Mr_Kamikaze

I made us some Duals Univers icons for the Rocket Dock program. Help yourself and enjoy!
      
 

It looks very good

So, it is done! The first DU-Fanart made by me  Hope you like it!
 

This is what happen if you are out of fuel

 

Hi everyone,
 
It seems the DevBlog was not clear enough on some points.
We have said it many times before, and we'll continue to say it again:
While many players wants to see Dual Universe with a dominant gameplay aspect, it's important to understand that it's NOT the case. 
 
Building gameplay is as important as Combat gameplay. Not more, not less. Balancing both won't be easy and we are aware of it. No, Building is not the major feature of Dual Universe. If the Building aspect has been made first, it's only because, it was making total sense to start the development with this part: we are pretty much in R&D field regarding the Voxel technology. It was an essential piece of tech to build the base of the game: Voxels were necessary to create editable planets in the first place. Then the logical next step was to develop tools to give players to manipulate voxels. That wouldn't make sense to develop Combat gameplay before the two previous steps because, there wouldn't even something to destroy, or even an environment where the combat could happen.
 
The order in which the features are developed are NOT by order of importance.
It's just a matter of logical game development roadmap.

We have no plan to make Dual Universe a total free for all PvP game, just as we won't make it a whole game universe safe, just because some players want to explore it completely without taking any risk. While we don't plan to make our game some kind of "EVE Online 2.0", we don't want either to make a "No Man's Sky 2.0". We understand this may not appeal to everyone taste, and we totally understand that. However, if there is something that is very unlikely to change, it's the fact that there's no intention to catter to only one specific category of players. 
 
A final word about the griefing and the mindset of the community. Our point of view is that griefing mainly proliferates when it's an easy way to get rewards with little effort, not necessarily because many people really wants to play that way. Of course, there are people who like to grief just for the enjoyment of annoying other players but we are convinced they're not a majority. If game mechanics are designed in such a way that griefing doesn't give easy rewards, then griefing will be naturally limited. 
 
Why not simply remove the possibility of griefing, then?

Yes, it would be clearly easier and quicker to remove the ability to grief other players, but while we have no intention to encourage griefing, removing it totally would go against the very definition of the sandbox concept: players are free to interact in the way they want. If we remove any kind of interaction, then we are not in a Sandbox MMORPG anymore: we would be in a Theme Park one. And that is not Novaquark's vision. We want a game universe where bad behavior is discouraged by game mechanics and heavy in consequences if a player still choose to do so, than arbitrarily forbid the said behavior. We want players to be free but also to live with the consequences of their choices. That's what Sandbox mean to us at Novaquark.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

What for? To have less diversity? Less gameplay? Less specialization?
 
Meh

- Yes, the one who claims a territory in an ASA or MSA first owns it for as long as the player is active.
That would make no sense to give the ability to expulse a player from his safe territory if he's active and would lead to massive abuses / harassment. 
 
- The Force Field Unit / Protection Bubble mechanics are meant to help players defend themselves in Unsecure Areas. Again, that would make no sense to implement this feature in Secure Areas where players are already permanently protected, and would lead to massive abuses.
 
In any case if some unexpected abuses appear, the dev team will react with fixes accordingly.
Game design isn't something graved into stone: It evolves with time, especially in MMORPGS.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

To give a clear image of what we have in mind, here is an example:
Let's say you want to build a car.
With low resources in an ASA, you will be able to build this:

 
This will do the job as a car. 
However, don't expect high performances in speed, security, comfort and such.
Don't expect either to win a race, or any competition with it.
 
However, with high value resources you will be able to build this:

 
Now with this car, you will be able to compete with other players in a race.
The car will have far better speed, better security and comfort, due to high quality Elements crafted and used in it.
 
So with low value materials, you will be able to do things that you could with high value materials but with the minimal specs you could ever imagine, just to get started.
We hope this give a clear idea of what we have in mind now
 
Best Regards.
Nyzaltar.
 

Hi everyone! 
Here are some answers to your questions and additional information to your feedback

@FleetAdmiralCoke
We are not sure to understand what you call "safe building zones to very small areas in very specific places". Moons having MSA will have thousands of territories each. Arkship Secure Areas will also contain thousands of safe territories. Those are not particularly "very small" areas. Planets will be huge, and safe areas, while limited, will be huge too.
 
