ELX987

I'm going to dive into several topics here. In addition to organizing this post like a book. Use CTRL + F to find the topic you're interested in reading.
 
Note: Some carebears are going to complain about it but yes, this is going to go down the route of PVP and will touch a little on how this can help the markets in game so deal with it:
 
Energy Management Concept, taking a page from another game (because this game took pages from multiple games already) Armored Core How energy management works on the fly Parts Weapons Energy Consumption The RedZone Cooldowns, Boosters and backups How it can apply to PVP ship combat in DU The Core XS ships Small Ships Medium ships Large Ships XL ships when? XXL ships... probably never at this rate. Batteries Generators Magnetic Nuclear Advanced Magnetic (slightly made up) Fusion Fission Cold Fusion Gravatron (this is made up ... it's a game) Thoramine (Finally a use for it??) Tachyon Zero Point Energy Backup Generators Overdrive Generators/Engines/Components Coolant Elements Auxiliary Coolant Elements Weapon application Instantaneous Usage over time How it can be applied to Buildings in DU The Core The introduction of game built Power plants Coal Hydro Nuclear Fusion Fission Cold Fusion Zero Point Energy Backup Generators Batteries/Power provisions for Base turrets Tiles How it applies to the markets The Starting Value The Starting Price How may change over time The limitations that would make ACTUAL sense Usage over time Instantaneous usage Red Zone awareness Coolant Mechanics Regeneration mechanics Auxiliary mechanics Additional elements to help balance energy management from the start Generators Primary and Auxiliary Generators Backup Generators Coolant pumps & Injectors Water Coolant Rods Emergency kill/cutoff switches (lua) Other ways that basically will hurt/push DU to dwindling Excessive limitation examples Not listening until AFTER the fact Pride Listening to carebears (yes, I hate them because they kill games that have tons of potential) =====================================================================================================================================================================
 
1. Energy Management Concept, taking a page from another game
            (because this game took pages from multiple games already)
             Out of all the games I've ever played, this one, Armored Core executed Energy Management and power consumption flawlessly on playerstation 1 and into future games on Playerstation 4, Xbox and CPU. Their approach should act as a halmark and in fact, flavors of it are seen in other games such as Halo and Mech Warrior just to name a few.
 
 
Armored Core Description: The game Armored Core is multi-series multi-console game that started on PlayStation. Set way into the future where corporations control everything. You are called a Raven who will embark on your journey through various sorties (missions) to take down some evil corp or antagonist Raven pilot. It features a mechanised robot you control and manage and fully customize thus sending the player down a route of awareness for how they wish to build their AC (Armored Core). How energy management works on the fly
  Parts As you've seen in the video the game features numerous parts for the AC which allows for full customization. Each part offers their own list of benefits and natural drawbacks that the player needs to consider in their playstyle. All parts consume some sort of energy when in use or passively. For example Light arms for a quick sniper focused AC would consume a small amount of energy passively and have good accuracy for sniper/singleshot weapons. However, would be horrible when taking a direct hit or attempting to use rapid fire weapons like machine guns that are too heavy for it to manage or carry. 
  Weapons Similar to arms, legs, tank chassis, core/chests ect. Weapons also have the different types of energy consumption. Passive, Instantaneous and none. Passive would be for things like laser swords that are active and out. Or a high range/high sensitivity scanner to search for cloaked targets when active and in use. Instantaneous would be when a handheld laser cannon, or shoulder mounted laser/railgun is charging and/or fired. None would be for when a regular mechanical bolt-action rifle or machine gun (requiring NO energy) is fired. 
  Energy Consumption
For Armored Core Energy is typically indicated via your bar shown above. Where the green and red are your available energy but the red is known as your red zone.
  The RedZone The redzone, as previously mentioned, is your avialable energy remaining however when you exhaust all of it then you need to wait for your core and generators and coolant to all work together to regenerate your energy. While your suit is regenerating energy your suit draws power from the auxillery generators to keep you moving, however you're unable to attack, fly/boost in any direction or do anything outside of walking around to avoid getting hit.
  Cooldowns, Boosters and backups The game features a number of boosters backups and cooldowns ect. or other ways to assist with your power management to ensure you're able to stay active in the fight for as long as possible.  
2. How it can apply to PVP ship combat in DU
 
