EpicPhail

Following the discussion around yesterday’s devblog, the community asked us to look over our figures to see what we can reliably sustain in terms of construct limits. In this communication we want to take the opportunity to outline what we have decided to change from the previous devblog as well as to explain some decisions such as the mechanics of construct abandonment and our reasons for arriving at our previous figures. These proposed changes are still being developed by our design team and we welcome your continued feedback on this major update.
 
Organization Constructs Slots versus Personal Construct Slots
 
There appeared to be some confusion in yesterday’s devblog between organization and personal construct slots. Personal construct slots are always independent of organization construct slots. 
 
Before outlining the details of the construct slots, it’s important to note that our position on excess construct abandoning mechanics. For the avoidance of doubt, when this change is implemented in the Panacea release. No construct will be subject to abandonment through the following mechanics for at least the first month after release.
 
This is to ensure as smooth a release as possible, and to allow our players who want to specialize in the architectural gameplay loop or the collecting of wonderful constructs, some time to accrue talent points and to adapt.
 
Personal construct slots:
 
Can only be used for constructs in the player’s ownership. Can not be assigned to organizations. Are non-transferable to other players. Are gained through talents independently of organization construct slots.  
Organization construct slots:
 
Can be assigned to any organization, regardless of membership. Can not be assigned to players. Once assigned to an organization, can not be repealed from that organization for 30 days. Once repealed, the organization will have until the next bi-weekly construct check to ensure that it meets its construct slot requirements. If that bi-weekly construct check determines that the organization has more constructs than it has slots, the organization will receive a warning and be required to ensure the constructs count is brought down to its capacity. If the next bi-weekly construct check following that warning determines that the organization still has more constructs than it has slots, random constructs from that organization will be abandoned until the organization is back in compliance with its slot capacity. All this means that even if you go over the available slot count, you have at the very minimum 14 days to correct it.  
We are keeping the random nature of selection for construct abandonment. This is because as game developers we know that if there exists a way for a game system to be broken, our players will find it. In this particular instance, given the gravity of the impact, we feel that it’s important to protect the game and our community from abuse, and the randomization is an effort to do that.
 
We hope this clears up some of the lingering questions that were remaining yesterday.
 
Player allocated slot amounts, why so low?
 
Following internal research, we determined that currently per active player there are approximately 25 constructs in the game at the present time.
 
Therefore we believed that having a total of 42 slots per player would have been enough to provide an overhead for the community to be able to distribute the available slots amongst each other and support each other's projects.
 
We do value our players and recognise that some of you own considerably more constructs than that average, and though we want to encourage collaboration and community, we don’t want to constrain those players that prefer to go it alone.
 
And, we’ve heard you. 
 
We are looking into an alternative approach that we feel will meet the majority of the community needs while also meeting our requirements for the long term sustainability and balancing of Dual Universe.
 
Talent Changes
 
We are going to increase the core allowances. In yesterday's devblog we proposed a figure of 42 total constructs. We are going to increase that through the introduction of talent changes that will require considerable time investment but keep the door open to players that wish to own many constructs.
 
The new talents are separated into three tiers, increasing in expense significantly per tier.
 
The new figures are (subject to change)

For personal construct slots:
 
The base personal construct slots will be increased from 2 to 10 slots without any talents. The first tier personal construct talent will grant 3 slots per level (up from 2), for a total of 15. The second tier personal construct talent will grant 5 slots per level (up from 1), for a total of 25. The new third tier personal construct talent will grant 10 slots per level, for a total of 50.  
This will allow for a maximum personal construct limit of 100, once all the talents are fully acquired.
 
For organization construct slots:
 
The base organization construct slots will grant 10 slots without any talents. The new first tier organization construct talent will grant 3 slots per level, for a total of 15. The new second tier organization construct talent will grant 5 slots per level, for a total of 25. The new third tier organization construct talent will grant 10 slots per level, for a total of 50.  
This will allow for a maximum organization construct limit of 100, once all the talents are fully acquired.
 
The combination of the two will allow a determined player to reach the maximum number of construct slots that we can reasonably maintain. This will take substantial time investment in order to be a specialization within the game. 
 
We will still be refunding the following Legate based talents:
 
Organization Construct Management Organization Construct Management Specialization Advanced Organization Construct Management Specialization  
These talents will be buffed to collectively increase the maximum ceiling for the organization's construct limit to 1625.
 
