MerlDT

I'll be loosing thousands of hours of scanning. I've spent more than most in this game. It needed to happen, while I have a lot I know of others that have damn near entire planets of scan results.  Literally giving me, and others a monopoly on the market. 
 
That all being said, myself and others will go back out and scan 18+ tiles at a time and will be fine.

Thx NQ, really appreciate all the small balance changes you did to the demeter Update.
- HQ Tiles: Great Idea! this helps us keep a lot of the player made content outside of sanc
- Wiping the scan results: Absolutly the right decision!

Please read the patch notes.

Who am I paying taxes to?
 
This abstract Aphellia entity, which also collects market taxes and already makes huge sums of money that way?
What do I get from Aphellia for this generous donation of 1M per tile per week? 
 
The privilege of magically being protected from looters to take away my hard earned assets? 
I already expected this when territory warfare was rumoured, but it just doesn't seem to come.
 
So what am I paying for exactly?
The entire Lore of DU is about settlers colonising new worlds and tailor their own fate. There is no "state" that I bought the territory from. It was new, unclaimed land. If anything, I should be the one that collects taxes to my tenants (If I manage to find some anyway).
 
And if you really think that Aphellia or "the state" can and should do this - Then give us ability to overthrow this greedy bastard, because apart from collecting money from us by selling us schematics, charging territory and market taxes and God knows what else in the future, Aphellia is just in the way of progress.
 
I've been living in this universe since Alpha, and I was really enthusiastic about the game. I understand that progress should come at some price. But from my perspective I already paid the price by investing insane amount of time in mind-crushingly boring mining (thank god for mining units), doing logistics to transfer the ore, selling on maket, etc - all that so that I can finally start doing what I came here for - construct a cool starship, and go and explore the universe.
 
Stepping out of my DU character and looking it from a casual gamer experience:
NQ, you made so much effort in slowing down the game (schematics, and now taxes)- up to a point of grinding halt.
 
DU no longer feels like a getaway form a real-life grind. Instead, it now feels like a prison where you are taunted with a promise that you can do anything that you want, only to be blocked with an overwhelming amount of grind that's in the way of your dream.
 
Being a software developer myself I know that you sometimes need to make compromises in order to deliver in a timely manner, but Demeter as-is is not acceptable.
 
Cut down the taxes to a symbolic amount, get rid of Atmo brakes tweak, and then we can continue to fight to live another day.

My opinion about the update:
I like the idea, but not exactly how it's done.
 
The main issue I have with this: The Taxes are far too high for people who are more interested in planetary building. The average Tile on Alioth gives you about ~500l/h, so ~84kl/week and most of this is T1
Even with talents it may be 150kl/week (not exactly, but just for demonstration). This is an amount you can currently get in 1h mining. And you have to sell at least ~1/2 to pay the taxes. The amount you'll receive in the end is way less than what you can get now if you are ready to invest some time.
 
If you are someone who likes to fly to other planets and build a base there this may be okay. I've heard about tiles with 300l/h T3 ore and more, so the taxes would not be an issue. But players who like the planetary building on alioth and not space travelling, will be extremely slowed down and I think this will cause more frustration in the playerbase.

This is going to be a long post!
 
Questions
1.       Is this the ore pool balance per tile we can expect when Demeter goes live? A ‘primary’ ore with a relatively large pool, then moderate to minimal pools of the other planet ores types.
2.       Is this the ore distribution pattern we can expect? Many I have spoken to have noticed ores in ‘Zones’ across the planets, where swathes of a particular ore is the primary ore pool per tile over significant numbers of tiles.
3.       Is the ore pool shared across tile boarders? Some have noticed ore pools being impinged on by extraction from neighbouring tiles.
4.       Are higher tier ores (T4 + T5) being deliberately excluded from planetary ore pools, and into asteroid mining gameplay?
5.       How is NQ planning to prevent large organisations from claiming large swathes of tiles, from the advantage of current territory scan libraries held by them & huge wallet balances, thus disadvantaging the rest of the player base from finding ‘good’ extraction rate tiles?
6.       How is NQ going to prevent the control of the mining unit manufacturing market by larger organisation that have access to the higher tier ores needed to produce the higher tier MU’s, that can then restrict open market sales of those MU’s, thus restricting the access to the higher tier ores and effectively controlling the higher tier ore market?
7.       How is NQ going to manage the expected significant reduction in ore availability to general gameplay, whilst the player-base train the required talents and set up their allowed number of MU’s, to restart the flow of ore through the game economy?
8.       How is NQ going to manage the expected significant ore price inflation that will result from the changes to mining, first from the near dead stop of ore production while MU’s are set up, then from the artificially capped extraction rate of ore, from the use of calibration charges?
9.       Will the number of asteroids, both in PvP space and the safe zone, be increased and if so by how many? And will the spawn time of asteroids be staggered over the week, rather than all at once on a weekend?
10.   What is NQ’s expected time frame for the new player experience, going from first spawn-in, collecting surface rocks, setting first base, creating/buying first ship, claimed tile expansion, reaching space, inter-planetary travel, asteroid mining?
 
