Frigidman

Finally. Hopefully nobody will be able to muddy waters again enough to get away without consequences in future ?

my hope is that they implement rotation of elements in more than one axis and more precise slow rotations. As of now you can only rotate in one axis which forces to use weird work arounds.(that do not always work)  

A sensible design is naturally cool-looking, but also;
Death cubes don't work as well in atmosphere, will be less useful in territory warfare within atmosphere if at all Death cubes will always be slower than normal ships, given the same amount of things and engines carried And the uses of "cool-looking" ships beyond the obvious fact that it makes the owner / users happier;
Propaganda / branding of your faction Crew's psychological endurance (see how long it takes for someone to get bored of being a gunner in a floating steel cube)

Kind of like this: 
 

Too many years of gaming has shown me otherwise.
 
Countless times I see a 'carebear' (a term pvp'rs came up with mind you), make mention of an unfair or unruly action which boils down to just a few despicable people griefing those who are not griefers. Pretty much like this thread was about someone doing something questionable in the name of lulz.
 
This mention is then immediately attacked by all the pvp'rs, throwing insults, name calling, and taking that mention into new heights of flaming high trolldom. Generally.
 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
 
PS: I've done my fair share of pvp, trolling, griefing in my life... I'm just too old to give a shit now.

Yeah, I discussed this with a friend of mine. I feel the game should do a better job at detecting aerodynamics. Its appears it currently only cares about weight and components equipped. I think that there should be other factors for example:// resistance, etc. I just don't think that someone should be able to slap a square of voxels together and fly with it, at least not effectively.
 
If you aren't good at building, then you buy blueprints. Let the creative players do the R&D to create the most effective ships. There is nothing worse than admiring this beautiful game, and a telephone booth flys by....
 
Just my opinion. ?

It is also my experience in games that there is always an absolute best meta. In ED for a while it was FDLs against all comers. Then with engineers, the boat was shaken for a bit but play soon gravitated around the new meta of engineered weapons. 
 
there ended up only being a couple of viable PvP ships out of the 40 odd ships in the game.
same for weapons only one or two out of the hundreds were useful... same for the engineering buffs... same for the commodities for trading. Same for the activities for making money. 
 
one or two key meta activities. The rest relagsted to pointlessness by the sheer gap in effectiveness between the “top tier” and the rest. 
 
all PvP play in ED (against non pvpers)  comes down to: can you get the first shot in before they can warp? If you can, your win is all but garanteed.  (I’m simplifying, but the point stands)
 
And if you were not PvP you have to warp out immediately before they can one shot you. 
 
 
the fact is, the PvP meta ships are honed to perfection and are unbeatable by anything not explicitly playing the same meta. 
 
I agree with the commenter above. Players are ingenious and focused humans in general are very, very good at optimizing at the expense of any variety at all. 

The design team has been constantly utterly underestimating the players though.  Solving whatever riddle that was supposed to take 2 years,  range limits based on core size, and thinking that each tier of ore was 5x harder than the previous tier (to the detriment of market balance).  
 
thinking they get other player interactions balanced on a mechanic release/change is very optimistic.

Meanwhile the real PvP challenge by far in Newtonian physics based space should be 'catch the ship'. Realistically a lighter ship built for maximum acceleration would be almost guaranteed to escape a 'death cube' simply by accelerating out of weapons range.
 
And in addition to distance, relative speed between two ships should also have a large say in weapons hit chance. So that a ship coming towards you at high speed would be harder to hit, even if the distance is technically well within weapons range. Combined with a narrow ship profile (when burning away from other ship) to further decrease hit chance, this would make it so that you can build good looking ships that would have a very good chance of evading PvP.
 
But this still doesn't mean PvP looses out, since that ship design would also suck at for example transporting goods. And if PvP'ers decide they want to hunt smaller faster ships, they simply have to adapt and make lighter ships also (at the expense of now being more vulnerable against counter attacks). And presto, we now have emergent game play where one size does not fit all.

