Nosomu

I wish NQ would announce this but it doesn’t seem like something they would do. Given their past tendencies I feel that they’ll wait until the last minute to announce a wipe or further erasures/deletion mechanics. Just look at the core changes. They saved the worst for last and highlighted every other feature in dev blogs beforehand. If they have decided to wipe already I don’t believe they will tell us until we’re blindsided and lose most or all of our progress from now until the wipe. The only ones who may be aware before that time are certain streamers and/or people who have close contact with certain employees at NQ. Which is very unfair to the rest of us. Since NQ doesn’t have financial issues, why won’t they just tell us if they will commit to a full wipe or say if it’s off the table? If they are going to wipe they should tell us. Surely they can survive if players decide to take a break until release. If they aren’t going to wipe then they should tell us how they’re going to fix the effects of the exploits.

This is a pretty old devblog, but it possibly spells out what the ‘unique resources’ obtainable from alien cores are (assuming nothing has changed). Also, the blog is a nice trip down memory lane and hints at some of the things that may change with the first time user experience. Enjoy:

Even though many of the people here have drunk the NQ kool-aid in regards to these IARs and territory abandonment mechanics, it still doesn’t sit well with me. This is the first game (and MMO) I’ve played that has actively destroyed players’ hard work just for taking a break from the game for awhile (which is normal and should be accounted for and encouraged for players’ mental health). Some of these people spend thousands of hours creating their works, and - I believe rightly so - didn’t expect them to be abandoned and claimable by others. I have taken months or years-long breaks from multiple MMOs and I haven’t had to worry about these types of mechanics. I didn’t keep up with the news or updates on these games either. Yet when I logged back in, all of my stuff was still there. A better path, in my opinion, would have been to create magic BPs of inactive players’ assets. But for some reason NQ decided to go down a path that has and will discourage previous players from returning which makes absolutely no sense to me and seems to be a lazy approach. Sure, they need to clean up the game world and cut server/bandwidth costs. But there were better ways to do this. This approach has and will only anger previous players that come back. I would predict that many of these would-be long-term players who decide to come back will immediately quit again after they find that a significant amount of their stuff has been stolen. That’s what I would do if I was in their shoes. So when people come in here and express their anger or frustration about having lost stuff, I believe they are justified. NQ’s game design is an outlier compared to other MMOs. Most people don’t expect this level of punishment for taking a break.

I too am disappointed with the space wreck system as it’s currently implemented. When I read about them in the dev blog, I was expecting frequent spawns that would open up a new salvaging loop. I also thought that they would be relatively lucrative wrecks that fairly compensated salvagers for their time (relative to the other game loops). However, I spent over 16 hours searching for wrecks after the patch dropped and didn’t find a single one. I was then told that space wrecks are something to be stumbled upon rather than actively searched for. I am very disappointed that this is the case and I have given up on looking for these wrecks until something changes. Suggestions to make space wrecks more interestIng and enjoyable: -Procedural spawns of the wrecks in the paths of transiting vessels at random time intervals (within, say, once every 1-2 hours). -A specialized abandoned construct radar that has a passive range of 10+ SU. -Exclusive elements that can only be found from salvaged wrecks (i.e. a new variant on existing elements or a new tier of elements that cannot be manufactured. -Alternatively, exclusive schematics of these element variants. -Unique ship spawns that have buffed attributes compared to what is normally available in the game world (i.e. lvl 6 equivalents of handling buffs) -Or, just more frequent spawns that have a higher payout to match other activities in-game.

Thank you for staying up late to write this @NQ-Nyzaltar. The communiqué is appreciated ?

I agree with the spirit of your idea Namcigam. I believe that removing safe zones around some of the planets might make gameplay more interesting for pvpers. I also believe that the subset of pvpers that focus on griefing rather than pvping for a strategic purpose should have more consequences for their actions than what is currently in-game. Ships that don’t equip weapons should also have defensive tools in my opinion.

