Dunbal

Be careful, I've seen what friendlytyrant03 does to his "friends"...!
 
Joking - welcome!

My name is Dunbal and I'm an alcoho.... er no wait, I'm a GAMER!
 
Anyway some of you have already read the stuff I've been spewing in the forums. I tend to be opinionated. I'm quite often wrong, too. Don't be afraid to correct me, I'll merely wait patiently for the opportunity for reveng er I mean learn from my mistakes, try to better myself as a human being, etc.
 
I've backed this game via Kickstarter. Hope to see most of you in the alpha. Good to be here, let's have fun, etc.
 
Let the hype begin!
 
while(hype++);

Yeah I don't disagree with you. I've been online a long time. I mean a LONG time (1986, when I got my first CompuServe account). I've gone from paying $6 an hour for online services (at 300-1200 baud, of course!) to free to play games. And while this is anecdotal evidence, there is a definite correlation between the cash you invest and the strength of the online community. When we paid $6 an hour, everyone was polite, online communities were rock solid, people helped each other and pulled together both in the forums and in the games. There were "bad" people too but usually they were the "honorably evil" types, playing in character but never, say, attacking newbs, etc.
 
Then the model switched to "flat rate" monthly subs... games filled with beggars who would do nothing but sit around begging hard to get items from players. People started doing dishonorable things "for the lulz", etc.
 
THEN models switched to F2P, and you could expect hackers, exploiters, griefers galore etc, on top of everything else. Needless to say communities and forums also degenerated into flame wars and trolling contests the cheaper it got.
 
While I'm certainly not proposing going back to a several hundred dollar/month hourly subscription model, I do wish to point out that there IS a correlation between how much real cash you have to put into a game, and how civilized players' conduct is in that game.

My name is Dunbal and I'm an alcoho.... er no wait, I'm a GAMER!
 
Anyway some of you have already read the stuff I've been spewing in the forums. I tend to be opinionated. I'm quite often wrong, too. Don't be afraid to correct me, I'll merely wait patiently for the opportunity for reveng er I mean learn from my mistakes, try to better myself as a human being, etc.
 
I've backed this game via Kickstarter. Hope to see most of you in the alpha. Good to be here, let's have fun, etc.
 
Let the hype begin!
 
while(hype++);

IMHO, EVE is dying because CCP got lazy. 
10 years is a good run for any game.  Same static nodes, time dilation etc..nothing really revolutionary in the expansions...its time it all came to an end.
 
In regards to monthly subscription.....few come to mine.
* Server costs, developer cost, continued development and expansion of game.
* Removes many of the troll players from free games that don't care if they accounts get suspended.
* Removes other nasty type of funding models like pay to win.
* Allows the company to more easily plan having a better prediction of monthly income.

My name is Dunbal and I'm an alcoho.... er no wait, I'm a GAMER!
 
Anyway some of you have already read the stuff I've been spewing in the forums. I tend to be opinionated. I'm quite often wrong, too. Don't be afraid to correct me, I'll merely wait patiently for the opportunity for reveng er I mean learn from my mistakes, try to better myself as a human being, etc.
 
I've backed this game via Kickstarter. Hope to see most of you in the alpha. Good to be here, let's have fun, etc.
 
Let the hype begin!
 
while(hype++);

Dunbal, not sure if you have played EVE recently, but they modified the bounty system where you only collect the portion of a bounty relative to the cost of the ship destroyed.  Obviously that is not really a viable option in Dual Universe where the players are designing and building the ships, but it is possible that a relative cost to the amount of voxels/elements present could be used to give a portion of the kill to the bounty hunter (albeit I am not really sure what counts as "killing" a ship in DU)

You've obviously never heard these words after a wait of several months.... it's almost orgasmic!

I have to admit one reason I refuse to touch Eve these days is because I'm behind. Of course in any MMORPG you are always going to behind someone out there. But at least you mentally know there is a chance you could be the best or one of the best.
 
To me it's hard to love it a lot because of the idea of taking a break and coming back and being behind.
 
This why I like to see some sort of active skill system where you actually can while playing physically help level your skills outside of a time restraints. 

there is another aspect you forgot to mention: difficulty that you cannot counteract becomes frustrating way faster than difficulty you can work around.
aditionally, this:

Fun should always trump realism if a choice has to be made.

This would certainly add another reason why high quality materials would be even more desired; they last longer. However I feel that components breaking down mid flight, mid battle, or mid anything, just when you're enjoying yourself, would get pretty irritating and annoying. Perhaps if the penalty for letting something break down wasn't very detrimental, but still something worth fixing, it would be less annoying and yet still present.
 
As for ship voxels getting damaged, I really don't know as we don't yet know how the damage system will work in the game. But if there was some way to detect the integrity of all parts of your ship, to forewarn you if anything was wearing down, then I don't think it would be so bad. Just so long as it takes a while.

physical dammages could only be applied to voxels parts, and gameplay dammages to elements parts

yup thats a good idea
 
but i never meant repairing by hand. in that way u arent sure repairing same as blueprint
 
an automatic repair, with a special tool, a garage... sucking your material from inventory, if u have enough, is more appropriate

I was intentionally general because without having any insight into the actual design process of the virtual world itself it's hard to be any more specific.
 
In general terms, it would work something like this - every in game item would need to have a few variables that include Age, Resistance and Complexity.
 
Age obviously is a way to calculate the time elapsed since the item was manufactured (it would be difficult to apply entropy to planets/raw materials themselves in a meaningful way). The older something is, the more likely it is to suffer changes in molecular alignment, imperfections, etc and deviate from the original manufacture. This would eventually affect or limit how it could achieve peak or optimal performance. Of course this also is related to the next variable, resistance.
 
