Thor Wotansen

What's interesting here is that you only took umbrage with the use of gold, and had nothing to say about possible higher tier product materials.  There are many things in this game that don't make sense from a "well in real life" perspective, however, they make sense within the rules set out by the game.  In this case, if you want oodles of hitpoints, you have to take on some serious mass.  This is balance.  I expect any future high tier product materials to have really good resistances against specific damage types, and have a huge resistance hole with another type of damage.  We already see this with steel, with it's 50% damage reduction of incoming EM damage, which is the best EM damage reduction of any honeycomb in the game, including T5 pures. 
But to get back on track, you are proposing a massive damage nerf, which will do only one thing, and that is to force everyone to use only missiles and to build giant cubes of gold to counter incoming damage.  Instead of solving it, you just create a new meta.  True balance comes from changing all things, not just one.

As someone who has been engaging in PVP for the last week and a half, I can assure you that PVP is currently quite balanced.  I would even hazard that the "balance" is heavily tilted in favor of the party that want's to nope out of there.  Safe zones are quite large, and radars can spot potential adversaries at 2SU (400km).  The biggest issue the poor innocent non-PVP industrialist types have is that they have put no thought whatsoever into designing their ships with PVP in mind, and are consequently unable to meaningfully effect the outcome of a confrontation once the "PVPer" has initiated it.  I have killed quite a few cargo ships that were quite adequate for carrying cargo off of planets and through space to Alioth or wherever, (and a few that were barely even capable of that) but to a ship, they have been built out of the cheapest materials, with no consideration to armoring anything.  It is entirely possible to haul kilotons of ore from place to place in a transport ship, even through blockades, but you need to design your ship to handle it and at least have an escort through dangerous areas. 
tl;d if you want to do your peaceful industry on Sanctuary, and just make pretty ships, you have to pay to protect your incoming shipments.  The alternative is to develop a contract with an org that is willing to supply you with stuff from PVP areas.
 
If you are a solo player or small group, consider signing on with a larger org for protection.  Just about every big org needs miners and industrialists, and they will happily let you do that while they go off and fight bad guys for you.  Being in a big org in DU is not like other games.

Right now, PVP is limited to shooting at people who want a fight (there are very few of those) and shooting at people who are either idiots or clueless.  I have personally killed 12 ships, and the blockades I've been a part of have killed over 30 in the last week alone.  In that time, I was absolutely flabbergasted by the incredibly poor designs people were flying.  PVP is entirely avoidable in DU right now, if you get killed, it is 100% because you chose to fly a poorly built ship in a dangerous area.  Enjoy the thrill and the fear of getting caught, it makes what you're doing exciting and when you get away, you will experience an amazing rush that very few games can give you.

Right now, PVP is limited to shooting at people who want a fight (there are very few of those) and shooting at people who are either idiots or clueless.  I have personally killed 12 ships, and the blockades I've been a part of have killed over 30 in the last week alone.  In that time, I was absolutely flabbergasted by the incredibly poor designs people were flying.  PVP is entirely avoidable in DU right now, if you get killed, it is 100% because you chose to fly a poorly built ship in a dangerous area.  Enjoy the thrill and the fear of getting caught, it makes what you're doing exciting and when you get away, you will experience an amazing rush that very few games can give you.

Agreed, the people who are the most vocal here are the types who spent 4 weeks building an intricate ship out of aluminum, with fancy greebling, forgot to blueprint it, and then flew off to Ion, or Jago, or some other remote planet, and got themselves blown up.  The old Eve adage of "Don't fly anything you can't afford to lose" still rings true in DU.  The other alternative is to join a Nation type org and pay taxes to ensure your safety.

Agreed, the people who are the most vocal here are the types who spent 4 weeks building an intricate ship out of aluminum, with fancy greebling, forgot to blueprint it, and then flew off to Ion, or Jago, or some other remote planet, and got themselves blown up.  The old Eve adage of "Don't fly anything you can't afford to lose" still rings true in DU.  The other alternative is to join a Nation type org and pay taxes to ensure your safety.

am i helping?

