Shaman

I must admit that a post like this was what I would have liked to see before, being able to speak with devs and understand your vision is important but also being aware that you are reading and analyzing our feedback. Thx for that.
 
From my point of view; the speed limitation equation by the mass of the ships need to be less rude, to allow to have competitive ships with some voxel and a skin/identity, not just a stack of elements, your orientation pushes too much to lose all what is best designed in DU: the construction and the voxel.
 
Shields should be limited by core size; Shield L for core L only, M for core L and M etc..
 
I sent a TTK video test to Deckard regarding tanking a ship with voxel and taking the whole box of an L core, it dies in 20 seconds with a good focus, during a fleet fight with 100% hitrate from anywhere, having ships with so many weaknesses (large cross section, slow, expensive in HC and elements ...) which become throwable and it's clearly not a solution. You need a real balance, the small ships are very powerful due to the misses, weapon damage are really too high for allowing another meta if you change anything.

I'm going to bite tounge on my thoughts on this subject for now and just say thank you for the response Entropy. I'll always applaud the dev team jumping in direct communication like this. Keep it coming mate!

Hello there,
 
First off, thanks for the feedback. 
 
So there's a couple of different things to touch on here:
 
The internal balance of shields sizes CCS/honeycomb health vs Shield Health per mass Venting
I’ll try to address in that order but they will mesh a little since they have some obvious links.
 
First of all smaller shield sizes are at an advantage in regards to HP/mass. So something to keep in mind is that as you go up in size, as it pertains only to shields, you are losing out on the HP/mass ratio (in simpler terms, each HP weighs more on larger shields). This is an inbuilt advantage smaller sizes simply have.
However, the main and primary reason we have different shield sizes at all, is to support constructs of varying sizes and mass. This is the key center-point around which everything else mostly revolves.
 
If you are intending to make a larger, heavier construct, that is going to trend towards or go past the max mass, then the large shield becomes the obvious choice. However, should you want to make something smaller, more agile, and quicker, you may start to use shields of smaller sizes. We already see people experimenting with constructs of smaller sizes using S and M shields to take advantage of the speed, this is a great direction, as long as the pendulum does not swing too far in the favor of smaller constructs.
Now, if the weight penalties do not sufficiently affect the design of the ship, and large shields are still too mass effective even on smaller designs. That's a subject we will continue to address. We do not want to see S designs using exclusively L shields because the additional mass from larger shields doesn't matter in regards to acceleration, max speed, and rotation speed.
 
To answer your question clearly, there is no direct goal for an M shield and an equivalent 95t of voxel to be worse, equal, or better than an L shield and I’ll try to explain why as we go. You should take the shield of the size that makes sense for the design of your ship. If you have the mass available, or are willing to “spend” the mass to have a larger shield, then go for it.
 
Don't want to get into the venting subject too quickly, but using an M with a bunch of honeycomb could allow you to vent once or twice during a battle, especially on a lighter design that can also evade some damage. Maybe the balancing on that isn't perfect, but it should be an option.
At the end of the day the inbuilt advantage of an M shield over an L shield is that it's significantly lighter. You say it's always worth going to an L shield because M+HC is worse in HP, maybe this is the case (more on that later) but the point is that for that 95t you could probably build out a good part of a fully equipped construct, allowing you to have a quicker, more agile construct with a superior max speed, that's the upside.
 
Talking concretely in regards to the mass, if I made a competitive light-ish design with an M shield around 250t ( I don't have one on hand, this is probably on the lighter side after the changes). I'm going about 38-39k km/h max speed, just switching from an M shield to an L shield, I drop down to about 35k km/h. Now adding an extra 95t to a 250t design is probably going to seriously hurt my acceleration as well, so now I'm probably at least looking at redoing my engine setup, which likely adds some more mass as well.
So now the question is more along the lines of, do I prefer an extra 5mill HP from the L shield, or about 5000-6000km/h extra max speed and some extra rotation speed. Well that's a question I’d love feedback on, maybe the max speed and rotation speed isn't enough, I could see that.
 
Secondly there could be an advantage to being able to “modulate” your weight while still gaining some tankiness from honeycomb. An M shield with some honeycomb unlocks some venting on that design, while retaining some/most of the mobility.
 
In regards to your reasoning about M vs L shields. Roughly you're going from “it only makes sense to use the largest shield mass wise, so I can never vent on xs-m because I'm not going to be using voxels on anything smaller than the L”.
 
