Xennon

As sad as it is, I think the reset is necessary. However, before you do, in my view, you NEED something that puts the evolution and maturity of the universe in the hands of the players, and combines the activities of the players to achieve it. All the techs were unlocked and built within weeks of the first release. You put in schematics to slow that down, but it was horribly artificial and just a grind gate. What we need is some kind of loop within the game that allows the universe to progress. People Mine -> Make stuff -> Build ships -> do... something wit hthe ships? -> Tech up - > Better mining and ships > loop repeats If you don't do something like this then the game will still suffer from the issue it has now which is 'I built some cool ships, made some money and... now what? The ships don't really serve a purpose other than to allow other people to do things a bit quicker until they themselves get bored of doing nothing. Everyone needs a purpose that feeds in to someone elses purpose! Personally I think some kind of exploration element that yields alien tech that can then be used by researchers to produce better schematics etc could do the job. Would give people a reason to go out and explore (beyond rare ore) and an entire new job/purpose for people in the universe to specialise in, and each feeds another profession in a loop.

Ok, so first this isn't a discussion about whether there will or will not be a wipe. Just my ideas for what I think the game needs (and it becomes especially true if there is to be a wipe). So there are two things. Number 1 The thing the game lacks for me overall, is a universe wide purpose, so my idea is thus. Introduce the concept of research and production of schematics by players. T1 requires none and is available to anyone, so new players can come in, mine, start a factory and start building components or ships or whatever and get in the game. T2 and above require some kind of schematic mechanic (not necessarily what there is today) but these are researched and produced by players. The resources to research and produce these are something that people have to go out and get, maybe some kind of alien tech that explorers/scavengers go out and acquire. This produces the following loop: 1. Ship builders build ships (for safe and unsafe space) for explorers so they can go and get tech 2. Explorers go out and get tech (higher techs/more of it in unsafe space) because it's valuable 3. Researchers use the tech to research and produce schematics for higher tier technologies that they supply to the ship builders 4. Ship builders build better ships (for safe and unsafe space) for explorers so they can go and get more tech 5. Rinse repeat. This gives a loop of interaction for players, but also has them all partaking in the maturity of the universe. The universe doesn't 'tech up' until the players make it so. So to start with, no warp drives, shields etc etc etc and it will take the universe a while to get them, with the necessity to do things 'the harder way' for a while to get there. It doesn't have to work this way, but there needs to be SOMETHING that stops the universe being fully mature within a month. Think Eve and Titans, it was a long time until people even saw one of those things, let alone the many there are now. Number 2 This is just a simple one. Bring back meganodes. Not regular mining, just meganodes. Meganodes were GREAT. They created an entire little economy and role all of their own. Specialist scanners went out and sold the scan locations. Scan ships were a thing. The mining locator LUA came out of it. It will also give people who like the manual mining something to do more than asteroids. I know there is the storage concern of regular mining on the planets, but if it was ONLY meganodes, that would be a VAST reduction in the amount of holes dug. You could also make territory scans pinpoint the node, so people dig straight to them. Also, make them disappear after a while. If someone mines one out, then just fill it in if there is no activity on that hex for X days, or its unclaimed for X days. Then regenerate that node elsewhere on the planet so there is a constant supply for people to go out and find. There are plenty of technical ways to keep the costs down but still get all of the good gameplay back that meganodes bought. Done So yeh, really Number 1 is the most important thing. SOMETHING that gives the game purpose. I just think number 2 would be a sensible gameplay step 🙂 Thanks for reading my rambles!

