Limyaael

All those games have taught me is that AIs love taking one road, and one road alone. Planned cities will have the advantage over real world ones in that we know the tech we're dealing with here. The inner, business section of my city has constant traffic problems because even its widest roads were still only planned for horsedrawn carriages and weren't made to deal with modern traffic (to the point where tram and car traffic is often completely split up on different streets). Well-planned roads will be wide enough to allow at least two hovertanks go by (for defense of the capital, comrade) and poorly planned ones will have thin streets and buildings stretching up so high that you can't see the sky. It'll be interesting to watch them all evolve.

At first reading through I thought "sure Twerk, I guess it's a little interesting to make death count", but these two bits were the big selling point for me. Giving a good reason to build more diverse buildings in cities (now they'll be masses of warehouses, the occasional apartment block, and a hospital with a bar ) and giving a smuggler more things to smuggle makes the world interesting. Also gives drugs a reason to be considered drugs rather than just arbitrarily banned medicine.

Space battles won't be occurring at such large distances that the speed of light will matter (well, maybe if two planets at war are close enough planetary cannons might need to consider it). If I'm shooting at you from 100 km, a laser will hit you immediately. Lasers aren't inaccurate because of the speed of light, they're inaccurate because of atmospheric scattering. If you could get a laser powerful enough that you could see it on the moon, a 2mm wide laser will be the size of a large crater from the scattering (solar winds do a little bit too). So going the other way, your shot at another spaceship might work from pretty far off, but if I'm trying to hit a specific city from space, the shot will get scattered and cause no damage (ingame, such a laser should tell you it won't work from orbit, have them fire either direction through the atmosphere just with 0% chance). Missiles/physical weapons going through the atmosphere should be more devastating than usual but less accurate. If you want to hit a building, get into the atmosphere (and well within the range of planetary cannons). When it comes to physical weapons, said missiles can recorrect their course (smart missiles already exist). When it comes to lasers, even if you're fighting at moon distances it hits in a few seconds (although you should try to close that gap quickly). And the reason why it's so hard to do space stuff in real life is that everything, including your launch platform, is moving. If the Earth and Mars were just spinning or their axis, we'd have a single defined travel time without travel windows. If someone has either wasted the munitions or gotten so lucky that they'd hit me from hundreds of kilometres away, let them. It's such a difficult task that it will rarely happen, and never will if I'm in a planet's atmosphere. Snipers who can hit from ovr 2km away are highly regarded for a reason.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't NQ already said that player made bubble zones will already exist? Unlike the Arkship, they require a power investment and thus can be destroyed (overwhelm the shield with more energy and it collapses - whether this is like taking down a boss by whittling away at its health or a case of all or nothing, I don't remember). No requirements to own anything, you just have to have the energy resources to set it up and a large enough army will be able to destroy it if you don't fight back.

The metre is based on the speed of light and the second, which is defined by the oscillations of a certain kind of caesium atom. Neither of these things will change because the new centre of civilisation is Alioth. Other things will change (the length of a day, perhaps how it's divided up, the forces needed to escape the atmosphere, etc) but the base SI units are designed not to.

Whether the pirate organisations of the game will be democratic or not isn't especially relevant - it's not like a modern or classical democracy with its parties and political affiliations. I mentioned democracies with this specifically in mind because a few people in this thread think we'll have political parties. And as a non-pirate, it's plenty anarchic to me

If you have a company IRL, and you don't want to hire criminals, what's the magical device developed by Alien Overlord Games, who have created this Earth 2.3 simulation? Nothing? Oh yeah, because in real life you have to actually perform background checks yourself by consulting police databases and such. ^I think it should work like this. Modify the community page so that it's easy to search by member, and look for their affiliations. Possibly you can check past groups they've been a part of, and if they very recently abandoned all their connections, maybe they're a spy or just a conman. Maybe they've discovered the light and will plead to let them join despite their shady resume. Should be integrated straight into the game UI. But nothing automatic. It forces you to think about all aspects of running an organisation. Then vet them, as I keep saying. I answered it in a roundabout manner. There are things that would increase the momentary enjoyment for me, but I recognise that overcoming the difficulties the game throws at you makes the game ultimately more fun and as such I don't advocate for it - not to mention it puts all sides of society (hackers, pirates, criminals, CEOs, truckers, traders, etc.) on a fairly even playing ground. You are advocating making running an organisation simpler when I think that allowing complexity means that organisations will be more rewarding when you can get them working accurately, and it will produce more entertaining stories when it's indeed possible for spies to enter large organisations with poor HR sectors, or for poor hires to be let in.

You can only copy real life democracies if there are democracies in the game. Off the top of my head, the largest organisations are either anarchist, totalitarian dictatorships, monarchies, or corporations. Arguably a corporation could have stocks, and board members, and thus voting of sorts, but democracy will probably be hard to come by in this game.

