Volkier

So now that the patch notes are officially out - specifically that the % chance to hit now goes off angle and cross section (awesome change, thank you NQ) and weapons can only be fitted on a ship with the same size core or lower (also awesome change, thank you NQ) - I would like to query a very important question which got left out of the equation: What is the disadvantage to having an L core on literally every ship? Say you have an S or an M ship (XL ok, trying to fit an L core will be pushing it) - what would be the disadvantage to simply not copying that exact ship onto an L core? You get the advantage of the core having more HP, the ability to use larger weapons, and your cross section and chance to be hit (and also locked) remains the same. What would be the cons vs. pros of doing this? Please don't say "durr it's going to cost more to make an L core" - that's not a valid argument when it comes to mega corps and pvp focused groups. Am I missing something or are XS - M cores now basically practically worthless and obsolete if you plan to fly somewhere where you can get shot?

Sure. That's already the case. You would get to the point of where you spent way more on scrap repairing the same thing that broke repeatedly than you would have if you bought a new one. Unless you are referring to the real world where it becomes more expensive to repair something since the parts have gone up in price due to obsolescence - which artificially drives up costs due to lack of production. Transferring this to the game would be NQ releasing T3 engines that cost the same to manufacture 6 months from now, T4 engines another 6 months and so on. Lastly realism is a welcome dynamic in games when it increases player immersion, thus in turn increasing escapism from reality. It is not a welcome dynamic however, when it makes the game less immersive by implementing the negative aspects of reality people are trying to get away from in their daily lives by playing the game. Not quite relevant to the topic as durability isn't a thing in reality - but there is a reason we don't have to urinate in the game every few hours, don't get a cold, have to have your character sleep else they become sleep deprived and balance a well nutritioned diet to avoid indigestion. There are games that implement these mechanics to an extent - aka. survival games - and where those mechanics can be implemented well enough to work well in the genre. This is not the genre for that however, nor do any of those mechanics ever push themselves to the extreme of full reality for the same reason. Realism should always be promoted for the sake of immersion, not reality.

I agree that the current system is a little too forgiving, but durability is not the solution. Hence my proposal - it's aiming to try and compromise with as many alternative thoughts and viewpoints as possible, as it creates a sink for elements and components in the market, keeps the current dynamic of repairing elements during combat, makes taking damage a lot more serious and even expands on the gameplay by introducing a new type of playstyle. Basically a win-win for majority of the playerbase involved is far superior than a loss for the vast majority of people who DON'T want durability. And I say vast majority because durability has been the single most hated mechanic in every single game I can think of to date (where it was created in a similar design to the proposed one in devblog) from the first time any multiplayer game has attempted to implement it. I'd love to be proven wrong in a poll of sorts - and would welcome NQ to poll their playerbase as to how many people actually support durability vs. how many don't.