The Core - It should be known that the Core of a vessel is what provides the main source of power. With that the various sized ships can pull energy and use it to however it was designed. XS ships All ships should be able to produce enough power to allow them to function in a minimal capacity. For extra small ships they should be able to do more than enough work so that new players can still build themselves up on Alioth or even on Sanctuary. For the more experienced players and PVPers we should be able to add in batteries and even an XS generator to power the ship and have enough energy regeneration for the ship to do scouting, or long hauling runs or even dog-fight. However, they should also have a built in issue where sometimes the redzone may be just a bit to much on their meter and may sometimes require assitance in some way. Small Ships This is typically where the novice level solo player ends up. Small core ships should be able to produce a healthy supply of power for w/e the ship is built for. The use of backup generators or batteries should help aid the ship both passively and instantaneously when weapons or boosters are required to get out of hairy situations. For PVPers these are typically known as gunboats, however since small sized ships cannot use medium sized weapons. This ship is practically pointless for PVP. Even with the silhouette  mechanics. Medium ships... getting tired A more thorough outline is mentioned in the Part 2 for Energy Management. Just search for the respective section. It's been recently updated. Large Ships ... getting tired A more thorough outline is mentioned in the Part 2 for Energy Management. Just search for the respective section. It's been recently updated. XL ships when?... A more thorough outline is mentioned in the Part 2 for Energy Management. Just search for the respective section. It's been recently updated. XXL ships... probably never at this rate.... I've given up hope...
  Batteries Batteries would be a way to store power for the ship meant as either for backups when all else fails or for temporary overdrive to fatten your ship's max energy. The additional energy batteries would provide would be temporary and once used the canister can be widthdrawn from it's battery outlet (new element alert) and placed in a separate outlet to be recharged.  One time use batteries should NOT be a thing because this is the freakin future... let's make it make sense here. Renewable energy sources SHOULD BE INVOLVED BY NOW. If a Sink needs to be added then you can create T1 through T5 batteries. Each tier featuring a set number of recharges before needing to be recycled for parts used to make the batteries. The higher the Tier goes the higher their max energy storage. In addition the tier would also be able to be buffed by talents to increase their number of recharges and max storage. Generators would be able to recharge batteries only when the ship is not being piloted so that way it creates an ability for the ship to somehow sustain itself.
  Generators - There are a plethora of different kinds of generators real and fake that can be added to the game from T1 to T5 Magnetic - Generator that takes advantage of the Electromagnetic field to create motion and thus energy for the ship. It's much more advanced than your combustable coal engines used in powerplants but still for more efficient and better for the environment. Nuclear - We already know about this... Extremely high amounts of energy, dangerous if pushed too deep into the redzone and can cause a meltdown destroying half the ship, has a decent energy regen rate. Advanced Magnetic (slightly made up) - A more advanced version of Magnetic Gens. with a higher max energy cap but a slower regen. rate and a larger redzone Fusion - Generator type that features a moderate energy cap., low red zone  but slow regen rate. Fission - Cousin Gen. Type that features higher energy cap., slightly higher red zone but much better regen rate of energy. Cold Fusion - The best of the Fusion/Fission style gens that has highest energy cap, lowest red zone, but fast yet fidgety regen. rate. (meaning there's times when it will stop recharging for 2 - 5 seconds) Gravatron (this is made up ... it's a game) This Generator is a T3 and T4 generator that takes advantage of the gravitational field of nearby celestial bodies to boost its regenerative abilities. It features an insanely high energy cap. 15 times the cap of nuclear and a very small red zone. However it's regen. is extremely low. This feature would make the generator useful for really long voyages to new systems or hidden pockets of space. (Think Exploration cruisers) Thoramine (Finally a use for it??) - T-5 level generator Tachyon - T-5 level generator Zero Point Energy - T-5 level generator that has almost infinite energy or the highest energy cap, Lowest red zone but no energy regeneration. The Zero Point Energy Gen would instead have a feature that allows the maintainer to "pull" energy from no-where. The maintainer would be able to do this X number of times per hour.
  Backup Generators As the name suggests these generators would be brought up online when something catastrophic goes wrong to maintain small amounts of power for the ship while it fixes it.
  Overdrive Generators/Engines/Components Overdrive generators would act as boosters for engines or to increase max energy cap temporarily. Using them would cause wear/damage to the engines but would result in the ship GTFO of a bad situation.
  Coolant Elements Coolant Pumps ... to cool the generators and the core Coolant Rods... well you get it
  Auxiliary Coolant Elements For when you need to be more chilled
  Weapon application Instantaneous All weapons would use a varying amount of instantaneous energy when in use. The cannons, being mostly mechanical, would use the least amount of energy. Missiles would be the 2nd least instantaneous use. Where as Railguns would use the most per volley. Enough for the usage to be noticable but not so much to where the ship can barely function. When we get harpoons and Interdiction.... This would be where they'd get applied as well Usage over time This is mostly applied to lasers, and tractor beams. The larger the laser or tractor beam the larger the usage over time. For tractor beams, the Longer the hold, the more energy is used. The more massive the tethered target, the more energy consumed. This can be slowed down by overdriving your system with your batteries and backup generators for greater output and better effect. However, doing so will severely hinder your ship for a while when you need to regen your energy stores for both the main and backup generators and batteries. None No energy is used when the ship is not being piloted  
3. How it can be applied to Buildings in DU
The Core - Produces it's own baseline energy for the entire Construct Requires other elements (generators) to boost it's max power for more elements on the construct The introduction of game built Power plants - These power types can help offset the demand for the core on static and space constructs Coal T - 1 Hydro T - 1 & T-2 Nuclear T-2 & T-3 Fusion T-2 & T-3 Fission T3 & T-4 Cold Fusion T4 -T5 Thoramine T5 only Zero Point Energy T5 only Backup Generators For if you mess up somewhere and the power gets knocked out via your own stupidity or via PVP engagements Batteries/Power provisions for Base turrets Batteries can be used to help offset the base's already existing power consumption during combat/defense. Where the turrets will draw from the batteries or side- generators. When the turret's designated power supply is drained it will begin to drain from the primary core just to protect the construct. Tiles Tiles on a planet or moon or asteroid would affect the three basic characteristics of the static cores placed. Max Energy (This would only be an addition) Larger Increase for barren planets Larger increase for Asteroids or moons Smaller increase for Cold planets Smaller Increase for Hotter Planets Energy Regeneration (This could be a +/- to the energy regeneration) Larger regeneration for Hotter planets (This gives hot planets like Sicarri, Sinnon or Madis an increase in land value) Smaller Regeneration for Colder planets Redzone Larger redzones for hotter planets Smaller redzones for colder planets (this gives ice planets an increase in interest value)  
4. How it applies to the markets
The Starting Value This will help add value to Coal, Hydrogen and Oxygen and create a solid use for Thoramine well before Warp gates are even on the drawing board. Coal would have a relatively low value but it and Hydro and Oxy would begin to gain better uses as well. Thoramine would be worth fighting over on asteroids and selling on the markets. The Starting Price Set the price for T-1 schematics lower but also allow for bots to buy coal to further stir the economy How may change over time People will see reason to engage the markets more on this front because you've created a sound way of doing so for PVE and PVPers  
 
