Kurock

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

Most important PRO's missed... 
 
Hundreds of paid accounts no longer paying.  Less money for NQ
Empty worlds with no constructs... sounds fun.
Many existing players offer help to new players in financial and advice... gone.

I have never read a bigger pile of one-sided bullsh*t basically advocating for full wipe in order to easily do away with schematics.  Just announce the decision and get it over with.

At beginning of beta it was announced "no more wipes except as required for updates" (like the mining update that was done).  So if NQ do decide to wipe, it would be yet another promise broken.  This also completely ignores that people have been paying monthly to play...

As for "removing unfair advantage" and "level playing field". These are fallacies to help people sleep better at night.  The players with the know how will return to the positions of abundance they have now in short order.   There will always be "haves" and "have nots".   All a wipe does is a slap in the face of the people that put time into the game after being told a wipe would not happen.
 
Make a system that creates schematics rather than remove them.  The problem with schematics, like the markets, is that they do not give player agency.  A player cannot make a schematic at all, they have to be bought.  Make science research a thing.

Cons for wipe have already been mentioned:   As I said, the "NQ thoughts" are heavily aligned to a wipe disregarding promises and small details like leaving an empty world, avid supporters of the game just leave, and paying customers just get their stuff removed.  

What a wipe also does is remove the history of DU such as it is... like Thoramine.  Deleting a piece of DU history like that is unforgivable.

Its a no to reset as  I have played the game for 5 hours per day for over 12 months (over 2000 hours), to get resources and warp cell factory up and running etc, i would have to quit and go back to eve if I lost all that time and effort.

Aww thanks everyone!  I'm happy to be here and I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you and of course getting to know Dual Universe almost as much as some of you folks already do!  (Well, I'll try anyways.) 

Hi everyone!
 
You probably heard that NQ-Pann has left Novaquark a few weeks ago.
Today, we are happy to announce that a new Community Manager is joining the team: NQ-Nyota ! ?
Please give her a warm welcome! 
 
P.S: on a side note, NQ-Naerais is still unavailable but should be back in a couple of months.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Can you hear that low rumble tumbling across the sky? It’s the goddess of war and wisdom, and she’s bringing the heat.
 
Slated for the end of Spring, the Dual Universe Athena update heralds a new tidal wave of conflict that will set Helios ablaze.
 
For peace-loving Noveans uninterested in warfare, Athena also includes a completely overhauled First Time User Experience (FTUE), a Space Market, and a variety of visual upgrades to the game.
 

 
 
WHAT’S IN IT
 
Space warfare hits a new stratosphere with the introduction of alien core units that will spawn in PvP zones. Think of them as resource-generating facilities, like space mining points. Players and organizations can claim these points to accumulate resources. But nothing comes free or easy in space. Alien core units must be defended. Do you have the mettle to get this metal?
 
These alien core units also serve additional purposes. The first is to provide fresh new PvP challenges for fighter types, and the second is to reduce the pressure on players who wish to avoid PvP side of DU but still find themselves ambushed by pirates when they step out of the safe zone.
 
To better balance PvP, we are adding stasis weapons and altering the behavior around a constructs’ maximum speed. With these sweet guns, big armored ships with powerful space engines will no longer have an advantage that allowed them to escape more agile smaller designs.
 
Last but not least on the topic of PvP, our voxel team has improved the performances near combat-related explosions, especially the destruction of voxels. We aren’t losing focus on keeping improving our players’ experience in Helios!
 
Shifting gears away from the pew pew pew features in Athena, we have also revamped the FTUE to provide a better, more easily comprehensible starting experience for new players. We want to give new players all the information they need to settle into DU with a solid foundation.
 
Among other features, you can look forward to the following:
New space map New skybox and stars rendering improvements Improved water visuals Improved flashlight visuals  Mining Units Lua API Space market Element stacking exploit fix  
The best news of all is that we plan to release a smaller update between now and Athena release to introduce some quality of life improvements.
 
WHAT’S NEXT
 
As usual, we’ll publish a series of devblogs to provide deeper insight into the new Athena features. We hope that you’ll like what you see!
 
Thanks to your constructive feedback, we have fine-tuned and balanced the content of Panacea with overall good results. We hope to see more of the same, so we encourage you to continue engaging with us as you read the upcoming articles. Your ideas and feedback are what will make Dual Universe better.
 
Head over to this thread and let’s chat!
 

