Wicpar

I think it may be even not necessary to bind it to a component, just bind it to the account, since it only needs to be on the cloud to be transfered to another computer you log on where it isn't present... maybe give us like 1G of dedicated blueprint/script storage each?

I'll try thanks

extremely good idea, yet i would like to object to your last paragraphs... It is quite destroying of the blueprint economy if you can duplicate original blueprints. the solution is to handle it like in eve, but you can modify the original, and make backup copies that become an original blueprint once the origin has been modified more than n%. You can hack a ship and get copies of the core blueprint, or sell any amount of copies you can make (at a cost of time/material)

i completely agree. for the star trek part isn't DU about sci-fi?

well, we are in sci-fi and would still like to be able to make maneuverable destroyers, that handle like a fighter, but the tech and modules required would be super expensive. Look at the USS enterprise D, it is massive, and still has quite a lot of maneuverability, but is filled to the neck with caviar-level luxury.

the shear effort involved in making self replicated robots, and having set up adequate AI to maintain it is worth a PhD, so it shouldn't be impossible, just really, really hard. I think they will provide api bindings to allow you to host a server to maintain infrastructure when you are offline, and if you have enough computational power you can let it autopilot drones and vessels. the problem is that NQ wont have control over the internals of your server, and will thus obligatorily have to compute physics server side and send back the input (sensor data, visual data, ship/struct status) and you can tell the ai to then send keyborard/instructions to pilot, manage your things. I think that is the only way to remain hacker free (with the input as only keyboard or other commands/instructions) because else you wouldn't be able to verify the validity of the turret rotation/position etc...

i think tile based territory control is quite limited... it assumes too fast overpopulation and concurrency. I think an influence system could allow to replace it more efficiently and create more war-like territory control: You place an influence generator that generates an expanding area of influence, that decreases in intensity with distance. You can make it stringer/faster with tech or fueling it. you therefore can assume control of a planet. but: you can place influence generators and only those in the influence areas of enemies (you have to be enemies) and the one that has the most influence on a terrain block can edit/ build on it. This would allow for armies to secure a zone, place multiple influence generators and build an outpost that will serve to push back the enemies influence until they can invade their base and destroy the generator. I really think this would be way more practical and fun as it would allow you to protect an entire homeworld from degradation/griefers so you don't find yourself like this: surrouned by a big hole. But this idea comes from strategy games like galactic civilization 3 and stellaris. what do you think of it?

we are borg, the metaphorical cultish-space-commies.

i would say otherwise, first, you would have ways to counteract it with skills and ship modules, second, it allows for a more fine tuning of the balance of agility builds, thing is agility builds with the current theoretical system are OP, and will be nerfed in other ways that will make them less fun like limiting speed with skill, or else. anyways the modification will result in a linear downscale. G forces would allow for a logarithmic reality based (not stats) progression you can mitigate in various ways. The problem is not if you will die, it is how will you integrate your modules that prevent this. You assume just G force is the end of the story but no. everything is connected. if you remove such a deep feature (deep because it changes the most basic mechanics and affects vastly every player) you also remove the interaction it has with all other aspects of the game, like ship deign that would need more thinking, industry to create the most efficient anti-G-Force module, battles that could be changed by propulsing ships too fast with tractor beams and killing its crew, destruction of probes too close to black holes, death upon impact on physical objects, ship ramming. and i think there are more. thing is it is a complexification agent, in the early game you buy a anti-G-Force module and that's it. later you will have to deal with it way more profoundly, in nearly every aspect of DU. Thing is control over it has to be provided, but you have to provide enough for it, and if you don't you get punished, but you can use it against your ennemies. This could even generate a new kind of weapon: a graviton well, that accelerates a ship into a singularity and then stops it dead in the center thus creating immense G-forces, the weapon would have a depth and radius relative to the energy used, so for instance a death star sized ship could easily gulp an entire fleet, but most fighters in it will survive because of their improved G-Force resistance. That is the extent it can affect the game. It's not just a matter, dam i got squished, it's a matter of how can i use it to help me and destroy the ennemies. and even more could be extrapolated if thought enough about it.

