vylqun

+100m from initial NQ decided height is max limit for planetary voxels. 

This is a list of improvements that can be coded in under an hour, the little annoyances that are easy to fix that degrade the experience.
 
Looking for feedback on what's good, what's bad, and things to add. Iv numbered them to make it easier to show what you like/dislike.
Once we have a decent list I can post on upvote https://upvote.dualuniverse.game/


Market:
1.) Buy to inventory: Bought items go into your active container if there is room. Skips unnecessarily transferring from market container to inventory.
2.) Sorting: Allow market orders to be sorted by several columns at once. (Ex closest distance and lowest price sorted in the order they are clicked)
3.) Default Sorting: Market orders are default sorted by, closest distance, then lowest price, then largest quantity.
4.) Searching: When searching a word like Atmo for example, have anything that starts with Atmo in the first word first, then anything with Atmo in the second word second, and so on. So if i search for Atmo, Advanced Engines should not be the first thing that comes up.
5.) Keep scroll position: When looking through items and you click on one then go back to the list, have it return you to where you were on the list, currently it resets you to the top of the list. 
6.) Quick Sell from linked container: Right now if i want to quick sell something i have to drag it from my linked container to my nano, reopen the market and sell it a little at a time.
7.) Right click, inspect item: In the market window allow us to right click and inspect an item to see its details without having to leave the list.
8.) Buy all for BPs: An option to buy everything needed for a blueprint from the market. This would also add to the market as sellers can now play the market for people buying all. This one is a little more Dev intensive and im iffy on having it on this list.
9.) Allow the market window to be moved around.
10.) When buying remotely you still get a warning about market items in container. A simple if player is not within 50m of a market don't show the window.
11.) A checkbox for blueprints when searching, so they do or do not showup when your searching. Have the checkbox remember its position of checked or not checked in-between client loads/logins. Most of the time your searching, its not for blueprints and they tend to just clutter the search.

Items:
100.) Right click, view on market: Not just for inventory items but on the inspect window as well.
101.) Shift click items: Much like you can do in OS's,  click one item, then shift click another lower in the list and it selects all items in-between. Would be a godsend for inventory transferring.
102.) When transferring items to a container that does not have enough space, by default round off to the nearest digit, so players don't end up with 0.47976249.. ect of an item in their inventory.
103.) Crafting an item in the nano crafter will auto craft anything that's required.(EX: Crafting a Surrogate VR Station also ques the items not in your inventory like Basic screen, Basic Processor, ect)
104.) When nano-crafted items do not have all the required material, skip to the next craftable item in the nanocrafting que.
105.) Give the option to clear the notification. This also helps server and client performance when noticed get into the thousands.
106.) Have notifications only show new ones by default.

 
Scanning:
200.) Having to freeze scanning ships: You need to freeze your ship or scanning can get aborted. You can be completely still and scanning will get aborted. I think giving scanning a little more margin on moving should fix this, that the player has to move a few meters from scan start location.
 
Server:
300.) Give a countdown for server restarts, a 15, 5, and 1 minute notices when the server is restarting, to allow people to get into a safe position.


Iv been playing for 2 weeks and every time I hit one of these items it degrades the experience and they add up over time.

don't know if i understood you wrong or if your statement is just false. Ofc normal fusion generates more energy than needed to iniate it for pretty much all elements below iron. And cold fusion is called cold fusion because it doesn't require high temperatures to initiate the fusion process, has nothing to do with the produed/consumed energy.

This stuff is why the game needs an “all but BP’s and skills” wipe on release. Reset the worlds and ore, etc..
 
I get it. I have stuff I do not want to lose too. But you can’t have stuff like this just go untreated in a PvP game with a player based economy. The consequences of these kind of massive economic errors only grow over time.
 
There’s a reason games wipe after Betas (and let’s be honest this is really an open alpha, not feature complete). There are going to be fuck ups, wildly bad balance passes, etc.. you can either micromanage their effects, ignore them and leave the game permanently damaged, or beta wipe. It seems like a pretty obvious decision from a balance/dev resource position.

don't know if i understood you wrong or if your statement is just false. Ofc normal fusion generates more energy than needed to iniate it for pretty much all elements below iron. And cold fusion is called cold fusion because it doesn't require high temperatures to initiate the fusion process, has nothing to do with the produed/consumed energy.

thats why i stopped making fleshed out suggestions for game mechanics after alpha1. It's just being ignored without any feedback because NQ follows their gameplan and basically doesn't care for the suggestions of players if it touches a core mechanic.

thats why i stopped making fleshed out suggestions for game mechanics after alpha1. It's just being ignored without any feedback because NQ follows their gameplan and basically doesn't care for the suggestions of players if it touches a core mechanic.

This is my opinion.

NQ wants this to be a community game. They want folks to play together and build relationships.
 
We are building relationships... in Discord. We can't build relationships ***In Game*** because the communication tools in game are awful.  This is, IMnsHO, the single biggest mistake that NQ has made, and is continuing to make.
 
If they want this to be a community building game, then they need to provide the communication tools to actually build communities. This includes mission terminals, player market terminals, etc but it also includes, threaded chat, tags, filtered customization chat tabs, in game email, ship hailing, and proximity voice. Without these, we are alone in game, and together in Discord.

Changing the schematic prices is defintiely needed, even tho schematics themselves are fine. What i miss in this update is how to make PvP worthwhile again. While its good that ships destroyed in PvP will be full stopped i doubt that the components salvaged will really be enough to cover the cost, but we will see about that.
And just so you don't forget, once again: we need more content and we need a complete revamp of the repair system! There are many good suggestions about this in the forum, keeping it as it is would be a great waste of potential.

