Mjrlun

I'm more for better jetpacks, but have them use fuel from Nano.
Replace the "compactable" ship.
 
I wouldn't mind fall damage either.
 
As for real aerodynamics, of course, but we may want to get past the simple things like OP air brakes, and overlapping elements first.
If ship builders want their ships/planes to look "real" we need to get rid of the WOE (wall of engines).

I talked specifically about planet atmospheres (and skybox) in this post, as well as a similar post that my friend made focusing on the nebula found here. These detail issues that link into this particular issue, and are very important, however, I am not mentioning them in this post.
 
Now why do I bring up these 3 posts? Well, they link very heavily into the topic at hand. Planet tech, and planet revamp.
 
Starting with the game's progression and longevity itself, the current planets do not link very well (if at all) with the progression within the game. To put it succinctly, this section of text describes it perfectly:
 
 
In this issue, the game's progression directly clashes with the way these planets were designed. Not to mention the longevity of the planets.
 
On the regard of longevity, the simplest way to explain it would be the post about planet tech, their appearance, and their atmospheres, but also including their size. If you were to compare the Alioth system to the rest of the planets, you'd notice something highly disturbing. Alioth is double the radius of all other planets (and a lot of them are over double smaller), Sanctuary moon is also bigger than every planet excluding Alioth,  and even Alioth's moons are the same size as Madis! 30km radius, 60km diameter. For an MMO of the scale that Dual Universe wants to have, planets this small is comparable to Space Engineers, a game designed for either small scale multiplayer, and singleplayer messing around. Many of the moons of the planets have been completely mined out of anything but tier 1's (pre-demeter), and planets such as Madis are extremely full of players, and we were only about a year into the public beta.
 
To solve this major issue, I suggest the planets' sizes to be increased significantly. The moons themselves should be around as big as Sanctuary is currently (80km diameter), and all the planets should be of course much bigger, a maximum size in my opinion would be upwards of 600KM, but most likely closer to 400KM diameters. This is of course to increase the longevity of the planets and their habitation, and to make the sense of scale within the game much more apparent.
 
Onto the tech itself, while I'm sure that the developers working on planet tech already have made major improvements to the planets, a sneak peak found in this video (over a year ago, now), it is highly apparent if you look closely at many of the planets that they were not made with intent of being permanent, let alone even looking pretty on the surface. Just look at Alioth, for example, it is quite clear that it is literally just an upscaled version of whatever it was when it was smaller like the rest of the planets, not even scaling the terrain's biomes and noise along with it to counteract this issue, which is an amateur mistake, especially for something as permanent as it seems to be currently. Not to mention, this post (can you tell the difference), which clearly shows that both Thades, and Sinnen uses the exact same planet generator, and if you look at Madis, also appears to use a very similar generator (but with different colors), of which shows just how lazy they were thrown together. Very little variety in terrain shapes.
 
We move onto the other planets, Teoma seems to be one of the higher effort ones, having both grass, and trees, but once again is betrayed by the laziness of not even doing a height filter properly, and in that, Teoma literally had UNDERWATER TREES (pre-Demeter), which is honestly confusing and I don't know why they did not pick up on this. Additionally, although it looks very pretty, Teoma also has what seems to be a translation slider for its terrain compared to Alioth, and in that, they just translated all terrain filters for voxel types down by like 500 meters to a KM, and terrain up by about 100-250 meters, achieving a planet covered by mountains, and with no proper bodies of water (which to my current knowledge is by no means realistic).
 
I could keep bashing each one of the planets and their features, but I think at this point you get the idea. These planets don't seem to be permanent, and seem to be amateur-ish at best.
 
With how the process of a planet revamp would work, I must clear up a few major misnomers. Firstly, assuming it's not an actual wipe, all of your constructs will be turned into magic BP's (compactified constructs) and put into players' inventories. Of course, the items within the player's inventories will also remain, and thus no actual information except for the planets themselves will be altered, or lost. This of course does mean, however, that multi-core builds will be a pain to set up once again, however, I'm sure NQ is smart enough to find solutions to that issue as before. 
 