Well honestly, I don't particularly agree with that, at least not in theory. The interest of voxels is that it's scalable, and you can choose how much voxel you think you need. If you're going to use an M shield because that makes sense for your design mass wise, you don't “have” to use 95t of honeycomb. You can use 30t of a good hc over your ship. That's already going to give you a chunk of armor to help you get some venting going, and probably not endanger your cross-section too much. If that honeycomb buys you enough time for 2 vents (probably optimistic), then you’ve essentially caught up on an L shield in raw shield HP and you’re operating at more than half the mass. 
Now maybe that's not viable, maybe the honeycomb itself is too weak and even reasonable quantities of honeycomb get blown apart too quickly, that's possible and that's something we can look at. Perhaps at that point the subject is more that voxels are generally weak.
 
It's also important to note that in regards to your “real HP”, some amount of the incoming hits are also going to be hitting elements, elements that can be repaired which can give you more tankiness down the road. That means that when comparing raw HP to CCS, you have to take into account that CCS is counting every hit no matter where it's going, as opposed to your raw voxel HP which will, in effect, have additional health from elements.
 

For point 2, there's a couple things to say here. Shields are not inherently in competition with honeycomb, as mentioned we don't want them to be magnitudes apart in terms of HP because it wouldn't make sense, but fundamentally they are supposed to be complimentary.
 
Now in regards to your chart and conclusions. You didn't quite explain what “mean raw HP” is but I can guess it's the actual HP value of the deployed m3 HC multiplied by the average resistance, or at least I get close enough to your numbers using that.

Internally, in our tests using real ships CCS almost always goes first as opposed to the direct destruction of the core, I’d say in general this is situational depending on the design of the ship. In my experience, when constructs actually have a good amount of voxels, it's very difficult to dig your way to the core, and between the HC and the elements and the (occasional, hopefully fewer and fewer) lost shot, I believe that most of the time, you can count on your CCS HP being your “real” HP bar.  If that's not the case, especially on ships that have a good amount of HC, I’d love to see/hear more about it, since that would be contrary to what we’ve tested. Perhaps certain voxels are outliers.
 
My gut feeling is that in the “nano-age” during which CCS was introduced and voxels were rebalanced, people haven't been using voxels a ton in pvp. The goal is for that to change and honestly, if people start using voxels in some quantity, that's already good progress. If it does come out that cheaper voxels, or certain cheap voxels are always way better than more expensive voxels, I'll be more than happy to take a look at that (and to be honest, I’ve started already since I had to look at a bunch of stuff for this).
Lastly on this, you’ve defined that plastic is the best material on the basis of it having the most “mean HP” for the mass. That may be the case, but seeing how much effort players have put into reducing cross-section at almost any cost, I don't think 6700 m3 of plastic is always going to be the best solution.
 

For the last point in regards to venting, I feel like I’ve partly answered the question already but I’ll answer more broadly. Venting isn't something that will or needs to be used. It's a tool at your disposal and it's up to you to figure out how and when you're going to use it depending on the situation and the design of your ship. In contrast it's our job to make sure that those avenues can exist in the game.
 
In view of that, lighter ships now can try to disengage using their speed and try to get away and disengage to vent and come back, some ships may have honeycomb to tank on the CCS, some ships may not be able to reliably vent. If you design your ship in such a way that it cannot vent, then that's on you. However, if it is the case that there are NO competitive designs that allow you to vent at all, I agree that's a problem we need to change.
 
It will come down to the design of your ship, and it's possible that venting will be more usable in certain situations, and certain circumstances than others. For example, I don't expect smaller and lighter ships to have enough CCS/voxels to tank more than a couple hits (let alone all the elements that will die on a compact design) so if they can't escape the firepower using their speed/agility, they are likely dead. But who knows, it might be worth it now to dedicate some amount of HC on ships, specifically to be able to tank a handful of shots to get some shield HP back, even if you don't manage a full cycle off.
 
Essentially from my perspective, if you go no honeycomb, you are accepting that venting is going to be a tougher proposal than if you had dedicated some mass to HC protection, there's a tradeoff there. Now maybe that tradeoff isn't balanced, and there's one obvious better choice than the other, in that case we will take a look (that was sort of what was happening up to 0.29, there wasn't much point to using HC, but I think between the shield mass and health changes,  and the speed changes, HC could have merit again in at least some designs, but maybe it's not enough).
 
For an example on a relatively light design, even just 100m3 of that grade 5 titanium is going to give you around 1.2milll CCS health for 4-5~ extra tonnes. Is that enough to tank serious damage for a while? No, probably not. Is it enough to absorb a couple hits as you try to pull out of range, get your transversal speed up and start venting some HP back, probably yes. The downside is your cross-section may suffer and you'll lose some speed (honestly the speed loss won't be much, even at the most severe parts of the speed curve). Is it worth it? I’d say so yeah, in some designs and some situations, especially now that heavy L ships can’t easily rotate to keep up with smaller constructs, having a slightly larger cross-section probably isn't such a big deal in certain scenarios now.
 
