Volkier

Yeah,  it sounds ridiculous to spawn shipwrecks if there are real player shipwrecks lying around. It goes against their catchphrase. "A persistent single-server universe, Entirely built and driven by players"

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

Hey everybody!
 
This post is about the sad state of the "Scavenging" "Profession" in DU currently - resulting from the gimped status of salvaging gameplay. Even though not documented, salvaging gameplay changed drastically in the last few days/couple weeks. While we, the players exploring and salvaging crashed ships and left alone static cores, were able to make somewhat of a living from exploring and salvaging until about a couple weeks ago, now, with the undocumented and unannounced changes to salvaging gameplay, we are no longer able to sustain this lifestyle.
 
Previously, when a gold digger on Lacobus overloaded their ship and crashed back down on the planet trying to make their way out of the atmosphere, we were able to benefit from that. We were able to find, locate and salvage the ship as well as reap in the rewards. Now though, there is neither a risk for ignorant players overloading their ships or carelessly flying and crashing into everything anymore. We cannot claim cores anymore that were destroyed (only in the sad, completely avoidable, tiny bit of pvp space we have left) - only cores that were abandoned by the owner by intention.
 
Here's the story unfolding pieced together from the DU Discord (just search for salvaging and get an impression of the confusion and frustration due to these unannounced and undocumented changes) :
 








 
Scavenging used to be a viable way of living. And a nice way to combine flying, exploring and making some money to pay for the fuel and upkeep. We are now forced into digging in mines underground instead of flying about and exploring this world you created for us to explore and conquer.
 
I'd like to end this post with a proposal and at the same time ask for feedback from the fellow DU player base:
Constructs which core get destroyed should be salvageable by anybody in general (on planets/moons and in space) - with the only exceptions being: On Sanctuary - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - but only on market tiles or your own/your org tiles - your destroyed construct should be salvageable by anybody on tiles of others (not yours or your orgs) and unclaimed tiles  
There should be no need for the owner to abandon a destroyed core/construct in order to make it salvageable by others taking above proposal into account. This mechanic takes scavenging/salvaging out of the game as a "profession". It takes the primarily reason to play the game away from me and a whole lot of others.
 
"Please fix" - as they say....
 
Best regards - former scavenger,
Bobbylord
 
 
 

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. 

Google is for the weak. I let my superior imagination enlighten me with visions of symphonic kinkiness and grandeur - such as that.
 
<Insert a hot Japanese high school girl sitting on Ripley's chest>

"Those who have no lives".... since I don't see many of us having one outside DU once it's out.

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

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".

It all depends when they manage to get moving joints working, and how they manage to do those. The devs said a few times they are planning to look into this, but not before alpha and possibly beta releases, so we'll just have to wait and see for that. You would just have to make do with really really big hovercrafts in the meantime.

Well, I can see how collision damage would create a problem with people strapping an engine to a bunch of blocks, and yelling "allahu akbar" in the voice service of their choice.
 
BUT having said that, I'm also in full support of 'free' collision model - providing there is no server load and providing it's implemented well.
 
Now what I mean by "implemented well" - is in a way that specifically makes it ridiculously inefficient to attempt and do what the first sentence of this post stated. For instance, having to take out shields prior to "ramming", would mean that the ship that is trying to grief, would require to A: have enough firepower to break through the target's shields, and B: have enough of it's own shields to sustain the enemy firing upon them. That alone would force the later to invest above the bare minimum. Next there would be the mass of the ship - a small ship would make a small hole in a big ship, destroying the small ship and producing some minor damage on the big ship (to put it in the simplest terms). A ship would need to be big enough and going fast enough to do enough damage to it's target - meaning it would need to be more bulky, and have an equally bulky engine - which would likewise cost a bit more to make / fuel etc. Which would then need more power from bigger power cells (which would actively also power the bigger shields that this ship would now need)... well you get the idea - you are basically trying to nullify the cost discrepancy between the two constructs, so the ship trying to kamikaze would need to cost at least close to the amount it's target cost - possibly more, depending on how the damage ends up being calculated.
 
