Vorengard

Acceleration forces \o/
Falling towards a planet at higher speeds (2k km/h) \o/
Light detectors \o/
Operators for those traps \o/
HUGE list of materials \o/
Actual building of ships is HARD \o/
 
Love it NQ, good progress! But I agree here: would be nice to see the accelerated flight.

I will ask if it will be possible to have a time lapse version of the video. However, we are not sure it will be meaningful: 
The thing is, as we don't have (yet) FX effects giving a feeling of speed in space during most of the space travel, at the moment it feels like you are not moving at all, until you get really near of a celestial body. 
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Praise the Sun, building ships looks like an actual science <3

No, he said very clearly no destroying planets.

Someone is very angry. Being angry and swearing at Lights won't make anything better.
 
This is awesome news! I am curious whether this changes anything since they still have the milestones listed on the crowd funding page, which would imply they are still relevant. But even if nothing changes, this is still wonderful news!!

I know this topic has come up before, JC has mentioned the idea, and as far as I know a final decision hasn't been made. Please correct me if I'm wrong. So, this thread is for discussing the pros and cons of multi-player ship piloting/fighting, and whether or not this type of system would be fun in the context of Dual Universe.
 
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Personally, I love the idea, and would really like to see it in DU. The added combat depth, teamwork, and strategy would make the game much more fun and immersive. It would make spaceships feel more like an actual ship you're piloting than a character skin or suit of armor you happen to be wearing, like in EVE. It would also place a power curve on individuals, so one guy in a super epic battleship can't take out an entire fleet himself.
 
That being said, I'm sure some people will be understandably annoyed that they can't fly the Enterprise around the galaxy all by themselves. It also gives large entities an advantage over smaller entities in some regards. For example: In EVE, I was in a scrappy Low-Sec pirate corp, but we still had a Titan to bridge us around places. In DU, I would hope that something like a Titan would require a bunch of people to fly properly, but that would prevent small groups from using that type of ship effectively... which may or may not be a bad thing.
 
Overall, the difference seems to be the degree to which we want to force people into playing as a group. Thoughts? 

You refuse to see the point. The point isn't giving players an option to play single vs multiplayer. That they can already do. What you are asking for is single player getting a bunch of compensations for tasks that requires a crew to do. Such as auto-gunners. That is taking away limitations that were originally put there to promote players cooperating in larger teams, and i am disagreeing with your ideas.

Disagree heavily there. The reason why everyone is a pilot in those games is because it's the strongest and most entertaining role and you are not required to do anything else to make it work. If you played games that actually requires people acting like a crew like Guns of Icarus you will see that the gunner role is not at all less popular, especially if you are playing as a team with people you know as opposed to playing with random people every match.
 
Personally i would actually prefer being a gunner than a pilot and i don't care what you say. NQ forcing people to be gunners isn't fighting human nature. You just have your bias from playing a certain limited type of game not really with a pre made crew and thus you are stuck with the illusion that EVERYONE and their mother wants to be the pilot.

I have several problems with this. Firstly, it removes people from the act of space combat, which is bad because this is an MMO, and the entire point of an MMO is fighting other people.
 
Secondly, I don't want to play a game that's all about "who has the better code." The point of the LUA code is to allow us to customize our experience, not to build a game that's automated. Not only does that defeat the purpose of an MMO, it's not even fun. Sure, setting my fleet of robot ships on someone would be great... the first few times. But if I want that I'll go play an RTS, not a game that's supposed to be about player interaction like DU.
 
Sure, scripting could be limited and less efficient, but in terms of anything beyond the most basic setups (press button go forward) what does that add to the gameplay? I want a space combat system that's about piloting skill, not coding skill.

From a lore perspective, the LUA scripting is limited as to not recreate AI that can kill us. It makes no sense for someone to create an automated battleship when combat automation is prohibited by the society. Maybe you could link multiple turrets together so that they can all be fired by one person, but can only fire in one direction or at one target.

We will yes but I struggle to see why anyone would want to replace humans.
And coding efficient AI is against the lore.
 
In a non hostile, non threatening way I would like to know...
Why do you want to fly a 1 person army?
-is it because of a game fantasy?
-dont like to depend on other people?
 
Multi crew is a unique feature of DU why would you want to get away from that?
Sure humans can be stupid but thats part of the story.
 
I feel the amount of live functions/features of a construct should be tied to crew size. Fly the death star if you must but also being able to repel the entire rebel fleet? No I dont think so.

