Volkier

Ok, I've seen a lot of people (not just in DU forums, but elsewhere too) go on about how NMS has affected the indie gaming industry, how it made it hard to back projects, how it's shattered people's faith, why games like DU are struggling with popularity, comparing NMS to every single game in development, inserting a "but NMS was so bad when it promised something" when talking about expected features etc. etc. I really have to get this off my chest, so vent incoming: People need to get NMS. I understand it was a huge disappointment, and a lot of people chose to ignore the red flags that were up right from the get go with it, because they were passionate about the genre and the potential of such a game. There's nothing wrong with that - people pay for hope and wishful thinking every time a lotto ticket is sold. But those red flags where there from pretty much the first announcement. Again, there's nothing wrong with hoping something you love would succeed, and to an extent letting emotions override logic. But denouncing every other indie project and game because "look what happened to NMS" - is basically refusing to accept that you didn't want to accept it's failure. Or alternatively, refusing to learn about what to look for, and what should set off alarm bells in the future. And no, I'm not being holier than though - I've screwed up in exact same way with other games in the past. I've backed a couple of 'kickstarters' at different times, that I was extremely passionate about, despite the obvious shortcomings with those projects, all because I really really hoped for a 'chance'. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with that - but either learn from your mistakes, accept that you were happy to pay $ for an off-chance the red flags were co-incidental and false, or simply grow up and accept you screwed up. And sure, if you feel like you no longer want to support games that are in development - there's nothing wrong with that. But don't act like NMS's disappointment was a surprise that nobody saw coming, and that it represents all indie gaming developers. The red flags were there, plenty of people saw them, there's nothing wrong with paying for 'hope' and an 'off-chance', there's nothing wrong with not buying pre-alpha stuff, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with pointing out red flags or when something doesn't quite sound right with a healthy dose of factual skepticism. There is only positive outcomes in any conversation or discussion through that. But when it comes to saying "NMS did it, so everything else must be all lies" - NMS does not represent any other game, project, development team, game features or genre. Get over yourself. Alright, I've said all I've needed to on the subject. Time to bring shields up to full power in anticipation for the incoming flak

Once Alpha is out, and a few people start uploading stuff on YouTube, I bet this game will become very popular very fast. All in due time

I used to make "fast battleships" in EVE online. I'm sure everyone has. I'm also sure that everyone remembers that while you would eventually match the speed of a first tier 'poor man's interceptor', it would take about one or two minutes to accelerate to that speed, just as long to stop, and your maneuverability was about as good as Hindenburg's last decent. And on top of that, you had significantly reduced offence and defense capabilities. Needless to say, while it was fun to mess around with such builds "for the lulz", it was guaranteed suicide to try and fly something like that into actual combat. Same applied in cases where you managed to shove a battleship sized MWD onto a battlecruiser - except multiply all the extremes by 10. Not sure where I'm going with this, other than I suppose pointing out that it's not impossible to have a mechanic that can provide a whole load of depth into the game, while avoiding abuse of the said mechanic by means of making it impractical - at least to an extent.

No I that nobody wants torpedo ships - but wouldn't that be countered by the fact that it would become insanely inefficient, considering you would need to put a whole load of mass, followed by enough propulsion to create the acceleration necessary, and dump a few modules like inertia stabilisers on so your ship doesn't fall apart the moment it hits a rock? I mean it would be 'possible', but extremely impractical - as you end up with a model whereby a ship that has no modules on it other than the engine + core + small mass (ie. cheap) would do nearly no damage to anything that is built as an actual ship - or that you would basically have to invest way more $ into a 'torpedo ship', than the cost of the ship you can successfully destroy by suiciding into?

I thought you were more on the simple F=Ma formula - ie. taking the overall mass of the other object into consideration, whereby F is directly converted to damage taken by the capacitor (and maybe later on to directional forces if the game goes in that direction / engine allows for complex collisions). Only thing, is I would like to see certain modules built around decreasing - or outright absorbing a certain portion of damage for a certain amount of mass - at the expense of something like Maneuverability - so as to give people the option to outfit ships designed to fly through asteroid fields (eg. mining barges?). Of course the trick here would be to not have a mechanic that allows for battering ram types of ships (ie. a mining barge that can fly directly THROUGH a larger carrier, destroying the said carrier and not taking any damage itself), but at the same time, I feel there does need to be some kind of 'buffer'. And what better way to impliment it, than to give players options with regards to how they build specific ships. EDIT: Also come on - 100metres is PLENTY of room for error! What can POSSIBLY go wrong there? What happened to 'living dangerously' and whatnot?

