Kezzle

That is the point they are NOT forcing PvP, you can get EVERYTHING from the three planets / moons, if you want to go to other planets get a WD, ZERO need to enter pvp = pvp is currently 100% consensual in its present state FACT.  You do not need to enter into the pvp zone unless to are ready to either fight or flight.

Our org has operations on 8 planets, I have spent 60% of my time in space, both flying to various planets and warping, I have radars on all my ships, do you know how many other players ships I have seen in that time...... ZERO.  Never been shot at, even waved at.  Anyone getting killed in space at the moment it is 100% user error.

PvP zone is a testing zone, enter it at your own risk, NQ will not expand it until PvP is ready, which will not be for some time.  So chill out and stop making these knickerwetting threads.

Thanks for provoking it in the first place
More variety means more chances of fun interactions. NQ should definitely do that. Would give everyone choices to make between the limitations they accept on their ships. It can be big and slow (and easy to hit) and do most things passably well, or medium and select one thing from a long list to do very well, or small and fast and hard to hit, but can only be really good at one or two fields. Or something like that. Simplicity breeds stupid metas, as we are seeing.
It would be great if one of those roles was "fleet coordination", a ship which (aside from anything else) carries lots of sensors and can act as the eyes for their mates.
I'd be happy if they weren't even interpolated, just picking the 'nearest to normal face' of the build box as presented at the moment the signal is assessed. Trying to get tooo analogue will make sums hard for the hamsters.
 
Aye, sloped sides and no acute angles... the "rules" they use could be "tweaked" a little away from pure realism to permit other cool shapes. Where rounded surfaces are dreadful for stealth IRL, in DU, they could specify "planes parallel with the faces of the build box" as being the "worst". I think calculating a "simplified" set of RCS values at the point you leave Build Mode on the thing would be doable.
Wouldn't it just? I hope the team have the programming chops to pull something like this off. It means a second set of signatures to keep track of for every ship-to-ship interaction, but the frequency of changes to the values being calculated could be managed using "cooldowns" and "warmups" so people weren't strobing about with their emitters on-off-on-off as fast as they can toggle 'em...
I either missed that or erased it from memory. Was it typical MMO "invisibility cloak" nonsense?
Yeah. I'd read about signal processing being applied similarly to the radar/microwave background for the detection of aircraft, too, though IIRC, it was much more hypothetical. That would be another great feature if they could fit it in: different kinds of sensors: no point being radio-silent if your reactor neutrino emissions give you away, and no point neutrino shielding your reactor if your mass signature gives you away. But radio sensors are cheap and plentiful, neutrino detectors expensive, finicky and rare, and gravitometers good enough to pick up a spaceship in a timely fashion really only happen on the largest most stable space stations, say.
This, a thousand, a million times. Of course there are computational limits, but push them, don't get lazy, you crazy programming dudes.
 
And fix your materials.
 
This too. We can understand some of the arbitrary limitations while the game grows and settles, but please don't use them as a crutch when you've the talent to solve actually hard problems.

Thanks for the excellent reply Kezzle, adding some thoughts onto that: 
 
AFAIK almost all aviation radars are phased arrays as they are lighter, scan faster (almost instantaneously), and have no mechanical components to wear and fail over time compared to rotating arrays.
 
couple this with:
and I think there is another even better solution to the problem: have a vast array of radar systems that are for different things. Phased arrays can lockon faster and account for high G acceleration in both the attacker and defender, but have less range and no ability to rotate (can't see sides and back at all). Have rotating arrays (don't need to be animated) that acquire much more slowly, have much higher range, and cannot account for high G acceleration, but can see in all directions. This way a railgun sniper would have to act like an actual sniper to be accurate, and fighters could be agile but with less range and no omnidirectional awareness.
 
Building a specialized vessel with weapons and radar to fill a specific role will help turn the game into rock paper scissors for two cores of the same size instead of having a meta. More radar options and radar parameters opens up a lot more numbers for tuning. Larger ships will have advantages with the ability to have multiple weapon types and multiple radars for redundancy and to be able to withstand multiple types of attackers.
 