So I'll start off with re-iterating what I've already mentioned in another thread - having "finite" Durability mechanic has been universally hated by gamers since the mid-90's, and is the worst possible step backwards for this game that I can imagine, that will: - Turn off a large chunk of playerbase - Make replacing destroyed elements hours long endavour due to "element already blocked by another element" error forcing you to strip half your ship before replacing the one thing in order - Create an insane gap between large orgs and small orgs / solo players - Make everything in the game less fun - from building, to general flying, to PvP - Is a survival mechanic that people have repeatedly stated they did not want over the entirety of the development of Dual Universe. Both in forums, discord, private groups etc. The only rational and viable reason I can see why durability would be introduced, is to provide a supply sink and increase demand for new elements, so as the economy does not collapse due to playerbase saturating itself with everything they need to build. (I do have to interject that there will always be players leaving the game, there will always be new players joining the game, there will always be existing players building and creating bigger and more things, the market is showing no signs of being unhealthy, there is absolutely no reason to.... ok /rant off, just had to get that off my chest) Now rather than whining about it without offering solutions, here is a win-win alternative that would not require any massive amount of rework or alterations to the current gameplay that should NOT ONLY appease both the people who want durability (I'm assuming for the following reason) and those who would rather run a cheese grater over their knees every time they wake up than see it ruin the game we are all passionate about - but also make the game more fun as a standalone mechanic, allow for easy balancing at a later stage, AND open up an entire new playstyle and career prospect in DU. So Anyway: Problem: Economy saturation requiring completed element sink Proposed solution: - Keep scrap and element repair functioning exactly the same as it is. - Scrap will no longer be produced directly from raw ore. Scrap by ore will be replaced by scrap by tier (eg. iron scrap replaced with T1 scrap. Gold scrap replaced with T4 scra.) - Introduce a "reclaimer" industry element (or add a recycler mode - the first just seems easier). - "Reclaimer" industry only has a "start" and "stop" switch. None of the whole industry of run maintain etc. That just seems to be more work and more difficult for the devs. Unless they want to use that system - in which case that would work just as well (we would just need more than one reclaimer for multiple elements) - "Reclaimer" industry will yeet any fully assembled element from the [linked input] container - such as engines, fuel tanks, windows etc. - and process them back into a fraction of raw materials and a bit of each type of scrap - The quantity and tier of scrap produced would depend on the quantity and tier of raw materials that were used to make the element in the first place. This means the game has already pre-balanced this system, as small components like lights that require T2 or T3 resources would yield less scrap but of higher tier, large components such as engines would yield a lot of scrap but at tier 1. Yeeting something like a warp drive on the other hand would give back a bunch of low - high tier components and low - high tier scrap. This also opens up the possibility to add new skill trees, as well as balancing the whole system by simply changing how much of raw materials are returned, how much is turned into scrap, and how much 'disappears' due to efficiency loss. Further, allowing the placement of this industry on dynamic cores, would open up entire career as scavaging ships that are designed to nom on other ships that have been captured or found derelict in space - as well as the dynamic gameplay whereby running out of scrap in the middle of space would require the pilot to make decisions of what components (if any) they can afford to recycle on the spot. Overall you get: - Economy sink for completed elements (which basically solves the problem that 'durability' is supposed to fix) - Incentive for people to look for derelict ships - or create derelict ships from other people when it comes to PvP - More engaging gameplay when it comes to repairing in the middle of combat - Expands the salvaging profession into scavenging, as well as creating a salvaging sub-profession - Creates the possibility of another class of ships being built that follow large org' fleets to "clean up" after a fight - Creates options for new skill trees - Allows for easy re-balancing tweaks at a later stage without drastically changing the system - Is still new player and solo player friendly as there are always elements to recycle (considering you start off with a bunch of stuff) - Uses existing already implemented and tested mechanics of linking containers and industry. - Overall win-win for everyone as it expands gameplay and makes it more fun - UNLIKE durability which does the opposite for both accounts (yes I had to say it again). Alternatively, if someone else has any ideas, that would be good too. Basically at this point, anything would be better than proposed durability changes. I'll go as far as to say that completely removing player markets and player driven economy would be better than proposed durability changes. Ok maybe not, but you get the picture. EDIT: Also alternatively - a simple RNG for a % for an element to get perma-destroyed when your core goes boom - would still be a superior mechanic that creates whatever element sink and necessity the current system does with practically none of the disadvantages listed above. Hell, if there's a minimum % of elements destroyed mechanic - even if it's as low as 1% - would encourage people to actually put decorative elements and whatnot on their ships.

So just to further play a devils advocate - which area would a ship that does two or three of the things fit into? Like something that can do a bit of cargo, yet is still small and light enough to function as a shuttle and is designed with first person immersion in mind so has a bit of glamour but is still functional (this is an example off the top of the head, not claiming to have a ship like that - you can mix and match any number of roles for another example to make the same point)

Wouldn't be an issue with districts as you're pretty much always within the range of your ship's linked container. As for trap bases and general traps - I don't see anything wrong with it. Having traps gives us players more choices with regards to how we venture around the Duniverse. It gives exploration a bit more depth, finding 'abandoned bases' more interesting and an adventure as it could potentially be a trap, and players who do want to make trap bases the creativity to one up each other. Ultimately, the only way you are going to trap someone in districts if is the person walks into the trap. As for everywhere else, it needs to remain the wild west that was promised, as not knowing what to expect is what keeps the game alive, enjoyable, interactive and overall fun. I would rather be "griefed" by negative player interaction, than be surrounded by a safety bubble in the form of arbitrary "anti griefing rules" set by the developers. If I wanted the later, I'd play a single player game (there's plenty of single player titles to choose from).