To be fair in regards to that point, I agree that on lighter and more compact constructs, the damage dealt to elements will sometimes be what ends up killing you rather than CCS, or even the core being killed. If you take a nasty hit that blows up half your elements, you are essentially dead. My question is are you able to use some HC, to reduce the chances of a good hit taking you out of the fight entirely.
 
I did a quick test, put up 50m3 of grade 5 titanium and blasted it with a fully talented laser L. It took 3 shots to get through and kill the core I had placed  just behind the material. To be honest though, based on my hit chance on a totally immobile target with zero cone or range issue, I would actually expect an actual S design to take almost 0 damage from L weapons. The shield and the CCS at that point is more of an insurance policy for the occasional hit, or to fight off other smaller constructs.
 
There's also something to be said about balancing cross-section vs compactness. Not having all your elements in the same spot, even on smaller designs, means a single shot has less chance to obliterate half your elements.
 

Anyway, I'm just spitballing on a lot of things, I certainly don't have all the answers, and likely there's some things I’ve missed, or some things I've overestimated the importance of or underestimated the importance of.
 
 
Now to address your “problems to be solved” directly as a conclusion of sorts.
 
   Point 1: In regards to this point, if people start using any honeycomb at all it’ll be a good direction. Once we get to the point where we’re saying “we’re using HC and these honeycombs are all clearly better than these honeycomb”, we will be in a good place to start addressing HC internal balancing. The second thing is I do currently believe that especially on larger ships, CCS is a better representation of health than raw HP, and this is likely the opposite on smaller ships.
 
   Point 2: I‘m not totally set on this. Unplayable seems like a strong word here. I think lighter, smaller constructs have more opportunities now to disengage from fights in order to vent, or potentially exploit larger ships' slow rotation to stay out of the cone of the guns. Additionally, in my mind, some honeycomb can be a valuable addition to smaller designs, to give yourself some room to vent. However, If this isn't enough, we could explore more powerful and quicker vents for smaller shields, that's certainly a possibility.
 
   Point 3: Maybe, I’ve gotten some info by looking into it again today, and it's possible some changes can come down the line on this. In the past we’ve had the opposite issues, so it's possible we went too far.
 

I know this is a big blob, I hope my numbers were right, my brain is a little hazy, and hopefully I’ve answered most of your questions and made this a little clearer for you guys.
 
 
Thanks.
 

I mean, if it did, it would be leaving all those poor star citizen players with nothing else to play, because the two games have almost nothing in common other than the word Space.
 
 

The year was 2012. I was in a wormhole alliance in EvE online.  The hot topic lately between corp mates was this new game being crowd funded at it was getting a lot of money. One particular guy in my Corp was adamant that Star Citizen would kill EvE when it would be released. Almost 10 years ago to the day. Time flies.
 

 

I'm good with "Radar needs to be on the outside of the ship" I  just wish they would stop making elements oversized and glowy/flashing.
If you are a small schooner and you want to achive victory over an aircraft carrier, then yes, the first thing you take out is the communications array/radar tower. duh.

Big giant overpowered ships should have some disadvantages yes.

well, despite what people outside of the PvP crowd think, this was actually hella fun!
The bugged radars and transponders frustratingly made this incredibly difficult and challenging to see who the enemy is, and who might just one of your allies.

We had ships from S to M to L sizes all represented, from the small cross section fast strike crafts to the larger L core battleships. We saw smaller ships trying to utilize their higher max speeds and we saw the bigger ships using their voxel to tank. It was a slug-fest the kind we haven't seen before and that brought excitement with it among us PvPers.

Personally I chalked up 8 kills (2x S, 5x M, 1x L) that I either partook in or even decidedly have gotten myself, but among the stress and hectic of the battle I couldn't save the positions on several of the wrecks from those that tried to flee the engagement zone but did not make it. I am sure there are still lots of wrecks like this, spread round the Alien Core.
 
We had up to 150 constructs, cored or not, directly around the Alien Core battle zone. With all the fighting slightly around it, it might be yet more that were directly engaged in the fight.

Thanks for showing/confirming that Alien cores only have resources to harvest as an excuse. They are meant/designed for combat PVP content first and foremost with no justification without a PVP objective to bother with them.
 
Not saying that having that type of content in game is good or bad, I have no opinion on that either way. But it's not what NQ claims it is.

With the Athena update we decided to hold 3-4 alien cores, the goal being to test our ability to defend multiple cores.

