Marrokev

In the upcoming 0.28 Panacea update, we will introduce the Vertex Precision Tool (VPT), which adds a whole new way of bringing detail to your creative designs.
 
This all may sound quite complex initially, but once you get used to the tool it’s quite intuitive. If you’ve been holding back because voxelmancy seemed too complicated, now’s the time to give it a try. By allowing you to simply equip the VPT and move the vertex around on a changeable grid, the process of designing with voxels is greatly simplified and far more user-friendly.
 
Here’s a brief demonstration of what the VPT looks like and how it’s used:
 
 
Heads up! The information in this blog leans heavily into the extremely technical side of things. Those who are into voxelmancy will probably dive in with unfettered joy. If building isn’t your jam, you may wish to stop here and get the TL;DR from one of your builder buddies later.
 
VOXELS DEFINED
 
Much of what you see in Dual Universe was built by players using voxels. The term “voxel” is very generic, a shortened form of “volume element”. Voxelmancy is an advanced form of building that can be quite complex, and there has always been a gap between building with standard geometric shapes and fine-tuned designs. The VPT aims to bring a game-changing  bridge for the gap between these building styles.
 
How exactly the voxels are implemented depends a lot on the software that’s being used. In DU, a voxel contains two things: material information and a vertex position information.
 
The material information is pretty straightforward; it is exactly the same as in a pixelated image where there is a material (think of it as a synonym of “color“) for each little square. We use what we call a uniform grid, meaning that voxels are put next to each other in a 3D grid and all have the same size. For example, on a planet voxels are 1 meter long (1m x 1m x 1m) whereas they can be 25 centimeters long (0.25m x 0.25m x 0.25m) on a user construct. It’s exactly how pixels work in 2D images, and you may already be familiar with these kinds of voxels because they are present in games like Minecraft.
 
VERTICES POSITIONS
 
Let’s drill down even deeper into the well of technical stuff.
 
As stated above, voxels contain material information and a vertex position information. The Vertex Precision Tool doesn’t touch materials, so let’s talk about vertices.
 
3D geometry is composed of vertices, and those vertices are linked together to form faces that will be rendered on your screen. For instance, take a simple single voxel cube. It is composed of one material, but has eight vertices on the eight corners. Since our voxels in DU store both a material and a vertex position, our “single voxel” here is composed of eight voxels because it takes eight vertices to form a cube!
 
This is where it starts getting complicated. We can consider that there are two voxel grids, one is the material grid and the other is the vertex position grid, and the two grids are shifted, dual to each other. There are eight vertices around a material, and there are eight materials (we can consider the void as a special kind of material) around a vertex.
 
So what are we talking about when we talk about a voxel? A little bit of both, depending on the context. Confusing right? We’ll try to be specific and talk about vertices, but remember there is only one vertex per voxel, although one voxel cube is composed of eight vertices (and thus is in reality eight voxels: one with matter and seven without matter.)
 
Take a look at this picture. It is in 2D because it’s easier to understand (and to draw), but this is the same thing in 3D. This image represents a voxel sphere (more like a circle since we are in 2D).
 

  The dotted lines are the uniform grid that represent the voxels. At the intersection of those dotted lines, you can have a blue dot, representing a material. So, we have our material grid: either emptiness or a blue material. Inside of all of those cells, there may be a vertex. There is a vertex if and only if all four corners are not the same. If one of the corners is blue and another one empty, it means we have some material change here and thus something to see. So we need a vertex to know where we see the surface. On each of those cells, we have a vertex represented. The vertices are then linked together to form the surface.
 
POSITIONS VALUES
 
Before the Panacea update, you could only get such a sphere with the sphere tool, but with the VTP you’ll now have the opportunity to change the vertex position manually. This raises the question: what coordinate system do we use?
 
In theory, we could use an infinite range of values. For example, we could say that the vertex should be at one third (on a given axis) in between the two materials as shown in the grid, so its value (on this axis) could be 0.333333333. It could also be 0.1415926535, or whatever we want.
 
However, we need to store those vertex positions, and we want to be efficient so that we don’t take too much disk usage so we encode the vertex position (on a given axis) on a single byte. This means we only have 256 different possibilities for a vertex position, but we don’t really need more. A vertex position is a coordinate with three numbers (for the three axes) where all of these numbers are integers (with a maximum 256 different possible integers).
 
