MRog40

Thanks for the excellent reply Kezzle, adding some thoughts onto that: 
 
AFAIK almost all aviation radars are phased arrays as they are lighter, scan faster (almost instantaneously), and have no mechanical components to wear and fail over time compared to rotating arrays.
 
couple this with:
and I think there is another even better solution to the problem: have a vast array of radar systems that are for different things. Phased arrays can lockon faster and account for high G acceleration in both the attacker and defender, but have less range and no ability to rotate (can't see sides and back at all). Have rotating arrays (don't need to be animated) that acquire much more slowly, have much higher range, and cannot account for high G acceleration, but can see in all directions. This way a railgun sniper would have to act like an actual sniper to be accurate, and fighters could be agile but with less range and no omnidirectional awareness.
 
Building a specialized vessel with weapons and radar to fill a specific role will help turn the game into rock paper scissors for two cores of the same size instead of having a meta. More radar options and radar parameters opens up a lot more numbers for tuning. Larger ships will have advantages with the ability to have multiple weapon types and multiple radars for redundancy and to be able to withstand multiple types of attackers.
 
6 values that are interpolated between would be perfectly effective, and I'm sure NQ already has the code base or at least knowledge for doing this because of their atmospheric drag systems. It is important that the 6 values are not purely cross sectional area though, they need to account for the normality of a surface and the material used to really push designs to be realistic and not wireframe cubes. Actual RCS computation is way beyond feasible for DU.
 
I absolutely love the idea of the emissions/active elements of a vessel affecting the detection range and targeting difficulty, but this might be too computational difficult. Rolling through a dangerous area with a stealth designed hauler full of precious ore, being careful not to use an adjustor or an engine to try and go undetected by pirates sounds like a great DU only experience, and it sure as hell beats the stealth mechanics talked about by Entropy in a previous Q&A livestream. 
 
Fun fact about the "hole in space" note: There is such a thing as too stealthy, as a stealth ship will block out the background noise and this ultra quiet point can actually be identified for it's stealthiness. There was a navy ship design that had this problem. The first designs were invisible to radar, but it was way too quiet relative to the ocean waves around the vessel so was easily identifiable.
 
 
Novaquark - the best solutions to problems are natural, physical solutions, not arbitrary ones.
 
Arbitrary (classic game design) solutions, while they can be effective, leave a bad taste in the mouths of people who know they are arbitrary. There are a few decisions like this in game, but core size targeting range, core size docking limitations, really anything that is core size specific seems like an arbitrary cop-out that I hope is temporary to simplify the computational load.
 

I don't want XS Borg Cubes to be the meta. Here are my Problem/Solution suggestions.
 
Disclaimer: I don't fully understand the current state of PvP/RADAR. The problems listed here are primarily what I have heard from others and some points may not be accurate. I will edit the post to reflect any corrections or suggestions from commenters.
 
Radars are isotropic (the range is the same in all directions)
In reality a radar cannot be isotropic and an array is going to need to physically spin (even if it's a phased array). Radars staying isotropic wouldn't be a huge problem, but it'd be better if the range was longest in the forward direction so placement matters and having multiple is a strong benefit. Maybe have full range in 30 degrees, then half power beamwidth at 60 degrees, then -10 dB at 120 degrees and greater. Having discrete radar beam steps will combat desync problems with tracking someone at range. They are not obstructed by voxels surrounding them
Radars should have to be either unobstructed or require a weak material as a radome to cover it. Each material could have a reflectivity factor that attenuates at a fixed loss/voxel thickness. This would have to be simplified as to make the calculations simple, but it shouldn't be anything much more complex than how wings are obstructed by voxels. Performance is not degraded as damage is taken
An XS ship with a Large radar, unobstructed, is much more likely to have the radar take damage than the same ship with a small radar. If they degrade as they take damage, and since redundancy in radar systems is almost impossible with such a small ship, it wouldn't be risky to put such a large radar on an XS ship. Have redundant L radars on an M or L core battleship should be a necessity. Performance is not affected by the acceleration of the construct they're on
Rocket boosted borg cubes should have their accuracy greatly affected by how quickly they are change velocity (doppler affect affecting signal strength). A railgun XS borg should need to maintain a constant velocity vector to be accurate at long ranges. Only core size affects detection range, not the radar cross section
A cube of steel is going to have a massive normal surface that is highly reflective, and such would be identifiable from much farther ranges and be much easier to hit with radar targeting. Cross section calculations like for drag should be used here. More accurately, have the normality of the surface to the radar beam multiplied by some material reflectivity scalar define the radar cross section and thus targetable radar range of any vessel. Core size shouldn't matter in this regard. http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/dielectric-constants-strengths.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_cross-section
Computing the real RCS is not feasible, but even just a cross sectional area calculation for now would be a good nerf to full volume cubes.
Also, having a larger radar should increase the radar cross section, as an antenna will reflect very large amounts of energy. There is no passive radar detector
An ultra cheap radar detector for passive ships would be great. Something similar to the Gyro you slap on your ship, and an alarm sounds and warning pops up when someone is shining a radar at you. Ideally it would have more range than a radar, so you could be warned that there is someone with a radar nearby. This would simply alert you to the existence of radar, and would only be useful on ships without any radar (otherwise it would always be on because of your own radar) Radar doesn't work in the safe zone
I should be able to detect ships outside the safe zone from inside the safe zone, and vice versa. Having a magical boundary where it instantly stops working doesn't make sense. Same thing with atmosphere, performance should be attenuated by atmosphere not instantly lost.  UI changes
Disable advanced HUD while radar targeting and implement something else. The UI is ugly and breaks immersion, but you pretty much need it on to know where the ship you're targeting is. Maybe have a wireframe box so you know where to look, but less available info. Change the box color from red for enemy to blue or green for friends and allies.