I hope that you enjoyed this post to some degree, and also are willing to undergo a planet revamp. I doubt it will be the easiest change, however, it is vital to the game's success, not only for the player base, but for the company, and continuation of the game's development as a whole.

Player jetpacks vs. hover vessels
 
The sense of scale in this game has always been weird to me. When I started out back before having any talents, the world felt very big, and very mysterious. In this, a sense of immersion was there, not knowing what was over the hill in front of me, while also taking a long time to get there. This, of course, is no longer there in much manner.
 
Currently, the idea of a hover vessel is entirely overshadowed by a player's two feet (and a jetpack sprint), for literally any purpose other than short-distance lugging of some resources early game. Especially with a maxed out jetpack-sprint talent, you move at 81km/h, which is literally faster than a hovercraft that's trying to stay safe.
 
Additionally, players can jump extremely high with the use of a jetpack, with an oversimplified "refresh" method. Side note, but a better method is how Empyrion Galactic Survival does jetpacks. Google it

Due to these very simple, but highly underbalanced features, the sense of scale, immersion, and a need for hovercrafts is broken (as mentioned before). Therefore, buildings and ships feel much smaller, planets feel much smaller, to the point where even a kilometer feels much smaller (a KM in the real world takes a while, even in a car!). 
 
To fix this issue, of player movement being comparable to a hover craft, I suggest 2 major changes. First, remove the double tap sprint* (in this, of course reimburse the players that have it upgraded). It's quite confusing to have 2 different sprints, and on top, one that is objectively better than the other for literally all purposes but immersion. Removing this alone makes need for a ship of some form a lot more valuable (including slowing progression in a sense). My second suggestion regarding player jetpacks is to simply make the jetpacks very similar to Empyrion.
 
*Double tap sprint would just enable the normal sprint instead.
 
Mobility Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
Let's talk engineering and aerodynamics!

The second part of this post I wanted to direct attention to the engineering side of the game. There's 2 major problems within the game's progression and ship construction, of which stem from 1 major issue: calculations for proper center of lift, lift itself, are not very advanced.
 
The first of the two reasons for needing this is that hovercrafts, the most simple form of ship design, as well as normal omni-directional thrust space ships are almost extinct, due to literally being able to slap some wings on them and call it good.
 
While of course the major downsides of a change such as this would be scrapping a lot of designs that rely on wings to function, I see a lot more major upsides for at least me personally (and I'm sure others will agree with me).
 
First, ships that want to use aerodynamics (and wings) will have to prioritize proper shape, to optimize the amount of lift (and where the lift is located), will need to go through more rigorous engineering, and give more meaning to each ship crafted.
 
Due to this, planes will be a specific market, of which space ships (without wings), and hover crafts will once again have a purpose due to being more simple to engineer. Additionally, anti-gravity will be even more valuable to larger vessels, due to air-space maneuvers being much more difficult, and requiring more skilled piloting to do normally.
 
Continuing on, a better marketing image for the game, as well as an interest from the space ship engineering side of the community, would most likely arise from this. Due to the changes in how well crafted ships have to be, each ship will have a higher chance of looking more believable, and help with both marketing of the game (in luring people interested in aerospace engineering), and of course immersion. 
 
Lastly, major changes to ship progression within the game. This is because it would make each ship's thought toward the engineering side more pronounced, will make the progress slower, and for a lot of people more interesting and fun. Making your first proper plane will be an accomplishment, and if done right very rewarding (achievement tree for this stuff maybe?).
 
On a side note, similar problems that this change would highlight would be the flight model, which doesn't work very well for omni-directional thrusters, due to not having automatic dampening against gravity (see most other space piloting games, one of the best examples would be the flight model of Elite Dangerous for this matter imo).
 
What I would like to see specifically change to how wings and aerodynamics works is very similar to how Kerbal Space Program (and actual aero physics work). Firstly, surface area for not only drag purposes, but also rotational purposes would be appreciated.
 
