I do not like the wait the option is presented, clearly NQ is using the "Remove Schematics" as the bait or carrot at the end of the stick, my question is simple why make us go threw the drill of reducing construction and limiting orgs and such, why make us go threw the drill of buying Schematics, why make us go threw the drill of terrain reset and the list goes on and on. Why did you decide to turn your early backers and supports into unpaid testers, better yet Testers that have to pay NQ to test your game.
So my choices are loose everything Talents, Constructs, Quanta so a new player can do WHAT. Play the game like I did, no the can not I played for 2 years, so a new player should never be able to walk in the door and be equal to me simple because you "Release The Game".
Did the NEW PLAYER pay you for 10 accounts for 2 years at 9.99 a month NO
Did the NEW PLAYER have to learn how to use Schematics and now UNLEARN how to use Schematics NO
Did the NEW PLAYER spend hours DIGGING their base out of the dirt after a Terrian reset NO
Did the NEW PLAYER have to play with and countless Towers, Game Errors and Bugs and still played the game NO
Why the hell Do you OWE this NEW PALYER anything when in fact YOU NQ owe US those that are here NOW, those that Play NOW, those that paid you NOW those that will come back when you screw us ONCE AGAIN for a pipe dream of the Magical NEW PLAYER that you cant seem to get to come to the game now but for some reason they will at RELEASE. So you Lied about Sancturary to I guess that the next statement that I am waiting to hear. Remember the lie Sanctuary will never be wipe and will always be save.
And for the record, you have no idea who, what or HOW MANY ....NEW PLAYERs you are going to get if any. If so Where are they NOW...
Hundreds of paid accounts no longer paying. Less money for NQ
Empty worlds with no constructs... sounds fun.
Many existing players offer help to new players in financial and advice... gone.
I usually am not very active on the forums, but I decided I wanted to help combat some of the "hate" people have been spreading about this update and I'll do it in multiple sections to make it easier. I'll also bring some things up that have been put on the back burner, but I believe should be addressed sooner rather than when they become a major issue again.
TAXES
Opinion: 1 million quanta in this game is not nearly as much as most people think. If you log in for 7 days, you just paid for your territory tax for a single tile on top of the free one on sanctuary. You do not have to do a single thing other than log in then back out to earn the money for a territory of your choosing. This being said, NQ can easily change the rate after implementing the system and seeing what does happening instead of everyone guessing what might happen. Arguing about the rate before it is even implemented is not useful since everything will remain an "if."
Territory Loss
Opinion: The game NEEDS this. We have way too many tiles claimed and too many obtrusive constructs owned by players who left the game. This is making the game feel abandoned in some areas instead of simply "unexplored" or "potentially useful" in those areas. These abandoned cities and towers and outposts are discouraging clutter and need to go. We also do need the system to continue purging abandoned materials from land. For the health and enjoyment for the active players and to attract new ones, we need this system.
Suggestion: I'm not sure of the capabilities of linking in-game information to external registered accounts, but I believe we are seeing more and more need for a external connection to certain information. This territory loss mechanic is the largest need so far. We really do need a way by email to receive a notification of an abandoned tile construct being marked for excavation by another player. If someone is taking a break from the game but still has their active subscription and maybe ran out of tax funds, they shouldn't have to log in continuously to make sure their constructs aren't marked for excavation. A simple email notification from an in-game connection to it would go miles for relieving players of their worries and would be less deterring for players to branch out. I'll address another crucial need for this system under Player Communication.
Brakes
Opinion: To those complaining about new obstruction: I'm sorry, but move on. The obstruction arrows and indicators have been on the elements since the beginning of Beta. You should have known better and cannot act surprised that they are fixing what has clearly been a bug for ages.
Question: Are we going to see the intended animation for the air brakes at some point?
Question: Will the obstruction areas be changed for the air brakes? Currently the area is towards the front of the model, but wouldn't they logically open upwards and it not matter what's in front of them so long as they can open?