Problems
1.       Having a primary ore, especially T1, severely restricts the ability of new & solo players from establishing a ‘home base’ from which they are able to grow from and then expand to new territories. It confines them to simply extracting the primary ore, then having to sell enough of it to buy the other ore types needed for expansion. This will limit how quickly a player is able to progress in the early game, thus reducing the likelihood of player retention.
2.       Having zones of primary ores places another limit on new and solo players, like in problem 1, that they are not able to gain the resources needed to expand in what would be considered a reasonable gameplay time frame. It also allows larger organisations to claim large swathes of territory, potentially shutting out new / solo / small org players from large regions of the planets, forcing them away from markets, so increasing fuel cost and playtime to reach said markets to sell goods and progress.
3.       Allowing neighbouring tiles to pilfer across tile boarders will obviously reduce the ore pool for the tile owner. This will only lead to the reduction in the overall ore extraction, as people will not want to waste MU’s on tiles with only partially remaining ore pools, and it will also create player animosity to the game mechanic, especially in densely claimed areas, like the market rings.
4.       By moving higher tier ores off planets, this restricts the higher-level gameplay attainable for players not wanting to be involved in asteroid mining. Even by retaining a small amount on planet, akin to rare mineral deposits, these tiles will quickly be found by large organisations with their territory scan libraries, and so claimed within days of the update, shutting new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. Forcing a gameplay loop is not a sandbox.
5.       While the implementation of a tile tax is intended to prevent players holding tiles without ‘using’ them, or at least incentivise their use for mining or industry to cover the tax, large organisations have the wallet resources to maintain their hold over significant swathes of multiple planets. These orgs also have the player numbers to rapidly data mine their territory scan libraries to find the best yielding tiles and immediately claim those tiles within the first days, if not hours of the update. This will shut out all other players from decent yield tiles, effectively producing two tiers of players, one who scrapes by on low yield tiles and purchasing ores from the large orgs or open markets, and the large orgs who will be able to control the ores market setting whatever price they want.
6.       Having MU’s require the tier of ore they extract in order to build them will allow player groups who have access to those tiers of ore to control the production and sale of the mining units for those tiers. Combined with the level of control large orgs can bring to bear on the ore markets, this has the potential to shut out new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. It also goes against the current manufacturing meta of a ‘Basic’ industrial element can produce the ‘Uncommon’ version of the element being made, the ‘Uncommon’ industrial element can produce the ‘Advanced’ version of the element being made, etc. This meta allows progression up the industry gameplay levels, whereas the manufacturing requirements of the MU’s does not.
7.       The expected significant reduction in the ore extraction rate whilst the mining changes take effect are already impacting the gameplay, with speculative market price inflation and ore hoarding taking place. With scarcity comes restriction of growth and knock-on price inflation across the market, restricting gameplay options and progression.
8.       The introduction of Missions showed the impact that can be inflicted on the game market by the reduction in the global ore extraction rate as players moved away from mining to a more afk and profitable gameplay loop. At first the scarcity of ore will drive price inflation way faster than the spike seen with the introduction of Missions. Then by putting an artificial cap on the global extraction rate, ore prices (and so all other market prices) can and likely will be controlled by the few large organisations that establish territorial hold over large swathes of tiles with good pools.
9.       The number of asteroids currently spawning at any point in the game, be it PvP space or Safe Zone is insufficient to ‘fill the gap’ expected in ore supply whilst the new MU’s are being established. Additionally, given the potential for significant territory control by large orgs on good yield tiles once the MU gameplay is established, even T1 ores will be in demand from asteroids. With the low spawn numbers and the ‘all-at-once’ spawn mechanic, this severely limits the player base to where and when asteroid gameplay occurs disadvantaging those players that cannot for whatever reason play at those times.
10.   If the new player experience takes ‘too long’ to reach the point in gameplay where they are able to choose what sandbox play they want to pursue, then player numbers / retention will suffer, especially if the opening gameplay is days/weeks (/months?) of just collecting surface rocks and hoofing them to market before they can even afford to expand beyond their Sanctuary tile.
 
