vylqun

The Backstory of Dual Universe tells us, that we traveled thousands of years with sub lightspeed in giant ark ships to reach our current home. That was nessecary due to IK Pegasi turning into a supernova and catapulting its remnant towards us (which is btw a little hole in the backstory, with the fastest currently known speed of accelerated neutron stars (~2000 km/s) IK Pegasi would still need approximately 19000 Years to travel towards our solar system) The arkships traveled with sub lightspeed, but for humanity to colonize more than one solar system they need to invent some kind of ftl- technology. So, which are the currently scientific slightly reasonable ftl-techs? The probably easiest way to introduce ftl are wormholes or rather giant space-gates as in most space sims, they would link together by (still highly theoretical) wormholes and allow instant travel to distant gates. That method is overused and outdated tho, so i'd suggest a different way, which is, within the limits of the current string theory, quite reasonable. The HTOPN - (haven't thought of proper name) - Engine. Every star, every planet, every object in the universe which consists of matter has mass, for natural objects that mass and its distribution in its volume is as distinct as a fingerprint for humans, within the boundaries of our universe you wont find a planet or sun which have an exact twin considering its mass distribution. The mass distribution can be measured by the gravity distribution. That means, if the gravity of a stellar object can be mapped accurately, then we can identify it. But why would we need to identify an object in such a complicated way if we can just use its spectral data and positioning? Thats where string theory comes into play. I will keep this short, every particle, be it boson, quarks or leptons, is a string. Those strings for most particles, are connected with their endpoints to branes, which simplified means our dimension. Thus they can only interact with our dimension and don't influence other dimensions at all (we wouldn't be able to see or interact with objects of other dimensions). There are however some exemptions, those are strings which are closed loops, one example for those kind of strings are the gravitons (still theoretical but with high probability to be correct). They are not connected to any brane and thus can influence other dimensions, that means you can measure the gravitational fingerprint of a sun or (with high enough sensity) a planet in other dimensions than our own! (which is btw one quite successful attempt of the string theory to explain dark matter, its the gravitational influence of matter from other dimensions) Thats what the HTOPN Engine uses, the engine opens an extreme amount of small dimensional gates in a very short time, and searches for the gravitational fingerprint of the stellar body which is the target. In all these dimensions the distance to the target is different, thus the computer searches for the dimension with the shortest traveling distance and safest route. After an acceptable dimension is found, the ship is covered in a shield, a big dimensional gate is opened, and it travels with sub-lightspeed through that other dimension to the target, where another dimensional gate is opened to return to normal space. The shield acts as connection to our dimension, because the strings of our matter still is and has to be connected to it, that means we cannot see or feel anything from the other dimension, and if the shield fails the ship will cease to exist. The beauty of this way to travel is, that the distance in our dimension is not related to the distance in a different dimension, that means humanity is not bound to a single galaxy or cluster, it can travel literally everywhere, exploring the whole universe.

They want to generate the planets procedurally, so i dont think this will be possible as it would require quite a lot more data to be transmitted to every other player. It would make a great reason for conflicts tho, if 2 guilds occupy the same planet and one guild builds terraforming plants while the other keeps destroying it

thats a good point, and i too think, that what i wrote could most likely be only used for lore except maybe for the crafting of those communication spheres to create a new chat- or voice channel.

yes, exactly that was what i had in mind when i thought of this system, its pretty easy to get the basic materials, nearly as easy as smelting in wow just with a single slider u have to use, while the creation of a little bit better materials requires the use of catalysators and more types of basic ressources, thus everyone can easily make materials with ~80% of the maximum attributes, while getting up to 95% or something alike can take months of research (and not just going down a skilltree which is then called research by most games)

