Moulinex

sounds very good so far.
reducing the daily work like pressure on the calibration stuff will be a relief! ❤️

The community spoke, you listened, you updated.  Thank you.

Dual Universe’s Panacea update is right around the corner, bringing with it a sizable variety of changes based on feedback from our community. 
Ahead of the update, however, we are immediately introducing revisions to territory upkeep and mining units. 
 
Read on for the full scoop! 
 
GOING INTO EFFECT ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 25th
 
Taxes will be effective again starting Wednesday, January 26th.
The day before, we are going to deploy three adjustments to address the issues mentioned in the Community Feedback regarding Territory Upkeep.
 
Territory Upkeep Reduction: 1 MM --> 500k.

Territory Upkeep was first introduced in the November 2021 Demeter update. After reviewing community feedback, we announced that territory upkeep payments would be postponed for two weeks to allow the Design team time to dig deep into the metrics and fine-tune the system accordingly. 

The upkeep rate per territory will be reduced by 50%, from 1MM to 500k quanta. Player feedback indicated that people felt they were having to sell ore too frequently to generate the funds needed to pay upkeep. In halving the upkeep costs, we will relieve the pressure to make frequent trips to the market as well as the need to sell large quantities of ore.
  Calibrations Charges:
Base calibration charge slots increase : 5 --> 25.
Talent calibration charge slots increase : 1/level --> 5/level.

Also introduced in the Demeter update, mining units were designed as an alternative to digging endless tunnels underground for ore. To keep them producing at their peak capacity requires occasional calibration; however, initial feedback from the community told us that further tweaks were needed for the calibration process. To this end, we’ve made the two changes mentioned above.

This will change the total amount of stored charges from 10 (5 base + 5 max talents) to 50 (25 base + 25 max talents).

The intention behind the charge cap was not to force a behavior in which you felt like you needed to spend charges in order not to “lose out” on charges by hitting the cap and wasting your recharge. 

In view of that, both the base and the talent bonus are drastically going up. This will not only allow you to store more charges in general, but specifically allow you to store a much longer period of time in charge recharge time, giving you much more breathing room to store charges and not waste charge recharge time.
  Calibration grace period: 48h --> 72h
  The calibration grace period is the amount of time during which a mining unit does not lose calibration. Similarly to charge slots, the intention was not to aggressively require you to calibrate mining units every 2-3 days. In our initial calculations our goal was more to hit the 5 to 6 day mark depending on what efficiency curve the player selected, and how many mining units the player was trying to maintain.
 
We are changing the calibration grace period from 48-hours to 72-hours. 
 
This change should bring us closer to the initial values we were looking for and give players more breathing room to calibrate when their mining units seem to be producing less than usual, indicating that calibration is needed.
 
CHANGES COMING WITH PANACEA UPATE (0.28) LAUNCH
 
Using industry units on offline tiles

The intention of requiring online territories for industry units was not to negatively impact industry units on planets. We initially saw it as further incentive to pay for taxes, but it was not a core requirement. This is also why industry units on Ssanctuary and space cores were left untouched.

We understand from player feedback that requiring you to operate mining units on a territory in order to not run industry units at a loss on that territory was an annoyance and many players did not want to run their industry units on the same territories as their mining units.

In view of the preferences expressed, we have decided to allow the operation of industry units on all offline territories. In combination with HQ territories, this will allow you to effectively run industry units on offline territories for extended periods of time.
  Faster extraction animations
  We are also addressing the feedback we’ve received regarding the time it takes to complete a calibration minigame, specifically the frustration from the long loading animations when calibrating a number of mining units.
 
An option has been added in the mining unit UI (tick box) that will let you significantly reduce the time these animations take, drastically reducing the period of time the animations run.
 
Additionally, a number of mining unit mini-game animations have been slightly reduced in duration, thus allowing a faster minigame completion.
 
New talents for surface harvesting
  In order to further incentivize harvesting surface rocks, and to be able to specialize in it, we are adding four talents linked to surface harvesting that will touch on harvesting speed and output.
 
