Vorengard

I'm not sure what exactly I'm allowed to say on the subject, and I have no desire to violate the NDA in any way, so I'm going to keep this really vague. I understand your inherent distrust of official trailers, because most companies publish videos that look nothing like their games. However, NovaQuark is not most companies. I have not yet had any experience with them that would lead me to distrust the accuracy of the information they publish.

Definitely a fan of customization of uniforms, especially adding emblems and org colors and flags to uniforms. That would be really cool, especially for militaries and fleets. I can also see other types of clothing being fun and interesting, but I don't think it's something NQ should be focusing on doing at this time. There are so many more important things for the Dev team to be working on right now. Perhaps if and when the game takes off, they can hire some more artists just to make all of these things and add that level of depth to the game, but right now we need a functioning core game before they start adding in that much variety. Just my personal opinion.

Without breaking the NDA, let's just say that your timeframe of 2 days between planets is wildly out of proportion (at least for a small ship). Lethys is more on track with the timeframe, as has been mentioned in multiple interviews and Dev blogs. However, you seem to be suggesting that it shouldn't take that long to travel between planets in any case. While I understand the thought process, that's very contrary to what NQ has in mind for DU. Traveling between planets (and even more so between stars) is supposed to be a time investment. This isn't going to be like EVE, where you can travel across that galaxy at the drop of a hat, so don't expect that amount of freedom of movement.

I wouldn't count on this being a common occurrence, assuming it ever really happens. I wish I could get into a full explanation, but I'm not 100% certain what's covered by an NDA and what isn't, so I'll just say that since atmosphere and space engines are separate entities, it would take a ton of extra resources to make a ship combat-effective in both. I think you're missing some of the better solutions here. There is nothing compelling NQ to provide static defenses (automated or otherwise) that can challenge a capital ship. I agree with you when you say that doing so would be incredibly hard to balance, which is why it would be best not to include them in the first place. Instead, the balance should focus around CvC combat, with bases being primarily defended by other players in piloted constructs. Not only is this inherently more balanced, it also encourages player participation. I know people want static defenses because they think they're cool (a point I thoroughly agree with) or they want shiny skyscrapers that defend themselves, or "realism," or whatever, but the fundamental truth is that static defenses always encourage stagnation and risk-averse gameplay. This is bad for the game, and we would be better off without them.

NQ is rather busy with the ongoing Pre-Alpha, as they should be. I wouldn't expect a Dev blog any time soon, and in this circumstance that's totally ok with me.