Insurance premiums can also play a big part here. Say you are a griefer who kamikazeed your current ten ships in a short span of time. You claim insurance on those ten ships, and want to build another few and insure them with the money you got from the insurance. Now if you did that in real life, I doubt your insurance company would want to have anything to do with you, and will likely tell you "sorry sir, I'm afraid we cannot do anything for you". In fact, after the third "accident" they will likely double your premiums, look very closely at your records, and possibly take you to court for insurance scam by the fifth one. Now obviously the later may be "too realistic" for a game like DU, but there's nothing stopping in having an algorithm that increases your insurance premiums based on how often you have had to make a "claim", based on certain variables (eg. within a certain amount of time / type of ship / system and area / type of damage - instant death or gradual module failure etc.) There is also nothing stopping an in game insurance "company" outright refusing to insure any further ships for certain people, until some condition(s) are met.
 
Lastly, reward good design. Basically, a ship that has it's critical systems damaged by a light bump from a small fighter, due to the location and proximity of those systems, is not a bad design. A ship that is a massive hunk of metal that floats in space, protecting all it's critical systems in it's centre, is also not a good design - due to the cost / power-weight ratio / maneuverability etc. A ship that is designed in a smart way, that tries to predict what are the most likely angles it may be hit from, what shape of the fuselage could be used to better absorb the shock, and where to put the components to maximise their efficiency even if the hull is breached in several places - is a good design.
 
And that last paragraph, is really why I would like to see such a mechanic in game. I would happily take the immersion that it would provide, over the potential of someone griefing me through ramming. Yes, it would certainly suck, but I would only consider it a problem if the game provided a "cheap" way for someone to destroy someone else's months worth of work, in mere seconds, with minimal effort and at nearly no cost to themselves. If they end up losing as much or more in game wealth as you do through their actions, there is really no reason to try and exclude such a mechanic from the game. Provided, like already mentioned, it doesn't directly impact on things like server performance.
 
EDIT: Also, I'm not a fan of the idea of having only "certain voxels" being able to collide. That makes it messy if anything - like what happens if those voxels hit voxels that are not designed for collision - and why would voxels not designed for collision not take damage when colliding in that sense? Because collision damage is not just about suicide bombing - if done well, that would be the very least of what it's used for. It would be more about things like doing crappy landings, or lading inside another construct in a dangerous (and deadly) manner, or taking risks around asteroids or dogfights etc. Collision is one of those mechanics that I want to see either done well, or not done at all. Not half arse it

"Those who have no lives".... since I don't see many of us having one outside DU once it's out.

Hi everyone, 
 
As it is pretty much the same discussion in two threads, I will lock this one and advise you to continue in the one mentioned below.
 
@Bleep_Bloop: please read the reply here (this is important): 
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/11087-game-looks-like-%E2%88%9E10-so-far-except/page-3#entry50966
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Woah there horsey - what have DACs or EVE PLEXs have anything to do with what I said? I was specifically referring to shops selling in game items for RL cash - not subscription tokens like DACs or PLEXs, in a subscription based game. If I didn't like the idea of DACs, what the hell would I be doing here in the first place, since that was this game's model since the beginning of times. One which I fully support and see huge advantages of over "free to play" models. As I've already stated in every single other thread addressing that point.
 
The thing is, one of the advantages of having a subscription (supplemented with DACs) is specifically to NOT have in game 'cosmetic stores' and the like, which are a necessary evil for f2p games (and also a major reason why many such games eventually crumple under their own weight of priorities, through inevitably putting these stores as the top one). Having cosmetic stores starts a slippery slope of what design concepts are 'held back' from the game, in favour of selling as cosmetics, versus earning or creating them in game. Furthered only by what is considered "cosmetic", like camouflaged armor or bright reflective surfaces on ships that make their silhouette nearly invisible against the background of something like a sun, and eventually concluded by items that really are more than simply 'cosmetic'. As happened with every single game to date.
 
So no, I'm sorry but I will have to vehemently disagree with you here (I think? Sorry if I'm a bit confused over your post). I fully love, support and embrace the idea of subscription, DACs, and DACs earning and trading for RL currency, because I don't want to see in game RL currency shops for in game items.

Pretty straight forward for me - I am absolutely outright against 'shops' for RL currency for in-game items - be they cosmetic or otherwise. Therefore I would not want to see this system implemented, and have a final personal confirmation that I will not be going back to EVE online. Plain and simple.

"Those who have no lives".... since I don't see many of us having one outside DU once it's out.

You, sir, have no idea how hard it was to resist the troll to quote your entire OP with a one liner reply.....

You, sir, have no idea how hard it was to resist the troll to quote your entire OP with a one liner reply.....

You, sir, have no idea how hard it was to resist the troll to quote your entire OP with a one liner reply.....

You, sir, have no idea how hard it was to resist the troll to quote your entire OP with a one liner reply.....