6 values that are interpolated between would be perfectly effective, and I'm sure NQ already has the code base or at least knowledge for doing this because of their atmospheric drag systems. It is important that the 6 values are not purely cross sectional area though, they need to account for the normality of a surface and the material used to really push designs to be realistic and not wireframe cubes. Actual RCS computation is way beyond feasible for DU.
 
I absolutely love the idea of the emissions/active elements of a vessel affecting the detection range and targeting difficulty, but this might be too computational difficult. Rolling through a dangerous area with a stealth designed hauler full of precious ore, being careful not to use an adjustor or an engine to try and go undetected by pirates sounds like a great DU only experience, and it sure as hell beats the stealth mechanics talked about by Entropy in a previous Q&A livestream. 
 
Fun fact about the "hole in space" note: There is such a thing as too stealthy, as a stealth ship will block out the background noise and this ultra quiet point can actually be identified for it's stealthiness. There was a navy ship design that had this problem. The first designs were invisible to radar, but it was way too quiet relative to the ocean waves around the vessel so was easily identifiable.
 
 
Novaquark - the best solutions to problems are natural, physical solutions, not arbitrary ones.
 
Arbitrary (classic game design) solutions, while they can be effective, leave a bad taste in the mouths of people who know they are arbitrary. There are a few decisions like this in game, but core size targeting range, core size docking limitations, really anything that is core size specific seems like an arbitrary cop-out that I hope is temporary to simplify the computational load.
 

It has been founding principle of the game that there would be pervasive, FFA PvP. To anyone who came to this game not knowing and accepting that, to the point that they won't play if it remains,  I say, "Thank you for your donation of 20 bucks to a game you want to see succeed but don't want to play."
 
Moosegun has made eleventy billion good and salient points. And they are an industrialist.
 
The primary reason for eventual militarisation of all volume in the game (apart from the "neutral safe ground" of the Sanc Moon(s)), as I see it, is that if there is a safe space where all resources can be obtained, the concept of territory being held becomes moot. You won't need to fight for resources because you can just get them in the safe zone. So the only reason to fight will be "for the love of combat", which is meaningless and hollow in the context of setting up a "civilisation". Right now, every resource can be obtained risk-free, and the danger is in moving it from place to place. In EvE, you can't get everything in HiSec; the rewards are predominantly in 0.0 space, with Hi-Lo-Nul being the "game progression".
 
The answer to the title question of the thread is "not any time soon", or at least I hope that's the case. Not because I don't want pervasive FFA, but because the game systems are not yet ready for it. There should be safe zones in space right up until the systems for territory warfare go live. And there should be a big "We're backing the game up now. If it goes pear-shaped, we'll be rolling back to the state at this date," notice posted weeks in advance and all over the Internet (not that this will happen; NQ will probably sneak TW in on a Tuesday night patch and then announce it on MySpace ;} ). Before TW can happen, they need to sort out the dog's breakfast that is materials and make space combat actually function in some sort of plausible way with roles for all classes of ship. The current meta is boring. You need TW in place so that, if the civilisation has the will, pirates and criminals can be hunted down and wiped from the place of whatever den of vice and iniquity they infest, else swatting them out of the sky becomes a never-ending chore. And that TW has to have mechanisms in place to make that wiping-out costly and expensive, so that it's not just a matter of glassing a planet and calling it done.
 
It has been suggested that PvP is contrary to the lore because humanity would have passed the point of waging war by the time the arkship got to where "we are" in game. I'd suggest that this is primarily irrelevant, since the game's founding principles include war. If you must, it's trivial to think of reasons why such a speculate might not be the case. But essentially, that's just fluff, and a degree of fluff that pales into insignificance compared to all the "handwaving" that has to go into making the technology "work" for the purposes of game play.
 
It has been suggested that space PvP is for gankers and griefers. I counter that there are corps out there who have set themselves up to be "protectors". Without PvP, that becomes a meaningless role in the world. Space PvP *is*. At the moment, a lot of folks are just heading out there looking for something, anything to shoot at. If it shoots back, that's a bonus, but most things don't, and the loot is a consolation prize.
 
Another key part of the civilisation puzzle that is heretofore missing is  communication. Without message boards where people can offer jobs, commerce is mediated entirely by the markets and restricted to known-to-the-game objects (materials, elements and quanta). It is difficult to offer services or constructs for sale or to buy. Until such a mission system exists, there's no commonly-available way to engage escorts or call for help or rescue or revenge justice. That's another thing that needs to be in place before the current safe zones are dropped back.
 
