Kurock

Build a shield - safe for now. Ofc they a spherical, would not make sense if they would be cylindrical.
 
Lookup the develop on that and various forum entries

Nice references (even if you claim there are none).
 
Just a reminder: the arkship has no FTL drive.

Experiment Alpha.  
 
Before waking up the thousands of the Alpha team, surely one would need to check that the system is working as intended with a single test subject. A few times.
 
No characters in the story are in any way related or based on characters outside the story, real or imaginary.
 
This is a short story of around 5200 words  At this time the placeholders for UMF are still in. These were never removed.
 
Enjoy.
 
----First Paragraph Snippet----
 
Space.  Contrary to popular belief back on Earth, stars do not move as you travel through space. Well they do, but the changes are imperceptible to the naked eye. And they don’t twinkle. Everyone I cared about I left back on Earth. Now Earth is destroyed, by some nova star and them along with it. Staring out into the void echos the void inside me. It is the loneliest I have ever felt. And then a space whale drifts by.   --------------------------------------

Edit v1.1: Uploaded again with minor typo fixed as pointed out by Lethys.  UMF is still in the document. Otherwise no changes.  
Edit: No doc changes, just here to say UMF remains in the story and won't be changed Edit: File was 0kb for some reason.  Re-uploaded for everyones enjoyment.  
DUShortStory-ExperimentAlpha1.1.pdf

Experiment Alpha.  
 
Before waking up the thousands of the Alpha team, surely one would need to check that the system is working as intended with a single test subject. A few times.
 
No characters in the story are in any way related or based on characters outside the story, real or imaginary.
 
This is a short story of around 5200 words  At this time the placeholders for UMF are still in. These were never removed.
 
Enjoy.
 
----First Paragraph Snippet----
 
Space.  Contrary to popular belief back on Earth, stars do not move as you travel through space. Well they do, but the changes are imperceptible to the naked eye. And they don’t twinkle. Everyone I cared about I left back on Earth. Now Earth is destroyed, by some nova star and them along with it. Staring out into the void echos the void inside me. It is the loneliest I have ever felt. And then a space whale drifts by.   --------------------------------------

Edit v1.1: Uploaded again with minor typo fixed as pointed out by Lethys.  UMF is still in the document. Otherwise no changes.  
Edit: No doc changes, just here to say UMF remains in the story and won't be changed Edit: File was 0kb for some reason.  Re-uploaded for everyones enjoyment.  
DUShortStory-ExperimentAlpha1.1.pdf

It's not far-fetched to say that scripting inventory table interactions in Lua is something not that difficult.


And yes, a factory would follow the same principles as a battleship. You got 3D printers that are fed materials, that are provided by smelters, that are fed raw resources, that they drain from a container or racks of them, that players refill all the time.
A battleship would have turrets, that are fed ammo, that they fire by draining energy from the reactor, that is fed fuel, that resides in a container, that is refuelled by people. It's the exact same principle.

The industrialist chooses what things the 3D printer prints, and the gunner chooses what things they shoot at.

The thing is, it's gonna be an automated factory, but it won't run without a player in charge. So, an ambitious industrialist better hire people to run the factory for them if they were to go afk for a couple of days.

Hi everyone, 
 
For questions related to the Lore, please post them in the dedicated topic of the Lore Bible, in order to centralize all the information in one topic.
 
@Zeal_Iskander:
Your questions related to the Lore have been answered here.
 
@Ashteron:
Yes, it's a way to avoid conflicts in the future.
The one considered as the author will be the first to post the text on the forum.
One topic containing both the pre-proofread and post-proofread versions.
 
@Temerian:
The title is only for the community winner.
The thing is, if the community winner wins also one the Novaquark's prize that grants as well the title, then there is no reward for being selected community winner anymore.
 
@Jon1812:
- Were any passengers awakened at any point(s) before the Alpha team wakes? Or can they be in our stories?
You can imagine an accidental and premature awakening. However, this would mean either the character is going back to sleep before he dies from old age... or the character can die during the trip. Just for story consistency, keep in mind that the Alpha team members should remain those who awaken first before the landing.
 