You, sir, have no idea how hard it was to resist the troll to quote your entire OP with a one liner reply.....

Skimming over the thread, I can safely say that I would be pulling my pledge and boycotting the game if it turns into a censored SJW shithole to "protect the feelings" of degenerates whose sole purpose in life is to try and find things to be offended by.
 
That said, I can completely understand and support reasonable rules that ruin the gameplay on an immersive level for majority of the people, because one person decided to be a troll. An example of this would be naming policies in older MMOs back in the 1990s / 2000s, where names like "qwertyuio1234" or "Aragorn513" were not allowed for the sake of creating a living, realistic and immersive world for the playerbase. In context of DU, I can completely understand and support them not wanting planets that consist fully of dick pics drawn all over them as an example.
 
But to go back to the point, in game conflict is part of the game - regardless of whether that conflict originated from in game politics of one organisation to another, or a group of players encroaching on someone else's in-game property. RL politics and censorship that has zero relation to the gameplay or immersion value of the game, has no place in it whatsoever.
 
As for people who cannot differentiate between reality and an online MMO, or who try to bring their personal real world issues into the development and structure of an online game, need to piss off and crawl back to under whatever rock they feel "oppresses" them.
 
EDIT: Fixed a typo and split a paragraph.

It's ok, don't worry. I've got a google diploma and run my own cult, so I'm legit / qualified and whatnot. Your children are safe with me.....

Even though your points are exaggerated and I know what you meant by it, I just have to write this.
 
While I agree to some extent on your well made points, I first want to highlight that part you said: Bottom line is - they're still 5 and you're alone. The balancing you are asking for is just not possible. Numbers will always win, no matter the mechanic. They can only dampen the effects of the blob. Where would you draw a line here? 10v1? Why should 5 well trained pilots with good skills not be able to take on a single guy? Here's the MMO aspect again: get an escort. In your example of a highly sophisticated ship against duct tape junk, 2 well made fighter escorts should suffice - because quality/efficiency > lowtech/cheap (that's balancing)
 
Timezones/RL happen and are indeed a problem for such ships. You can't force people to play every day at the same time and because of TZs they can't even participate even if they want. So either you have a crew of 500 people on board so that at any given time there are 50 players online, or...... ??
This is not a problem only because of turrets. It also affects ammunition, piloting, navigation, boarding parties, engineering, repair crews, captains, .... All of those are either dependent on another group or on each other. If one guy doesn't show up, you can't use the ship properly. And since constructs stay in space I, as a pirate, would attack in their weakest participation hour.
 
So how to solve this problem?
In my opinion, you can't. That's why I always said that I doubt we'll see many huge ships. The only solution would be that the game somehow allows some "bots" (AI, npcs, scripts, whatever you'll call it) to man those stations so that a few players can at least run the ship with its basic functionality.....

The point is, people want to be Captains, nobody wants to be an engineer. It's either EVE Online with Voxels, or it's a sandbox game. 
 
And let's be real here, nobody is gonna add randoms on their ship. If the concept of a role call is unheard of some people, then they'll never crew a ship efficiently.
 
And since it's not EVE, let's also be real here, ships in DU have fuel, and fuel COSTS. Nobody is gonna fly a ship unless in oeprational hours or in a strategic operataion (ala EVE) or in a Call to Arms situation in home defense. So no, you won't have to scrougne for members o na wednseday to crew a battleship.
 
You gotta see a battleship crew as an organisation or a corporation from EVE, only with a GOOD AND VITAL difference. You don't bulk recruit. A spy in EVE can rob you of billions of ISK, in DU a spy can blow your precious battleship with C4 charges on your fuel tank.
 
Your organisation starts small, like a 5 man org. Crew a moderate corvette or a frigate. You move in numbers by recruiting more people? Buy a new ship for your org's size. You may never be able to crew a whole battleship, so you'll stick to a Heavy Cruiser. You may join an alliance, who will buy your ship and field you one of their own, doctrine, Heavy Cruisers, becuase you got the nubmers to crew it and you proven yourself loyal for XYZ reasons.
 
That's called "Ergonomics", greek for "how things should work".
 
Average Joe MacNobody, who plays the games Solo (and not the Han kind of solo, that actually had crew i nthe past), will get the Burn Jita treatment. You play an MMO single-shard as a singleplayer? You'll die. A lot.
 