I have several serious problems with your most recent analysis Wizard, specifically that you're consistently presenting a false dichotomy of the possibilities. The first problem here is that this proposed system requires very little player input. The process of setting up a TCU with a "cyber warfare" unit (or whatever) is something that could be accomplished by a single person, which would lead to afk greifing tactics with alts setting off timers all over the place just to piss the defenders off. This type of behavior is a staple of warfare in EVE, and it's really an un-fun and toxic type of gameplay that DU should avoid at all costs. You seem to be under the impression that this will prevent blue-balling due to the cost of losing the involved materials, but that attitude is also unsupported by reality. Did the cost of SBUs in EVE ever prevent people from SBUing systems on a whim just to be annoying? No, it didn't, because those costs were insignificant to an alliance of any size. I know, your immediate counter argument will be that NQ should deliberately inflate the prices of these elements in order to prevent people from throwing them away, but the problem with that argument is that it will essentially price small or poor organizations out of the PvP market, and grant huge advantages to rich players who can afford to throw money at the problem. Such a system will inherently favor the rich and advanced players, and will make guerrilla warfare impossible. Another problem here is the idea that PvP should only be allowed in specific, regulated, and highly restrictive windows. This type of behavior will lead to risk-averse and highly defensive strategies where the goal becomes less about winning the fight and more about delaying until your enemies timer runs out. That not fun or engaging. Such a system would encourage orgs to, for example, surround their TCUs with a massive layer of armor with repair units inside, designed simply to wait out the attackers until their timer expired. EVE saw similar strategies, with fleets made of carriers sitting just outside POS shields to rep the structure for hours and hours, until their opponents got tired and left. No actual PvP happened, it was just people shooting inanimate objects for hours. This might be your definition of fun, but it isn't mine. This is another terrible idea, because it grants major advantages to large coalitions, restricts the emergent nature of warfare, and promotes strategies that encourage the manipulation of mechanics, rather than actual battles. If only members of the involved sides can participate, then large orgs will fundamentally have more people available in each fight. Smaller orgs wont be able to call on allies without having every one of them join their org, and the mercenary system will be nerfed by extension. This also leads to awkward situations where people are shooting at structures that are taking no damage because they're not in the right org. Furthermore, what's to stop people from transferring the ownership of structures(on either side) at the last second, either to negate the timer completely, or to place the structure into a much larger organization that can now bring hundreds more players into the fight? This will encourage people to go around setting off timers with alt organizations, or smaller holding corps, only to transfer the structure at the last second to some major alliance that can now attack with their full membership, catching the defenders off guard. That might be a clever mechanic, but it isn't a fun one. Sure, you could make a rule that prevents structure transfer while the timers are active, but then you'll have people reinforcing things just to greif people by preventing them from selling or transferring specific assets. Overall, the entire idea is suspect at best. All of scenario B is a contrived mess that assumes the only options are Timers or Nothing. In contrast, I currently favor a system like that in EVE which required people to engage the target structure with a certain amount of damage, over a relatively flexible amount of time, in order to bring it to a reinforced state. This prevents solo alts from setting off timers willy nilly, and actually forces orgs to commit valuable ships and manpower to attack structures. Those fleets would then be vulnerable to attack, and would engage players in the process of warfare. It would also prevent people from sending solo alts around to set off timers in their enemies downtimes, so that they get a favorable timer without having to risk anything of value. An added benefit is that it allows anyone to participate in the process of taking territory so long as they can afford ammunition and a decent gun. This isn't simply wrong, it's inherently illogical, and your own argument proves the fallacy of it. If the timer system is designed to allow for attacks 24 hours after the system is engaged, then the attacker's window will always fall in their own timezone, thus guaranteeing that the attacker always gets to choose when the timer happens, which can and will be in the defenders downtime whenever possible. However, if you flip the system and make it an odd number of hours, say 32 or so (as the old EVE system did), then you force attackers to initiate attacks at times that are awkward for them, just so they can generate a timer that is favorable to them. For example, if I wanted the attack window to be at 8 pm EST, then I'd have to initiate the attack at 12 pm EST the day before (while I'm at work). Either method grands significant advantages to one side at the expense of the other, which is bad. This is the fundamental problem with any timer system: no matter how you implement it, it always enforces arbitrary divides in the community based on timezone. That's why timers are bad, and why you can't build a game based around making PvP conform to the timezone of one side or the other. DU needs to implement an open system that encourages people to seek allies in different timezones because that's ultimately good for the community. The alternative is a crappy, gimicky, obtuse timer system like in EVE that encourages greifing and discourages risk. Yes, such a system will result in people losing structures while they're at work or asleep, but the timer system in EVE often resulted in many of the same problems, with the added (and absurdly frustrating) problem that there were people you couldn't attack simply because they could play in a different timezone from you. I was once in a situation where my 100 man alliance couldn't take the structures in a neighboring system from a corporation with a single member, even though he was also USTZ like us, because he would just set all of his timers for 3 AM and alarmclock to repair them with a dozen alts, because he didn't have a job or a family and could afford to stay up all night. By allowing people from separate timezones to attack each other, you at least allow for some tug of war in the combat system, with each side accomplishing objectives instead of senselessly setting off timers they can't actually capitalize on. This isn't unbalanced for either side, because if I'm attacking you while you're asleep, then you can just attack me while I'm asleep. While not a perfect solution, it's at least more fair than arbitrary nonsense designed to enforce stagnation and turtling.