Dear Noveans, 
 
We took the time to look at all the feedback you gave us during this weekend and the past few days. We understand there are still concerns and that the second version is not the perfect solution to all potential problems. That doesn’t mean we are just going to deploy this version and be done with it. As mentioned previously, our goal has never been to punish players and we don’t want you to feel pressured to destroy/abandon/remove some of your current constructs.
 
Therefore, while monitoring how things will evolve (reminder: we are still in Beta, and things are bound to change or to be tweaked. Nothing is set in stone yet), we are going to act on two aspects when we will deploy the core units limitation with the Panacea release:
 
Extending the time period during which the automatic abandonment feature for core units in excess will remain inactive (1 month was previously announced but we now aim at 2-3 months at least). This is  to make sure everyone has enough time to reach the amount of core slots needed through queued talent training focused on specifically construct slots.  
In rare cases where it wouldn’t be enough, the Novaquark team is willing to help players who have large community projects, assuming they don’t gain any particular profit from them, and they’ve been in the limit of “one player personal cores + organization cores limit of one organization (which is 275 pre-Panacea)” and for whom the limit of 200 cores per player is not enough. We know those cases will be quite rare as there are currently less than 40 organizations going beyond the 200 Core limitation.  
If you are a player in charge of an organization with more than 200 constructs and you have a genuine issue about keeping all your Constructs, please reach out to NQ-Deckard or NQ-Nyzaltar on Discord or on the forum by private message and we will see how we can assist.
 
Again, the goal is not to frustrate you, our players, nor put you in panic mode to reduce the amount of core units you may currently have in your organization(s). We are not applying limitations with a light heart, without caring for players. We do know that these measures are frustrating for many of you, but at some point, we have to think also about the long-term sustainability of the game. All the restrictive measures already deployed, going to be deployed or activated in the coming months, have been all decided with this main goal in mind.
 
We do acknowledge the first version of the core units limitation was way too low and too much based on metrics that weren't detailed enough, not taking into account many edge cases. To show our good will, we decided to approach the problem from another angle: what could be the highest limitation of core units we could give to the players without endangering long-term sustainability? The answer is what has been suggested in the second version. Even if we wanted to go further, it would be unreasonable.  What would be the point of keeping the "no limit" policy if we find ourselves unable to sustain the model one year after its release? Dual Universe is meant to become a MMORPG and as such we have to do our best to design it for the long term.
 
You might ask:
Why didn't you set the limitations sooner?
Why is it just now you talk about long term sustainability?
 
Those are legitimate questions and here is the explanation: 
We had, of course, from the beginning, some rough estimation regarding long term sustainability. But as you can imagine, estimation on paper (or even simulations with a massive amount of bots) can vary quite significantly from actual metrics we get from running a live server with a massive amount of real players. To have accurate numbers, we needed to have two things: having all the main gameplay mechanics implemented in game, and enough metrics about player habits once all the main gameplay mechanics have been implemented. Those are things we didn't have yet before Beta launch and we could only guess before for some of them. Player habits are, for example, a parameter no one can predict perfectly in advance. Even after reaching the Beta stage, it required quite a few months to accumulate enough data to have an accurate idea of what could be the real cost per player. So yes, ideally, we should have set the limitations much earlier, to prevent players from going wild in creativity beyond what was technically reasonable and sustainable. However, this would have been a decision with just "gut feeling" (which is always very risky) and not based on relevant metrics.
 
Now to reply to the many suggestions and concerns you’ve mentioned in past few days:
 
Isn't there a risk of seeing the organization slots weaponized by opponents infiltrated in the organization through Alts?

Weaponizing organization slots - if someone ever does that - will have a very limited impact. There will be no way of catching by surprise the legates of an organization:
- Legates of the organization are all notified when a construct check has failed for the first time (opening the two-week period before random abandonment), in order to check what happened, take immediate action and handle the situation before the next check.
- Once lent, construct slots cannot be taken back for 30 days, which limits the possibilities for immediate negative actions and allows for anticipation.
- Organization legates can know from the list of active slots whether a donator is part of the organization or not (and how many slots are lent), therefore caution should be taken not to rely too much on 'external' slots to deploy new constructs, especially to the point where it becomes critical to pass the construct checks.
- Deploying a construct is restricted to legates and via RDMS, so people actually using the slots are assumed to be trustworthy.
- The log keeps track of every movement in the slot count (who gave/took back slots, how many and when, what happens to the amount lent by this player, what happens to the total amount for the organization)
  Will you give us more control ( show the values ) of : 
 - how many cores do you have free?
 - how many org slots cores do you have free?
 - what is YOUR org potential limit?