Durability will kill the game. People have said "we don't want survival mechanics" for the past 4 years. This goes against what NQ has promised the game to be. If they want to re-work how elements are fixed up, that would be a welcome change. Durability is just the worst possible way to do it. Simply adding a "deconstructor" that strips elements into their raw crafting components and a "repair hub" that repairs any element using the raw crafting components with the scrap limiting how much it can repair to 50% will solve all the "issues" that people claim to exist which require a durability mechanic. And it will encourage people to PvP since now you don't get some crappy ship that you will never use and will scrap for elements anyway out of it.

I'd make this sound as diplomatic as I can, but I do apologise if it sounds like I'm raging or venting - because I sort of am. This mechanic is the absolutely the worst idea imaginable not only for the current state, but also the overall atmosphere of the game. For the love of everything holy, if anyone at NQ stumbles over this, I urge you to reconsider - at the very least based on the sheer volume of feedback you have gotten over the past 5 years of development where people explicitly stated they don't want this to become a survival type of a game. I'll use bullet points from this point onwards as I cannot articulate my arguments without the sheer volume of disappointment otherwise: - Replacing destroyed elements on ship builds would become impractical and impossible due to how clipping of elements currently works. You will need to strip off half the ship to place an element in it's original position, because the original position is 'too close' to another element - so you'd need to replace everything in order. This will only further encourage box ships taking away from immersion and spirit of the game. - Arbitrary system of "this element got destroyed X times = perma death" would make ships with a couple of elements that were already damaged before obsolete, as players would try to replace those at first opportunity. If anything, this just seems like a fundamentally the worst possible and the least practical way of implimenting the mechanic. - This is further expanding on the first point - but mechanics like this work in games like Eve because you have a pre-existing number of hard points to which you slot in desired modules. It takes a matter of minutes if you have the modules in your inventory. It would NOT work in a game where you would need to spend hours replacing one element due to placement priority on a ship. It would NOT work when some elements can break and other elements can break at another time. Other building games that started off with this, had to implement game mechanics to fix the issue - Empyrion with repair projectors that automatically fix up your ship, space engineers with nanite bots etc. And those games have a "clip to box" build system, not a free standing one like DU. DU is going BACKWARDS by implimenting this. - The whole "but muh economy needs money sinks!" argument - to date - has been a myth. Markets haven't crashed. Prices haven't plummeted. There will always be people leaving the game. There will always be people abandoning constructs. There will always be new people joining the game needing stuff. There will always be existing people building more and bigger stuff. If money sinking becomes a requirement, add element disassembler that strips an element to it's base component (at reduced efficiency if you want), add a mechanic where you can only repair using scrap to 50% of element's hp and efficiency while simultaneously adding a repair module that repairs using crafting components. Make the mechanic fun and challenging. The current proposal is literally the worst way you could impliment it. - If you want harder penalties for crashing your ships - which I fully 100% support, claiming destroyed cores needs to return for a start, or/and increase the cost of scrap, or give people options to use components INSTEAD of scrap to instantly repair an element. Again, make the game more interactive, fun and challenging. Not less. -

It's not so much a matter of laziness - but rather registering yet another login account with yet another website. Make registration not require an account and you'd get a lot more traffic. That said, looking forward to the phase 2 portion to throw a ship in the mix

Thank you Naunet - appreciate the response.

Just to re-iterate: I've never salvaged a single player wreck to date, and I absolutely despise the kid glove style of change. If I screw up and crash, as a player, I want that sense of urgency and uncertainty of whether my ship is going to be there. As a player, I want that type of game interaction. I want "vultures" to exist and try to sell me my ship back if they claim it, or alternatively attempt to outmaneuver them while running back to my wreck. Negative player interaction drives positive player interaction, thus all player interaction as a result - which can only benefit the playerbase and the game. We are not here to play a single player game, we are not asking for pve mechanics to be removed - we NEED sanctuary type planets for players to learn - I can understand and respect that BUT we also still need the overall game physics and mechanics to exist there too, or heck, even a planet like Alioth which is currently in the blue sector but outside of sanctuary - as a compromise. If NQ representatives are still reading this tread, I urge you to re-evaluate the crash nerf decision - which is the way I see it more so than salvaging nerf (since I've never done the later, but have the former). What the OP said with regards to this removing more emergent gameplay is 110% spot on. And not just for the scavengers. On a flip side - NQ is opening the can of worms now to having to write a new set of arbitrary rules into the registar, as a penalty for people "griefing" by crashing dozens of XS cores into markets or player bases, since the built-in game mechanic that would have prevented this has been removed.