Flying Faster with less
or
...Dual Universe and the cross section calculation
 
I quite enjoy building small efficient atmo flyers (you probably know the Hagboard)
The key to the fun factor of these little ships is keeping the Frontal Cross section as low as possible. For the Hagboard it is usually 0.38 which is the smallest value that is possible if you still want to have the comfort of a hover engine on your construct.
But since some months, DU is not making it easy for these little ships. There is a bad bug with the cross section calculation which usually leads to a wrong (higher) calculation of the frontal cross section.
You can easily see the problem by entering build mode and having a look at your max speed & frontal cross section. In most cases you first see lower speeds and a higher cross section, and after some additional seconds this value changes to the "real" values.
So the frontal cross section is supposed to be the total surface of the ship when looking from the front. This should be a static value, but due to the bug, we get 2 separate values.
Even worse: when starting a flight DU usually takes the "worse" value to calculate the flight physics.
I assume that the first "bad" calculation is done on the client side, and the second "real" values somehow come either from the server or using some values being loaded fro the server.
As sometimes the server is slow, we get into a situation where the "better" values might even never get loaded to the client.
As well during flight, DU re-calculates this values. So even if we manage to start a flight with the "better" values, we might get faster speed & Acceleration at first, but after some control movements DU usually falls back to the slow values.
There is 1 trick how you can do a test flight and "force" DU into the faster values.. give this a try:
1. place your construct flight ready, pointing towards a wide open area ( e.g. a big water surface)
2. enter build mode and look at your max speed / frontal cross section
3. wait for the max Speed & Cross section to be displayed with the "better" values
4. exit build mode and directly activate the seat/remote controller
5. give full throttle, avoid steering and try to stay between 100 and 300 m...
By following these steps you should be able to do a flight with the "full potential" of your construct.
Another possibility to increase the speed of your construct is to remove ALL Honeycomb from it. The cross section calculation only fails if there is at least 1 honeycomb voxel on your construct. so without them, it should always use the "better" values.
i have 2 tickets around this topic open now for 1-2 months, but obviously NQ has more important things  to fix right now. But as i get asked multiple times a day, i thought it would be easier to give the explanation here so i could point people to it ?

Have fun flying,

Hagbard
 
 

I really dont understand why some people are so negative concerning a wipe. Beta testing involves alot of balancing espically after significant content additions and if some of that rebalancing is significant enough, only a wipe restores the intent moving forward. I'm not leaning either direction but in beta, I would not rule it out. I want this game that I have been following for years to last for a decade plus. Just because we are paying a sub, I dont think we are entitled to never realizing a wipe.

The devs should take note that the 2 most popular forum topics in the last couple weeks or so are either new players asking to refund/unsub, and old players saying there needs to be a wipe before release(after all core game features are implemented).

....and if it were - that would NOT be a good thing!
 
Alright, this is something that's been bothering me for some time from JCs interviews - and yesterday's Easter Egg interview pushed me over the edge to where I really have to say something...
 
First and foremost - lets face the reality that Ready Player One would be a horrible game for most people nor would the events of the book be enjoyable for the majority of the player base.
 
If you're looking at your game and going "Hey look it's just like RPO!" - what I hear is "Look just a handful of no lifers got to have all the fun!". That IS the plot of RPO. A tiny group of players who take the game WAY WAY WAY WAY too seriously get to enjoy the content while the rest may as well not exist.
 
The puzzle fit this perfectly. A tiny group of players with tons of NDA covered information going back to pre-alpha solve a puzzle while the rest of the community doesn't even know it exists. Yup  - very RPO.
 