5. The limitations that would make ACTUAL sense
Usage over time Start the balance off Low. Don't go setting it on holy shit mode then walking the numbers back because everyone hates the mechanic and claims it doesn't make sense. Start small and work your numbers up. Setting the consumption and limitations excessively high will only curb your community towards playing Starbase and StarCitizen more. Instantaneous usage Most of this has already been explained. but Again, start small. Then adjust from there. Red Zone awareness Coolant Mechanics allow your construct (static and dynamic) to slow the decent towards the redzone. The name of the game is the keep in the green. It's a simple yet complicated balancing act that the player has to manage. Because of this properly executed challenge the player has fun actually trying to balance stuff out on their own. Being aware of your redzone's level will only help with immersion. Regeneration mechanics This literally adds a brand new job for someone on the ship. Where they'd hang out in the power room for most of the ship's trip to ensure everything stays running at the right levels. Think of Scottie on the Enterprise "I'm given her all she's Got Captain!" Auxiliary mechanics This would be on the "Scottie" of the ship to maintain and implement on the ship to ensure the ship can at least be marginally functional when it takes on catastrophic damage or experiences a catastrophic event from space. (Hint Hint: some random waves from a start that sucks out power from the ship or something ridiculous)  
6. Additional elements to help balance energy management from the start
Generators Primary and Auxiliary Generators Backup Generators - While Generators can be used as backup, these units would be unique and have a considerable advantage over regular generators but will only work if Regular generators are down. Coolant pumps & Injectors Water Coolant Rods Air Emergency kill/cutoff switches (lua) Used through lua to kill the power to a ship  
7. Other ways that basically will hurt/push DU to dwindling
 
