Wicpar
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Posts posted by Wicpar
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quite indeed this could be a double edged sword in many aspects of the game
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Hey, I've been digging and I found this post from NQ-Nyzaltar : https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/335-player-systematics/?view=findpost&p=1269
At the question :
He answered :
So it seems to be possible but with limitations.
Good news
(actually old news ^^)it can be OP as a resource gathering faction, but can be very weak in a strategic war, thus is inherently balanced by the mechanics the players are bound to. Imagine a bunch of ants playing the game.
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Reputation systems get abused.
Human nature and all that it brings.
forgot some people are enjoying doing damage.
well, then just allow people that are too loud to be shot even in safe zones.
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One way to cure "ScreamingChildDisease" is to make it so that "muffled, high pitch, or earhurt songs" are automatically blocks.
Just a suggestion. Or just let organisations just pop them in the body.
a reputation system could be put in place, that allows people to be muted if their voice reputation is too low
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a lot of you think self replicating bots will be OP.
Self replicating bots imply a fully automated production line, all managed by bots, and that will not likely be implmented. But if it does: it would be OP against one opponent, in a combat. if well enough programmed it could conquer the universe. But this is not about perfect balance, it is about perfect imbalance. What would happen is that big companies will see it as a threat and attack it together. during that a small armada goes behind their lines and destroys their resource production line, which will result in their doom.
thing is if you do it with front line battles only, you won't win... but if you use tactics and strategy, you will always triumph over AI as it does not have as much hindsight as a human.
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Oh my god that would be hilarious. It can't possibly ever really go in the game but a man can dream.
shall we bet?
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If mining is boring, then people might just pay good credits for large volumes of ore. As a minecraft player, I can tell you that different people enjoy different aspects of that game, but sometimes being able to put on some netflix and just dig for a while can be nice, especially if it goes quickly.
Digging by hand might be very efficient in this game. We aren't really sure since Alpha isn't out yet little lone beta. We might find that players spend more time prospecting, and that mining is the quickest part. It may be that transporting and refining ends up being the riskiest/most time intensive part.
For now though, there isn't enough out there for us to guess, but there is plenty out there to say that the Dev's won't want the MMO to suffer a performance hit because of a self-replicating drone army.
the best analogy you may have to DY is terrafirmacraft ore veins, 10 times bigger. you alrady get bored on TFC veins, you are gonna die on the DU ones.
But.
There are two choices to make:
Big and fast or Slow and small
If mining, prospecting goes to useable components in less than a few hours, we will have a game with massive starships, starbases, battles and frickin planet eaters. It will be like star wars.
If the production chain is slow we will have a gameplay that is based on medium sized ships and medium sized starbases, small colonies, war is to be avoided and politics are really bureaucratic. it will be like star trek (ignoring the borg).
this subtility makes a massive difference in the gameplay, and people seem to ignore it, and that's sad, because it can be the difference between a good and a boring game, with nearly no dev cost (just change some parameters)
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I agree with cap' twerkmotor, applying a special rule to the DAC item will only break the game overall in immensa consequences.
removing the ability to use force to get dacs will in 100% of the cases result in abuse by the protected class: the hoarders.
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"Hey game dev, implement a feature that reduces server cost so that I can cause it to implode with self-replicating nanites" yeah great suggestion.
I beleive it was during the Q&A that they wanted exploration and resource collection to be a personal experience, and they wanted to incentivise players to explore by making resource collection by-hand only. Even if that changes, I highly doubt they will allow players to automate construction.
they wanted to make resource prospecting a social thing wich is good and should be, but there is no point in making mining one, as it will be quite boring with huge ore veins.
resource prospecting is you go on a planet, take samples analyze them and detect what ores lye beneath the surface, and then sell the location to a mining corp.
mining is, remove voxels, deposit: repeat.
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Ok, but that's on the current wiki. How frequently is it updated? Is it actually up to date?
It may also be possible that the future we will get to dig with more powerful tools and who knows, those tools may be usable by an automated construct.
Hope will keep us going!
"hello, my name is steve, i have been mining for 20 years in DU, and look at that hole over there, it's my life's work, 1 million cubic meters"
this is absurd, having a futuristic game and having no mining automation...
best mining automation would be analytical vein depletion, instead of voxel removal, thus reducing the server cost.