The org related numbers are visible in the new UI elements, we will look into creating better insight into your personal construct counts however this will not be available in the initial release of Panacea.  
Why chosing core units abandonment randomly?

We understand it might seem a strange decision at first glance, but we think it's a necessary measure to prevent some players to abuse the system (like inflating temporarily the number of core unit slots before a war and fill them with junk or "can afford to lose" ships). We did consider ways of selecting which type of constructs should be abandoned first, but in the end we found none exempt from loophole.   
Why not go with “constructs are not abandoned when the limit is not high enough? You just can't place new ones (otherwise many constructs will be abandoned long before the players will have leveled the skills for that)

This would in fact result in a situation where an organization could get players to temporarily increase their slots, deploy a very large amount of constructs, and then remove the slots to leave the constructs in place. This in fact does not meet our requirements.  
Suggestion: assigning automatically 10 organization core slots to each organization the player is joining? If he joins the organization, he must participate in the group effort.

While we definitely agree on the idea (each member of an organization should participate a minimum to help an organization to achieve its goal(s)), there are a lot of edge cases if we enforce a hardcoded assignment. What happens if the member doesn’t have 10 organization core slots available? Can he still join the organization? What happens to those who are already in organizations and don’t have the required slots? Moreover, if someone really doesn’t want to share some organization slots, he might just quit an organization if we try to force to assign organization slots to a player. In every case, whether it’s enforced or not, it’s up to an organization leader to convince their members to assign some organization slots to the said organization. Last but not least, enforcing an organization core slot assignment shouldn’t be a prerequisite: not all organizations have a purpose of sharing constructs, and we want to let the organization system be flexible in this regard.
  Suggestion: putting a maximum amount of organization core slots being assigned per member to one specifically organization? (beyond the 10 automatically assigned, like 25 max)

Limiting organization slots assigned per organization will just have the same effect as the suggestion above: if a player wants to keep organization slots for personal use, they will still find a way to do so by creating several organizations for personal use. Beside, as some of you may be wary of potential opponents infiltrating an org, letting the option of having the maximum amount of organization core slots assigned to one organization should be useful to make sure that even in big organizations,  you might have a significant amount of organization core slots with just a small team of trusted people.
 
Will we have a way to disassemble or deactivate easily and quickly a Construct to avoid taking hours to just remove the Constructs in excess of the Core slot limitation? (for example, an ability to compactify a larger variety of constructs in a way that retains their mass and volume, so you can basically box away ships - or even buildings - not currently in use to avoid the core count cost)

This kind of feature is on the roadmap. While we’ll try our best, we cannot guarantee it will be delivered before the activation of the automatic abandonment feature for core units in excess owned by an organization.  
Will there be in-game assistance from GMs in deleting or dismantling the constructs?
 
As we plan to extend beyond 1 month for the inactivity of the automatic abandonment feature as mentioned above, we aim at developing a tool to make it easier to disassemble or deactivate Constructs using the Core Units in excess. We’ll keep you informed on the topic once we’ll have more information about it.
 
What do you think about limiting to each player to be a member of 5 orgs maximum?

That could be an idea, but being aware of how frustration is accumulating after many limitations, we don’t want to push more limitations than the ones really needed.
  How long would it take to train all the talents to max them and reach the maximum limitation?
 
Currently we estimate to maximise all the talents from nothing, will take approximately 6 to 7 months.
However there is a curve, the last few talents take the longest:
- In 30 days, you should be able to reach around 60 slots total.
- In 60 days, you should be able to reach around 90 slots total.
- In 90 days, you should be able to reach around 130 slots total.
- In 120 days, you should be able to reach around 170 slots total.
The remaining slots will take considerable time.
Remember you will also have a partial refund of talent points, which should speed up quite significantly your training in the new talents.
 
If cores were tokenized will they count towards the cap? So if I was to tokenize 90% of a HUGE station? that might save it? Technically they wouldn't be my core right? Might be a legit way to save larger projects. Then hand out tokens to people who buy / already own... These tokens expire after 3 months or something. Tokens are always inactive, so server wise not as much load? Boom, in game tradable property token market aka NFT's (without being able to buy these with USD but they would be considered as "Non-Fungible Tokens"). 
 
While tokenized, constructs still count towards the organization they belong to until the token is claimed. And transferred ownership is to another owner.
 
 
That's all for now, but if you have additional feedback on the upcoming changes, let us know in this discussion thread!
 
