Emptiness

I would like to know for next Q&A how many meganodes JC found and mined out before coming to the conclusion that mining is too easy and linking to containers need to be nerfed.

We didn't start out with the idea of building a megafactory in DU.
 
We wanted to PvP - but it was awful - so we decided to play the game that we got even if it wasn't what we really wanted. 
 
We build up our industry. With all the hell that is - with the awful hundreds of transfer units, system errors, horrific lag when you whip out the link tool and it took weeks.....as in about 8 weeks total.
 
Of those 8 weeks I spent basically all of them underground constantly mining to keep the factory producing the factory....
 
When wrecks got added - I figured I'll log back in and do something besides mining - flew around - found nothing all night. Logged out. Haven't logged in since.

You're well on the path of going the way of Worlds Adrift.
 
You want to nerf industry because everyone is building their own 'Iphone' - fine - what are they going to do instead? What else is there to do instead? 
 
You want to add element destruction? Great - I'm with you. It needs to happen. But maybe just maybe pairing it with the removal of the Alt-F4 mechanic, removal of Discord support and on top of that nerfing production isn't the best idea? 
 
You think mining is too easy? Grea.....wait what....what? WHAT?! Have you mined in DU? How much? Look, ask anyone who has filled a 10L hub every two nights, there is nothing 'easy' about mining. It's boring. It's tedious. It's concentrated drudgery and one of the primary reasons I don't play DU anymore - but what it is not is 'easy' and never even in my most drunken state (and I admit I sure didn't mine sober) did I think that "Hey maybe if I couldn't link to my 10L hub mining would be better!" . In fact, when linking was broken, I just didn't play the game. 
 
Just the fact that JC thinks that linking is the issue with mining - not literally everything else - makes me lose all faith in his judgment. Of all the things wrong with mining - linking isn't  one of them. Nor is the lack  of "mining hazards"...
 
The community has over and over and over asked for constructs that can mine - empyrion style - give us drills we can put on hovers - give even bigger giant drills we can put on stationary constructs. Give us anything besides handmining because 'easy' it's not - it's at least 7th level of hell grade tedium - and 9th if you have to deal with phantom nodes and pending operations. Unless of course you take my approach, get drunk and watch netflix so that the next day you forget about how hellish mining for 6 hours straight was.
 
Unfortunately I've remembered enough of those nights over time to stop logging in to DU...and the upcoming changes and theroycrafting about the future of mining have made it extremely clear that JC does not play DU either...he may goof around in his castle - but he sure hasn't built a mega factory nor has he mined the ore to get the resources to build his giant fortress if he thinks all those things are too easy...
 
Seriously - JC just logs in - looks at all the stuff others built and his take away is that mining and mega factories are too easy? It took us weeks of drudgery......I can't even...
 
Edit: Also - cores not repairable?! Masterstroke....

Please please please RESPEC all current players if you're going to make using industry require an unlock!

I mostly just play industry and will need to consider re-doing my whole character if half of it's now useless. 

I should have put this in my original post, but Im too lazy to edit. This system doesn't prevent large factories. It just delays them. Ill still be able to make everything eventually, itll just take a few more weeks. Especially if I have friends and we can all split up talent lines. Power should have and needs to come first. Every single "balance" patch NQ has done or proposed in the last month means nothing when power finally comes. 
 
We all know power should have been one of the first mechanics in the game, but here we are. NQ has to focus on power if they want any of these balance changes to mean anything. 

How do I make the dev blog text size larger? Or invert the colors? White on black at that small is horrible for my eyesight...
 

This is probably one of the worst systems I've ever seen implemented into a game.. Was is designed by a child?

WHY THE HELL are you making Bots the cornerstone of civilization again.. IT GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING you said about a player driven universe.

How about making the schematics researchable with skills then let players sell schematic loaded factories to other players....

NO MORE BOTS, Please... They ruin everything.

If industry specialization is the end goal, then reset our skills and allow us to respec based on this new rule set.  Time is the most valuable commodity in character development.  I made decisions on which way to specialize my skills based on the rules of the game at the time.  Those rules are changing dramatically and will create an industry system that I no longer want to be a part of.  Therefore, millions of skill points are now lost and effectively will set me back considerably.

NQ, you must deliver more content or your dwindling player base will continue to fall.  I play in an org with a good group of players.  It is that group, not your game, that keeps me logging in.  There are only a few things to do and you just hamstrung one of them with debilitating limitations.  Now, more than ever, you will be forcing people to mine more.  I mine A LOT.  It is not fun.  It is necessary.  
 