Possible solutions
1.       Have T1 ore pools be more balanced in each tile. While a primary ore type can still be present, the other T1 ore pools need to be similar, in order to allow new / solo players to establish a ‘home tile’ from which they can expand, without reliance on ore markets that have the potential to be controlled / dominated by large organisations.
2.       Reduce the size of planetary ore zones or completely randomise the distribution of higher tier ores per tile – though while keeping the per planet ore type distribution currently in game. This will prevent the domination of ore types by larger organisations and allow new / solo / small org players to find higher tier ores nearer to their home bases, whilst still incentivising players to expand to other planets to find ore type not available on their home planet.
3.       Ore pools must be restricted to the tile they reference in the territory scan – anything else will just encourage griefing across tile boundaries. And if NQ think ‘our player base is better than that…’ I encourage you to look at the amount of ships with glitched element still being sold / used in PvP, the number of players with large numbers of alts abusing the Mission system to gain massive wealth, the players using the terraforming tools to grief their neighbours, etc.
4.       Retain the small chance to find higher tier ores on their respective planets as currently. This is still potentially subject to large orgs finding and claiming these tiles immediately following the update, so shutting out higher tier extraction by new / solo / small org players. A possibility is a rng spawn of higher tier ores in the extraction cycle of a lower tier MU.
5.       a) Implement the increasing pricing scale for the tile taxation amount, as is currently used of the TU deployment cost. Currently the TU deployment cost is of little significance to the large organisations, as they have the wallet resources to soak up the one hit up front cost of deploying high numbers of TU’s. Implementing rising tax rates for the number of claimed tiles would go some way to limiting the reach and control of large orgs over swathes of territories, as the cost then become recurring currency sinks.
5.       b) Wipe all current territory scans – it is the only way to set a level field between orgs / players with large scan libraries and the rest of the player-base.
6.       Implement the manufacturing meta seen across the rest of the game to the manufacture of the Mining Units. This will allow progression of mining tiers, as is currently available to industry progression.
7.       Temporarily introduce market bots to sell ores at ‘reasonable’ market process to cover the scarcity gap. Reduce the quantity available on the market as the MU gameplay becomes established, then remove them at the 45day mark when most invested players will have the MU talents trained to Lvl4.
8.       For long term MU gameplay loop either remove the calibration charge cap, allowing charges to accumulate unrestricted, therefore allowing as many MU’s to be used as can be started with a charge per player – or allow the charges to be traded on the market, so players that do not get involved with the MU gameplay loop to sell them and make money, and also allowing players involved in MU’s to increase the amount of MU’s they are able to run.
Or a more drastic change – just remove the charges all together and use the calibration mini-game to determine extraction efficiency. This will then put the global ore extraction rate burden back onto the player-base, as determined by the amount of game time they are willing to spend on servicing their deployed MU’s.
9.       Increase the overall number of asteroids spawning in the game, both in PvP space and Safe Zone, and stagger the spawn times throughout the week to allow players to choose when they involve themselves in the asteroid hunt gameplay loop.
10.   The tile tax burden must not be set so that it restricts the new / solo players from expanding from their first tile. This leads back to the solution of a rising tax rate per number of tiles claimed. The principal limitation of a player’s expansion, should this update be implemented as seen on the PTS, will be the dominance of large organisations over the ore markets. If the ore price burden is too high for players to progress to building / buying their first / next ship or tile – due to the rate of which ore can be collected from the surface, verses the amount of time required to collect sufficient ore to progress – then the majority players will not continue and the game will stagnant, or worse….
 
I hope NQ realises the scope of the changes they are proposing and the potential damage to the game that can come from them. It will only take small tweaks to existing gameplay mechanics and the proposed numbers of the Demeter update to ensure the damage is mitigated and we are presented with a well-structured game that fulfils NQs vision and give players a rich and enjoyable universe to explore and build.

Let's just hope the new "complexity restrictions" will not prevent us from actually using the vertex editor to create great works of art.