JC - The takeaway from the puzzle event should not be that "Look it was just like RPO! I did a good job!" - it should be that "The event was a complete failure and did not involve the majority of the community in a meaningful way, and was solved largely due to a bug and alpha knowledge that was not available to the bulk of the community."
 
Please please please for the sake of DU - stop trying to make this game like a fictional book about a fictional game. You need to take a serious look at how other games have done community events and have managed to involve much larger groups of players. Everything from opening the gates of Ahn'Qiraj to the Elite Dangerous Alien events - yes they were flawed in their own ways - but by and large involved more people.
 
 
Finally, this doesn't just cover events. The general game mechanics cannot be based on the mindset "Just like RPO!" - because I repeat - RPO would be a horrible game. In fact, I would go as far as saying if you are looking at any upcoming part of the game like AvA or Territory Warfare or Atmospheric combat and can say "This is just like RPO!" - then it probably needs to be reworked to NOT be like RPO but to be like an actual game that would be fun for more people.
 
Once again - face reality - RPO was a no life simulator where only the no lifers mattered.
 
This means designing things in consideration of players who are not willing to play DU 16 hours a day - and entire teams of such players.
 
Players are not going to want to spend hours waiting for an attack on a territory to man the manual guns because you refuse to consider automatic defenses.
 
Players are not going to want to fly dedicated gunners or escorts for every single hauler just because they may get attacked.
 
Players are not going to want to sit in their ship for hours watching the radar while their orgmates mine out an asteroid.
 
I could go on and on, but the core point is that the game mechanics need to be designed around giving people who do not no life the game a chance to have fun and stand a chance in pvp vs those that do.

About the situation:
The organization Desolation (https://community.dualthegame.com/organization/4124/) has used a bug very actively to move ships from the Safe Zones (even planets) to the pvp zone to destroy and therefore steal them. Around 300 players have lost there ships and a lot of new players with that everthing they had resulting in a big quit wave. We know, that Desolation even allows their members explicitly in their rules to use any kind of bug and exploit, which is clearly against the rules of Novaquark.
 
NQ now officially confirmed, that this organization doesn't get any punishment. So basicly this whole rules here
 are complete bullshit, because you can do whatever you want, Novaquark will not punish you.
 
If that is the way NQ wants to go, this game will die pretty quickly because all new players, that don't have the power or organizations behind them yet will quit the game very quickly.
 
In my opinion, this is a very poor and weak behavior of Novaquark and a punsh in the face for every honest player in this community.

Been thinking about posting this for a while but thought NQ would have done something already.
 
Going to post this as politely as I can but the support giveaways are a COMPLETE JOKE.  50% of people are lying, this is obvious because they say things like:

"I crashed when coming into atmosphere, logged back in and my ship was destroyed" - bullshit, you crash your ships stops what they actually means is "I have a really heavy ship, I crashed the game coming into atmosphere because i couldnt slow down, logged back in with zero momentum and my massively overweight ship fell like a rock"

"I just died on XXXXX insert planet and have magically teleported to Ailoth, can you port me back" = I was mining and tried to use the force respawn to cheese back to my ship, but didnt check my node before I used this soft exploit
 
This is causing a LOAD of problems, firstly you are completely shielding these new players from any survival elements of the game, experienced players know to fly with good scrap and extra fuel.  New players arent learning these lessons because when they make mistakes (and most ARE player mistakes) they get freebies.

The worst part about all this is that they are making a huge section of gameplay / career paths completely redundant.  In alpha there were loads of players planning to set up as repair / refuel crew or taxi services, I have reached out to several of these to see how business is and there ISNT ANY.  The game has limited career paths as it is (without really knowing the game) these are some of the more obvious ones and you are making them irrelevant.  The longer this goes on the worse it will get.

My solution - send out an email saying that the daily quanta is being continued but it is being called BETA SUPPORT INCOME, it is paid to ensure players have funds in case of emergency.  You then reach out to verified support services orgs and bring them into support via some additional channel, where you can send people who need there services.
 
This needs to be done soon, as you are making a massive rod for your own back by giving this crutch to new players (although seen several vets abusing it too).

That's an interesting observation. It's great if it's not dependent on subpar performance by the railgun sled driver.
No. Just no. Gold is a soft metal with bloody awful mechanical properties. It's hitpoiints relative to steel are as ridiculous as the existence of structural material made out of Fluorine. Marble is equally redonculous. Much of the "material science" in the building system is unnecessarily nonsensical. Nonsense that doesn't even achieve the goal of introducing variety and progression. It needs addressing as a basis upon which to build a plausible industrial and combat system.

I fully agree that there should be T5 materials with great hit points. But call them "Unobtanium", "Collapsium", "Neutronium", or even "Handwavium". Or find some actual tough alloy names based on actual strong substances. Don't apply misfit labels of real IUPAC chemical elements. It's science fiction; use science as the basis, not random assumptions that density=resistance to damage.