Well said

Element and Quanta Sinks Introduce new content via salvaging and a quanta sink via NPC vendors: ship modifications. Each ship can have a limited number of slots on the core unit - possibly based on core size. Add some rare ship mods that can only be obtained through salvaging or events. A subset of these mods (basic to advanced) can be made available through NPC vendors for quanta. Examples of ship mods: Space engines consume 10% more fuel and provide 15% more thrust, Shield health is increased by 10% but resistances fall by 5%, atmo engines consume 5% less fuel and engine weight is reduced by 5%. Quanta sink: Skills/Buffs that are not available via skill points that can be purchased from NPC vendors. Each player can have a limited number of slots for these permanent buffs. Access to these buffs can be unlocked by by completing in-game events and tasks. These can be purchased for a significant amount of quanta to act as a limited quanta sink. I.e. a player can purchase a permanent buff that provides x% reduced ship weight for x million quanta. Other examples of buffs: 5% less materials required to produce goods via industry, 20% reduction in taxes for tiles owned, 10% boost in radar range, etc. Sink: Element decay/destruction. Repair units that use scrap or new elements/parts to repair an entire ship. To make these easier to use, perhaps they can auto purchase elements/parts from the market remotely as needed with a cap set on the purchase price based on the cost to produce an element/part times 2 or whatever variable the user sets. Quanta sink: increased sales taxes for buyers. Quanta sink: A NPC service that will transport your damaged/destroyed ship in a safe zone location to one of your cores for a fee. Element sink/ quanta generation: Aphelia/NPC mega projects that require elements to be delivered before the project can be completed. I.e. warp gates, space stations, markets in new locations, NPC fleets for an upcoming event, etc. These projects can pay out a generous amount of quanta per element. Element sink/repurposing: The ability to upgrade multiple basic elements to a higher tier at 140% of the production cost of the higher tier element. I.e. 3-6 basic engines can be upgraded to an uncommon engine at current market prices. Element recycling that breaks elements down into pure metals. Fun Introduce items that can only be found by doing events. Introduce events similar to the Thoramine hunt. Create industry events that offer limited-edition rewards to players who participate (these could be integrated into the mega projects mentioned above). Create PVP events where the victorious org/group receives exclusive skins and rewards (king of the hill events around an aphelia ship or something). Create puzzles that award the location of an unclaimed high-value T5 tile location, the location of a valuable deep space wreck, etc. New-player ship building competitions that award exclusive items, honeycomb, skins, or whatever reward you can think of. Explorer events and rewards. Perhaps rogue planets (or large asteroids) that pass through the system for a short time with artifacts on them. Make ship lasers that allow players to mine asteroids from the comfort of their ships. Give orgs passive benefits that can be unlocked through tasks or leveling up the org. These benefits should have the dual purpose of encouraging players to join larger active orgs. I.e. Reduced warp cell costs when traveling to org-owned warp beacons, a slight increase in the amount of ore that MUs extract on org-owned hexes/constructs, 10% reduced fuel consumption on all org dynamics, reduced market taxes at the closest market to the org HQ, etc. Quality of life changes Fuel hubs Increase element link limits. Eliminate Kergon X1-4 and create a recipe that produces kergon using any tier 2 ore and hydrogen/oxygen. Reduce the weight of safe engines that scales with each tier. This should scale faster than the freight engines as the tradeoff for reduced thrust is pretty steep. Alternatively, find another way to make safe engines meaningful. Reduce the amount of fuel that rocket engines consume and increase their thrust to make them more relevant. Create a destructor element for industry that deletes excess materials (such as hydrogen/ oxygen). Make it easier to align multiple cores when deploying from blueprints. Add a "remove all elements, schematics, and honeycomb" option for cores. Add an option to include schematics when saving/deploying static blueprints. Make honeycomb types optional when creating blueprints. Put the honeycomb that the builder recommends as the default option, but allow players to select honeycomb on hand when deploying a blueprint. Remove the restriction that disables mining unit talents in VR. I don’t have enough time to travel to a different planet every day just to utilize the skills I unlocked. At this point I just VR everywhere to save time. Reduce territory scan times to a few minutes. Reduce the travel time required to reach asteroids by forcing them to spawn closer to planetary bodies. If it takes 10-15 minutes to travel to an asteroid this is great. 20-40 mins+ is not so great.