The way this would work, is that you have pre-baked model wings to work with (of which are literally just props), but additionally have "ailerons", or a more simple name "control surfaces", of which are controlled using yaw/pitch/roll depending on how they are set, and help control your vessel.
 
While of course on their own, these mechanics don't really make sense in the current model, as aerodynamics don't exist (past drag), adding proper use for the cross sections of ships, as well as the aforementioned player-built wings, and pre-baked control surfaces, of which depending on how they are animated (extended, retracted, inverted extended) will apply to the cross section differently, would have 1 major effect. Due to the sudden change in the "air current" on one side compared to the other in terms of center of mass, and the surfaces seen (such as a control surface extended), would rotate the craft accordingly.
 
Going "too fast", and turning suddenly would create a sudden increase in lots of drag, of which of course would in turn rotate the ship, as well as not only (potentially) damage elements (due to drag and high G forces), but also decelerate the ship, causing it to fall, and also cause the player to lose control of the vessel, if they are not skilled enough. High stakes KSP, OUCH!
 
The final change that this would make is changes to air brakes, to become directional. First, I must preface this as "only if omni-directional thrust flight model is fixed". If it is not, this feature will make the game too difficult to actually brake properly not in a plane.
Since by themselves, air brakes only increase the amount of surface area of the plane, proper placement would be necessary to make them functional. The proper mechanic here would be more that they extend and retract, and the drag mechanic does the rest. Of course, their "goodness" is still given in a different quantity (surface area when extended) as a stat.
 
When piloting a plane, a player will have to use a combination of both braking properly to not decelerate too much to drop out of the sky, while also using drag of the wings to "skip in the air" (pull up, dive, repeat), to both glide with efficiency, as well as land.
Good piloting will of course be required with this feature. Did I mention that already?
 
The final change I'd make is indirect with the topic of aerodynamics, but more simply to do with space brakes. Since air brakes require more knowledge to use, a similar amount of thought should be put forward to make space brakes omni-directional, and apply thrust only where they are facing, of course the angled ones would also provide braking force to those directions as well.
 
Conclusion
While of course this post is 2 pronged, the first being the player jetpacks, the second being construct engineering, I felt that the topics combined in a way that they merited being in the same post. I hope that you enjoyed reading the post, as much as you hopefully want these feature changes in the game.

It seems very bizarre how we have so many types of doors, yet we don't have gates that are big enough for an XS vessel, but don't cost a fortune to make, and that aren't extremely difficult to find a place to put on a not M to L size ship.

What I'm primarily getting at here is that you can make gates using sliding doors, sure, but they don't have a few major functionalities that gates have. First of all, they do not fold up like the normal gates do. Additionally, making a gate with a bunch of doors means that it cannot be tested for airtightness in the future (when that's probably a thing), due to being different elements, at different angles, and therefore most likely having unfixable gaps. Lastly, sliding doors don't really look that good when it comes to something like a hangar door. The aesthetic they give off is not "this is a super heavy duty airlock mechanism", more of a "I am a thing you push out of the way because I'm a door".
 
Separate topic altogether, but folding doors, swinging doors, and of course gate-like compressing doors would be pretty cool too. The mor-doors the merrier. Ahem, but anyways, more gates when?

Is a planet (voxel) reset still under consideration or planning?

I do know that Dual Universe currently has a declining community, and that something like this would most likely affect DU much less than if it happened near beta launch. 

On top of this, I must remark that the planets in DU currently REALLY need attention on not just texture and model updates, but in general features and topography. They are extremely bland in general, and most have not been updated in an *extremely* long time. At least in my opinion, seeing a planet/voxel reset of which would include bigger and more exciting looking planets, especially with new ore distribution and such would be a welcome addition for both PR of the game, as well as the exploration and building aspects as well. Even Teoma at the moment has trees (and grass) underwater...

We’re making some changes to the way organizations work. 
 