The harsh reality of alien cores
In response, our enemies have put our cores in lockdown ~fifteen times, sometimes 4 on the same day, forcing us to organize ourselves well to allow everyone to come home from work, eat, take care of their family or simply rest. For having a minimum number of people at the end of each lockdown, just in case.
The ends of lockdown follow one another and still nothing on radars, the regularity required by this feature prevents us from pirating on asteroids or pipes as we did before, but the various changes have not reinforced either the interest of them, the motivation is therefore less and less perceptible and it becomes a chore to come and defend...
So we come to this evening of May 21, 4 cores are in lockdown;
Gamma, Theta, Iota and Zeta
Theta and Gamma are respectively under siege at 18:24 UTC and 18:56 UTC, knowing that it takes 20 minutes to secure a core without enemies, the timing is tight but nothing can tell at this moment that our enemies will take advantage of it...

A well thought out plan
18:36 UTC, Theta in siege but without contacts, when suddenly the announcement falls: "CONTACT ON THETA"
10 to 15 ships on radars, the fight is easily managed but a large part of our fleet is therefore in combat lock for the next 10 minutes, preventing warp, and an attack on Gamma begins to grow in our heads. Taking advantage of the combat lock to loot some of the enemy ships, meanwhile another group forms, alerted by the first attack and start moving in direction of Gamma.
18:58 UTC, Gamma in siege and the dreaded announcement drops: "24 CONTACTS ON GAMMA"
We are all surprised and at the same time excited, @here and @everyone appears on the various discords to call Legion for mobilization, we've been waiting for this moment for a long time, impossible to miss it!
We get together in voice, we regroup in the same place in game and we jump into the fray. Focus announcements follow one another, but more surprisingly, there are not 24 contacts but 50... 70... 100... (we reached 150 contacts on the radar at one point, allies and enemies). Several ships are dummys, but the enemy is really numerous, we will have to be disciplined and use our experience in PVP but also as a group.
The confrontation was complex, the previous patch broke the radars and transponders, impossible to sort the contacts on the radar and even less those who change their name like ours (our entire fleet bore the name "WONDU" on its ships), but LUA scripts save us and maintain some semblance of order in this nameless mess.
The station sees its shield descend little by little, an alt left on it allows us to follow it live, protecting the core is impossible without killing all our enemies, it must get out of the 10 minutes of combat lock to recharge its shield. It ends up being core, we manage to regain control, the core itself is not enough, we have to hold these 10 minutes. Unfortunately the timer is constantly reset, even after taking advantage of the fight; the dead ships then repaired by our enemies, the incessant comings and goings of small fast ships and those bearing our tag, it's almost mission impossible to prevent them from approaching, the fight drags on so long as we almost destroyed the entire enemy fleet.

The Liberation
"30 seconds left" (combat timer on alien core)
Announced in voicecom, still no hostile contact... When suddenly a M core appear, rushing to the alien core.
"15"
Some of our remaining forces are concentrated on him, the burst is violent but it's not enough.
"10"
He is at 80km from the core, almost dead but he still represents the last threat of these long hours of confrontation.
"OHNO OHNO OHNO HE IS SHOOTING [filtered] MY LIFE"
...
"IT'S REPAIRED"
Nerd screams, phew of relief, Legion held on but not without difficulty.

A big GG to everyone, even if the game is clearly not the most pleasant for PVP currently, it's events like this that make the game live. Bravo for the organization, the execution and the destruction of the core. We had a lot of trouble keeping our precious plasmas

Some stats about those fight
The opposing forces: Legion vs "Empire, BOO, CVA, Penrose, CYT, IC, CRN, MSI, SB Nation, UA and I think another 1 or 2, just a handful from each, think IC had the most, but mostly new to PvP"
+/- 150 ships involved
~40 Legion members at the end
More than 3 hours of fight
45+ wrecks still close to Gamma this morning
Very very little amount of stasis
Too much ammo fired
Too much kills
Not enough transponder xD
 
 

Note - Firstly we thought Alien Cores in lockdown don't produce items but apparently they do.  It still takes a significant amount of time to get it into lockdown but anyway not sure if thats correct or not.   A group of us have randomly been hitting cores on and off due to numbers.  Secondly from asking NQ we wrongly assumed if the Core/Base shield goes down and we capture it then the base shield goes up and we capture it
 
The Preparation
 
With the majority of the PvP base in Legion plans went on behind to secretly arm non-PvPer's to a huge event before the impending wipe decision, a lot of our PvP'ers have paused with NQ's post about a wipe.   For props Deadrank/Caerus contacted with a potential idea to gather a group of orgs and equally arm, provide logistics support for one final event but also a good way to give NQ feedback.  They had built warp sleds to carry vessels and other orgs built ships and poked their non-PvP players so a very raw and quick into PvP for many.
 
