Kurock

Want to know more about DICE?
 
Read about it in Issue 2 of spaceshipdrama.com
 
 

Want to know more about DICE?
 
Read about it in Issue 2 of spaceshipdrama.com
 
 

"Go Boldly, Thread Lightly, Wipe Softly." (Jean-Christophe Baillie, June 2018)
 
(See you in July, one babbling per month seem just enough for now.)

Hello! 
I wanted to contribute to the community of this game in a way that wasn't only for one faction. So, I decided to cover one of Dual Universe's themes!
 
May I proudly present to you: "Particle Horizon" à la Westworld: https://soundcloud.com/user-311181165/duel-universe
 
NOTE: For some reason, the drums sound really watery. I'm sorry, I don't know why this has happened, but I have a feeling that it happened when I uploaded it to soundcloud.

Hey all,
 
So I put together a sign for Dual Universe. I made it out of Padauk, Walnut, and Oak. These are natural wood colors, so no dying. I then traced a logo onto the wood and carved it out with my router. It isn't perfect, it is the first sign I've made, but I am really happy with it. After making the inlay i drilled holes, routed out the back of the piece, and added 24 LED diodes. Once i wired them up and everything was working, I mixed up epoxy with white pigment and poured it over the letters. After the epoxy dried, i sanded smooth, added some chamfers, and finished with Shellac. 
 
Here are some pics of me putting it together...
 
I used spray adhesive to attach the paper to the wood and then used a router to carve out.

 
What a mess? Maybe I should have used LED strips instead of this... Well, maybe next time.

 
It works!!

 
Finished Product..
I turned the lights off..

 
It is really shiny  

 

 
 
Hope you all like it!!
 

I have found a fitting image for what I do:
 
DUSleepers is my Baseline.

DU OST preview is available on Soundcloud
 
https://soundcloud.com/dualuniverse

I have purged some of the Logs and updated the Previous page, from Sept. 23 to Feb. 2.
 
It seemed... neater.
 
"Terrific work, by the way".
 
 

With the bounty system being the next stretch goal, I thought it was high time we take a look at what it could mean to "set the bounty and put a price on somebody's head".
For me at least, there are three factors that are important in a bounty system:
Fun: That bounty hunting *feels* like bounty hunting, not an unlucrative fetch quest.  That it is challenging to succeed at collecting a bounty and the bounty provides a suitable reward. Fair: The average player is (relatively) safe.  The system should ensure that the game does not devolve into a gank fest. Less abusable: Ideally a system should *not* be abusable at all, but in an MMO setting where alt's are cheap, this is very difficult to achieve.  So minimizing abuse is the goal here. First, I will go through how MMO's in the past, present and future will have done their bounty system and then give a suggestion of one that could work in Dual Universe.  This might get a little long, so strap in or just skip to the suggested system at the end.
 
 
Past: Ultima Online
I have fond memories of my years spent in this fantasy MMORPG in the early 2000's.  PvP was changed multiple times over the course of the game and a bounty system was one aspect of PvP.  
 
This was "justice system" which could be triggered when a player was murdered by a player killer. Usually after a number of murders, a bounty from the victims own pocket could be placed on the murderers head.  A list of bounties could be looked up at a nearest bank.  If the murder could be found, killed, butchered and his head returned to a guard, the full bounty would be awarded.  
 
In some cases the head could be ransomed back to the murder or the murder would suffer a stat decrease for a defined period. In other cases, the murderer would lose his own money from the bank and it would be placed on his head as a bounty.  In yet other cases the murderer would suffer stat penalties for dying at the hands of a "blue" player.
 
In short, there were many different variations, but most revolved around the concept of a justice system specifically targeting perpetual player killers.
 
 
Present: EVE Online
There is no justice here: only money.  
 
Bounties in EVE can by placed on anyone, by anyone. And everyone can see all the bounties.  But a player having a bounty does not give all other players the right to kill that player anywhere, for example a bounty hunter attempting to collect in high-sec will still be attacked by the ever vigilant defenders, CONCORD. Although any where else, all bets are off.
 
The bounty is not paid to the bounty hunter in full, but is instead based on the value of the bounty targets destroyed ship starting at 20% of the actual bounty value. While this system reduces collusion to split the bounty between the bounty hunter and target, it also reduces the potential earnings of a bounty hunter, making bounty hunting less viable.
 
 
Future: Star Citizen
I say "future" because the game is not technically released yet.  The idea is that the bounty system is a justice system: bad guys (both PC and NPC) could have a bounty and good guys attempt to collect it.  That's it. Moving on.
 