Thanks for provoking it in the first place
More variety means more chances of fun interactions. NQ should definitely do that. Would give everyone choices to make between the limitations they accept on their ships. It can be big and slow (and easy to hit) and do most things passably well, or medium and select one thing from a long list to do very well, or small and fast and hard to hit, but can only be really good at one or two fields. Or something like that. Simplicity breeds stupid metas, as we are seeing.
It would be great if one of those roles was "fleet coordination", a ship which (aside from anything else) carries lots of sensors and can act as the eyes for their mates.
I'd be happy if they weren't even interpolated, just picking the 'nearest to normal face' of the build box as presented at the moment the signal is assessed. Trying to get tooo analogue will make sums hard for the hamsters.
 
Aye, sloped sides and no acute angles... the "rules" they use could be "tweaked" a little away from pure realism to permit other cool shapes. Where rounded surfaces are dreadful for stealth IRL, in DU, they could specify "planes parallel with the faces of the build box" as being the "worst". I think calculating a "simplified" set of RCS values at the point you leave Build Mode on the thing would be doable.
Wouldn't it just? I hope the team have the programming chops to pull something like this off. It means a second set of signatures to keep track of for every ship-to-ship interaction, but the frequency of changes to the values being calculated could be managed using "cooldowns" and "warmups" so people weren't strobing about with their emitters on-off-on-off as fast as they can toggle 'em...
I either missed that or erased it from memory. Was it typical MMO "invisibility cloak" nonsense?
Yeah. I'd read about signal processing being applied similarly to the radar/microwave background for the detection of aircraft, too, though IIRC, it was much more hypothetical. That would be another great feature if they could fit it in: different kinds of sensors: no point being radio-silent if your reactor neutrino emissions give you away, and no point neutrino shielding your reactor if your mass signature gives you away. But radio sensors are cheap and plentiful, neutrino detectors expensive, finicky and rare, and gravitometers good enough to pick up a spaceship in a timely fashion really only happen on the largest most stable space stations, say.
This, a thousand, a million times. Of course there are computational limits, but push them, don't get lazy, you crazy programming dudes.
 
And fix your materials.
 
This too. We can understand some of the arbitrary limitations while the game grows and settles, but please don't use them as a crutch when you've the talent to solve actually hard problems.

Thanks for the excellent reply Kezzle, adding some thoughts onto that: 
 
AFAIK almost all aviation radars are phased arrays as they are lighter, scan faster (almost instantaneously), and have no mechanical components to wear and fail over time compared to rotating arrays.
 
couple this with:
and I think there is another even better solution to the problem: have a vast array of radar systems that are for different things. Phased arrays can lockon faster and account for high G acceleration in both the attacker and defender, but have less range and no ability to rotate (can't see sides and back at all). Have rotating arrays (don't need to be animated) that acquire much more slowly, have much higher range, and cannot account for high G acceleration, but can see in all directions. This way a railgun sniper would have to act like an actual sniper to be accurate, and fighters could be agile but with less range and no omnidirectional awareness.
 
Building a specialized vessel with weapons and radar to fill a specific role will help turn the game into rock paper scissors for two cores of the same size instead of having a meta. More radar options and radar parameters opens up a lot more numbers for tuning. Larger ships will have advantages with the ability to have multiple weapon types and multiple radars for redundancy and to be able to withstand multiple types of attackers.
 
6 values that are interpolated between would be perfectly effective, and I'm sure NQ already has the code base or at least knowledge for doing this because of their atmospheric drag systems. It is important that the 6 values are not purely cross sectional area though, they need to account for the normality of a surface and the material used to really push designs to be realistic and not wireframe cubes. Actual RCS computation is way beyond feasible for DU.
 
I absolutely love the idea of the emissions/active elements of a vessel affecting the detection range and targeting difficulty, but this might be too computational difficult. Rolling through a dangerous area with a stealth designed hauler full of precious ore, being careful not to use an adjustor or an engine to try and go undetected by pirates sounds like a great DU only experience, and it sure as hell beats the stealth mechanics talked about by Entropy in a previous Q&A livestream. 
 
Fun fact about the "hole in space" note: There is such a thing as too stealthy, as a stealth ship will block out the background noise and this ultra quiet point can actually be identified for it's stealthiness. There was a navy ship design that had this problem. The first designs were invisible to radar, but it was way too quiet relative to the ocean waves around the vessel so was easily identifiable.
 
 
Novaquark - the best solutions to problems are natural, physical solutions, not arbitrary ones.
 
Arbitrary (classic game design) solutions, while they can be effective, leave a bad taste in the mouths of people who know they are arbitrary. There are a few decisions like this in game, but core size targeting range, core size docking limitations, really anything that is core size specific seems like an arbitrary cop-out that I hope is temporary to simplify the computational load.
 