may be a good alternative.

wow. just.... wow.... do you realize what you said? patents for voxel sizes are a problem? no. NQ is based in Europe, and in European jurisdiction you cannot patent a concept you need a working prototype (that's why you cannot patent pseudo scientific idiocies). you can patent a specific text (code) but is invalidated if you change the names of variables so they will not be sueable outside the US.... Additionally, they use voxel farm, a commercial voxel engine which demonstrated tiny voxels. And even if it was the case you could have scale up the rest of the world. In a program, size doesn't matter, relative scale does. how can you be sure the voxels are 25cm, what if they told you 1, you wouldn't have noticed because there is no absolute reference... Additionally, dual contouring can be as precise as you want, it's only the detail (minimum thickness) that will be limited.

good idea given that there could be a module to remove a percentage of the G-Force (that removes each iteration the same percentage as it is left, like the element resistances of the hull/shields in eve)

Hello, I cannot help but notice controversy about the starting zone. I would like to give my input. I have noticed there is a lack of planned tutorial, the arkship is ideal for that. You could create faked interactions that cancel out after a certain time allowing you to make npc quests and thus gather enough material and money to get a decent newbie ship and go away onto another planet. nstead of letting the NQ team design the starting area, it would be beneficial to let the alpha players make it and build it organically, with the premise it will be deallocated from their property once in beta to implement npcs and their quests according to the past happenings in the alpha. It would be wise to make a small no edit zone around the arkship itself to make it look like a memorial once things have been built around. I hope you like that proposition.

I proposed a material/material quality/molecule group based stats generation system, so depending of the quality and rarity of the materials used you may have different stats.

Absolutely but if your watch the demo voxels are placed with 3D brushes and not one by one so your point is quite irrelevant in that aspect. For what concerns the borg cube it will barely be heavier than 25cm voxels as most components are meter-wide, but yes you are right in absolute but the gain in size will be about 5% max for a 25cm to 1cm swap (guesstimation)

in larger and evolving community you cannot rely on trust. It has to be constructed and earned. They will most likely add permission mechanics to the game.

indeed that is why pure liberalism shall prevail. Limiting us will only result in negative results in game, since you will never be able to analyze the development of omnipotent beings in their natural habitat. Could be an interresting sociological study.

Imagine a big cube of 1000000000 meters by side, with one material, made by 1 mm cubes, how much space does ti take in memory? 1000000000000 bytes? Nope. Actually only one. the point is voxels are structured in an octree and will be optimized, a bigger cube will be considered one voxel. Having smaller voxels only increases the data usage on the edges and increases baking time, but for a server is not too problematic as it only has to manage the memory, and isn't a lot. The problem would come in the client side as baking would take exponentially more time, as a recursive algorythm is used (in general they may have optimized it to avoid stacking the stack) to transform each step in a mesh. In these kind of applications, servers do physics and have to do those to avoid hackers, and provide sync between clients. And physics are the thing to worry about. But i am the devils advocate. In DUs application 25cm is enough, unless you wanna do microdrones but that can be added separately since they use voxel farm that supports any size. Its for the argument's sake.

i'd rather stay with eve style blueprints... they have proven themselves to be worthy. Having the ability to copy a blueprint just ruins the value of that unless there is a limited amount of uses in the copies. If you build a ship from a template, it is linked to it. You can only blueprint original creations, or update blueprints. A backup may be made at a great cost, that can only be used if the original blueprint deviated more than 10% in composition.

Huh, custom skins could be an amazing market opportunity.

I think what will happen is they will make an api so you can setup a local server to manage your infrastructure. If it has the same bindings as the base game you may as well create elaborate AI without too much effort (well, trouble and issue wise).

Unless they rent the space and put their own hardware i don't think they will be able to achieve their goal as their single shard technology will have to use a monster of a machine, a mini supercomputer.

I agree, a really good dev costs 50k€/year, and they need a lot of them.

i did 4 posts ago