If you have already trained Advanced Organization Construct Management Specialization to level 5, by reinvesting the refunded talent points, we estimate that you will be able to reach at least a construct slot capacity total of 80. Further, given the grace period of at least 1 month following the Panacea release, we hope that those amongst our players who value their construct capacity can increase it to a comfortable level of approximately 125 construct slots before needing to make decisions on which constructs to keep.
 
We want to thank you all for your feedback and take this opportunity to recognize the passion you our community have for the future of this game. We would love to hear how you feel about the new changes outlined above in this forum.
 

This is something we have been asking for since day one of play testing (2017).
 
The idea being that you have separated engine and nozzle elements for more flexibility, and fuel tank voxels where volume of connected voxels become volume of tank.
This would solve MANY of the creative freedom vs cube meta problems in DU. But NQ has never even acknowledged this.

OP, I'm sorry if I derailed your post.  I'm sure you have put every bit as much time into this game as I have, if not more.   I disagree with your assessment of exploit usage and I used way too many words to say that.  The ideas of  buffing elements is a good start.  Realistically, new elements are part of the fix here.  Why does the thrust end of an engine and the power generating end of an engine have to be the same element?  Combustion chamber and burner, linked somehow maybe?  Who knows.  I think more complex systems and additional tools would be a great discussion without the caveats of the exploit usage.   In my opinion the rationalization of the exploit usage detracts from the constructive discussion of "where do we go from here".  Again, sorry for derailing.  Hope our next exchange goes better.  I'll try harder next time.

One or two engines wouldn't be the max though, it would be the middle, or balanced.
 
I'm over simplifying how this would work hopefully, but imagine each type of element needed one unit of power to function, and you had something like 14 units available on your core.  two for atmo engines, two for space engines, lift, brakes, shields, storage and weapons.  So if you don't need weapons, you've got two more points to spend somewhere else.
 
That would still allow you to totally ignore PVP, or hauling, or build a ship that's space or atmo only, and dedicate all that power somewhere else.  
 
Hopefully it would be a lot more interesting then that, with different tiers of elements requiring different amounts of power, higher tier cores with higher power output maybe.
 
But the goal would be that if you want your ship to be above average in one area, you have to give something up in another area, like you said.
 
The docking thing could be a problem.  But i don't think docking was really intended to be used to tow another ship that's the same size/mass.  Maybe docking should disengage if the docked ship weighs too much compared to the parent ship, or something like that.
 
Although that's the only way people are able to build larger ships right now, so if they changed that hopefully they give us XL cores too. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

You have some chapters in your past that you havent moved from. Come on man, 0.23 its like half a year ago. We all took a hit but we all play the same game. I hope you get well soon and you understand they are doing what they can with the tools they have to help and please every single one of us, KNOWING, its impossible.

o/

i think you should re-think your ragepost. specifically the part that says:
 
 They clearly and specifically stated, in the very announcement you clearly saw and read because you already mentioned that you know they are backtracking a bit on their initial decision:
 
 
So you won't find anyone PvP'ing in stacked ships and if you do, report them and their ship goes poof. I'm willing to bet that if you get your salad tossed by someone using a stacked ship, and you report them, NQ will probably fix your ship for you if you ask nicely. NQ are cool like that. Stop being such a whiner.

Im confused why Ferro thinks that they are bound by the Player ToS. Almost ever clause you are referring to are for the players. They can and have in the past selectively ignored portions of it to keep the community from exploding from certain things. Get over it, next large patch they will cease to work at all. Play if you want, play if you dont. Its their game.

From the perspective of a ship builder, @EpicPhail is right.  A lot of people were using element stacking to build ships that looked good, but could still haul the most weight possible.
 
There were other reasons people were using element stacking too.  But all you have to do is read the OP to see that isn't the topic.
 
So in my opinion the first thing NQ needs to do is decide how much thrust, lift, brakes ect they want each core size to be able to handle.  Then they need to make the elements powerful enough that you only need one or two of each type of element to reach that level.  Because having a thousand elements is bad for performance and it looks like crap.
 
Then they need a new way of limiting the number of functional elements that we can put on a ship.
 
Something like a power management system that makes you choose where you want to use power, instead of simply deciding how much power you want to pile on.
 
Hopefully NQ is already working on it.  And if they aren't, hopefully this whole element stacking thing makes them realize that we need it.
 