About choosing the location of a city outside the MSA and the ASA, it has never been confirmed that we will let players choose a place for a city, then make it officially invulnerable. The idea may have been mentioned somewhere, but it was just an idea and with this idea comes a lot of issues of game balance. The most obvious possible abuse is the following: 
 
If we let players choose which location should become permanently safe, then you will have very big organizations, able to mobilize hundreds or even thousands of players installing invulnerable cities just next to their smaller opponents, giving endless possibilities of harassing theme easily. That would give an unfair advantage to big organizations. Abuses can be made by installing invulnerable cities on high value resources with no revert that once it has happened. Unless we find a reasonable way to prevent such issues, it's unlikely that the Secure Areas location could be decided by players.
 
Now, all the explanations above are for MSA and ASA, for areas 100% safe with no exception.
However, that won't prevent players to build heavily protected cities in Unsecure Areas. A city built in an Unsecure Area will still have a chance to be attacked and destroyed. We won't start to give details here of what could be reinforce defense for such cases (cities in Unsecure Areas) but it could be the topic of a new DevBlog in the future. The present DevBlog was released mainly to answer the recurrent questions of "Will Dual Universe be a complete Free For All game ?", the answer is "No, there will be room for very different player types, but it doesn't mean it will appeal to everyone either."

@Lethys
- If we were to use domes instead of bubbles, what would happen if an agressor starts to dig a tunnel under the dome?
- About DPS saturation and the risk of player blobs, we will take that into consideration. For now, it's still too early to confirm how PvP Mechanics will work.
- MSA can't be placed anywhere as those will be located on specific moons, decided by Novaquark.
 
@Hades
It's still too early to give details on the final mechanics for the Protection Bubble. As said to FleetAdmiralCoke, this Devblog was meant to address recurrent questions from newcomers. We won't give right now the details regarding the protection bubble.
 
@AeonReign
Well, for game balance reason, basic protection (protection bubble mechanics) should be affordable and not that expensive, otherwise playing in Unsecure Areas will be only viable for people that never disconnect from the game (and we don't want to encourage such behavior).
 
 
@Takao
 
Thanks for reporting the typos.
1) In Arkship & Moon Secure Areas, you CAN'T claim an already claimed territory, for obvious reasons.
2) If you install Forcefields in a certain manner, it may lead to a situation where you can prevent people to enter a territory.
3) MSA won't be on every moon. There will be MSA only on moons decided by Novaquark.
As said to Hades, we won't go into details for now.
 
@PerksPlus
Moons with MSA won't be next to planets with valuable resources.
Or else, it would nullify the concept of "risk vs reward".
Moons with MSA will be near planets with ASA, or with low valuable resources.
That means that if some pirate want to ambush miners gathering valuable resources, he will need some time to go back to the safest area (and plenty of time to be intercepted). Moreover, we are considering also game mechanics that could discourage greatly the behavior "Go In/Go Out" from a Secure Area abusively, just to ambush people without taking any risk.
 
@Shadow 
@Ben Fargo
We won't go into the details of the Protection Bubble mechanics yet.
As said to Hades, this Devblog was meant to address recurrent questions from newcomers.
There will be another Devblog later giving more details on that aspect, and it will most likely be when we will talk about PvP
 
@Zamarus
The difference between ASA and MSA:
- ASA will get have basic, low-value material in the ground. Players who just want to build things without being bothered by PvP (and aren't interested to compete with other players in terms of construct optimization or combat) will be advised to stay in this type of safe area.
- MSA are Safe Areas with no other perks than being a safe place. So yes, if you want to build in Sanctuary Areas, it will necessitate to bring resources from outside.
 
@lethak
@yamamushi
@LittleJoe
Of course, we have considered APIs.
But as already said before, it means additional development time (far more than just an email alert) and we want to stay focus on the features promised during the Kickstarter first, for the official release. However, there is a high chance that the dev team plan something on this topic once the game will be launched (we prefer to take the proper time to develop one if we want to avoid issues)
 
@mrjacobean
@Kurock
- There will be MSA only on moons decided by Novaquark, nowhere else.
- If a moon has a MSA, it will cover the whole moon (unlike ASA, which will cover only a part of the planet where it's located).
- No, "Sanctuary tile" can't be taken by military means, just like territories in an ASA.
- Moons with a MSA will be always near a planet having an ASA (there might be reasons for that reccuring "coincidence") so only near no to low value resources, nowhere near high value resources.
- Yes, We plan some means to gain ownership of a Sanctuary tile that is occupied by a owner inactive for a long time (and one of the current idea considered is that inactive user assets will be archived but not lost. The inactive user would just lose the ownership of the territory).
 