The Novaquark team.

@NQ-Deckard Great update. 10/10. Talents are for those that want to invest and specialize in a certain direction and builders need lots of cores to be a builder. Or have massive space ports or showrooms or puzzles or have a huge junkyard of defeated enemy ships to show off.
 
This system still allows those fresh off the arkship to ban together and put down a decent number of cores (I still disagree with the gated core size placement talents but that is a different discussion)
 
Panacea update is looking more and more like its namesake rather than a Burst Pancreas.
 
 
Edit: For those worried about players leaving orgs in the lurch on core counts: there will be other players that will sell their core slots temporarily to keep the org afloat without losing anything. If there is a market, there will be those that fill that market.

GREAT ! 200 CORES

Hello Noveans, as yesterday's discussion thread was so lively, we would like to open a new thread to hear your feedback on our planned revisions.

Following the discussion around yesterday’s devblog, the community asked us to look over our figures to see what we can reliably sustain in terms of construct limits. In this communication we want to take the opportunity to outline what we have decided to change from the previous devblog as well as to explain some decisions such as the mechanics of construct abandonment and our reasons for arriving at our previous figures. These proposed changes are still being developed by our design team and we welcome your continued feedback on this major update.
 
Organization Constructs Slots versus Personal Construct Slots
 
There appeared to be some confusion in yesterday’s devblog between organization and personal construct slots. Personal construct slots are always independent of organization construct slots. 
 
Before outlining the details of the construct slots, it’s important to note that our position on excess construct abandoning mechanics. For the avoidance of doubt, when this change is implemented in the Panacea release. No construct will be subject to abandonment through the following mechanics for at least the first month after release.
 
This is to ensure as smooth a release as possible, and to allow our players who want to specialize in the architectural gameplay loop or the collecting of wonderful constructs, some time to accrue talent points and to adapt.
 
Personal construct slots:
 
Can only be used for constructs in the player’s ownership. Can not be assigned to organizations. Are non-transferable to other players. Are gained through talents independently of organization construct slots.  
Organization construct slots:
 
Can be assigned to any organization, regardless of membership. Can not be assigned to players. Once assigned to an organization, can not be repealed from that organization for 30 days. Once repealed, the organization will have until the next bi-weekly construct check to ensure that it meets its construct slot requirements. If that bi-weekly construct check determines that the organization has more constructs than it has slots, the organization will receive a warning and be required to ensure the constructs count is brought down to its capacity. If the next bi-weekly construct check following that warning determines that the organization still has more constructs than it has slots, random constructs from that organization will be abandoned until the organization is back in compliance with its slot capacity. All this means that even if you go over the available slot count, you have at the very minimum 14 days to correct it.  
We are keeping the random nature of selection for construct abandonment. This is because as game developers we know that if there exists a way for a game system to be broken, our players will find it. In this particular instance, given the gravity of the impact, we feel that it’s important to protect the game and our community from abuse, and the randomization is an effort to do that.
 
We hope this clears up some of the lingering questions that were remaining yesterday.
 
Player allocated slot amounts, why so low?
 
Following internal research, we determined that currently per active player there are approximately 25 constructs in the game at the present time.
 
Therefore we believed that having a total of 42 slots per player would have been enough to provide an overhead for the community to be able to distribute the available slots amongst each other and support each other's projects.
 
We do value our players and recognise that some of you own considerably more constructs than that average, and though we want to encourage collaboration and community, we don’t want to constrain those players that prefer to go it alone.
 
And, we’ve heard you. 
 
We are looking into an alternative approach that we feel will meet the majority of the community needs while also meeting our requirements for the long term sustainability and balancing of Dual Universe.
 
Talent Changes
 
We are going to increase the core allowances. In yesterday's devblog we proposed a figure of 42 total constructs. We are going to increase that through the introduction of talent changes that will require considerable time investment but keep the door open to players that wish to own many constructs.
 
The new talents are separated into three tiers, increasing in expense significantly per tier.
 
The new figures are (subject to change)

For personal construct slots:
 
The base personal construct slots will be increased from 2 to 10 slots without any talents. The first tier personal construct talent will grant 3 slots per level (up from 2), for a total of 15. The second tier personal construct talent will grant 5 slots per level (up from 1), for a total of 25. The new third tier personal construct talent will grant 10 slots per level, for a total of 50.  
This will allow for a maximum personal construct limit of 100, once all the talents are fully acquired.
 
