Thor Wotansen

In the footage that has been released so far we have a pretty good picture of how mining will go on a small scale, however, we have yet to see what is in store for the large scale mining tools. There are several ways this could go, from drills ala Space engineers, to scaled up versions of whatever we have on our arms, to mining lasers that can harvest a roid from kilometers away. This also means that the method of harvesting will have a direct impact on how we design mining ships and also how we use them. Drills, for example, will limit the size of any practical mining vessel. Of course there will always be some mad genius building a huge and impressive, but heinously expensive rig that makes holes clean through the planet, but those will be rare. If we have a large version of whatever the thing on our arms is then we can expect larger vessels that have multiple mining stations, and are crewed by a group of players. I like this version the best, because I could see some truly astonishing mining barges being built for planetary mining. The other option, mining lasers, would be less effective because of the voxel system, but still a good option. They would probably end up being more like the weapons, that lock onto an asteroid and mine it away like that. They would also be a bit more cumbersome on planets and require less player involvement overall. I, for one, am casting my vote (do I get a vote?) for the nanoformer based mining rig that is a turret-like device that mounts on the ships hull and is controlled by a player to carve away layers of material. It would have to be piped up to a very large storage system. I don't think it should be a thing that can be coded to be run by a script. Of course there could be a fixed type that mounts on the front of a ship and just sucks in whatever is in front of it for your little mining drones, but the player controlled turret things should be more effective.

I can't say I understand how any of the programing works, but with the voxel system they will have to apply damage to individual voxels, so having a thing that intercepts that damage shouldn't be that hard. The lock on thing with the skills is probably going to determine the accuracy cone.

This is an awesome idea! I can already see someone writing a script to route power to the shields on the side or the ship closest to an unknown or hostile vessel. This is in my opinion, exactly the kind of thing that will make the ship designing career valuable. I think that there should be several different shield types, as well as settings, so I could choose to fit my ship with particle shields that can block or largely mitigate incoming projectile damage, or I could fit EM shields that block or mitigate energy weapon damage. Frequencies of the particle shield generators would have to be tuned to the velocity of the incoming projectile, so rail guns would need high frequency to defend against and missiles would need lower frequency. There should be different sizes of shield generators that have different fixed areas of coverage in a simple hexagon shape that stands at a distance from the ship that can be set by the owner by tweaking the settings, but perhaps the farther out you set it the more energy it uses, and the area of coverage wouldn't change. I also think the power requirements for shield generators be on the higher side,more suited to large ships and bases. That's not to say that somebody couldn't put shields on a small ship, but they'd have to have a chunky energy source. This also means that most ships will simply not have the energy to mount both EM and particle shields. For the skills associated with tuning shield generator frequencies, I envision a skill that allows you to determine the desired frequency for the incoming damage. The higher the level, the greater the accuracy of the info; for instance if I have only level 1 in shield tuning I am able to detect the desired frequency to within 15%, but the more I train the better I get so at level 5 I might get it down to 5%. Of course knowing exactly what the enemy has will let you tune it perfectly, but I think there will be a fairly large range of weapons to choose from once we get going.

Sign me up. I've already stated my intent to build the elevator and I'm happy to have help in the planning and construction of it. I also intend to be the mind behind the ship designs that everyone will buy, so getting an early start in the building of things is right up my alley.

I've built some crazy shit in Space Engineers that I'm sure baffled a few of my faction mates, but I knew what everything did, so it was fine. Having automatic sorting systems and an automatic baseline inventory of finished components can look confusing but it is not hard to make.

Is that the she-Stig? She can fly my ship any day.

You guys are designing things already? Where, in Sketch up?

I personally like the player built jump gate idea very much. As has been said, they will be tremendously expensive and certainly not a thing a small group would build, unless they were very successful at something else and paid someone to do it. Remember, there will be vast amounts of resources in the game and it will all need to go somewhere or the inflation will devalue and destroy the game. Having to constantly send expensive pieces of hardware off into the void for weeks to months at a time to expand will be a great driver for the economy and once these structures are built I'm sure they will make for great target practice by the rivals of the builders. So expect it to take a few tries to get anything going, simply because those who build the first jump gate will look strong and the strong are challenged. This will be an event akin to the first Titan in EVE, the pinnacle of a vast undertaking and the biggest target in the system.

We shall see, I look forward to working with you on this.

Of course, however I have been thinking about how to get the train to move up and down the cable or whatever you call it. I have heard that there will not be wheels and there has been talk in the devblogs about being able to make large multi legged walkers and things, which is influencing how I envision the propulsion system of the elevator. Of course you could just put thrusters on the bottom, but that defeats the purpose of being able to go to space before such things are available. I've been thinking along the lines of cogs or ratchets, at least initially. Like I said, we shall have to wait and see what tools are made available.

are you talking about the elevator? I don't know what you have in mind for a mechanism to get it up, but I imagine it would have to be a bit complex. I'm talking implementation here, not a theory of how it might work IRL.