- The Alpha team will experience first a "half-awakening" by becoming "active" through a virtual simulation one year and a half before landing. The virtual simulation is supposed to represent what Alpha testers will experience during the Alpha (which explains why there won't be combat, and why it's just a partial, imperfect simulation).
 
- The Passengers are picked from the population. And there was nowhere near the room to embark the whole population. 
Please read the answers to Zeal_Iskander questions for more details, on this topic (you have the number of Arkships launched and the number of people that could embark in one Arkship.
 
@Yamamushi:
There migh have been a misunderstanding there as in fact, Sohan Decker hasn't awoken before the Alpha team (for more details check the errata regarding the Short story written by Alain Damasio).
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Additional information, answering to Zeal_Iskander questions (posted there) and more!
 
  More or less a hundred of Arkships has been launched. An Arkship can roughly host five millions people.     
Passengers have been cryogenized slightly before the launch: As the space available aboard Arkships was already severely limited to host several millions of people, it would have created an uproar among the population if some significant space was wasted for huge living quarters. You can assume there are some rooms and food storage for emergency situations enabling a few people to survive in case of an accidental awakening... but that wouldn't last years. If the AI fails to solve the situation quickly, then the unfortunate awakened ones might meet a grim ending: death by starvation.    
As explained in the Lore Bible, the Arkship speed can approach Light Speed. When we say "approach", it should be read 99,5% (according to the special theory of relativity, the time dilatation effect will be roughly time multiplied by 10. Even for the Arkship passengers, it would be more or less a 1.000 years trip, which still totally justify the use of cryogenic sleep).
  This question has also its answer in the Lore Bible.  Please read the last part called "Mysteries".    
"Proto" is to be understood here as primitive. It is meant to have limited sentience, just enough to perform its duties (that cannot be entirely automated in a non-sentient way), but without too much of free will or existential risks associated to the full sentience AI (which was banned). This, at least, was the official story and intent behind the Arkship AIs. Distinguishing between a smart full sentient AI that can fake its proto sentience, and a genuine proto-sentient AI is probably hard.   P.S:  For the temporary names remaining in the Lore Bible, their final replacement will be announced next week. We apologize for the delay.   Best regards, Nyzaltar.

That also removes the chance of stealing your text. I can't see why you should open two topics, just stick to one. First post your original text. Send it to a native speaker, get the revised text back and post a second comment with the revised text. No need for people to spreading their story on different threads, only adds confusion

Nay! Teamspeak is the realm of villains, demons and witches! Thou shalt dwell only in Ventrilo, wherest the righteouss find solace!
 
 

Pretty sure it's done this way with regards to hard timers in both Eve, and planned to be done here, because unfortunately people don't all "live" in DU, and instead exist in the limitations and constraints of real life. People play all over the world, at different times, in different timezones, and can't drop everything on a whim even if they are instantly somehow notified that their shields are "under attack".
 
So really, it's more of a mechanic that enables the defenders to have a chance at countering their attackers, and actually provokes a PvP fight - albeit 48 hours later, instead of shooting down shields and taking over bases of each other when the other party is simply not online. Though I'd have to say that I agree with the point that 48 hours doesn't really work in this concept either - as the attackers 12 hours away, simply have to time it to have the shields go 'offline' at 9pm their time, when the defenders are going off to work at 9am theirs. So I don't know what is the best way to go about this either.
 
What I would like to see, is some way for smaller organisations with much smaller structures to effectively 'hide' their structures better. A small secret outpost with a small shield should be much harder to locate in the first place, than a much larger one, Maybe have a bit of a 'risk and effort vs reward' scenario - whereby a huge organisation with 10'000 people wouldn't be going around blowing up small 10 man bunkers "for the lulz", while it's still viable and profitable for a 50 member organisation to attempt the same feat. Though once again, I don't know how this can be practically achieved in realistic terms.
 