The Day
 
The day had finally come to give it a go.  Prep was completed and the gathering point confirmed.  Forces from multiple orgs were ready and an rough plan was formed.  A fake attack was made (maybe more too) but the bulk of the fleet was near the Alien Core.  Orgs/Groups were split into comms with A 'Siege wing' sole role to target the core (Reality is they should have just shot ships now what we know).  We knew Legion potentially had a 'Warp Beacon' Nearby so knew it had to be as quick as possible as unfortunately if your the attacker you really are limited compared to the defender who could keep warping more ships in.  We had around 30 people to start with which is a mammoth amount of people (this increased slightly as more joined in) but one of us was dropping off 'decoy' ships just to mess up the radar (they even had weapon looking stuff on them!).
 
Transponders were broken still as NQ did not fix it in time so this was even more of a challenge with a huge list, people new to scripts/Lua.  
 
The fight begun with one of us blasting in to spot a couple of Legion Ships.  We did call out core ID's to target but this was a newly formed force so no simple task at all.  I personally was chasing a L ship for a period and swung back to the core to assist.  The L cores of our group begun battering the Base shield with others targeting legion ships (core ID's).  Our channel had the bulk of people and it was a little chaotic.  I had personally split off with a few Legion ships and chased an L core which I successfully Cored and with more on radar for me it was to quickly get off grid to vent my shield (was low).  I rejoined the fold closely and we were still at that point successfully coring Legion allied ships but equally ours were slowly being popping off, then rapidly more and more Legion ships appeared.
 
The tide had totally turned quickly.  Multiple ships, multiple double/triple seater ships (A lot of ours were single seater things) all targeting people with ease.  Some allied forces had already begun to flee unbeknown to the core group but the Alien core shield was still going down.   It was obvious without the people and ships it was only a matter of time before it was a full retreat.
 
It was at this point a few ships named the same as Legion and strafed into the fold to keep hitting the core.  The shield was close to breaking point.  It was at this time at 1% shield I failed to escape and at 1.8SU away one final shot hit me and BOOM.............  I did however exit in time to float about in space.  I managed to fly to the core in case we needed to repair to capture it.
 
At this time Lovoda finally made it on 'grid' his ship opened up onto the Alien Core and BOOM the core died.  A few of us frantically tried to repair the core and they did so we thought huzzar! we won the day.  Sadly this was not the case in fact Legion blew it up within minutes (we did delete some plasma and took 1 that's it).  Thinking it was a bug one of us kept coming back with a ship and kept re-coring it or we flew to a wreck and reactivated old ships that had cores stored in their containers.  Honestly we thought it was a bug so kept going!.
 
Running out of throw away ships, wrecks to use we called it a day.  I guess we thought wrongly if the core died, repaired its yours with a shield.   So its good feedback to know that is not the case.
 
Anyway this was a blast but that was the last made hussar from the group.  Reality is you equally needed a trained PvP group to combat another PvP group so well played to Legion it was an absolute blast and more importantly the SERVERS HELD UP WITHOUT MAJOR LAG!!!!!!!!
 
Thank you to all who made it happen and turned up.
 
NQ has lots to do but this certainly has given food for thought
 
Honvik
Premier of the Empire

Hello, Noveans!
 
We have good news: DACs are coming to Dual Universe! As many of you already know, DACs are an important feature of the game’s economy, allowing players to gain game time with quanta. We will initially be releasing a website-based DACs system in the coming months and will then be further developing the system moving forward.

WHAT IS A DAC?
 
A Digital Access Coupon (DAC) is equivalent to a month of subscription. Think of it as a digital coupon that you can use to gain 30 days of subscription time or transfer to another player. 

HOW CAN I REDEEM AND TRANSFER DACs?

Players will interact with this first iteration of DACs on our website. You’ll be able to see an overview of your DACs and be able to redeem as many as you’d like in exchange for game time. You’ll also be able to find other players by searching for their name and transfer DACs to them, but in order to receive DACs, a player must first have an account or create one on our website. There are no limits to the amount of DACs that may be transferred from one account to another.
You will also be able to view your DACs history, giving you an overview of previous transactions.

HOW DO I GET DACs?
 
The initial set of DACs being released has already been purchased by our Kickstarter backers through the Founder and Supporter packages. You can however receive DACs from any player who has already purchased them, for example in exchange for quanta, allowing you to buy Dual Universe game time using your in-game assets, or to gift game time to friends.
 
 
Just as a reminder, we wish to reinforce that this is only the first iteration of DACs in Dual Universe. We’ll be adding to this system over time and will work on integrating DACs into the game as an item that can be traded directly from a market. As always, we welcome your thoughts and look forward to reading your feedback in this forum thread.
 

...er...um......er....after 6 months we really are still thinking very hard about whether to wipe or not...we want to make the best decision honest...it's not so we want to wait until the last possible minute before you unsub...honest....
 