For organization construct slots:
 
The base organization construct slots will grant 10 slots without any talents. The new first tier organization construct talent will grant 3 slots per level, for a total of 15. The new second tier organization construct talent will grant 5 slots per level, for a total of 25. The new third tier organization construct talent will grant 10 slots per level, for a total of 50.  
This will allow for a maximum organization construct limit of 100, once all the talents are fully acquired.
 
The combination of the two will allow a determined player to reach the maximum number of construct slots that we can reasonably maintain. This will take substantial time investment in order to be a specialization within the game. 
 
We will still be refunding the following Legate based talents:
 
Organization Construct Management Organization Construct Management Specialization Advanced Organization Construct Management Specialization  
These talents will be buffed to collectively increase the maximum ceiling for the organization's construct limit to 1625.
 
If you have already trained Advanced Organization Construct Management Specialization to level 5, by reinvesting the refunded talent points, we estimate that you will be able to reach at least a construct slot capacity total of 80. Further, given the grace period of at least 1 month following the Panacea release, we hope that those amongst our players who value their construct capacity can increase it to a comfortable level of approximately 125 construct slots before needing to make decisions on which constructs to keep.
 
We want to thank you all for your feedback and take this opportunity to recognize the passion you our community have for the future of this game. We would love to hear how you feel about the new changes outlined above in this forum.
 

The per player approach is likely the correct one, however abandoning the constructs so quickly when someone leaves is a bit... draconic. I feel like an org should have a longer period before abandoning happens.
 
also unless the new talents are very very cheap, 10 more org constructs is worse than the number you can get for private cores using talents (2 base + 15 talents). Sure the org constructs start at 15 but I feel like the talents should give at least 15 again if not double that. It would basically be required for ship collectors and builders.
 
 
 
 

the number are to low.  A Single Player can have 25 Construct slots, for Mining Units u need lets say 10. For Buildings and Ships only 15 left.....
 
Just do it in the way that the player hast max 25 Construct slots for himself, and lets say 10 extra slots only for org spending which he cant use himself, only for org.
 
Or make it simple double the numbers.
 
At least the paying ppl should have more construction slot that beta key users.
 
 

OMG. i am a builder.. an engineer .. a collector.. a single player. and i have played for quite some time.
i use a construct org with maxed talents to manage my constructs. and it is always close to the construct limit.
enabling a limit of 15 for my org basically means the end of almost everything for me.
How is that supposed to work. people like building stuff or buying cool stuff, and they usually come as a single new construct due to how DRM works.
so we are killing construct selling economy?
who would assign construct slots to an org if you need them to even store your own single player stuff??
seriously?
and all the mining unit cores? dead as well..  sorry.. that would not be my game any more
 
 

I find the claim that 64 steps per voxel would deform ships dubious, since as far as I can tell the voxelmancy-heavy ships (those built using voxel reactors, the ones where deformation would become obvious) would align exactly to those steps - as far as I know, all voxel reactors have a detail degree of a multiple of 2, and I've never heard of anything more detailed than 64 step. Even if it did deform ships a little, 1/64 of a voxel is not even 4mm/0.2". I think 64 steps per voxel would make much more sense.
 
Please do not lower the voxel extension range below what it is today. Being able to extend a voxel by 1.5vx in any direction is extremely useful for things like detail work and connecting complex shapes without having to line them up to each other. Just as an example, many of the finer details in this build (e.g. the struts, landing gear and horizontal stabilizers) were only possible due to the ability to stretch voxels by 1.5vx on each side. Limiting this range now would probably ruin this and many other builds.

Greeting Noveans. Let us know what you think about our latest devblog, Precision in Building!

Time to smash some voxels!

In the upcoming 0.28 Panacea update, we will introduce the Vertex Precision Tool (VPT), which adds a whole new way of bringing detail to your creative designs.
 
This all may sound quite complex initially, but once you get used to the tool it’s quite intuitive. If you’ve been holding back because voxelmancy seemed too complicated, now’s the time to give it a try. By allowing you to simply equip the VPT and move the vertex around on a changeable grid, the process of designing with voxels is greatly simplified and far more user-friendly.
 
Here’s a brief demonstration of what the VPT looks like and how it’s used:
 
 
Heads up! The information in this blog leans heavily into the extremely technical side of things. Those who are into voxelmancy will probably dive in with unfettered joy. If building isn’t your jam, you may wish to stop here and get the TL;DR from one of your builder buddies later.
 