But wait, you say, surely there is more?  Well yes.  But at this point it is conjecture.  For example some bounties may be "capture alive" some may be "dead or alive" perhaps depending on their misdeeds.  Star Citizen plans to have a legacy system where, after a random amount of lives , characters are permanently killed and replaced with their offspring. The offspring do get a bit of inheritance (and/or debt) and there is a slight neutralizing of reputation.  The bounties will probably simply disappear on death.
 
The take home point here is that this is a justice system.
 
 
A note on abusing bounty systems
The simplest way to abuse a bounty system in a free trade game is to have the bounty target and the bounty hunter collude.  The bounty hunter brings in the target and they split the bounty 50/50.
In Ultima Online, there was an inherent loss of skills at death and skills are really difficult to increase. 
In EVE the target must lose more than the bounty but bounties are so unlucrative that they no longer feel like bounty hunting.
In Star Citizen, a character will have limited number of lives (for that character at least), so death may mean losing that incarnation of your character.
But why collusion is not an issue is that it requires trust.  Trust that the bounty hunter will not just take all the money after the bounty target rolls over.
I am sure there are other ways to abuse a bounty system but these I leave for another post.
Suggestion for Dual Universe
Dual Universe is about giving players tools to run systems, not to have systems run the players.  That said, none of the above example bounty systems really tick all the boxes. So a suggestion is as follows:
Create a bounty: A bounty can be placed on anyone by anyone (minimum amounts on the bounty apply).  This moves the bounty system away from being a justice system tied to reputation and makes it another useful tool in the DU belt.  This, on its own, does break the "fair" goal, since anyone can be targeted but a single point does not a system make. Read on.
  Get the contract: A bounty contract can only be picked up at a special terminal and is chosen from a randomly generated list of say 10 nameless bounties with a last known location (with a possibility of a reroll within a set time frame). Only those with the correct bounty contract can claim the bounty.  This means a list of bounties may be optionally published, but they will have no effect since only allowed bounty hunters with the correct contracts will be able to collect.  This makes investing into bounty hunting skills viable as it would be possible to tier bounties.
But why contracts?  This means the game won't devolve into a griefer gank-fest.
  Accept the contract: Once a contract is accepted, the bounty's name is revealed can track the target, the name remains unknown. A bounty hunter can only have a set number of bounty contracts active at one time and this does not preclude others from gaining the same contract. There should be some potential for competition after all. Also there is no auto tracking built in at best a proximity beep.
  Completing the bounty: The bounty hunter kills the target and gains the full bounty amount.  A bounty should be completed within a time frame (say a month) of being accepted or the bounty hunter will suffer a penalty (e.g. monetary loss and/or temporary loss of skills). Likewise the target could suffer a temporary loss of skills. This is a broad outline of a system and definitely still needs details filled in, but as you can see from the earlier examples, a bounty system is far from easy and straight forward.
 
Do you like what you see here? Do you have ideas for a bounty system? Feel free to discuss.
 
P.S. A further insightful video on the subject.

More memes for the meme machine...
 

@Rom35700
 
1) I have 16G, so I can not say how it runs on anything less.
2) The language is Lua.  You do not need to code to play.  It is an option that makes more things possible, but not essential.
3) There is an NDA.  Players can not post videos or screenshots anywhere.  We can not discuss our experiences during the test sessions outside of private forums for those who have access.
4) The basic pack does not give you immediate access.  Only the patron pack gives access now.  The contributor and sponsor packs give access to later stages of testing.  We do not yet know when those stages will start.
5) Because of the NDA, I can not describe what the sessions are like now.  The purpose of the current sessions is testing the game, not providing a fun experience.  That does not mean they are not enjoyable, but the game still is in an early stage of development.  Anyone who expected a complete game they could start playing right now would be disappointed.
6) The time needed will depend on what you want to accomplish.  It is still too early to know how time will be needed for what a typical player wants to do.

Hello everyone.
 
For this article I had the chance to talk with Code24 about his organization Objective Driveyards.
Follow the link to get a closer look at ODY. We even have a preview of a concept ship that is currently being designed by Dalmont.
 
Oz Team. 

Issue 2 is out now!
 

(pdf, 2 mb)
 
Contents: War on the Battlefield & War in the Arena, Non-English-speaking communities

Text Log: Earth year 12476, Novark.
Found an audio file today. I thought it was my collection of classic songs from the year 1990. Turns out it was another passengers message. Horrible audio quality. Between the static and silences, I gathered the passenger will be in the last simulation before landing. I wish this Reniya the best.
 