So what are those possible values? Before answering that, we need to consider where a vertex can lie. On the sphere representation drawing, you can see that vertices are inside the zone defined by the four surrounding material points. This is indeed where a vertex should be most of the time, although we may sometimes want to overflow a bit, reach a little further than the vertex is supposed to. This will encroach on the zone of the neighbor voxel, but it does not have to be a problem. We decided that a vertex could lie on its one zone, but also the zone of its direct neighbors. On the 2D schematics above, it means that a vertex can be placed anywhere on the nine squares around it.
 
A vertex encoding actually encodes three vertice’s positions. We want to have an encoding for all the important positions, the middle of each of the three voxels and their borders. This means that we need a multiple of six. We’ll use 252 as it is very close to 256. Now let’s see this coordinate system in a picture. The picture below represents four simple cubes in voxels (yellow, red, blue and cyan).
 
We will be talking about the vertex shared by the red and blue cubes. There are actually two of those vertices in 2D, one top and one bottom; let’s talk about the top one. We state that the position it is in in the picture will be 0 (it’s a convention, the one chosen in the Vertex Precision Tool), and above the cubes we showed all the position values this vertex could have
 
 
So 0 is the position of a vertex in a simple voxel cube. If we move the vertex into position 42 (both the top and bottom vertex of this red-blue junction), then the red rectangle will now be 1.5 times bigger, and the blue rectangle will be half its current size. If we move the vertices to -42, it would be the other way around. Note that all the values between -42 and 42 are the values where the vertex is supposed to be without overflow. This is the zone we described earlier.
 
If we were to move the vertices to value 84, then we would enter the territory of the vertex shared by the blue and cyan cubes. This becomes a little dangerous and could result in strange results. In this example, it would lead to the blue surface to completely disappear and be replaced by the red one. The blue voxel would still exist, it would just have a null volume.
 
And, in the example of these four cubes, if we were to go to a value above 84, it would result in an ill-formed shape because the blue shape would have a negative volume. This would probably create visual artifacts, and we may prevent this situation in the future.
 
ENCODING CHANGE
 
One last note for those who are familiar with voxelmancy. In Panacea, we use an encoding of 253 positions (from -126 to 126), which is different than it has been. We used an encoding of 255 positions (it was from -128 to 128 but previous -128 = actual -126). Since there is no exact mapping between the old encoding to the new one, this means that vertices in your constructs may be shifted up to 1mm (vertices at position 0 will not move, but those at extreme values will move the most). This will probably be unnoticeable, but we wanted to err on the side of caution and share this information.
 
You may wonder, why 253? It is for the reasons explained before, to have those nice -126, -84, -42, 0, 42, 84 and 126 values. The 255 system did not allow for that. We could have chosen 193, so that you could split a voxel in 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64, but that would have meant a huge loss in precision and significantly deformed most constructs. So 253 it is, and you can now split a voxel in 42!
 
USING THE VPT
 
There are exactly 253 positions on a single axis including zero that a vertex can be in due to it being divisible over three voxels. Negative 126, 0, and positive 126. As such, the width of one voxel is exactly 84 positions. And each vertex can be moved exactly 1.5 voxel away from the center position.
 
Thus, the grid on which a vertex is moved is adjustable to a size that covers 1, 2, 4, 7, 14, 21 or 42 positions, 42 being the size of half a voxel. This allows the accurate placement to the finest detail or to quickly scale up and move a vertex by a half, a quarter, a sixth, or a twelfth of a voxel.
 
See the image below to get an idea of the different size grids available to the VPT.
 
 
Once selected, the vertex cursor can then be moved with:
The up, down, left arrow and right Arrow keys for the x- and y-axis.
The Page Up and Page Down for the z-axis.
The Home key to send the cursor to the current position of the vertex.
The End key to send your cursor to the last confirmed coordinates.
(This also happens by default when you change vertices.)
The Alt+Home key combination to send the cursor to the centered 0,0,0 coordinates.
Holding Control+Scroll will adjust the grid size between the available sizes.
Left-click confirms the placement and moves the selected vertex to the cursor.
 
