Fenrave

I had assumed that given there was multiple discussions on this thread about ship based automated defenses(basically using ships/stations interchangeably), that the original topic was not the main topic at hand. Neither was i aware of the ruling, and thats mildly disappointing, regardless that was just my personal opinion on the topic. I'm going to assume by the second point you made that you believe that smaller orgs(as long as their the defender), should have the advantage. Which wouldn't be denied here, since i didn't say anything like that at all. I was speaking in the context of a small org being slammed by a huge attack from a much bigger org, of course they should have the homefield advantage, they would theoretically have many hours to plan ahead and get their members on. My point being was that a small org shouldn't be able to rely on automated defenses, since that would also be scaled to big orgs, where they could have a colossal swarm of automated defenses. Because no matter how you try to balance it, bigger orgs will always have the advantage in resources, manpower and influence. Not saying that they should lose, as i did clarify that they should move out of the way of more aggressive orgs or adopt a mobile strategy. If you're going to start a small org that becomes the target of bigger orgs, sitting still in one place is just asking for trouble, especially if you've done something to anger a bigger org, or they are just be unreasonably aggressive.

I personally think that automated defenses should be limited to their own subset of turrets. You can only get small, mildly inaccurate PDCs as automated defenses. They would be great for small scale fights, such as fending off a pirate, but when scaled up, you might as well be hitting your opponent with what can be compared to spaghetti. Other things to weaken them would probably be a high ammo usage, though that does mean a high fire rate at the same time. If they ate through ammo really quickly, then it would be mildly impractical to install hundreds of them on a ship, since you would need to dedicate a huge portion of your ship to ammo storage. Assuming ammo is combustible when shot, this would obviously become a priority target for anyone aware of it. Naturally other variants this could exist, maybe some more scaled up ones or different weapon types, but overall the premise is the same. Though i have to seriously ask, what kind of situation would a small org need to put themselves in that would warrant such a huge force to come down on them? Its likely that if they did something that pissed off an org to the point where this would happen, that they would be able to man their own turrets or escape before such a situation escalates. Automated defenses should not be the primary damage dealer, it should just be a stop-gap measure. Bigger more powerful turrets should be manned, as to not make everything horribly unbalanced. A small org should not be able to fend off a big org with automated defenses alone. I'd imagine you should always come to expect that a bigger org might want to flex on you, so you should either move out far away or adopt a mobile strategy.

These are just my thoughts, if they are wrong or not the actual case, feel free to correct me. There's also not much that can be said about the game due to the NDA, so somethings are pretty vague and open ended. Though if you want to know more, watch the podcasts for DU on novaquarks channel. a. There has been simulated tests with upwards of 30000 "bots." Now correct me if I'm wrong, but typically running bots is much more intensive than just having someone input the movements themselves. This is all assuming they ran the bots with their own hardware of course, but that's not the point. The servers clearly can handle a lot of people even as of right now, they can probably handle much more once they expand the server and more people start playing. Unless the game got inflated by millions overnight, I doubt server instability will be a common place issue. b. The economy will be entirely player ran and controlled, with presumably little intervention if any at all from NQ. Its tough to say if it will work, since it would actively require a large of amount of people to keep it running. I don't think NQ will make NPCs to stimulate the market quite like SC will do, at least in the long term. c. I think this really isn't said enough and seems to be ignored, even by me sometimes, but DU is still a game, it has people from many different backgrounds. Whether they be German or an edgy 13 year old making phallic shaped ships, creativity will run rampant and imposing rules will only hamper it. This is will probably be an inevitable issue, not much could be done in the way of preventing abandoned ships or space debris from forming. Though like real life, junkyards will most definitely form and many people and probably orgs will make it their job to salvage abandoned ships that they can then sell off or scrap. I definitely imagine starting worlds eventually getting to the point where there's thousands of ships in orbit, or just junk all over the planet. d. You might be disappointed, but I'd suggest that you might want to get used to this fact. Accounting for physics in a single continuous universe with millions of people moving in and out, blowing stuff up or building ships, would be very impractical to say the least. I believe they are going to eventually work on orbital mechanics, but as of now they are non-existent e. PVP will probably resemble space engineers combat. Not much else to say since it might be under NDA, but i know that safe zones will only be around the starting planets, and that there will be no universal law system.(Since they haven't announced or discussed such a thing to my knowledge) So, i really don't know, if you want to support the project then i'd say yeah go for it. You aren't really losing much if you contribute 60 dollars, and you get access to the alpha tests, which could definitely give you more of an insight than what we could give.