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So you say that fully automated constructs should be possible but take much more time?
That's interesting and work in the case of automated factories or mining, but what about automated defense mechanism or automated exploring mechanism that needs real time reaction to avoid utter destruction? Then that won't work.
I don't think it will become grindy and tedious to refuel or replenish the necessary resources because of storage : it will be a task to do only every X hours/days.
Plus it will limit the size of these automated constructs because everything would scale with size and in particular the frequency you will have to refuel.
It would work as a soft cap limit.
i meant only resource gathering/production to take longer, but overall even when you are online.
defenses would work anyways but the scripts will have to be run on the server (the execution time cap could be removed when you add a dedicated script-running server on the API) so people cannot alter them to their advantages on their clients. No you cannot do integrity checks. everything beyond NQ's server is out of their full control.
imagine you have a megafactory, and you have to manually put materials in every one every 10 hours, you would do that all the time...
else you will be able to have a massive container you pay people to fill anyways so there is really no point fighting it, people are sneaky bastards, they'll find a way, that's why you should be able to do everything, so NQ plans in those shenanigans in the game balance.
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I agree, but there should be a limit:
you buy a DAC, it goes in your premium inventory: an inventory where all you stuff you bought irl goes into.
You cannot get robbed in it, but you can only withdraw from it.
you can activate the DAC from it.
So: if you sell the DAC, it gets on the open marketplace and then it is not worth money, but in game cash, and thus becomes a normal good, since the value bought with irl money has been taken.
on this point, you would go on a trade station, buy a DAC and use it immediately. you should be able to accumulate DACs play time when used, thus ensuring a stable play time.
BUT: there would be a need to transport the DACs as once they are used by the buyer they become an in game item, and can be stolen/destroyed/protected and must be transported by safe convoys to bring to big trade stations.
i think this is the best system as it keeps all the games mechanics intact while guaranteeing the original buyers value, without fearing to be stolen cash value.
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I know but then you have the AFK issue where players just stay logged online to achieve just that and that is not fun at all (ok it could be fun to hunt AFK guys for a while but that's it).
If they don't want fully automated factories maybe they should move the issue to fueling or providing the necessary resources to the factory necessitating having a player to make the "refuel".
but then it becomes grindy and tedious and i don't think it's good, the solution to that is to accept that this is gonna happen, and integrate it into the game. allow it but at a cost. This will mentally block people that want to abuse the system as the system doesn't care and is still balanced even if they do.
Factories could become balanced in an afk scenario if you stretch the 3-4 hours it was online to 24 hours a day, and produce the same in that time. if you want to produce faster you can just scale horizontally, but again, low level stuff should not take 20 hours to make.
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Hate to spoil the fun, but currently resource collection is exclusively by hand, with no indication that it will change. Also, the scripts that the robots will rely on to run will only run if players, probably just the owner, is close by. Also we have no idea if grid construction can be automated or scriptet.
So apart from the fact that each mechanic that this will require to work has either been confirmed to not be a part of the game, or has had no mention at all, great work!
ideas change.
it is especially good that these features do not exist as that means we will be able to influence them.
Optimism my friend
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First are we sure that we can delegate/give rights to run a script to individuals or organisations?
I think it could be cool to be able to build sandboxed CPU units with different processing powers to run our scripts in our place, this way the scripts would be costly and thus would naturally reduce the actual CPU usage on their server and prevent infinite loops/heavy loads to crash the servers (only the sandboxed unit will crash).
They could always make them number limited and destroyable to limit further their impact on the servers.
the ALUs should kill the script and malfuction if it takes more than n millisecondseconds to compute,
but overall i think they should make an api that allows you to interact in every way with the game, includeing piloting your shops, this would allow for client-hosted AI, but it still doesn't solve the afking issue as you may wanna keep a ship and a base loaded...
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That sounds pay to win
The current system allows you to have infinite accounts to afk, how does that soud? Additionally if you can have one bound to your account for free this would allow you to have one base without issue and that is far enough until you become imensely big, but at that point you can buy DACs ingame.
This whole thing is not about should we allow it, it is about how do we control and balance it.