Currently, organizations can cascade within themselves thus making it possible to create a near-infinite multitude of sub-organizations. This poses a problem from both a design and cost perspective as it removes any form of scaling limit to the amount of constructs and organization that can be in the game. It also leaves the door open for various ways to circumvent limitations needed for balancing. 
 
These changes will address these issues as well as clear up a number of anomalies that are affecting some existing organizations. They will be included in the 0.26 update, which gives you more than a month to reorganize as needed. 
 
New regulations for organizations will be:
Each organization must have a player as its super legate. An account can only be the super legate of one organization. Nested organizations will still be possible but will require a player as super legate of that organization, and that player cannot also be the super legate of the parent organization.
  To ensure a smooth transition and have things set up the way you prefer, we encourage you to restructure your org(s) accordingly. Organizations that have not been updated will undergo an automated modification process. This will be done in a prioritized order as described below. 
 
For players that are the super legate of multiple organizations:
One organization will be selected as the player’s primary organization according to the following parameters: The number of players in the organization. The number of constructs in the organization. The age of the organization. The player will become a designated legate for any other orgs to which they belong.
  To address situations where an organization is nested within another so that there is no player designated as super legate, these are the solutions we’ll pursue: 
The legate with the most seniority that is not already a super legate of an organization and has connected over the past month at the time of the change is promoted to super legate. If no legates exist, the oldest member that is not already a super legate of an organization and has played within the past month at the time of the change is promoted to super legate. The oldest legate that is not already a super legate of an organization is promoted to super legate. The oldest member that is not already a super legate of an organization is promoted to super legate. If none of the above apply, the organization will be disbanded.
  Constructs and territories for any properly structured organizations or organizations that are assigned a new super legate will be unaffected and remain in ownership of that organization. The constructs and territories of disbanded orgs will be reassigned to the first former super legate in the chain of organization parenting. Any other construct will be abandoned, and territories will be unclaimed.

 

Some great (and detailed) feedback in here! Sharing with the team. Thank you

In this post I'm going to list (in some detail) what I think should be top priority for an update that focuses on a few pillars: intuitiveness and documentation. In these two pillars, this game can make a lot more sense to newer players (thus keeping more on board), while also helping the pre-existing community from becoming discouraged.

Other things you must assume, as is for most games. This game should not require 3rd party tools to play, as MOST players do not use any outside tools to play games. Even if this changes in the future, it is still a good idea to take things from the ground up, assuming they do not understand how to play this game.

Starting with actual Quality of Life features:

Complete overhaul of Maneuver tool to indicate with proper HUD
a. Create durability for the Maneuver tool. This durability amount directly correlates with the amount of meters a player can move ANY (dynamic) construct. This is not tied to the construct, but the item itself.

b. Increase range capacity from 50, to 150 meters. This is because of making it a unified meter for all ships, while also adding a bit of QoL by allowing players to move their constructs a bit further.

c. This durability would recharge at 2m/s* while the durability is not gone, while if it is gone, it recharges at 5m/s*. While the bar is recharging from empty, the tool is not usable until durability is FULL.
*Since we're measuring the durability in meters allowed to move distance, using m/s indicates the rate of which durability is recharging per second

d. Add a status bar tied to the durability, of which would function similarly to most durability bars (see Minecraft). This would be a visual indicator on the tool itself, like the image given below, which allows the player to understand how these mechanics work in an intuitive way.




Allow cores to be swapped out for larger ones
Similar to how Mindustry does cores (see gif), allow players to replace the current core on a ship with a larger one (not vice versa). If there is ANY other element in the way of the core, then it would collide, and not be allowed. In addition, the core must entirely envelop the previous core in order to replace it (like Mindustry). Lastly, the previous core is destroyed upon replacement, and all data tied to the previous core is transferred into the new one. 