There will have to be a mode like this. If people want to design the kind of epic ships that I'm sure they do they won't be able to without a "creative" mode. I for one, intend to make some fairly elaborately shaped hulls that will require a good amount of time to get right and I would hate to have to do that in the world.

I don't know why this is an issue.  Everyone who downloads the game will get a free trial period in which to try out the game.  Even if it's a 2 week period, that's more then you get to decide if you like a game you bought on steam (you get 2 hours on steam).  NOBODY WHO DOWNLOADS THE GAME IS IN ANY WAY OBLIGATED TO PAY A DIME.  Many of us on this forum enjoy going to the theater to see a movie now and then.  Movie tickets these days cost anywhere from $8 to $15 and of course you then buy the refreshments, and you probably are going with someone, so you end up spending about $40 for at most 3 hours of entertainment.  Now if you spend $15 a month on a game, you have to play less then half an hour a month to get the same value for your entertainment.  Don't complain that you can't afford to pay a subscription if ever go see a movie in the theaters.  Hell, you could probably make your subscription money by going on craigstlist and gathering scrap metal from the free area and taking it to a recycler.  Or just put 50 cents a day in a jar and deposit it in your bank every month.  If you can't spend 50 cents a day to play a game for as many hours as you like in that day then you really don't want to play any games and you should probably go join a monastery somewhere and take up Gregorian chants as a hobby instead.

I don't know why this is an issue.  Everyone who downloads the game will get a free trial period in which to try out the game.  Even if it's a 2 week period, that's more then you get to decide if you like a game you bought on steam (you get 2 hours on steam).  NOBODY WHO DOWNLOADS THE GAME IS IN ANY WAY OBLIGATED TO PAY A DIME.  Many of us on this forum enjoy going to the theater to see a movie now and then.  Movie tickets these days cost anywhere from $8 to $15 and of course you then buy the refreshments, and you probably are going with someone, so you end up spending about $40 for at most 3 hours of entertainment.  Now if you spend $15 a month on a game, you have to play less then half an hour a month to get the same value for your entertainment.  Don't complain that you can't afford to pay a subscription if ever go see a movie in the theaters.  Hell, you could probably make your subscription money by going on craigstlist and gathering scrap metal from the free area and taking it to a recycler.  Or just put 50 cents a day in a jar and deposit it in your bank every month.  If you can't spend 50 cents a day to play a game for as many hours as you like in that day then you really don't want to play any games and you should probably go join a monastery somewhere and take up Gregorian chants as a hobby instead.

Girly scream  
holy shit I can't wait

I don't know why this is an issue.  Everyone who downloads the game will get a free trial period in which to try out the game.  Even if it's a 2 week period, that's more then you get to decide if you like a game you bought on steam (you get 2 hours on steam).  NOBODY WHO DOWNLOADS THE GAME IS IN ANY WAY OBLIGATED TO PAY A DIME.  Many of us on this forum enjoy going to the theater to see a movie now and then.  Movie tickets these days cost anywhere from $8 to $15 and of course you then buy the refreshments, and you probably are going with someone, so you end up spending about $40 for at most 3 hours of entertainment.  Now if you spend $15 a month on a game, you have to play less then half an hour a month to get the same value for your entertainment.  Don't complain that you can't afford to pay a subscription if ever go see a movie in the theaters.  Hell, you could probably make your subscription money by going on craigstlist and gathering scrap metal from the free area and taking it to a recycler.  Or just put 50 cents a day in a jar and deposit it in your bank every month.  If you can't spend 50 cents a day to play a game for as many hours as you like in that day then you really don't want to play any games and you should probably go join a monastery somewhere and take up Gregorian chants as a hobby instead.

