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Dracostan

Alpha Tester
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Everything posted by Dracostan

  1. Bigger picture view -> Recent interviews by new CEO have stated NQ is a 'Metaverse' company that is developing voxel tech to use/licence in any virtual world that gets established. From this we can deduce DU is a tech demo of the voxel tech first and a Sci-Fi MMO game second.
  2. The blog said HQ declaration will be from the 'Territory Management' interface - but we haven't seen or been told where that interface will be yet. (Speculation, this could be the Territory Tax window in the Wallet)
  3. Demeter is giving the ability to tokenise TU's, just the same as constructs, so you can transfer tiles easily - HQ declaration will be from the 'Territory Management' interface - but we haven't seen or been told where that interface will be yet. (Speculation, this could be the Territory Tax window in the Wallet)
  4. HQ tiles are still taxed and will need paying to have industry and MU's running - it just means any tile designated as an HQ will not go abandoned if you don't pay your taxes.
  5. From the blog -> "...., unless that territory is flagged as a headquarters from the territory interface." This is all the info on HQ assignment we have atm.
  6. It means any industry or mining units you have on the tile will stop working, until you pay the taxes again - HQ tiles just won't go abandoned if you don't pay the tax
  7. I agree, and the demo video of the miners in use on the Q&A showing a MU on the ground is massively unrealistic , as most ppl will drop a floor to the static from which they are mining.
  8. A solution would be to have T1 ores at roughly the same extraction rates (with tiles having higher or lower rates, depending on tile 'quality'), then higher tier ores at randomised levels, in a similar manner as ore amounts are currently found in tiles.
  9. This is going to be a long post! Questions 1. Is this the ore pool balance per tile we can expect when Demeter goes live? A ‘primary’ ore with a relatively large pool, then moderate to minimal pools of the other planet ores types. 2. Is this the ore distribution pattern we can expect? Many I have spoken to have noticed ores in ‘Zones’ across the planets, where swathes of a particular ore is the primary ore pool per tile over significant numbers of tiles. 3. Is the ore pool shared across tile boarders? Some have noticed ore pools being impinged on by extraction from neighbouring tiles. 4. Are higher tier ores (T4 + T5) being deliberately excluded from planetary ore pools, and into asteroid mining gameplay? 5. How is NQ planning to prevent large organisations from claiming large swathes of tiles, from the advantage of current territory scan libraries held by them & huge wallet balances, thus disadvantaging the rest of the player base from finding ‘good’ extraction rate tiles? 6. How is NQ going to prevent the control of the mining unit manufacturing market by larger organisation that have access to the higher tier ores needed to produce the higher tier MU’s, that can then restrict open market sales of those MU’s, thus restricting the access to the higher tier ores and effectively controlling the higher tier ore market? 7. How is NQ going to manage the expected significant reduction in ore availability to general gameplay, whilst the player-base train the required talents and set up their allowed number of MU’s, to restart the flow of ore through the game economy? 8. How is NQ going to manage the expected significant ore price inflation that will result from the changes to mining, first from the near dead stop of ore production while MU’s are set up, then from the artificially capped extraction rate of ore, from the use of calibration charges? 9. Will the number of asteroids, both in PvP space and the safe zone, be increased and if so by how many? And will the spawn time of asteroids be staggered over the week, rather than all at once on a weekend? 10. What is NQ’s expected time frame for the new player experience, going from first spawn-in, collecting surface rocks, setting first base, creating/buying first ship, claimed tile expansion, reaching space, inter-planetary travel, asteroid mining? Problems 1. Having a primary ore, especially T1, severely restricts the ability of new & solo players from establishing a ‘home base’ from which they are able to grow from and then expand to new territories. It confines them to simply extracting the primary ore, then having to sell enough of it to buy the other ore types needed for expansion. This will limit how quickly a player is able to progress in the early game, thus reducing the likelihood of player retention. 2. Having zones of primary ores places another limit on new and solo players, like in problem 1, that they are not able to gain the resources needed to expand in what would be considered a reasonable gameplay time frame. It also allows larger organisations to claim large swathes of territory, potentially shutting out new / solo / small org players from large regions of the planets, forcing them away from markets, so increasing fuel cost and playtime to reach said markets to sell goods and progress. 3. Allowing neighbouring tiles to pilfer across tile boarders will obviously reduce the ore pool for the tile owner. This will only lead to the reduction in the overall ore extraction, as people will not want to waste MU’s on tiles with only partially remaining ore pools, and it will also create player animosity to the game mechanic, especially in densely claimed areas, like the market rings. 4. By moving higher tier ores off planets, this restricts the higher-level gameplay attainable for players not wanting to be involved in asteroid mining. Even by retaining a small amount on planet, akin to rare mineral deposits, these tiles will quickly be found by large organisations with their territory scan libraries, and so claimed within days of the update, shutting new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. Forcing a gameplay loop is not a sandbox. 