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WarrenOne

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  1. How many times do we have to ask for the purple plastic and steel variants? This was a mistake left uncorrected for 2 years now.
  2. I was planning on waiting to see how the new system works before saying anything but the more I hear about this new system, the worse it sounds. The whole point of this game is to model it after somewhat realistic systems and theories (yes I know we can't warp in real life and the planet scales are off). However, this new schematic system seems like the most arbitrary system that could have been drawn up. I fear you (NQ) have already gone too far into it to be willing to go back to the drawing board, but I think this is one system where you are going to have to for people to want to play this game. A quanta/time drain into an intangible copying system makes no bloody sense and doesn't make anyone want to go into industry. My suggestion is to make a new system to combat the previous issue of unlimited industry crafting. If you really want to do it the right way with similar systems you've created, here's my STRONG suggestion instead of this awful current system: The goal is realism in the theory. Let's compare it to the real world for a minute. The concept (recipe/schematic) of how a screw is made is cheap. It's a threaded rod with an imprint on the head for a screwdriver. The machine to makes screws is somewhat expensive. You can't make your own screws so easily by hand but there are the machines that make them for a price. The biggest hurdle why people don't make their own screws at home is that we don't know how. You have to buy the machine, have some schematics/designs for it, but then you have to know how to operate the machine to make that design. You have to go to an institute/knowledge base of some sort to learn how to do it. That is where I believe the limit should come in for the game and could add so much more fun gameplay. Have Research Lab on all the planets with a passive research queue. Have it operate almost identically to the talent system, but you have to be at the Research Lab to be learning while logged out. The queue still goes as long as you are there even offline. If you want to learn how to make basic screws, you could visit one of these labs on any of the planets and have it take maybe 5 minutes. To learn how to make warp drives, you may have to fly out to Lacobus and require the character to research it for say 12 hours. It can be cumulative and have the ability to resume so if you have it research for 8 hours over night, you can go do other stuff and then leave it for the last 4 hours and add maybe another 4 hour research to the queue while you're offline. Your character then has the knowledge required almost identical to the "skills needed to run a machine" to make the part/element/consumable. With a system like this I would suggest two things to keep it fair: a limited queue amount and make the actual industry machines cost more to make in parts. The machines shouldn't be cheap as the real world works. Also to prevent completely passive endless research, make a queue limit of say 24 or 48 hours so players can't queue up 2 weeks worth and just log off and know everything when they log back on. All the numbers suggested were also arbitrary and adjustable. Maybe warp drives should take 24 hours to learn how to make, I don't know. Please consider a more realistic and interactive system for industry. This suggested incoming schematic change is ridiculous. It's just another passive money dump/resource gather. Just click a button to spend money every time you want something with no real reasoning other than "we need something to balance the game." You're just going to see everyone frustrated again that they can't make things without roadblocks only now instead of giving quanta to a non-existent entity, you also have to wait and they'll be consumed so you have to keep doing it every time you want to make an item. This is just a terrible idea.
  3. Obviously in recent posts and releases, the game is focusing on preparing the game for release. There are many additions that could definitely be added or changes to correct after release, there are some that I believe NQ should absolutely not do after a release as without them, the release is likely to fail. The first on the list is to redefine the pillars of the game as there are new features that really changed how to even talk about them in the game. I believe the easiest way to categorize the players is in the following sections: Mining/Harvesting, Building, Fighting, Transport/Missions, Scripting, Industry, and Admin/Management. Below are the absolute necessities for each before release. Mining/Harvesting As is, the system is alright. However, I recently saw a suggestion that may be way more appealing to the community over passive mining and the change would have to be made before release as it would be too game-changing to be made post-release. The idea of passive mining has lead to massive acquisition of ores that honestly seemed too easy. The reason people mined by digging so much even though it was monotonous is that there was a reward right away for the grind. The current mini game seems very boring since there's no real reward in front of you minus the little bit of surface ore. What could be a good system is have a mining unit bring the ore to the surface (either the surface rocks or what would be nice is just the surface ore we used to have when a node was above ground so no tunnels) and have each 'calibration' yield a few thousand liters and then go into a cooldown period. No passive mining but rather you use the mining unit to gather a large amount. This brings some of the active effort back to acquiring resources instead of clicking a few buttons and then waiting. Whatever the rebalancing or change may be to make planetary mining better, it has to be final before release Building Blueprints: If we're going to have a wipe (I'm not getting into that argument