W1zard

Currently, hit probabilty depends only on a cross-section of targeted ship.
In my opinion, this is pretty bad for making pvp ships look pretty, this is how my ship currently looks like:


It's done like that because it was the smallest cross-section I managed to achive with 6 M railguns + L shield + good amount of thrust.

This is a good example of a beautiful ship by Metsys:

 
But this one have x1.5 frontal cross section, and I'm not talking about other two (which can make a difference in a fleet fight)
The box design will have at least 20% less hit-probably compared to pretty-looking ship (which makes it 20% more tanky)
and 20% is in my opinion a very big difference in survivability to make a choice towards using a box.

For me, creative aspect of DU is one of the best compared to every other voxel-building games, and i want to be able to use this aspect of the game in pvp as well.
Because PvP is a competetive aspect of the game, and if we want to min/max our builds, we have to use boxes =(

Here are some of my thoughs that can help improve this situation:

Make hit probability based not on a cross-section, but based on:
a) total elements+voxel volume (that will give full freedom on ship design while keeping the smaller-better trend)
b) total ship mass (don't really know how this can make any sense, but that can be pretty balanced i think)
c) heat emission (amount of thrust / gun shots  produced)
d) any other parameter you can think of except cross-section

Currently, hit probabilty depends only on a cross-section of targeted ship.
In my opinion, this is pretty bad for making pvp ships look pretty, this is how my ship currently looks like:


It's done like that because it was the smallest cross-section I managed to achive with 6 M railguns + L shield + good amount of thrust.

This is a good example of a beautiful ship by Metsys:

 
But this one have x1.5 frontal cross section, and I'm not talking about other two (which can make a difference in a fleet fight)
The box design will have at least 20% less hit-probably compared to pretty-looking ship (which makes it 20% more tanky)
and 20% is in my opinion a very big difference in survivability to make a choice towards using a box.

For me, creative aspect of DU is one of the best compared to every other voxel-building games, and i want to be able to use this aspect of the game in pvp as well.
Because PvP is a competetive aspect of the game, and if we want to min/max our builds, we have to use boxes =(

Here are some of my thoughs that can help improve this situation:

Make hit probability based not on a cross-section, but based on:
a) total elements+voxel volume (that will give full freedom on ship design while keeping the smaller-better trend)
b) total ship mass (don't really know how this can make any sense, but that can be pretty balanced i think)
c) heat emission (amount of thrust / gun shots  produced)
d) any other parameter you can think of except cross-section

Currently, hit probabilty depends only on a cross-section of targeted ship.
In my opinion, this is pretty bad for making pvp ships look pretty, this is how my ship currently looks like:


It's done like that because it was the smallest cross-section I managed to achive with 6 M railguns + L shield + good amount of thrust.

This is a good example of a beautiful ship by Metsys:

 
But this one have x1.5 frontal cross section, and I'm not talking about other two (which can make a difference in a fleet fight)
The box design will have at least 20% less hit-probably compared to pretty-looking ship (which makes it 20% more tanky)
and 20% is in my opinion a very big difference in survivability to make a choice towards using a box.

For me, creative aspect of DU is one of the best compared to every other voxel-building games, and i want to be able to use this aspect of the game in pvp as well.
Because PvP is a competetive aspect of the game, and if we want to min/max our builds, we have to use boxes =(

Here are some of my thoughs that can help improve this situation:

Make hit probability based not on a cross-section, but based on:
a) total elements+voxel volume (that will give full freedom on ship design while keeping the smaller-better trend)
b) total ship mass (don't really know how this can make any sense, but that can be pretty balanced i think)
c) heat emission (amount of thrust / gun shots  produced)
d) any other parameter you can think of except cross-section

There are already some ship related sounds in game like `Shield activated` and so on.
I would suggest moving them to the audio folder and use your new audio framework to call those sounds from default script.
Or at least the ability to disable the default ship voice sounds.
This would allow us to make fully customizable "Ship Voice Assistants".

There are already some ship related sounds in game like `Shield activated` and so on.
I would suggest moving them to the audio folder and use your new audio framework to call those sounds from default script.
Or at least the ability to disable the default ship voice sounds.
This would allow us to make fully customizable "Ship Voice Assistants".