Just to clarify a few things, I am strictly opposed to anything going from one container to another without some form of physical connection or somebody actually grabbing it and moving it by hand. 
My thoughts on how moving cargo from where you make it to where it's used are pretty simple.  I'm going to use the mining example, but this could work for other things like refined metals or other goods.  Basically, the mining tool gathers materials in whatever way it ends up doing that, and in the process compresses it, much like how the Nanoformer works.  The compressed matter is injected directly into the storage container, which has the tech to keep it in it's compressed state.  When the container is full, you have to swap it out, as the conduit from the compressor only has a limited range before the compressed matter becomes unstable.  This mechanic could be done a few ways, for instance, if you wish to put materials into a container from a production element you would have to attach the output to a compressor element, which would then have an attachment point for a cargo container on it.  This might seem complex, but if you have a huge factory that makes ships or whatever, and you're buying a lot of ore to refine and form into the hulls, all you have to do is buy the full containers of ore and hook them up to the refinery modules.  Then you could have an automated system that swaps the containers when they get empty.  You can then take the empty containers and sell them on the market or return them to your mining guy.

After some thought and discussion I have deiced to lay out my thoughts on survival mechanics and how they might be implemented in DU.  I understand that some do not wish to have any survival mechanics at all and just want to build things; however, I think that in a game with the huge potential for immersion that DU has, we need some form of survival mechanic.  I have spent some time thinking about this and I think I have found a way to have bot simplicity and complexity, depending on how each player wishes to play.
With the Nanoformer we have the technology to compress matter, which is how we can mine materials and use them to construct things.  This seems like a really handy technology so why not use it elsewhere?  I propose a system that creates Life Support cartridges for player’s suits that contain all the necessaries, food, water and oxygen.  These cartridges are created by an element that would require some uncommon, but not to rare, resources to build.  The cartridges have enough life support to last for about 8 hours (time can be varied for balance) and can be swapped out of the player’s inventory on the fly.  During different activities the various components (e.g. food, oxygen) might be used up at different rates, but this is kept simple by the HUD on the player’s suit displaying the remaining components as a percent value.  If a player wishes to have more info on what is being used they can open the menu via whatever interface we are provided to look at the details.  The suit would also have a power cell that may also deplete at varying rates, but also displays its remaining effectiveness as a percent value.
For the players that want more in depth survival mechanics, there could be a module that adds various stimulants to the basic life support cartridge that effect different stats either positively or negatively.  For instance, there might be a stim that improves targeting, but reduces one’s effectiveness at repairing damaged equipment.  Creating stims would be an entire science with its own skill tree and the more skill a player has the more effective a stim is and the less severe the penalty.  This allows a player who desires complexity to carry a variety of life support cartridges with different effects, and to swap them out at will, depending on the task at hand.
In the same way, power cells could perhaps be overclocked to provide more power or longer duration, however the effects of overclocking a power cell would be random energy surges that have the potential to damage nearby electronics.  Should such a power surge occur near a cargo container full of a volatile substance, the results could be catastrophic. 
While this all might seem very complex, it really isn’t.  If you just want to go about mining or building and not having to worry about fiddling with this or that just so you don’t die then you can.  Simply make sure you have a few power cells and life support cartridges in your inventory and you’re good to go.  But if you want to experiment with always having the highest performance at a given task then you can have the complexity of a varied diet and potentially dangerous power cell. 

I had an interesting discussion with Yamamushi via discord today about cargo containers and cargo and how they would be handled in the game.  This also ties in with how ships might dock to one another.  Mostly this is a bunch of questions and speculation, but here goes.
We were thinking about how cargo will be moved around, and wondering if it would make sense to have it stay in the cargo containers rather than being piped around like in Space Engineers.  We both agreed that it would make more sense for the cargo to stay in the containers and have a system for swapping out the containers on cargo vessels rather than having magic pipes.  One possible RP explanation for this is the storage method that compresses the matter, as is described in the various story episodes in the devblogs.  The container is the vessel that holds the matter in it's compressed state, and in order to remove the matter it would have to be reconstituted to it's original structure.  This would make trading a bit easier as well, because instead of trading ore or raw metal by the kilo or cubic meter or whatever, you just trade it by the cargo container.  It also makes it important that the cargo containers remain powered, lest they lose containment and make a big mess.  If this is a feature, I would suggest that as well as not being powered they should have to sustain a certain amount of damage to go poof.
In a similar vein, there should be some cargo that is more unstable than others, for instance certain types of fuel that are more efficient should have higher power requirements to maintain containment. 

