Phroshy

A new major update for Kerbal Space Program is on the horizon.

Well, what's the worst that could happen? Running into another ship in interstellar space doesn't seem hugely likely (especially if you deliberately steer slightly off-course and do a last day correction towards the destination, just to be sure), and since Novaquark aren't too fond of collision damage, stray asteroids wouldn't be a big deal either, other than slowing you down and throwing the ship off course. If interstellar bodies are even a thing in the game. You would certainly want to check back daily if everything is still working as intended, but otherwise it doesn't seem so dangerous to me.

They promised realistic(ish) ship physics, I don't think there will be drag in space. Plus JC is still holding fast to the idea that space travel with early tech and without stargates should take days to get to different star systems, so I imagine it will be possible to just point your nose at your destination, boost up and then coast there with idle engines (and being offline). Since planets are currently not planned to move and I imagine they'll do that classic cheat of having no gravity in space, you wouldn't have to do any calculations to get the right trajectory either; just point, boost and wait. I haven't played Everspace, what exactly is your grief with Elite: Dangerous? I do expect we'll get a limit to movement speed if it's about that, unlimited relative speed is just really difficult to handle, especially in a multiplayer game. I know it's not impossible, I believe Infinity: Battlescape has effectively no limit, but I wouldn't expect Novaquark to go to the lengths to get similar results in Dual Universe.

Not going to happen. Being able to talk to strangers is an important feature either way.

That's what you get for living in a small country with a small population. Per capita you're probably above the European average with a single late dev studio that deserves mention. ----- Personally I don't understand the hostility towards the idea of separate language forums. The English speaking parts pretty much always tend to remain the main focus of all discussion anyway, and separate language forums tend to attract people who just aren't capable of effectively communicating in English, and provide a place for them to find community-provided translations of official news and announcements. People who can't speak English are going to have a hard time when the game goes live, yes, but imo that hardly stands as an argument against providing a place for their language-specific community to gather. If they stick around they'll get the hang of basic English by natural interaction, at the latest when they find themselves playing the game. It's not like we could keep them out of the game (if we wanted to?) anyway.

Huh, are you sure? As I understood the devblogs, "safe zone shields" that take a lot of firepower to take down can be set up on every territory, but require an enormous amount of energy to maintain, while actual arkified zones will be indestructible just like the original one. I might have misinterpreted the system, but that's how I understood what JC was planning.

Why do you always have to burst my bubbles? I hope such problems would be rare enough that people would be content filing a support ticket and discussing with the mods whether they can get a new ship spawned somewhere, instead of tailoring the gameplay around "what happens when everything breaks". That's a procedure I'm familiar with e.g. in Elite Dangerous. Although I can see how this would be problematic in a game of high economic competition like DU, hrm... Your suggestion would certainly be workable, but you can tell I really don't like the unrealism of it.

Well, the Terran Union for example is organized in a similar, modular fashion. Although they are a government rather than a private enterprise, so I can still see where you're coming from.

I like the way you think. Very good idea.

It's actually four more-or-less interdependent subunits of the same company as I understand it.

I believe this is my favourite general solution. When I think about it, it might be necessary to make it possible for territory owners to declare "no parking zones" where foreign constructs may only stay for a limited amount of time after which they can be legally destroyed. There would probably need to be a minimum amount of time to avoid abuse, so people don't lure in others under the guise of a free fly zone and then after 1 second all automated turrets in the vicinity start shredding the poor "intruder" without further warning.

I don't think it will be possible to connect multiple voxel grids with moving parts like that, no. At least nothing of the sort was promised yet. I'm afraid we might be down to pre-made elements like landing gears and blast doors.

I do hope people understand the sarcasm here so that we don't have to introduce sarcasm tags to this forum.

Schoff is talking about your expert ability to walk the fine line of talking down to people while still flying under the mods' radar. You are free to make of this whatever you will. I'm not surprised people find your way of communicating offensive, but personally I guess I'm desensitized enough after so many years on internet communities that I don't care anymore.