5. While the implementation of a tile tax is intended to prevent players holding tiles without ‘using’ them, or at least incentivise their use for mining or industry to cover the tax, large organisations have the wallet resources to maintain their hold over significant swathes of multiple planets. These orgs also have the player numbers to rapidly data mine their territory scan libraries to find the best yielding tiles and immediately claim those tiles within the first days, if not hours of the update. This will shut out all other players from decent yield tiles, effectively producing two tiers of players, one who scrapes by on low yield tiles and purchasing ores from the large orgs or open markets, and the large orgs who will be able to control the ores market setting whatever price they want. 6. Having MU’s require the tier of ore they extract in order to build them will allow player groups who have access to those tiers of ore to control the production and sale of the mining units for those tiers. Combined with the level of control large orgs can bring to bear on the ore markets, this has the potential to shut out new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. It also goes against the current manufacturing meta of a ‘Basic’ industrial element can produce the ‘Uncommon’ version of the element being made, the ‘Uncommon’ industrial element can produce the ‘Advanced’ version of the element being made, etc. This meta allows progression up the industry gameplay levels, whereas the manufacturing requirements of the MU’s does not. 7. The expected significant reduction in the ore extraction rate whilst the mining changes take effect are already impacting the gameplay, with speculative market price inflation and ore hoarding taking place. With scarcity comes restriction of growth and knock-on price inflation across the market, restricting gameplay options and progression. 8. The introduction of Missions showed the impact that can be inflicted on the game market by the reduction in the global ore extraction rate as players moved away from mining to a more afk and profitable gameplay loop. At first the scarcity of ore will drive price inflation way faster than the spike seen with the introduction of Missions. Then by putting an artificial cap on the global extraction rate, ore prices (and so all other market prices) can and likely will be controlled by the few large organisations that establish territorial hold over large swathes of tiles with good pools. 9. The number of asteroids currently spawning at any point in the game, be it PvP space or Safe Zone is insufficient to ‘fill the gap’ expected in ore supply whilst the new MU’s are being established. Additionally, given the potential for significant territory control by large orgs on good yield tiles once the MU gameplay is established, even T1 ores will be in demand from asteroids. With the low spawn numbers and the ‘all-at-once’ spawn mechanic, this severely limits the player base to where and when asteroid gameplay occurs disadvantaging those players that cannot for whatever reason play at those times. 10. If the new player experience takes ‘too long’ to reach the point in gameplay where they are able to choose what sandbox play they want to pursue, then player numbers / retention will suffer, especially if the opening gameplay is days/weeks (/months?) of just collecting surface rocks and hoofing them to market before they can even afford to expand beyond their Sanctuary tile. Possible solutions 1. Have T1 ore pools be more balanced in each tile. While a primary ore type can still be present, the other T1 ore pools need to be similar, in order to allow new / solo players to establish a ‘home tile’ from which they can expand, without reliance on ore markets that have the potential to be controlled / dominated by large organisations. 2. Reduce the size of planetary ore zones or completely randomise the distribution of higher tier ores per tile – though while keeping the per planet ore type distribution currently in game. This will prevent the domination of ore types by larger organisations and allow new / solo / small org players to find higher tier ores nearer to their home bases, whilst still incentivising players to expand to other planets to find ore type not available on their home planet. 3. Ore pools must be restricted to the tile they reference in the territory scan – anything else will just encourage griefing across tile boundaries. And if NQ think ‘our player base is better than that…’ I encourage you to look at the amount of ships with glitched element still being sold / used in PvP, the number of players with large numbers of alts abusing the Mission system to gain massive wealth, the players using the terraforming tools to grief their neighbours, etc. 4. Retain the small chance to find higher tier ores on their respective planets as currently. This is still potentially subject to large orgs finding and claiming these tiles immediately following the update, so shutting out higher tier extraction by new / solo / small org players. A possibility is a rng spawn of higher tier ores in the extraction cycle of a lower tier MU. 5. a) Implement the increasing pricing scale for the tile taxation amount, as is currently used of the TU deployment cost. Currently the TU deployment cost is of little significance to the large organisations, as they have the wallet resources to soak up the one hit up front cost of deploying high numbers of TU’s. Implementing rising tax rates for the number of claimed tiles would go some way to limiting the reach and control of large orgs over swathes of territories, as the cost then become recurring currency sinks. 5. b) Wipe all current territory scans – it is the only way to set a level field between orgs / players with large scan libraries and the rest of the player-base. 6. Implement the manufacturing meta seen across the rest of the game to the manufacture of the Mining Units. This will allow progression of mining tiers, as is currently available to industry progression. 7. Temporarily introduce market bots to sell ores at ‘reasonable’ market process to cover the scarcity gap. Reduce the quantity available on the market as the MU gameplay becomes established, then remove them at the 45day mark when most invested players will have the MU talents trained to Lvl4. 