Gottchar

I would really like to set up missions to transport things more often, sadly, I can rarely use the mission system. My missions will compete with the endless supply of NPC missions, meaning if I pay less than a player can get from an NPC mission, I don’t have to bother. NPC missions are -repeatable, can be done multiple times in one shipment with alts. -the longer the mission, the better it pays, and the smaller the inconvenience of having to log into multiple accounts, or ask friends to come for the ride. -the shorter/smaller the mission, the lower the collateral. -no limit for litres Due to this, the player missions are hard to sell: Long range ore transport: Every ~5 days I ship 4ML from Sicari to Alioth. I would have to set the collateral to 200M for the whole amount (50 per litre), so no newer player can do it. And more established players, if interested in transport, will already do NPC mission which pay better and can be organized better with group or alts. Also, I would have to split the transport into 512kl chunks, and as only 3 missions can be set up at a time, I would need three EXL parcel containers, on both ends, to organize, pack, set up. I would also have to pay upper market cell cost for a heavier ship than mine, +actual reward. So I just do it myself. Short range heavy transport: No warp cells involved, but still same problems as above. Also, these transports would likely be from the market to my base, which means I need to create the parcels inside the market container, which does not allow to split stacks. If I have more than 512kl of a single type of ore in the market container, it can no longer be used for a mission. Long range light transport, like schematics: For a small job like just hopping with a warp shuttle to Talemai and back, I could set up a mission, but now the collateral is a huge deterrent. 3M quanta job, for 100M collateral, maybe somebody would still do that. Same job but for 500M or 2B collateral? Short range light. I just pick it up next time I need to fly light anyway. I wouldn’t mind outsourcing some work, but the tedium, high price (to compete with NPC missions) and restrictions mean I either ask a buddy to fly it (and I move from container to container via VR) or, in 99% of the cases, I just fly myself.

By default, hover lift you up (as seen from planet) and boosters lift you up (as seen from the ship). You can however, just rightclick the engines and enable or disable "thrust along gravity". There was no change to the engines.

The idea isnt new, I just have not seen it in a while. Warp gates which are neutral premade structures located in pve space, somewhat close to planets, which can be used to get to other warp gates, but with a control station in pvp space, where the connection can be set, and a price for travel. Route shortening It creates a third way for long distance travel (the others being warp and slowboating). So even without adding and direct reward, controlling these is worth your while, as the group in control can travel cheap and quick, while being able to set up a cost for non-group players, in quanta/kilogram. Any non-group players planning to use the warp gate do not risk anything, worst case they arrive and see the price is higher than they expected, and don’t use it. Getting money for pvp No cargo that got deleted last minute, no elements with lost life or anything, just cold hard cash as income for controlling the station, and cheap travel for mission haulers. All this while even being willingly payed by the pve players. Some communication required, in a dynamic system. Any gate can only connect to one other gate, which often may not even lead back. The system map shows gates and their current destinations, rates and owners, plan your course and contact any pvp org controlling a gate you might want to have changed. Ask nicely or maybe pay a little. PvPers shooting each other Now the pvp players can shoot other pvp players, who like that sort of thing, and still get paid by the PvE players Think about it this way: Currently Mr Rabbit is sometimes shot by Mr Looter and sometimes by Mr Raider. Mr Rabbit is unhappy and the other two would rather have a proper fight. With this idea, Mr Looter and Mr Raider shoot each other, and whoever is better gets to control the gate the happy Mr Rabbit uses for his transports, and pays for. Fineprint: This requires, amongst other things, a new system map, which is long overdue anyway, and likely a rebalancing of the npc mission rewards.