Remove the territory tax and link the property to a subscription. As soon as the sub expires plus 4 weeks of error tolerance, the territory and everything on it becomes accessible for all to loot. if an active subscription is running, your own things are secured. So the players can keep everything and NQ gets support through the sub. Win-win and nobody cries.

Dear NQ,
 
If you are trying to fix the problem of too many players buying tiles and then leaving the game with all of their territory still claimed, taxes can be the answer. I even like the idea of taxes for this very reason but I think tax pricing is very wrong. Any amount of taxes even an insignificant amount of taxes would acomplish the goal.
 
If all I had to do was pay 1000 quanta a month taxes per tile that would fix it. I'm not saying it should be that low either but as long as there is something I need to pay every month or I will lose my territories it will accomplish the goal of getting rid of abandoned players' territories.  It needs to be a very small amount, and to prevent players owning 2000 territories easily, it should go up in price when buying a territory, like it currently does. 
 
Now lets talk about the economy. The economy will fail if more money is being removed from the economy than being put in. The way I see it right now the only money going into the economy is the 150k a day for each players daily login and the few players doing missions from the market. Your proposed taxes will subtract far more than this amount of money every day eventually causing an economic collapse in the game. Economics 101.  If most of the player money gets subtracted from the game by taxes how does money reenter the game or get put back in the system? Missions and 150k a day? Hell no, do not force me to play your unfun and low profit missions.
 
This is supposed to be a game about freedom and playing the way you want but after these changes I will be forced to spend many hours a week just to keep owning the tiles that I spent a lot of time earning money to own already.  I don’t want to pay a monthly fee for that.
 
I hope for the future of this game that the taxes will be adjusted to be much more reasonable. 

After seeing the video and getting hyped for DU again I almost resubbed my account to come back to the game. (only been gone since Apollo issues).  I was like now this, this is the right direction.  Now after reviewing with my org the details on the test server I am no longer hyped. No longer impressed and no longer even considering for a moment about returning to DU if these changes go live.  

Not only will this destroy literally every build I have in the game and remove them permanently (I don't make 27 million a week in profit on anything) but as someone who has health issues, there is no way I can sustain my building enjoyment vs the tax rate.  NQ asked players to BUILD THE WORLD so there was stuff here when the release happened so that new players would see a world full of builds. Now with taxes the world will be barren.  Did someone just take a 2 week vacation with their family for the holidays? Oh great all of their factories, builds, etc have been taxed and unpaid and now simply gone.  They return after a good family outing to find out that NQ has deleted everything they worked for due to taxes.  That ends their enjoyment of the game, and they move on to other games. 

Even mobile afk games have enough buttons to press to keep people playing games like AFK arena for years.  Come on.  You get so close to something good, something that hypes the community only to throw in some STUPID last minute thing that completely destroys your reputation as a game developer. Its too much for any White Knight of NQ to deal with.
 
________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
What Demeter COULD have been.

-Auto-mining and more asteroids resulting in more ore in the economy.
-Time saving feature allowing players who build to have a constant supply of ore (although low) to build the world with
-Beautiful builds arising that function better and have less lag due to the ground rework
-Rebalanced Ore economy due to surplus from players not using the ore (or orgs mass mining to supply markets)
-Voxel tools making building with voxel easier, saving more time for players.
-More time saved = more builds = more pvp content as people have time to have fun in DU. (since they have to mine less)
 
________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
What Demeter IS GOING to be;
 
-Auto-mining costs more than the ore that is mined. (tile with 500L/hr hematite generates 2.1m in value to bots in a week, 1m cost to own the tile, likely 1-2m to ship the ore if not on Alioth in warp cells, saved to 400k if slowboat)
-With the increase in ore stabilizing the ore market, the lack of ability to pay the taxes results in NO ore on the market
-Players who aren't "Hardcore" and are "Casual" or have real lives losing their builds
-Ships now cost so much that the ore will never be attainable for the ships to be built.
-ALL ships PRE-Demeter become INVALID
-All Ship designers pre-demeter leave DU when this releases rather than completely overhauling everything they ever did in DU since September. (see Apollo update results)
-PVP will die off completely as orgs/pirates will not be able to afford the taxes on the ore they need to repair their ships and players will not risk hauling anything valuable without warp due to the taxes consuming 90% of the value of the ore before you lift off the planet with it.