VOXELS DEFINED
 
Much of what you see in Dual Universe was built by players using voxels. The term “voxel” is very generic, a shortened form of “volume element”. Voxelmancy is an advanced form of building that can be quite complex, and there has always been a gap between building with standard geometric shapes and fine-tuned designs. The VPT aims to bring a game-changing  bridge for the gap between these building styles.
 
How exactly the voxels are implemented depends a lot on the software that’s being used. In DU, a voxel contains two things: material information and a vertex position information.
 
The material information is pretty straightforward; it is exactly the same as in a pixelated image where there is a material (think of it as a synonym of “color“) for each little square. We use what we call a uniform grid, meaning that voxels are put next to each other in a 3D grid and all have the same size. For example, on a planet voxels are 1 meter long (1m x 1m x 1m) whereas they can be 25 centimeters long (0.25m x 0.25m x 0.25m) on a user construct. It’s exactly how pixels work in 2D images, and you may already be familiar with these kinds of voxels because they are present in games like Minecraft.
 
VERTICES POSITIONS
 
Let’s drill down even deeper into the well of technical stuff.
 
As stated above, voxels contain material information and a vertex position information. The Vertex Precision Tool doesn’t touch materials, so let’s talk about vertices.
 
3D geometry is composed of vertices, and those vertices are linked together to form faces that will be rendered on your screen. For instance, take a simple single voxel cube. It is composed of one material, but has eight vertices on the eight corners. Since our voxels in DU store both a material and a vertex position, our “single voxel” here is composed of eight voxels because it takes eight vertices to form a cube!
 
This is where it starts getting complicated. We can consider that there are two voxel grids, one is the material grid and the other is the vertex position grid, and the two grids are shifted, dual to each other. There are eight vertices around a material, and there are eight materials (we can consider the void as a special kind of material) around a vertex.
 
So what are we talking about when we talk about a voxel? A little bit of both, depending on the context. Confusing right? We’ll try to be specific and talk about vertices, but remember there is only one vertex per voxel, although one voxel cube is composed of eight vertices (and thus is in reality eight voxels: one with matter and seven without matter.)
 
Take a look at this picture. It is in 2D because it’s easier to understand (and to draw), but this is the same thing in 3D. This image represents a voxel sphere (more like a circle since we are in 2D).
 

  The dotted lines are the uniform grid that represent the voxels. At the intersection of those dotted lines, you can have a blue dot, representing a material. So, we have our material grid: either emptiness or a blue material. Inside of all of those cells, there may be a vertex. There is a vertex if and only if all four corners are not the same. If one of the corners is blue and another one empty, it means we have some material change here and thus something to see. So we need a vertex to know where we see the surface. On each of those cells, we have a vertex represented. The vertices are then linked together to form the surface.
 
POSITIONS VALUES
 
Before the Panacea update, you could only get such a sphere with the sphere tool, but with the VTP you’ll now have the opportunity to change the vertex position manually. This raises the question: what coordinate system do we use?
 
In theory, we could use an infinite range of values. For example, we could say that the vertex should be at one third (on a given axis) in between the two materials as shown in the grid, so its value (on this axis) could be 0.333333333. It could also be 0.1415926535, or whatever we want.
 
However, we need to store those vertex positions, and we want to be efficient so that we don’t take too much disk usage so we encode the vertex position (on a given axis) on a single byte. This means we only have 256 different possibilities for a vertex position, but we don’t really need more. A vertex position is a coordinate with three numbers (for the three axes) where all of these numbers are integers (with a maximum 256 different possible integers).
 
So what are those possible values? Before answering that, we need to consider where a vertex can lie. On the sphere representation drawing, you can see that vertices are inside the zone defined by the four surrounding material points. This is indeed where a vertex should be most of the time, although we may sometimes want to overflow a bit, reach a little further than the vertex is supposed to. This will encroach on the zone of the neighbor voxel, but it does not have to be a problem. We decided that a vertex could lie on its one zone, but also the zone of its direct neighbors. On the 2D schematics above, it means that a vertex can be placed anywhere on the nine squares around it.
 
A vertex encoding actually encodes three vertice’s positions. We want to have an encoding for all the important positions, the middle of each of the three voxels and their borders. This means that we need a multiple of six. We’ll use 252 as it is very close to 256. Now let’s see this coordinate system in a picture. The picture below represents four simple cubes in voxels (yellow, red, blue and cyan).
 