While I agree with everything else you said Klatu, on this particular point I have to disagree. While I also don't like the restrictions an adjacency system would place on PvP, I think it's necessary to make warfare meaningful. If you can always attack anywhere, then all warfare would devolve into attacking the largest and most important infrastructure of a planet, while ignoring everything else, and so owning large swaths of territory would be completely meaningless. Such a system would also invalidate most defenses and any form of protracted warfare, as all combat would devolve into attacking and destroying high-value targets only. Furthermore, under such a system all buildings would have to be fortresses. There wouldn't be any room for elegant designs or non-combat structures because you'd have to build every single building with imminent attack in mind. An adjacency system is what this game needs to provide some modicum of protection and safety for builders and industry guys, while adding depth and longevity to conflicts. It would prevent lightning raids from being the dominant form of combat, and would allow for some level of stability and protection for new players. (See @Jack_Trent, I do believe in protecting builders and soloists)

First of all, I'm seriously opposed to any sort of timer system. Been there done that with EVE and it's simply no fun. EVE only has it in the first place because the nature of the game requires it. DU can and should avoid creating that sort of system because it's absolutely obnoxious and is easily abused, and I think I expressed my opinion on the matter rather well in this post. So, overall, I would oppose any and all timer-based systems because they're silly, annoying, and actually encourage griefing (such as setting off timers just to get people to show up, then blue-balling them). Furthermore, they divide the community into groups based on timezones, with various timezones not competing at all because of how the timer system prevents them from attacking in their enemies downtime. Then there's those groups in EVE that win conflicts simply because they have people who can log on in the middle of the night with no consequences. I've been on the receiving end of that, and its incredibly frustrating to lose territory simply because your opponent's pilots don't have families or jobs, and so they can log in at 4 AM and spend hours sieging your towers, and you just have to let them. Timer mechanics encourage this type of nasty behavior, and it's bad for the game overall. I'm much prefer a weak asset protection system that forces people to work together and protect each other in their down-times. That being said, I totally support the idea of having to conquer hexes "inward", because it will provide some sort of protection and will turn conflicts into prolonged wars, rather than lighting strikes at critical infrastructure. However, that's going to require some serious ground rules, because currently you can place a TCU anywhere. So, what's to stop an org from placing their outer TCUs on the very edge of the hex, and then building huge defense turrets right across the border in an adjacent hex that would be totally immune to damage? That's completely broken, so any such system would mandate that TCUs be placed more centrally in the hex. Regardless, you prevent greifing and pointless wars by making it take serious investments of resources and time to take a territory, not by implementing arbitrary timers that say when people are "allowed" to fight. Such a system goes against the very nature of PvP and the open-world experience. Edit: I'm also very against the idea of war declarations, for many of the same reasons already mentioned, and because they're restrictive and contrary to the very nature of an open-world game. There should be no arbitrary gateways for PvP in a single-shard, open world game.

That's fair, but you'd still have to balance it so those Ramming elements are expensive, to prevent the same abuse of suicide mechanics by numerous and/or wealthy organizations.

JC has stated several times that there will not be construct to construct collision damage for a variety of reasons. That is ofc subject to change, but right now collision damage is for construct to environment only.

While I voted yes and think this is a really great idea, let the record show that NQ has publicly stated that this feature is a serious stretch goal that will not make it into the game for years, if ever. The issue is that weapons are all elements, which are meshes, not voxels; and the current editing system is based entirely on voxels. So, allowing us to create custom elements would require creating a whole new editing system just for meshes, which would require massive amounts of time and money and effort from basically the whole development team. Then there's the issue of balancing all those possibilities, which is itself a major endeavor that would likely require large amounts of additional dev time for the life of the game. So, while I love the idea, don't get your hopes up. It's really not going to happen any time soon.

I don't believe that this is correct. Our current data indicates that Alioth has a 60km radius. So slightly smaller than the example provided by JC. However, that's still a massive amount of resources that can be mined. We're not going to be in danger of exhausting them any time soon.

Yes, I am quite familiar with the EVE game mechanics. I played for 7 years. However, we do not have answers to these questions because NQ has given us virtually no details. I suspect because they are not sure themselves exactly what will be best for the community. Either way, at the end of the day, if you want your assets to be completely safe, put them in the safe zone. Otherwise, there is no guarantee. There will most likely be full wipes during pre-alpha and between Alpha and Beta, and there will definitely be a full wipe at launch. However, all blueprints made during alpha and pre-alpha will be saved to the player's account, so you can build whatever you want and not lose your designs.