Mining
Opinion: I'm on board with all the changes honestly. I will not miss digging holes being the most profitable source of income. Also thank you for increasing asteroids in the safe zone because the current 12-ish was definitely NOT enough. I get it low risk is low reward, but we're just talking wanting some tier 1 and 2 ore. My only complaint with the mining changes is some of the tier 2 ore scarcity is a little too extreme. Out of over 50 tiles on Alioth absolutely zero of them had any tier 2 or 3. I get it for the tier 3+ maybe this scarcity will make the game more interesting. However, the bare necessity of this game is fuel, specifically space fuel. How are people supposed to play the game if you can only make space fuel to start exploring on less than 2% of the tiles. This is too extreme. As for a scan wipe, I don't personally care. It's better to not wipe and see how it goes and maybe wipe and regenerate the ore pools later than to wipe it and then realize you shouldn't have.
Suggestion: We need more tier 2 ore in the ore pools. New players can't play this game if they have to scan 100 tiles to start making fuel to start playing the rest of the game. Sure they could theoretically buy space fuel, but that's not going to be affordable for new players if there's, again, less than 2% of tiles ever capable of producing it on the entire main planet.
Suggestion: Keep the majority of asteroids spawning on the weekend if that's the route you think is best, but maybe make some spawn during the week (unannounced). You could potentially try and use the ratio of online players. Example: if you have 70 players online Friday-Sunday and 30 online Monday-Thursday then 70% of the weekly asteroids spawn on the weekend and 30% spawn during the week.
Mining Units
Opinion: The current production method is rather ridiculous that you're required to have tier 3 ore to be able to mine tier 3 ore. You mention it's a "chicken and egg" situation, but this is a game where you (Devs) can change what turns into a chicken.
Suggestion: Just make the mining units function as the industry units do that works fairly well. Basic mining units can mine basic and uncommon ore to make the next one up. Uncommon mining units can mine basic, uncommon, and advanced ore to make the next unit up. Seems to make sense to me since you've already implemented this system with industry and it works pretty well in my opinion.
Subscription Price Increase
Opinion: Fine by me. I was afraid you were about to start charging up to $15 a month which would be absurd. $9.99 USD for a single month and if you buy a year it's still only $6.99 USD? As a few friends of mine constantly repeat and is still true: if you sacrifice two *insert popular coffee brand name here* drinks per month you just got 30 days access to a fully customizable sci-fi server world.
Now onto some older business that has, in my opinion, gotten pushed to the back of discussions
Warp Drives
Opinion: Love the speed reduction in making it feel like a real journey again instead of it being 5 seconds and you're at the farthest place you can get in this world. You could probably slow it down even more and I'd be okay with it even at 1,000,000 km/h instead of 2,500,000 km/h. My only sadness is with the still removed Lua functionality.
Suggestion: After all the balances and adjustments to prevent PVP exploitation, and maybe one or two more to prevent unfair auto-warp, can we please get warp drive control back through Lua? What might help is if there is a way to prevent warp activation through Lua just in the PVP zone to stop the auto-warp on radar contact. There are so many projects I had to throw in a box and pack away for later because we don't have warp drive control anymore. The biggest problem I have with the system right now is there's NO way to block people from dropping out of warp on a ship they have access to. Would be real nice to un-bind alt+j from stopping warp at the very least so we can remove users ability to forcibly bring a ship into PVP space that we coded to not allow users to do. . If we could have full Lua control back that would be even better to make cool warp control scripts for more immersion.
Question: Are we getting Lua control back someday?
Industry in General
Opinion: Please for the love of Novea fix these talent applications. I have some seriously cool projects I'm working on for industry display and control, but this guessing game of which talents are currently being applied to the schematics and how are they affecting the schematics and which version am I looking at is insanity. Sometimes efficiency skills reduce time, but sometimes it increases its production output and then also requires more material at a certain unknown threshold. Some talents are applying when looking at a schematic in the machine and some won't show their affect until you already started it and who knows which ones did what.
