W1zard

Dear Noveans,
 
Update 1.3 is on its way! As we finalize the Maintenance Unit and prepare for its public test session (more on that below), we are excited to share the details of update 1.3 with all of you.

We also want to thank you for your patience as we work towards bringing you a new PvE system in Dual Universe. Our development team is working hard to create an exciting and enjoyable feature that provides the best gaming experience for everyone. We are prioritizing PvE and are working to bring it to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, you can still look forward to other new features (like the ones below), with more details coming on our Social Media and teaser livestreams on Twitch.

With that, let’s look at update 1.3!
 
THE MAINTENANCE UNIT

We’re replacing Repair Units with Maintenance Units, giving players more flexibility in maintaining their constructs by allowing repair and disassembly.

Repair:
You can choose to repair damaged elements, honeycomb, or both Use scrap to repair damaged elements or replace them Choose what happens to extra elements: If damaged elements are not part of the original snapshot, they can either be recycled or repaired with scrap and recovered. They will be recovered if they are undamaged but not part of the original construct snapshot. Destroyed extra elements (those with no remaining repair counts) will be recycled.  
Repairing honeycomb structures requires the exact amount of honeycomb missing, and elements still need the same amount of scrap to fix.

Disassembly:
You can remove all honeycomb and elements on a construct, including the core. The maintenance unit will use its linked container to retrieve all items instead of using it to repair. Damaged elements can be repaired with scrap before recovery or recycled. Destroyed elements (those with no remaining repairs) will always be recycled.  

 
THE CONSTRUCT SCHEMATIC CONTAINER

Following popular demand by our community members who grew tired of manually inserting schematics into industries, we’ve now added the option to designate a single container on a construct to act as the schematic provider for all industry units on the construct.
This feature is accessible by simply right-clicking on a container and selecting “Set as schematic container” from the context menu.
 
UEF SHOP EXPANSION

Looking to buy ships from Aphelia? We’ve grown the UEF shop with new floors and a Blueprint Basement that sells copies of all outposts and speeders. Before launch, we ran the ‘Build Your Legacy’ contest, giving DU builders a chance to be woven into the game by building speeders and outposts for new players. We’ve added the winners to our First Time User Experience and into the Blueprint Basement of UEF stores. We’ve also added four bonus speeders and an extra outpost!
 

 
INTRODUCING EASYANTICHEAT (EAC)

Accessing and manipulating game files is critical to many disreputable players who want to cheat by automating actions or gaining hidden data, for example. To combat this, we shortlisted EQU8 and EasyAntiCheat (EAC) when implementing our original solution for Dual Universe. With the sale of EQU8 to 1047 Games and the closure of their service to third-party customers, we will switch to EAC.
We want to thank EQU8 for their amazing service and responsive support and are excited to transition into EAC. The only change that should be visible to our players is seeing EAC instead of EQU8 as the anti-cheat system in Dual Universe.
 
UPCOMING PTS SESSION

Many of you have requested a PTS testing session, and our goal is to open the PTS to the public between Friday, February 10th, at 10:00 UTC and Monday, February 13th, at 10:00 UTC.
The PTS will allow you to test all features of Update 1.3 and help us with information and feedback on the PTS Forum thread to tune the features.
Your involvement has been invaluable in helping us shape the future of Dual Universe. As we progress with development, we want to thank you for your continued support and engagement and invite you to share your feedback. We’re working hard to give you all an enjoyable and immersive gaming experience and look forward to introducing more upcoming features.

Thanks for playing, Noveans!

That's some awesome news. Looking forward for these updates!

That's some awesome news. Looking forward for these updates!

That's some awesome news. Looking forward for these updates!

That's some awesome news. Looking forward for these updates!

Hello, everyone! I'm Mark van den Heuvel, known to many of you as NQ-Deckard, a member of the Production team here at Novaquark.
 
First, to those of you who celebrated your new year recently, I wish you a wonderful new year, and I look forward to seeing all of your creations in-game. As we step into 2023, I want to bring you all up to speed on where we're at with Dual Universe and where we are going.
 
After our launch last September, we have all worked hard to squash remaining bugs and improve balancing. We also delivered the promised digital Kickstarter rewards to our backers.
 
As is always the case with Dual Universe, work does create itself in front of us, and we have a great deal to work on and improve. One of our current central goals is to enhance the gameplay experience and catch up with some features and quality-of-life improvements, particularly some of those requested by our community.
 
Let me walk you through some of what we have planned for you both soon and further down the road.
 