The VPT will give you the finest precision possible, no more complex voxelmancy of copy-pasting things around to get a specific shape. You may not use this tool all the time, but when you do you’ll find it exceptionally helpful for fine-tuning.
 
WHEW, THAT’S A LOTTA INFO!
 
Still with us? We know there’s a lot of information to process, but we felt it was worthwhile to share the details with our voxelating community members that would appreciate seeing how the sausage is made (so to speak).
 
We can’t wait to see the cool new stuff Noveans build with the Vertex Precision Tool. As always, we encourage everyone to join the conversation on the forum in this thread. If you have questions about the VPT or want to share your thoughts and tips about voxelmancy in general, that’s the place to go.
 
 

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

Wallet feeling a little light lately? Get ready to remedy that when the Panacea update hits, bringing with it two lucrative, quanta-producing possibilities: space wrecks and inactive asset requisitioning (IAR).
 
SPACE WRECKS
 

You’re going about your business, flying through space from one market to another or heading out to join some friends when your radar unexpectedly reveals something. Curious, you move closer to investigate and find wreckage. There’s no indication of who left it behind or why. Finders keepers, right? It’s yours now. And you’ve got some choices to make.
 
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
Will you: 
salvage the ship for materials and elements? tokenize and sell the whole ship? sell the information about where the wreck is located? create a mission to get someone else to salvage it? The decision is all up to you.
 
RADAR AND RARITY
No special equipment is needed to locate these space wrecks, your standard radar is enough to detect them.
They will spawn randomly throughout Helios. There are five tiers of rarity, with lower-tier wrecks with low-value contents spawning at a higher frequency. The highest-tier wrecks will be harder to find; those who discover and harvest them will be rewarded with high-value materials and elements.
 
INACTIVE ASSET REQUISITIONING
 
This system is being introduced to address one of the chief complaints we’ve heard from Noveans, namely abandoned constructs cluttering up the universe, especially in public markets.
 
The purpose of IAR is to:
create salvaging opportunities for players around the game world. ensure cleanliness and performance around markets and other Aphelia zone hot spots. clean up older, unowned constructs.  
In other words, IAR has the potential to create a less cluttered environment for everyone and a fatter wallet for you.
 
ABANDONED CONSTRUCTS DEFINED
Players with a subscription, even if they have not logged in for a while, are in no danger of having their constructs flagged as “abandoned”, with the exception of constructs parked in Aphelia territory as noted below.
 
In effect, constructs belonging to unsubscribed users and not on their owners’ sanctuary zones will eventually lose their ownership, putting them in an abandoned state and making them vulnerable to be salvaged by other players. Likewise, constructs owned by an organization will lose their ownership when the org’s last remaining legate ends their subscription.
 
During the unsubscribe process, players will be reminded that their constructs will be in danger of becoming abandoned. When the constructs lose ownership, a blueprint will be placed in the owner’s inventory should they choose to return to Helios at a later date.
 
TIME’S TICKING 
When an account becomes inactive due to a canceled subscription, a countdown will begin on all constructs belonging to that account. After a period of time, those constructs will lose their ownership and other players will be able to salvage or capture them.
 
Then, all unowned constructs will have a countdown timer and it will count down from the moment it is unowned, regardless of why they are unowned (PvP destruction, IAR, abandonment, etc.) At the end of this timer, the construct will simply be removed from the game world.
 
The ‘ownership’ timer for unsubscribed players’ constructs is three months (90 days/2160 hours). The timer is the same for organization-owned constructs and begins when the last active legate of the owning organization’s subscription expires.
 
Each time a construct is unclaimed, whether due to an owner’s inactive game account or if abandoned via PvP, a one-month countdown to decay is set and is visible to everyone. If no one salvages the construct, it will be permanently removed from the game.
 
As with most newly introduced systems, this is subject to change in the future depending on the metrics we see as time passes.
 
SPECIAL RULES FOR MARKETS 
A modified version of IAR will be used on Aphelia territories, including all market zones.
Regardless of whether or not the owner is an active subscriber, all constructs on Aphelia territories are subject to IAR. As soon as a player exits their construct in Aphelia territory, a 168-hour (seven-day) abandonment countdown will begin for that construct. This is considerably shorter than the default IAR timer. Once that countdown reaches 0, the construct will lose its ownership. A new countdown timer of 48-hours (two days) before deletion will start ticking.
 
