Shaman

While I don't disagree with the changes to Airbrakes, can you explain why Demeter is the time to implement this? A time where we are all already experiencing a game changing shift in the way we will play Dual Universe, with entire systems being implemented and changed, why would adding an previously un-announced change that will go and cause the majority of constructs to not function properly, be something you thought should be included with Demeter? 

Hello Noveans!
 
We would love to hear all your feedback on the PTS version of Demeter, come and join us and let us know here what you think.
Bugs should be reported here.

As announced in the Inside Novaquark: Demeter vlog, the Dual Universe public test server (PTS) will be available to enable players to explore the new features and changes we’ve been working on for the Demeter update. The database has been mirrored from the current build on our live server to the test server so that your inventory, talents, and constructs will be readily available. 
 
SEE IT FOR YOURSELF
 
Since Demeter introduces significant server-side changes via the integration of hexoctree technology, we need to ensure that we run a charge test on the PTS to assess the stability of these changes. We’ve planned two dedicated time slots where players will be able to play with Novaquark staff, and we kindly ask you to try to connect to the PTS during these two slots.
 
There will be two long weekends, of three to four days each, for testing Demeter on PTS:
October 29th - PTS opens with NQ personnel and players at 13:00 UTC and will remain open until 08:00 UTC on November 1st, and/or...
November 5th - PTS opening with a potential second event with NQ personnel and players (depending on the October 29th event). PTS server will remain open until 08:00 UTC on November 8th.
 
You will also be able to play around with mining units, an exciting addition to the game that will negate the need to dig underground. And, with mining units, a new minigame used to calibrate mining units and increase their output efficiency. It will also trigger spawns of rocks for surface harvesting. 
 
In view of the impending geometry reset, we highly recommend that all players spend some time on PTS to see how their constructs will be impacted. The geometry reset is not a wipe. Structures above ground will not be affected. Anything below ground is still there; you will only need to clear out the dirt around subterranean constructs. Inventory will not be impacted in any way. Points invested in mining-related talents will be credited back to your talent points pool. (Note that this will not be the case for the PTS, as you can simply refund your talent points there by typing /respec in chat and then reconnecting to the PTS.)
 
DIGGERS GONNA DIG
It’s important to stress that you will still be able to dig to create underground constructs and do some terraforming. The difference now will be that you won’t collect ore while doing so. 
 
If you haven’t watched the vlog yet, we highly encourage you to do so. In particular, you should watch this segment that shows how the geometry reset can affect an existing, pre-Demeter subterranean construct and the “quick clear tool” assistance we may be able to offer to owners of very large underground constructs.  
 
We ask that requests for construct excavation assistance be submitted before Demeter launches. This is available only for static constructs built before the Demeter release. (The launch date for the update is TBD, but we will give plenty of advance notice beforehand.) You’ll need to use this handy form to submit your request, and be sure to include the following information: 
Owner name (player or organization) Construct Name Construct Size (dropdown) Construct Location (orbital body dropdown) Coordinates An image of your construct  
Excavation will begin one day after Demeter launches and might take a few days to complete, depending on the number of requests. The queue will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis. The sooner you submit your request, the closer you’ll be to the top of the list. It’s important to note that the excavation tool carves out a cube whose dimensions are determined by the voxel boundary box of the construct. Construct owners will still need to do clean-up here and there. For the best results, or if you are under time pressure, we strongly encourage construct owners to do their own clearing, thus ensuring that the area meets your exact standards for form and style.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Feedback and comments regarding Demeter on PTS can be shared in this forum thread.
Bugs can be reported in this forum thread.

NQ, with this editor you got a winner. This will be easy to use and straightforward for new players, while still allowing all the shenanigans (up to the complexity limit in the future) and gives blocky ships no excuses anymore. Feels like christmas to see this video and cant wait to build ships with it

Skimmed the read, I was wondering if we could "export" a shape. So you can then "import" it by copying a string from somewhere. Could be extremely useful for Lua stuff as you could make something which generates the voxel format of a voxel you make on a screen or similar. And also just nice to have so voxel people can more directly share shapes.