_____________________________________________________

What should NQ do then?!
 
-Remove taxes from this update.
-Remove brake changes from this update
-Research how to implement "decay systems" into your game properly.
-Remove weird ass mechanics from Auto-miners that not a single person has said was positive. Wtf even is this. 

_____________________________________________________

Suggestion on HOW to implement TAXATION for CLAIMATION.
 
-Players place the core, receive a pop up that asks the type of tile it will be and selects one of the following options;
Residential Tile (Housing and cool looking builds with no functionality) Minor tax (150k/week) or No Tax (already paid upfront) Industrial Tile (Designed for Industrial tiles with factories) Medium tax (300k/week) Mining Tile (Designed for Mining Units) High Taxes (450k/week) Commercial Tile (Designed for selling goods) Taxes paid off sales (10%-20%) directly from dispensers. This will allow players to choose what they want to do;
 
To further elaborate- Residential tiles cannot hold industry units.  Industry Tiles could have a maximum # of allowed assemblers, Mining Tiles could be the only tiles that allow autominers to be functional, and Commerical tiles are the only tiles that allow use of dispensers.  Residential tiles could be green, Industry tiles yellow, Mining tiles Red, and Commerical tiles blue on the map.  
 
This would allow players to identify the tile type in the map and see the various commercial tiles around the worlds and encourage them to go shopping. (boosting economy)  Which highest traffic ones could eventually end up with market areas (as previously mentioned at the end of Alpha)

WAR DECLARE SYSTEM- This suggestion would tie into future features like the War system as orgs could identify mining tiles or commercial tiles of their enemy orgs while at the same time leaving alone those massive Residential builds that everyone loves to visit that won't gain them any profit for attacking. 
 
This would also allow a decay system to be put in place for people who just leave the game for "too long" and would remove many of the towers that exist of people who haven't played since 0.23.
 
_________________________________________________________________________________
 
TLDR:  If NQ implements taxes/brake changes to DU, the game will die fully. These changes don't increase the time for FUN, they remove the FUN entirely.  NQ I strongly urge you to PAY ATTENTION to this update more than you did the last 2 and LISTEN to these ONLY TWO REAL complaints from the community and X them out before this goes live. 

I have so much time in this game and really enjoy it and the only issue is territory tax cost. i have 21 tiles and not all in 1 place. a few on different planets. I enjoy the build of the game, but 1 million a week. No way i can keep up with this. Our organization is only 3 of us and we will probably stop playing this game if this sticks. 21 million a week? Thats Crazy. I really hope this changes alot because i really want to continue playing DU.

QUESTION: 

Are you trying to punish PvE, New, and Solo players? First the miniscule number of PvE Asteroids, and now the taxes on territory that yield less ore per hour than you can mine per 5 second scoop currently. 


Comments on question.

Based on the numbers from PTS, you need 20-30 territories and many more miners to yield a steady flow of resources

All this is going todo is assure is that the inflated ore market becomes more inflated, and that smaller orgs, solo players, and new players have virtually no chance to ever progress, and force people into just doing hauling missions, which in turn forces them to risk PvP Conflict, which with the new changes increases the chance of now being not able to replace what you lost.

I understand this is a civilization building game. To have a civilization you have to have groups, large groups, even nations or mega corporations. But if you remove the ability to make an impact as an individual, or even be able to function self sufficiently to a good degree, what's the point? 

What is the attraction for a new player?  "Welcome! Now pick one of 5 mega organizations to join, or spend the next month collecting your daily reward to build your first ship. By the way, if you want a Territory not on Sanctuary, you are going to need to find a way to make more money, because the daily reward won't even pay for your taxes for one territory."

Honestly I have rarely said anything about the game updates. Even schematics. I enjoyed the challenge of working hard to build something. But honestly, if these extraction numbers stay anywhere in the neighborhood where they are now, I honestly think my time will be better spent elsewhere. This is not a threat, or me generally just whining. I love this game, I truly do, but this will literally suck the enjoyment of the game right out of me. 

You have the ability to create and maintain what is likely the best MMO in a generation - Don't waste it on bad  decisions. Listen to your player base, what remains, learn from the many people who have left. When Beta hit, the first couple months were amazing, despite the bugs. When you looked at Dual Universe on a streaming site, it was loaded with people building, PvPing, exploring, and enjoying the game, with thousands of people enjoying watching them.. But if you look now, you see the same few streamers, with maybe a couple dozen viewers, if anyone is online at all.