Excessive limitation examples 0.23 execution. Yes I'm bringing it up again. Because 0.23 should serve as a valuable lesson of what not do to or how NOT to do something... ever again. Overdoing the power consumption - This will limit creativity and drive people away from the game. Again, start small with easy numbers people can work with so they can get used to the idea of power consumption. Limiting the number of weapons on a ship - You've already limited the size of weapons on a ship by core size to curb cubes... which did and didn't work. Setting hard limits on the number of USABLE weapons on a ship through power management will only piss off your community more than needed. AGAIN, start small and work your way up to something that's balanced. Like for example, I'm going to only allow 5 weapons on a Large core ship or 3 weapons on a small or medium core... sorry but I will change my credit card number in a heartbeat if this game takes that route and say good luck. Then pick up Starbase or spend money needlessly on star citizen and encourage all of BOO and even the AC to jump ship. Just FYI, DSI is already hitting us up about playing other games and saying goodbye to DU. Let's not even talk about Youtube and Twitter ect.  
Not listening until AFTER the fact  ATV are full of very knowledgeable intellects. Their input is based on their perspective and from that of your community. Taking their word with a grain of salt will only hurt you vs. taking them seriously. You built the ATV for a reason. Pay attention to it to ensure your success.  
Pride - "Pride commeth before the fall" This one is mainly for JC. You are highly intelligent and very knowledgeable in many things and have garnered much respect from people, however being too prideful or too hardstanced (overzealous) in any one belief and unwilling to change WILL cause you to lose people. You have a team that have 2nd thoughts about the direction and a community with even more resentment about what you're building here. The question is, are you trying to build a simulator that will see 10-20k ACTIVE people after 10 years time? or one that will see that number 2 years after launch?  
Listening to carebears (yes, I hate them because they kill games that have tons of potential) The definition of a carebear varies from one PVPer to another. However, at it's core, a carebear is an individual who sees any one game mechanic that doesn't fit their personal narrative of a game (usually PVP focused) and does or says anything they can to cause devs to ruin it for the many.

0.23 was the feature that made the game excessively difficult for many but not all. My personal view is that NQ needs to be focusing on adding features to the game that make it fun and enjoyable for the community to even have the energy to get involved in.
"There's no where to go but up from here"

I'm going to make this claim:
If NQ doesn't push to make this game fun, to offset the difficulties they've created it will not survive long after launch.
Many people don't like coming home from work to do more work. It's what won't make money for NQ's DU to survive as a game. The only thing left to do would be to sell the technology and close up shop and move on to the next project.