Star wars handles most fuel sources quite similarly to this, but instead of using real gases(hydrogen, helium, etc), they use Tibanna gas, which is used for everything, from fueling their guns to their reactors. DU could have something similar, as I'd imagine, hydrogen would not be sufficient for futuristic technology that might be using more than the yearly energy usage in north America. Having some kind of special gas resource would only add to the economy, and create more jobs and opportunities for the market. Using cloud city from star wars as an example, players could build huge orbital refineries that either scoop up the gas or suck it up from the atmosphere. Cities and important space stations could either form from these, or near these. It does create quite a few fun possibilities, such as experiencing total economic free fall after multiple of these stations go up in flames because of the highly combustible gas, and subsequently causing the stations to slowly drift towards the gas giants core. Which then causes the price of this fuel to sky rocket due to a shortage, which might just make rebuilding these refineries even slower. That being said, this gas shouldn't just be exclusive to gas giants, you should be able to source it from planets, similar to how we source our helium supplies currently. So people stranded aren't just out of luck, they would just have to make a long trek to some kind of geothermal vent or synthesize it from the rocks or whatever.

@NanoDot I was speaking in reference to Aarons post, where he posed a situation that everyone at the launch, would get roughly 5k quanta to begin with.(I presume, regardless of playtime) Hence:

With hindsight and reading those other threads relating to the topic, I have to admit i didn't really think of the idea in that way. I was mostly thinking of it from the perspective of pure optimism, but clearly thats an unrealistic standard. The idea of a voluntary system is pretty intriguing, although that wouldn't really require any form of scripted implementation on novaquarks part.

Just to add insult to injury, we have to consider how many people may just stop playing on day 1 for whatever reason. In addition to the more wealthy playerbase just eventually leaving. Both of those just further reduces the available quanta as a whole. Not just widening the wealth gap, but making "trickle down" economics impossible.

This topic is an offshoot of this thread (for contexts sake) Since DU is placing an emphasis on civilization building, I find that some form of a prison system will be a must. Without one, the only punishments that would be feasible is: 1. fines or appropriation 2. kill orders Fines are potentially impossible to enforce, especially if the currency in-game is decentralized, you could take someones ship until their pay a fee, but given the ease of building ships, I'd imagine this would be pointless for griefers or new players. Kill orders would require a lot of work to carry out, in addition to just flat out removing due process; What happens if someone who happens to be good friends with the local "police" force claims that you did something illegal/against the rules? They'll either hunt you down, or wait until you show up to kill you, was there evidence of this supposed crime? Maybe, maybe not, but that could have been determined if you were thrown in jail and went through the legal process. Without a proper prison system, there would be no method for civilizations to stay democratic or pacifistic. Obviously some problems with this idea are as follows: 1. Unfair legal codes 2. Insanely long prison sentences 3. Abuse of the system Most, if not all of the time, the enforcement of laws is often up to the population as a whole. If people agree that the law saying you can't wear yellow on Saturdays is absurd and stupid, chances are, most people are not going to enforce it. Long prison sentences could closely moderated by novaquark themselves, I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to check every couple days to see if a prison is carrying out sentences longer than a week, especially if it becomes publicly known that someone has been in jail for an awfully long time. Abuse of the system for smaller groups of griefers or pirates could be solved, maybe by limiting who can establish a prison to sufficiently large enough/established societies. What would set the limit for these? I don't know. But i do know that the benefits are pretty good. I don't personally think i would be inclined to grief if i knew i could risk spending half a day in a virtual prison, If i was just killed, I'd probably do it again. Griefing is fun because its quick and often easy, but if you have to spend hours in a prison wasting your potential play time, then griefing might become not so easy and quick, it would be more of a chore, as to prevent being arrested. (as an fyi, the linked thread suggests that the players would still have to catch you however, stun weapons could potentially be an effective means of enforcing a prison system as to stop people from just letting you kill them, or to run away.)