Planets

We’ve recently released a new version of Talemai, and we’re continuing work on the others. After reviewing our progress, we've decided to take extra time to make the new planets truly feel different with new art, new terrain, and more exciting features. This means they are coming at a slower pace and possibly in a different order than we had envisioned. Expect new teasers, concept art, and images from us soon™!

Combat Missions

We had decided early in the life of Dual Universe not to focus on a PvE combat system, given other priorities. With all of the feedback we’ve received since the beginning of the game, PvE combat has consistently remained a highly requested feature from our community. We always try to listen to your feedback, and I’m happy to announce that we have begun work on implementing the first iteration of a PvE combat system into the game!
We’re planning the first version to be a PvE mission system that takes players into combat in their ships. The missions will scale in size to allow all players (solo or part of a larger group) to participate.
 
We’re very excited about the PvE combat feature. It will add more engaging gameplay for all Noveans and allow players to try out the rigors of space combat before heading out to battle with other players in Dual Universe PvP.
 
We are still in the early development of this feature, and it will take time, but we are already looking forward to seeing you all trying it in future PTS sessions. Your feedback will be instrumental in our developing PvE combat in Dual Universe.

PvP Improvements

Following a recent and very successful round table discussion with members of our PvP community, we are reviewing all the feedback gathered and our own data to determine what changes we will make. We are considering increasing the importance and/or requirement of having voxel armor onboard successful PvP ship designs, finding ways to encourage multi-crew ship setups, and potentially restricting the ability to remove cargo while in combat. Stay tuned for more exciting developments on PvP.

Contest Winner Constructs

Before launch, we ran the Build Your Legacy Contest for players to design starting outposts and speeders, with the winning entries being added to Dual Universe. We are currently working to make the constructs that the contest winners submitted available as options to select during the first start of the game, and we are also looking to make these available for purchase in the UEF shop. The contest entries were original and impressive. I want to congratulate all of you who took part. 

Maintenance Unit

A complete rework of the repair unit was planned for the 1.2 release just before the holidays. The feature still needed more work, and we decided to delay its release with plans to include it in the upcoming 1.3 update. When finished, the repair unit will be replaced with the maintenance unit, which can repair constructs with scrap and disassemble constructs. However, construct disassembly is the feature that still requires the most work, and we are determining if the feature will make it into the 1.3 release. When added, this feature will remove the pain of finding that one last bit of voxel in a construct and make redesigning builds easier, with the Maintenance Unit taking down constructs for you.

Joystick Support

Dual Universe already has a basic system to connect joysticks to the game. However, these were never cohesively connected with the Lua system. We will change that, allowing players to map analog and button inputs from Joysticks, Throttles, Pedals, and even simple Gamepads into Dual Universe. This will significantly improve the flying experience for non-Lua developing players and open new doors for Lua developers through projects such as Lua arcade games, custom flight control systems, and other nifty things our community creates.

Default Lua Configuration Rework

Once we’ve added Joystick support, we will redesign the default Lua scripts we give to players. Our community has long requested this update, and we want to ensure we deliver it. We will add a full suite of features and improvements. This means new Lua flight control systems, the ability to toggle widgets on and off without requiring Lua code, and integrating several systems not fully encapsulated in current control scripts, such as Anti-Gravity Generators.

Fuel Intake Changes

This has been a popular demand by our players, and we are looking into options to allow players to refuel tanks from another element. Currently, we plan to make a  'Fuel Intake' able to act as a proxy for a single fuel tank. This feature is still on the drawing board and may change as we dive deeper into it.
 
-------------------------------------------

As always, thank you for reading this short overview of some of what’s coming up. I hope you have a clearer picture of the direction we're taking Dual Universe in, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the forums. Have a wonderful day.
- Mark (NQ-Deckard)
 

While I agree that we need a better UI, I don't think E:D radar ripoff will work for DU.

let's try to get an answer for these questions:
- Why E:D have this kind of radar?
and
- Would this work for DU?

E:D is a an immersive First-Person view game. Again, First-Person.
And this radar is your only way of knowing your surrounding.
Also the combat in E:D is at much lower distances
In DU you can just wiggle your mouse a bit and see what's going on.
I think we actually need some fleet markers, and better UI for already existing system. Not a ripoff from other game with different mechanics...

find 10 differences I guess?

Base Shield Generator doesn't protect any docked dynamic construct.
So, no, you can't protect a fleet with it.