Thanks for posting info on the upcoming changes. I’m excited to see how space markets, territories, and space TW unfold. I would appreciate more information about these three additions in future dev blogs. In particular, I would like to know: What will the tax rate be in space? What shape will the space territories take? (I.e. hexadecahedron, or by space territories do you mean huge zones encompassing large areas surrounding each planet, or something else) Will I need to race to claim the space territory my space cores are in? Will space markets be player-owned or aphelia-owned? Will players be able to influence, and benefit from, the market taxes at these markets? Will space TW only apply to space territories outside of the safe zone? I currently operate a factory in space and I would like to know in advance if it’s ideal to keep it as is, move it to sanctuary, or move it to one of my HQ tiles on Alioth. Cheers

I have been thinking about ways to improve the DU experience: New Player Experience: -As a temporary measure increase the yield T1 surface rocks from 20L to 400L -Gift new players a territory unit in addition to their Sanctuary TU -Reduce the volume of territory units so new players can hold them in their personal inventory with greater ease -Make a new player’s first territory claim free and give them a tax holiday on that territory for a month -Create and gift a temporary compact territory scanner to new players. This scanner should function like a normal territory scanner but remain in the player’s inventory while scanning. The item can then expire after x uses or after x weeks. -Change the starter MU to a basic mining unit L -In addition to the starter hover ship, give new players the resources and BP for a small asteroid mining ship -Add a new menu item that allows all players to see discovered asteroids and set them as a destination. Players can currently VR to public DSATs and do this, so why not just make this easier for everyone. DSATs will still be required to discover new asteroids. -Recommend that new players join an org and provide them with a list of a three Active organizations that are accepting new players and willing to help them grow -Introduce a new player chat that only allows NQ staff, new players, and veterans that volunteer as community leaders to join it NQ’s Civilization-Building Vision: -Introduce new incentives for players to build mega cities/space stations. For example: for each static core owned by a Unique player within 20km, introduce a +x% buff to industry output and -x% reduction in industry production time. Introduce market terminals in these up-and-coming mega cities with reduced tax rates based on the above parameters. -Introduce a new type of territory unit (or other solution) that allows multiple players to share tiles in these mega cities on planets using a trust-less system. Asteroid mining: -Remove all the rock on asteroids and make them giant balls of ore. This has the added benefit of reducing server costs because all of the calculations involved in removing the rock will no longer exist. It will also make asteroid mining more enjoyable. Passive mining: -Heavily increase the T1/T2 pools to encourage players to build -Remove taxes and set a limit for the number of mining units that each unique player can place. If some players want to support NQ financially by buying more accounts so be it. -Remove calibration and simply use the above MU placement limit. Container capacities will also limit how much ore is mined in the long run for AFK players. -Change MU skills to allow players to place a few more mining units. -Potentially limit how many of each tier of mining unit a unique player can place. I.e. for every 1 T5 MU, 2 T4 MUs, 3 T3 MUs, etc. -If NQ is really hurting for money perhaps players should be allowed to purchase additional MU licenses for $2 a month to increase the MU limits. Ways for NQ to make money other than through subs: -In-game shop with new armor skins -Schematics that produce unique honeycombs -Engine trail colors -Allow players to purchase small moon-sized rogue planets in the distant future (though this may be a stretch) -Allow players to choose from a list of pre-made planets or allow them to select the biomes they prefer -Alternatively, introduce a planet core that allows players to place dirt on it. The volume of dirt placed on these cores should be many times greater than what is currently possible in-game. -Unique decorative elements for static and dynamic cores PVP: -Introduce specialized dynamic cores that only come in certain sizes. I.e. small interdictor cores and make it so that certain elements can only be installed on these cores (such as an interdictor) -Other examples: Hauler core which gives +x% cargo capacity. Battleship cores with +x% weapon damage -As soon as a ship is identified via radar, set it as a destination so players can tell where the ship is Warp Beacons: -Reduce the cost of warp beacons Ship Mining -Introduce ship mining lasers that allow players to mine asteroids without leaving their ship if they so desire Construct height limits: -Ensure players can’t build towers by introducing no-build zone from x km above the surface to 40 or 80kms above a planet’s surface -Alternatively, make voxels in this range non-collidable