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that once we have the game in alpha, and have a feel of what the world is like and how it works, people may have better ideas how to go about doing this - but until that point, I feel it's really taking stabs in the dark.

More exciting designs from Objective Driveyards! Three cheers for those fantastic designers!
 

Every single item in any bundle has some specific value and the number of items you get is balanced across all bundles. Some of the packs have also Lifetime subscription, that is equal to 80 DAC (this is ratio set by developers).
 
Now, the physical vs digital:
 
Ruby Physical has extra physical items.
Ruby Digital has no physical items but same price, so the difference in price is balanced with 20 DAC.
 
If you get the math, physical items for Ruby pack are equal to 20 DAC. And it's only your choice if you pick physical items or virtual currency.
 
 
 
If you are still not happy with answer, I'm pretty sure that if you asked developers after game launch that you want to get your lifetime subscription replaced with 80 DAC, they would do it for you :-)

Interesting opinions so far.
 
So let's start by stating what we know and don't know:
 
1) Fairness is important in DU. There will be no orbital bombardment and no death ray for this very reason. People will always know what is happening to me (at least mechanically).
 
2) We know that when you log off, your construct stays in game where it was.
 
3) In DU there are no ships or buildings: There are only constructs, some of which happen to be able to move.
 
4) We do not know how shields work in DU yet, all we have heard is that there is a 48 hour timer. So let's not jump to conclusions before we have even had a devblog about how shields actually are intended to work.
 
Now I will skip to my own conclusion:
To be fair to all players, any unmanned unmoving construct will necessarily need protection of some kind because Real Life Happens. This makes the game more accessible to more people. Crying that this is unfair to pirates is incorrect. It is 'unfair' to cowardly pirates that are too afraid to attack a manned construct.
 
But doesn't this mean everyone will just log out at the first sign of trouble? Well, games have solved that problem a long time ago: the shield only goes up after a certain period of time has elapsed after the last mans log off. Does this hurt unintentional disconnects? Yes, but that would happen far less often at the exactly wrong time than people would abuse the system to stay safe from bad situations.
 
I would rather this timer-shield, call it a "guard shield", be seen as a separate mechanic to normal player built shields. Player built shields would run off power and can be knocked down as mentioned in earlier posts.
 
My 2c

Hi everyone!
 
This bug should be fixed now
Let us know if any of you continue to have this problem.
 
Best regards
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone!
 
To answer your questions:
 
@MinerMax555:
The Novark is the 17th Arkship to be launched.
Correction in the Lore Bible: 
"2510-2536: The first Arkships leave Earth" becomes "2510-2536: The Arkships leave Earth."
 
@Aetherios:
- To go from Earth to Alioth takes roughly ten millenia.
- The Neutron Star reaches our solar system just a half millenia from present day.
- In the end, Humanity has no time to send an expedition to Alioth or make extensive research (at least not better than data gathering from a space telescope like the James Webb one).
- Before the launch of the Arkships, a list including thousands of potentially habitable planets has been finalized the 15th March of the year 2137. As information about each planet was far from being enough detailed to be 100% sure to find an habitable on first try, the list was uploaded in each Arkship AI memory. As an Arkship approach a potentially habitable planet, a short range scan ("short" compared to the size of the galaxy) is made by the AI to see if the planet is indeed compatible with human colonization or not. So while the coordinates of Alioth were known from before the Arkship Launch, the decision of landing on it was made by Aphelia, while approaching the planet. This also implies that Novark passengers don't know where the other Arkships might have landed.
 
@Smacker:
1) Surprisingly, the atmosphere IS compatible with humans. The similar specs between Earth and Alioth (without terraforming efforts) is nearly miraculous.
2) Cryo-pods and Resurrection nodes are two completely different things: the first preserve the physical body on a long period. The second could possibly resurrect a possibly dead (or recreate a destroyed) physical body.
3) As said in the Lore Bible, the Arkship speed can approach Light speed. There is no other data on the topic as the Arkship engines are undocumented.
 