HAPPY HUNTING
 
Will you be among the happy scavengers scouring the skyways and byways for wrecked ships and abandoned constructs? Join the conversation about this devblog here.

This is going to be a long post!
 
Questions
1.       Is this the ore pool balance per tile we can expect when Demeter goes live? A ‘primary’ ore with a relatively large pool, then moderate to minimal pools of the other planet ores types.
2.       Is this the ore distribution pattern we can expect? Many I have spoken to have noticed ores in ‘Zones’ across the planets, where swathes of a particular ore is the primary ore pool per tile over significant numbers of tiles.
3.       Is the ore pool shared across tile boarders? Some have noticed ore pools being impinged on by extraction from neighbouring tiles.
4.       Are higher tier ores (T4 + T5) being deliberately excluded from planetary ore pools, and into asteroid mining gameplay?
5.       How is NQ planning to prevent large organisations from claiming large swathes of tiles, from the advantage of current territory scan libraries held by them & huge wallet balances, thus disadvantaging the rest of the player base from finding ‘good’ extraction rate tiles?
6.       How is NQ going to prevent the control of the mining unit manufacturing market by larger organisation that have access to the higher tier ores needed to produce the higher tier MU’s, that can then restrict open market sales of those MU’s, thus restricting the access to the higher tier ores and effectively controlling the higher tier ore market?
7.       How is NQ going to manage the expected significant reduction in ore availability to general gameplay, whilst the player-base train the required talents and set up their allowed number of MU’s, to restart the flow of ore through the game economy?
8.       How is NQ going to manage the expected significant ore price inflation that will result from the changes to mining, first from the near dead stop of ore production while MU’s are set up, then from the artificially capped extraction rate of ore, from the use of calibration charges?
9.       Will the number of asteroids, both in PvP space and the safe zone, be increased and if so by how many? And will the spawn time of asteroids be staggered over the week, rather than all at once on a weekend?
10.   What is NQ’s expected time frame for the new player experience, going from first spawn-in, collecting surface rocks, setting first base, creating/buying first ship, claimed tile expansion, reaching space, inter-planetary travel, asteroid mining?
 