1) You can build on territory without claiming it. However, you can't build on territory owned by someone else without their permission. 2) We have no information about the structure protection system, if any, so we really can't answer this question at this time. 3) Playing solo will definitely be possible, but more difficult than playing in a group of course. However, how difficult is also hard to answer at this time because game mechanics such as the structure protection system play a major part in determining how difficult it will be to solo, and we don't know anything about that yet. Furthermore, keep in mind that it won't be possible to travel to another star system until some time after launch. At launch, everyone will be restricted to the starting planet Alioth, but you could definitely travel to the far side of the planet and build a hidden underground base that nobody would ever find. Alternatively, you could simply join a major organization that doesn't have serious participation requirements, and then go play solo. That way you can use their name and alliances as protection from a bunch of players without actually having to play with anyone else. You can also use the RDMS system to restrict all your buildings and ships to personal access only, so you don't have to worry about your unwanted alliance mates barging in without your permission. 4) I think my previous responses mostly answer this question. To summarize, it's too early to tell at this point.

We don't really know enough about the combat system to give meaningful answers about what types of ships we prefer, because who knows what the combat meta will favor. However, while I'm sure there will always be a market for replicas, especially once the game becomes more developed, the vast majority of people will look for performance over style, especially the bigger orgs in major conflicts, who will be using a large majority of the ships (because theirs will keep getting blown up). That being said, if I can make a replica Firefly work as an effective anything, I'm going to fly that, because Firefly.

While we don't actually have any real answers to these questions at this time, I would be very surprised if Air-to-Ground combat wasn't a thing. Keep in mind that buildings and ships are both constructs, and so there's no reason to believe they would function differently in terms of combat and taking damage (besides the fact that buildings are static ofc). Not necessarily. Buildings could simply be resilient enough that destroying them isn't feasible without significant effort. We don't really know anything about automated defenses at this time, but JC has mentioned them in several interviews, and has specifically floated the idea that they would operate at significantly reduced fighting capacity for balance purposes. However, the main problem with strong automated defenses is that they are impossible to balance in an unstructured game. There's nothing stopping wealthy organizations from buying and installing tons of them all over their territory, thus making themselves impervious to attack from anything besides other major organizations. This would seriously cripple the viability of smaller organizations, not to mention solo players, and would ultimately push many people out of the game. So, while I sympathize with the desire to have strong defenses that people can't easily defeat, that would ultimately hurt the game. I'm much more in favor of very weak asset protection systems because that forces a more honest and interesting dynamic between players and organizations. If anyone can come along and wreck your stuff at any time, that will foster much more co-dependence and community unity than a system that makes this hard. Strong automated anti-air/ground systems are the antithesis of that. (this might seem a little off-topic, but I think it's really important to explaining why strong automated defenses and hard-to-kill buildings are bad for the game) EVE Online is a perfect example of why strong asset protection can be bad in an open-world single-shard game. In EVE there are rather robust systems in place that prevent people from quickly destroying other people's things (the reinforce and timer systems for player structures in particular). This is necessary in EVE because entire organizations can exist in high-security space where their assets are untouchable. However, huge segments of the community abuse this system and spend hours grinding down other people's structures just to piss them off, and they can get away with being this nasty and petty because there's fundamentally nothing anyone can do to stop them. This behavior would not exist if everyone was vulnerable to destruction at any time, because the community would gang up on and annihilate bad actors. DU could avoid this problem to an extent because virtually all of the game is open to PvP, so DU can (and should) implement a system that forces people to work together for mutual protection. Adding in strong automated defenses and buildings that take hours to kill would make it impossible to retaliate against people who are far stronger than you. For example: It would allow rich and powerful players to grief smaller organizations with impunity, because they could just retreat to their virtually unassailable base where the smaller players have no way of attacking them back. In contrast, If no one is ever really safe, then people will be less willing to make enemies and break other people's things just to be petty, because it could have very real consequences for them. So, going without major asset protection systems will allow us to avoid much of the trolling and nastiness that comes from giving everyone a place where they're relatively untouchable.