Listen. Learn. Debate. Act. Do better.
 

I am hoping, like I think most of us, that the numbers like the tax and the ore yields are just placeholders and we're on the PTS purely to test the mechanics.
 
If not, my initial questions / comments (apologies if repeating much that also already been written):
 
1) Devs at NQ, if the PTS ore yields are similar to your plans for the actual game, can you help us understand how you came to those numbers? To me, they seem too low by a decent amount - please explain your logic / calculations. This is a building game after all - why risk constraining the life-blood of it? Higher ore yields also makes the notion of greater voxel destruction (e.g. pvp / player crashes / eventually territory warfare etc) more tolerable as the cost is less.
 
2) Tax - this issue has been done to death - can you confirm that the numbers on the PTS are just placeholders? (with one week covering both the PTS weekends, so the mechanics can be tested). If this isn't the case, why 1m, why 1 week, and why not a (more logical) progressive system that makes it more expensive for players / orgs to sustain sprawling empires? 
 
3) Scans - please think long and hard about the scan results. I have many many thousands, but agree that rolling the old scans in Demeter will further extend the inequality, and do so permanently. Yes, we've spent hundreds of hours gaining these scans, but we also got our rewards from these by getting the richest meganodes. Why compound the already-gotten advantage? Full scan wipe, please.
 
4) Add Scan randomness / ore distribution resets - for scans, why not add (considerable) imprecision in their results ... perhaps only give qualitative descriptions, not quantitative results, and also sometimes make them just plain wrong (just like mineral exploration in real life) - improved marginally with talent(s). Uncertainty and the chance of a major positive surprise could spice things up. It also allows you to dynamically tweak up and down the yield algorithm behind the scenes to ensure reasonable balance in the ore generation rates in the game. I'd also be an advocate of ore distribution resets once in a while (say, every 6 months - perhaps with a storyline linked to an new mining technology untapping new undiscovered resources blah, etc), that makes the whole territorial scene much more dynamic and less entrenched. Plus makes potentially today's low value tiles into next years high value tiles - shake-ups can be good.    
 
5) For the Mining Unit Mini-Game, make the potential payoffs massive if you get really lucky ... like spawning a full blown surface meganode if you ace it, not a measly couple of thousand litres, and not just the ores that are linked to the tile (i.e. getting higher tier ones that expected). A casino feel, perhaps, but creates much needed excitement, unpredictability and hope (as one goes about the perfunctory recalibration tasks).      
 

So, here are some questions. This time I even spent time on the PTS and watched the full video first

-Demeter fees will pull a lot of money "out of the system" and slow the inflation or even reverse it (deflation). The 1M per week fee is set now, at a time when it is equivalent to only 10kl or hematite, or one t2 engine L. Will you adjust the fee should the buying power of the quanta change significantly? The whole "player driven economy" is, by far, not really player driven anymore, and this patch is yet another step in that direction, the fixed rates for schematics, missions, other bot buy and sell orders, and now territory fees see to that.

-I generally like airbrakes now finally getting an obstruction zone, however the current direction indicated by the yellow arrows is not only unintuitive but would also just lead to players stacking them on the inside of the craft pointing outwards to the sides. On the current PTS it appears the obstruction is checked above the brakes (if placed on horizontal surface). What are the plans for the direction of the obstruction directions for the airbrakes?
 
-This is a nice reminder that plenty of items have obstruction zones which dictate a certain usage, which is often not visually pleasing, intuitive or, for better lack of word, "feels right". Any plans for an overall overhaul of obstruction mechanics and directions?
 
-To use mining units to their full potention, by at least never wasting charges because the charge pool is already full, you have to log in almost daily (every 30h with no talents, every 35h with full charge gain and pool talents). It feels rather tight. Do you think DU is a game for casuals, RP players, weekend warriors and others who are not playing in a regular profit oriented way? (So not like me   ).
 
-My first ever ship sale was to a player who just travels the planets and maintains a little base on almost every planet and moon. Quite serene and dreamy actually. He will now have to set up mining units and get into business, or collect rocks, or quit. He is not allowed to continue the way he is used to play. The fee is too high for that. Patch .23 stopped groups of people from having autonomous outposts and building civilisation away from alioth. Demeter now stops another group of players from playing their way. What is the intended and therefore likely future-proof way to play DU? 
 