Those legal limits must be enforced by a governing body. UK law might very well have said that joing the American Revolutionary Army was an act of treachery and subject to execution, but if you can't enforce it I can get away with being a UK citizen and a part of it. If I am a citizen of OrgA, at war with OrgB, and I join OrgB's army, against the laws of OrgA, come and get me. If they want to prosecute me for treason, I say let them. But if they can't physically find me, I'll join OrgB's army all the same. I don't trust the system either. That sense of doubt, whether or not this new member you're accepting is actually a spy, makes it exciting. But this is also what real life is like. When you're on a frontier with few laws and no one can be trusted, you have to vet everyone. As others have said, if someone wants to be a spy, they'll find a way. Maybe they temporarily leave their org, promising to return after they find out the codes to get past your shields. An automated system will allow this to easily get through, so you'll need to perform background checks anyway if you're suspicious, defeating the whole point of the system. Emergent gameplay, mate, not NQ enforced protection. I don't like that there are so many pirates in the game, but the only way to get around it is to be careful - just like in real life. I'd love if I could pilot an enormous battleship with the power of seven suns to singlehandedly obliterate my enemies, but I don't advocate for it because the game is about realistic simulation of the rebuilding of society and it wouldn't be any fun or promote emergent gameplay.

There will of course be engineers paying close attention to the stresses on the engine and various weapons. Any battleship will be just as complex as real life ones. This doesn't proclude us from having complicated and difficult piloting. The skill required to be a pilot should be like in Tie Fighter - lots of stuff to remember, but realistically learnable. Piloting skill points shouldn't really make you that much better a fighter, it should be about actual skill. Most games simulate improvement. In Skyrim, what's the difference between someone who's never touched a sword in their life and a master swordsman? Their one-handed skill level and the skills from that branch that they've chosen. The actual gameplay is identical - use the left mouse button for an attack, and hold it for a power attack. This incredibly simplistic combat system makes it boring outside of random chance occurences such as beheadings, sneak attacks, kill cams, or archer sniping. These don't require that the player actually understand the system any better, because it's so simple that you already understand it before purchasing the game. DU should be about taking that simulated improvement and throwing it in the garbage. The game's not simulating a well-run political system, or a poorly commanded ship, why should this change for flying? Picking up a small fighter and getting it to move, sure, that should be easy. Being an ace? Not at all. Flying a battleship? Should be a very difficult job involving collaboration between a very skilled pilot and navigator to successful work in a battle. I want to be able to have a game where if someone's just joined, but they're a really good pilot, that my organisation really wants this guy. Sure, the experienced pilot may be able to 'naturally' (due to skill points) reduce G-forces, or get a bit more out of an engine, and the programmed LUA moves may be satisfactory in battle, but this guy's so good that we could put him on an old ship that's completely manual and would still kick our enemy's asses. Planet cores are enormous. You can only dig 2km down before it becomes too hot for you or your machinery to function (in reality, it's where the voxels stop). Automated mining would crash the economy multiple times and only cause strife and grief. It isn't fun for new players to find that their simple mining is easily outclassed by people who have been playing the game for years and have a ship that can strip mine a planet in a matter of weeks. This goes against literally everything NQ are trying to do with this game so it doesn't became like EVE or WoW where after a certain number of years the people who have been playing for so long are just so much more obviously better that new players don't want to join and it bleeds subscribers. I'm one of those people by the way - ever since I started hearing about EVE stories in 2012 I've wanted to join the game, but it always seemed like there was a large barrier to entry (and a highschooler would have struggled with the sub payment) so I never bothered.

Stardates were nonsense numbers that constantly jumped around, just like warp speeds before TNG (where warp 10 was defined as infinite speed, which also messed with time and thus people's evolution, and was the subject of a Voyager episode). In the alternate movie timeline, it's Earth dates. 2135.32 is the year 2135, February 1 (the 32nd day of the year). I don't remember how/if it accommodates leap years. I don't understand everyone saying that SI units would change. Six of the seven are currently based on universally demonstrable processes. The oscillations of a caesium atom (the definition of a second) doesn't change just because we spent 9000 years in cryosleep. The only unit currently dependent upon some prototype is the kilogram, and that will be redefined next year to a universal constant.

But you already have the option. 1. Anyone who is a member of another organisation can be refused access to any sensitive documents via the RDMS. Have them as basic lackeys who follow orders and that's all. 2. If that's still to sensitive to spying for you, refuse their membership. Spell it out in rainbow coloured, bolded letters that you will not accept any members who are members of another organisation. In the final game I'm sure that NQ will leave legates in charge of membership applications. Instead of relying on an automated system to prevent you from allowing multiorg members, be vigilant yourself, like people in the real world have to be if they wish to be restrictive.

Depends where you are. But "very little matter and a whole bunch of stuff that won't affect a spaceship" is accurate enough for the game, I think. The momenta in even trillions of photons is completely irrelevant, it's so tiny.

There are plenty of pirates that win't care. If you get a brutal dictatorship (there are already a few totalitarian regimes) that doesn't care about how it conducts itself in war, it won't matter what your organisation thinks because they'll probably beat you. The "rules of war" that will form will be very light.

Just hit em with a few links for Do You Remember Love and you'll win the war. Only if we decide to have it. Such rules of war may not exist in DU, as I doubt there will be an equivalent of the UN to enforce anything on a nation that refuses to comply.