So much this.
 
If I want to create a massive ship the size of the moon, but it only does one thing... and that's thrust forward... I should be able to.
 
However, a more intricate ship should be run with more players.  I'm pretty sure that's what most people mean by a larger ship though, one with more guns... more goodies.

I think the size of the crew should depend the number of elements that need to be operated, not the size of the ship.  Elements would include not only weapons, but things like sensors and shields.  It would be reasonable for a very large freighter to require fewer crew members than a much smaller warship.

I love the idea of being a damage control crew on a large spaceship in the middle of a battle. Having to repair critical systems under fire and scrambling not to get blown away in the carnage just sounds amazing.
 
Not to mention being a captain in that situation. I'm really hoping that large ships are impossible for a single person to control effectively, because that would be so much cooler. I'm dying for a space game that requires specialization and defined roles like you would need in a real navy on an actual space ship.

My thoughts are;
 
DU is very much focused on player driven mechanics and player interaction.
LUA scripts are limited as not to replace humans.
 
If you want to command The Enterprise you need a crew. I couldnt be more opposed to the idea of a 1 man army. Because thats what it boils down to, in my opinion.
 
The human factor is 1 of the reasons behind me following and backing the game, to explain my motivations behind this post.

"xxx420_H@ck3r, stop using advanced weapons!"
"lmao no"
xxx420_H@ck3r was brutally dissected by a stone spear.

Yay! You're finally back!
But you do know that some people love to have complete-order and everything has to have a purpose.
 
Also, it is something to talk about due to, understandable, the Developers not rolling/showing anything new for a bit. Nothing to speculate currently.

I'm all for skepticism, because its the best way you avoid people getting all hyped, and then rage-quitting and writing a dozen negative reviews when things don't go according to their imagination. I'd much rather be pleasantly surprised by a game than disappointed.
 
So, in that spirit, let's be realistic here. DU is not going to launch with a thousand features and all kinds of super deep gameplay. That takes years and years to develop, and if you come into this expecting a game as deep and intricate as EVE or as filled with content as WoW, you're going to be disappointed.
 
But I'm totally fine with that, because I never played EVE for the gameplay, as weird as that sounds. I played EVE for the relationships and the conflicts, and neither of those things can be manufactured. All I ask of Novaquark is that we be given a game worth fighting over, and the stories will take care of themselves.

Why?
Orgs are one of the primary tools in community creation.
 
But to answer your question more directly, no I dont think so.

I'm all for skepticism, because its the best way you avoid people getting all hyped, and then rage-quitting and writing a dozen negative reviews when things don't go according to their imagination. I'd much rather be pleasantly surprised by a game than disappointed.
 
So, in that spirit, let's be realistic here. DU is not going to launch with a thousand features and all kinds of super deep gameplay. That takes years and years to develop, and if you come into this expecting a game as deep and intricate as EVE or as filled with content as WoW, you're going to be disappointed.
 
But I'm totally fine with that, because I never played EVE for the gameplay, as weird as that sounds. I played EVE for the relationships and the conflicts, and neither of those things can be manufactured. All I ask of Novaquark is that we be given a game worth fighting over, and the stories will take care of themselves.

@Megaddd:
 
We can understand your concerns, fears and/or doubts.
It's a natural reaction, especially in the era where a lot of projects are either promising the moon (which they can't deliver) or just failing.
So being skeptical is totally understandable. However, allow me to clarify/correct a few of your statements: 
 
1) EVE Online success:
 
EVE Online current gameplay loops are not what they are today just because of CCP designers. They have really talented people, no doubt about that. However, the gameplay loops you are refering haven't been as precise as they are now right from the beginning. There is a lot of work from the designers, that's a fact, but these loops where born from emergent gameplay at first: CCP developers have admitted themselves that when they launched the game in the first year, players have used the game mechanics in ways they hadn't think about. Then, they analysed what people liked to do in game and listen to the community feedback. Saying the success of the game was reached because they had 3-4 absolutely brilliant people is very reductive to say the least:
- They started with good base with open game mechanics.
- They have talented and reactive developers.
- They kept listening to their community. 
It's the combination of these 3 factors (not just one) that brought them success.
 
2) Not much gameplay has been shown until now:
 
Regarding Dual Universe, yes indeed, you have mostly seen technical stuff for the moment and very little from the gameplay.
Is it because we want "to hide" the gameplay side? Jumping to this conclusion is a bit oversimplying the situation.
 