Changing the schematic prices is defintiely needed, even tho schematics themselves are fine. What i miss in this update is how to make PvP worthwhile again. While its good that ships destroyed in PvP will be full stopped i doubt that the components salvaged will really be enough to cover the cost, but we will see about that.
And just so you don't forget, once again: we need more content and we need a complete revamp of the repair system! There are many good suggestions about this in the forum, keeping it as it is would be a great waste of potential.

TBH, all the industry stuff isn't such an issue if you're not just started.
When all went down i had 5mio Quanta in my wallet and no assets i would sell, thus i bought 30 warp cells, hopped in my small warper courier and went to teomas for 2 days where i mined sodium for about 20 hours, earning 30mio in the process. With that i bought the schematics for an advanced s-engines industry, and while the sales aren't anything to write about i got a bulk order thats worth a few millions so far. 
With the dwindling playerbase being industrialist might not be profitable for the next one or two months, but you can still start building something up.
 
The bigger issue for me is the lack of other content, which is whyplayers leave, and the stupid repair mechanics which completely killed pvp. And JC had the gall to say they know it killed pvp but it will be fine in the future with no intention to fix it for the time being.

TBH, all the industry stuff isn't such an issue if you're not just started.
When all went down i had 5mio Quanta in my wallet and no assets i would sell, thus i bought 30 warp cells, hopped in my small warper courier and went to teomas for 2 days where i mined sodium for about 20 hours, earning 30mio in the process. With that i bought the schematics for an advanced s-engines industry, and while the sales aren't anything to write about i got a bulk order thats worth a few millions so far. 
With the dwindling playerbase being industrialist might not be profitable for the next one or two months, but you can still start building something up.
 
The bigger issue for me is the lack of other content, which is whyplayers leave, and the stupid repair mechanics which completely killed pvp. And JC had the gall to say they know it killed pvp but it will be fine in the future with no intention to fix it for the time being.

with limited repairs that wont happen again i'd guess.

let's be honest here, DU is extremely boring to watch on twitch, even if i love playing the game, i would never watch someone else do it, way to slow and no action.

You're well on the path of going the way of Worlds Adrift.
 
You want to nerf industry because everyone is building their own 'Iphone' - fine - what are they going to do instead? What else is there to do instead? 
 
You want to add element destruction? Great - I'm with you. It needs to happen. But maybe just maybe pairing it with the removal of the Alt-F4 mechanic, removal of Discord support and on top of that nerfing production isn't the best idea? 
 
You think mining is too easy? Grea.....wait what....what? WHAT?! Have you mined in DU? How much? Look, ask anyone who has filled a 10L hub every two nights, there is nothing 'easy' about mining. It's boring. It's tedious. It's concentrated drudgery and one of the primary reasons I don't play DU anymore - but what it is not is 'easy' and never even in my most drunken state (and I admit I sure didn't mine sober) did I think that "Hey maybe if I couldn't link to my 10L hub mining would be better!" . In fact, when linking was broken, I just didn't play the game. 
 
Just the fact that JC thinks that linking is the issue with mining - not literally everything else - makes me lose all faith in his judgment. Of all the things wrong with mining - linking isn't  one of them. Nor is the lack  of "mining hazards"...
 
The community has over and over and over asked for constructs that can mine - empyrion style - give us drills we can put on hovers - give even bigger giant drills we can put on stationary constructs. Give us anything besides handmining because 'easy' it's not - it's at least 7th level of hell grade tedium - and 9th if you have to deal with phantom nodes and pending operations. Unless of course you take my approach, get drunk and watch netflix so that the next day you forget about how hellish mining for 6 hours straight was.
 
Unfortunately I've remembered enough of those nights over time to stop logging in to DU...and the upcoming changes and theroycrafting about the future of mining have made it extremely clear that JC does not play DU either...he may goof around in his castle - but he sure hasn't built a mega factory nor has he mined the ore to get the resources to build his giant fortress if he thinks all those things are too easy...
 
Seriously - JC just logs in - looks at all the stuff others built and his take away is that mining and mega factories are too easy? It took us weeks of drudgery......I can't even...
 
Edit: Also - cores not repairable?! Masterstroke....

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

sadly both kind of players need completely different game mechanics, and while Sims players, with clothes food etc. can play together with warmongers as long as they are save, to many survival mechanics will drive pvp players away. The discussion about having a food system or not was quite big in the past and served to prove that. PvP players want to have clos eto zero survival/upkeep mechanics, while its the bread and butter for rpg/sims/whatever players.
 
thats one of the problems here, cities need a lot of work without ingame gain, which is why only few players will create one without incentive.  And honestly, who, if not hardcore rp players, would work as garbage collection or similar tedious work in a game if it doesn't pay well? that's why we need gameplay benefits for those things. We can't hope that rp-players have sufficient drive to deal with that.
I'm all in for social/educational/recreational elements for buildings which could gather players there. Be it an physical therapist center that helps removing penalties due to being reincarnated, Foodstuff/entertainment modules that slightly increase xp gain or whatever, but we can't rely on players without giving benefits. If you want a garbage collector we better have a salvaging mechanic that can be used as personal skill or incorporated in garbage refineries to make their time worthwhile.

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

well, of all the possible systems of government you chose the democracy and deny the existence of other forms, isn't that in itself pretty limiting? Besides, its a bit arrogant to think that democracy is the only way to go for an advanced civilization, democracy is a pretty limited system, it only really works in idealistic environments where every person is well informed about political, economical etc. issues. Otherwise it devolves into inefficient structures lead by persons without excellence which only serve to limit the development of a state.

laws, sure, get your organization to enforce them, artificial restrictions? surely not. Star citizen isnt exactly comparable to DU.