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Do we know for sure that YOU have to be there for your scripts to run? If scripts run if any player is close enough, being close to a turret will cause its script to allow it to shoot at that player. Similarly, script-based space mines would also function.
If not, that trashes my idea of a law-enforcement that puts up kill contratcs on people that pvp in restricted zones...
The problem is that if You do not run your scripts, but your ennemy does he could modify your script on his client to say "kiiiiill meeeee :'(" instead of being the awesome terminator you built it to be.
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This post had no value, please ignore.
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Are those 2-3 accounts hosted by the server?
nope, but is the opposite? not necessarily, there are a lot of ways to mitigate that, and scripts are extremely cheap to run, unless they didn't think through the scripting mechanics enough, which would be wired coming from them.
Would be a little bit sad if a person prefers to multibox instead of interacting with other players. Eventhough I know this happens frequently in other mmo's.
Since a human will always be better then a script I dont really understand why you want your scripts to run even when you are not online.
If you want a factory that produces 24/7 you should hire people to make that work.
I suspect that while an autonomous production line will be possible I doubt it wouldnt require some form of real time user input. Just having alternate accounts standing there might not work at all.
since it is gonna happen anyway, and persons will always be more efficient than scripts, what is the point preventing it, technical issues aside because it shouldn't be taken in account in gameplay decisions, unless it is a strict: it's impossible and you can prove it.
humans in video games are extremely unreliable if there isn't a relationship, and who the hell wants to watch a factory anyways?!
preventing this would promote unfun grind-like jobs that give a lot of money, and this is not the point of the game isn't it?
i didn't realize at the start but balancing this aspect of the game is extremely important as it could have major effects on the gameplay, and a, simple ignore it and it will go away won't work because it just directs mechanics towards afking jobs, that are not fun, or done by bots you pay for with real cash.
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Wait... what do you think graveyard shift guards do at a factory in real life? They are paid to be "AFK"
The ones running the Lua scripts on your sleeping times, are the guards you hire. Simple.as you said
DACs = buy them with real money to enable you something you can't without real money. Therefore, pay-2-win, in the context of DAC-to-have-scripts-working-offline.
what would prevent you from having 2-3+ accounts? at least thinking of it as a mechanic would allow for some degree of control on the NQ side.
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Well, that's what the delegating system in the RDMS is for. You hire a person to be online from X to Y hours and they get paid for being online and near the Lua scripts to function. It's much more organic and efficient than taxing the cpu of a guy on the other side of the universe.
no, it isn't. what you will see is an emergent economy of afk mercenaries. that's all. people leaving their account logged to keep things running.
thing is the only way to avoid that is to think as it as part of the mechanics as the only alternative is banning and punishing it, and that is ridiculous.
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Would you like me to tax YOUR cpu because I am offline?
sure if i get something for it
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this can be solved by implementing script execution on clients that have free cpu, despite them being elsewhere, or implementing in the machanics: a box that generates energy when you are online but executes other's scripts when their cpu is too used, or are offline.
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Petite nuance: despite being annoying, you still need to be close to the person to talk to him. This allows you to make him shut up by killing him. Problem solved. But then the respawn point will be filled with afk's baby cries, bodily sounds and other wiered noises.
For the devs: What you can do to make me donate
in Idea Box
Posted
As one of the backers invited to their in house event, there was no point in making any footage as it was exactly as the devs depicted it, on the exact same map, with the exact same playable fps that was quite impressive for a pre-alpha.
If you need more than community confirmation, you are not worth the money you may back at this point.
you seem to be a safe goer, those who adopt games that work, and wants its bang for the buck guaranteed.
We backer are riskers. We hope it works, but are willing to make a loss for a far greater gain: an awesome game.
With only a pre rendered video i would have only given a 10th max of what i gave, but here we got active devs giving in game footage every 3-4 days wich is too short notice to make fakes, and i had the chance to play the game, and that was extremely convincing. But the game in its state only has the engine, nothing too fancy, barely enough to showcase the power of their engine. There is no way it is actually playable because the base mechanics werent implemented yet, but the engine is the down face of the iceberg, and the mechanics + design its tip. They showed the bottom of it.
Most hoaxes only ever show the tip.
i think that is the biggest difference there is.
After that, the devs are awesome and competent, far beyond your average dev.