It's exactly like ccp ....

Why not OR Space engines Or Atmo Engines and 1 appropriate fuel tank (XS). That gives atmo people a vehicle and space people a space vehicle... And not rich people a pocket rocket that can do both...

If paying 35 cet per day or access to a game is too much for you, you should probably check your priorities
 
While DAC by design wil lbe tradable in game and as such be a way to earn gametime in game, it wil lbe massively harder than doing so in a game like EVE because of the fact DU is so insanely shallow as far as options to make the quanta you'd need.

I don't really get it from a business perspective. The longer you play the game, the more it costs NQ. Why would they then reward players with free time? That's combining higher cost with no revenue. 
 
The only way DAC works is if there's enough active subs to support those that don't pay -- then it becomes a money sink and a lure to encourage people to get hooked thinking "hey I can earn my sub by grinding" when most likely they can't. 
 
If DU doesn't first have enough subs to be stable, then people trading quanta for DAC doesn't make as much sense. If they allow it...it will be absurdly expensive.
 
I mean, it seems obvious...NQ only makes less money the more people actually play and I'm skeptical that they'll be so overflowing with subs that they will be willing to exchange free play time for quanta for any reason. 

Depends on how you many people are willing to (buy and) sell DAC and at how much they'll value it...
 
I can buy a year's subscription for $83.88, that is $6.99/month. With a single account, I can maybe make 350M quanta a month, with a ton of skills already in place and knowing how to do it... But that's like spending 80+ hours/month on just gathering resources to sell and make quanta... If I choose just the 'money maker', it's down to around 250M quanta a month, but the time it takes actively is about 20 hours per month, plus a computer running 100+ hours/week...
 
A month of DU time is just $7 for me, so looking at what I make per hour in RL (after taxes) vs a 'job' in DU is... Making my head spin... But not everyone looks at games the same way... I can totally see myself buy DAC with RL cash at a certain point after launch and sell it ingame for quanta. But how much quanta is a DAC worth in the new post-wipe/relaunch game? Is it worth 4 million T1 ore or ~20 special missions? I could see designers eventually paying for the game via DAC, as their designs are make once and sell forever (besides the updates after patches). Maybe industrialists as well, if they scale up large enough or sell certain rare items at a decent rate...
 
That doesn't mean that DU becomes a p2w game for me, it becomes a game where I set goals that once I achieve them and they work, I can retire them instead of grinding it till I break. I can focus on projects instead of constantly keeping up with NQ game changing/breaking patches...
 
The the other big question will be, what will a DAC cost, will there be a difference in price between 1 or 10?

Don't agree with the 1 month trail.  Bots will destroy this game.
 
You can already buy DACs from other players so buying a sub is already a thing once release hits.

Sub with quanta (DAC) is already planned but not until release.

Because gold farmers always make mmos better.  
-You are probably right, but there would have to be brakes on the crazy CN asteroid blockade that’s bound to happen. 

This is classically called 'overextending'...
CVA currently has 4, Legion currently has 6, they had 8+...
I'm also thinking of a lot of options not to have to fly 300SU or warp the entire fleet... It's called a garrison... If you don't have enough people to defend each alien core, you shouldn't be expected to hold onto all of them...

What was initially planned for the game is that players could create their own safe zone which will be attackable by other players.
For the moment the alien space cores are only an L shield on a static core.

Alien core can be a good feature... If only players really need to fight for them, let me show you what we will really have 99% of the time:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1480246940
(No sound because of comms, sorry)

Why defend a station is a waste of ressources and time?
- Shields are too low, we can't wait for our ennemies before moving
- So we will need to travel 300SU+ or warp our entire fleet each time we have to defend, even for nothing
- Ship aren't protected when dock on a station with a shield (??) - This can help ppl with lot of job/kids or else to setup their ship when they can
- If we take at least 2 core we have to defend an alien core each day
- If we want to attack, we add another timer where we need to be, again it can be each day
- Why we don't have a combat free timer after we win a defense?

With your wipe talk without ANY DECISION, with your patch against any PVP mechanic or method, a big nocare about some of the oldest bugs known in DU... We don't have any other content outside of alien core in PVP now.
We send plenty of idea/feedback for a better PVP or more confortable, we tryhard each PTS for help, report each bug/exploit find even if that lead to another nerf of our content
How can we keep our players hype for Dual Universe?
Why NQ stay so quiet? (Entropy did a nice feedback but only around voxels and shields for PVP but some other part are missed)

Our ennemies got the same problem, maybe more because we are really lucky to have so many ppl still active on DU. Don't kill your game, listen us, don't stay focus on your ideas if everyone say it's not the good way and talk with your community.