The intent of this change may be justified but not without something else to balance it.  All I've been hearing is how to slow down the pace of the game.  Make the game harder.  We never intended on players progressing this fast.  For anyone reading in between the lines, what this means is "We don't have the content to support this game; therefore, we must make existing content harder to consume."
 
This software will soon need to be reclassified as a simulation rather than a game.  Please remember that reality doesn't make a good game.  People take breaks from real life to play games, not to subject themselves to a grind. 
 

The game right now has several issues that need to be adressed before the Alt+F4 and element destruction changes.
 
Several players have login timeout / disconnect issues. Those issues seem to happen only to certain players connecting via a few internet hubs. (Seems at peak times the Amazon servers do not work very well with certain internet hubs ... as the game runs better, faster, and with less lag when those players use a VPN ... which is paradox). DU does not use the processing power of your graphics card. It‘s main source of processing power are the CPU cores. Additionaly my system is capable of running 24 threads ... but DU only uses 12 threads ... as it only uses one thread per core ... even if your system could use two threads per core. My CPU is screaming, while my GPU isn‘t even bothered to turn on its fans. That‘s a huge waste of processing power. Repair unit does not work. Needs to be fixed before the changes happen. When you buy a tokenized ship from someone, the elements get the „when put down“ boosts of the creator. If I have to replace broken elements, those boosts will be lost. They need to have a possibility to keep those boosts upon repair/replacement of the elements. Otherwise most of the tokenized bought ships will be fubar once they have been repaired. With limited ressources in the system it is not smart to have element destruction in the game as this will drain ressources from the game faster than NQ can imagine. Higher tier ressources are already hard to find ... these changes will make things worse ... prices will skyrocket ... and new players will be forced to fly around in crappy ships ... which will make new players leave the game before they reach a point where they can afford the better equipment. Stuck adjustors will be stuck forever, when the Alt F4 changes are implemented. This needs to be adressed beforehand or we have a lot of „adjuster shipwrecks“ AGG towers on low surface altitude planets are littering the atmosphere. Many of those towers are sitting on 1 voxel wide „poles“ that support them. Those structures are invisible during flight, spawn very late ... too late to break. I have crashed into them more than just once. With Alt F4 gone ... you can‘t even do an emergency break to avoid the destruction of your ship. AGG towers must be banned from the game ... easiest way to fix this ... make AGGs work from any altitude ... and make them work faster in vanilla settings. The way AGGs work now is just forcing players to litter the game with trash towers everywhere.

Alpha is work in progress. Beta is most parts working, but needs bug fixes and minor adjustments.. So make that 2+ years..

people in atv shouldn't be allowed into the general public on the live server.  
this foreknowledge that they have is chasing people away.   it feels like favoritism. and elitism.   
it's leaving a verry verry verry bad taste in the mouth of the average community.   
 
they know what is comming in future updates.  and are able to prepare for this on the live server.  
they get a headstart on everything.    it's ffing sickening.  
and if this is something that's intended as a bonus because they are alpha players.  then i am quitting today.  
 
i don't have problems with people testing things.  but everything that's on the test server should be 100% public knowlegde.   and not any of this secrecry bullcrap

The auto-docking is a pain for players, and is ripe for abuse when I park my Med ship nexto a Small ship and "accidently" fly off with it.
 
Just give us a "Dock" and "UnDock" key.
This will solve most of the problems

This is my two cents for what its worth. 
 
1. Ammo and shooting people is far too cheap.  it should cost lots of money to wage war just like IRL.   Its too cheap right now as every individual player can make a war ship and shoot at anything that moves.  Just my opinion here but those "should be" amongst most expensive things in the game to make.  Players should have consider the cost of the ammo they waste shooting new player ships. 
   
2.  Pirates and PVP encounters  should flag that player with some kind of timer that makes them attackable in safe zones.   This can have a reputation associated with it also that could make someone  be permanently attackable in any zone.     I don't know about the rest of you but I am tired of people  shooting at me then running back to safety after I open fire on them. 
 
3. Bugs in the game:   I also feel the changes that are coming are needed in one way or another, however at this point in time there are way too many bugs and random disconnects.  It just too soon to put this in without some kind of stop gap.   This could easily be restricted to PVP fire or maybe only the more expensive engines with more power have the perm damage. 
 
4. Elements on ships:   This is a Major peeve of mine and a lot of other people.  Why do we have to stick all these elements all over our ships.  Why do you keep making them not be able to be hidden inside the ship somewhere.    We can make ships that look amazing but after sticking all the wings and crap all over them they look like garbage.  Will you please make them able to be hidden away in some compartment of the ship ?  
 
