Muttley

They should have built a different type of ship. Variety is the spice of life!

Yeah, that's a very good point. Fascinating to see how the NMS debacle has affected gamer consumer confidence in general. What a legacy for Seam Murray. I occasionally tune in to see the latest player stats for NMS for the hell of it. The current record low for players per hour is 507 people - http://steamcharts.com/app/275850. This are stats just for Steam mind you. In a broader sense, I understand consumers reluctance to back a Kickstarter game, especially one that is P2P.

It's going to be close... 10k per day. I'm curious what happens if the Kickstarter fails. NQ must have other sources of income because 500k isn't going to last long.

I changed by bid and after saving and a quick page refresh the figure had updated accordingly. So I would imagine that the figure is more or less accurate at the time of your page visit.

I did consider this as a possibility.

OK, thanks. I think I'll change my pledge. That's an extra €2 to NQ.

Hi folks, Two questions for you. 1) What is the 'ID Card Arkship Passenger' reward? 2) What does the 'Early Bird' pledge mean in practical terms? The reason I ask the above question is because I backed the Silver Founder Pack (Early Bird) but in retrospect, I should have backed the Digital Silver Pack (Early Bird). I'm thinking that the ID card will be some gimmicky badge that will end up in a bin sooner or later so it would have made more financial sense to back the latter (I'd have ended up with an extra DAC and not have had to pay for P&P). But this latter pledge is no longer an option so an alternative is to change my pledge to the Digital Silver Founders pack (the non-Early Bird option) for €2 extra - that's €58 t0 €60. I loose the ID card but gain an extra DAC.

It's gonna go viral and top €124,100,001 by the end of the campaign. Either that or 560,0001

I'm not sure what you mean by "landscaping characters", WOT, but if you meant some kinda NPC then I like it. The idea of a team of NPC robots flying about the place filling holes and demolishing structures (perhaps just around the Arkship) is appealing. This way the initial spawn point is kept in order leaving everyone free to trash the rest of the planet as they see fit.

Unless NQ have some ideas up their sleeve, I think both resource depletion and environmental destruction are going to be an issue, most especially in and around spawn points like the Arkship. I've used the analogy before - if you have ever been to a music festival everything looks at best shabby after the third day. How much worse will it be when the festival goes on for years. We don't just have to be concerned with people removing voxels, they will also be randomly placing voxels. Much of this will be people legitimately attempting to get the hang of the game, while some will be trolling by building chasms, walls and generally just making life difficult. While I do appreciate that people may try to self-regulate we should not underestimate how determined and destructive we can be.

We can't offer you any guarantees. But I think if you are asking here you are already more than half convinced. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Yes and no. I've not played since planetary landings as I've had limited internet access but, yes, I would say that the game has some distinctly grindy elements and this has been my main criticism. The ships generally have distinctive characteristics to the point that they handle substantially differently. In fairness, FDev have spent a lot of time trying to flesh out the universe and add more depth. I still think it has some way to go but this game, much like DU, SC, EVE etc., is very much a work in progress. No, you don't have to buy expansions. They have released a mixture of free updates for the core game and expansions that are part of a season pass. So far that single season pass, Horizons, costs €24 on top of the original game. This is approximately 2 months worth of play time in DU. For what it's worth I'm also a lifetime subscriber and I get all expansions for free. I've played around with Horizons and for the most part, I simply decided not to partake in certain parts of the expansion because it didn't float my boat. I'm essentially playing the core game though this may change once I get my hands on the latest update. It's interesting how Star Citizen, ED, DU and NMS have taken slightly different routes to funding their games. I quite like EDs approach whereas the P2P model that DU will use is personally far less appealing. Rolling back the clock a couple of years I would have absolutely said that the NMS model was preferential because it's easier on the bank account but given the unmitigated disaster that the game turned out to be (check out the latest steam charts - highs of about 2.5k players and lows of about 800 in the last week) I think that games with the scope of DU, ED, SC etc actually need a steady income rather than an initial big outlay. And for that, I don't begrudge FDev their money or their business model.

I'd recommend Elite Dangerous. It has its issues but I think that the devs are committed to the game and since it went live they have released a number of major updates (a mixture of free and season passes) - the latest of which is only around the corner. They also have a nice way of slowly getting the community excited about the imminent arrival of a hostile alien species that appeared in previous versions of the game. For example, you can see the appearance of an alien probe here and the effect it has on a player's ship when scanned - The nice thing is that the devs have done things like add hidden messages to these alien encounters and the community has poured their time and effort into deciphering them. It adds a nice bit of mystery while also giving the devs have a little bit of breathing space to do their jobs.