 
It's like saying "Freighters in EVE should have guns, they are carrier sized ships, so they should have figheers on them, 8000 DPS tank and at least 1 Billion GigaJoules of energy reservers on capacitor". No, that's not how this works. You put guns on a freighter in DU? Get crew to crew them. you put gusn on a battleship? Get crew to crew them.
 
You don't have the numbers to get into freightering in space? Good, be a courier on a planet. You know, them plnaets. You can't expect people to have factories right next to veins of mineral. Someone has to haul it. And planets will be far safer than space. You find other people who like the sandboxy element of Trucking on a planet? Good, form an org, go and start a Space Freighter enterprise on your own small number, again, starting small, going big.
 
 
The problem with the above, is that Ripper on his posts, wants AUTOMATED TARGETING AND FIRING. 
 
It's not a "have a super-jacked Starfighter with 4 nose guns that target at the same direction you look at and firing at them".
 
No, Ripper wants "turrets turn and fire autoamtically at a target, while pilot does a seizure inducing flying maneuver".
 
The superjacked-up starfighter, is something I approve. It's one pilot, controlling four guns at once, aiming at the same direction. Heck, it can also be tied to a missile launcher that the pilot can acces that way. But they are not automated.
 
It's neither "Turret faces a certain direction, if target's are detected at 10000 meters down the range, the turret fires" which is a dumb-firing mechanism.
 
No, Ripper asks for turrets that TURN and FIRE on their own will. That's the problem.
 
Decide, either you'll have a moron of an automation that's as simple as heat-switches for yardlights, or you'll crew a ship on your own. Anythign other than that kind of automation, is EVE 2.0 only 1000 times worse due to depleting resources and rampart alt-frenzy being what made GSF in EVE big. One guy, 10 accounts , then battleships fielded, firing on theiro wn. 
 
Move battleships to a location, go afk, you come back, everything's dead. That's what Ripper and everyone else who keeps asking for automation, single-man battleships, wants.
 
And yes, having automation in the game will just make it like the good old "Guy has 10 Dominix batteshlips on a stargate, camps said stargate solo with his frigate, wtih slaved drones to the frigate, locking a ship that enters a system in 2.1 seconds and blowing it up with 50 Sentry Drones striking at once". Mhmmmm, I bet Goonswarm people reading this had their jimmies rustled. They'll know they found their game if you were to allow it. I mean, depleting resources, blowing up a ship is just 1000 times more painful for a person in DU than in EVE. You may have striken a good vein and mined that Titanium you needed for you ship and you built it very cheap cause of that. But now? Johnny with 10 Accounts blew your ship up cause he has the money to field 10 accounts on his own.
 
I bet you don't really want that in DU, right good sir? Cause it will be there if automation is allowed. NQ knows it as well, it's why they ditched automation from the get-go. It's very not balanced to have automation. It can be exploited to a ridiculous extreme. But people are naive enough to tihnk "it will be great! We will all be captains of ships without crews", then they will just whine on the forums about how GSF, or Test, or Palnedmic Legion / Horde members blew up their ships on a gatecamp of 10 accounts being multiboxed by one guy.
 
Yeah, if you can't see the issues of automated turrets on ships and how they'd make an excellent multiboxing cancer, no matter how many facts I throw your way it will ever change that.
 
No matter how you spin it, progress in an MMO should not be rewarded for solo players. You shouldn't be able to do what a 100 people org can do by yourself. If people can't be teamplayers, they should find themselves flying single-seater crafts.

Skimming over the thread, I can safely say that I would be pulling my pledge and boycotting the game if it turns into a censored SJW shithole to "protect the feelings" of degenerates whose sole purpose in life is to try and find things to be offended by.
 
That said, I can completely understand and support reasonable rules that ruin the gameplay on an immersive level for majority of the people, because one person decided to be a troll. An example of this would be naming policies in older MMOs back in the 1990s / 2000s, where names like "qwertyuio1234" or "Aragorn513" were not allowed for the sake of creating a living, realistic and immersive world for the playerbase. In context of DU, I can completely understand and support them not wanting planets that consist fully of dick pics drawn all over them as an example.
 
But to go back to the point, in game conflict is part of the game - regardless of whether that conflict originated from in game politics of one organisation to another, or a group of players encroaching on someone else's in-game property. RL politics and censorship that has zero relation to the gameplay or immersion value of the game, has no place in it whatsoever.
 
As for people who cannot differentiate between reality and an online MMO, or who try to bring their personal real world issues into the development and structure of an online game, need to piss off and crawl back to under whatever rock they feel "oppresses" them.
 
EDIT: Fixed a typo and split a paragraph.