A link would help as it's not showing up with search... On a flip side - I can kinda see a whole bunch of people building a whole bunch of ships, purposely crashing them into the markets and leaving them there in protest against the change XD

It's unfortunately incentivised for third person flying. I would have preferred them to - while giving you the option to go into third person during flight - keep LUA scripts to physical in game screens (elements) instead of widgets to display relative information - which would remove the cube meta and incentivise people to build around proper cockpits with screens if they want telementary and information. But hey, we can't all have what we want I guess XD

Considering how much warp cells cost to make or buy, I'd say it's fairly balanced right now. And this is from someone who routinely flies through pvp space. Not to mention that warpdrives would cease to be insta-safe button once planetary pvp is introduced. If it becomes a major problem at a later stage, I'd far prefer NQ to be looking at some sort of ECM style weaponry, radar jamming countermeasures, and jamming countermeasures countermeasures (if that makes sense) On that note, I have no issues with the current balance mechanic as well. More crew should not instantly mean a better ship. Build a ship specific to a role, and that ship should excel in that role. With the exception of how tracking currently works based on the gun size vs. the core it's shooting, creating a scenario where an XS core will never be hit by an L core at the same range while shooting at the L core - regardless of what type of guns the L core has opted for. However, this is already being addressed by NQ from what they've said with regards to what weapons can be equipped on what cores and whatnot. EDIT: And I know it's kinda a late edit - but you DO realise that they are already planning to add planetary PvP and remove the safe bubbles around planets right? Which would mean that warp drives are no longer safe. This is already planned and promised. Everyone just needs to wait rather than asking for a re-balance now, then another re-balance to fix the first re-balance, then re-balance again after planet pvp is added. Like the system isn't broken, it's just literally not fully made yet.

Completely agree. Safe zone or no - it should be up to players to design their ships around their flying capabilities or accept the risk vs. reward if they overload their ship. If your game crashes, your ship stops anyway. To date I have yet to salvage a single ship, so I am by far biased in this assessment as this was never a source of income for me - but removing such features and basic elements of risk is a major step backwards in the game. As for "griefers building invisible walls" - you guys do realise that radars exist and you can set them to show you static cores right? Removing features and limiting gameplay should never be an option or a consideration in my humble opinion. As long as players have reasonable means to circumvent it - which in this case there is - NQ needs to let us players figure out how to interact with each other and stop trying to micro-manage and social engineer the community. I would far rather deal with griefers in the game than the developers neutering the gameplay or setting arbitrary rules around how the griefers grief me.

Oh don't get me wrong - there are far more possibilities than in space engineers with DU, but we need basic tools to utilise those instead of playing the guessing game as to what the voxels are going to 'clip' to: - Visible mesh of voxel corners and a tool allowing us to move those corners (or just type in the x,y,z for those points manually) - this would cut down on the stress tremendously and already uses in game mechanics of how voxels behave - all that's needed is a visual and player input - Ability to alternate between voxels meshing to whatever you are placing, and whatever you are placing meshing to existing voxels. - Copy paste actually copying and pasting an existing shape without ANY deformation of that shape. Pasted shape should override ANY voxelmancy that exists in that space, or randomly wants to create itself and deform random parts of the pasted blocks. - Option to place a voxel without affecting existing voxels or the voxel you are placing (I get that the last one might be a lot more tricky to made functional as to how the engine treats voxels though) EDIT: - This is probably the easiest - "Straighten tool" - un-deforms selected voxels into their original placed shape. Any of the above would make building actually fun and enjoyable instead of hours and hours of battling against voxels that do whatever they want, and every time you think you are beginning to understand the 'science' in their behaviour, they do some arbitrary and random BS that blows whatever theory you had out of the water.