We will be talking about the vertex shared by the red and blue cubes. There are actually two of those vertices in 2D, one top and one bottom; let’s talk about the top one. We state that the position it is in in the picture will be 0 (it’s a convention, the one chosen in the Vertex Precision Tool), and above the cubes we showed all the position values this vertex could have
 
 
So 0 is the position of a vertex in a simple voxel cube. If we move the vertex into position 42 (both the top and bottom vertex of this red-blue junction), then the red rectangle will now be 1.5 times bigger, and the blue rectangle will be half its current size. If we move the vertices to -42, it would be the other way around. Note that all the values between -42 and 42 are the values where the vertex is supposed to be without overflow. This is the zone we described earlier.
 
If we were to move the vertices to value 84, then we would enter the territory of the vertex shared by the blue and cyan cubes. This becomes a little dangerous and could result in strange results. In this example, it would lead to the blue surface to completely disappear and be replaced by the red one. The blue voxel would still exist, it would just have a null volume.
 
And, in the example of these four cubes, if we were to go to a value above 84, it would result in an ill-formed shape because the blue shape would have a negative volume. This would probably create visual artifacts, and we may prevent this situation in the future.
 
ENCODING CHANGE
 
One last note for those who are familiar with voxelmancy. In Panacea, we use an encoding of 253 positions (from -126 to 126), which is different than it has been. We used an encoding of 255 positions (it was from -128 to 128 but previous -128 = actual -126). Since there is no exact mapping between the old encoding to the new one, this means that vertices in your constructs may be shifted up to 1mm (vertices at position 0 will not move, but those at extreme values will move the most). This will probably be unnoticeable, but we wanted to err on the side of caution and share this information.
 
You may wonder, why 253? It is for the reasons explained before, to have those nice -126, -84, -42, 0, 42, 84 and 126 values. The 255 system did not allow for that. We could have chosen 193, so that you could split a voxel in 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64, but that would have meant a huge loss in precision and significantly deformed most constructs. So 253 it is, and you can now split a voxel in 42!
 
USING THE VPT
 
There are exactly 253 positions on a single axis including zero that a vertex can be in due to it being divisible over three voxels. Negative 126, 0, and positive 126. As such, the width of one voxel is exactly 84 positions. And each vertex can be moved exactly 1.5 voxel away from the center position.
 
Thus, the grid on which a vertex is moved is adjustable to a size that covers 1, 2, 4, 7, 14, 21 or 42 positions, 42 being the size of half a voxel. This allows the accurate placement to the finest detail or to quickly scale up and move a vertex by a half, a quarter, a sixth, or a twelfth of a voxel.
 
See the image below to get an idea of the different size grids available to the VPT.
 
 
Once selected, the vertex cursor can then be moved with:
The up, down, left arrow and right Arrow keys for the x- and y-axis.
The Page Up and Page Down for the z-axis.
The Home key to send the cursor to the current position of the vertex.
The End key to send your cursor to the last confirmed coordinates.
(This also happens by default when you change vertices.)
The Alt+Home key combination to send the cursor to the centered 0,0,0 coordinates.
Holding Control+Scroll will adjust the grid size between the available sizes.
Left-click confirms the placement and moves the selected vertex to the cursor.
 
The VPT will give you the finest precision possible, no more complex voxelmancy of copy-pasting things around to get a specific shape. You may not use this tool all the time, but when you do you’ll find it exceptionally helpful for fine-tuning.
 
WHEW, THAT’S A LOTTA INFO!
 
Still with us? We know there’s a lot of information to process, but we felt it was worthwhile to share the details with our voxelating community members that would appreciate seeing how the sausage is made (so to speak).
 
We can’t wait to see the cool new stuff Noveans build with the Vertex Precision Tool. As always, we encourage everyone to join the conversation on the forum in this thread. If you have questions about the VPT or want to share your thoughts and tips about voxelmancy in general, that’s the place to go.
 
 

Dual Universe’s Panacea update is right around the corner, bringing with it a sizable variety of changes based on feedback from our community. 
Ahead of the update, however, we are immediately introducing revisions to territory upkeep and mining units. 
 
Read on for the full scoop! 
 
GOING INTO EFFECT ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 25th
 
Taxes will be effective again starting Wednesday, January 26th.
The day before, we are going to deploy three adjustments to address the issues mentioned in the Community Feedback regarding Territory Upkeep.
 
Territory Upkeep Reduction: 1 MM --> 500k.