The main goal is to create some surface harvesting specialization for those players who enjoy it, giving them the capability to harvest better and faster, and for longer periods of time.
 
CHANGES COMING POST-PANACEA
 
New surface harvesting controls
  To further address surface harvesting issues, we are working on quality of life-type improvements that will allow a degree of auto-harvesting similar to normal mining as well as other changes to reduce control and UX-based frustrations during surface harvesting. 
Watch for additional details as we refine our plans!
 
 New mining unit surface harvesting, rocks spawning behavior
 
Lastly, we are looking for a solution to simplify the process of gathering rocks. This is in direct response to player requests to eliminate the hassle of having to comb their territories after calibrating a number of mining units. 
 
While this is still in relatively early stages, the solution we are looking at is to spawn the rocks right under the mining unit beam, where the beam hits the ground. Players would then be able to rapidly harvest surface rocks. 
 
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE
 
Don’t forget that there’s a lot more to Panacea than the changes and tweaks discussed above. It’s also got some cool new stuff, like the Vertex Precision Tool which we’ll be talking about in the next devblog! 
 
Meanwhile, please join the conversation on the forum here to tell us what you think about revisions we’ve presented in this Devblog.
We’d love to hear from you! 
 
---

The Novaquark team

Through the Facebook groups about DU, I am aware of players that cancel their subscription now because of the unexpected hardship of the new tax and mining system. It affects me, too, in a bad way, so bad that I calculate I will be fully bankrupt in 4 to 5 weeks and not be able anymore to act ingame. If I am affected, then many many many others are, too. I am open-minded, alwas saying that DU sets new industrial standards for player-made ship and base designs. I gave time to try the new changes. But now I have to activate the Alarm Bell.

Here are my suggestions, and these are very URGENT suggestions to Novaquark just to stop the rising bankruptcies of a vast amount of players:
- increase the amount of fully calibrated mininung units a player can have at the same time by 16 to 32 from whatever it is now.
- re-calibration only needed over time when the match was below 100%, but at 100% it stays calibrated as "disturbing forces are eleminated"
- the weekly teerritory tax needs to be lower, maybe half of what it is now

Besides, to limit territory occupation "en masse" by some big organizations, there are other,probably better ways to counter that.

Dear gamers, please show that you agree by posting positive answers to this thread. NQ need to see a wide and general agreement t become aware of the problems and make swift adjustments.

Working in an actual industry is a job you get payed for. DU is a game we pay for.

The Dual Universe roadmap has been expanded with the Panacea update, which is currently in production and brings with it a plethora of new features, tools, and improvements that will be particularly interesting for builders, scavengers, and Lua aficionados.
 
WHAT’S IN IT
 
A follow-up to the changes introduced in the Selene and Demeter updates, the Vertex Precision Tool will provide a powerful, intuitive way to fine-tune your builds. Particularly for those who are new to voxelmancy, this tool will be invaluable. Watch this video to get a taste of what it can do.
 
The introduction of shipwrecks in space will open a variety of lucrative opportunities for players who seek them out. Sell them as-is, salvage them for parts, create missions for other players to bring you the ship or its parts, or simply fetch a handsome price by selling the location information.
 
Other new features and improvements include: 
Camera Lua API: get access to information about the in-game camera Talents UI improvements: a more efficient way to view Talents RDMS UI polish: a cleaner interface for the management of RDMS  
To reduce clutter and keep Alioth beautiful, we are implementing inactive constructs requisitioning, an automated system for the abandonment of constructs owned by unsubscribed players and organizations to aid in keeping overcrowded public market areas clear.
Organization construct ownership (construct slots): a new way of assigning available construct limits to organizations. Disabling element stacking or overlapping: the final step in preventing the element stacking exploit.  
WHAT’S IN A NAME
 
Choosing the name for this update, Panacea, the goddess of remedy, is a reference to our renewed dedication to taking player feedback into greater consideration.
 