5.  People that I know that have quit:   My fear is some or most of the changes will magnify the reasons they left the game and cause more people to leave. 
 
The reasons they quit (quotes from them)
a.  It takes way to long to do anything 
b.  Mining is awful and I hate it.  They know its boring as they made an achievement for it WTH!  
c. PVP is completely broken,  it looks like they spent 20 minutes making the gunner interface. Any little XS core can take out most any ship without even taking fire
d. This game is way too buggy,   every time I go anywhere near other people I have to completely repair my ship after crashing 
e. We need more content so that we have something to get into besides mining and building I am board
f. The help desk is useless  they just state the "there are orgs out there to help with stuff like that"  "I have had a ticket in with them for two months and no response" 
g.  They don't listen to us and don't care what our opinions are
 
6.   New players are going to have a really hard time getting into the game or making money.   Maybe when we get a new solar system it can have new rules like, planets have more gravity, warp doesn't work unless you have some upgraded module or whatever other thing you want to add.  
 

If we add up several talking points from JC during the interviews over the past few months a picture starts emerging which could work _IF_ the game would be rebooted (ie wiped).
 
The combat changes
Good starting point for an overhaul of (space) combat from what I see
 
Perma damage
While the changes itself would be good, it may be too early due to the instability in game. This sill trigger more workload for support which is already stretched very thin
 
Maneuver tool changes
whatever.. I guess. The change to make the range 128M is OK but he refusal from NQ to clarify this will be the default or the L5 distance is raiding eyebrows 
 
Movement resume from a disconnect
Same as perma damage. too soon due to a lot of instability and it will also cause more work for support
 
Mission system
first basic implementation
 
Blueprint changes and locking control elements as far as accessing Lua
I understand the need for the changes but I hope that it will be possible to remove the creator lock and then make a BPO which is basically a master BP in case this is needed for commission work in some cases. Locking Lua down will only bring restrictions for the average player who wil now have to depend on creators providing updates and fixes in case of bugs. The nerds will have ways to lift the code from memory anyway.
 
Industry
This is the big one I expect. While there no substantial information, we know JC wants to achieve a number of goals here:
Slow down progress Break up mega factories introduce tiered industry elements As there is no information yet on what will happen and as I do not expect much to be said on this in a fundamental way on the Q&A as this will be highly controversial and NQ will not want o rock the boat until the patch notes arrive 5 minutes before the patch goes live, I will be mostly speculating based on what we know with some guesswork inserted.
 
NQ will start gating elements through Talents Batch sizes will further increase and/or production time will get longer T1 items will be nerfed in general to be below current elements, they will be usable but slow you down in many ways when travelling T2 elements will be basically what we currently have Further tiers will add to this but mostly benefit combat and not impact your average safe zone player much Industry will get smaller as NQ will introduce a cap on how many Industry elements can be used on a core depending on the core size. Building mega factories will no longer be viable.  
While all of this in itself is actually not terrible, the snake in the grass would be that existing industry will be "promoted" to T2 and thus for existing (placed) industry nothing much changes. Mega factories will be able to continue as they are as long as no changes are made to them at which time the cap on elements will activate.
 
If this turns out o be correct, this would be bad because it will provide an insane advantage to exiting constructs owned by larger orgs and it will become much, much harder for smaller orgs, solo players and new player and orgs to even try and match this. It will create a "have and have not" culture and will massively play into the next big controversial item;
 
Driving/forcing the use of markets
With their industry intact and high productivity capacity, big orgs and mega factories will be able to pretty much force their prices and control supply on the markets. Their profit margins will be such that they can buy up smaller batches and resell or write off even and still maintain profitable. Generally the result wil be that small group/solo and new players will be forced to use markets and existing larger orgs and industrialists can pretty much set prices as they see fit and from that follows that there wil be little to no room for actual competition on markets.  This could potentially become a choking factor on the economy and the game as a whole.
 
 
Now all of this could actually work out IF the changes were introduced on an even playing field and that would mean a wipe. Obviously a wipe would still mean there is an advantage for larger orgs but they would have to start off on the same parameters as everyone else and so that would IMO be fair enough. As the closest alternative I could see the element cap go live on all existing industry which would mean mega factories would cease to operate and require a rework. That way there would be at least some level of equality. I also hope that I'm wrong on existing Industry being upgraded to T2 on the patch.
 
 
 

Hopefully you guys will take some of our feedback into consideration with these patches. 