It's very simple: if you don't want to PvP, get someone else to do it for you. Or take the risk and suck it up. Or you can sortof PvP by taking measures to mitigate your risk: would you rather spend a bit more fuel and time and arrive having dodged the blockade (with the added frisson of watching the out-of-position attacker stive to cut an intercept course, and fail before you drop into the safe zone), or do you want to save that fuel and time and increase the risk of a successful intercept by flying CoM-CoM. Hauling is boring. Being chased and applying your brain to evading pursuit and intercept should be embraced as enhancements to the game. Maybe it's a bit more complicated than I said at the start of the paragraph. But it doesn't have to be.
 
Commerce raiding is something that naval transport has had to deal with since the days of the Sea Peoples. East Indiamen used to carry a few light cannon to deter pirates on their way to collect valuable shipments. Spanish galleons fetching gold and silver back from the New World were some of the best-protected ships that the wrights of the time could build. A convoy of Gold Ships was way beyond even the capabilities of the best-organised raiders sponsored by hostile military powers; they had to wait for inclement weather to scatter the elements and deal with the ones they could find in detail before they regrouped. If you're going into space, you need to be more like the C16th and 17th Spanish (without the colonial attitude and genocide), and you don't even need to deal with space weather. 
 
PvP is part of the game. You can either accept that, embrace it and join in the fun, or be unhappy any time you need to head somewhere you might get jumped. If you think you're being ganked, get your own gang. If you think you're being griefed, stop being an easy target. If you don't want to do either of those things, just stop.
The game has always been about building civilisations and including PvP. If you don't want to do either of those things, don't be surprised if the game is hard. A thousand hermits living in the boonies and not interacting outside the market place is not a civilisation, by the way. 
 
 

The solution is simple and should have been in game already as it would both add options, enhance gameplay AND resolves issues like this.. Power Management..
 
You want an L gun on an XS core? Sure, but you will need to bring heavy power systems which will cause your construct to be far less agile and fast than it would if you'd run XS weapons. It would also mean others components of the ship will not be able to run at full spec..
 
I really do not understand how NQ keeps saying that power management is really not a priority and would mostly be a buff.. It is the one mechanic that can be used to set up and "control" so much. To me it just seems like they do not _really_ understand basic game design in this respect.
 

It's weird how it doesn't do this to everyone's rig. Not judging, just saying there's something going on somewhere...
 

It has been founding principle of the game that there would be pervasive, FFA PvP. To anyone who came to this game not knowing and accepting that, to the point that they won't play if it remains,  I say, "Thank you for your donation of 20 bucks to a game you want to see succeed but don't want to play."
 
Moosegun has made eleventy billion good and salient points. And they are an industrialist.
 
The primary reason for eventual militarisation of all volume in the game (apart from the "neutral safe ground" of the Sanc Moon(s)), as I see it, is that if there is a safe space where all resources can be obtained, the concept of territory being held becomes moot. You won't need to fight for resources because you can just get them in the safe zone. So the only reason to fight will be "for the love of combat", which is meaningless and hollow in the context of setting up a "civilisation". Right now, every resource can be obtained risk-free, and the danger is in moving it from place to place. In EvE, you can't get everything in HiSec; the rewards are predominantly in 0.0 space, with Hi-Lo-Nul being the "game progression".
 
The answer to the title question of the thread is "not any time soon", or at least I hope that's the case. Not because I don't want pervasive FFA, but because the game systems are not yet ready for it. There should be safe zones in space right up until the systems for territory warfare go live. And there should be a big "We're backing the game up now. If it goes pear-shaped, we'll be rolling back to the state at this date," notice posted weeks in advance and all over the Internet (not that this will happen; NQ will probably sneak TW in on a Tuesday night patch and then announce it on MySpace ;} ). Before TW can happen, they need to sort out the dog's breakfast that is materials and make space combat actually function in some sort of plausible way with roles for all classes of ship. The current meta is boring. You need TW in place so that, if the civilisation has the will, pirates and criminals can be hunted down and wiped from the place of whatever den of vice and iniquity they infest, else swatting them out of the sky becomes a never-ending chore. And that TW has to have mechanisms in place to make that wiping-out costly and expensive, so that it's not just a matter of glassing a planet and calling it done.
 