While I agree that we need a better UI, I don't think E:D radar ripoff will work for DU.

let's try to get an answer for these questions:
- Why E:D have this kind of radar?
and
- Would this work for DU?

E:D is a an immersive First-Person view game. Again, First-Person.
And this radar is your only way of knowing your surrounding.
Also the combat in E:D is at much lower distances
In DU you can just wiggle your mouse a bit and see what's going on.
I think we actually need some fleet markers, and better UI for already existing system. Not a ripoff from other game with different mechanics...

find 10 differences I guess?

find 10 differences I guess?

find 10 differences I guess?

The asteroid stuff seems like an improvement. But not really what I was hoping for myself when I heard that asteroid hunting was going to get a rework. I've always wanted the DSAT coordinate system to be replaced with a DSAT that works like the scanner/direction scanner tools that are used for mining. That's a neat mechanic that requires some skill and intuition, and now it's barely used. Seems like a waste. Tracking down an asteroid could work just like tracking down an ore node.

I see some pvpers think that the removal of the discovered column will make it hard to find miners and kill them. But we haven't seen how the new roid spawning will work. If the roids are continuously despawing/respawning, there might only ever be 20-30 spawned roids and it will actually be easier to find miners.

The tactical map is cool as well but I hope you guys do it better than Elite Dangerous did it. Theirs can definitely be improved.
No need for the varying distances between concentric circles. They should have even spacing every 50km so that players can properly see how far away a contact is with just a glance at the map.
The contact icons should indicate the direction of travel and facing of the contact. (markers should as well)
The plane altitude lines should be dashed when below the plane.
There should be an indication of radar range at the top/bottom of the sphere in the form of a vertical circle that shows where the limits are.

I also hope that Lua wizards will have access to the data that the tactical map uses so that they can build user-made tactical maps into their hud.

find 10 differences I guess?

find 10 differences I guess?

Greetings Noveans,
 
As many of you may have noticed, there have been no Market Bot buy orders available recently. We wanted to give you an update about this topic. 
 
The Market bots were initially designed to help kickstart the Helios economy for the launch of Dual Universe. It gave all Noveans a chance at earning more quanta at the beginning, in order to jumpstart the global in-game economy.
 
We have been closely watching the amount of quanta obtained selling to the Market Bots and we have determined that Market Bots are no longer needed and this ability has now been turned off, which means that players will no longer be able to sell to Market Bots.
 
A note from NQ-Entropy:
 
Just to establish some background, before Market Bots started running out, the T1 ore buy orders were the first quanta faucet in the game economy, with missions coming in second. Another point of note is that since the start of the game the total amount of quanta in the game has never stopped climbing. It was honestly a scary level of inflation for the early state of the game.

One of the reasons we had mentioned when we did the release wipe is that the economy was in trouble and the state and health of the economy is something we are paying especially close attention to after wipe. While we didn't communicate on this, and perhaps we should have, is that we knew we needed bot buy orders on launch, but we were unsure as to if and when we were going to refresh them. We know that there was some confusion about this and we do sincerely apologize for any miscommunication. However, it has become apparent that keeping bot orders refreshed would not be a good thing for the economy, and ultimately the game at large.

So let's talk about the game itself, there's a couple of things I want to mention. The realities of a game with a pseudo-economy and a real market is that we are in a basic version of supply and demand. If the supply for a resource is too high, the cost will fall. Unfortunately, it was too idealistic to think that everyone could free-farm a T1 ore territory cluster and make guaranteed (and quite high) profit. On average ore buy orders were seeding 3 to 4 times as much quanta as was being sinked by territory taxes.

The second thing I’d like to mention is that for most players there is no requirement for your territories to always be online. HQ territories still allow you to build and run industries. The only thing onlining a territory does is activate mining units and if it is unprofitable to do so, you may choose to offline/HQ your territories.

Territories and mining units were never meant as a means to print infinite money, sustainably, with no risk and limited effort. The tradeoff you are making when activating a territory and running mining units is paying tax for access to resources. What you do with those resources, and what is possible with those resources is up to you, and to an extent, the state of the game and its economy. It may be that it's a good time to make a profit on the market, but it may also be that you just need extra resources for honeycomb, scrap, or materials to run industries and make items you need.

If it is the case that the supply exceeds the demand, and as a result of that, prices sink, then it may be that the best solution for you is simply to go buy those cheap ressources at the market and take advantage of the surplus of resources. The more people do this, then demand should rise, and so will the cost, until we find some sort of equilibrium.
 