Voxels make up almost everything you see in the world of Dual Universe. Currently, most creations are made using the basic tools we provide with standard shapes such as cubes, spheres, cylinders, wedges, and tetrahedrons. 
 
More intricate designs can be achieved through the art of ‘voxelmancy’ where players customize the shapes of voxels using a variety of methods and techniques based on how voxels react to each other when placed. This very advanced technique allows voxelmancers to place each corner of a voxel exactly where they want it. To do that, they use what is called a ‘voxel reactor’.
 

 
Voxel reactors, as amazingly useful as they are, have three major drawbacks:
They are time consuming to use. They are not very intuitive for beginners. They are laid out in a checkered pattern in all three dimensions.  
The last item on that list poses some technical problems. 

VOXEL COMPLEXITY
When we are effectively applying a checkered pattern of voxels of different colors or even air, it creates a relatively large amount of small surfaces. This doesn’t really pose a problem for a single reactor, but can be a performance burden for some voxel libraries that consist of thousands of reactors.
 
With more and more detailed constructs of complex design being built, it’s become problematic for the ‘mesh service’ system that generates the shapes that you see when not in build mode. On a few rare occasions, highly-detailed constructs may not render at all or their honeycomb will disappear. 
 
To prevent this from happening, we will gradually implement a limitation to the complexity that can be created in a single chunk of voxels. It will start with a simple complexity gauge in Demeter:
With the launch of Demeter, you will start by seeing a new feedback gauge while building which highlights the region you’re actively working on and will appear as a bar in the HUD that indicates the complexity level of that region as a percentage.  In a future update (exact update number still to be discussed), we will introduce the eagerly-awaited vertex precision tool (Known to many of you as the fabled vertex editor) as a way to ensure that the limitation to voxel reactors doesn’t hinder players’ ability to create amazing constructs in the game. (More on that below.) In a subsequent future (and yet undefined) update, we will enforce the complexity value limit to be 100% for any new voxel operations. As such, old constructs and blueprints will not be altered by this but may become unalterable if they are above the limit in a region. Rest assured that if you have an existing construct that’s above the limitation, you will still be able to use it as is.  
With all that out of the way, let’s get to the fun part!

THE VERTEX PRECISION TOOL
There is currently a bit of a gap between learning how to build using the basic tools and more advanced voxelmancy techniques, something we’ve wanted to address for a long time. The introduction of the vertex precision tool in a future update will allow you to take any vertex (a corner of a voxel) and move it to a new location on any of its three axes inside the vertex's moveable area at different resolutions. This will provide an intuitive way that fills that crucial gap between basic building and advanced voxelmancy to fine-tune your builds.
 
See the video below for a demonstration of how this works. Please keep in mind that the video only shows an early prototype, but we think it’s already promising enough to make you as excited as we are about the possibilities of this tool.
 
 

 

 
VENI, VIDI, VOXIED
I came, I saw, I voxeled 
 
We hope that these voxelmancy changes, along with all of the great new Lua functions added in the Selene update, will inspire and encourage you to make even more amazing things than you already are. 
 
Check out our Tutorials page for even more ideas and tips on using voxels to bring your creativity to life in Dual Universe. 
 
As always, we’d love to hear your comments and answer your questions on the forum. 
 

What are you carrying? What kind of traffic? OST is stored on your PC and played by your PC from your disk, there is no server traffic here .. It is a complete nonsense of people who do not understand how it works. Or do you want to say that music is transmitted to you from the server all the time? Are you seriously?

Honestly I think terraforming talents are just as effected in this scenario as mining talents. They are much less of an asset when mining asteroids. Full talent reset would be overkill but I would suggest including terraforming talents in this reset as well. 

How about the terrain talents we all boosted for faster and bigger digging while looking ore. These will be of no use either, can these please be added to the list. 