When i read through the devblog, the resurrection concept to be exact, i saw that u go with a multiverse lore. That gives a great way to introduce a physically reasonable way of real-time communication over infiinite distances. The Communication Sphere The basic principle is that every communication device has a small dimensional gate through which it sends and recieves the communication data. The basic idea seems simple, but the hardware to recieve, collect and send the data in the other dimension has to be located in that specific seperate dimension, which limits the mass and size of the hardware. That problem was solved with the invention of the communication sphere. The communication sphere is a spherical object with a diameter of a few meter, depending on its planned capacity. How recieving and sending data works: The surface of the communication sphere spreads every incomming radiation homogenous over its whole surface, that means if you aim with a high intensity, red laser at the surface, then the whole surface will glow in a low intensity red, which can then be detected with any sensor placed around the sphere. It works like an inverse integrating sphere. So a communication device sends high intensity, directional radiation to the surface of the communication sphere, and any detector placed around the sphere can measure that radiation. That means any communication devide requires a strong transmitter and a very sensible transceiver. The sent data is encoded, thus even tho every detector placed around the communication sphere can recieve the data, they wont be able to decode it. (pretty much the same as a mobile phone) The required sensity of the transceivers limits the distance to the communication sphere, thus the diameter of the sphere automatically limits the maximum amount of devices connected to it. That can be bypassed tho by using at least one communication device which gathers all information of one communication sphere and its transmitter sends it to the surface of a second communication sphere, linking them together. All this would be useless tho if those communications spheres are still located in our normal space, because the speed of light and necessarity of a direct connection makes it impractical. Thats where the extra dimension comes into play, the communication sphere is pushed into a small seperate dimension upon activation, it then opens dimensional gates in the proper distance to the surface (defined by the sensitivity of the transceivers) which connect to the dimensional gates of the communication devices in our dimension. So the way the communication works is basically: I. The communication device sends the data as laser through its dimensional gate II. The laser travels from the dimensional gate in the communication dimension to the surface of the communication sphere III. The Laserlight is emitted homogenously from the whole surface of the sphere IV. Each dimensional gate around the sphere recieves the low intensity radiation and sends it to its communication device V. The communication device with the proper code decodes the information and contact between both communication devices is established. And because pictures are always nice and catch attention i tried to picturize the communication sphere and dimensional gates with my limited skills With that concept it would be possible for players to build those (extremely expensive) communication spheres, which would create a communication network for everyone linked to it, if there are several communication spheres and the players want to connect them together without building a new, bigger one, they can do so by linking them. As long as no spy is within the communication network then the communication is completely secure, if a spy gets access to it then, ofc, they can try to hack into it. (for example if they infiltrated a ship or city and get access to a communication terminal with a dimensional gate linked to that communication sphere)

Ah right, i forgot to say, when i like a game concept i often spam suggestions and concepts in the forum because i just can't stop myself from thinking up stuff that i'd think would be amazing ingame. That doesnt mean i think what u guys are planning needs to be improved or anything like that, just take it maybe as a scource for inspiration and as a sign that i'm fascinated with the game concept

mh, yes, thats true, it would probably only work with a limit like 1 skillbook per week and then big guilds still have a head start.

i dont know if getting into it would really be as complicated as u think it is, basically the players only add the ressources and catalysators and move a single slider, especially for "low level" crafting where u use just 1 or 2 ressources its really simple, they "just" need to chose the correct craft parameter and chose relatively well fitting ressources, and for that there could be basic recipes which are at maybe 70% of the best archieveable value. As for the coding, the formulas should be pretty easy, but i can imagine that balancing all possible ressources and catalysators will be a horrible work^^