It has been suggested that PvP is contrary to the lore because humanity would have passed the point of waging war by the time the arkship got to where "we are" in game. I'd suggest that this is primarily irrelevant, since the game's founding principles include war. If you must, it's trivial to think of reasons why such a speculate might not be the case. But essentially, that's just fluff, and a degree of fluff that pales into insignificance compared to all the "handwaving" that has to go into making the technology "work" for the purposes of game play.
 
It has been suggested that space PvP is for gankers and griefers. I counter that there are corps out there who have set themselves up to be "protectors". Without PvP, that becomes a meaningless role in the world. Space PvP *is*. At the moment, a lot of folks are just heading out there looking for something, anything to shoot at. If it shoots back, that's a bonus, but most things don't, and the loot is a consolation prize.
 
Another key part of the civilisation puzzle that is heretofore missing is  communication. Without message boards where people can offer jobs, commerce is mediated entirely by the markets and restricted to known-to-the-game objects (materials, elements and quanta). It is difficult to offer services or constructs for sale or to buy. Until such a mission system exists, there's no commonly-available way to engage escorts or call for help or rescue or revenge justice. That's another thing that needs to be in place before the current safe zones are dropped back.
 
It's very simple: if you don't want to PvP, get someone else to do it for you. Or take the risk and suck it up. Or you can sortof PvP by taking measures to mitigate your risk: would you rather spend a bit more fuel and time and arrive having dodged the blockade (with the added frisson of watching the out-of-position attacker stive to cut an intercept course, and fail before you drop into the safe zone), or do you want to save that fuel and time and increase the risk of a successful intercept by flying CoM-CoM. Hauling is boring. Being chased and applying your brain to evading pursuit and intercept should be embraced as enhancements to the game. Maybe it's a bit more complicated than I said at the start of the paragraph. But it doesn't have to be.
 
Commerce raiding is something that naval transport has had to deal with since the days of the Sea Peoples. East Indiamen used to carry a few light cannon to deter pirates on their way to collect valuable shipments. Spanish galleons fetching gold and silver back from the New World were some of the best-protected ships that the wrights of the time could build. A convoy of Gold Ships was way beyond even the capabilities of the best-organised raiders sponsored by hostile military powers; they had to wait for inclement weather to scatter the elements and deal with the ones they could find in detail before they regrouped. If you're going into space, you need to be more like the C16th and 17th Spanish (without the colonial attitude and genocide), and you don't even need to deal with space weather. 
 
PvP is part of the game. You can either accept that, embrace it and join in the fun, or be unhappy any time you need to head somewhere you might get jumped. If you think you're being ganked, get your own gang. If you think you're being griefed, stop being an easy target. If you don't want to do either of those things, just stop.
The game has always been about building civilisations and including PvP. If you don't want to do either of those things, don't be surprised if the game is hard. A thousand hermits living in the boonies and not interacting outside the market place is not a civilisation, by the way. 
 
 

It has been founding principle of the game that there would be pervasive, FFA PvP. To anyone who came to this game not knowing and accepting that, to the point that they won't play if it remains,  I say, "Thank you for your donation of 20 bucks to a game you want to see succeed but don't want to play."
 
Moosegun has made eleventy billion good and salient points. And they are an industrialist.
 
The primary reason for eventual militarisation of all volume in the game (apart from the "neutral safe ground" of the Sanc Moon(s)), as I see it, is that if there is a safe space where all resources can be obtained, the concept of territory being held becomes moot. You won't need to fight for resources because you can just get them in the safe zone. So the only reason to fight will be "for the love of combat", which is meaningless and hollow in the context of setting up a "civilisation". Right now, every resource can be obtained risk-free, and the danger is in moving it from place to place. In EvE, you can't get everything in HiSec; the rewards are predominantly in 0.0 space, with Hi-Lo-Nul being the "game progression".
 