Can you please do the same for PVP? You change all time our voxel tanking, our weapon, capacity cost, the meta itself... Don't listen only PVE players plz, thanks.

Thank you for not doing a complete talent reset.

When the Demeter update goes live soon, some talents will be reset to fit the mining overhaul and the introduction of mining units. 
 
The following list of talents will be reset and their points recredited to your available talent pool:
Mining and Inventory Miner Mining Range Advanced Mining Mining Optimizations Scanner Upgrades Detector Upgrades Dredger Mining Efficiency Scanning Efficiency Scanner Advanced Upgrades Detector Efficiency Detector Optimization  
Any of these actively training when the update is released will be taken out of the queue, and the points already invested during training will be seamlessly recredited to your available talent pool.
 
Note that this will not be the case for the PTS, as you can simply refund your talent points there by typing /respec in chat and then reconnecting to the PTS.

Join the conversation here. 
 

I agree with this.
If the game is ready with more content and increased performance, list it on steam with advertisements. Then stonks

Game doesnt need players now, it needs them at launch.  That is when it could go on Steam, when it is finished.

I know NQ isn't going to listen to me, and i've said this a BILLION times already, but i'm going to say this anyway.
 
smaller core sizes need more perks. There is nothing stopping you from strapping a xs sized ship onto an L core, and getting all of the benefits from that core size. The only 'benefits' you get from smaller core sizes is a slower identification speed (negligible with skills) and a faster repair time (negligible with shields), which, to be frank, is terrible.
 
it didn't used to be so bad either.
before 0.23, radars had a nerf where they could only lock certain core sizes from certain ranges, (eg L radars were only able to lock xs cores from about 40km away), which is a perfect fix to this problem since it removes the issue of small ships being unable to get into the firing range of L cores before being shot at/ destroyed, as well as making the meta much more diverse as the best counter for xs cores would be other xs/s cores (think rock paper scissors, but with cores from xs→s→m→l→xs).
I mean seriously, WHY was this removed? imagine the metagame with something like this, its such a simple fix that would make pvp 10x more fun. my only guess is that NQ came up with this nerf when xs cores could still use L guns, which i guess is a fair fix at the time, but makes absolutely no sense if you remove the ability for those xs ships to use L guns in the first place.
 
my second alternate solution would be to give core sizes different max speeds, which i have seen many people request (including me) and IMO seems like a very good idea. it could finally give people the chance to escape/catch up with their enemies, with the downside of dealing less damage/ being weaker. if NQ cant/wont do the radar fix then I would be very happy with this change as well.
 
I've contacted the devs about this radar a month or so ago, but they never got back to me about what happened to my suggestion. thoughts?

When you have more than 4 fuel tanks of the same sort (atmo or space), the fuel window gets a scrollbar.
The command seat has only 10 connection available where 1 is already taken by the core.
So why not have a fuel hub that only takes up 1 seat connection and have the hub display the fuel tanks in a window with a scrollbar?
 
I think its pretty lame that we can only connect 10 things to a command seat. Also I think that solving this problem with lua-fuel screens n stuff should be an option, not mandatory. An L-core is a pretty big ship, 1 AGG, 1 warp, 1 radar, 1 ECU, 1 core, 1 gyro, 1 shield and there goes 7 of the 10 connections available, with a fuel hub this would not be a problem (you can still have 20 fuel tanks on this massive ship).
 
And the on/off switching of engines. we can already connect them to relays/switches, why cant we turn them on/off? Yes it can be done with 'simple' lua, but I dont know why I should learn lua for this game when the things are already in place. Why doesnt the on/off switch work on engines, but you can connect them? Is it more fun to make it difficult for players?
For parking in space or taxi on the runway, its very handy to have some engines turned off.
 
What you guys n girls think of my complaints/suggestions?