I had an interesting discussion with Yamamushi via discord today about cargo containers and cargo and how they would be handled in the game.  This also ties in with how ships might dock to one another.  Mostly this is a bunch of questions and speculation, but here goes.
We were thinking about how cargo will be moved around, and wondering if it would make sense to have it stay in the cargo containers rather than being piped around like in Space Engineers.  We both agreed that it would make more sense for the cargo to stay in the containers and have a system for swapping out the containers on cargo vessels rather than having magic pipes.  One possible RP explanation for this is the storage method that compresses the matter, as is described in the various story episodes in the devblogs.  The container is the vessel that holds the matter in it's compressed state, and in order to remove the matter it would have to be reconstituted to it's original structure.  This would make trading a bit easier as well, because instead of trading ore or raw metal by the kilo or cubic meter or whatever, you just trade it by the cargo container.  It also makes it important that the cargo containers remain powered, lest they lose containment and make a big mess.  If this is a feature, I would suggest that as well as not being powered they should have to sustain a certain amount of damage to go poof.
In a similar vein, there should be some cargo that is more unstable than others, for instance certain types of fuel that are more efficient should have higher power requirements to maintain containment. 

Now that you two are done hashing out your stupid technicality can we get back on topic?
I agree with Aetherios that it be a plethora of dumb sensors controlled by a central processor, that's what I was going for, but the main point is the mechanic, do people like the idea of having to place sensor grids or would you rather have one sensor for the entire planet and have instant godlike knowledge?

I'm actually curious right now whether the point of control is at the origin or the destination.  In other words, if I have permission to use this jumpgate can I jump to any gate regardless of what the owner wants, or do I have to have permission from the destination end?  This is an important consideration, because if I can't controll who comes through my gate I will have to put up giant insta-kill cannons around my gate in a new system.

I have always loved to draw.  I remember I used to sit for hours in the classroom after school, or under a tree, and draw.  I never drew pictures of people, or of landscapes.  I drew my ideas, the vehicles my young mind imagined sprung fully formed from my head and landed on the pages of my tattered notebook.  It’s funny, I can remember every page of that notebook, the way it felt in my hands, but I can’t remember my mother’s face, or the name of the town I grew up in.  I do remember the day I got the message that I had been selected for the Arkship Program.  I didn’t tell anyone for a week.  When I told…….  when I told her about it she cried; how could she not.  I would have stayed with her, I would have help her as the world tore itself apart and fell into the neutron star.  We would have grown old together then, who knows, we may have even died young, but she begged me to go.  I think I was working on something at the time, I can’t remember.  She said it was important that I go.  I remember finding her the next morning, cold and still in our bed.  I have nothing left to live for.  I have nothing left to die for.
I can still see the ideas running across my mind.  They keep me busy, building this new world.  I am thankful for my shattered memories.  They keep me working to rebuild the life mankind had before.  They help me live on without buckling under the weight of all the pain of the past.  Together in this new world we will make new memories and the old world with all its pain and loss will be forgotten. 
I had a funny dream last night of the last time I was happy, 10,000 years ago.  I can’t remember it, it’s just a feeling at the edge of my mind.  I caught myself turning around to see her smile, but she wasn’t there.  I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll meet her around the corner, or in the elevator.  I am haunted by the most beautiful smile.

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.

First of all, thanks for inviting me.  As for the questions about whether or not we shall be making ships of any size, I can assure you that if it is a conceivable ship class we will be making it.  Small ships, of course, will be a large market for us but I have plans already for much larger ships and buildings.  Naturally we shall have to wait and see what we get to work with, but that will merely be the final layer of the design.