My 2c: I do not want a wipe, cause I have built a lot of stuff that I will likely not be bothered to rebuild. HOWEVER, there needs to be a wipe for the longevity of the game. Basically there isn't a lot to do anymore in game because the universe fully matured very quickly. So, with that said, I believe some things need to happen before a wipe which is partly linked to why they want to wipe. Schematics - In their current form are bad. They're just an artificial block on stuff, however I think they should be incorporated in a way that will enhance the game. So my idea: 1. T1 has no schematics, let everyone get that 2. Higher tiers of stuff needs some kind of gate, whether that's schematics or whatever, I don't know, but it needs something so that the universe has to progress over time 3. That progression of the universe should involve the whole player base, not necessarily working together, but in natural symbiotic ways. For instance: make it so that people have to build/research schematics, so there will be players who specialise in this and sell schematics Make the production/research of those schematics take some kind of alien tech or something that explorers need to go off and collect Then you get a nice loop. Ship builders make ships that explorers use to go off and find alien tech that they provide to researchers who provide better schematics that ship builders then buy to make better ships for the explorers to go off and get better tech etc etc etc And IMO this should be a long process. The higher tiers of tech should take months to reach so that the universe has a natural curve and maturity to it and the overall player base has some reasons to do things other than 'Make money for... reasons'. You can then feed other systems into this like combat for stealing tech, monopolising resources for better stuff, whatever. So yeh, do a wipe, but get the game at a point where it has a proper loop that makes the universe feel worthwhile first, otherwise the same thing will just happen again (especially if you just remove schematics). Solo players will be able to build everything after a month and then... what's the point?

The UEF ships are terrible. In fact, I'd go as far as to say they are damaging for the game, because new players have them and have a terrible experience of supposedly 'official' ships. I see where you're coming from about the common areas, but that is why the game needs to embrace it and make some changes to make use of those common spaces official. Just kicking everyone out of them is denying what has been an important emergent behaviour in the game. It just needs to be done properly ?

Already addressed this above. a) I'm at a district, not a market. b) My store is off to the side of the landing pad so is already non blocking - I even have an elevator to take people from the ground floor to the parking level so they don't have to run to the stairs. c) Adverts to redirect people to some other location is not efficient or convenient for customers/business. d) I've sold a tonne of ships and helped loads of new players get into the game where otherwise they would have struggled. So trust me, I've helped far more people than I've hindered. Players congregating around market areas is natural, and so selling things to them there should also be natural. The game should find proper ways of implementing this rather than just saying the 'solution' is to do something counterintuitive. Emergent gameplay started people making stores at busy player hubs, DU should find a way of embracing this in a more streamlined way. Other items were mentioned above. Rentable static space is one. You could also make it so you can sell full ships at the market, or have a player section of the UEF store with a scrollable catalogue or VR sales area. 'Do it a worse way' is a pointless argument.

If you're still struggling, give me a shout on Discord (xennon#5560) and I'll help sort you out

Not quite that simple when you're trying to do it for 5 different ship models. Can only have 10 transfer units total because then you hit the limit on the source storage containers. So I have 2 TU's per ship model doubling up where possible. The more ship models you add, the harder and slower it gets. But really the point is, I can link a container and drag and drop something in a second, whereas a TU will take a day to do the same job. Kind of feel like there needs to be a middle ground there. (TBF, i've stopped with the TU's now. Instead I have 5 dispensers set up to vend the parts for each ship. I dump all of my produced parts, manually, into one massive storage container, then, one by one, connect the dispensers and vend a whole ship, package it, then move onto the next. It's a workaround, but far quicker than manually counting out the parts or waiting for the TU's). TU's are designed for moving one thing, constantly, to somewhere else (like a factory unit build it). They aren't designed for moving selections in bulk. They fit into a production line, not into a stock control system ?

It depends on the size of the ship. L atmospheric engines and L containers (and similarly large items) take 1-2 hours to transfer, each. So even an S core ship with a transfer unit running constantly takes about 24 hours to move all of the elements (could easily be more, could also be less). One of my ships is a tri scanner, I think it takes something like 6 hours just to do the territory scanners. Yes indeed. I would prefer, as your third point says, specific space for static constructs that would circumvent that problem entirely while at the same time ratifying the player made stores at the markets concept. An S core off the side of the parking lot is exactly what I have, and I would be more than happy for that to be a static S core and pay some rent for the space. That brings its own problems of limited space and new players having nowhere to build (see things like Ultima Online back in the day), so would also need thinking about. That said, with player numbers as they are at the moment, it wouldn't be a problem, but you have to design assuming a larger player base.

Yeh, I think I was probably the first to have a player run market place at a district, which made me both popular and unpopular in equal measure haha. I started this game at the end of alpha and as soon as I got the hang of it my plan was to sell entire ships to serve newer players. but lord is stock control tedious! lol.