In order of how it appears in the text: "goddess of war", goddess of wisdom and strategy. "set Helios ablaze" Helios is the star, not hard to set a bloody sun ablaze. "hits a new stratosphere" there is only one. You can hit it, but not hit a new one. "Alien" There are now aliens. "Alien core units must be defended" If there is one space core, it might actually be defended, if there are plenty, we just have pvp asteroids 2.0: PvE players in throwaways try to get some, without being shot down by the "league of pvp players who banded together to not shoot each other and complain about lack of targets". "Stasis weapons". Are there really concerns right now that haulers have it too easy to escape from pvp ships? FTUE at long last. New space map, about time, embarrassing it took so long. Visuals visuals visuals, sure nice, the bug introduced with the industry visuals is still not fixed. Mining Units Lua API, nice, can we have dispensers, too? Space market: If this is just a market, but in space, we already have that, on every moon. Want to bring a huge space only ship to trade things? Go to the moon. Nobody does it of course, because nobody does it. The player base is so low, there is only one npc market with (usually) all things. Also, how large will the no player-station radius around this be? Because there will be a cloud of little shit stations blocking access. Just because it is cheap to "reserve" some space in case NQ introduces more and better npc buyers and sellers again. Element stacking exploit fix: This time really though, right?

The problem: Elements never decay, ore is infinite. A possible solution: Element decay and requiring maintenance. Overview -a second health bar -decay is time based -decay is in no way coupled with damage taken. Scrap stays the mechanic for damage related repairs. -purely cosmetic items are excluded from this, no maintenance for plants, furniture, windows etc. -no decay for items in containers -a maintenance unit keeps the tedium at bay -the maintenance unit is fuelled with elements of the same "family" as the items to be maintained. The new bar: With the repair tool in hand and ALT key held, elements show their decay status. Usually players will use their maintenance unit to check stuff though. The bar slowly fills with decay points and, when full, the item needs full replacement. This would on average take month to happen and is easy to avoid. The decay bar has as many points as the healthbar has health points. Time based: Any time a player enters the seat or build mode of a craft, or enters build mode, and at least 5 minutes have passed, the game runs the decay check. This also happens during server down time if it didnt happen for the last weeks otherwise. So most constructs have this happen to them spread over time, but even unused constructs do not escape decay. During decay check the following is done: -game checks time passed since last check -game checks total hitpoints of all elements that can decay (cosmetics are excluded) -multiplies the above numbers and a coefficient -assigns those decay points, up to 5% of the bar of an element, but on the healthiest (by percentage) elements first. If you have two identical ships, but one is used every day, and the other every month, they still decay at the same overall rate. The first in daily tiny chunks, the other in big chunks whenever used. Please note it would still take months to actually destroy an item due to decay. No cosmetic items: Players are already discouraged from using cosmetic items, due to the tedium of repair. I don’t want to add to that. No decay for items in containers Especially now with core limitations and the renewed talk of "storage mechanics" for ships reemerging, having no decay for items that are not visible in the game world is a nice incentive for players to keep the world clear of their 40 ships they have in some corner. The Maintenance unit Similar to a repair unit, but useful, this machine let’s you empty your decay bars. A ship in maintenance is temporily disabled, the unit can also be used to fuel all tanks. The "fuel" The most important part, in order to do the above, the unit must be connected to a container with items (and fuel). It directly transfers the decay points of elements on the construct to elements in the connected to container, and deletes them if the bar is full. This only works for elements that share a group: -atmo and space engines of each tier are a group -ground engines and adjustors -aerofoils -containers including tanks -AGG, pulsors, warp -control units, electronics, elevators, force fields, other "system" items. -industry units of the same tier -doors, gates, landing gears So unlike the repair units you do not need the exact item, but you do at least need something similar. This should also normalize different market prices of different elements with similar production cost. Possible results: -Every item is useful, if only as scrap. If a patch makes some item obsolete (like recently with scanners) they can still be put to use. -just like the 4 different space fuels equalize the t2 ore prices to some degree, this would also equalize prices between safe/freight/military/maneuver engines. -no item is a one time purchase, unless it is cosmetic. Equipping t4 engines mean from now on you need t4 engines to maintain them. -You can not just only buy things on alioth and there is little commerce on other planets. because now, on every planet, there is a constant, if slow, need for elements. -Ore prices steady and hopefully ore bots can be turned off again. A step towards a player driven economy.

added: -"Show only doable" filter for transfer units requires much more than a single batch size to show up. For ore (tested baux and lime) this is 1700 litres. -Build helper menu in flight no longer shows mass -G-values in build helper do not factor in docked constructs -Sustentation speed value in build helper does not include talents of pilot. -"Rightclick-> instant sell" only works for items in the nanopack, linked container items must be searched and the button on the site of the item be used. This is why you will often see your buy orders filled in chunks of ~4500 ore. -Nanopack volume talent works in VR -Some ships in the flight challenge have full buffs, not sure if intended. As you can see, some are super old and known already but only added now, so hard to try to write all of them down, whether you know them or not. So please tell me if you notice something is missing, no matter how known you think it is already, I might have just missed it.