Here are a few facts:
 
- The pros and cons of having proprietary techs:
 
Until a few months ago, the Novaquark team kept prioritizing and building the tech, for several important reasons:
 
The project is technologically ambitious, our studio is coming from nowhere (no past track record for the studio, even in the people in it are experienced), and the combination of these two points made it very hard to be taken seriously right from the beginning, especially in the current context where overpromising has become a common thing. So the first thing we had to address is to show some proof saying "Hey guys, this is really possible!".
 
The other important reason is because it's just common sense to start by building the tech before the gameplay. It's only once we know the capabilities of our tech - after testing it - that we can build a gameplay adapted to it.
 
Some could argue we are taking a very long time to build our tech compared to other studios able to show advanced gameplay just only one year (or sometimes even 6 months) after they started the project. Why is there so much difference between them and us? Simply because they started the project with an engine with many features implemented. This kind of engine is great to have a short development cycle. However, "ready-to-use" game engines have a drawback: you can't expect making a game really different frow what has been done before.
 
Dual Universe is in this case. We tested affordable game engines (Unity and Unreal Engine) in the early days of the studio and we came to the conclusion that they wouldn't allow Novaquark devs to do exactly what they had in mind. We hadn't the time (and the man power) to build a complete game engine from scratch. So we opted for a middleground solution: we've chosen Unigine, which was a very good base to start with (especially for planetary simulation), with not too many technical constraints (generally proportional to the number of features already implemented in the game engine). However, having not many features already implemented in the game engine is a double edged sword: having less features implemented from the start than popular game engines, means more things to develop on our side: the massively multiplayer tech, the voxel tech, and some of the graphics tech (to be optimized for a massively multiplayer context).
 
Then, after all of this reached a reasonably advanced state (it's not finished yet), we were able to start the gameplay development. And that's where Novaquark was a few months ago. As you can imagine, it wasn't possible to show advanced gameplay footage just a few weeks after having seriously started the development of this part. It takes at least months to have something meaningful to show.
 
- The lack of gameplay loops in the early days of sandbox games:
 
As CaptainTwerkMotor stated, you won't find complete predefined game loops, at least not at the beginning. In this regard, we have exactly the same open-minded approach than CCP Developers in the early days of EVE Online. It's also what happened, to some extent, for Minecraft. In the early days of a sandbox game, developers give "tools" to the players and those "create" the gameplay loops they like. Then the developers make improvements to the game to favorize the emergence of popular gameplay loops. That's, in our opinion, how a successful sandbox game can be born: synergy between developers and the community, not just game design decisions made by developers.
 
So yes, you will see gameplay mechanics in the future that could be used as pieces of a gameplay loop. But you probably won't see a complete gameplay loop, or if we do such kind of video, then it will be to show some example, not to say "This is how the game is meant to be played". Moreover, the Alpha will launch with just a few of the gameplay bricks we have planned on the long run, precisely to get feedback on the first ones by alpha testers, and adapt/improve the following ones coming into the game.
 
3) The poor graphical performance in the Dev Diary videos:
 
You're right, the framerate of the recent DevDiary videos is not a decent one.
If you have read the comments under those videos, you might have seen that we already replied regarding this concern.
While we have currently a good framerate in-game on a high-spec machine, when it comes to recording it, the framerate displayed in the video is far from being representative of the current framerate in-game. We made tests with Shadowplay and OBS, and while tweaking the parameters improved a bit the framerate in the videos, this is still far from being perfect. Yes, we admit we haven't any expert (yet) in this domain inside the team at the moment. However, we have taken note of advices made by some professional streamers and youtubers following our Youtube channel and we are going to have a dedicated machine to record videos for DevDiaries in the future. We planned to have it for the March DevDiary of March, but it might be too tight in the schedule to make it happen next week. We will give an update on this topic next week.
 
Long story short:
If you have questions, ask them. We will do our best to answer them
We can't promise we will be able to give you only satisfying answers (as you might have a lot of "too soon to give you a detailed answer on this gameplay aspect") but it's sure you won't have any answer if you don't ask first. 
 
@All:
 
If you would like to see some dedicated videos to a specific topic already presented in the previous videos, just let us know: I can't promise anything right now, but I can transmit to the devs what are the topics you would like to see developed.
 