This. ESPECIALLY this: -For the love of god don't do voxelmancy ripples, bulges and bumps on only 90° and 45° lines... Please give us a way to see and erase those metadatas. What would take me half an hour or an hour at most on games like space engineers or empyrion - which only give you blocks and significantly limit you to the preset shapes of the said blocks, takes me DAYS currently on dual universe and still comes out messy because voxels keep trying to merge with each other when I'm trying to get a clean angle or corner. It should be the other way round - considering how much more should be possible with Dual Universe engine, but instead of giving us the flexibility and options to mould voxels whichever way we see fit, it's a constant fight against the voxels deforming themselves whenever you place another set against them.

I'm really confused over the information proved for airfoils - specifically the lift / drag stats and their measurement being given in degrees. For example: - A small aileron Lift/Drag = 9.0 degrees - A small wing Lift/Drag = 7.0 degrees - A small stabiliser Lift/Drag = 5.0 degrees Can anyone please explain to me what do those degrees represent, mean, and how those measurements are calculated as that makes about as much sense to me as measuring the length from point A to point B in cubic litres

And I'd say the same thing. Think I actually said exactly that up there in the post somewhere (albeit for different reasons) How are things Twerky?

Eh I've been messing around on Empyrion Galactic Survival, practicing building ships with blocks and whatnot Great game, with very few flaws. Though I'm expecting a lot more from DU, as it has already addressed my major gripes (ie. what I see as flaws) with Empyrion (small planets, instance wall between planet and space, just the distances overall, clipping through your constructs unless you are in your seat when it moves building frames are more limited - though I expect DU to have fewer "elements" at alpha, simply because Empyrion has been out longer) - though it does have a few mechanics I would love to see in DU (mining, resource gathering and crafting aspects are done quite well in my humble opinion). So anyway, DU definitely looks to be the "next step up" from Empyrion - even from what we've just seen in the development footage - but regardless, its a great $20 to spend on however long worth of time one plays it while one waits for DU, if you enjoy building a ship or two, and exploring / blowing stuff up with your creation. Anyway, here's a semi-built station with a few small capital ships parked next to it that I've been messing around with in Empyrion EDIT: You can turn autobrakes off to have no friction :P. I know it took me three weeks to figure that out too, and was really off putting. But yes - definitely closest thing to DU, and something that is actually worth comparing it to (so you can point out where DU is better for the most part, but maybe even in time where Empyrion holds it's own. Competition can only be a good thing for both games right? :D)

Ok, so what I was saying (or suggesting?) is that every construct would have it's own 'tag acceptance' setting so to speak. In other words, if you want to 'donate a ship / base' to an alliance, you set the construct to the "insert alliance tag of this rank here" as designated control of the said ship / base. If you were an officer in that alliance - as an example - and wanted to 'overthrow' them, you would go into that ship and edit that setting to "insert your corp / your player / number of players" as designated control of the said ship / base. Alliance removing your tag will no longer affect it. You've commandeered the construct with your group of rebels (or several constructs if several officers perform an organised mutiny and hijack a number of assets before anyone 'revokes their tags'). Now I do believe we are on the same page so far - so what you are talking about is basically those without enough "rank" to simply change the ownership systems in a ship. Which in my humble opinion is a GOOD thing. You could still actively 'steal' the alliance ship - albeit following the rules that anyone else in PvP areas would in order to achieve the same feat (ie. steal a ship or overtake a station). You would also have the advantage of already being "on the inside", but not having "commander codes", would need to actually work for it. And you'd likely need a whole load of people with lots of preparation and careful planning to pull it off - again, a GOOD thing. One "double agent" should still be able to cripple a ship - you know, plant charges, shut down modules etc. - but not single handedly "change ownership" of a structure without holding some form of rank over it. Now what that would involve, I don't know yet - but NQ did say that stealing constructs is part of gameplay that they will eventually like to see (to my knowledge at least - correct me if I'm wrong), and how they will implement it is something we'll have to wait and see. I'm guessing it would have something to do with the core of the ship, and/or other systems on board. Albeit, however they do implement it, I don't think there needs to be any additional system designed specifically for "insider alliance takeovers" - as the model for stealing ships would already exist, and "being on the inside", in my opinion, is already a solid enough advantage. Which is what I was trying to say I guess - and I have a habit of not making sense