Hello, Noveans! Athena’s Lua changes bring many community-requested features into the game, and there is a lot to go over, so let's dive right in!
 
SIGNS REFORGED
 
We’re revising the resolution of opaque and transparent screens to 1024x513 pixels in order to better fit them into the real screen element dimensions and improve image resolution on screens.
 
Also, each sign will now have a resolution adapted to its actual size:
Horizontal Sign XS : 1024x512
Horizontal Sign S : 1024x1024
Horizontal Sign M : 1024x512
Horizontal Sign L : 1024x256
Vertical Sign XS : 512x1024
Vertical Sign M : 512x1024
Vertical Sign L : 256x1024
    These changes are also accompanied by new features and substantive changes.
 
NEW TEXT & COLORS RENDERING
 
With this update, we’re making a fundamental change in text rendering technology. Called, ‘Signed Distance Field,’ (SDF), this rendering method allows for cleaner rendering at any font size and also supports effects such as outlines and shadows.
 
As a result, here are some text-related changes in the Rendering Lua API:
[int] loadFont([string] fontName,[int] defaultSize) - The font size setting becomes the "default" font size and can be changed during script execution with the setFontSize function.
addText([int] layer,[int] font,[string] text,[float] x,[float] y) - Now supports the following properties : fillColor, shadow, strokeColor, strokeWidth.
 
And some additions:
[float] getFontSize([int] font): Return the currently-set size for the given font.
setFontSize([int] font,[int] size): Set the size at which a font will render.
setDefaultTextAlign([int] layer,[int] alignH,[int] alignV): Set the default text alignment of all subsequent text strings on the given layer.
 
But that's not all! As you may have seen from the image below, we have also added support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) colors which will let you add a glow effect on your colors.
 
To use the HDR colors, you just have to set color values higher than 1 in the colors you use; commonly multiply each color component by the same HDR coefficient.
 
As an example, here is the ‘PEGGED,’ screen from Bonusaben’s Underdun Arcade modified with HDR colors:
   
LET’S MOVE LAYERS
 
One of the most common requests for screen rendering has been the ability to apply transformations (translation, rotation and scaling) to text. Given that this is not strategically optimal for rendering, we’ve decided to apply transformations to layers instead with the following functions:
setLayerOrigin([int] layer,[float] x,[float] y): Set the transform origin of a layer; layer scaling and rotation are applied relative to this origin.
setLayerRotation([int] layer,[float] rotation): Set a rotation applied to the layer as a whole, relative to the layer's transform origin.
setLayerScale([int] layer,[float] sx,[float] sy): Set a scale factor applied to the layer as a whole, relative to the layer's transform origin.
setLayerTranslation([int] layer,[float] tx,[float] ty): Set a translation applied to the layer as a whole.
 
We’ve also added a clipping area! This allows you to define an area to limit rendering per zone, especially useful for making scrolling areas and so on.
setLayerClipRect([int] layer,[float] x,[float] y,[float] sx,[float] sy): Set a clipping rectangle applied to the layer as a whole.  
Please note that anything drawn outside of the clipping area will not be visible but will still be counted in the rendering budget.
 
THE MINING UNIT API
 
As already announced in Athena roadmap, we’ve decided to add a Lua API allowing players to take accurate information from Mining Units with the following functions:
[string] getStatus() : Returns the current status of the mining unit ("STOPPED", "STALLED", "RUNNING")
[float] getRemainingTime() : Returns the time remaining on the drilling process.
[int] getActiveOre() : Returns the ID of the current selected resource.
[table] getOrePools() : Returns the list of resources pool on the territory. Each resource pool object of the list contains ‘id’, ‘available’ and ‘maximum’ fields.
[float] getBaseRate() : Returns the base production rate of the mining unit.
[float] getEfficiency() : Returns the production efficiency of the mining unit.
[float] getAdjacencyBonus() : Returns the territory's production adjacency bonus factor. This value will only be updated when a new batch is started.
[float] getCalibrationRate() : Returns the current calibration rate of the mining unit.
[float] getOptimalRate() : Returns the optimal calibration rate of the mining unit.
[float] getProductionRate() : Returns the production rate of the mining unit.
[vec3] getLastExtractionPosition() : Returns the position of the extracted ore during the last calibration in world coordinates.
[int] getLastExtractingPlayerId() : Returns the ID of the last player who calibrated the mining unit.
[float] getLastExtractionTime() : Returns the time in seconds since the last calibration of the mining unit.
[float] getLastExtractedVolume() : Returns the amount of ore extracted during the last calibration.
[int] getLastExtractedOre() : Returns the ID of the extracted ore during the last calibration.
 