Again, if you think fuel is expensive, use a more fuel efficient ship. If you fly multiple trips to Alioth from Sanct daily, with mil engines, and carry an AGG around at all times and who knows what else, it is understandable you need a lot. I wish fuel was far more expensive or more was used, so people would actually care about consumption more.

Did you only scan hexes in a small area?, Fly 20km in some direction and scan a few tiles there. ore distribution is more in "areas" now, if you have a hex with mostly quartz and coal and little hema, the neighbouring tiles in a 5km radius will be roughly the same

I like the changes, but was also hoping that the calibration loss over time could be reduced, while also reducing the gain rate for charges. So that user have the same amount of units with the same output, but can (and have to) calibrate less often.

Mostly things they had planned anyway, check how much on the top is suggested by "moderator". The site was shitty to navigate through, people just made new suggestions as they didn’t see the suggestion was already made, with so many pages people only voted on the stuff that was on the top already: the stuff added by NQ. Proper polling needs some proper moderation.

Very nice post. I have to go through it one by one: Instead of NPC offering to modify your ship for quanta, i think the already existing different elements should be more balanced. You already mention the safe engines below. I wish each of the 4 types, and both space and atmo of them, actually had a role to play and was used. When there are 4 types, and they are used to like 90%, 8%, 2% and 0%, you should question if maybe a rebalancing is in order. Also, especially seeing how higher tier ores cost almost as much as t1, it would be nice if there where higher tier parts for other things as well. Currently there are only guns, radars and engines where you can chose the rarity. By litres of ore required to build it, practical ships are to like 90%-100% made of t1. So for modification I would rather see t2-4 wings (increased lift at high speed or at low speed, different stall angles), adjustors (more strength but warm up time) etc, just like engines have different tiers and properties. Similar to above, other elements could have different properties, too. Be it faster transfer units that are t2, container with more storage volume but same element size, or less storage volume but weight reduction etc. Generally about this and the point above is to add, some people made vast amounts of money with exploits, some with (legit) mission running with plenty of accounts, I do not think people should be given that much of an advantage to spend it at the NPC. If those exploits had not happened, and the mission system was not paying out those ridiculous amounts, I would agree. Yes please, use scrap for something more of a "field repair" after a crash, but require elements to get some amount of maintenance from time to time. Meaning elements get a second health bar, "maintenance bar", which is replenished via a repair unit, which in turns requires fresh elements. Not 1 to 1, but you need eg 1 Wing M to get the 40 wings on your ship back to 100%, every few weeks. On one hand it solves the same issues that lifes lost on destruction tries to fix, but support does not get overwhelmed because people will contact them every time their ship is destroyed due to a bug. Hell no, the sales taxes are a big reason why there is pretty much only one market, and why people don’t sell things on Alioth. If my items don’t sell, not only do I obviously not get the money, but I also waste the fee. Instead the storage tax should be abolished and buy and sell orders stay in the market with no time restraint, or the value tax for unfilled orders be returned. The current fee system just leads to less items being available. Additionally, it leads to more players wanting to bypass markets and their fees, without the ability to properly advertise in a non-intrusive ways. So we just get an increase of messages in the general chat "WTS Basic engines L for a good price, message me for more info", and more signs and screens and dispensers at public places. If there were proper player markets, or if you could see dispenser sales in the market interface (optional), and players selling things was actually integrated more in the game, I would totally be for higher market taxes. If NPC missions didn’t pay so much, so reliable and with so little collateral, player missions to do the same thing would actually work well. Similar to the ore bots, and before that the HC bots, bot kill the economy. Just like t1 ore is now down to close to 25 (and soon, at least on alioth, below), other elements would be artificially more or less expensive. A bot that buys any number of t2 military atmo engines for 180k or even more? I bring it 200 per day. If it pays 160k or less, I don’t care about the bloody thing. So the devs would have to exactly know the current value of things, which, historically speaking they are bad at, the players without industry skills can not partake, or doing so would be at a loss, and, depending on the items, some people win the lottery. NPC pays 10M for Bonsais, some few people are suddenly rich, If instead it was Exotic agile Cannons XS, nobody cares, because nobody builds them. There is just no way to properly balance this, and even if it was balanced, it would just introduce another artificial NPC price stabilisation. And when the event is over, any overproduced stock is worthless. This would bypass schematic costs and talents and be hard to balance, and would need constant rebalancing, or it would by itself just be another artificial stabiliser. Make it so that I upgrade 3 t1 engines into one t2, that would currently not be worth it. But if other items are introduced (like t2 wings )suddenly the t2 ore price rises and it might be worth it, so far so good. The ability to upgrade now artificially keeps the t2 price lower, because if it climbs too high, people stop using t2 ore and just make t2 engines with t1 ore. But if you can make t2 items with t1 ore, the t2 refining and smelting talents become worth less. So do the schematics. So some people who trained this and bought that, now find their stuff made obsolete. What I am all for though is the ability to swap elements, like engines, without the need to remove, place anew in the same position (and re-buff) Would have to be at a rate of 35% or less of the ore needed for the original item without talents, otherwise I am all for it. I wish there were better tools for players to do these. Only the last one, for orgs is imho a bad idea, orgs should really be a social feature, or we should have a different tool to use for grouping. I am not part of an org to have a group chat with people I often interact with, because I use my limited org slots for beacon sharing and to have more construct slot. Almost all of them please! Link limit increase maybe for fuel tanks, but not for industry please. There should be a limit, and I think the limit is just right currently. I am all for other industry related QoL though, like faster transfer units, or talents to build something faster are also applied to transfer time. Rebalancing item volumes and batch sizes. There is lots to be done. Nothing to add to the rest, they are all very good ideas. I wrote more about the stuff I disagreed with, I hope you understand.