The answer to the title question of the thread is "not any time soon", or at least I hope that's the case. Not because I don't want pervasive FFA, but because the game systems are not yet ready for it. There should be safe zones in space right up until the systems for territory warfare go live. And there should be a big "We're backing the game up now. If it goes pear-shaped, we'll be rolling back to the state at this date," notice posted weeks in advance and all over the Internet (not that this will happen; NQ will probably sneak TW in on a Tuesday night patch and then announce it on MySpace ;} ). Before TW can happen, they need to sort out the dog's breakfast that is materials and make space combat actually function in some sort of plausible way with roles for all classes of ship. The current meta is boring. You need TW in place so that, if the civilisation has the will, pirates and criminals can be hunted down and wiped from the place of whatever den of vice and iniquity they infest, else swatting them out of the sky becomes a never-ending chore. And that TW has to have mechanisms in place to make that wiping-out costly and expensive, so that it's not just a matter of glassing a planet and calling it done.
 
It has been suggested that PvP is contrary to the lore because humanity would have passed the point of waging war by the time the arkship got to where "we are" in game. I'd suggest that this is primarily irrelevant, since the game's founding principles include war. If you must, it's trivial to think of reasons why such a speculate might not be the case. But essentially, that's just fluff, and a degree of fluff that pales into insignificance compared to all the "handwaving" that has to go into making the technology "work" for the purposes of game play.
 
It has been suggested that space PvP is for gankers and griefers. I counter that there are corps out there who have set themselves up to be "protectors". Without PvP, that becomes a meaningless role in the world. Space PvP *is*. At the moment, a lot of folks are just heading out there looking for something, anything to shoot at. If it shoots back, that's a bonus, but most things don't, and the loot is a consolation prize.
 
Another key part of the civilisation puzzle that is heretofore missing is  communication. Without message boards where people can offer jobs, commerce is mediated entirely by the markets and restricted to known-to-the-game objects (materials, elements and quanta). It is difficult to offer services or constructs for sale or to buy. Until such a mission system exists, there's no commonly-available way to engage escorts or call for help or rescue or revenge justice. That's another thing that needs to be in place before the current safe zones are dropped back.
 
It's very simple: if you don't want to PvP, get someone else to do it for you. Or take the risk and suck it up. Or you can sortof PvP by taking measures to mitigate your risk: would you rather spend a bit more fuel and time and arrive having dodged the blockade (with the added frisson of watching the out-of-position attacker stive to cut an intercept course, and fail before you drop into the safe zone), or do you want to save that fuel and time and increase the risk of a successful intercept by flying CoM-CoM. Hauling is boring. Being chased and applying your brain to evading pursuit and intercept should be embraced as enhancements to the game. Maybe it's a bit more complicated than I said at the start of the paragraph. But it doesn't have to be.
 
Commerce raiding is something that naval transport has had to deal with since the days of the Sea Peoples. East Indiamen used to carry a few light cannon to deter pirates on their way to collect valuable shipments. Spanish galleons fetching gold and silver back from the New World were some of the best-protected ships that the wrights of the time could build. A convoy of Gold Ships was way beyond even the capabilities of the best-organised raiders sponsored by hostile military powers; they had to wait for inclement weather to scatter the elements and deal with the ones they could find in detail before they regrouped. If you're going into space, you need to be more like the C16th and 17th Spanish (without the colonial attitude and genocide), and you don't even need to deal with space weather. 
 
PvP is part of the game. You can either accept that, embrace it and join in the fun, or be unhappy any time you need to head somewhere you might get jumped. If you think you're being ganked, get your own gang. If you think you're being griefed, stop being an easy target. If you don't want to do either of those things, just stop.
The game has always been about building civilisations and including PvP. If you don't want to do either of those things, don't be surprised if the game is hard. A thousand hermits living in the boonies and not interacting outside the market place is not a civilisation, by the way. 
 
 

I dont WANT pvp, I avoid it like the plague, but I 100% want it in the game, I want the RISK of it.  My point about 'hermit' solos, people who completely refuse to engage in the community element of the game, is that they ruin it for everyone else.  Societies solution to antisocial behaviour is community and law and order. That only works if the community that needs protecting engages in it.  We can protect areas of this game space, if the people group together to protect it.  But every time I fly over Alioth and see all these tiny 'Rust in Space' outposts miles away from civilisation I just see massive targets.  We need to group together to build a stronger world, THAT is the solution to pvp in my opinion, not false safe zones.