Better Item/element descriptions

a. This one is purely documentation, but a static table with groups you can choose from a dropdown menu next to it would be much more intuitive and better working than a scroll bar. Examples of groups of these would be "resistances", "basic info" (HP, tier, mass, unit volume), "unit specific info" (fuel consumption, thrust output, just related info for that specific part). I'm sure a dev team could make better groups than I can, but that is the idea.


 
b. Review EACH and EVERY item description, and make sure that it is neither generic, nor is completely forgotten about. For example, there are a LOT of items that just don't have descriptions, or have copy pasted descriptions that don't really tell the player much.

This is not a chair? At least it doesn't have a lot of generic text...                       So a bunch of generic text, with a generic description afterward. What does this element do again?
                   
For a lot of functional elements, the game nails the proper description. However, I don't see a reason to have a copy pasted description on EACH tier of EACH engine, because if a player is buying a higher tier engine (than basic), it's quite clear they understand how engines work, because they've played the game enough. In addition, reminding a player each time they look at a decorative element "they do nothing but make your construct look cool, but they do add mass", instead say "this is a decorative element", or something similar, of which shortens descriptions, and makes them more rich in content. In addition, less need for that annoying scroll bar...
 
Increase documentation in, and OUTSIDE the game
 
a. The codex's information, while sorta useful early game, is extremely outdated. There hasn't been a single time in my entire DU playthrough where I've looked in the codex, and genuinely found something that is new, and USEFUL. The sort of things needed to be documented inside the codex are things such as tutorials, how an element works, such as how to use Anti-grav, or warp drives!

Uhh... so how does one use this? How do I control the AG unit?

 
...hello?

 
b. Increase external documentation on the DU wiki. Even if it's community run and made, encouraging, and/or working on the wiki is a MUST. Perhaps encourage users in some way to update the forum. Anything to get proper documentation. In addition, tying in the wiki with the codex (as in, it's edited on the wiki, then the codex syncs to it) would be very beneficial by having both be updated *dynamically*, cutting the work in half.

To be the face of knowledge for this game, it seems quite old. As the background suggests, this seems sunsetted.

 
Developers dedicated to fixing smaller issues
 
This isn't really a list, but as a lot of games have, having DEDICATED developers that play the game and from there fix these minor issues and gameplay elements is a good idea.

This would be beneficial because you'd only need 1-3 devs total to work on something like this, and they'd be able to do things such as these QoL changes in game, and fixing these minor bugs or inconveniences. In addition, having devs that do this will also increase involvement with the community. This is because these minor changes makes a big difference when playing the game for a long time. In addition, being able to fix minor issues on-the-go means that they won't build up, and instead will be maintained much more efficiency, due to being at a ground level.
 
 
I hope you guys enjoyed my post, I plan to update it with more ideas in the future as time goes by.

Yeah, I hate this NMS colorful looking space .... one of the reasons (as I mentioned in my review) I liked DU is for its realistic DARK space ...
I want my space to be dark!

I second you the skybox and spacebox backrgound is ugly even horrible even the fast speed in space special effect looks bad we need better vfx.

IDK if it's just me, but I find it quite unnerving that the player size is absurdly tall (exactly 2 meters). Especially for the sake of allowing smaller interiors to not feel so cramped, as well as making the player generally feel more like themselves (but in an alternate universe, AKA immersion), I think it makes more sense for the player to be 6.5-7 blocks tall. While a minor change, I think it would be a welcome addition.

If the devs are willing to go further, I think that the players should be able to set their player height (within reason) when making their character (and/or when we edit our avatars as well). Would be a welcome addition on my part.

I believe that the nebula skybox should be replaced with a realistic, dark and starry skybox, akin to the old one prior to Alpha 3. Here are my arguments,
 
The nebula was originally introduced as an immersive way to increase ambient lighting in Dual Universe, making it easier to see at night. This is mentioned in NQ's Dev Diary on YouTube. However, this was nullified in 0.24 with the reduction of ambient light brightness.
 