Any of your org members can access the containers on your tile at any time. Which means any of your members can then fly it to the market, at any time zone. And any of your other members can then VR to your ship, at any time zone. And any member can then fly the ship back to your base, again, at any time zone. Maybe don’t stop playing for a bit while your construct with all you own is parked on the market. Just generally don’t park on the market unless you are there to bring or fetch something. People ask all kinds of things, usually "how does my ship look" or "why can’t I use this or that?". What they do no ask is "how can I safe on fuel?". Military engines and vertical boosters are the default, fuel prices are dirt cheap. I sell about 4x as many military engines compared to maneuver, and at least 10x as mane maneuver still compared to freight engines. If people wanted to safe a lot of fuel, they could. I happily VR to your ship and tell you how to safe a lot of fuel. With the amount of bugs around, it would overwhelm support with tickets and requests. Currently most players only ask for GM help if they can’t repair bug related damage themselves within 5 minutes. If I lose a single engine to a bug and cant just repair it, I will contact support. We already had that. So I might fly to the market and find out I can not sell my engines there? or I know the limit for an item and just push it to the max, now nobody can compete with me, unless people buy my overprized items. So I put 100 XL engines for 5M each on the market, now my buddy does the same, and mine are auto-sold, I like it. All of this can be abused so hard. And what about storage fee? So people have to guess how long the "queue" is and pay the fee accordingly. The minimum prices for items would also have to be constantly changed by NQ, due to fluctuating ore prices. They did not do this for the 10 UEF store ships, which now essentually cost 4x as much as they did a few month ago (same quanta price, but quanta currently has 4x the buying power). And you want to set a minimum price? Imagine that minimum price is 80k for a basic atmo engine L, if ore bots run dry and ore prices dip below 25q/L, people can now no longer use the markets, because the minimum price is too high, and people with dispensers can sell them for the "real" price. We need less regulation, not more! There would be more proper hauling going on if player missions didn’t have to compete with the aphelia missions. Prior to ore bots people would generally ship ore from A to B. Prior to schematics people would have factories on all planets. All of the fencing, forcing, botting and other restrictions and NPC competition mean the markets and economy are far more forced and overall worse then it was prior to .23. Get rid of ore buy bots, so that we can finally know the true prices of ores again, but also massively reduce tax. Or, as has been suggested many times now, have different territory states, so you can have it active but not run mining units, for a vastly reduced fee. We all know how annoying it can be to take apart a construct and still look for that last voxel or glass panel, and that is on our own constructs. When taking apart constructs that were abandon, you grab what you can, and if it takes more than 20 seconds to look for the last part missing for grab the core, you leave the core where it is. You imagine some dreamy ruins and ships with most engines missing. What would happen is pointless radar contacts or cores with 20 voxels and some broken elements hanging in midair making landing hard. I took a requisitioned factory building apart and the walls where thick and had lumi, the roof was a 1 thick layer of alu of a shitty colour, guess what is still standing there now. It looks neither alive, nor abandoned, not like a ruin, it is a roof hovering in midair well I agree there. Please slow down calibration charge gain but also calibration loss. So that we get the same ore as before, can only have the same amount of units running, but calibrate half as often.