I am going out of my way to build bridges and defences to ensure my org are safe when pvp comes....... most of these people havent spoken to a single person since they joined the game, might as well be playing a single player game.

And here we have a fine example

- purchased an open world pvp game without actually wanting open world pvp CHECK
- solo / small player, takes 2/3 weeks to build ship CHECK
- now wants to completely remove pvp from the game apart from large org CHECK
 
IF they did your suggestion, my whole org quits..... as will most others I know who bought into this game from the start

No it isnt, it is bot driven with a player overlay, Elite is a miss mash of several games loosely joined together in a sudo MMO that isnt really an MMO.  
 
No it isnt a PvP game, sorry but you are 100% wrong there, it is a civilisation building MMO, a pillar of civilisation is war, which means it will be a part of the game, it WILL NOT be the main driving factor, NQ has been very clear about that and it shows in its development plan.
 
This is actually what I think SHOULD happen, it should be up to the community to protect itself from pirates, the issue as always though will be the solo players, they will refuse to play in larger groups and because of this will be very open to attack, they will cry, seen it in loads of games.
It actually shouldnt come down to what generates the most money, it should come down to the integrity of the developers to build the game they set out to build, without caving into pressure from either side.  If games where just designed to be 'popular' they would all look like fortnight, I LIKE niche games, I DONT like niche games that are turned into mainstream ones due to players forcing their playstyles on other, be that PvP or PvE.

There is no resource drain at all cause nothing is destroyed, everything can be repair so there is really no sink. PvP is in shambles anyway and needs a major overhaul before anything else is done/added.

Neither WoW or Elite were player driven games though, this is a pretty much 100% player driven game, so the danger HAS to come from players, if you are removing pvp, then you are basically removing any risk at all.  The game is then broken, nothing has any value.
 
Why did you by a game with pvp and then try to get it removed / dumbed down?  It has been very clear from the start that it would have pvp pretty much everywhere.  Why do people buy games and then complain about well advertised elements of it.

Once you're at max speed, you can get out of the pilot seat; you won't just stop (that only happens if you disconnect). And you'll stay with your ship so long as you remain close to it.
 
If you've hit max speed, though, you probably don't want to bother refuelling until you *need* to. Which, at least for a few transits is going to mean "once you've braked back to zero so you can correct your course". Stopping from max speed just to refuel is counterproductive as you have to use fuel to get back up to cruising speed. Space brakes don't use fuel and can kill all your vectors.
 
I think the advice about draining your fuel tanks was meant to be that you only put enough space fuel in to get to orbit or a bit faster. Once you're coasting in space at any speed, transfer the mass of the space fuel out of your mass-cancelling backpack into the tanks and set your transit burn going.
 

None of the premise ships are worth their price, specially if you have to invest the same or more you pay for it in parts to make it work. This are suppose to be ships a new person can get a few days after they start, so skills shouldn’t be a factor here.

Once you're at max speed, you can get out of the pilot seat; you won't just stop (that only happens if you disconnect). And you'll stay with your ship so long as you remain close to it.
 
If you've hit max speed, though, you probably don't want to bother refuelling until you *need* to. Which, at least for a few transits is going to mean "once you've braked back to zero so you can correct your course". Stopping from max speed just to refuel is counterproductive as you have to use fuel to get back up to cruising speed. Space brakes don't use fuel and can kill all your vectors.
 
I think the advice about draining your fuel tanks was meant to be that you only put enough space fuel in to get to orbit or a bit faster. Once you're coasting in space at any speed, transfer the mass of the space fuel out of your mass-cancelling backpack into the tanks and set your transit burn going.
 

If you are trying to do everything yourself and live completely solo you are playing a role, A HERMIT...... which is a bloody tricky role to play.  I do get what you are saying about player made jobs to be ingame, I cant wait until it is, but until it is, how difficult is it to join and org with a job board (there are plenty) and find ways to earn money.   OR just pick a certain range of products, sell them on the market and buy the stuff you need.  Solo doesnt mean self sufficient, in a game like this they cant make it so solos can easily be self sufficient or it would be TOO EASY for everyone else.  A good example being materials, all the people complaining about the changes on this thread has made look into setting up an operation to make and sell materials to them lol.  Different way at looking at the game i suppose, some people see a problem, i see people with a problem as an opportunity.