I do not agree with a list that pretty much says "remove any sting from PVP without asking me to put in effort defending against it"
 
The glass walls that are being put up in safezones which destroy you when you fly into them and if there are walls built in space on warp landing zones (also in safe zones currently) then yes, I agree that would/should fall under griefing and NQ should both reimburse the victim and ban the griefer, there is no question or argument from me on that.
 
That said though, you fly with radar and you pay attention, that alone will take away a huge number of opportunities currently being offered to gankers.
Yes, weapons need a balance pass and yes, NQ needs to look at how they will restrict options like flying L guns on an XS core but at the same time, the way forward here is to offer gameplay options to those who consider themselves non combattant. And that means countermeasures like jamming or radar lock breaking mechanics. NQ also needs to provide more details on why you were killed, with what and by whom. This is information that allow you to build experience, learn and get better.
 
PVP is part of this game, you can't go around basically asking NQ to nerf PVP into the ground because you want to do your thing without having to worry and not put in any effort to counter a possible attack. That is just as spineless as building walls in space IMO..

It has been founding principle of the game that there would be pervasive, FFA PvP. To anyone who came to this game not knowing and accepting that, to the point that they won't play if it remains,  I say, "Thank you for your donation of 20 bucks to a game you want to see succeed but don't want to play."
 
Moosegun has made eleventy billion good and salient points. And they are an industrialist.
 
The primary reason for eventual militarisation of all volume in the game (apart from the "neutral safe ground" of the Sanc Moon(s)), as I see it, is that if there is a safe space where all resources can be obtained, the concept of territory being held becomes moot. You won't need to fight for resources because you can just get them in the safe zone. So the only reason to fight will be "for the love of combat", which is meaningless and hollow in the context of setting up a "civilisation". Right now, every resource can be obtained risk-free, and the danger is in moving it from place to place. In EvE, you can't get everything in HiSec; the rewards are predominantly in 0.0 space, with Hi-Lo-Nul being the "game progression".
 
The answer to the title question of the thread is "not any time soon", or at least I hope that's the case. Not because I don't want pervasive FFA, but because the game systems are not yet ready for it. There should be safe zones in space right up until the systems for territory warfare go live. And there should be a big "We're backing the game up now. If it goes pear-shaped, we'll be rolling back to the state at this date," notice posted weeks in advance and all over the Internet (not that this will happen; NQ will probably sneak TW in on a Tuesday night patch and then announce it on MySpace ;} ). Before TW can happen, they need to sort out the dog's breakfast that is materials and make space combat actually function in some sort of plausible way with roles for all classes of ship. The current meta is boring. You need TW in place so that, if the civilisation has the will, pirates and criminals can be hunted down and wiped from the place of whatever den of vice and iniquity they infest, else swatting them out of the sky becomes a never-ending chore. And that TW has to have mechanisms in place to make that wiping-out costly and expensive, so that it's not just a matter of glassing a planet and calling it done.
 
It has been suggested that PvP is contrary to the lore because humanity would have passed the point of waging war by the time the arkship got to where "we are" in game. I'd suggest that this is primarily irrelevant, since the game's founding principles include war. If you must, it's trivial to think of reasons why such a speculate might not be the case. But essentially, that's just fluff, and a degree of fluff that pales into insignificance compared to all the "handwaving" that has to go into making the technology "work" for the purposes of game play.
 
It has been suggested that space PvP is for gankers and griefers. I counter that there are corps out there who have set themselves up to be "protectors". Without PvP, that becomes a meaningless role in the world. Space PvP *is*. At the moment, a lot of folks are just heading out there looking for something, anything to shoot at. If it shoots back, that's a bonus, but most things don't, and the loot is a consolation prize.
 
Another key part of the civilisation puzzle that is heretofore missing is  communication. Without message boards where people can offer jobs, commerce is mediated entirely by the markets and restricted to known-to-the-game objects (materials, elements and quanta). It is difficult to offer services or constructs for sale or to buy. Until such a mission system exists, there's no commonly-available way to engage escorts or call for help or rescue or revenge justice. That's another thing that needs to be in place before the current safe zones are dropped back.
 
It's very simple: if you don't want to PvP, get someone else to do it for you. Or take the risk and suck it up. Or you can sortof PvP by taking measures to mitigate your risk: would you rather spend a bit more fuel and time and arrive having dodged the blockade (with the added frisson of watching the out-of-position attacker stive to cut an intercept course, and fail before you drop into the safe zone), or do you want to save that fuel and time and increase the risk of a successful intercept by flying CoM-CoM. Hauling is boring. Being chased and applying your brain to evading pursuit and intercept should be embraced as enhancements to the game. Maybe it's a bit more complicated than I said at the start of the paragraph. But it doesn't have to be.
 