Adding another thing: Ultimately one of the main things that matter in all of this is fundamentally balancing our supply versus our demand. When it comes to T1 ore, the barrier to entry is incredibly low, even a starter character can have a basic mining unit setup over a couple territories in a few days. The question is, how many people as a rough percentage of the player-base are needed to supply the game with the resources that all players require? We fundamentally don't expect all players to need or want to gather resources, that's why markets exist. The real question is if that number is too high and too low. The issue that we are seeing now I believe is that while bots were still active, mining units were a good form of income for everyone, because the prices were artificially pumped up. That will not be the case anymore and we will have to find some form of equilibrium between people willing to farm resources and people who ultimately would prefer to buy them at a competitive price. For those staying in the MU field, as with any competitive endeavor, it will come down to organization, talents and preparation to stay competitive if you truly wish to make good profit selling ore from MU.
 
The counter-balance is that if resources were ever too expensive and demand was higher than supply, either due to some sort of market interdiction, or other similar phenomenon, anyone is free to pay for a couple territories to start flowing resources into the economy to rebalance the supply and demand or to acquire resources at a “cheaper” price. 

It could be that it requires too few people to supply the game with the resources it needs, and in that case, we have levers we can ultimately use to change the balancing of the game and make the demand higher, such as making crafting more resource demanding, or introducing more element sinks.

Finally, a note on buy and sell orders. We understand that without infinite buy orders the market feels less fluid. This is the reality of the size of our economy at this point in time. People will have to get more used to utilizing buy and sell orders as opposed to instant buy and sell. Don't get tricked by players putting up low buy orders, put up a sell order at a fair price and people will buy it. Make no mistake, people out there need ore, and are willing to pay for it.

We understand many of you enjoyed using the Market Bot orders, but ultimately this amount of quanta flowing into the economy could not last. We will be continuing to monitor the in-game economy very closely.

Make missions reward dynamic.
E.g. lower the reward for specific mission for everyone, when someone delivered it, and make the reward grow slowly by time when no one does them. Also with this you can remove the hard cap of 1 package per account to make big hauls accessible by everyone.
They will balance themselves out very quickly this way.

I think you don't see full pictures here.
Mission runners who do mission with 50 alts don't pay for their alts with real money.
They buy DACs from other players for quanta, increasing their overall alt army, and making even more quanta progressively.
Everyone can do that with an investment for about 300 mil quanta. That's not a very large amount.
And the amount of quanta you can generate that way if absolutely absurd, that's hunders of millions daily.

Make missions reward dynamic.
E.g. lower the reward for specific mission for everyone, when someone delivered it, and make the reward grow slowly by time when no one does them. Also with this you can remove the hard cap of 1 package per account to make big hauls accessible by everyone.
They will balance themselves out very quickly this way.

Personally, I think even with current pools it's still to much t3-5 ore generated out of nowhere.
The major problem, is that there is no TW on the planets yet, and ore pools are basically uncontested once claimed.

Territory Warfare

Change my mind:
Stasis effect should depend on yours ship mass, or the ratio between your ship mass and target mass, Not only on the target mass

Currently the stasis weapons are basically useless, because their optimal range depends on target mass.
It's useless against very light S-cores (current meta), because optimal range is only ~25km and it's basically impossible for heavier ship to maintain such close distance
It's useless against a heavy ship, because it's max speed already very low, and you don't need stasis to catch it.
So I can't find any real purpose for using stasis weapons with this mechanics.

On the other hand, if stasis weapons worked based on your ship mass, that would allow for heavier ship to remove the ability of a smaller ship to run away.
But as stasis weapons have zero effect on max angular speed, this would still allow for a smaller ship to orbit a big one and try outperform big ship's tracking and turning capabilities.

Why do we we have so many time inconviniences in the game?

1) in-game time in UTC, but roid publish time in local timezone
please, either do them in one timezone, or make publish time relative (ex. "1 day 12 hours ago" or something)


2) Yes, we can calculate that `24 - 10 = 14`, but seriusly, fo you think than `negative 10 UTC` is an ok time to display? Why not just show us 14:00 UTC?

Why do we we have so many time inconviniences in the game?

1) in-game time in UTC, but roid publish time in local timezone
please, either do them in one timezone, or make publish time relative (ex. "1 day 12 hours ago" or something)


2) Yes, we can calculate that `24 - 10 = 14`, but seriusly, fo you think than `negative 10 UTC` is an ok time to display? Why not just show us 14:00 UTC?