Still have not found my mix tape.
*text ends*

Text Log: Earth year 12476, Novark.
Found an audio file today. I thought it was my collection of classic songs from the year 1990. Turns out it was another passengers message. Horrible audio quality. Between the static and silences, I gathered the passenger will be in the last simulation before landing. I wish this Reniya the best.
 
Still have not found my mix tape.
*text ends*

'
There's a new article on Oz, by DU's Alsan_Teamaro. It's his first piece and by all means, a solid entry.
@Alsan_Teamaro's article on Oz takes a look at the organisational structures in Dual Universe, with some funny puns and videos along with it. If you are thinking of building an organisation or already have one and need some tips on the mode of governance (not all leaders are dictators), Alsan's article is an insightful - if witty - piece. 
 
Head over to Oz to have a read. Who knows? You might learn a thing or two about keeping the cannon fodder in line orgaanisation members happy.  
 
Oz Team.
'

AUDIO MESSAGE CODE : DU715
FROM : A place
TO : The Arkship Pub
 
Tap to play the message
 

Bastille
 
This short story (around 5000 words) is set on Earth before the technology required for the Arkships (and more) were entirely completed. This story does not include any DU organisations nor does it reference any arbitrarily named gaming organisations outside of DU.
 
Enjoy.
 
---------First paragraph snippet---------
I am a broken man. At least that is what the shrinks say. They say I’m too broken to continue in the Centauri Special Forces. But if one of the powerful nation states pays for your training, they own you. So that’s how I became stuck as a Tester, a guinea pig, for Centauri scientists. On the bright side, they gave me a place to stay, even if it is a single room apartment that you couldn’t swing a proverbial cat in. Centauri also provides a seemingly unlimited cereal molded into multicolored letters of the alphabet. Today, the cereal spells out “freedom” which quickly sinks away and then spells “dominated”. I stare at the word knowing if I blink it will instantly rearrange itself into the usual random jumble of letters. For taunting me, I teach it a lesson by biting into another mouthful. It might look colourful, but it tastes like week old sweaty socks.
-------------------------------------------------------
Novawrimo 2017 - Bastille by Kurock.pdf
Novawrimo2017 - Bastille by Kurock.docx

DU is an MMO so its mechanics should encourage group play while not completely squashing a lone wolf style of game play.  This is tough to balance since adding a simple thing like repair nanites could marginalize the group play aspect at least from a repair perspective.  But if repairing a massive ship adds no value to group play, nanites might be a good solution, freeing up those players to feed resources into the nanite machines.
 
Balancing ideas:
Repair using nanites would necessarily be a slow process where as manual fixing is very fast at least in the nano-formers location.  So the one is general slow repair while the other is for pin point quick fixing. The nanites element is bulky, fragile and costs quite a bit of power to use.  So this will lend itself to repair stations rather than on board every ship except the largest ones Will it happen? Probably not. But rather than outright dismissing ideas, lets see if there is a way to make them workable (even if NQ will never implement them)

Dual Universe Withdrawal Symptoms.
 
They are real.
 
Send help.

The Tortuga City building contest for Pre Alpha has concluded and the winners are Kurock, Agilolfing, Captain Hilts, Lau2356, and Sunrider. They will be the first among many to help layout the final layout and design for Tortuga City. Keep an eye out for future events from Tortuga City as we begin to flesh out roles of administration as required throughout testing.
 
This project has come a long way since its inception, with a community already beginning to flourish on Discord. Why not come join in on the fun and help make a badass home for yourself?
 

The usual mineable resources will not regenerate. While they are finite, there will be a lot. So much so that it may take years to mine out a planet.
 
Besides mining, potential future (read as "most likely not for release") renewable resources could include farming trees and alien-creatures. (Many players want wood and meat, after all.)

The founder (both Kickstarter and post-Kickstarter) rewards are as follows:
 

 
But wait! There's more! Founders also get some of the Supporter pack goodies:
https://www.dualthegame.com/en/news/2018/03/07/supporter-rewards-for-founder-backers/
 
For the full explanation on how name reservations work:
https://www.dualthegame.com/en/news/2018/03/09/character-name-reservations-how-it-works/
 

The usual mineable resources will not regenerate. While they are finite, there will be a lot. So much so that it may take years to mine out a planet.
 
Besides mining, potential future (read as "most likely not for release") renewable resources could include farming trees and alien-creatures. (Many players want wood and meat, after all.)