Territory Upkeep was first introduced in the November 2021 Demeter update. After reviewing community feedback, we announced that territory upkeep payments would be postponed for two weeks to allow the Design team time to dig deep into the metrics and fine-tune the system accordingly. 

The upkeep rate per territory will be reduced by 50%, from 1MM to 500k quanta. Player feedback indicated that people felt they were having to sell ore too frequently to generate the funds needed to pay upkeep. In halving the upkeep costs, we will relieve the pressure to make frequent trips to the market as well as the need to sell large quantities of ore.
  Calibrations Charges:
Base calibration charge slots increase : 5 --> 25.
Talent calibration charge slots increase : 1/level --> 5/level.

Also introduced in the Demeter update, mining units were designed as an alternative to digging endless tunnels underground for ore. To keep them producing at their peak capacity requires occasional calibration; however, initial feedback from the community told us that further tweaks were needed for the calibration process. To this end, we’ve made the two changes mentioned above.

This will change the total amount of stored charges from 10 (5 base + 5 max talents) to 50 (25 base + 25 max talents).

The intention behind the charge cap was not to force a behavior in which you felt like you needed to spend charges in order not to “lose out” on charges by hitting the cap and wasting your recharge. 

In view of that, both the base and the talent bonus are drastically going up. This will not only allow you to store more charges in general, but specifically allow you to store a much longer period of time in charge recharge time, giving you much more breathing room to store charges and not waste charge recharge time.
  Calibration grace period: 48h --> 72h
  The calibration grace period is the amount of time during which a mining unit does not lose calibration. Similarly to charge slots, the intention was not to aggressively require you to calibrate mining units every 2-3 days. In our initial calculations our goal was more to hit the 5 to 6 day mark depending on what efficiency curve the player selected, and how many mining units the player was trying to maintain.
 
We are changing the calibration grace period from 48-hours to 72-hours. 
 
This change should bring us closer to the initial values we were looking for and give players more breathing room to calibrate when their mining units seem to be producing less than usual, indicating that calibration is needed.
 
CHANGES COMING WITH PANACEA UPATE (0.28) LAUNCH
 
Using industry units on offline tiles

The intention of requiring online territories for industry units was not to negatively impact industry units on planets. We initially saw it as further incentive to pay for taxes, but it was not a core requirement. This is also why industry units on Ssanctuary and space cores were left untouched.

We understand from player feedback that requiring you to operate mining units on a territory in order to not run industry units at a loss on that territory was an annoyance and many players did not want to run their industry units on the same territories as their mining units.

In view of the preferences expressed, we have decided to allow the operation of industry units on all offline territories. In combination with HQ territories, this will allow you to effectively run industry units on offline territories for extended periods of time.
  Faster extraction animations
  We are also addressing the feedback we’ve received regarding the time it takes to complete a calibration minigame, specifically the frustration from the long loading animations when calibrating a number of mining units.
 
An option has been added in the mining unit UI (tick box) that will let you significantly reduce the time these animations take, drastically reducing the period of time the animations run.
 
Additionally, a number of mining unit mini-game animations have been slightly reduced in duration, thus allowing a faster minigame completion.
 
New talents for surface harvesting
  In order to further incentivize harvesting surface rocks, and to be able to specialize in it, we are adding four talents linked to surface harvesting that will touch on harvesting speed and output.
 
The main goal is to create some surface harvesting specialization for those players who enjoy it, giving them the capability to harvest better and faster, and for longer periods of time.
 
CHANGES COMING POST-PANACEA
 
New surface harvesting controls
  To further address surface harvesting issues, we are working on quality of life-type improvements that will allow a degree of auto-harvesting similar to normal mining as well as other changes to reduce control and UX-based frustrations during surface harvesting. 
Watch for additional details as we refine our plans!
 
 New mining unit surface harvesting, rocks spawning behavior
 
Lastly, we are looking for a solution to simplify the process of gathering rocks. This is in direct response to player requests to eliminate the hassle of having to comb their territories after calibrating a number of mining units. 
 
While this is still in relatively early stages, the solution we are looking at is to spawn the rocks right under the mining unit beam, where the beam hits the ground. Players would then be able to rapidly harvest surface rocks. 
 
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE
 
Don’t forget that there’s a lot more to Panacea than the changes and tweaks discussed above. It’s also got some cool new stuff, like the Vertex Precision Tool which we’ll be talking about in the next devblog! 
 
Meanwhile, please join the conversation on the forum here to tell us what you think about revisions we’ve presented in this Devblog.
We’d love to hear from you! 
 
---

The Novaquark team