Yes! I love the idea that with knowledge and effort one can increase efficiency of a task, whatever it may be. I hope this becomes a thing.

If it really gets to be that big a problem I'm sure we could build "traffic control" towers to "dissuade" attacking ships and provide a light rain of material for fixing things. The only real problem we will face, aside from the materials, is in how to get the car up in an efficient manner. I do have a few ideas, but I will have to wait until I see what type of joint elements we get. I don't think the elevator will be all that quick but it may be the easiest at first and a tourist attraction later.

Having read the devblogs on how the DPUs will work and reading this Wikipedia article I can say with almost absolute certainty that that is how the DPUs will run on the backend. The plug and play thing is exactly how he describes the DPUs to work.

Actually I am, I have been trying to get other people from games I play to throw in their lots with me but so far I have been unsuccessful. I have read the page you created on the community site and we seem to have similar interests and goals. The idea for a public infrastructure system that charges a small fee for upkeep and energy costs has been growing on me and I think it may be the fastest way to get to space initially, however there is no way I can accomplish this without the support of other players and of course territorial control. To that end I intend to try to secure a territorial claim in or as close as possible to the arkship for this purpose. I think it is very important that the immediate area around the arkship be somewhat protected as this is where all the new players will start.

I guess I'll have to be inventive then.

I don't see why wheels would be even comparable to spaceships in complexity. The devs have so far not said a thing about wheels, however I see no reason not to have them. We will need some form of mechanical actuator, be it pistons, flexible joints, or rotary motors. I have no problem making my own wheels if need be, but it would be simpler to have a wheel element. The devs have said it would be possible to build giant spaghetti monsters so they are thinking along the lines of some form of joint, but they have yet to say anything about wheels.

While I'm sure the vast majority of the people here are hoping to make a kick ass ship and fling themselves into the endless abyss of that last frontier, I am wondering about a more terrestrial mode of travel: wheels. Obviously when the game launches it will take a bit of time before we all get the skills/blueprints/materials/ability to make ships capable of spaceflight, and we will need a cheap and effective way of getting around on the surface. Will there be a selection of wheel elements of various sizes to make this happen? And will the physics allow us to set things like the torque and friction on the wheels to overcome rougher terrain? Also having wheels would enable us to have a racing league and have awesome races like in Speed Racer where you have those tracks that go upside-down and across continents and stuff.

I do believe there will also be space territory claims, so perhaps it would be possible to pop one of those up at the 1001m mark. However, if indeed this is a priority project that is started ASAP on launch by a large(ish) group of like minded folks we should be able to get fairly high and secure before the unsavory types get their hands on the means to try any shenanigans. Also, if done correctly and with enough support this might indeed be the first way to space. I do have several ideas as to how it all will work and I believe I read somewhere that at least initially the voxel constructs will not have structural integrity problems. If this is the case the main obstacle I see is simply gathering the necessary materials. Also for any of you unsavory types who might be cackling with glee in anticipation of destructing this fine endeavor, I would remind you that should you not misbehave in the direction of this marvelous project you will be afforded the same easy and inexpensive access to the heavens as the rest, and the rest will make juicy targets up there.

Actually this is a good idea. If I can get a group of people to help me I would be happy to take this on at the beginning. Obviously this kind of structure would require some fairly regular upkeep and probably a group dedicated to protecting it from the types that just like to see pretty explosions and the resulting rivers of tears. If some established group would be willing to help initiate this project I would be happy to join forces with them.

Pillows as melee weapons have a stress level bar and pillow fights reduce the stress level also serves as a pvp alternative in the arkified zones

Ygdrasil the Norse Tree of Life

I'm proposing a mixture of both, you still have a skill tree that you train in a linear fashion regardless of weather you're logged on or not, but you also have the XP gain from doing things. If you're just sitting there setting up your organization system or designing a construct you don't gain anything except what's in your training cue, but if you are gathering resources or building a construct or even shooting some marauding nutjob you gain XP in the related fields as well as what you have in your training cue.

Another option would be to have various actions provide points to the relevant skills, as well as having the training system. For instance I might focus my training cue on manufacturing systems or whatever, but every time I get in my little fighter ship and shoot something I get a bit of skill at it, not much, maybe not even enough to get very far with it, but a little bit.

I think ocean worlds and sub marine vehicles and bases would be cool as all hell. It would be a great place to be entirely undetected and with territory units it would be a great place to hide them. Also that scene from that Star Trek movie where the Enterprise comes out of the ocean.