@Bleep_Bloop:
 
We won't go "Early Access" on Steam any time soon (if we go one day, as it's not even certain either). We want to wait until we're close to have all the main gameplay mechanics implemented in game and a decent stable version. We are very well aware that the Steam Community is composed of a lot more people that want to play a nearly-finished game than testing a game in its early stages... And that's perfectly fine: we totally understand that a lot of people are not interested in experiencing the intermediate stages of a game development. As for your question "what are the chances of this game reaching its full potential?", unless someone has a working crystal ball... No one can answer this question accurately. The chances are something that can vary a lot in a development process, according to the decisions taken and the unexpected events. So far, we think (but you are free to think otherwise) the odds are good, as we haven't hit any "wall" that seems like an impossible obstacle. Our private investors, who saw the success of the Kickstarter campaign, are ready to help even further in the game development, as promised. So as far as we know, there is no dark cloud in the sky at the moment.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

This is an absurd argument. Expectations do not require enforcement, I certainly wont be deciding who does what, and the idea that such an agreement ultimately limits freedom is baseless. I believe in creating a community that is enjoyable and doesn't ruin the game. This is critical in DU because there's huge potential for abuse and griefing, even worse so than EVE because the "safe zone" is so much more limited.
 
Or you can just abuse everyone all the time, as you clearly intend to do, and we can have another toxic mess of a community that ultimately kills the game like what's happening to EVE right now. Your choice.
 
 
 
The idea that "playing how you like to play" necessitates being a total dick to everyone is the reason EVE is a toxic wasteland. It's the reason the Rainbow 6 Siege community literally causes cancer. You can sit on your high horse of arrogance and selfishness, but in the end that kind of attitude will destroy the community, and by extension the game. "Not being a total dick" isn't a restriction of your freedom, and plot twist, MMOs need good communities to survive. This is what I'm looking for. 

I think for most people it will depend on why they are fighting.
 
Org war: probably leave the pods alone.
Personal vendetta: well......probably not.

Thrilled to see the features that they showed off, I like the look of the new models so far!
 
I'm really not surprised at all about the delay, they are being very straightforward about it rather than just stringing us along with SOON^tm. I'm not expecting a super polished game in alpha, but it does seem like what we will see in September is less of an alpha and more like a greenlight release.
 
The fact that they are trying to get a significant amount of actual gameplay in the alpha rather than just creating a sandbox for building and flying ships is actually huge, bigger than I expected. What I expected the alpha to look like was "here are some building tools and material skins, have fun!" but it sounds like we get to taste some of the player progression and harvesting/processing materials as well. SWEET ACTION.
 
Likely to up to Ruby soon

TL;DR Give enough depth that building excellent ships is hard, but building good enough ships is easy.
 
I'm here to advocate for a ship design system that is complex and deep enough that it requires a certain level of skill to get the most out of your designs. I don't know how the Dev team plans to work out ship statistics, so I'll lay off the specifics and focus on the general concept of what I think would make interesting gameplay.
 
Key Concept: Functionality should be easy, Excellence should be hard
 
It shouldn't be hard for your average player to figure out how to put together the necessary parts for a space ship or building. A couple basic components and you should be good to go (I know the Devs want it to be relatively hard to get into space at first. I absolutely support that, this is just a comment on the general complexity of building things, not the easy of acquiring resources). It should be easy to make something that flies, because a space game (which is how 90% of people will look at DU) is about flying a space ship. So building your first space ship should be relatively easy. But that first space ship you make by yourself should suck. Like really suck. It should be 1 step above barely functional, and achieving anything better than that should require a decent amount of knowledge and expertise.
 
Like with fitting ships in EVE Online, there should be a clear performance difference between the people who know what they're doing and the people who just throw on things that seem good. Then there should be another clear difference between the people who know the basics, and the real Fit-Masters. But with DU, there's also the possibility for complexity in the actual ship hulls, not just what you put in them. So when it comes to building ships, it should be complex enough that only real masters of the craft can design ships with the best speed, or most HP, or most damage, etc. Then those people should be able to sell those superior designs for more money on the market.
 
To use another EVE example, it never ceases to surprise me how many people don't know how to fit their ships properly, because the system is deep and complex enough that it takes a great deal of knowledge to fit the best possible ship. Most people are acceptable, many people are terrible; but after 7 years of playing I still see fits every now and then and say "wow... that guy has a really nice fit that I've never thought of".
 
Ship building in DU should be like that. Simple enough that anyone can get by, but deep enough that quality takes real skill. Then extend that complexity where possible to buildings and space stations, etc. But especially to space ships.
 
Thoughts?