  

i think you should re-think your ragepost. specifically the part that says:
 
 They clearly and specifically stated, in the very announcement you clearly saw and read because you already mentioned that you know they are backtracking a bit on their initial decision:
 
 
So you won't find anyone PvP'ing in stacked ships and if you do, report them and their ship goes poof. I'm willing to bet that if you get your salad tossed by someone using a stacked ship, and you report them, NQ will probably fix your ship for you if you ask nicely. NQ are cool like that. Stop being such a whiner.

Did you notice that this post is not in the suggestions board?

I tried to refrain from suggesting any one single course of action because I am not here to fix this problem, that is NQ's job if they decide this is something that needs fixing, which they clearly already have. (See linked external thread)

 
 
This is actually exactly my point, there are some simple changes that could be made to the game that would allow nearly all shapes of ship to be near-meta simultaneously.
From a balancing perspective I fail to see how that is an undesirable thing for anyone. Unless you are a ship creator who profits from making cube haulers.

 
 
You are quite a cynical being, this is a forum where feedback is regularly reviewed and looked over by NQ. On a topic that NQ has asked for opinions on. If actually means quite a lot in this scenario because changes are incoming, whether you like it or not.

 
 
Jesus christ, you're still on the same useless trope as the first time you posted. You claim you read the post but yet you probably understood less than 5% of it.
At what point did I ever advocate for stacking to be kept? Never once. Lol if you think you can I would like to see you quote the exact place where I say "stacking should be kept". I'd love to see it bud.
Stacking is already gone, it's over with, done. Get over it.
 
 
But that's the thing, you weren't (and still really arent) disagreeing with my idea, because you don't even understand it in the first place. You've made this much clear.
You're just posting useless tropes of your predetermined opinion on stacking which you have every right to have - but your opinion on stacking has no relevance here. This is about shaking up a meta not a thread about whether you liked stacking or not.

 
Same as I said to Arch - If you disagree that this meta needs changing that is one thing - but that isn't something you've even intelligently voiced here. Instead you came in here whining about "Exploit x is an exploit!" No duh, pretty sure everyone knows that already.
 
To allude to a simplistic metaphor that someone with even your limited attention span should grasp:
Your reaction here is the same as if I asked the question "How would one go about breeding a new color of tiger" and you come in and reply with "But tigers are orange and black"....

Yes, we all know this, that wasn't the question that was asked.

i think you should re-think your ragepost. specifically the part that says:
 
 They clearly and specifically stated, in the very announcement you clearly saw and read because you already mentioned that you know they are backtracking a bit on their initial decision:
 
 
So you won't find anyone PvP'ing in stacked ships and if you do, report them and their ship goes poof. I'm willing to bet that if you get your salad tossed by someone using a stacked ship, and you report them, NQ will probably fix your ship for you if you ask nicely. NQ are cool like that. Stop being such a whiner.

i think you should re-think your ragepost. specifically the part that says:
 
 They clearly and specifically stated, in the very announcement you clearly saw and read because you already mentioned that you know they are backtracking a bit on their initial decision:
 
 
So you won't find anyone PvP'ing in stacked ships and if you do, report them and their ship goes poof. I'm willing to bet that if you get your salad tossed by someone using a stacked ship, and you report them, NQ will probably fix your ship for you if you ask nicely. NQ are cool like that. Stop being such a whiner.

i think you should re-think your ragepost. specifically the part that says:
 
 They clearly and specifically stated, in the very announcement you clearly saw and read because you already mentioned that you know they are backtracking a bit on their initial decision:
 
 
So you won't find anyone PvP'ing in stacked ships and if you do, report them and their ship goes poof. I'm willing to bet that if you get your salad tossed by someone using a stacked ship, and you report them, NQ will probably fix your ship for you if you ask nicely. NQ are cool like that. Stop being such a whiner.

What's your problem guys.
You decide on the amount of engines and put them at rear. One near another as close to the border of box as possible.
Put the rest of crap in front of the engines, you have space until the box ends.
When fighting, point the sausage nose towards the enemy.
 
This flying bunch of elements is the most efficient design so why bother.

i think you should re-think your ragepost. specifically the part that says:
 
 They clearly and specifically stated, in the very announcement you clearly saw and read because you already mentioned that you know they are backtracking a bit on their initial decision:
 
 
So you won't find anyone PvP'ing in stacked ships and if you do, report them and their ship goes poof. I'm willing to bet that if you get your salad tossed by someone using a stacked ship, and you report them, NQ will probably fix your ship for you if you ask nicely. NQ are cool like that. Stop being such a whiner.