Ships in combat or recently fired at should have build mode disabled.

Will NQ be doing anything about players who abandon ships and/or structures and never return to the game? Or just  leave a ship sitting at a market or other public place for days or weeks?
 
If a ship has been sitting on a hex that doesn’t belong to the ship’s owner or org for more than a month, it should be open to salvage. Same goes for abandoned structures. If a player doesn’t have an active log in for more than 60 days, they should lose their structures and territories. That would help speed up some of the lag issues and provide an incentive for people to stay active. 

There are lot of games that have this "trash it so the hunter doesn't get it" and usually games develop mechanics that prevent it. If you don't get anything from piracy why not just disable and be done with it ?
 
The throwing to space can be nice(but not just trashing so it vanishes). Trashing your own XL engines while you are fired on... That's BS.
 
For now, at least can we disable "trash" and "build mode" on ship if it's under attack (same as warp drive)

Ships in combat or recently fired at should have build mode disabled.

This is already botched - because solo players and small orgs will automatically get discouraged because you can be damn sure you will never be able to get the rewards when large, RICH, organisations waltz in with 1000 ships, surround the planet and claim the riches for themselves, making them even richer.
So, yeah, solo players and small orgs will definitely get discouraged and will not bother to even attempt to be part of this anymore.

yea, at least the pvp ones are claimable and you know it was really built by a player and lost in combat.
 
The NQ ones are like: here is the crap we buried in dirt, found it ? cool, dig it out, get 1 engine, go on capsu... err novean.
 
But they can now show that like their are doing something other than fixing linked container for 1 month over and over.

This also further destroys the pure/refined market for all minerals/pure except Natron Petalite and Limestone which are lighter than minerals.There is a penalty to be paid for refining the minerals in the mining colony (which is what other planets are) as they are not weight efficient.  The extra weight adds to the cost of transportation. It would be much better if the mineral to pure ratio were reversed. I could go further and say that it would be better if there were different variations of the minerals that require different talents on the planets and that you could gain by being on the planet for example. It will create opportunities for locals to specialize in generating supply lines and transportation jobs.People will seek to move out naturally seeking said opportunities.
 

It doesn't make sense that the talent tree is so short in time because it also contributes to destroying not only pure markets but also intermediaries. The factories must be difficult to obtain and have a maintenance cost (cost of time) so that the products have added value that is sustained in the time.Ironically now the only temporary cost is to fix the bugs in the machines, "unknown server errors" and recipes never finishing.
 
PVP could be a solution to this problem but it requires that NQ applies it of a cautious form that does not require the permanent monitoring and that limits the amount of losses in a defeat/raid.The only problem is that the factories would move to zones without PVP what is discouraged (it does not prohibit) with the mass adjustments before mentioned that should be present in all the productive line.
 
There are many ways and ideas to energize the economy by creating the possibility of new ways to make money, this is just one, you can think it's not going to work or it's terrible and that's okay. The system needs changes because what we have now is not going to work in the long run because it has problems at the beginning that are becoming apparent now.
 
 
 

Um no, due to bugs or game stablity maybe sure but saying you need a crutch because something is hard is the worse possible reason to justify it. 

Ideas:
1)  For new players:  Mission requires stealth.  Player must be low renown.  No access to people with above  blah blah skill points.  Some people will create new accounts to access it but that will make NQ more money so this should be an easy sell.
2)  For new players or PvE players:  MIssion requires peace envoy:  Character must have zero PvP skills 
3)  For PvP players:  Mission requires Mercenary:  Character must have PvP skills above blah blah skill points or possibly blah blah number of kills.
4)  For orgs that limit org membership:  Mission requires loyalty:  Character can not belong to more than one org.
5)  For open orgs:  Mission requires diplomat:  Character must belong to at least 5 orgs.
 
I could go on and on but I hope you find this helpful.  I'm not used to MMO's so maybe my ideas are easily exploited?  I dont know.
I think it is important that some of what is available to new or solo players is valuable or even vital.  So, for example lets say DU has an ongoing saga that requires heavy research and co-ordination.  Something only a biggish org could pull off.  Something that also probably requires knowledge gained in alpha (like the 1st one) and/or knowledge gained from completing the 1st one (probably the next one).  Well, that vital next clue ...........  make that something only a new player or solo player can complete.   Any major content should involve all players.  The only way that can be done IMO, is by restricting some players.  

I wonder what happens to the ships that are currently "frozen". Will they now all start falling to the ground post patch lol. Interesting to see if it happens even if you don't login.