Totally agree with the initial post even if I DO believe that DU needs PvP, even the most sauvage version of it.
 
But the game, on this aspect, is really unbalanced. 
 
Some ideas :
- no exploitable external view while in PvP combat, for example no engine control or weapon activation => no more seat in voxel blobs, no more blind voxel blocks => add the need to design proper cockpits with usable view. 
 
- seats needs to be "inside" the ship. Totally possible as they are already able to detect it (for the sound)
 
- currently, PvP is a huge and sharp cissor and a very thin leaf and a tiny rock. Pure escaping ship (speed or signature) or tanky ship should be able to manage encounters without problem. And these feature should be exclusive with heavily weaponized ships. Using capacity, perhaps? With thrust enhancer or shield, plugged on the seat? 
 
- no build mode while in combat. You should be able to repair from inside the ship.
 
Just some ideas. 
 
 
 
 

NQ can't ignore the builders player base, I think there will always be a safe zone somewhere. Where and how big? The current safe zone is fine to me, it has every ores so builders can build everything in the game (untill everything gets mined out).
 
The current game mechanics leads to the current pvp meta, the deathcube seams to be the most efficient fighter. You define skill involved for it as "zero", when omitting all the process players went through before starting the construction. Building the perfect XS fighter doesn't happen in a day, there are a lot of things to consider like the proportion of engines, weapons, voxel used, etc. All of this is affecting the ship capabilities and when the goal is to build the most efficient XS fighter, you have to test a lot of things before coming to the solution.
 
You place the skill at "building a nice ship", where some other players place it at "building the most efficient ship". There is no "right way" of building a ship, it's only subjective to you, it's about what you want to do with it. But you have to concider the game rules for what you want to do, a beautiful ship will win the first price at the Alioth Aerospace Expo, but outside the safe zone the rules are clear, prepare to die in your lamborghini killed by people flying in a dumpster.
 
Play in the world you want to be in, and accept what happen if you step outside of it.

Would like some kind "Restore Landscape Tool" ... i.e. able to terraform landscape, plant more trees, ponds etc.   Right now
just digging and flattening is like taking a sledge hammer to your territories.  Why not have tools much like you have to make building
to restore some of the landscape (in one's own Territory of course).

Hiya,
 
Just a suggestion, Basically I think that transfer units are too 'expensive' compared to the other industry items. to cut a long story short for the resources consumed by building one transfer unit you can build either 1 medium container, 1 large engine a large assembler or 5 other industry items. Personally i don't believe the limited functionality of the transfer unit when compared to the other items in its 'category'.
Building and using transfer units would be much more appealing if they consumed just as much resources as as single medium industry maybe even 2 at a stretch given that they seem to be a hybrid industry unit/quality of life asset. currently their primary function seems to be to pick up catalysts from the out tray and place them back into the  in tray....A large Engine it is most certainly not....
 
thats all for now

UKFatguy

Just like the mining tool is able to deposit soil by using the alternative mode (alt+lmb), the flatten tool should have a similar functionality.
 
Anyone who has leveled an entire tile with a significant height difference knows just how time consuming it can be. Right now you need to mine out or flatten all of the high spots, then you need to fill in low spots then go back over them with the flatten tool. All of that is much easier said than done and it has you going over the same area numerous times. 
 
Let the flatten tool deposit soil by holding the alt key while setting the height then if you hover over a tile where there isn't enough voxels to lift up to surface height, it can fill in using soil voxels up to a maximum distance below the selected height. 

There are a lot of practical benefits when it comes to ship aesthetics. Well...sort of practical. 
 
Your fleet ought to be recognizable. Everyone knows a Federation ship when they see it -- if you attack it, you'd best be ready for war with the entire faction. 
 
They design ships to look pretty and consistent -- sure, they could pump out a bunch of war ships, but the design is a reflection of their values as an organization.
 
If a Federation ship shows up to answer your distress call, you probably trust them more than a stranger. Even if you aren't familiar with their org, they don't look like warships. You wouldn't invest in pretty ships if your only concern is piracy/war. 
 