A finite currency sounds wonderful on paper, and for some good reasons: 1. It would have a stable price, no runaway printing of currency that drastically lowers the price and destroys the economy. Just kidding, that's probably the only good reason that everyone could agree on. It still has the problem of people accumulating loads of wealth and never spending it, and the value of it would still fluctuate pretty wildly as the market figures out its value, especially since its not backed by anything, and inflation would be non-existent. Now instead of built in currency, I'd suggest letting players, or bigger factions just print their own currencies instead. Let the players determine the value of the currencies, and punish irresponsible groups for making their own currency worthless Germany style. I'd imagine this would players handle how their own currency works; one group could experiment with the finite currency, another could back the value and quantity of their currency based on a certain resource, or just do a fiat currency. This is truly the only way to figure out which is best, as we could cite examples from other MMOs that handle the early game and resources much more differently from DU all day long, until novaquark just makes a decision on their own.

A slavery system(i doubt the team at novaquark would make an actual system people could use, so lets assume its player driven), is logistically and fundamentally impossible for dual universe as far as i can tell so far. There is no way to make people work for you, there is no way to stop them from running away. It would just be a complete pain for any large group of griefers or pirates to ever make use of it. Assuming people might use slaves, say in a factory setting, whats going to stop them from just ruining your production line? I'd imagine the closest you could get to slavery is a form of indentured servitude. You could impound peoples vehicles and force them to work or else you scrap their ship, or some other valuables that they may not want to leave simply by attempting to kill themselves. Though this does begin to raise questions about automation, and why you would ever need a workforce of players who may have inconsistent hours, or ones that might just intentionally leave the game to grind whatever you had them doing to a halt, and excuse it with a "family emergency," when you can simply just automate your factory and try to cut out players as much as possible as to avoid these problems. Stun weapons are not the tools of a slaver; they would only serve as a means of self defense or as a means of incapacitating people who have broken the law.(As arbitrary as said laws may be, even though in a game thats probably going to have people who are more aware of terrible law systems, i doubt unreasonable laws, in most player driven societies at least, would ever take hold, or be tolerated.)

Call me crazy, but how would a civilization in DU, let alone a living economy, function without a proper legal system? Fines would almost be unenforceable, and kill orders just throw out due process entirely. Sure the laws would be arbitrary and sometimes ridiculous, but given that more sensible legal codes would obviously be respected and followed, anything absurd will just be ignored by any person with common sense. A prison system exists as a deterrent to stop people from committing crimes that don't necessarily need the death penalty. What more to compliment a system like this than a non-lethal weapon that solely exists to incapacitate people? Stun guns will be abused, that's indisputable, but griefers won't be able make much effective use of them if they're already in jail for, well, griefing. Obviously stun weapons will still be abused, but in what capacity? Stunning someone doesn't really do much, assuming there isn't pick pocketing mechanics associated with it. Maybe kidnapping some high level official for ransom? Well that would just be more interesting and intriguing to see, than an actual problem. As for slavers, you would be kind of ignoring the elephant in the room; what use would slaves be good for? mining? You can't just throw people on a planet and tell them to mine, they'll just figure out a way to escape and waste the slavers time. You can't make them mine asteroids since they could just float away in various directions, forcing you to kill them or to recapture them, again wasting their time. Not like you could force them to produce things for you either, since killing them isn't permanent. In fact, that does also show some holes in the mentality that kill orders are better than prisons. Death isn't permanent, its quick and easy to get through. Prison on the other hand? Thats slow and not so easy to get through, in fact its a pretty good deterrent all things considered. I wouldn't want to steal from someone knowing i risk being thrown into a jail for half the day, as it would waste so much of my time. If i was just killed right away however? Well gee golly, I'll just do it again the next time i get the chance, especially if i have nothing to lose.