If anything, I'd go with Twerkmotor's suggestion, of collision damaging capacitors - or even modules on the ship. A small ship kamikazeing into a planet sized starship should go pop with the starship's crew going "Why did the proximity light flash for a second? We didn't feel anything.. Oh well, must have been a space rock or something". (ie. it taking little to no damage). WHY do we need 'some' sort of 'collision' damage, is because we 'need' people to actually put some effort into landing, and building their ships / constructs around the ability to maneuver / land better or worse under various different circumstances. Like having half the thrust engines blown off. I know I'm likely speculating here, but ramming full speed into a planet to "land", or alternatively having a "one button auto-land" - aka NMS style - is going to ruin this game for a large number of people imho.

Wouldn't it depend entirely on the planet?

Pretty much the general gist of what's being said in this thread - it makes absolute sense to have more efficiency from more crew on larger ships. In pretty much what #4 said regarding roles and what was later said regarding NQ's statement on efficiency of larger ships. The statements that I really disagree with, and what I really don't want to see happen, is the obsession of "balance", that has existed in, and completely crippled several games in the past. Life is unfair. Sure, there would always be advantages and disadvantages in everything and anything, but I don't want to have a "fair fight" against a capital ship when I'm flying a little single seat fighter - or even a bunch of em. If I take my mitsubishi pajero onto a a race track up against a Ferrari, I expect to lose in a race, badly, beyond any recognition. Likewise, I would like to see specific roles when it comes to ship designs, and sizes - so using that same comparison with cars, my Pajero climbs 40 degree hills in the mud on the farm - something which a Ferrari wouldn't be able to do. Basically, what I would really hate to see, is the whining of "whine, that capital ship gun melted my single seat fighter - it's too OP, balance it" - in the regard of EVE online, something which I didn't quite like (though I understood why they had to do it in the span of EVEs gameplay), was the fact that smaller ships were literally invulnerable to larger ones, as the guns were unable to hit them. Yes, you want a mixture of ships in fleets - but that mixture needs to be achieved through each ship earning it's specific role in that fleet through it's own strengths, rather than forcing a rock paper scissor scenario, with the ability to evade turret fire of small maneuverable craft lying with the pilot, against the aim of a gunner, or the quality of the design and location of hardpoints of the ship - rather than simply saying "gun size X cannot hit targets smaller than size Y". Would this result in certain ships and builds that would be significantly better than the others - of course - but isn't that the entire point of a game such as DU, part of which is building and improving blueprints and ships? And it would also bring in the mechanic of correctly identifying your target based on it's threat level meaning the difference between victory and defeat. I feel, that 'unbalance' in this sense, is a GOOD thing, since it will push players to try and build better, more efficient, more advanced ships throughout the 'evolution' of DU, rather than stifling this with balance.

So basically if I want to organise a get together barbie in this part of the world, all you Aussies would have to fly across the ditch eh?

There is no such thing as a fully peaceful community, for as long as that community is filled with individuals, each with their own opinions and ideals. There is also no such thing as a fully warmongering community, for as long as that community is filled with individuals who share opinions and ideals with other individuals, or simply accept strength in numbers. And it is way more complex than "a mix of both".

Woo - that was quick. Didn't realise there were so many of us around already. New Zealand here - but hopefully we'll see more replies this evening when people get home from work etc. Invitation to TS3 server is there, and Anonymous - would love to see where the little 'playerbase community' gets to. Hopefully we'll meet each other in game

NOOO!! Go back into the shadows and be mysterious god damn it! WHY MUST YOU MESS WITH MY FANTASIES LIKE THIS?!?!

That's a guy?!

And then you wake up and you have Chlamydia....