Cohesive ship design helps build the organization's reputation across the galaxy -- and this reputation helps each individual ship stay safer...or be more feared, or whatever values you want to reflect.  
 
For those of us that want to play a civilization sandbox, these sorts of things will hopefully be important. 
 
My hope is that generic cube ships (if they remain in meta) get treated as "pirates" on sight by more organized fleets -- e.g. if your ship looks like it is a generic cube built only for combat that doesn't belong to any faction...maybe you get treated like the dirty space rat you are by more civilization-focused orgs.  

Too many years of gaming has shown me otherwise.
 
Countless times I see a 'carebear' (a term pvp'rs came up with mind you), make mention of an unfair or unruly action which boils down to just a few despicable people griefing those who are not griefers. Pretty much like this thread was about someone doing something questionable in the name of lulz.
 
This mention is then immediately attacked by all the pvp'rs, throwing insults, name calling, and taking that mention into new heights of flaming high trolldom. Generally.
 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
 
PS: I've done my fair share of pvp, trolling, griefing in my life... I'm just too old to give a shit now.

That's an empty camp raid which is the essence of what so called PVPers think is game play. That's why open world PVP doesn't work.

There is a good reason why the voxelmancers are the superstars in this game, I dont see many people looking for a 'boxelmancer......'


See what I did there

Sorry for the sidetrack, but this relates to why a good looking ship should make more sense beside just the aesthetic factor.
 
The saying "If it looks fast, then it is fast" is very much true for aerodynamics. And NQ has accounted for that to some degree with frontal area deciding how much drag a construct will have in atmosphere.
So while a cube does in fact make a lot of sense in space, make the large profile affect radar detection distance, hit chance etc.
A lighter ship with faster acceleration should also have a MUCH higher chance of escaping then currently. I.e. make weapons follow the same physics rules as ships have to obey.
 

Slightly confused why you think that someone who like aesthetic design is a 'kid', we tend to find that it is peoples love for good looking ships that increases the quantity and value of the ships that we sell.  I also like to 'min/max' the amount of quanta in my wallet.  Having one of the best designers in the game building ships for my org certainly does that.  Having nice buildings also bring recognition to my org and our activities.  You would be surprised how many leaders I have spoken to through the quality of our asset design.

I am all for quality design, and also for the devs doing everything they can to remove any benefits from having borg cubes / 'exploits to circumvent restrictions'

Have to ask everyone's opinion here (since this is entirely subjective), about why or what do you think is any point to spending the hours and days in designing a neat looking ship, when this game is headed toward more and more open-world PVP? Mentions and murmurs are that safe zones are going to be tuned back as much as they can, with no plans in adding more safe zones because the devs are more interested in galaxy wide warfare, than sustainable well-designed building activities.
 
For the discussion: Try not to attack others opinions on the matter. Try to keep it a healthy discussion, no pvp  
 
So, few points (from my perspective):
 
A "death cube" is generally what wins out there. Has maximum blob surface for armor. Game allows it no problem. Requires the least investment in time to get going. A "designed ship" tells all the death cubes 'here is an easy target', because: Someone who spends time designing and building neat ships, generally is not a heavy pvp'r. So they lack the combat skills. A designed ship is never going to be as strong and potent as a blob of voxels with elements and weapons slapped on the side. There are no repercussions to openly attacking others. Its a free for all out there, no rules. No NPC police to enforce anything. No accountability in actions because "its just a game, get over it". The moment you exit safe zones, you are basically committed to losing what you have. So why spend hours/days designing something cool, just to have it thrown away in a minute. Just slap together a death cube, and join the fray and have fun.  
This leads me to a conclusion that:
 
If a player is a "Builder" type, this game is a complete dead end for them. There is no point to designing anything remotely cool looking, because it will not be effective in combat, and combat is all this game is about. They would be forced to live in a tiny corner, unable to create because of the lack of dwindling finite resources, almost like a leper colony... where the vast majority of players mock them and pick them off if they even try to head out of a safe zone.
 