These are ridiculous suggestions and overly simplistic. Small ships aren't supposed to fight large ships (alone anyway), but they should be faster, more maneuverable, and harder to hit. Weapons should absolutely not do the same damage all across the board, which is why tracking should be the modifier that evens the playing field between the different size ships.

Hi, Can we please have a Customizable hud. Just looking for basic move and size functions. I don't want to be forced to use a lua script. Especially in light of the lua errors

if the game isn't balanced now, it may affect how other gameplay elements are implemented in the future, leading to an ultimately broken game foundation. plus; its much easier gamedev wise to balance instead of adding new features.

so basically "CORE COMBAT STRESS" = a global hitpoints value for the ship.
ship dead = HP reach 0 or core element is directly destroyed
Why not call it that way ("ship HP") instead of a confusing name like "core combat stress" ? people are used to "HP notion" in gaming. not much to 'stress' (which is simply here 100%-HP% left)
 
 

We recently announced that an additional update, Ares, was added to our public roadmap. Many of the features and changes for Ares will be available on our public test server (PTS), when it is updated and back online tomorrow, September 15th, at 10.00 UTC. (See the roadmap here.)
 
In that announcement, we promised a devblog that would talk about the big-ticket items we plan to deliver with Ares: the new Core Combat Stress victory condition, more functionality for shields, and PVP-related fixes. (Inside Ares, Part Two will cover warp improvements as well as boarding and docking changes. Watch for it on Thursday.) 
 
Without further ado, let’s dive in! 

CORE COMBAT STRESS 
In a nutshell, core combat stress represents a core's ability to keep functioning under prolonged weapons fire. A core unit that takes too much stress will be destroyed and will be considered a PvP destruction.
 
Core combat stress will be used as a second loss condition on constructs during PvP, working in tandem with generic core unit destruction. It does not matter which one happens first, only that one happens eventually. This will allow us to support larger fights and ensure that everyone's weapons are doing damage, even if it is only against core stress.
 
Stress will be accumulated as the construct takes non-shield weapons hits, taking the form of a gauge that starts at 0% and goes up to 100%. Non-shield hits on a construct will make the gauge go up. The core stress gauge is affected by a weapon's raw damage and is unaffected by the resistances of the element or material the attack hit.
 
Example: A weapon hit does 1,000 thermic damage. It hits an element with 50% thermic resistance doing 500 damage to the element; however, the core stress gauge will count 1,000 damage for that hit.
 
When the core stress gauge hits 100%, the core unit will be destroyed and will be considered a PvP destruction (as if it was destroyed by a weapons hit) and everything that implies.
 
The value of the stress gauge will be defined by the following:
The base of the core stress gauge value will be the health sum of honeycomb materials on your construct. The quality of the material used will provide multipliers to the value. Higher honeycomb tiers will provide better multipliers. The type of material used will provide a different multiplier, with products having a better multiplier than pure materials.   
Finally, the stress gauge will gain health linearly with honeycomb until a cap, at which point additional honeycomb will have diminishing returns.

SHIELDS v2
The fundamentals for shields were unveiled in this devblog and made their initial debut with the Apollo update in August. The time has come to increase their potency and value with some new features. 
 
Shields v2 brings adjustable resistances and venting. 
 
Adjustable resistances Shields have a base resistance value of 10/10/10/10 with an additional resistance pool of 60% that players can assign in 5% increments to any of the four resistances. (Examples: 10/10/10/70 or 25/25/25/25) Once players have locked in their resistance selections, those choices will be active and cannot be changed until the cooldown time of 60 seconds has expired, at which time the resistances will remain as set unless they are recalibrated. Shields UI will display which resistances are taking the most damage on the shield, allowing pilots to make an informed decision regarding the settings. Venting Pilots may vent their shields at any point, the exception being when the venting cooldown is active. Cooldown duration varies per size, with smaller shield variants having lower cooldowns. Venting shields will do two things: Turn off the shields, bearing in mind that they can’t be active during venting.  Begin shield regeneration of a certain percentage per second.  Venting may be deactivated at any time. Deactivation will occur automatically when shields have reached maximum capacity.   
We highly encourage pilots to explore the use of shields and venting while it’s available on PTS. Since there’s a bit of a learning curve involved, the test environment is the perfect place to experiment freely without any real cost to your ship on the Live server. 
 