Problems
1.       Having a primary ore, especially T1, severely restricts the ability of new & solo players from establishing a ‘home base’ from which they are able to grow from and then expand to new territories. It confines them to simply extracting the primary ore, then having to sell enough of it to buy the other ore types needed for expansion. This will limit how quickly a player is able to progress in the early game, thus reducing the likelihood of player retention.
2.       Having zones of primary ores places another limit on new and solo players, like in problem 1, that they are not able to gain the resources needed to expand in what would be considered a reasonable gameplay time frame. It also allows larger organisations to claim large swathes of territory, potentially shutting out new / solo / small org players from large regions of the planets, forcing them away from markets, so increasing fuel cost and playtime to reach said markets to sell goods and progress.
3.       Allowing neighbouring tiles to pilfer across tile boarders will obviously reduce the ore pool for the tile owner. This will only lead to the reduction in the overall ore extraction, as people will not want to waste MU’s on tiles with only partially remaining ore pools, and it will also create player animosity to the game mechanic, especially in densely claimed areas, like the market rings.
4.       By moving higher tier ores off planets, this restricts the higher-level gameplay attainable for players not wanting to be involved in asteroid mining. Even by retaining a small amount on planet, akin to rare mineral deposits, these tiles will quickly be found by large organisations with their territory scan libraries, and so claimed within days of the update, shutting new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. Forcing a gameplay loop is not a sandbox.
5.       While the implementation of a tile tax is intended to prevent players holding tiles without ‘using’ them, or at least incentivise their use for mining or industry to cover the tax, large organisations have the wallet resources to maintain their hold over significant swathes of multiple planets. These orgs also have the player numbers to rapidly data mine their territory scan libraries to find the best yielding tiles and immediately claim those tiles within the first days, if not hours of the update. This will shut out all other players from decent yield tiles, effectively producing two tiers of players, one who scrapes by on low yield tiles and purchasing ores from the large orgs or open markets, and the large orgs who will be able to control the ores market setting whatever price they want.
6.       Having MU’s require the tier of ore they extract in order to build them will allow player groups who have access to those tiers of ore to control the production and sale of the mining units for those tiers. Combined with the level of control large orgs can bring to bear on the ore markets, this has the potential to shut out new / solo / small org players from that level of gameplay. It also goes against the current manufacturing meta of a ‘Basic’ industrial element can produce the ‘Uncommon’ version of the element being made, the ‘Uncommon’ industrial element can produce the ‘Advanced’ version of the element being made, etc. This meta allows progression up the industry gameplay levels, whereas the manufacturing requirements of the MU’s does not.
7.       The expected significant reduction in the ore extraction rate whilst the mining changes take effect are already impacting the gameplay, with speculative market price inflation and ore hoarding taking place. With scarcity comes restriction of growth and knock-on price inflation across the market, restricting gameplay options and progression.
8.       The introduction of Missions showed the impact that can be inflicted on the game market by the reduction in the global ore extraction rate as players moved away from mining to a more afk and profitable gameplay loop. At first the scarcity of ore will drive price inflation way faster than the spike seen with the introduction of Missions. Then by putting an artificial cap on the global extraction rate, ore prices (and so all other market prices) can and likely will be controlled by the few large organisations that establish territorial hold over large swathes of tiles with good pools.
9.       The number of asteroids currently spawning at any point in the game, be it PvP space or Safe Zone is insufficient to ‘fill the gap’ expected in ore supply whilst the new MU’s are being established. Additionally, given the potential for significant territory control by large orgs on good yield tiles once the MU gameplay is established, even T1 ores will be in demand from asteroids. With the low spawn numbers and the ‘all-at-once’ spawn mechanic, this severely limits the player base to where and when asteroid gameplay occurs disadvantaging those players that cannot for whatever reason play at those times.
10.   If the new player experience takes ‘too long’ to reach the point in gameplay where they are able to choose what sandbox play they want to pursue, then player numbers / retention will suffer, especially if the opening gameplay is days/weeks (/months?) of just collecting surface rocks and hoofing them to market before they can even afford to expand beyond their Sanctuary tile.
 
Possible solutions
1.       Have T1 ore pools be more balanced in each tile. While a primary ore type can still be present, the other T1 ore pools need to be similar, in order to allow new / solo players to establish a ‘home tile’ from which they can expand, without reliance on ore markets that have the potential to be controlled / dominated by large organisations.
2.       Reduce the size of planetary ore zones or completely randomise the distribution of higher tier ores per tile – though while keeping the per planet ore type distribution currently in game. This will prevent the domination of ore types by larger organisations and allow new / solo / small org players to find higher tier ores nearer to their home bases, whilst still incentivising players to expand to other planets to find ore type not available on their home planet.
3.       Ore pools must be restricted to the tile they reference in the territory scan – anything else will just encourage griefing across tile boundaries. And if NQ think ‘our player base is better than that…’ I encourage you to look at the amount of ships with glitched element still being sold / used in PvP, the number of players with large numbers of alts abusing the Mission system to gain massive wealth, the players using the terraforming tools to grief their neighbours, etc.
4.       Retain the small chance to find higher tier ores on their respective planets as currently. This is still potentially subject to large orgs finding and claiming these tiles immediately following the update, so shutting out higher tier extraction by new / solo / small org players. A possibility is a rng spawn of higher tier ores in the extraction cycle of a lower tier MU.
5.       a) Implement the increasing pricing scale for the tile taxation amount, as is currently used of the TU deployment cost. Currently the TU deployment cost is of little significance to the large organisations, as they have the wallet resources to soak up the one hit up front cost of deploying high numbers of TU’s. Implementing rising tax rates for the number of claimed tiles would go some way to limiting the reach and control of large orgs over swathes of territories, as the cost then become recurring currency sinks.
5.       b) Wipe all current territory scans – it is the only way to set a level field between orgs / players with large scan libraries and the rest of the player-base.
6.       Implement the manufacturing meta seen across the rest of the game to the manufacture of the Mining Units. This will allow progression of mining tiers, as is currently available to industry progression.
7.       Temporarily introduce market bots to sell ores at ‘reasonable’ market process to cover the scarcity gap. Reduce the quantity available on the market as the MU gameplay becomes established, then remove them at the 45day mark when most invested players will have the MU talents trained to Lvl4.
8.       For long term MU gameplay loop either remove the calibration charge cap, allowing charges to accumulate unrestricted, therefore allowing as many MU’s to be used as can be started with a charge per player – or allow the charges to be traded on the market, so players that do not get involved with the MU gameplay loop to sell them and make money, and also allowing players involved in MU’s to increase the amount of MU’s they are able to run.
Or a more drastic change – just remove the charges all together and use the calibration mini-game to determine extraction efficiency. This will then put the global ore extraction rate burden back onto the player-base, as determined by the amount of game time they are willing to spend on servicing their deployed MU’s.
9.       Increase the overall number of asteroids spawning in the game, both in PvP space and Safe Zone, and stagger the spawn times throughout the week to allow players to choose when they involve themselves in the asteroid hunt gameplay loop.
10.   The tile tax burden must not be set so that it restricts the new / solo players from expanding from their first tile. This leads back to the solution of a rising tax rate per number of tiles claimed. The principal limitation of a player’s expansion, should this update be implemented as seen on the PTS, will be the dominance of large organisations over the ore markets. If the ore price burden is too high for players to progress to building / buying their first / next ship or tile – due to the rate of which ore can be collected from the surface, verses the amount of time required to collect sufficient ore to progress – then the majority players will not continue and the game will stagnant, or worse….
 