In reflecting on the aftermath of the Demeter release, we recognized that we fell short in this area. We read your feedback but did not make the adjustments we could and should have. We pledge to be better about working hand-in-hand with the community by implementing a plan to increase two-way communication and making some important tweaks and balancing to the game that will address some of the pain points as much as we’re able.
 
As a first step, beginning January 12th, we will postpone the next territory upkeep pay period for two weeks. This will allow the Design team time to revisit the tax rate, which many community members said was too steep. The purpose and functions of the upkeep system go beyond limiting “landgrabbing” and are more complex than they may appear on the surface. Many factors and interdependencies need to be taken into consideration.
 
WHAT’S NEXT
 
A series of devblogs will be published soon to reveal more information about the Panacea update. Additionally, we will be sharing a new roadmap soon. We hope that you’ll like what you see, and we encourage you to share your constructive feedback about our ideas as you read each article. 
Let’s chat! 

This will lead to so much looting, much more than a single player can ever make with Minung Units.

When implementing the ore extraction rates and territory taxes, please just start with higher numbers for ore, and lower numbers for taxes. You can always adjust toward stricter later.
A slope, versus a cliff.

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. 
 

Novaquark is pleased to announce its partnership with NVIDIA GeForce NOW to make Dual Universe as accessible as possible to our players. GeForce NOW is NVIDIA's cloud game streaming service that instantly transforms nearly any PC, Mac or Chromebook into a powerful PC gaming rig.
 
If your PC specs are below the minimum requirements for DU, this is for you!
 
Dual Universe has been thoroughly tested to ensure the experience is optimal on GeForce NOW. You can now play DU at its best, in all its graphical magnificence.
 
To do so, you will first need a subscription to Dual Universe. Then, simply head to the GeForce NOW website. GeForce NOW offers two membership options: Free and Priority.
 
Anyone can sign-up for a Free membership, and start playing instantly. If you would like to upgrade your membership to experience the best of GeForce NOW, including priority access to game servers and extended session lengths, you can upgrade to the GeForce NOW Priority membership.
 
Dual Universe awaits you, Novean!
 

Hello again Noveans!
We have heard your initial feedback on the screens and we want to elaborate on some of your major concerns.
 
Will this affect both screens and content written to the players screen (HUDs)?
No, this technological change will affect only screen units at this time.

Will all player created work on screens suddenly become non-functional?
No, this technology will be available side-by-side with the current technology, both first on the PTS in a prototype state, and eventually also on the Live server.
We strongly recommend everyone does test and experiment the new tech on the PTS, as your feedback and testing will help shape this feature.

How will this make a difference on performance?
The main reason being that the current implementation does not allow for much control over the performance impact of screen renderings. Complex 3D transformations using a combination of HTML, SVG and CSS has a significant impact on render times in the client. Adding to the fact that screens are often condensed with multiples of them in close proximity to each other, there is an increasing drop in performance on the client with more screens using the current technology. The new system allows for more precise control over rendering time allowed across screens and allows us to safeguard the level of performance impact the screens have on the client.

So you will be removing HTML support entirely?
Not necessarily, the two techs will run side by side for an as of yet undefined period of time. Eventually we may introduce a phase where we make the rendering of HTML on screens an option for players along with a warning that it can significantly degrade client performance. Players with that option disabled will simply not see any HTML content and not suffer performance degradation because of it.

Why not improve the current HTML implementation instead of the new technology?
This is a complex topic, HTML/CSS/Javascript is a group that forms a UI technology. For reasons beyond the scope of this topic we do not allow the use of Javascript inside the screen units. When you remove Javascript, the group effectively becomes a not so efficient vector image drawing technology which we have very little control over in terms of rendering. We have previously implemented a lot of small limitations here and there to reduce the impact of the screens, but there are (and likely always will be) edge cases which will eventually crop up using that technology. As such, the new technology has built-in limitations on how taxing a screen unit can be, and if a screen unit goes over the limit it will simply stop drawing. This is why we ask you all to go and test this, and help us find caveats and where you run into things you can and can’t do.