KSP style mechanics aren't that difficult to learn (I imagine it took most of us the tutorial and a few flights to understand it) so I don't see why those with a good intuitive sense of Newtonian mechanics should be penalised as potential pilots over some newbie kid who doesn't even understand the DST triangle yet. That goes against every sense of the world around us though. What's the point of differentiating between an atmosphere and space if they're both slowing the ship down? How can one make a space game feel like it's real without Newton's three laws? Twerk, if I'm understanding correctly, these inertial dumpers are essentially fluids absorbing the momentum from accelerating? Sounds like the huge water drums they put in the upper floors of skyscrapers.

It's not the case of having a small team or anything, simply the fact that orbits make travelling harder. Instead of knowing that a certain planet is in x direction and is 12 minutes away by FTL, you need the astrophysics skills of actual scientists (or at least a physics major) to accurately calculate its location and travel time. Other aspects of the game should be difficult, but watching the planet you're trying to land on move out from underneath you isn't one of them. Their intention is to have a static star, and stationary (but rotating) planets. No sure if they were going to out moons in orbit or if that moon was only in the videos to demonstrate the seamlessness of the game.

As has been stated before, make everything hard. If you're on a ship in deep space, you only hear the whirring of your engines, the firing of your guns, other crew members, and some creepy music composed by NQ. A few thousand atoms per cubic metre is not enough to carry any information. Navigators would be those with access to elements that are connected to various electromagnetic sensors on the outside of the ship. You can generate strong signals if you want to easily find others, but they'll be able to find you without difficulty too. Turn off the engines if you don't want infrared sensors picking you up, scan across all ranges to detect regularly travelling ships, dead ships, and those flying towards you (FTL shouldn't be a complete surprise if you invest in some high powered sensors to pick up the tachyons or whatever, scifi mumbo jumbo).

You could easily achieve such a spectacle by setting up a huge armada hovering above the planet's surface demanding surrender (and then landing a huge land invasion force that will get attacked by anti air turrets in the event of refusal, cultivating in a space, atmosphere, and land set of battles). In fact, that would probably be more interesting and tense than having some tiny ship show up with a doomsday weapon ready to blow the planet to hell. I'm sure the end to WWII would have been more interesting from a storytelling perspective (although certainly more horrific) had it ended with an enormous Allied assault on Tokyo than the bombs delivered by small fighters that no one saw coming.

There are a few of us living even more in the future than Anasasi, being on the east coast and half an hour ahead of him.

The advantages a large mining operation will have compared to a solo player won't be about the actual extraction of resources, but moving them around. A large operation can build automated hovercarts to carry material from the mine to the surface without players having to stop digging, it can have the resources to safely refine ores on the surface without needing to worry about attacks (because they'll have a mercenary company or their own turrets at the ready). Smaller operations won't be able to move stuff around as much and probably won't have the tech to do anything but simple strip mining. I hope there are upgrades to the handheld mining device though, whether as objects or just skill upgrades.

Yes, but my point was that Star Wars, despite being space fantasy, isn't completely divorced from reality. Smashing a planet to pieces without just throwing another planet at it is probably impossible. But a Death Star-like laser could probably hit the crust with so much energy to smash it up, which is as good as destroying the planet for a civilisation. They just aren't in the game. Weapons that are completely superior to others aren't fun in games. In real life, nuclear weapons don't get used because we know how devastating they are. In a game, where no one's actually dying, players will drop them like candy even if they're difficult to make. We know that in the final release planets won't have orbits (only rotational periods). They'll probably do the same for asteroids, especially as they're smaller. So even if you attach an engine to one, you probably can't move it. This isn't Planetary Annihilation.

Your own guns, or those of a mercenary company you hire, or those of others in your organisation who are there to protect the build site. And potentially, depending on how they work, Territory Units, which are used to claim land. It's unknown whether they will prevent disallowed people from entering the territory or if it's simply an alarm that goes off. You can also build protective bubbles similar to the safe zone around the Arkship; however this will require extensive resources. One mode, one single shard universe. Solo play is not a separate gamemode, just a lifestyle within the universe of the game.

If that's the case, we'll need to cut off a lot of the roads and build bridges to replace them to keep traffic off the main roads, we'll need a $2.5mil subway system (alongside our extensive, constantly delayed bus services), 6-lane avenues, we'll need to ban trucks from most of the city, about three highway interchanges in a 2km stretch, and a tunnel under the city solely for emergency services to be able to actually reach people in the west before they die. I uh, don't think too far ahead making cities in C:S, but the chaos is terribly fun. I can see uses for apartments. Easy places to log out (if you have locks and such) and store items (although you should probably be putting your most important items in a bank or something). I can see organisations having large complexes inside their headquarters for meeting the heads of other organisations to make trade deals and diplomacy and such. If there are enough people that want to go that far for immersion.

Almost certainly not. How would you do third person mode on a multicrew ship and you're the engineer? The great thing about DU is that it'll make spaceship battles with proper, large ships actually different to fighting with small ships. It's not just "click on opponent, fire". You've got a large ship, with a lot of potential blind spots - you need ways to get around it and work out where your enemies are, whether that's via LUA-coded radar or looking out of lots of windows and telling the bridge.