Hence my idea of a long abandoned alien network of gates. Human gates could be moved, chained, captured or destroyed but these alien gates just do their own thing and are impervious to human technology. Again, I have another sci-fi reference. This idea of human discovering a network of alien gates (strictly speaking it was automated pods that go through a gate) was covered in the book Gateway - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_(novel)

Yes, secret gates would be cool. Perhaps there could be some way to scan and detect massive power signatures but also some way to mask them.

You might want to check out Planet Nomads - https://www.planet-nomads.com/. I think it's in alpha and only just released but it might tick the editable voxel box. I personally know very little about it so can't recommend it as such. In terms of general sc-fi space game then have a look at Elite Dangerous. It doesn't have an editable environment but it's pretty cool and a new update should be landing in the next couple of weeks for the public - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/elite-dangerous-guardians-2-2-details-guide/

Stargates would be fantastic. However, only if there were a handful of them in the universe. I suppose later NQ could make a nice story about a network of long abandoned alien stargates but for now, the initial construction and operation cost should be so expensive that it makes stargates they type of construct that only the most powerful of corporations can build (or take by force for themselves). Ensuring that stargates are incredibly rare means that they are also incredibly valuable. They will be universal points of interest for those willing to pay the toll in hopes of finding their fortune in a new frontier and perhaps for those larger corporations who would dare to try and take the stargate for themselves. I like the idea of a large fixed gate on one end and a smaller semi-portable gate on the other. When a planet's natural resources have been depleted of the smaller stargate could be relocated (perhaps this is when a rival corporation could strike) or perhaps chained to another to expand the network. There is a sci-fi novel called Pandora's Star that in part deals with this idea. It's well worth a read if you are into space operas.

For those too lazy see update #9 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg/updates

That's actually a great idea. A brief interview with Scott might generate some interest. Though I'm not sure if he really does interviews.

150k to go in just under 3 weeks. They'll be fine. Nothing can possibly go wrong.

I literally have no friends that play PC games and 8 followers on Twitter. (I had 9 up until yesterday ) So I don't think I'll be of much help in bringing in the $$$. What DU really needs is another ringing endorsement from the likes of Chris Roberts so I hope they are knocking on the door of the big gaming media outlets.

Out of curiosity, do NQ staff ever post on the forum?

For sure it's not an FPS. But my hope was that it wasn't going to be a traditional anything. Rather, that it could pick and choose between genres and smush them together. For example, you see this in tower defence games that have a FPS element on top of your more traditional tower defence game. A more pointed example would be the forthcoming Bannerlord game. Like it's predecessors it incorporates many different game types including MMOFPS (first person slasher). So technical considerations aside, I think that it can be done and done successfully. I will say that if it doesn't happen then I guess that Star Citizen and Squadron 42 will scratch that FPS itch. Incidentally, I think that the Warband community (at least those in-game) is amongst the most toxic and unpleasant gaming community that I've had the misfortune of playing alongside. One good thing about DU is that NQ will be in complete control of the server and they get to keep their own house in order.

Being on the wrong side of 30 I've noticed that my reactions have slowed. I'm pretty much cannon fodder these days and I used to be good, very good at FPS like Wolfenstein:ET. So in a sense, I don't want this game to focus too heavily on reaction times because I know it will lead to frustration for me as I'm thumped again and again by kids a 1/3 my age. Yet if I'm looking at the bigger picture, I think that it would be a massive opportunity lost if all battles are all ultimately determined by stats - which is my experience of MMORPGS. Now maybe I'm oversimplifying and not doing justice to the skill level that goes into this type combat but in a game that promotes limitless gameplay (erroneously as it happens but we can let that marketing speak slide) I think anything but FPS dynamics is an unwelcome limitation on gameplay. But If it's not possible to implement FPS dynamics or just prohibitively difficult to solve then I guess I'll have to suck it up. But hopefully captaintwerkmotor is correct and for smaller battles, we still have a more traditional FPS dynamic, even if the cost is watching my old, bullet-riddled corpse being repeatedly teabagged by kids with better reflexes but less class.

True. Though I must admit to being so initially disappointed that I was (maybe still am) considering revoking my pledge. That's not a "change the game or else..." kinda threat, btw. It just seems like I'm now buying into a very different game. I must go off and meditate upon this new knowledge and choose my path accordingly. To the meditation lair!