As a side thought; why would the devs spend any real amount of work making building tools easier, or adding more building customizations and styles... there is no point to using them when the current tools let you slap a blob down and toss elements on it and be on your way.
 
 
In contrast to other games with open pvp (like ED, SC, EVE, general shooters etc):
 
Players are not 'building ships' from scratch (or their character, in a general shooter), having to design them piece by piece with mined resources crafted into items. Everyone has access to the same pre-designed in-game ships that the developers provided. They are already 'pre balanced' by design, and they obviously look cool while still being lethal. The only "build" options are to tweak loadouts. No one loses anything because when they die, they still have those pre-designed ships to head back out in. The only real loss there, is some credits. Not hours of work mining up resources and designing a ship block by block (when a designed ship is always weaker than a deathcube).
 
 
Your thoughts?

Have to ask everyone's opinion here (since this is entirely subjective), about why or what do you think is any point to spending the hours and days in designing a neat looking ship, when this game is headed toward more and more open-world PVP? Mentions and murmurs are that safe zones are going to be tuned back as much as they can, with no plans in adding more safe zones because the devs are more interested in galaxy wide warfare, than sustainable well-designed building activities.
 
For the discussion: Try not to attack others opinions on the matter. Try to keep it a healthy discussion, no pvp  
 
So, few points (from my perspective):
 
A "death cube" is generally what wins out there. Has maximum blob surface for armor. Game allows it no problem. Requires the least investment in time to get going. A "designed ship" tells all the death cubes 'here is an easy target', because: Someone who spends time designing and building neat ships, generally is not a heavy pvp'r. So they lack the combat skills. A designed ship is never going to be as strong and potent as a blob of voxels with elements and weapons slapped on the side. There are no repercussions to openly attacking others. Its a free for all out there, no rules. No NPC police to enforce anything. No accountability in actions because "its just a game, get over it". The moment you exit safe zones, you are basically committed to losing what you have. So why spend hours/days designing something cool, just to have it thrown away in a minute. Just slap together a death cube, and join the fray and have fun.  
This leads me to a conclusion that:
 
If a player is a "Builder" type, this game is a complete dead end for them. There is no point to designing anything remotely cool looking, because it will not be effective in combat, and combat is all this game is about. They would be forced to live in a tiny corner, unable to create because of the lack of dwindling finite resources, almost like a leper colony... where the vast majority of players mock them and pick them off if they even try to head out of a safe zone.
 
As a side thought; why would the devs spend any real amount of work making building tools easier, or adding more building customizations and styles... there is no point to using them when the current tools let you slap a blob down and toss elements on it and be on your way.
 
 
In contrast to other games with open pvp (like ED, SC, EVE, general shooters etc):
 
Players are not 'building ships' from scratch (or their character, in a general shooter), having to design them piece by piece with mined resources crafted into items. Everyone has access to the same pre-designed in-game ships that the developers provided. They are already 'pre balanced' by design, and they obviously look cool while still being lethal. The only "build" options are to tweak loadouts. No one loses anything because when they die, they still have those pre-designed ships to head back out in. The only real loss there, is some credits. Not hours of work mining up resources and designing a ship block by block (when a designed ship is always weaker than a deathcube).
 
 
Your thoughts?

Interesting you bring up Empyrion (you had probably blown up a few of the POI I built or upgraded lol). It is a decent example of some of the struggles of trying to appease the pvp-vs-builders spectrum. However it was not all a single server everyone is on. This allowed a wider audience to play the game how they wanted to play (small servers, co-ops, single pve or just creative mode), but when they make sweeping changes that only benefit one side (the pvp end), they lost momentum.
 
You mention their CPU addition... arguably it was one of the worst decisions they made. And as you said, it came about as an attempt to 'balance' the pvp end of things... however in doing so, it negatively impacted the creative side of things (the Builders). The devs had their view though, and refused to budge on the overwhelming negative feedback during internal testing, and pushed it out the door regardless that most all internal testers were against it and brought up bountiful arguments and alternatives to just make it a bit better without all the drawbacks alienating their creative audiences. Same thing happened with their method of making Shields require the most rarest of element in the galaxy to function. Another bad decision they ignored their internal testing group on... "it was for pvp balance".
 