If you want to work on a useful in-game skill, I'd definitely practice your Lua skills. I'm sure there's good tutorials out there that could help you get up to speed with how the system works. Other than that, you'll just have to wait and see like the rest of us, and maybe purchase a supporter pack once they come out.

Boarding and taking over a ship is definitely a thing, as players can break down interior doors and kill the crew to take over a ship. However, I'm not sure how I feel about hacking in a persistent MMO. There would need to be a system that restricts the number of times you can attempt to hack something, otherwise people could break into your ship while you're offline and just try the hack over and over until they succeed. Any hacking system would need to be complex enough that you can't easily brute-force it, and you should need to hack into containers and vaults on ships. However, I'm not sure how I feel about hacking being a requirement for boarding parties. That seems like it would seriously negate the whole boarding gameplay in most circumstances. I can understand a secure ship taking longer to take over than, say, a typical fleet battle. But if it takes hours to hack into a ship, you'd really only be able to do it to people while they're offline, or if they have no friends, because they could just hunker down and call for help. That would turn boarding into something that only large and powerful groups do to people who are smaller than them, and that would be really bad, so there needs to be a happy medium of difficulty.

I like this idea, but I don't think a small studio like NQ should be focusing on developing an app for a game that's not out yet. Right now, making money isn't really a major issue, and producing a game that's viable and fulfills it's promises is far more important in this atmosphere of suspicion. That being said, I would definitely appreciate something like this after release, even it it's in-game. NQ has talked about making a sort of creative mode for building and testing ships in, but that's not going to be until sometime after release.

No, all voxels (including ships) take up space in the game world. They can't just pass through each other. So no, you can't clip ships into each other to hide their numbers, If you want to dock ships in another ship, you're actually going to have to build passageways, doors, and hangers that can fit them.

The wiki has a list of elements that we know of so far, but it's obviously far from complete. However, we will be updating it as more information becomes available to us. (Once the NDA drops ofc). P.S. hey there Vis

Hey mate, NQ has stated that there will not be collision damage in the game for balance reasons, friendly or otherwise. However, JC mentioned something in a recent dev diary that implied that there may be collision damage from running into the environment, though that is not yet confirmed. Also, thanks for mentioning the wiki article on combat. It hadn't been updated in a while, so I went through and edited it heavily. It should be more understandable and clear now (though I'll have to go through and work on it some more shortly). Thanks

Here's my personal opinion on each question: 1) I would definitely contract organizations or individuals to supply resources on a regular basis. I.E. We'll buy all the resources you mine at +X% of market value so long as you deliver them to a certain place. I'd also sell protection to people who want to operate in my organization's space, and I don't have a problem with hiring mercenaries in certain situations. But beyond that, I'm really not the trusting kind of guy, especially when it comes to large amounts of cash. Anything beyond simple contracts tend to fall through, either intentionally or because one side isn't as reliable as they say they are. 2) Ideally I'd avoid any situation in which I had to trust an unknown entity with delivering goods or making payments, because it's a video game and scammers are everywhere. But maybe I'm overly paranoid lol. However, if it was a smaller or weaker organization in my area of operations, I'd definitely make it clear (in as nice a way as possible ofc) that if they stiff me I'm going to make them pay it back one way or another, with interest. 3) If there's a sufficiently strong and robust contract system that allows me to give people my stuff with relative certainty they're not just going to walk off, or break it, or what have you, then yeah, I'd use a contract transport system. The key here being that I don't have to worry about being paid or receiving my stuff at all. If I'm even a little concerned, I simply wouldn't use one. 4) No, I don't understand gambling, fake or not. But I know a lot of people who would. 5) Trust and consistency. I'd need someone to really work hard to prove their reliability to me before I started giving them genuinely valuable and important jobs. Otherwise, I'd just do it myself.

Glad you found the wiki useful Also, some of the info on that page was outdated, so I've updated it and clarified some things.