We had a player join us recently who we sent took out and set up on another planet, he can run the site himself and owns HIS OWN land their too, all he has to do is fill some crates with certain things and which we pick up and pay him for at above market rate.  He earns over 1 million a day JUST from the stuff he does for us.  All because bothered to join a flexible org.

I agree.
 
For one, there should be no arbitrary effect of controlling a certain number of hexes on a planet. Not that I think any single entity will ever be able to afford the territory claim units to cover a significant proportion of a planet, if the costs to do so are properly set by NQ; if the Quanta-to-place cost increases faster than linearly, it will become  more and more difficult to find the cash to place the next TCU.
 
Control would be defined by being able to exert one's will over an area. That can be achieved by negotiation, threats, simple obstruction, or any other tools of diplomacy. If you can enforce a blockade, you could be considered to have control of the celestial body. If you can persuade other people to pay (taxes/protection money) and acknowledge your control, you have control. Any mechanism that suddenly hands rights to an entity for 'proportion of land controlled' is nonsense and shouldn't even be considered.
 
Something to bear in mind: the British Empire, ranked largest ever in Wikipedia, could never have been considered in control of the whole of Earth. As the biggest human empire ever, in terms of area actually controlled, it had just over a quarter of the land area of the planet. This says two things to me:
no entity in DU should even begin to approach controlling a quarter of the hexes on a planet no entity in DU should directly control a whole planet.

I think you missed the point of the OP somehow.. It's OK though..
 
 

NQ has a tendency to go for the easy option without really considering gameplay impact. While during Alpha that was fine, not that they released the game and are charging subs, they really can't do that anymore IMO. There are very simple solutions which would yield the same result like not just looking at a target time for a batch and adjusting the batch size to match that (what seems to be happening atm) which may be an easy database query but as we now see has quite an impact on gameplay. If they'd instead (for mostly the voxel material manufacturing) increase the runtime for the same 10m3 batch to say 2 minutes I'd have no issue with it at all as a temporary measure. But that would take a bit more time to set up and NQ seems to pretty much shove anything under the "quick and dirty as we have soo much to do" and the problem with that is that they create so much technical debt doing so it will bit them back in a while when all these small things turn into a massive spaghetti of needed fixes/corrections.

It really feels like there is no proper project management going on and  decisions are mostly made on a "sounds good.. do it" ad-hoc basis.

1. Repeatedly saying "bad idea" without explanation isn't really providing anything useful lol -- I think by 'creative mode' the OP probably just means having some way to build and test constructs, not a full blown server running creative mode rules. 
 
2. There's a big difference between difficulty due to complexity vs. difficulty due to a lack of information / clunky presentation. Having a design mode to figure out how building works would motivate new players to grind the materials required. That doesn't make the game effortless or not rewarding.  
 
3. NQ should be open to any good idea, especially in regards to retaining new players. Arrogance isn't a good look in any community or business. Honestly considering an idea you initial dislike is a sign of intelligence...discarding an idea because "you say so" really isn't...
 
4. This game is advertised as a sandbox. Creativity is a challenge that can never be "mastered". Helping people get to the point where they can actually enjoy the sandbox seems like a good idea to me. There's plenty of ways to do that other than a design / creative mode, but this part of the game needs major work. If this is supposed to be a cool space adventure where I can adopt any role and be any specialist, it'd be nice to see some of that potential even starting out -- vs. "actually no you're stuck on this moon and i hope you like digging and setting up the same factory as everyone else..."  
 
 

Yeah, that free 20T in your pockets isn't for cargo. As the mosquito says, it's a great backup fuel tank...  

Now *that* is a financial commitment worth giving more than a few moments' consideration. Respect.

Sadly it is logging in first thing and checking my sold orders.......... know what you mean about the machines firing back into life though

Also I am currently flying in space 80% of the time, actually quite enjoying it, tend to save my warp fuel and just cruise about some days.

...that I've found so far is hearing a machine cascade you made whirr into life when you feed it more raw material. Checking on each queue in the chain to see that progress bar start up, and seeing the blinken lights come to "working" is pretty cool.
 
What's your "I made/did that" feelgood?

Can be worst my friend.
 
Here in Brazil:
$20=R$118,00=11%'s minimum wage.