Have you done any calculations on this topic?
Currently if you are using tier 5 alloy, they have more than x5 multiplier on CCS per HP, you would need at least 120mil of voxels HP to even have a chance to hit your CCS limit and not die by the core explosion. That is around 30,000m^3 of voxels. How is that limiting your creativeness?

 
 
Elements HP are negligible compared to voxels if you have at least 20-30 mils of HP, and with current curve and multipliers you will have much more CCS than that HP amount, so I don't really get your point here, why would you want to increase your CCS if it's hardly noticable before 120-150+ mil of HP, and that's what it's main reason, to make invicible ships not possible to make.

 
 
There are already counterplays and fleet compositions, if you don't see a counter to your ship, that doesn't mean that there is none.
If you have low cross-section L laser ship, it will die to low cross-section M rail ship.
If you have low cross-section M rail ship, it will die to 50mil+ CCS L laser/Cannon ship.
3Lasers+2Missiles+M radar are viable too (will have 4 types of damage and very hight DPS, but not very long range),
And there is more, that's just an on-surface example.

 
 
 
Weapon percs depending only on size? I strongly agains this. Addition of other percs in current `heavy`, `precision` etc.. I'm ok with.

 
 
This is a good one, but not based on weapon type, or size.
Just make it 80% shield, 20% to ship, this will return the mid-fight repairing gameplay

About a month if playing solo with only 1 account?
Let me provide some calculations to you. One mining unit provides 230 l/h with maxed handling talents.
With good recharging talents 1 player can maintain around 30 mining units running simultaneously.
That being said, that's 165kl daily, so it's around 23 days to fill 20L containers. So if you are playing in an org with, let's say, 3 players, you would need to use such a hauler once a week.

You make a lot of good points, but my main contention is this. We know speed changes are coming.  We need to see how those changes work before altering other things. The reason ships die really quickly is you can hit so far.  If S and M weapons become a main then you have to actually get in range, and also no longer need to get out of the full 2su radar range to mitigate damage. If my S core goes 10k top speed faster than your L. Plus a low cross section I know have an ability to get into close range, or exit range. This alone will spice up the gsmeplay and make piloting and choice of core more important, then after sufficient time and feedback we can work on balancing HP of shields, CCS, and stuff like that cause a lot of those are number tweaks.

Have you done any calculations on this topic?
Currently if you are using tier 5 alloy, they have more than x5 multiplier on CCS per HP, you would need at least 120mil of voxels HP to even have a chance to hit your CCS limit and not die by the core explosion. That is around 30,000m^3 of voxels. How is that limiting your creativeness?

 
 
Elements HP are negligible compared to voxels if you have at least 20-30 mils of HP, and with current curve and multipliers you will have much more CCS than that HP amount, so I don't really get your point here, why would you want to increase your CCS if it's hardly noticable before 120-150+ mil of HP, and that's what it's main reason, to make invicible ships not possible to make.

 
 
There are already counterplays and fleet compositions, if you don't see a counter to your ship, that doesn't mean that there is none.
If you have low cross-section L laser ship, it will die to low cross-section M rail ship.
If you have low cross-section M rail ship, it will die to 50mil+ CCS L laser/Cannon ship.
3Lasers+2Missiles+M radar are viable too (will have 4 types of damage and very hight DPS, but not very long range),
And there is more, that's just an on-surface example.

 
 
 
Weapon percs depending only on size? I strongly agains this. Addition of other percs in current `heavy`, `precision` etc.. I'm ok with.

 
 
This is a good one, but not based on weapon type, or size.
Just make it 80% shield, 20% to ship, this will return the mid-fight repairing gameplay

NQ, please take a look at this.
 
This is how seat DPS would look after Demeter update.
All wepon types are pretty balanced except rails, they are totally useless

This is how it would look if there will be 4 rails in one chair, which would make much more sense

So, as predicted T2 and some T3 prices are often below T1 bot prices by now, which makes those hexes very unprofitable, considering that you can often claim 500 ore/h T1 hexes, but nothing like that for T3+ and in most cases you rarely have a T1 above 100 as secondary ore on them. 
NQ said they watch marketprices and will act accordingly. The time to act is now! Either lower hex taxes, or introduce buy bots for T2+ at logical higher price levels than T1, else no one will be able to afford keeping those T2+ hexes, because they just cost more than you can earn with them even if you keep nothing for your own use (or alternatively add buy bots for finished products).
 