What about bandwidth? Are you doing this to reduce data transfer for screens?
The current implementation does not address this, the current implementation is a way for us to collect your feedback on this concept. Eventually we may change the way data transfer for screens is handled, where we may increase the size of the defined “template” inside a screen unit itself. Followed by a lower limit on the amount of data transferred to the screen from external sources. Allowing the screen element to do the rendering and drawing work, using parameters fed to it by a control unit.
For example: You would draw the design of a fancy instrument panel using the screen element, and a programming board or control unit just sends the values for all the instruments to the screen. This is currently not in the current implementation however, but may give you a better idea of why this technology has a lot of potential for more intricate and powerful designs.

What about artists who draw using external programs and import their SVG’s into the game?
One of our hopes is to provide a good enough set of commands in the screens API so that our system can express most SVG graphics converted to these commands through for example a small conversion tool. It is unlikely that we will develop and maintain a conversion tool for this, but this is also why we want your feedback on this new API for you to let us know what commands you really want to see included to make this process easier.

We sincerely hope that this answers many of your initial questions and concerns.
I personally can’t wait to see what you will all come up with in your designs!
 

Dear Noveans,
 
We would like to address the recent speculations that have arisen in our community, and openly disclose some changes that are happening at Novaquark.
 
First and foremost, Novaquark continues to be supported by its long term investors to allow it to launch Dual Universe in line with its original vision. It also puts us in a position to attract experienced talent to complement the team that’s already in place so that we can continue to improve the game.
 
Next week, we will share with you what we think our priorities should be for Dual Universe and how we hope to approach the development of the game with improved processes going forward.
 
An important change to note is that Jean-Christophe, the founder of Novaquark, has transitioned from the day-to-day management of the team to better focus on his position as a board member. Over the years since the creation of Novaquark, JC designed and set the standards for the structural and conceptual foundation of the game, and he feels now that a solid base is there for him to move forward as a strategic advisor. The recent changes in the administrative presidency of the company only reflect the transition of JC to his new role. We’re excited to have the team he has built deliver on his vision for the game.
 
Rest assured that Novaquark’s future is in good hands, and there is a strong partnership between our long-term investors and our team. We believe that the future is bright for the game and for the company, and we cannot wait to tell you where we want to take Dual Universe.
 
With our warmest regards,
The Novaquark team

Hey, thanks for this wonderful tool! It has revitalized my interest in building. I'm now able to produce almost whatever I want. Such as these badass catwalks/floor grates.
 
However, I think I've run into a couple errors in the voxel stack. While trying to produce those catwalks, I discovered that some of my vertices weren't quite in the right place. For example, when trying to make this bar of the catwalk, two of the vertices appear to be at different heights. It doesn't seem to be a visual artifact, as the difference persists when I exit build mode. I'm rather clueless about how to go about repairing these apparent errors, so I thought I would bring it to your attention. I'm not sure which voxels are non-standard.
 
Thanks again for your amazing work. I hope you have some insight into this weirdness.

Continuing on beyond the original 2D Voxel Planner, I'm releasing today a new in-game building tool: Reactor/2D+ Voxel Planner. It extends the original 2D Voxel Planner's limited layer support with a Layer definition screen while adding a tool to design the 3 dimensional shape of a single voxel.
To support these features, a new XS Dynamic core construct has been built with a unique Voxel stack (derived from the NRD Voxel Cube which also inspired some aspects of the interface). The construct also has new Reactor frame
The blueprints (at nominal cost) for the construct and the original 2D Voxel planner are available at the Objective Driveyards headquarters at the open space location which will hold their future sales office. There is plenty of parking! In game location: ::pos{0,2,23.2925,73.1635,9.1008}
Also available is a limited number of blueprint+elements+voxels from a dispensor. These will cost 100 000 quanta and are limited to 1 per player.
More information can be found on this short  Video tour.