@Kurock:
The decisions for the remaining temporary names/placeholders should be announced before the end of the week.
 
@Stark:
Who knows?
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar

Hi there,
 
It's time to reveal my story.
 
Keep in mind:
 
- It's written from my roleplaying point of view
- there are references, hidden and obvious, to many things in there (mostly related to DU)
- I deliberatly didn't mention any year or city
 
 
Have fun reading and talking about it
Novawrimo - Lethys.pdf

Part 2
 
Techdemo
 
- no one did this before. dynamic system
- when distant - not so often updated
- some thousand "people" on that demo
- he skips voxels, seperate video available in english if you want
- KS campaign did well, third highest result - good sign that DU is wanted and well perceived by people
 
Question time
- how monetized? P2P (10 - 13 € per month) with DAC (talks about it, but all is known to the forum). no sense in doing as some AAA title with 20h on gametime which sells for 60€
- blackmail problem, liberal economy? like eve - free economy but when something always goes against one particular person they intervene. Players drive the economy and safty is ensured by safe zones, territory,  shields with 48h timers. It needs war and conflicts - otherwise it's not interesting. But they want both: big cities and conflict. Everything has to be balanced.What players want will be done
- Consequences of AIs taking over parts of life or make humans no longer needed (automated cars, medical robots, AIs,...) ? Perhaps organize another conference for that. Otherwise it will take too long. RL and VL are both positive or negative for humanity. It's not only about entertainment. In RL you have different parts or groups of your job like works council, bosses and so on - in VL like DU you could have that too. SL is no game to him. It's more.
- Value of the game and his motivation. When everything is possible and you create your universe, what is good and what bad?
JC didn't quite understand that question NQs position: they don't intervene when players squabble, if it's within the laws (no racism for example).
Fairness priciple: what comes around, comes around. No weapon on death star - funny and cool to build but not fair for players on the planet.
If there is a dictator in DU who is aggressive and has pirates around him, he has to be dealt with by players, NQ won't say that he can't be that pirate. Iron sky for example is funny and hilarious but not meant in a neo-nazi way, but ofc you can't know what the director meant. Same in DU: It's always a hard decicion: if, in a player driven sandbox, a dictator who bullies others for his gain is he good or evil?
- Not forcably there has to be capitalsm in the game or even civilazations. But there is capitalism all over DU like markets, supply/demand, contracts, ... so it implies it. Will it be fun for players to be broke all the time?
note from myself: I'm at work atm, didn't understand everything there cause he talks really fast. And sloppy sometimes
 
Missed some parts, but should cover the most interesting parts about DU
 
Didn't listen to the girl, maybe in the evening

Part 1
 
very interesting video, but nothing too fancy about DU. Short topic summary:
 
- whats a MMO?
- civilization building game, emergent gameplay, build a society  - first of its kind
- problem of mmos - continuity - and different aspects (craftig, history, player interaction, building, cities,..) - DU wants to be more than that, giving players the oppertunity to do whatever they want
- DU consists of defenders, traders and pirates and let them interact - we will see what happens
- Nation, orgs, corps - all possible and wanted
- other games: you have predefined techs, provided by the game. in DU you can invent new things (he meant only blueprints here - so ship designs)
- limits on War (safezone), france is too afraid to attack anyone (hahaha on that one)
- reconciliation has to be emergent if its feasible (doesn't take too long, is fun, ...)
- one standard currency (too complicated trade otherwise) - necessary for emerget gameplay
- further down the road we will have different nations, governments,...
- DU will be a thinktank for new ideas because of emergent gameplay
 