here) then for the blueprints to be put down, we need a way for structures to snap to an existing structure on the ground. I don't know why we don't already have this as there are many multi-core structures that people cant share because you cant align blueprints with each other. If this is not added before a wipe, say goodbye to a good amount of the content creators. Also a recommendation: add this feature soon and reemphasize that blueprints will stay even with a wipe. There seems to have been a lack of awareness of this. Energy Management: If you're going to add this, add it before release or else it will restructure everything people already built. Don't do this after a release and then screw up how people began building the officially released version of the universe. Also my personal opinion is this system should apply to ships to encourage specialization like a real ship would have to (energy to operate weapons is a thing), apply to anti-gravity generators (this is basic physics that something like that should consume SOME type of energy), and apply to industry machines (seriously we should have to use energy to run machines this is a basic concept). Element Destruction: we need this back once the game is stable. People keep taking sides on this over one very easily detachable issue: loss of ownership. People saying how bad the element destruction was and how it should never be done again said it because people lost their entire ship on game glitches. Just remove that part. Elements should have lives and then be able to be broken down into some of the parts based on the amount of lives maybe. The problem was the core destruction from environmental damage should not have caused you to lose your ship permanently. I don't understand why it would be so difficult to separate PVP from PVE damage to a core in it's ability to lose ownership. I get it would take some time to code for the conditionals but if the core's single life is destroyed from PVE damage, it should be replaceable instead of dropping ownership on PVE damage. If it really is that impossible, then just allow for PVE element lives on all the other elements like the wings and adjustors. Maybe the number of lives may need adjustment on them and maybe different numbers on different elements, but I see no reason to not put back in wing replacement mechanics after being broken over ten times. Maybe things like large engines would have more lives since its a more durable element than say an extra small wing. It could be an equation based on element mass that determines how many times it can be repaired. Now an outstanding bonus that might have to wait if it's reasonable to implement is to either repair "damaged" elements with scrap, but "broken" elements or maybe just ones with no lives would require some of its parts to restore like consuming pipes to restore an engine. That would be amazing for game balancing with industry and finally give use to parts instead of just the final product. Core Sizes: Recently we heard about how XL cores could cause some issues with people just having too much data in a single area. I think this actually highlights a small flaw in the current core limit system. The idea is to limit the amount of data a single player/organization can be taking up. As it stands now, if someone has 100 construct slots available, it doesn't matter if they are 100 XS constructs or 100 L constructs. This seems to defeat the purpose since 100 L constructs is 512 times the amount of data as 100 XS constructs. This means 100 L constructs has the space of 51,200 XS constructs. I suggest to better handle the needed data limits, switch to a system of construct points of either "XS=1, S=2, M=3, L=4, XL=5" or "XS=1, S=8, M=64, L=512, XL=4096" and then have construct point limits. This would allow better balancing for XL cores and the current core sizes. Purple Honeycomb. This is personal. The fact that I still cant build with purple plastics or purple polished/galvanized steel disappoints me every time I log on. Fighting Balancing can always be adjusted after release. Weapon nerfs/buffs happen all the time to healthy games. What absolutely needs to be decided (even if not implemented) before release is territory warfare. Implementing it can happen after release if really necessary, but players have to know where they should plan to build. The safe zone was obviously created for that reason. If there are plans to add planetary warfare on say Lacobus, players need to know that before building their lives on Lacobus at release. A simple statement saying "the safe zones around planets outside the main safe zone (Alioth-Madis-Thades) will not remain long term" would prevent players from quitting when they learn their home base will no longer be safe even after release. Transport/Missions Missions: We just need more variations that were talked about long ago. We really need the bounty system before release as this would be many players' reason for playing. Maybe even a taxi service as part of it too. There have been other ideas floated in those discussion threads but we definitely need more types of missions to keep players playing at release. Also for the love of Aphelia we need to be able to use parcels with RDMS and not have to be a Legate of an organization to ship a package. I should be able to send a "letter" to my friend without owning my friend's house. Warp: We need to ability to add public warp beacons to our list in our map menu. This is the only way for player/organization constructs in space to form when the game is released. We can't require a player to waste an organization slot just to be able to visit an organization's space construct with a warp beacon. Also please give us the ability to block the "stop warp" function. With the original Lua API we could remove the "alt+j" key's ability to stop warp but for obvious PVP exploit reasons that may be an issue to control the "stop warp" function. There must be someway we can remove a player's ability to drop out of warp in PVP space on our ships if we so choose. "Trust your