Resistance is a way to measure the innate property of a material to degradation through entropy. For example a piece of raw meat will degrade much faster than a steel pole, which in turn will rust and degrade much faster than a diamond. Some materials also age better than others. A 500 year old wooden beam will not have the same strengths and properties as a newly seasoned one, but a 500 year old steel beam should still be fairly close to the original provided it hasn't undergone dramatic changes in loading, stress, magnetic fields, heating/cooling, etc.
 
And complexity tracks how far away an object is from the original materials that created it. A lump of titanium is not very complex, but a spaceship engine made of titanium is quite complex. Therefore you shouldn't expect a lump of titanium to either fail or require maintenance, but the spaceship engine must be kept in top shape quite often in order to remain fully functional.
 
Now - depending on the time-scale of Dual Universe, it's highly unlikely that we are going to be concerned with the degradation of simpler things that would normally take thousands or tens of thousands of years to start showing any form of degradation. This would limit us to three basic scenarios in the time scale of a game (even a game that spans a few decades of real time):
 
Artificial stress and loading: Anything that is made to undergo rapid/sudden changes in acceleration should suffer increased degradation rates. Wings of airplanes, turbines and fan blades of engines, hulls of space-ships, etc. They cannot be expected to last forever with zero maintenance/repairs. Repairs should cost materials and energy - as well as time, but I can imagine a future where trivial, time consuming tasks are automated.
 
Environmental damage: Anything that is exposed to hostile environments (thermal, chemical, ionizing radiation, etc) must suffer accelerated degradation. This includes anything destroyed by weapons, for example - heck this could even be a way of implementing damage say from energy weapons.. And it must also include the weapons themselves. The gun barrels on large artillery pieces and WW2 battleships for example had to be re-lined after 100 shots or so. Nothing lasts forever and usage = maintenance. This would also include production facilities/machinery - except for the magical "root" machines that allow players to start building the world. You cannot create a fabricator for example and expect it to produce forever without additional inputs for maintenance and repair and "downtime" to carry out said repairs.
 
Complexity damage: while complexity itself should not be a cause of damage if the engineering is well done, this basically assumes that engineers are human and not perfect, therefore their creations are not perfect. Bugs in software. Zinc fingers on circuit boards. Bearings wearing out on moving parts. Shorts in electric motors. Magnetization of things not supposed to be magnetic, etc. The more complex a system, the more maintenance it requires to prevent a sudden catastrophic (ie - it stops working) failure. This is a boolean condition. If adequate maintenance is provided (including preventative maintenance), the system will work flawlessly - forever. But if maintenance is neglected, the system stops working AND suffers damage.
 
But exactly HOW to go on implementing something like this is quite, quite daunting. It could make for a game all by itself THAT's why I was vague...

Nothing lasts forever. Metal fatigues and rusts. Complex systems break down. Machines have to be maintained. I wish/hope there would be some approximation of entropy in the game as an overall balancing/leveling force. It should not be possible to create highly complex systems and hope that they will work perfectly and last forever - especially if they are exposed to harsh conditions - g-forces, combat, multiple atmospheric re-entry, etc. While a stone pillar can last 1000 years with no problem other than a little erosion, an F-16 cannot fly more than a few dozen hours without extensive maintenance.
 
If there is some way of tracking the complexity of a construct and the materials it is made of, this should be fed into some sort of algorithm that degrades effectiveness over time or increases the probability of a functional/structural failure. Better still if forces, loads and stresses are tracked - then this usually should be the point of failure - where the stress is highest.
 
This would also force people to build redundancy into their constructs. You wouldn't want your vital systems to fail in the middle of combat, for example...

Nothing lasts forever. Metal fatigues and rusts. Complex systems break down. Machines have to be maintained. I wish/hope there would be some approximation of entropy in the game as an overall balancing/leveling force. It should not be possible to create highly complex systems and hope that they will work perfectly and last forever - especially if they are exposed to harsh conditions - g-forces, combat, multiple atmospheric re-entry, etc. While a stone pillar can last 1000 years with no problem other than a little erosion, an F-16 cannot fly more than a few dozen hours without extensive maintenance.
 
If there is some way of tracking the complexity of a construct and the materials it is made of, this should be fed into some sort of algorithm that degrades effectiveness over time or increases the probability of a functional/structural failure. Better still if forces, loads and stresses are tracked - then this usually should be the point of failure - where the stress is highest.
 
This would also force people to build redundancy into their constructs. You wouldn't want your vital systems to fail in the middle of combat, for example...

I have been a proponent of the "harder is better" philosophy from the beginning.
 
I think that things in the game will be more rewarding if you have to work to get them. 
 
Wurm Online was 99% grind and it was still super rewarding after you built something massive, even if it took months to do it. I'm not saying DU should be grind, but it should at least be difficult.
 
Getting into space should be a rewarding feeling, like you managed some huge accomplishment. Going to another planet should feel the same way, putting a space station into orbit, etc. All of those grand things should require a massive amount of logistics to accomplish, and will then feel that much more rewarding. 
 
I also like the idea of having survival mechanics like food and weather/temperature. I know that food has generally not been a well received suggestion on the forums, but I still would like to have food/beverages in the game, at the very least for RP sake.
 
 
You and I can be in the "everything difficult" club because I feel like this suggestion won't be well received  

Having to pay keeps a lot of riff-raff out, too. It makes your participation in the game more meaningful, makes you care and protect about your stuff more, and rage more if/when you lose it. Likewise it feels a lot better when you hurt "the other guy". Sad but true - schadenfreude is a part of human nature.

https://www.themittani.com/
 
Was reading up on EVE politics (retired) and then saw the kickstarter story and decided to check it out. 
Looks like Eve with even more freedom, so here I am.