DU isn't remotely close to a playerbase where there is any ore scarcity with the currently available mining hexes which would drive the prices up!
(and please, i dont want to hear anything like "players aren't supposed to own more than 1 or 2 T2+mining hexes" or any of that, because without mining there is barely any gameplay left that is directly supported by the games systems)

NQ, please take a look at this.
 
This is how seat DPS would look after Demeter update.
All wepon types are pretty balanced except rails, they are totally useless

This is how it would look if there will be 4 rails in one chair, which would make much more sense

Current starting planet is Alioth/Sanctuary, and they both have a 1g gravity.
All other planets/moon have less gravity so if you have built a ship that can leave Alioth, you can safely land on any planet. There is no challenge in that.

How about adding a higher-G planet, even something like 10g gravity planet, with some Ion\plasma storm that disables AGG.
With big ore pools, but only of heavy metals, hematite, chromite, etc.

I think we need some challenges in this game.

Current starting planet is Alioth/Sanctuary, and they both have a 1g gravity.
All other planets/moon have less gravity so if you have built a ship that can leave Alioth, you can safely land on any planet. There is no challenge in that.

How about adding a higher-G planet, even something like 10g gravity planet, with some Ion\plasma storm that disables AGG.
With big ore pools, but only of heavy metals, hematite, chromite, etc.

I think we need some challenges in this game.

So with all recent updates multicrew is literally gone from DU. You can totally handle all ship by yourself even in tough pvp scenario, and it benefits you to have multiple ships, than flying a big one ship.

1. Combat engineer role:
With all damage increase and addition of shields and CCS it's now not needed to repair ship while shield is active and almost impossible after that.

2. Multigunner ships:
Again with shields it's now more profitable in total HP amount to have seperate shields rather than having one big ship with many people on board.


Here is my few thoughs how these can be reintroduced to DU without big changes.

1. Make shield absorb only part of damage (e.g. 80-90%).
This way, despite having a shield active you will still need a combat engineer to fix your elements while in active combat, and not being impossible to do so (like with current damage L weapon will oneshot every element)

2. Make a dedicated engineer role.
Indroduce a new seat and interface for a new role that can do some old and possibly some new things.
Here is some ideas what that role could be:
2.1 Analyzing and changing shield resisntaces only from that new seat. (You can still fly by yourself with default resistacnes, but it will benefit you to have dedicated person on board)
2.2 Very basic power managment with three options: Weapons, Shields, Engines. (Make it same like resistences, so you can have a default even layout, but one can be lowerd to increase others). And make it available only through this new seat and interface.
2.3 Long-range radar available only in this new seat. (Like 3 or 4 s.u. detection range).

With adding benefit of other roles on board it will be more valuable to have multiple gunners on same ship, because if you want to separate them on other ships, you would need extra engineers there, and that will make it not really viable.
 

I totally agree with you. I also crashed a lot due to lags at market when doing ore hauls. But demand problem can strike big with all the taxes now... People simply have no needs to buy elements, and even won't have any quanta to buy extra just in case.
I hope someday they will fix all performance issues and will bring ement destruction back.

We have asked NQ to consider this: 
 
Release with a new system. All new accounts will only spawn in that system. 
 
All existing accounts are stuck in Heilous until a stargate is crafted. Make the craft time long like in the 90-180 day area. 
 
This gives new players a clean start without veteran interference. It gives existing players an option without a wipe where they cannot snowball over new players. By the time the stargate is crafted enough time has taken place to allow new players to grow without interference. 
 
Lastly it will add subs for NQ as some of you will not wait you will just sub a new toon to see and start in that system until the gate is open. 
 
Sort of a middle ground between wiping and not wiping. 
 
 

There is a reason people want S cores and such to have a legit role in pvp. They are cheaper and more accessible.  I know people in EvE that are 10+ year pvp vets, and they mostly fly frigs and interceptors and they are damn fucking good at it and being tackle, or anti tackle in roaming gangs.  NQ needs to address this asap imo. S cores need a real legit role that is vital in pvp. 

Than we agree. It is bad. And nothing you described is something kind of crazy indepth pvp. What u described shows that majority of guns are useless. And you can also pair different guns and get Close enough on ranges. Just aim at getting to a point of your closest one.  Nothing you described sounds remotely fun, as shown by the lack of interest.  
 