player" is not a good enough mechanic. We should have control over their ability to do that since we would be able to block a person's use of systems in the real world without just "trusting them to not hit that button." Scripting Additions can be made post-release, but what we need beforehand is a way to sell scripts for people to put on their own constructs. For example, if I made a shield control system/interface, I can't sell it to someone to put on their ship without them being able to copy and paste it for free afterwards. The only way to keep it protected is to sell them a whole ship with the interface installed with DRM enabled for the entire construct. They can't put it on their own already existing ship with protection enabled on just my script. Just add DRM flagging in the actual element of a programming board when putting it into an inventory and trading it. It's already in blueprints. Industry Fix "balancing" mistake that was made. Obviously the idea of an endless amount of machines making screws was something that needed to be fixed, but the wrong side was adjusted. The "idea" (schematic) of making a screw is very easy and simple. In the real world, the hard part is acquiring a machine that can actually make the screws. In this example, it should be the metalwork industry unit that is the bottleneck point, not the specific screw. Having a machine to make screws should be difficult, but not to then simply reprogram the machine to make a frame instead or another added cost for a second machine you already have to be able to make screws. I'm open to how this would be implemented. My idea is have the machines cost more to make and then have your character "learn" to make screws. This could be through talents, a separate passive learning que, or some sort of mini game for each tier of each part/element. This could even apply to the current familiar schematic system only you buy one schematic that stays in the avatar's memory bank to start a machine with that schematic loaded. Then once your character learns how to make uncommon screws, they can make it in any machine since they have the knowledge. Admin/Management We need in game and external communication. It really doesn't seem too hard to implement since systems already exist for hundreds of other server based programs not just games. We need a way to leave a message for someone in game. Some sort of mailbox to send a message to a player that's not online the exact second we are. Also a system where an email can be sent to someone with in game notifications such as when something is under attack or a construct of theirs is about to be abandoned. I can already see how many players would hold back from playing or building out in space and taking risks because someone would have to be online 24/7 to monitor if their space station is under attack. Could be a simple menu under the organization/person for "notifications" where you can see a list of constructs and check boxes of what you want notifications for on the individual constructs: one for when targeted (meaning it's been discovered), one for when attacked, one for when destroyed, and one for when abandoned by IAR or parking/construct number limits. Players have quit this game before due to lack of info on what's going on with their stuff in game and there needs to be a solution before release. Things that can wait until after release because they wouldn't turn players away: More Lua screen functions More Lua APIs Skin stores? More star systems/planets In-game events like earlier Pets Potential farming/food for buffs New voxel textures XL cores existence (see building for new limit system though) L and XL elements that don't already exist (ie engines/wings) Construct deconstruction/packing Player market pods Playing sounds through lua Holograms? Visual FX
  4. Honestly I'm still waiting for the relevant Lua for my field in this game: Industry. We've been having issues since the very beginning of Beta with figuring out the amount of product certain batches create. An example is basic pipes. With no talents, 10 pipes are created per batch. Not counting the productivity talent, the efficiency talent actually changes it at a certain point so that instead of making 10 pipes quicker, it actually jumps up to just making 20 pipes in the same amount of time to account for efficiency. Smaller elements like buttons also see this effect with efficiency talents where it will go from making say 2 buttons per batch to 4 which screws up the required input material. TLDR: We need a Lua function that queries what the machine is making and how much is needed/outputting in a single batch.
  5. 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!
  6. This is a post to hopefully get the attention of NQ staff: You promised better communication and we’re still waiting. Most of us still with the game understand that it is a difficult task to predict timing on a developing situation. The issue at this point is a complete lack of even a guess. It’s okay to give us a date and be wrong about it. No one has been walking away from the game because of a “wrong time estimate.” People are leaving the game because we’re being left hanging. We see the great features coming such as the mission system, new Lua screen tech, and long awaited docking changes. They’re exciting. The problem is we have no idea if we’ll ever see any of it at this point. The constant answers of “we’re not 100% sure” isn’t good enough and is the wrong approach. It’s fine if there are currently issues with the features you’re working on. However, you need to inform us what you’re looking at. Main Point: Give us an estimate. We know it might end up wrong. Fine. That’s the life of game developing. Tell us a range of when we can look to new features such as “within the next few weeks,” “in about a month,” “maybe in 3-4 months.” Again, if you end up needing more time, that’s fine. Just TELL US how much you need. We can’t help you keep the game alive if you don’t give us estimates to work with.
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