This hardball approach to the game is the reason why people get up and walk away. If there's any one lesson that players and NQ should've realized by now is that when you lean to hard to one side or the other it creates this initial implementation of the game that costs us both carebears and PVPers... basically community members, and friends. On a larger scale it costs NQ subscriptions which means they get less money during beta. I can agree with this 100%. There will ALWAYS be groups of people who will "no-life" an mmo and get further ahead faster than many others simply because they're in a position to do so. The point of smaller sized ships comes with boons that L core ships do not possess: L core ships accelerate slower (typically) and legitimate PVP l-core ships will not be seen in atmospheric areas. XS,S and Medium core ships are easier to make atmo capable and the smaller sized ships are able to act as faster haulers vs the mediums (if properly designed) When Energy mechanics come into the light I'm almost certain we'll see the field shift to ship designs take on a more thoughtful approach vs. the brick shits you see today. For those who build the luxury ships means they put in the hundreds to thousands of game hours scanning, mining and refining and crafting the T5 everything to have that ship. As you mentioned earlier there's ALWAYS going to be people who will push for the absolute best of everything. The matter of balancing is a common denominator across all MMOs. I actually agree with certain aspects of this point. Having an L-core means you possess the ability to take care of it from start to finish. You're able to field a crew to manage the power, handle fuel costs when travelling and deal with the PVP costs when in combat. Loss of elements should come at a price, one that makes PVP both enjoyable and have you stop briefly to consider how much of a risk you're taking by going "all-in" on this engagement. This balancing act is important for NQ to consider because while you want to ensure there's a risk you don't want the risk to be so overwhelming that people just say "Fuck this shit I'm out" at every opportunity to PVP or even travel outside the safezone. (Again, going back to being too extreme on anything leads to people not playing the game or subscribing and telling their friends, don't bother until they... NQ... gets their shit together). To this nugget, no, the schematic prices were insanely high... again they leaned TOO FAR to one extreme rather than starting low and then slowly turning up the heat over time. This has been a constant thing every time they've implemented something new in DU where they've gone too far to one side or the other and the game just sucked horribly. ATV would even tell them, "Don' t do this, and don't do that" but the Devs wouldn't listen and push out the bullshit anyway. As a result the community would go into an uproar. They did it several times during alpha 1,2 and 3 and here we are during beta experiencing the same thing again. Each time they've done it the activity in the community dropped dramatically shortly after seeing the changes they put in were done so leaning too far to one extreme or the other. As far as the implementation of schematics? There have been mixed views on it. I do feel there could've been a much more fun an immersive way to implement it, that wouldn't have been this overwhelmingly complicated thing that caused an already hurting community to lose so many people. As far as omni factories go, people will always go for aiming to produce everything the most efficient way possible in a move to swallow up everyone else. Similar to the PVP front where you'll always have someone going for T5 everything. As forth the entirety of this piece goes, it leans WAAAAY TOO FAR to one side and makes the game more grindy than it already is. Overall I think DU has hit a pivotal point in grindiness to actual gameplay and I'm sorry but schools of thought like this, while well meaning, only serve to drive more of the community away. Examples that drove away the community during Alpha (and yes I understand it's alpha): Implementing Industry for the first time with high costs Implementing PVP with excessive bugs Fixing bugs after nearly half a year of the community dealing with the most game breaking ones for both Industry and PVP Locking every single element behind talents, thus preventing players from being able to test the game out at all Implementing Talent system with excessive bugs that ATV attempted to point out. NQ taking well over 3 months to drop the price of AMMO when both ATV and the growing pvp community told NQ within the first 2 weeks of PVP industry that the cost was far too high. There's some merit here I feel but again... adjusting the difficulty is leaning far to deep into the extreme side. People who think adjusting the difficulty are missing the mark on making the game fun vs. more tedious. There needs to be more fun ways for people to engage in a difficult mechanic to entice them to venture down the road to begin with. If something isn't fun people will grind themselves into not wanting to play the game and as a result will unsubscribe. Again... people are calling for the game to be more difficult will only find themselves playing this game alone. Eventually their own friends will walk away and will begin to see NQ close up shop because they went the route of making a "NOT FUN" subscription based game thinking everyone wants to sign up for a grind that yields very little FUN. Let's identify the ways you're able to make money in the game if there were NO OTHER PLAYERS AROUND: Daily rewards Selling ores to bots Because these 2 faucets are the only sources of income in the game, then when there ARE players around what will the sources be then? Other players? No, because there will be many greedy individuals looking to gobble up every known piece of quanta in the game and everyone will be too poor to buy anything. This will force people to once again go back to mining and making their own stuff. AGAIN, leaning TOO FAR to one extreme or another here. Now THIS has some solid merit. If NQ implemented a suggested cost/value to the cargo onboard a ship that you aimed to sell on the markets that would help people identify a relative price they should sell their goods at on the markets. Not everyone is an economist and has degrees in the area. However, when people receive a suggestion from "On-high" they tend to go with what's suggested and place based on it. "Word of mouth" by way of NQ suggested prices based on calculated time spent flying/mining tends to go a long way potentially creating a legitimate economy. Similar to EVE... (A game that's been going 15+ years) and virtually every MMO out there, everyone in various aspects of the game will "Follow the meta". Balancing is a constant thing that occurs in every game with every new feature. So telling NQ to do X,Y,Z to prevent balancing is just going to fall on deaf ears. As mentioned before, XS,S,M ships will prove to be far more viable come atmo pvp. As the weight of Ammo currently takes a toll on ships and their storage capability ships designed for atmo combat have to be designed with some serious considerations. Even with full T5 cargo talents the weight and volume of ammo in it's current state takes up vast portions of storage room and with both core locked weapons and surface area chance to hit, forces pvpers to design ships that are actual ships and not blocks of bullshit with tons of weapons all over. Once energy mechanics come in, you're going to see a difference in how ships are built and how long they take to be finished.

Thanks for joining the conversation