The reality is there needs to be legit negatives when you chose something.  One thing we have shouted since alpha days is a power management.  We should not be able to put 300 breaks, 12 engines, 12 guns, adjusters, dsats, rez nodes, shields, and be able to Power it all. There should be thought in how we manage our power out put. That along with different core speeds and core bonuses we at least be a start.  The other problems being no ewar and terrible radar system but NQ always reminds us they are small indie studio so who knows if the game will even be around by the time they can tackle those issues.

So with all recent updates multicrew is literally gone from DU. You can totally handle all ship by yourself even in tough pvp scenario, and it benefits you to have multiple ships, than flying a big one ship.

1. Combat engineer role:
With all damage increase and addition of shields and CCS it's now not needed to repair ship while shield is active and almost impossible after that.

2. Multigunner ships:
Again with shields it's now more profitable in total HP amount to have seperate shields rather than having one big ship with many people on board.


Here is my few thoughs how these can be reintroduced to DU without big changes.

1. Make shield absorb only part of damage (e.g. 80-90%).
This way, despite having a shield active you will still need a combat engineer to fix your elements while in active combat, and not being impossible to do so (like with current damage L weapon will oneshot every element)

2. Make a dedicated engineer role.
Indroduce a new seat and interface for a new role that can do some old and possibly some new things.
Here is some ideas what that role could be:
2.1 Analyzing and changing shield resisntaces only from that new seat. (You can still fly by yourself with default resistacnes, but it will benefit you to have dedicated person on board)
2.2 Very basic power managment with three options: Weapons, Shields, Engines. (Make it same like resistences, so you can have a default even layout, but one can be lowerd to increase others). And make it available only through this new seat and interface.
2.3 Long-range radar available only in this new seat. (Like 3 or 4 s.u. detection range).

With adding benefit of other roles on board it will be more valuable to have multiple gunners on same ship, because if you want to separate them on other ships, you would need extra engineers there, and that will make it not really viable.
 

1. Those that don't agree with you aren't automatically whiners.
2. Respectfully, go fuck yourself. I graduated with a 3.8 GPA in college and that included Trig, Calc, Linear Algrebra, Geometry etc. all in an advanced and accelerated 4 week course for all topics just listed. Far beyond "basic" math. Not everyone that disagrees with you is stupid either.
 
If you can't support your points without disrespecting/insulting myself and the general community, then your arguments are weak.

1. Please make HQ tiles 7 vs. 5 so that way if we need to take a break we can maintain a bonus constellation of hexes if we can't be online to mine it for extended period of time. 5 seems like an arbitrary number out of kneejerk response to appease all the players with torches and pitchforks. 7 on the other hand creates a function & aesthetic number of tiles that feels complete, and allows players to take breaks in case you know their parents has cancer, or they lose their job, or both of these things at the same time.... kind of stuff in life.

2. Make recalibration & drop off after 7 days not 2... (keep the current recharge rates/cap etc.) If I have to login every day to spend my charges, I don't want to do it to nanny the same mining unit I just nannied 48 hours ago, to simply maintain efficiency rates. Some of us can only play on weekends, and work several jobs, so it feels like a punishment for being responsible in real life.

 @NQ-Pann @NQ-Deckard @NQ-Sesch

With current shields and CCS mechanics it's encouraging playes to fly on different ships, not as a one big crew.
Because you can have big ship with 40 mil CCS and 20 mil shields for two gunners, or you can have two different ships with 20 mil CCS and 20 mil shields each. (Which would result in more total HP)
 
As DU is an MMO it should encourage players to fly together as a crew (at least that's how I see MMOs), but that's not the case currently. Will that be changed?

With demeter weapons balancing this is how DPS from one gunner seat looks like currently. (considering max handling/ops talents).

In changelog you guys said 
 
But as you can see from the graph, that's definitely not the case, railguns are not dominating long-range. They are doing more DPS only on 1.9+su range, and that's not possible to hold that distance in active combat with only 2 su visibility and lock ranges.

This is how DPS graph would look like if you lower the required PvP-Capacity of railguns by only 2.5% so we can fit 4 railguns in one seat. Now you can clearly see that railguns will have most dps on ranges 1.4+su which for me sounds like it should have been.


 
So now to the question:
Will we see proper weapon balancing in near future?

I do see what you are saying and I respect your thoughts and ideas.  But I tend to also agree with some of the others here in that, if you want to PvP, then arm your ship.  If not, stick to the safe zone.