This is personal preference however I believe many will agree; the ambient light level does not have to match the skybox's brightness. For example, take this image of Pre-Alpha Thades. Its dark side is heavily illuminated, as I'm sure it would look on the surface as well. You'd be able to see. Compared to current Thades, I think most of us can agree that it still looks far better, and it could be taken down a notch if it's too bright. Additionally, with the introduction of the nebula, the atmospheres were changed to the same blue color we're all used to. I'm guessing this was done as a result of a technical limitation relating to the new skybox. So, think; If I'm right about this, we could have a Thades that looks like this, for example:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Current Thades, for comparison:

 
You see where I'm coming from?
 
The way I see it, removing the nebula would provide so much in the way of fidelity, immersion and polish. It wouldn't affect gameplay either. Furthermore, I believe this change would solve many, many of DU's lighting glitches and "rough spots," at the very least making them look far better, and would provide much more polished lighting, both on ground and on a planetary scale. I simply don't see what the nebula adds other than style, but it sacrifices fidelity in a lot of key areas. Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots to back up that claim, so you're gonna have to take my word for it as an Alpha 1 player who knows how lighting used to interact with the old skybox.
 
The nebula may be beautiful to some, but honestly, changing it would add so much in the way of polish — which I believe is far more important and is what this game needs right now. Not to mention, many people were dismayed at the release of this nebula, and I'm taking a wild guess by saying that most players would like this change. I know my friends and I would.
 
Please consider this, Novaquark.
 
Similar post by Mjrlun

Tell me... Which of these is Thades, and which is Sinnen? If you can tell me looking purely at the terrain generation of these two images, you deserve a raise.

   
The purpose of this post was to raise awareness for the need for improved planet generation (including a terrain reset), as variety of planets is essential in the appeal and longevity of the game, especially in exploration.

Tell me... Which of these is Thades, and which is Sinnen? If you can tell me looking purely at the terrain generation of these two images, you deserve a raise.

   
The purpose of this post was to raise awareness for the need for improved planet generation (including a terrain reset), as variety of planets is essential in the appeal and longevity of the game, especially in exploration.

Gee. The game has an ingame codex with info; surely it could be updated each patch, right?
 
NQ: Hint, hint, hint.

Voxel tools -- good! 
 
Yet new trees and rocks... questionable.
 
1) New objects not help current "bioms" much, because its mainly question of terrain generation logic, not some mock up trees or ocasional stone. And terrain will stay same very low-grade procedural generated pancake. Also it will have influence only on several "vegetated" planets, while most of them still be totaly featureless (even considering their barren state).
2) Its meaningless in way, that we still can't manipulate terrain artisticly (restore it), only totaly destroy, by digging into dirt. So its stay quite static and usless for more complicated building projects. 
3) Perfomance?

I want to add to this idea that with the darker ambient lighting introduced in the 0.24 patch, the whole point of the nebula skybox (to add more light) is basically nullified. Assuming the nebula wasn't a purely stylistic addition, I think it'd be cool if the devs considered re-adding the older style skybox with a little ambient lighting so night isn't pitch black.
 
That alone would make me, a player primarily interested in exploring, soooo much more excited about DU.
 
Just my two cents.

So here's my constructive criticism on the new update. I love it, don't get me wrong, but there's some things that would probably take between 30 minutes to 2 hours for a single dev to complete, and would completely overhaul the feel of the update, and graphics in general (written in the specified feedback format, here we go).
 
The background, yes, the nebula, as well as atmospheric scattering are the main topics that I want to have changed.

My opinion on the current background/nebula, is this. It ruins the ambient lighting, by having a persistent, ugly, turquoise tint to the entire night side of the environment. It removes all the depth of any structure or voxel, while also not even being dark, or night time. It's so bad that I'm forced to put an L vertical light above the ship im building just to get some decent lighting on it to not make it look flat, and drawn poorly. In addition, people, as sourced from the video where the nebula released, thought it would be a cool idea for stealth combat with having to make ships dark in some way to be able to not be seen from so far away, while also making headlights useful in space. On top of this, just to mention, the corners of the nebula are soooooooo clearly visible if you spend about 30 seconds looking, which completely ruins immersion further than just having poor lighting. Furthermore, a darker sky would better pronounce the incredibly beautiful atmospheric scattering, and generate some breathtaking screenshots.