But wouldn't that be configurable from the ship - for that specific ship? Or any construct (ie. base / warehouse)? I mean it makes every sense that it will be the case, rather than some 'central command' somewhere. Not only is the idea of someone having full control over a tag of every single construct in a massive alliance an insane and outright near impossible concept to implement, but it just seems like a needlessly painful and difficult way of doing something, that creates the very problems you describe above. Obviously someone can mess around with your tags to prevent you from stealing any more constructs from your alliance - as an example - which would make sense of course (you've been found to be rebelling against your overlord, and your overlord decided to revoke your automatic access to their shit), but I don't think a system that will "automatically grant access of everything you build, to your entire corp / alliance" would make it into the game. You would likely have the ability to set the access of your constructs to specific friends, corp, alliance or w/e - and someone hijacking your ship would (or at least should) be able to change that in the ship's / base's console.

"Engage warp drive!" "Warp drive engaged sir and.... uhh... there appears to be the remnants of some organic matter attached to the ship by a cable. Not even sure how much of it is left after being pulled into light speed without inertia stabilisers...." "I guess we better have a look... Disengage warp drive!" "Disengaging sir! Aaaaaaandd... whatever that was is now a very fine misty splatter across the rear section of the hull. I'm afraid our microscopic sensors can no longer pick up on what composition that organic matter used to be." EDIT On topic itself, yeah I fully support the "building your constructs in an open world setting" as you propose. But at the same time, I can also understand that not everyone wants to be in a PvP environment 24/7 in such games - and having that open world exist in a "safe area" is something that I can only see benefiting the game. And no, I don't see people building massive star destroying dreadnoughts and battleships in these "safe areas" over a week long progress, as it makes a whole load more sense to do this under the protection of those players' own corporation and alliance claimed territories - where they don't need to fly the required resources from to build the said construct, and fly the built construct back to - which makes such safe areas arguably more "dangerous" when it comes to constructs of that power and that size. Now for the idea itself - I propose simply separating the "building and blueprint" aspect of the game, and "testing simulator" aspect of building. The later will allow you to create a construct, and see how it performs "on paper" - ie. have all the variables calculated etc. You could still make a blueprint out of that "on paper" concept - but bear with me, as this brings me to the next point. The "building + blueprint" would become a separate mechanic, whereby a blueprint would be a final uneditable... well "blueprint" of the construct. So if you want to change something on the construct after you built it, you have to now make a new blueprint after the editing / changing the construct. Now what if the blueprints cost more money to create, after every time the construct has been made from one and edited after the fact? You can still edit things off blue prints, you can still make constructs in concept and print a blueprint straight away, but it becomes significantly more financially viable to make a concept, make sure it works on paper, then build a construct, field test it, do all the necessary alterations that you want, then print a blueprint of your creation. It may still be financially viable for you to have two or three blueprints of two or three versions of your ship that you have modified over time - but at some point, it again becomes financially viable to simply build a new ship from scratch rather than editing the construct and making a blueprint of it (for insurance or recreation), meaning you strip your old ship for the material, remake it etc. This also encourages players to run with good quality constructs that they don't feel they need to edit much (or at all), promoting good designers, encourages players who like to experiment to constantly be building in the physical world, and encourages players to re-build their ship now and again, rather than making a small fighter that they will fly for the next year, swapping out a "thing" here and there, while still retaining the freedom and ability of players to alter their constructs as they see fit as well as make them directly from blueprints avoiding the building stage altogether - providing their insurance will only reinstate the construct as per their 'old' blueprint (as an example) should they go kaboom. This does speculate on what the blueprints will actually do for the player too - I am assuming insurance payout will be based off them, but I may be wrong. Still, I feel this will combat a lot of the problems that you mentioned in your post regarding immersion.

Would it not be best to leave these kinds of things (ie. what kind of government structure an organisation or an alliance wants to have) to the organisations and alliances? Some may be more democratic, electing their leaders. Others may be a more anarchistic, be a full monarchy, or simply have a dictator like rule. Wouldn't it be better to have this kind of choice and options for people, rather than structuring an artificial system that says "this is how you manage your group".