Commerce raiding is something that naval transport has had to deal with since the days of the Sea Peoples. East Indiamen used to carry a few light cannon to deter pirates on their way to collect valuable shipments. Spanish galleons fetching gold and silver back from the New World were some of the best-protected ships that the wrights of the time could build. A convoy of Gold Ships was way beyond even the capabilities of the best-organised raiders sponsored by hostile military powers; they had to wait for inclement weather to scatter the elements and deal with the ones they could find in detail before they regrouped. If you're going into space, you need to be more like the C16th and 17th Spanish (without the colonial attitude and genocide), and you don't even need to deal with space weather. 
 
PvP is part of the game. You can either accept that, embrace it and join in the fun, or be unhappy any time you need to head somewhere you might get jumped. If you think you're being ganked, get your own gang. If you think you're being griefed, stop being an easy target. If you don't want to do either of those things, just stop.
The game has always been about building civilisations and including PvP. If you don't want to do either of those things, don't be surprised if the game is hard. A thousand hermits living in the boonies and not interacting outside the market place is not a civilisation, by the way. 
 
 

I don't want XS Borg Cubes to be the meta. Here are my Problem/Solution suggestions.
 
Disclaimer: I don't fully understand the current state of PvP/RADAR. The problems listed here are primarily what I have heard from others and some points may not be accurate. I will edit the post to reflect any corrections or suggestions from commenters.
 
Radars are isotropic (the range is the same in all directions)
In reality a radar cannot be isotropic and an array is going to need to physically spin (even if it's a phased array). Radars staying isotropic wouldn't be a huge problem, but it'd be better if the range was longest in the forward direction so placement matters and having multiple is a strong benefit. Maybe have full range in 30 degrees, then half power beamwidth at 60 degrees, then -10 dB at 120 degrees and greater. Having discrete radar beam steps will combat desync problems with tracking someone at range. They are not obstructed by voxels surrounding them
Radars should have to be either unobstructed or require a weak material as a radome to cover it. Each material could have a reflectivity factor that attenuates at a fixed loss/voxel thickness. This would have to be simplified as to make the calculations simple, but it shouldn't be anything much more complex than how wings are obstructed by voxels. Performance is not degraded as damage is taken
An XS ship with a Large radar, unobstructed, is much more likely to have the radar take damage than the same ship with a small radar. If they degrade as they take damage, and since redundancy in radar systems is almost impossible with such a small ship, it wouldn't be risky to put such a large radar on an XS ship. Have redundant L radars on an M or L core battleship should be a necessity. Performance is not affected by the acceleration of the construct they're on
Rocket boosted borg cubes should have their accuracy greatly affected by how quickly they are change velocity (doppler affect affecting signal strength). A railgun XS borg should need to maintain a constant velocity vector to be accurate at long ranges. Only core size affects detection range, not the radar cross section
A cube of steel is going to have a massive normal surface that is highly reflective, and such would be identifiable from much farther ranges and be much easier to hit with radar targeting. Cross section calculations like for drag should be used here. More accurately, have the normality of the surface to the radar beam multiplied by some material reflectivity scalar define the radar cross section and thus targetable radar range of any vessel. Core size shouldn't matter in this regard. http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/dielectric-constants-strengths.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_cross-section
Computing the real RCS is not feasible, but even just a cross sectional area calculation for now would be a good nerf to full volume cubes.
Also, having a larger radar should increase the radar cross section, as an antenna will reflect very large amounts of energy. There is no passive radar detector
An ultra cheap radar detector for passive ships would be great. Something similar to the Gyro you slap on your ship, and an alarm sounds and warning pops up when someone is shining a radar at you. Ideally it would have more range than a radar, so you could be warned that there is someone with a radar nearby. This would simply alert you to the existence of radar, and would only be useful on ships without any radar (otherwise it would always be on because of your own radar) Radar doesn't work in the safe zone
I should be able to detect ships outside the safe zone from inside the safe zone, and vice versa. Having a magical boundary where it instantly stops working doesn't make sense. Same thing with atmosphere, performance should be attenuated by atmosphere not instantly lost.  UI changes
Disable advanced HUD while radar targeting and implement something else. The UI is ugly and breaks immersion, but you pretty much need it on to know where the ship you're targeting is. Maybe have a wireframe box so you know where to look, but less available info. Change the box color from red for enemy to blue or green for friends and allies.

I don't want XS Borg Cubes to be the meta. Here are my Problem/Solution suggestions.
 
Disclaimer: I don't fully understand the current state of PvP/RADAR. The problems listed here are primarily what I have heard from others and some points may not be accurate. I will edit the post to reflect any corrections or suggestions from commenters.
 