Catalysts The usage of catalysts is for the advanced or master crafters, they can change the affinity value of the attributes and increase the attributes for certain affinity values, enabling completely new compounds. A catalyst has 4 stats, Factor Affinity Width Shifting the formula for the catalysts is 1+Ee^(-(F+G-x)^2)-e^(-1/H(F+G-x)^2) E is the Factor, it is the maximum multiplicator for the basic improvement of the ore due to the catalyst, its something between 1 and 1.5. F is the Affinity and G the Shifting, F+G decide the location of the peak on the x-axis. H is the Width, it determines the depth and range of the area below 1, which would reduce the final value. The Shifting has an additional purpose, it changes the Hardness or Quality Affinity of anything that's near the Affinity of the Catalyst. It works with a Gaussian again, its calculated by Affinityshift= G*e^(-(F-C)^2) where C is the Affinity of the primary resource. That affinity is then changed to C = C+Affinityshift. In this way primary resources which aren't compatible without catalyst can still be successfully mixed. One example for the Hardness and Hardness Affinities of 2 different types of Ore, mixed in a 1:1 ratio: this picture shows the graphs without active catalyst, the black graphs are the ore Gaussians, the red one is the combined function with limiter and the green graph is the function of the catalyst which wasn't applied yet. The Affinity of the Catalyst is 6.7, the Shifting is -2.5. If the Catalyst is applied to only the right ore function its transformed to this way: red is the original function, black the new one with catalyst. For refining a single ressource, that catalyst would be pretty bad, because it reduces the maximum hardness value. Thus the result would be inferior to refining without catalyst. However, using the catalyst on the compound improves the result significantly because, even tho it reduces the hardness of the second ressource, it brings its affinity much closer to the first ressource, leading to a great improvement, as seen in the magenta graph which shows the compound function after applying the catalyst: the affinities are brought close enough together so that the maximum possible hardness is higher than for a single ressource.

Detailed Version Every resource has several stats, for example Hardness, Quality, Flexibility etc., depending on the type of ressource (hardness for a liquid would be rather weird). As stated in the previous post i'll take metals as example and give them the attributes hardness and quality (i'll set weight aside because the weight can be just an weighted average of all materials used in the process). Each attribute has an attribute affinity, that means every ressource has 2 values for every attribute. The attribute and Attribute affinity define a gaussian: The attribute is the maxium Value, and the attribue affinity is the location of the maximum. the shown attribute has a value of 15 with an affinity of 6.( the formula for the gaussian is A*e^(-B(C-x)^2), A = Hardness or Quality and C = Hardness Affinity or Quality Affinity, B will be defined further below, its a weighting factor depending on the amount of the ressource used) If we assume now that the player wants to refine a material with just one ressource and without catalysator, he will get the best result for the hardness if he sets up a heat equivalent to the affinity value of 6. If he is a little bit lower, at 5,5 then he only recieves a value ~13. It would make sense to let the refinment fail, if the archieved attribute value is a lot lower than the maximum, nobody needs an iron ingot with a hardness of literally zero. That also means, that the affinity values for the single attribues of a ressource have to be relatively close together, else it would always fail because either the hardness is to low, or the quality. an example for a ressource would be following graph: If the player sets a temperature between 4 and 5,2 he would get a result, everything else would fail because either the hardness or the quality is to low. at ~4,95 he would have a material with a balanced hardness and quality, a lower temperature produces a material with the focus on hardness, a higher temperature with the focus on quality. Now assume the player wants to create a compound of 2 materials. i will concentrate on only one attribute now, to not make the graphs to complicated. For that purpose the Gaussians of all metals are summed up and multiplied by a limiter function: (2-0.6^n)/n * e^(-(D-x)^2)*(Sum of the Gaussians of every used ressource) where n is the number of different ressources used and D is the sum of the Hardness or Quality Affinities of all ressources divided by the amount of them. the black and blue functions are the hardness gaussians of the single ressources, the magenta curve is the sum of both gaussians and the red one is the sum multiplied by the limiter function. The limiter function is important to not exponentially increase the attribute with the number of ressources used. The example shown in this picture is a rather bad choice of ressources for a compound, as it reduces the maximum of the archieveable hardness. If we take two other ressources which affinities are clother together we get the following graph: the color code is the same, and now its clealy visible, that the red graph has a higher maximum than any of the single gaussians, thus the compound can archieve a hardness which is higher than one of the single metals. If a player uses more than 1 different ressource, the parameter B from the gaussian becomes important, its not 1 anymore. The value for C is 1/Amount . The amount is realtive, that means if u use 2 parts iron and 1 part copper the relative amount of iron is 2/3 and the one from copper is 1/3. The value 1/Amount gives 3/2 for iron and 3 for copper as result. This is where the crafting for uninterested people ends, its realitvely easy to mix 2 or 3 metals and archieve a fairly good result, but anything after that becomes complicated enough to be fun for crafting addicted