Regarding having markets stocked with different things, on one hand I am really against having bots sell even more things everywhere, on the other, it would be nice if it was easier to sell anywhere but market 6. Some months ago I brought about 20kt of elements, from doors and plants to engines and containers, to a sanctuary market. I priced them about 30% over alioth market price, to compensate for the storage fee for 90 days. Then, after those 90 days I picked most of it up again and brought it to market 6. Due to the storage fee (0.02 quanta per day per litre) based on litres and time, t1 items are best sold with a 7 or 30 day timer, rail L ammo not at all. As long as the storage fee exist, sellers not only want to make sure their stuff is sold fast, but also that is will sell within the timer. Not only will my stuff be sold quicker at market 6, but I can also be somewhat sure somebody will buy it at all. Any if somebody someplace else wants it, he can still buy it and set up a mission for transport. Anyway, if all moons, (especially Sanctuary) had no storage fee and duration timer, but instead double the value fee (two instead of one percent) it would mean: -Some items, like ammo, are generally better sold at moons, won’t hurt to have an active ammo market on Alioth moon 1, sounds fun. -New players on Sanct will actually find items on the local market, because seller, like me, can sell items there without thinking about selling before things run out. -The doubled value fee would mean higher tier items, be it t3+ engines, guns, warp drives, anti grav etc, will still be sold at normal markets. -OP is more likely to be able to buy fuel for normal-ish prices next times it happens

yes, they are gotten rid of as well, it is kind of the point here.

No good way of stopping them, but the mechanic will solve most of the issue and at least put a good amount of work and risk of losing their stuff in the hands of the people who clutter the market. And hopefully the feeling that they harm the game with their "I have a new ship and everybody should see it even if it kills the game" attitude.

Wallet feeling a little light lately? Get ready to remedy that when the Panacea update hits, bringing with it two lucrative, quanta-producing possibilities: space wrecks and inactive asset requisitioning (IAR). Does not generate quanta. I mostly like it, the details remain to be seen. But dont claim it generates quanta please. There are five tiers of rarity, with lower-tier wrecks with low-value contents spawning at a higher frequency. Any info on how close to planets or safezone? Space is too big and empty to fly around randomly to "dig a 2SU wide tunnel" and look for something. As soon as a player exits their construct in Aphelia territory, a 168-hour (seven-day) abandonment countdown will begin for that construct. Hell yes, thank you, please don’t backtrack on this one, it is the only way to really clean up markets and make them usable for everyone.

I use my haulers for ores I bought or elements I sell, and usually transport somewhere between 1 and 10ML on my trips to and from the market. Hybrid, no AGG, go into orbit and land again on the other side of the planet. And I like wings and dislike brakes and brake landing.

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/forum/7-novarks-registry/

It is time again

First update in a while, the amount of tangible, easy to name bugs has really gone down a bit, now there are more other problems. Anyway, what did I miss?