The second aspect of this, the atmospheric scattering, is probably the more confusing side of this request (not that adding the nebula despite people on the video announcing it saying they didn't like it doesn't make it not confusing why it exists), is that the different planets used to have different atmosphere colors, yes? This is a server-side thing that was "changed" some time in the land of NDA, and thus the devs know when this was. All the different planets used to have cool unique atmospheres, not just "blue blue blue blue blue". The desert planets in the top right of the map had orange atmospheres (Sinnen's not supposed to have an atmosphere, but it has a bright, BLUE one!), as well as Thades having a nice orange atmosphere, and Madis having a nice unique purple acid-y atmosphere. In addition, all of these atmospheres have clouds, which makes 0 sense from a realism standpoint, as they are all white clouds, indicating each planet has sufficient enough water to generate a biosphere (not true, in a long shot).

And to wrap this up, they made Sanctuary have the only "unique" atmosphere, which did not need it at all. A bright orange one. Weren't we wanting those for the desert planets? To be frank, the Sanctuary moon should have some alteration of a nitrogen blue atmosphere (similar to Alioth), however, changed in a way to represent its biosphere. Something like a more oxygenated, or less oxygenated, would be a cool addition. For example, if the atmosphere of Sanctuary was made to be a nice green-tinted nitrogen blue, it would probably be as "cool and exotic" as the orange one, without making it look like an apocalypse is around the corner, and also ruining every screenshot in existence that involves nature. IMO, it takes the beauty of the nice, lush landscape, the beauty of the moon, and turns it into something I wish would not exist the way it is at all.

To wrap this up in a meaningful concise wants and desires, here's my list in sentence form. 

Remove the nebula, keep the stars. If you poke around in the files (of course not altering anything), you can see that they are deliberately separate files, as if it was a simple patch at some point that altered it. See images found from public sources where this was a thing. If there are any issues with doing so of course putting in the effort to fix such issues are quite important as well.
If you truly want, replace the nebula with some form of darker galaxy background, I don't really care, just not something that ruins the night sky so harshly. Take a note out of Elite Dangerous if you so have to. Find a cool nebula background by messing around in blender, or create a nice galaxy background which would have a similar effect.
Should this be the case, however, the ambient lighting should still be dark and black, and still maintain some amount of AO (and shadows preferably, but that's a task).
 
All images here are from earlier versions of the game, publicly found (click on the images)
 
Atmospheric scattering, background, and ambient lighting during night time

Shows the background plainly just there against the nice day time atmosphere, in general, very serene!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A cinematic cold morning or evening in the early days of DU engine infrastructure

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Now just pure background and lighting!

 
Now for the atmospheric scatterings. All I request is to make them accurate to the map, and to their descriptions (should they have them, cough sanc cough). On the map, in case you all forgot, Sanctuary used to have an Alioth-style atmosphere.
If you prefer to go for a more engaging style, however, I'd highly recommend choosing something similar to what I suggested earlier for Sanctuary, but then apply this creative vision that seems to have been forgotten about on this topic to the other planets, which dearly need some love.

Demonstration that even in pre-alpha that this was possible, and just how breathtaking it is with a dark background!

The points will be applied after a brief downtime starting at 9 am UTC | 4 am EST on December 17th.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
Hello Noveans,
 
December is halfway over, meaning the arrival of the new year is tantalizingly close! 2021 is sure to usher in some big changes, and we couldn’t be more excited to experience those with you. ?
 
While we were rolling out 0.23.1, we noticed that players who had talents in training lost what was accumulated during our downtime. So, in the spirit of bringing out the old and ringing in the new we would like to offer everyone 1 million talent points (~1 week’s worth) to not only replace lost points, but also as a bit of a holiday gift! Build, explore and be merry!
 
Thank you for your continued support. We sincerely hope that you and yours enjoy a restful holiday season!

Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team