Radars are isotropic (the range is the same in all directions)
In reality a radar cannot be isotropic and an array is going to need to physically spin (even if it's a phased array). Radars staying isotropic wouldn't be a huge problem, but it'd be better if the range was longest in the forward direction so placement matters and having multiple is a strong benefit. Maybe have full range in 30 degrees, then half power beamwidth at 60 degrees, then -10 dB at 120 degrees and greater. Having discrete radar beam steps will combat desync problems with tracking someone at range. They are not obstructed by voxels surrounding them
Radars should have to be either unobstructed or require a weak material as a radome to cover it. Each material could have a reflectivity factor that attenuates at a fixed loss/voxel thickness. This would have to be simplified as to make the calculations simple, but it shouldn't be anything much more complex than how wings are obstructed by voxels. Performance is not degraded as damage is taken
An XS ship with a Large radar, unobstructed, is much more likely to have the radar take damage than the same ship with a small radar. If they degrade as they take damage, and since redundancy in radar systems is almost impossible with such a small ship, it wouldn't be risky to put such a large radar on an XS ship. Have redundant L radars on an M or L core battleship should be a necessity. Performance is not affected by the acceleration of the construct they're on
Rocket boosted borg cubes should have their accuracy greatly affected by how quickly they are change velocity (doppler affect affecting signal strength). A railgun XS borg should need to maintain a constant velocity vector to be accurate at long ranges. Only core size affects detection range, not the radar cross section
A cube of steel is going to have a massive normal surface that is highly reflective, and such would be identifiable from much farther ranges and be much easier to hit with radar targeting. Cross section calculations like for drag should be used here. More accurately, have the normality of the surface to the radar beam multiplied by some material reflectivity scalar define the radar cross section and thus targetable radar range of any vessel. Core size shouldn't matter in this regard. http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/dielectric-constants-strengths.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_cross-section
Computing the real RCS is not feasible, but even just a cross sectional area calculation for now would be a good nerf to full volume cubes.
Also, having a larger radar should increase the radar cross section, as an antenna will reflect very large amounts of energy. There is no passive radar detector
An ultra cheap radar detector for passive ships would be great. Something similar to the Gyro you slap on your ship, and an alarm sounds and warning pops up when someone is shining a radar at you. Ideally it would have more range than a radar, so you could be warned that there is someone with a radar nearby. This would simply alert you to the existence of radar, and would only be useful on ships without any radar (otherwise it would always be on because of your own radar) Radar doesn't work in the safe zone
I should be able to detect ships outside the safe zone from inside the safe zone, and vice versa. Having a magical boundary where it instantly stops working doesn't make sense. Same thing with atmosphere, performance should be attenuated by atmosphere not instantly lost.  UI changes
Disable advanced HUD while radar targeting and implement something else. The UI is ugly and breaks immersion, but you pretty much need it on to know where the ship you're targeting is. Maybe have a wireframe box so you know where to look, but less available info. Change the box color from red for enemy to blue or green for friends and allies.

I don't want XS Borg Cubes to be the meta. Here are my Problem/Solution suggestions.
 
Disclaimer: I don't fully understand the current state of PvP/RADAR. The problems listed here are primarily what I have heard from others and some points may not be accurate. I will edit the post to reflect any corrections or suggestions from commenters.
 
Radars are isotropic (the range is the same in all directions)
In reality a radar cannot be isotropic and an array is going to need to physically spin (even if it's a phased array). Radars staying isotropic wouldn't be a huge problem, but it'd be better if the range was longest in the forward direction so placement matters and having multiple is a strong benefit. Maybe have full range in 30 degrees, then half power beamwidth at 60 degrees, then -10 dB at 120 degrees and greater. Having discrete radar beam steps will combat desync problems with tracking someone at range. They are not obstructed by voxels surrounding them
Radars should have to be either unobstructed or require a weak material as a radome to cover it. Each material could have a reflectivity factor that attenuates at a fixed loss/voxel thickness. This would have to be simplified as to make the calculations simple, but it shouldn't be anything much more complex than how wings are obstructed by voxels. Performance is not degraded as damage is taken
An XS ship with a Large radar, unobstructed, is much more likely to have the radar take damage than the same ship with a small radar. If they degrade as they take damage, and since redundancy in radar systems is almost impossible with such a small ship, it wouldn't be risky to put such a large radar on an XS ship. Have redundant L radars on an M or L core battleship should be a necessity. Performance is not affected by the acceleration of the construct they're on
Rocket boosted borg cubes should have their accuracy greatly affected by how quickly they are change velocity (doppler affect affecting signal strength). A railgun XS borg should need to maintain a constant velocity vector to be accurate at long ranges. Only core size affects detection range, not the radar cross section
A cube of steel is going to have a massive normal surface that is highly reflective, and such would be identifiable from much farther ranges and be much easier to hit with radar targeting. Cross section calculations like for drag should be used here. More accurately, have the normality of the surface to the radar beam multiplied by some material reflectivity scalar define the radar cross section and thus targetable radar range of any vessel. Core size shouldn't matter in this regard. http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/dielectric-constants-strengths.htm and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_cross-section
Computing the real RCS is not feasible, but even just a cross sectional area calculation for now would be a good nerf to full volume cubes.
Also, having a larger radar should increase the radar cross section, as an antenna will reflect very large amounts of energy. There is no passive radar detector
An ultra cheap radar detector for passive ships would be great. Something similar to the Gyro you slap on your ship, and an alarm sounds and warning pops up when someone is shining a radar at you. Ideally it would have more range than a radar, so you could be warned that there is someone with a radar nearby. This would simply alert you to the existence of radar, and would only be useful on ships without any radar (otherwise it would always be on because of your own radar) Radar doesn't work in the safe zone
I should be able to detect ships outside the safe zone from inside the safe zone, and vice versa. Having a magical boundary where it instantly stops working doesn't make sense. Same thing with atmosphere, performance should be attenuated by atmosphere not instantly lost.  UI changes
Disable advanced HUD while radar targeting and implement something else. The UI is ugly and breaks immersion, but you pretty much need it on to know where the ship you're targeting is. Maybe have a wireframe box so you know where to look, but less available info. Change the box color from red for enemy to blue or green for friends and allies.