-With planet based mining gone, yet another thing to actually do in the game is removed. For players who have time on saturdays there is still asteroid mining, for the rest there are AI missions, which consist of taking off and waiting for 5h to arrive, assuming you do one that actually pays something. Player made long distance haul missions can not compete with AI missions. Any plans on revisiting Apelia missions, their payout, or the fact that the long distance ones are overly profitable with multiple accounts or "car sharing" via VR?
 
-Related to above: Any plans to add anything to the game that is fun to do and at the same time brings an amount of resources?

-In order to find asteroids you need access to a DSAT which is t3. In order to mine t3 via units you also need t3 ore for the advanced autominer. Will it be impossible to get t3 ore without already existing t3 ore?
 
 
 
 

I own a fair amount of scans. I was able to read through a lot of them and find which tiles had value and which was worthless. This is a significant advantage over people who don't. And since the ground content is reset people with scans will have an insane advantage over anyone else. For such a resource reset it is important to put everyone to the same level. At first I was happy with me keeping my scans but when I realize that minutes after getting into the pts I had goen though all my scans and found which ones were valuables I realized how unfair that was.

Sone Observation/Comments
 
1) I have 3 miners in this tile all reporting a production rate of 86.34L.x 3 = 259.02. If you look at the pool of 301 then there should still be an available balance for extraction of 41.98L but it says 0 available 0/301.
 
2) Maximum of 10 charges and a rate of 1 charge for per 4.25 hours (with talents) if it was a fresh tile and the person started with 0 charges and a tile needed 15 miners (as an example) that is 63.75 hours to get all the miners going. Degradation of charges starts after 48 hours and we are only looking at 1 tile.
 
3) Ore extraction rates of 100L. There are rocks around me on the ground and they each yield 20L. I'm not going to do the maths but I can pick up a hell of lot of those in an hour in comparison and this even pales compared to the amount minable from an asteroid in an hour or just the current underground mining.
 
4) When MU's were first mentioned I thought they were going to provide a small supplemental supply of ore to just bring in some of those tier 1 items that are needed for manufacturing. I thought they were going to be additional to current underground mining. There are only so many hours in a day and if a higher tier resource is valued at 900q then mining that product for an hour is obviously a better return than an hour spent mining something worth 50q.
 
The market to me suggests the health of a game and it is fair to say there are MASSIVE ore shortages currently with prices gradually creeping up. It wasn't long ago the ship builders who advertised on DU-Creators a badass M core hauler for say 150m and they could turn a profit and prices were stable enough. If you look at what's happened one by one from the smallest solo builder to the largest suppliers the narrative has changed. If you want to go and buy a ship now the response is its going to take days to get the parts AND we aren't sure of the prices. I predict that the amount of ore available to manufacturers will be a LOT lower than is even currently in the system, especially while the replacement to underground mining gets under way. One example of inflation the Alioth price for Warp Cells used to be down around 9k each now they are 32.5k
 
In view of your technical issues with holes in the ground and planets being turned into swiss cheese perhaps a good balance may be to have the holes refill after a month for unowned tiles. That would mean underground bases would remain while also provide a renewing amount of mining resources without the need to store the huge amount of data as is currently the situation.  Scans could remain current for untouched tiles but those that have been mined the scans could be flagged as expired and require rescanning.

This has been done, here -> (props and credit to Gottchar for running the numbers for us)
 
and the numbers say that each player character will be able to get only ~150kL of ore total of all tiers per day - and that is after 145days of talent training to all L5, and assuming you 'win' the rng of the calibration mini-game.
This specific limit on ore extraction rate will kill the industrial game and cause such ore market price inflation, as to effectively shut out all small orgs, individuals and new starters.
 
And this completely ignores the effect of keeping scans valid, which allows large orgs to cherry pick the best tiles to TU in the first day of the patch, denying everyone else even a chance at getting a somewhat reasonable tile set to extract from.

If these figures are indicative of the taxes to be paid on all territories, I will not be able to continue playing the game.
 
I will have to pack up all of my bases. I have one on every planet and moon because I am an explorer and have enjoyed the game as an explorer but the taxes will force me to bring everything I have back to sanctuary and just hang out there until the game goes live.
 
If there are taxes on all territories, including the first on each planet or moon, I will not be paying to play this game.
 