LOL you smartass

Pretty sure it's done this way with regards to hard timers in both Eve, and planned to be done here, because unfortunately people don't all "live" in DU, and instead exist in the limitations and constraints of real life. People play all over the world, at different times, in different timezones, and can't drop everything on a whim even if they are instantly somehow notified that their shields are "under attack". So really, it's more of a mechanic that enables the defenders to have a chance at countering their attackers, and actually provokes a PvP fight - albeit 48 hours later, instead of shooting down shields and taking over bases of each other when the other party is simply not online. Though I'd have to say that I agree with the point that 48 hours doesn't really work in this concept either - as the attackers 12 hours away, simply have to time it to have the shields go 'offline' at 9pm their time, when the defenders are going off to work at 9am theirs. So I don't know what is the best way to go about this either. What I would like to see, is some way for smaller organisations with much smaller structures to effectively 'hide' their structures better. A small secret outpost with a small shield should be much harder to locate in the first place, than a much larger one, Maybe have a bit of a 'risk and effort vs reward' scenario - whereby a huge organisation with 10'000 people wouldn't be going around blowing up small 10 man bunkers "for the lulz", while it's still viable and profitable for a 50 member organisation to attempt the same feat. Though once again, I don't know how this can be practically achieved in realistic terms. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that once we have the game in alpha, and have a feel of what the world is like and how it works, people may have better ideas how to go about doing this - but until that point, I feel it's really taking stabs in the dark.

Just thought I'll throw in a call out to anyone who plays in my timezone - which is as above in title (UTC +12). Any Kiwis, Aussies, people living in Japan or Americans working the night shift here - who are looking for other people to play with? Not sure if there's any organisations already in existence in this timezone - and don't know if I want to start one without getting a feel for the game itself, but it's probably time to start putting some feelers out either way. So yeah, too early to talk about creating corps / orgs / whatever, but here's an open invitation to hop onto my TS3 server (equilibrium.instantts.net) - no strings attached - just to hang out with people keen on DU outside the all popular American timezone and see what happens

Well, in the grand scheme of things, legally speaking, everything we make would become the intellectual property of Novaquark. It's a part of every single EULA of every single game for a reason - else you open up opportunities for a clever lawyer to sue the company if someone's "intellectual property" gets copied, stolen or even destroyed. So anyway, I would say give players options to do what they will with their blueprints and live and let live. Of course stuff will be reverse engineered and copied - but I think all of us here want to play a space sim game, rather than virtual IP and bureaucracy simulator.

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/1207-thoughts-on-these-designs/ Here's another thread with a few more.

I got confused because I got offered two name reservations, but the first one was called "namer reservation" - so I wasn't sure if it was a mis-spelled "name", or whether it was some kind of a "character namer" type of naming system in place. So I put the same for first choices in both the first and second option. Hope I didn't screw it up.

Don't remember where I've seen the Devs saying it - probably in one of the Q&As, but basically there would be a complete world reset both at the end of Alpha and at the end of Beta prior to full public launch. However, blueprints of your constructs would be kept and will cross over with your character(s).

Well, NQ already does invitations every quarter of a year. More than ten too. They post about it on the forums, and invite people who contribute to the community - and those contributions could very well be creative stuff people did for the game. I think it's done that way specifically because it shows which people are truly passionate about DU. Which to me makes a lot more sense than just inviting random people who have made something in some other game. I would also argue that there is already plenty of creative talent in the current existing DU community, and there's no reason not to see what people come up with in alpha - so inviting people who may not give a stuff about DU may work as a double edged sword. If you really wanted to promote the game in this manner, do something along the lines of what star citizen did with their "next great starship" competition. Make a little side-competition available to anyone, with top prizes getting alpha keys and whatnot, and potentially have the created constructs appear in game. This may be what you've already meant in the OP, but it did sound like you were suggesting just randomly giving people alpha access based on something they made in some other game, and regardless of whether they are interested or not in DU in the first place. And even if you do find a very creative player, it's not going to do much in terms of marketing or promoting the game - unless that player also happens to have a youtube channel or whatnot.

Couldn't find anything related to this in the searches, other than the Devs saying there will be a system up and running shortly after the kickstarter finished. Wondering if I missed the E-Mail, or it just hasn't been sorted yet. And if I did miss it, anyone got the link to it? Cheers

Played EvE. Didn't like that I don't live in the US so had no people to play with consistently, as 99% of the regulars online are in America, and the others were too intermittent. Ended up flying solo and with a small squad defensive patrols around friendly systems saving the carebears from reds in NRDS space, which I loved doing, (and I know isn't for everyone, but I felt the first contact with 'unknowns' to figure out if they were potentially red or not while strictly abiding to NRDS rules, added that bit of adrenaline and made me an overall better pilot). Sadly that meant little chance of participation in large scale operations, and ultimately, I would still be playing if the alliance didn't end up crashing and burning.