That's vastly less convenient for customers and subsequently worse for business. The reason my store has always done so well is because it serves newer players and they can buy a ship directly from the district. The game should be supporting this kind of thing, not try to make it less convenient.

So let me outline my problem. I run a ship store which is a dynamic construct at District 3. I have a factory which produces all the parts for all of my ship models (12 different models). When I restock my store, I have to go to all my various part output containers (approx 10 of them) and manually move out the specific number of parts for the amount of ships I want to stock, for every part in that ship, load it on to a transport, then do the same for the other ships. Then I fly it all to the store and move each set of parts into their respective sale containers which are attached to dispensers. Here are main problems that make this process tedious when doing it for the 100000th time PROBLEM - Selecting the parts for a ship takes ages. It's the same set of parts every time, but there is no way to automate that. I have written lua scripts that use transfer units to move a specific combination of parts to a container, but transfer units are slow. it takes over a day to move all the parts for a ship, whereas I can drag and drop those same parts in a second. My current workaround is to manually move all of the constructed parts to a single container, then connect a dispenser which is set up to vend the parts for a ship. I then use that dispenser to vend the specific parts into another container, and then package those parts up (packaging was a great addition btw, it certainly helps here). The ideal would be to be able to run a selection template over the part containers in order to pull out a specific set, that would eliminate the need for the 'consolidated container' and the dispensers, but open to suggestions on how this could be made easier. On the above, only one dispenser can be attached to a container at one time. this means to vend my ship parts, I have to disconnect a dispenser, connect the one I want to use, vend the parts, disconnect the dispenser, connect the next one etc etc. SUGGESTION - I know I'm using dispensers as a workaround here, but can't we have it so a container serves multiple dispenser? SUGGESTION - Maybe some kind of 'packing' machine, that takes a batch like dispensers, but can be connected to multiple source containers. When the full 'batch' is detected across all the source containers, it packages it up and outputs that package to a destination container. Appreciate this could possibly deprecate transfer units, but larger factories need some kind of way to automate the management of their inventories. Doing it manually isn't fun, and more machines means more opportunities for talents, production etc. PROBLEM - I wanted to use the mission system to have people come and do the deliveries to restock my store. So assuming problem 1 above is solved and I can (mostly) automate my preparation of stock, I could then package them up (or have the packing machine do it straight into a Parcel container) and create a mission to have it transported to my store. The problem?, you can't put a parcel container on a dynamic core. Of course this makes sense, you don't want people having a 'moving target' for a mission, but lots of people run dynamic core stores at the districts and markets. SUGGESTION - 1 (small, or maybe even add extra small) static core allowed per player per district/market. This would probably need a lot of thinking about, but these stores are an emergent part of the game (I was probably the first to do it since day one, and while it's always had mixed feedback, it was massively successful, so embracing this kind of emergent behaviour only makes the game better in my opinion. Attempting to get people to move their stores away from the districts and markets just doesn't make sense, because those areas are where the people are (especially new players, that my ships target). SUGGESTION - A generic delivery container at every district (like the market container) where things can be delivered to or collected from. This wouldn't be ideal, as there would always be the manual step of collecting the package (unless you allow people to link machines to it, but that seems doubtful) but it would at least allow people to set missions to carry things to markets/districts that they didn't want sold to the market. I could VR in, move the package to a container at my store and then unpack, which would still be pretty easy to do. Considering market containers already exist and are tied in to the mission system, this feels like it'd be a really easy implementation. I really want to engage players using the mission system to deliver my stuff, but I just can't do it at the moment, which seems like a big miss for the mission system ? PROBLEM - Ok, this one isn't really a major problem, but it'd be cool if you had the packing and unpacking machines that could link to parcel containers, and then automatically create missions based off a template. Would just automate another step in the pipeline (but appreciate you don't want to automate everything as then players don't actually need to log in). So yeh, there are my use cases that aren't served by the current system. The biggest one is the mission system. I was really excited to start using to to engage delivery drivers, but I can't because there is just no way to set a district (or dynamic store) as a target for a delivery.