Sorry was some massive sarcasm in my comment, well aware. Mate it is a joke, I sit in discord support and it is loads of new players crying because 'their game crashed and they are stuck 40km from their ship and there poor hands are hurting so they couldnt possibly mine for scrap....." In three years never asked for a single teleport, lol  in alpha we once flew jetpacks 2SU in space to get to our space station after running out of fuel, took two hours with a rizla packet wedged in the key because you couldnt autorun, god damn it!  That is the adventure, this guy wants to sit at home in front of his tv with a pizza whilst stuff is delivered to him.
 
Forgot to add..... kids...... country gone to the dogs..... etc

This game is not, will not, and should not be easy. The most rewarding part of this game is succeeding through the difficulty not because the game got easier but because you got better.

I literally gagged a little bit.....
 
Just to humour you
 
1/ Dont crash, if you do it has consquences
2/ See 1, if you dont do 1, you are saved from doing 2, 2 is your penalty for doing 1
3/ ok
4/ live nearer the market or stop moaning you chose to live miles away from the market - probably bought into the weird Rust mentality that it is 'safer' out there
5/ pay another player to do it
6/ Pay attention
7/ See 6 but if you go to a market you can check all your market containers

People liking different things isn't a crime. Space is supposed to be huge. This game is supposed to be huge. There's plenty of room for people that gain enjoyment from different styles of gameplay, especially since that's how the game was actually advertised. Not as a piracy sim, as a civilization sandbox. That implies some level of civilization. 
 
These two concepts aren't mutually exclusive at all. Who cares if some people prefer to build instead of fight? Why should that bother anyone? 
 
Similarly, I like the idea of a dangerous frontier where anything can happen. There's no reason why the game can't have both. It's called space for a reason. 
 
It's 2020. If I want to be completely isolated in an underground moon lair I spend years carving out with a spoon, I think we can all understand.

DU isn't ED with Solo Mode or Open Play options with the line between PvP players and non-PvP players clearly defined, to say a person or a group of people is a "PvPer" in DU implies that person or group of people does PvP while others don't - which propagates a faulty understanding of what kind of universe DU is supposed to be.
 
What most people call "PvPers" are really "Pirates", because even if someone isn't aggressively hostile towards other, doesn't mean they don't do PvP, in fact most people would at some point even if they're not necessarily pirates.
 
To divisively label the playerbase "PvPer" and "Not PvPer" is really, really misleading in what kinda universe DU's meant to be imo
 
Just putting it out there because people keep calling pirates PvPers, just call them pirates because non-pirates do PvPs too

Don't bother with concrete, mine and make honeycomb voxels to build with. Buy a Medium container for your base and fill it with all the T1 ore types, sell the extra on the market. Use the money to buy ship parts and upgrade your ship, or go watch an industry tutorial on youtube to learn how to start crafting stuff.

It isn't that they don't *want* to drive it, it's that the economy is in infancy because the game just started

The big elephant in the room can’t even be discussed properly, which will answer and most likely had this thread closed 14 responses ago. This is a direct product of that elephant and why people are rushing to get an end game item 2 weeks after release. Regardless of any discussion here, Most of us know what the real issue is, so I won’t indulge the OP on a serious response about anything.

It isn't that they don't *want* to drive it, it's that the economy is in infancy because the game just started