Suggestion: Please just add a way for us to query a schematic's adjusted time, input, and output before and after talents and/or show us in the schematic info panel inside the industry unit what is happening from which talents. If you feel extra nice it would be great to have a blog/forum post somewhere as to how in the world they are supposed to be calculated to be able to figure out what materials we'll need for what without having to build the entire factory and start the machines first.
Markets
Opinion: API when? With all these changes coming to ore acquisition which will help stabilize markets with static ore influx rates, we could really use something to get market data in game instead of all these semi-allowed "market log file readers" floating around.
Suggestion: Lua API for highest buy/sell order, lowest buy/sell order, and average buy/sell order values and amounts for target item please. Would be even cooler if you added a planet ID parameter where if left blank it will query the entire market but if specified it will only query the data from the specified planetary body's markets.
DRM Flag System
Opinion: Love it. I just want more control over it. Right now there is no way to sell someone a protected script. The only way to do so is to put the script on a new construct, DRM protect it, and sell the entire construct. There's no way currently to sell someone a protected script to add to an existing construct. If you think there's a work around through trading/tokenization/flag activation/deactivation/trading, there isn't trust me. I've tried every method and the buyer can always open and edit/take the script.
Suggestion: Please add a way to DRM a programming board with the Lua script on it. They have "dynamic properties" so is it difficult to add a DRM to one of those dynamic properties to communicate with the DRM flags when placed down after trading?
Element Destruction
Opinion: The ownership loss on core destruction was obviously a terrible idea especially in the game's current state. Great for PVP and makes sense, but terrible for flying around the safe zone on planets. I don't fully understand why cores are no longer destroyed on ground collision anymore since they were previously before that PTS version and didn't result in the loss of your ship. Also what happened to recyclers actually recycling? I digress. I have some suggestions on how to bring all this back in a healthy way.
Suggestion: Before addressing the core lives and ownership loss, maybe just throw in element lives on the other stuff first. It would help the economy a lot to make people replace their wings after crashing so many times. 3 lives is definitely a little too harsh given the current game state. Maybe start off with 10 until it's more stable from all the client crashes. That may seem like too many lives to some, but we have infinite right now for collisions in the safe zone so 10 is better.
Suggestion: Allow recyclers to break elements back down into parts based on lives. if an element requires 20 screw and has 9/10 lives left, allow it to be broken down for 18 of the 20 original screws. If an element takes a single large reinforced frame, then if its missing a life, the frame is damaged so you don.t get the 1 item back. Basically if the percent of lives left multiplied by the number of parts is less than 1, you don't get any of that part back because all of them are damaged.
Suggestion: For core destruction, first of all, maybe there's a way to introduce another "type" of damage? So you have thermal damage/resistance, electromagnetic, and others. Maybe add another type call "structural" damage/resistance. This is so that the PVP damage and environmental damage are separately controllable by you guys (Devs). A core unit could have a much higher structural resistance so that core loss is more likely in PVP rather than accidentally crashing into a rock. A laser should be able to do much more damage to a core than a lump of snow. Secondly, maybe put a timer for ownership loss in the safe zone? This might be harder to implement since it would need to have different mechanics in the safe zone vs PVP zone, but it would be logical. If you blow the core on your ship, you already get a waypoint to where you died so add a 24 or 48 hours timer to it when it blows in the safe zone so you can decide if its worth going back for and can without losing everything.
Player Communications
Opinion: We really need a way to leave messages for players and/or be notified of communications outside the game.
Suggestion: As I mentioned earlier in Territory Loss we really need some connection between in-game and out-of-game. Would be nice to get an email when someone wants to reach out to you in game or simply when you get a friend request. Would also be super useful if we had an inbox to send/check messages with for when you need to talk to someone who isn't online. Discord just isn't good enough since there's no guarantee they have the same name on Discord as the person you're trying to reach out to in game.
Energy Management
Question: Is this still a future thing?
Suggestion: This should be a thing.
Shoutout to @NQ-Deckard for being the Lua master who probably has all the answers and good luck reading all this Deckard/Pann
Keep going with the video Q&As I love these and it's why I decided to be involved on the forums again. You might need a whole other video just from my questions/suggestion in this one post!