I backed this game because it promoted itself as appealing to many different styles of players but it is turning into a game where money is more important than fun.

If 1 million per week per tile then -> Ore supply is going way down + Quanta supply is going to become a puddle -> No more ships being produced because no money exists to buy them
 
PvPers aren't going to be happy because targets won't exist anymore
I really don't like PvP here... but this makes me feel bad for players who do.

The main issue is that this is going to cause a massive decrease in ore produced. This will also destroy the money supply at a far greater rate than the npc missions could ever counter-act at current mission payouts.
 
The money sink is way too large! Even if large corporations wanted to pay their members, no more quanta will exist to actually pay them. Production of goods is going to stall because no quanta exists to buy goods and everyone will save up for schematics... which will destroy even more money.
 
Without either increasing ore supply with more asteroid rocks or multiplying the npc mission rewards by 10x, this is going to cause the post-schematic market crash.

Q: Will the taxation per hex be reduced to an acceptable amount? (Suggested: 1 mil per month not per week) It feels like the price is set with purely auto-mining in mind while the territories are used for other things: like racetracks, train-lines, bases and works of art  (voxel or dirt works).
Is the plan to force players to move back to sanctuary or space?

Lets look at some of the basics.  Ore generation is tiny compared to what it was.  You could easily mine 100KL in less than an hour of T1 now this will take days.  I know you can have multiple territories but even with talents this idea of auto-miners will see you being pushed to asteroids for the ore fix.  Ore inflation is already at crazy highs and to be honest its shame even from previous feedback NQ just ignored it and carried on.
 
PvP is still broken unless by some magic you fixed the issues already highlighted? 
 
Airbrake changes not sure who knew this change was coming (I didnt) but so many constructs broken!.  Sadly you need loads for large ships to be viable so either make them more powerful to make them viable or look to otherways otherwise you'll end up with ugly ships again
 
Taxes - dont mind it but cost is high especially if your solo, who does this benefit?
 
Scans - Delete them render them useless then everyones equal.  Yea I got over 2k scans..... i'll be a sad panda but seems more fair.

I whole heartedly agree with this post. The scans should be eliminated and everyone start fresh. Not doing so will again only benefit those who are at the top due to meganode finds. Why give them another boost from the same thing. Let them and everyone else start fresh. If not than "tax the higher yielding ore tiles higher while reducing the taxes on lower performing tiles. New players to this game are going to be screwed which means no growth for the game.

If there are massive changes to the mining mechanics we should all start new. Existing scans should not work for the new system of mining. The large orgs will claim all the available good tiles within the first day or two. They should have to go scan new like everyone else.
 
Taxes on territories are way too high considering the cost to buy a tile is 140 000. Now I pay 7 times as much PER WEEK just to keep owning it. INSANE. Taxes need to be 1/4 of this or smaller.
 
I like the direction that is being taken with auto miners but the taxes will ruin the game if they are left this high.
 
Also, I think when you place a mining unit it should not start at 0% calibration. I have to use calibration charges just to start it?? Seems wrong. Minimum calibration needs to be bigger than 0%. Not much but just something even if its only 10 %, there needs to be a minimum that isn't 0.

resolving the problems would probably not be too hard.
here are some suggestions:
1. territory costs should be cheap for the first tiles.. then increase exponetially.. stop the possibility to have players claim unlimited number of tiles using orgs/suborgs.
2. delete all existing scan results and make it a lot harder to identify the mega tiles. make it impossible for single orgs/players to claim a high quantity of them. we've seen players finding patterns before, scanning full planets and being able to claim all undiscovered mega nodes of high value within months before.
 

I am loving the changes so far (especially the ability to play your most recent emote), but I would like to mention:
I don't think you should be taxed for the first tile you place on a planet, just like how the first tile was free pre-demeter, so that you can safely have your house on a tile without it being evicted if you leave too long. Not doing this will leave most planets empty as many people will migrate to space. IK you guys are taxing for mining but I think its a bit unfair if you don't want to - e.g. you sell ships and money can be few and far between, so could you guys maybe consider changing this? Perhaps you could add an option to your tiles where you don't get taxed, but can't mine either? I'm usually pretty stoic about changes you make, but the new brake system really struck a nerve. these things are too flat and large to fit on the outside of sleek / detailed ships. can we see some changes so that we don't have to scatter them around our constructs like plate armour? maybe xl brakes? thanks! -Shaman ?