While Empyrion does do a lot of interesting things, and has more content (so to speak)... many of its growing pains, DU could learn from. And yes, the structural integrity system is a laughable mess  When they added it, it reduced almost every building into "a mound of blocks" because anything remotely creative would fall apart with just one hit. Space Engineers has ship-based integrity, which you can rip parts off for not building correctly... but that game suffers from a lot of physics issues too (maybe because of it).
 
DU is in a unique position I think. It has Space Engineers, Empyrion, Starship EVO, Satisfactory, and even Intersteller Rift and Astrox to draw from.... seeing 'what failed', and 'what jives'. I'm not sure it could be compared to Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, or any of the X series... just due to those are not 'builders'.
 
Hope is a dangerous thing  

I agree with all accounts above.
 
As it stands, trying to 'look to the future', its hard to tell. It already gave me one sleepless night pondering "should I really invest my time here" ... "is this headed the right way". Granted I've got a year sub plunked in, so I'm here for that time. I hope during that time I see movement towards positive vast-audience changes, and less pigeon holing to one demographic. From a business perspective, rounding it out to entice all three kinds of gamers, is a good thing to push for. However, devs have visions too, and its still their baby to do with as they please.
 
In the meantime, our lil org is off building and fiddling around with what the game can do, slowly, cause crafting is a sloowwwasssspaaaaaaiiinnnn ugh  

Have to ask everyone's opinion here (since this is entirely subjective), about why or what do you think is any point to spending the hours and days in designing a neat looking ship, when this game is headed toward more and more open-world PVP? Mentions and murmurs are that safe zones are going to be tuned back as much as they can, with no plans in adding more safe zones because the devs are more interested in galaxy wide warfare, than sustainable well-designed building activities.
 
For the discussion: Try not to attack others opinions on the matter. Try to keep it a healthy discussion, no pvp  
 
So, few points (from my perspective):
 
A "death cube" is generally what wins out there. Has maximum blob surface for armor. Game allows it no problem. Requires the least investment in time to get going. A "designed ship" tells all the death cubes 'here is an easy target', because: Someone who spends time designing and building neat ships, generally is not a heavy pvp'r. So they lack the combat skills. A designed ship is never going to be as strong and potent as a blob of voxels with elements and weapons slapped on the side. There are no repercussions to openly attacking others. Its a free for all out there, no rules. No NPC police to enforce anything. No accountability in actions because "its just a game, get over it". The moment you exit safe zones, you are basically committed to losing what you have. So why spend hours/days designing something cool, just to have it thrown away in a minute. Just slap together a death cube, and join the fray and have fun.  
This leads me to a conclusion that:
 
If a player is a "Builder" type, this game is a complete dead end for them. There is no point to designing anything remotely cool looking, because it will not be effective in combat, and combat is all this game is about. They would be forced to live in a tiny corner, unable to create because of the lack of dwindling finite resources, almost like a leper colony... where the vast majority of players mock them and pick them off if they even try to head out of a safe zone.
 
As a side thought; why would the devs spend any real amount of work making building tools easier, or adding more building customizations and styles... there is no point to using them when the current tools let you slap a blob down and toss elements on it and be on your way.
 
 
In contrast to other games with open pvp (like ED, SC, EVE, general shooters etc):
 
Players are not 'building ships' from scratch (or their character, in a general shooter), having to design them piece by piece with mined resources crafted into items. Everyone has access to the same pre-designed in-game ships that the developers provided. They are already 'pre balanced' by design, and they obviously look cool while still being lethal. The only "build" options are to tweak loadouts. No one loses anything because when they die, they still have those pre-designed ships to head back out in. The only real loss there, is some credits. Not hours of work mining up resources and designing a ship block by block (when a designed ship is always weaker than a deathcube).
 
 
Your thoughts?