PVP FIXES
We’re closing the loop on some “unintended” uses of these game mechanics. 
Speed Resume deactivated on construct death: When a core is destroyed, that construct will be incapable of benefitting from speed resume in any way. This will avoid and fix various exploits in regards to “ghost-riding” destroyed ships into safe zones. Offline player deaths on construct death: Offline players on constructs will now be killed on core destruction. This will avoid logging off characters that can then log back in, repair the core unit, and attempt to flee.   
Originally, the plans also included a change that would cause ownership loss on core unit crash destruction. Thanks to our intrepid PTS players who tried it out and promptly let us know the problems such a change could cause, we pulled it from the Ares update. (Read the related post from the Game Design team’s NQ-Entropy.) 
 
This is exactly why we have a test server and why we value those who do reconnaissance there before the updates are released on the Live server. We offer sincere thanks to the players who took the time to give us candid, constructive feedback. 
 
SEE YA THURSDAY
Inside Ares, Part Two will be published on Thursday. While you’re waiting, why not head over to the forum and share your thoughts about Part One? 
 

Well, I found a lot of DU fun so far, but this post is about the login page.
 
From some of the posts here, I should probably take this login page with a grain of salt, but as far as I'm concerned, having this right there when I log in is way cool. I get to see some of the recent things that happened before I arrived and what I can look forward to now that I'm here. 
 
And on a related note, the tutorial was fantastic! Spent about 20 mins a day on it the past few days and took notes. There seems like there is so much in DU, and I'm excited to start exploring it.

"there's some pretty rare stuff here" while mining bauxite
 
Good effort, if only the game could live up to this..

The Dual Universe roadmap that we presented in July has been revised with an additional update, Ares (0.26.10), sliding in before Demeter (0.27), which has, in turn, been slightly delayed.  
 
Ares will bring more changes to PvP with the addition of Shields v2 thanks to the introduction of adjustable resistances and venting to complement the feature introduced in Apollo (0.26). Together with a new victory condition called “Core Combat Stress”, we hope to offer an improved PvP experience as players continue to fight for the riches of the newly introduced asteroids. Watch for an upcoming devblog that will cast more light on these PvP-related topics. 
 

 
Other additions in the Ares release include warp drive improvements and the previously announced boarding and docking revamp. 
 
Ares is full to the brim with new features, necessary tweaks, and lots of bug fixes. With this update, you should be able to fight more, hit harder, deflect weakness, and be the thundering galactic sky god you are meant to be.   

PTS UPDATED WITH ARES FEATURES TODAY
 
For a limited time, the Dual Universe public test server (PTS) will be available with a preview of some of the content that will be featured in the Ares (0.26.10) update. (Additional Ares features, as well as several exploit fixes will be added to PTS soon.) We urge all Noveans to take advantage of this opportunity to explore all of the changes and new content as soon as possible.
 
We would like to ask players to look into honeycomb and terrain voxels for any issues they can find with their constructs due to recent technical improvements we have made.
 
We would also like to remind you that the PTS was recently updated with a mirror of the live server database, which means that most of your recent possessions and creations should be right there, waiting for you to help test the future Ares release. 
 
If you’re new to the PTS, please read more about what to expect here.
 
The universe is waiting for you! Head to the PTS and start pew-pewing to your heart’s content. Constructive feedback is greatly appreciated and encouraged. You can share those with us here. 

Join the conversation about the Ares update and the revised roadmap in this thread. 

Post Schematics nerf every1 was 1-man-megafactoring and that was not ok. This is not a single player game and when ppl started to sell items cheaper than crafting cost something had to be done.

And stop playing the victim card, players left for different reasons, including lack of pvp.