Demo gameplay
- pre alpha, not finished yet, blah blah blah
- Alioth is the planet, there is a backstory, we can edit everything (minecraft anyone?)
- can modify environment - complicated to do (program wise)
- there will not be 7 billion inhabitants, so planets have to be scaled down
- only he has godmode, noone else. only for showing the demo
- sun is going around planets for now, not yet possible to let planet go round / "real" sunsets, you can watch live
- builds a ship, simple physics in building it but fly mechanics are in place (not as much as in kerbal space program); automated lua scripts or you program yourself
- RCS / gyroscope will be there too
- much more simple than what you do (at nasa)
- 1-5% (estimated by NQ) of players will really get into building grand ships
- not everyone will get really deep into the game, which is fine because of markets
- space station hard to build, lots of resources needed, defense needed, good connections - death star reference
- LOD; difficult with fully editable environment
- shows scale of ship to station and command center; screens for information display
- lags in game now because not optimized, only pre alpha
- corvette for 50 - 100 people, fully editable
- planet biomes: forests, can mine there, build a house (or in the mountains)
- everything is persistent with todays techs
 
Organizations
- guilds, with a goal; shows community page. 30k views on page, over 900 orgs, TU over 270 members, all kinds of orgs: designers, podcasters, military fabricants,...
- they provide sandbox - we do whatever we want; unbelievably scope of game;
- everything matters - when a station is destroyed you built for months, it matters.
- no death, because players are clients. no good economic strategy to let them die
- territory units: hexagons with pentagons. control that tiles, construct things there; geostrategic/mineral rich tiles will be fought over
 
Further sheets of presentation
- RDMS, control who can do what
- ships are physically there and stay while offline. markets need to be physically there with containers. no fixed price, you set it - capitalism. markets even on stations.
- they don't want a mad max environment (so the safe zone), because then no markets can evolve. Building defenses like walls needs time, will not be there from the start so you need a safe zone
- RN: crucial to know where those are when someone attacks - will be sent to next one.
- exploration: finding new planets, resources,..
- contracts: jobs for people: i need x
- backstory: it exists but not interesting for audience.

Setting up small land parcels, basically defining a volume that someone can build in is a a must otherwise its going to be really hard to have "cities" in any meaningful way.
 
You could even have a hierarchical system where owners of a building/ship/station could define spaces for individual room/apartments/warehouses that could be rented out.
 
I hope that NQ is thinking on the same wavelength here, it seems like something that would be coveded by the "Rights and duties managment system"
 
Everyone is going to want a apartment/house/warehouse in the ark zone so there is going to be a serious need to be able to efficiently subdivide and rent out areas

I agree with this, it makes more sense to add something like ore quality or density into the mix than some sort of directional calculations.

The videos indicate that space is indeed three dimensional.

Yes.

This is my entry into the Novawrimo contest and also the backstory of my character, Ben Fargo.  I hope you enjoy it.
 
PartingGifts.pdf

I doubt the developers will want any sort of prison system. They want this game to grow and retain players, and to do that they need people to remain engaged. If you have a player getting locked up then they are going to log out, and that is the last thing the devs want people doing. Even if they could come up with a way to prevent any "abuse" of the imprisonment system (which they can't, there will always be a way to abuse it), it still adds nothing to the game and only detracts from it. 
 
There may be some ways to temporarily trap players, but the developers will very likely make sure there is always a way out. And if somehow someone gets well and truly trapped or imprisoned, you can bet that a GM is going to come running to set them free.

Hi there,
 
I will upload my story next week after me and some friends read it again and made sure that there are no major logical mistakes in it and lore problems.
 
Short facts:
- 9 pages
- 7.092 words
- backstory of Lethys
- year: 2525 - 2535
- city: unknown, possibly somewhere in europe
 
As a roleplayer, all my characters need some kind of backstory. Why they behave like they do, how they see the world and so on. Since I deeply believe that NQ should provide the details of the lore, I tried to be as vague on those parts as possible but nonetheless I described the "side effects" of such an event and what would possibly happen on earth during those last few years.
 
The only thing I made up myself is that implant in our heads for skill training. As a teaser for my story, I will further describe what I mean in a short post by the end of the week.
 
To keep this thread clean and in order to publish this as I want it to be, I ask you not to answer to this thread. If you want to know something about the story, my writing, some other info, please write a pm. I will answer those alongside the teaser this weekend.
 
Looking forward to read other stories