The most important thing about a mmorpg for me is an entertaining combat system, and closely after its the crafting. So far there was no game where i would have said "Thats it, perfect crafting system", so i want to give some suggestions which i hope will inspire the devs to create a crafting system where i completely forget the combat There are many games which describe their crafting systems as "complex" or "complicated" while it still is nothing different than clicking 2 or more items together to get a predetermined result. In the end every player crafts the same items, there is no real distinction between single crafters except for their masteries and endgame gear has the same stats for everyone. Better and worse at the same time are the chinese mmorpg's, especially those in the past which added a random factor to the crafting. While this is a good way to make crafting a bit more ... realistic (afterall every reallife artisan will create items with slight quality differences) the randomness is not good. For those who dont want to read a wall of text i will give a summary here, as for the devs and players interested in a discussion i hope they'll read the wall of text in the next post Summary: All crafting starts with the ressources gatheredand refined. The gathered ressources are equal for everyone, an iron mine on hyperion will get the same iron as one on earth (except for the composition of isotopes maybe, but thats neglectable i think) But which will make a difference is the refining, the creation of composite metals / plastics etc. Those refined materials will have a direct impact on the crafted items. Thus my suggestion starts with the refinement system. To refine any compositve material a player can add several primary ressources and catalysators, additionally he has to vary a refining parameter, for metals it could be heat. Each of the ressource, (i will stay at metals for the rest of the text to simplify things) has a "heat-affinity", if the player sets the correct heat value the final composite metal will have better stats. This is the basic crafting that everyone can do, just take a metal or two, vary the heat and u will get some result. More advanced crafters will add catalysators, those affect the affinities of the metals, ultimately giving the chance to get a higher affinity value thus further improving the result and at the same time enabling composites which arent possible without them. This way every player has the opportunity to create his own secret compounds, giving items built with those materials superior (or inferior) stats to other crafters. It gives the players the chance to really learn crafting instead of just learning recipes, and with a little bit luck in experimenting with the materials and parameters a new crafter could even get superior materials than an old veteran. Depending on the stats of the materials used to craft an item, an armor for example, the movement, armorvalue, durability etc. can vary thus giving the possiblity to greatly individualize the gear if the crafter has access to the proper materials.

How about giving players the ability to create "skillbooks" when they mastered a certain part of the skilltree, which improves the training speed for the person using it by 50% or something alike. That would give new players the chance to catch up while old players still have the benefit from selling those skillbooks.

i'm looking forward to botswarm ai tournaments

Another part of the chat, something i really loved about anarchy online, even tho it was playercreated, were chatbots. I dont know if anyone here played AO and remembers fixercom or guildbots, but they were playermade accounts which could answer questions and had basic database functions as well as some other little more or less usefull functions like random number generators, information about other players etc. It would be really great to have something like this as kind of rudimentary AI (even tho its obviously not an ai)

Power in numbers? please take a few barrages of the long range aoe missile ships

If all goes as planned and the ships can be designed however they want then i'll happily try to create my dream of a fleet carrier, large, slow ships with a mushroom kind of design, where the head consists of nearly only armor, so that fire from the front might create craters with a depths of dozen of meters without dealing serious damage and fast interceptors which try to kill the enemy before they can get around the carrier Ofc the mass distribution would make it slow and hard to turn around, but thats how a realistic, massive carrier should be anyways.

Hello, i'm always looking for the perfect scifi mmorpg where i can immerse myself in for a decade but haven't found one so far (except for anarchy online way back). Besides fallen earth pre beta this is the only one which actually made me register before i can test it, i hope u can realize ur ideas and create a great game