So while I am unable to log in anyway, here my thoughts about Demeter so far: -Mining units are fine for the most part, it would be nice if charge gain and calibration loss was both halved, just so that you dont have to log in every single day. We all know I will anyway, but the game shouldnt persuade you that hard. -Headquarters are nice enough, it will just take a week or two for people to finally understand the concept "you still have to pay to have machines active, it is just immune to loss". -I have noticed no difference regarding loading times or other benefits of the dirt reset, but plenty of other people are amazed they can now "VR someplace, or use scanners, like other people can". I wasnt even aware it was so shit for some others. -Was still not able to find the "element overlapping" sign anywhere. -But I do now have some weird bar across the minimap, even outside build mode, is that it? ? -You got rid of mass info while flying, I liked checking my total cargo there, when I forgot to long to container or just have multiple hubs. This is not even in the patch notes, was it on purpose? -I dont see updates on the updated roadmap. -Not sure what rendering change there is to industry units, I had a good look when restart machines for 4 hours after the downtime, but they are still the same. And still show the wrong light colours and like to just get fucked all the time. -Force field change is nice. -Underwater landing is even harder now, because water is muddier. -Most of the "UI" polish is hard to judge without direct comparison, I really cant tell. -Space fuel XS, nice. - Mining unit collision is massively bigger a few seconds after deploying. So if you place a few, you then have to rearrange them so they dont overlap. -Added "view market page"! Hell yes, thx guys, I think most people didnt even notice this one yet. -People who made DSATs had their 60M schematics turned into 3M schematics without compensation. -People who owned DSATs, had their 16M items turned into a 1.7M item, with no compensation. Instead of just introducing a new basic DSAT that only works on basic and common asteroids. Solving the same issue, but without fucking some people over. -VR-mission change: There are two kinds of people (with some overlap) who do the big moneymaker missions. Car-pool guys, where 20 people VR to one guy with a ship to take and turn in the mission. Alt guys, where a guy and his 20 alts do the mission. The car pool guys at least did something that, while imbalanceds in the game, was in theory available to everybody, you got rid of that. The Alt guys can continue unhindered. Why not use one of the working solutions? -Weapon changes: Nobody bloody cares. I did the extremely hard math and found out that there are more engines in use than weapons, why not balance those for once? Just put pvp balancing on ice for now, it is a bottomless pit for dev time in some dirty shitcorner of the game most people dont visit anyway. -Plenty of DC, lag, prolonged wait time, inability to log in, which I guess goes away in a day or two anyway. Can you please hire a guy with the only job being to point out how something might be shit? This game has issues, you come up with solutions, those solutions however often are flawed and turn out worse than the issue they try to fix. The dedicated "pointing out how this could be shit"-guy, would help.

The small ones can be craftes in the nanopack and are about as complex and expensive as a basic small atmo engine. You can just craft them yourself after picking up 20 rocks.

So the org members claim hexes set as headquarters, sprinkled over the planets, so that they dont get adjacency bonus. In order to have different ores available if needed - "coal is 2 quanta above baux, drop the baux miners, activate the coal hexes!" Instead of making sure their own buildings are safe they rather reserve that safe slot for 3 mining units. And due to those efforts, the org now has infinite ore. Please open a window, make some tea and rethink if your issue is actually an issue.

Brakes should obstruct like any other element. Brakes do not add to the active element number bug, only engines (and ground engines when close to ground) and aerofoils do. The current arrows on the live server are pointing the wrong direction, for the M brake it even points sideways. IF they used the obstruction direction indicated by the current live server arrows, people could just stack them on top of each other in some room in the ship, like now, but pointing the arrows outwards through the wall, sideways or upwards. Which is bullshit. So the new direction makes sense, and also means it is futureproof for when they add the animation. So the changes, imho, make sense, I do agree though they could have announced it earlier, or when putting it on the testserver already told us "we plan to give you at least X weeks time before this hits live server, if at all". Regarding ship size, the amount needed to land a ship of any size and mass is the same as before, 0. You just need your silly amounts if you want to be able to almost stop in midair while freefalling. The moment you realize that your hybrid ship is a space-ship in space, and an air-craft in atmo, you can sail like an aircraft and land like one, brakes just reduce the roll out needed. How does obstruction work? Likely as follows: From the middle of the yellow circle you see, the game decides on a random direction within a ~40° cone. If there is an obstacle in that direction it counts as one obstructed direction, if not, not. Repeat every few seconds. Remember last 20 results. Obstruction percentage = (amount of obstructed directions X 5) % This explains why obstruction depends on collision detection, why it fluctuates, and why you often see elements either deep red or not red at all the moment you enter build mode, and it becomes a bit more "nuance" after a while. This is NOT something that was officially said somewhere, it is just my guess. My model if you will, which works better than any other model I head of so far though.