I hope NQ realises the scope of the changes they are proposing and the potential damage to the game that can come from them. It will only take small tweaks to existing gameplay mechanics and the proposed numbers of the Demeter update to ensure the damage is mitigated and we are presented with a well-structured game that fulfils NQs vision and give players a rich and enjoyable universe to explore and build.

Update 10-20-21 - REMINDER: These rules are still in effect and are now extended to mission hubs. 

In an effort to improve the experience of visiting some of our most popular markets, we will be implementing a new set of rules for constructs left at markets. Enforcement of these rules will begin on the 3rd of September at 6pm UTC. (That’s one week from the date of this notification.)
 
We want to encourage a free and open game environment for all to enjoy. It’s in the spirit of that goal that these measures are being put into place.
 
Only ships are allowed on the market landing platform. Constructs must be parked outside the green perimeter line surrounding the main market building and the access ramp to the market. One container construct per entity (player or organization) will be allowed for the purpose of storage below the landing pads. Shop constructs, advertisements, and dispensers are not permitted at any markets. These should be placed on your own tiles or at districts instead. We would like to remind you that you now have the ability to place a “Welcome Visitors” marker on your territory.  Under no circumstances may player constructs intersect with the Aphelia constructs. Constructs at the Aphelia markets must be parked either on the landing platform or the ground around the Aphelia markets. Airspace within 2km of the market building must remain clear. XL screens and screen arrays are not permitted within 2km of the market building Constructs that violate these rules may be hidden, removed, or abandoned without warning. Novaquark reserves the right to move, hide, or delete constructs at its discretion, for example if they are designed to circumvent these rules or if they impact marketplace performance or usability.  
To safeguard the performance of everyone visiting these locations, we strongly encourage players to adapt any screens and advertisements to use Lua based Render Script instead of SVG/HTML even if that is in the form of uploading an image of your SVG and then loading that into the Render Script.

Join the conversation here.
 

Dear Noveans, 
 
We’d like to take a moment to talk about the communication on the forums and in Discord. We appreciate the passion each of you bring to our community and don’t want to diminish it; however, we’ve seen an increase in negativity, specifically attacks, unconstructive complaints, and disrespect to fellow players and our team. This is not okay. 
 
We’ve always invited community members to speak their minds. We’d like to remind everyone that we require a certain level of decorum and respect. Participants in our community areas (forums, Discord, and our social media accounts) are expected to voice criticism and concern constructively and communicate with courtesy and respect.
 
This is a warning that we won’t tolerate attacks on staff, volunteers, or members of this community. If you can’t play nice, and with respect, then this isn’t the community for you. 
 
With love,
SpaceMom