do overnight, where going to war involves more than just throwing manpower and ships into battle, where every choice a player makes has an impact on the world around them.
 
I want a game that has a living breathing world, and you can't really do that without survival mechanics of some type, otherwise we'll just end up with Everquest Landmark in space.

One area in which the benefit of multi-crewed ships would be apparent in combat is with respect to repair.  The devs have already mentioned the role of players in actively moving around large ships repairing damaged systems in real time, and this is likely something automated systems in the game would not be able to accomplish.

Everything depends on how the "autiomation" will be balanced. I personally do not expect a single guy driving a huge ship by his own, with scripts all over it. There will probably be automated turrets in game without even the need for scripts, and those will be way less powerful than the ones that requires a player to aim manually. or they should find another way to balance it, but for sure, a player driven ship will be way stronger than a 1 man army, or the game wouldn't work. 

I don't know if any of you have played Artemis, but if you haven't, you should look into how that plays out.

Sure the different Elements will provide different controls and such. It would be relatively possible for a single person to maneuver a ship. But when you factor in sensors, movement, defenses, offenses, etc etc, there simple isn't enough WAYS a player can operate it singly.

Having specific stations for people with devoted screens with the fine details of that section, so Weapons control, Communications control, engineering, maneuvering, And maybe all the inputs feeding up to a captain who only sees the bigger picture indications and relies on his crew to do their job. This would be the best ship. The Outlaw Star of the galaxy. Multi-manned ships will begin to easily out perform single manned ships, even with advancements in AI control.

This will start the break down of the different classes of ship. There could be large single man frigates, multi-manned destroyers, etc. Dual-piloted fighters that have a pilot and a gunner so that one focuses on dodging and positioning while the other focuses on aiming and countermeasures.

...I sorta like Dual Universe a lot now.

Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but micromanaging is what the LUA scripts are for. And you can't expect having such a powerful tool for free. I would suggest reading the devblog on what you just described. And Fusion Reactors need fuel, it's called hydrogen, and battleships run on fuel, DPUs (who are like CPUs), will need power. They confirmed there will be pipelines to bring power to different screens, modules etc. This is not EVE 2.0 with arbitrary HP points. You blow a ship's power grid off, you gutted them good.  
 
And where would you dock to refuel? The non-existing NPC docks? Players will make the fuel. Players will make the docks. And players want money. Ain't nobody building things for pretty's sake.
 
 
 
Yes, indeed, there should be an energy - string-of-commands ratio on how much a DPU consumes. Also, how a builder of a ship handles the cost vs the effectiveness of the ship is what the voxel building system is for and will show who has skill at making good ships, as the ships will have mass depending on materials. So, you can build a ship out of steel, but it will be heavy, OR you can build the ship's frame out of steel and its hull and outfit the interior with lesser grade materials of your choice, then balance the thrusters so the ship is not derpy on its flight and then you manage the amount of power cores. A good example would be the Titans in EVE. 
 
 
Sure, you can build the Titans of EVE in Dual, but it would take time for people to figure out the correct materials, fuel efficiency and how to fly iit. Dual is not a point and click adventure on a flat map like EVE is. A ship has to have thrusters above and below it to move up and down (similar to Space Engineers) and guess what, an accelerating, massive ship, will have to put more power into its thrusters to avoid an enemy ships broadside in a firing run. Again, this won't be like EVE's combat system where two ships stand across one another and pew pew, with random numbers dictating the outcome. DUAL aims for a lock-on system and those automated lock-ons of a ship like a Titan, would have to be powered to provent solo players from building them, but giving big organisations with resources a reason to establish dominance.
 
If you find calculating center of mass, researching ways of reducing mass on a ship and the correct way to build a ship's frame or having to learn how to script in LUA, then I am afraid that building ships is not for you. But hey, you can be the best pilot that ever's going to be. 
 
 
Peace good sirs.

I think one player should be able to control big ships, but ship, that controled by team should have great advantage. So even bigger and more powerful ship with one player on board should lose in fight with smaller ship but with crew.

I think it should ,if possible, be up to you. If you have enough friends to man your ship every time you go into the game and get to play that way fine. But most people cant coordinate that well or might have friends in different time zones, so I think if you need a crew it should be either NPC or player, since many will prefer NPC so they will always be there when you need them.

First, I see another Captain is in here. Good .


And ships will be up to you to decide how many guns you put on them and you can't aim everywhere on your own. You have to have people aiming for you, since the LUA script units, the DPUs, will probably run on power and you know, you don't want power to be diverted on tasks you can have actual people doing, since power, means fuel, menas more cost for your ship to keep going.