8. For long term MU gameplay loop either remove the calibration charge cap, allowing charges to accumulate unrestricted, therefore allowing as many MU’s to be used as can be started with a charge per player – or allow the charges to be traded on the market, so players that do not get involved with the MU gameplay loop to sell them and make money, and also allowing players involved in MU’s to increase the amount of MU’s they are able to run. Or a more drastic change – just remove the charges all together and use the calibration mini-game to determine extraction efficiency. This will then put the global ore extraction rate burden back onto the player-base, as determined by the amount of game time they are willing to spend on servicing their deployed MU’s. 9. Increase the overall number of asteroids spawning in the game, both in PvP space and Safe Zone, and stagger the spawn times throughout the week to allow players to choose when they involve themselves in the asteroid hunt gameplay loop. 10. The tile tax burden must not be set so that it restricts the new / solo players from expanding from their first tile. This leads back to the solution of a rising tax rate per number of tiles claimed. The principal limitation of a player’s expansion, should this update be implemented as seen on the PTS, will be the dominance of large organisations over the ore markets. If the ore price burden is too high for players to progress to building / buying their first / next ship or tile – due to the rate of which ore can be collected from the surface, verses the amount of time required to collect sufficient ore to progress – then the majority players will not continue and the game will stagnant, or worse…. I hope NQ realises the scope of the changes they are proposing and the potential damage to the game that can come from them. It will only take small tweaks to existing gameplay mechanics and the proposed numbers of the Demeter update to ensure the damage is mitigated and we are presented with a well-structured game that fulfils NQs vision and give players a rich and enjoyable universe to explore and build.
  10. Try a fully loaded 'runway landing' on Ion ..... a planet of mountains.
  11. This has been done, here -> (props and credit to Gottchar for running the numbers for us) and the numbers say that each player character will be able to get only ~150kL of ore total of all tiers per day - and that is after 145days of talent training to all L5, and assuming you 'win' the rng of the calibration mini-game. This specific limit on ore extraction rate will kill the industrial game and cause such ore market price inflation, as to effectively shut out all small orgs, individuals and new starters. And this completely ignores the effect of keeping scans valid, which allows large orgs to cherry pick the best tiles to TU in the first day of the patch, denying everyone else even a chance at getting a somewhat reasonable tile set to extract from.
  12. No! Market inflation is the enemy of all economic expansion, it limits growth and development of new markets and severely restricts the entrance of new players into the game.
  13. VLog was recorded earlier in the month - they even say so in the video, just not specifically when
  14. Finally we get the vertex editor tool! This is a great development NQ, please keep this level of games design going Agree that a selectable level of fine control is a good idea, let us choose the step scaling (1/4r, 1/8th, 1/16th, 1/32th).
  15. The problem is it's NQ game design decisions that are CAUSING the inflation rate. Introducing missions caused the first spike in ore prices by giving an afk money-making mechanism, that could and was abused by multi-alt holding players and taking miners away. Now by deliberately restricting the ore production rate, ore prices will again be inflated, this time by multiples of the original inflation rate, that will kill the game markets for just about everything, as both there will not be the needed amount of ore to support the game play and no-one will be able to afford the ore prices that do end up on the market. The current ore prices are ridiculous, but imagine the consequences of ore prices being even anywhere near 1000q per litre of T1 ?
  16. Re: Airbrake obstruction - NQ, if you are going to introduce these design breaking changes to flight elements, whilst long overdue, at least have the decency to TELL US - this unannounced change is bad form.
  17. Dropping in airbrake obstruction, without even mentioning it, as well as changing the active surface that needs to be kept clear, so breaking countless ship designs - BAD FORM, NQ.
  18. While this change does need to be implemented at some point, I agree that NOT BEING TOLD about these changes is what generates poor feeling toward NQ and the game development path. Change notes, especially for the PTS, need to be mandatory and include ALL changes, not just the 'headline' ones.
  19. I think the idea of the 'Calibration Charges' is going to be a severe limitation on the game and only result in horrendous ore price inflation, as the limit this will place on the global extraction rate is likely to result in not anywhere near enough to supply the game. I understand the idea for including the efficiency mini-game, to keep auto-mining from being set and forget (though in my opinion it should be - the game is set 10,000 years in the future after all) but the introduction of these charges putting an arbitrary cap on the extraction rate will only lead to a shortage of available ore, so sparking ANOTHER inflation in ore prices.
  20. Why is there such a massive difference in 'Unboarding distance' between on planet and on a space-station. On planet I seem to be unboarded as soon as I leave the physical bounds of the construct voxelwork, but in space it can be almost a full core width away before I am unboarded - example images attached. This can make manoeuvring the construct people just left extremely difficult on a space-station, especially for L-core constructs. Image 1 - point at which I am unboarded on planet Image 2 - point at which I am unboarded on a space-station
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