@supermega
Sending a notification to a Discord in case of agression has been added in the Feature Suggestion list and will be discussed with the developer team. However, depending of the feasibility and the amount of time to develop such a feature, it may or may not be implemented. If the idea is validated, it may also be implemented after the official release.  In any case, thanks for giving the idea!
 
@Setzar
the "Force Field" Unit doesn't create a "Safe Zone" (if we stick to our definition of Safe Zone in Dual Universe), it's indeed more like a barrier that prevents entry from unauthorized entity. 
 
@CyberCrunch
This is a bit too soon to talk advanced game mechanics regarding cities located in Unsecure Areas.
Let's just say that the dev team is currently thinking of something that has similar points with what you suggested (not to the point to make permanent Safe Areas decided by the players though), but again, we will talk advanced mechanics in another DevBlog. This one was made to give only the basics
 
@Fins_T
We have several Ogame players among Novaquark staff so we know (and understand) what you're taking about
We totally agree that needing to check regularly if you're attacked is tiring (even if there are fleetsaving strategies and the use of moons to temper that) and that's why Protection Bubble mechanics, with email alert/notification will be put in place: to inform you only when necessary without having to check constantly in-game if you're attacked or not, and giving you the opportunity to manage your real life without being permenanently worried of what's happening to your assets in-game.

However, in terms of gameplay, combat mechanics will far more similar to EVE Online than Ogame: You can't just assume in advance what will be the strength of the defense, the number of player coming to defend a territory, etc. Moreover, one player can't have an overwhelming force built by himself alone. So, a combat result will be far less predictable than in Ogame. Player numbers, the involvement, and the skills of each of them are all factor that will impact victory or defeat, because no matter how much spaceships has... it can only use one at a time, and even a huge battleship with lots of weapon turret won't be used efficiently by a player alone.
 
We don't plan to copy Ogame much in this regard, because in Dual Universe, you play a colonist, not a governor managing an empire with many planets and a whole fleet at your command from the start (unless you achieve the difficult goal of having many real players accepting your rulership to colonize planets and pilot the said fleet under your command, but even then, there will be natural limits of how much firepower you will be able to bring to take down opponent bases).
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
 

It looks like a city got attacked

 
Just don't forget where you put your home in space

Voting is closed and the winning entry is Flipmaze by Ben Fargo
 
The voting thread and winning announcement can be found here: 
 
The DU Community in-game game idea pitch competition. Welcome to the DICE Den.
 
Note: Please keep discussions about a specific ideas in a separate thread, this thread is for entrants. (Putting this first so that it is hopefully read)
 
What is it? A DU community competition, here on the forums, where anyone can suggest an in-game game and then the community will vote for their favourite.
 

(Scribbles are welcome)
 
Rules:
The game must take place in playing field of at most 110x75 meters with a height of 50 meters inside Dual Universe (give or take a few meters) and should cater for spectators. A single post may be made per person detailing their idea. Keep it under a few paragraphs, enough to get the idea across. Pictures (even mspaint drawings) may be beneficial, but keep them few. While this is more a sales pitch than a complete design, if you feel inspired, just DU it. Entrants are free to make assumptions about DU combat and how elements work in DU, if relevant to their game. Working in groups is allowed but only a single person can enter the group's work here and win the prize. The competition is open to all that can post on these forums.  
Dates: Competition entries start on 1 February 2018 with last day for entries on 22 February 2018. Voting then starts on 23 February 2018 an will continue until 10 March 2018.
 
Prize: The winning suggestion wins a game key of their choice and DICE (https://community.dualthegame.com/organization/dice) will implement a prototype of the game and potentially add it to the roster of DICE games. The game keys can be chosen from: The Long Dark, Quantum Break, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition, and Tomb Raider.
 
TLDR: Yo wazzup! I heard you like games so I want to put games in your games so make a game then I award you with a game in a game as well as a game that is not in the game. Kapish?
 
This competition is sponsored by Soarnir. Also feel free to drop by the unofficial DU discord (http://dualuniverse.chat/) and say hi.

Alliances, terrorists, and spies to start off 2018. Here's your January briefing from Ark Central.
 
 
 

I rather like the last one, "Don't forget where you put your home in space". If that asteroid home has an outlook view of a blue/green planet, much like Alioth. I would be all set. There's nothing like living in space with a gorgeous view on a planet that's beautiful to the eyes and pleasing for relaxation.

Just DUlightful, keep up the great inspirational images guys!
 
 
~ Meldrik

It looks like a city got attacked

 
Just don't forget where you put your home in space

Bravo. Now I can quote something with fact rather than have to piece together parts that I remember from posts prior!
 
Also very nice work on the article. Thanks NQ!