And with some events:
[event] statusChanged([string] status) : Emitted when the mining unit status is changed. Provide the new status.
[event] completed([int] oreId, [float] amount) : Emitted when the mining unit completes a batch. Provide the item ID of the mined ore and the amount mined in the batch.
[event] calibrated([int] oreId, [float] amount, [float] rate) : Emitted when the mining unit is calibrated. Provide the item ID of the extracted ore, the amount extracted and the new calibration rate.
 
THE ITEM API
 
We have chosen to integrate the notion of item-IDs in a more concrete way. This is the first API using this principle, which seems to us the most adapted. Some functions and events will provide you with an ID designating an item in the game.
 
We will then integrate the getItem function:
[table] getItem([int] id): Return the item table corresponding to the given item ID.
 
The returned table will then contain the following information:
[int] id : The ID of the item.
[string] name : The name used to define the item.
[string] displayName : The name of the item used in the game.
[string] locDisplayName : The name of the item used in the game in the language of your game.
[string] displayNameWithSize : The name of the item used in the game with the size (XS,S,M,L).
[string] locDisplayNameWithSize : The name of the item used in the game with the size (XS,S,M,L) in the language of your game.
[string] description : The description of the item in English.
[string] locDescription : The description of the item in the language of your game.
[string] type : The type of item.
[float] unitMass : The unit mass of the item.
[float] unitVolume : The unit volume of the item.
[int] tier : The tier of the item (1 to 5)
[string] size : The size of the item (xs, s, m, l)
[string] iconPath : The path of the item's icon in the game files (usable on the screens).
 
BONUS FEATURES
 
We’ve also decided to include several smaller features with this update:
 
The function allowing you to draw a quadratic Bézier curve:
addBezier([int] layer,[float] x1,[float] y1,[float] x2,[float] y2,[float] x3,[float] y3): Add a quadratic Bézier curve to the given layer. Supported properties: shadow, strokeColor, strokeWidth.
 
Additional functionality for images:
addImageSub([int] layer,[int] image,[float] x,[float] y,[float] sx,[float] sy,[float] subX,[float] subY,[float] subSx,[float] subSy): Add a sub-region of an image to the given layer. Supported properties: fillColor, rotation.
[float],[float] getImageSize([int] image): Return the width and height of an image.
 
Finally, a function that lets you know the language setting of the rendering client:
[string] getLocale(): Return the locale in which the game is currently running (“en-EN”, “fr-FR”, “de-DE”).
 
CONCLUSION
 
Our goal is always to provide a larger and more feature-rich panel while maintaining rendering performance, and we hope that you will enjoy these Lua additions coming in Athena.
 
As always, we appreciate your feedback, so please share your thoughts and let us know your ideas on what Rendering Lua-related improvements and/or additions you would like to see in Dual Universe. Also, our API approach seems to be suitable and could potentially be applied to other API’s in-game, but we’d love to hear your feedback on that first.
 
NQ-Ligo is looking forward to discussing them with you in this forum thread!

Our new system map overhaul gives powerful new tools to players in visualizing the Helios system. You can read about this new Athena update feature below!

OVERVIEW
 
Players can now see and navigate around the entire system map laid out to scale in three dimensions.  

 
Setting a Warp Point will no longer replace your current destination. Players may now set a destination waypoint separately to a warp-specific waypoint.  
Space resources such as the Alien Core Units are accessible through the map.   
We’ve added a better organized menu that opens quicker and has a more useful filter system in the top-left menu, allowing players to filter items on the map by name, owner, or construct type.  

 
Players can see coordinates displayed in real time as they move the target around the map, allowing for precise copying of coordinates, position input and bookmark creation.  
THE CONTROLS
 
You can freely move around the map, rotate it by holding left click, pan around horizontally by holding left + right click and pan vertically by holding right click. You can zoom by scrolling your mouse wheel. You can also reset your view back to default with a button in the top menu.  
You can toggle display settings using the associated button in the top panel, such as the target plane or the safe zones. This will let you choose the amount of elements visible on the map at all times.  

 
You can select any item with left click, select and move to any item with double-left click, and select, move to and reorient the camera with middle click.  
You will also see an exact distance indicator between your avatar and any location (or your current selection and any location, if there is one), by mousing over them. Distances can also be quickly gauged using the grid size indicator at the top.  
Players may set destinations, warp points, open planet maps and more from the menu on the top-right of the map when selected. These actions are also served through contextual menus displayed on bodies in the map.  
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As always, we’d like to hear from you. How do you like the new map? Will it have an impact on your game? Please let us know here.
 

I am all for a partial wipe where the economy is reset, quanta + talents are removed, but all elements on constructs are removed as well.
That way old players still have the honeycomb hulls of their constructs as a base for rebuilding everything.
As a builder and this is the one I would be most happy with, as replacing elements is far less painful than replacing honeycomb.