Second Life isn't an economy driven game, the economy just serves as an income stream for the developer to siphon off. It's like a big microtransaction store where the microtransactions are between players. Buying or selling stuff in SL doesn't advance your position in SL in any meaningful sense. Plus the in-game economy is barely interconnected in any way. The Forest is neither an MMO nor is its world built by players, except for placing a few huts and walls; so the comparison is really far off to both SL and Wurm. I really can't follow the rest of your argument. The goal in this kind of game is to make your character more powerful and influential by training skills, accumulating wealth, building infrastructure, competing with others. What do ship instruments have to do with this? If its fun to fly a ship or operate turrets or serve as an on-ship engineer or whatever that's great for the game, and I do hope there will be lots of this kind of stuff, but it's not a requirement for the game to work.

Why would you think you'd need to roleplay to enjoy the game? DU very much has a focus on economic rivalry and complex politics as driving the gameplay, something SL never really had; at least not as a driver of a grander game. I've played both SL and MMOs in a similar vein as DU (most notably Wurm Online), and I can assure you the concept does very much work without the need for roleplay. It certainly doesn't hinge on minute game mechanic details like "air voxels", all it really needs is a market where most to everything is player-created and progress that is slow and difficult unless you work together with lots of other players, the rest pretty much just falls in place by itself. How many players DU will attract will of course depend on how fun and diverse various game mechanics are. But in the mentioned example, Wurm Online, literally every activity is slow, tedious, and bland, and the game still somehow manages to hold thousands of active players (who pay a monthly subscription and some buy in-game cash on top of that). And I've played the game for quite a bit, simply because it gives you a sense of purpose that traditional MMOs can't provide. Your other point, that 500,000 € isn't enough to finance the game: Yes, obviously it isn't. The kickstarter is a challenge by NQ's investors, in order to gauge if and how much gamers even care about the project. JC said that they were promised the necessary funding to complete the game (with full creative control) if they can meet the kickstarter goal.

I'm very sceptical whether this is a valid business idea in this game... but I like trains, too, so best of luck to you! Having some kind of automated rail system on Alioth would certainly be really cool.

Not that I'm aware of, but I imagine you'll be able to just get all the material back when deconstructing things you own, otherwise modifying constructs on-the-fly (without entering that designer virtual space) could become really frustrating. Maybe limitations can apply to constructs you bought.

There's a digital version of every available pack. If you don't care about ID-cards and T-shirts you can go for those. You'll get extra DACs instead.

Pretty sure I also remember mention of "supplies" needed for exploration, I believe clothing suitable for the encountered environment was mentioned specifically. Personally I'd like to have survival elements in the game, but I'm not necessarily sold on food. I'd much prefer if the focus was on things like energy, fuel, maybe oxygen, warmth, things like that. The environment could determine what you would need, like energy or fuel or heating elements to stay warm on a freezing planet, oxygen obviously when there is no breathable atmosphere, fuel for your jetpack, etc. There could be elements to "wirelessly" transmit necessary resources to friendly players within a certain range. This could also to a limited degree simulate pressurized environments that people keep asking for, even though you'd probably be able to effectively breathe while hovering just outside the hull. And boarding enemies wouldn't get their supplies restocked even while inside the ship. Basically I like the idea of survival elements that you could build automated infrastructure for. I can't quite envision this with food, food kinda carries the risk of becoming much more tedious. And as mentioned, the exclusion of food wouldn't have to mean the exclusion of farming or even raising animals. Also food in MMOs just always breaks the 4th wall for me, since the act of actually eating something is generally omitted, or condensed into a 2 second animation to not bother the players too much.

Farming doesn't have to lead to food, it could also for example lead to fuel or plastics.

What makes me, personally, hopeful for this project is that the dev team is extensively communicating with us, they have an open ear to criticism, and JC Baille, the founder and lead designer, has so far never dodged a question as far as I have seen, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable. Their promises are overall very down to earth, they don't just say whatever people want to hear but are open about the limitations of what they can do with the game and what we can realistically expect. I remain ever so mildly sceptical because JC doesn't appear to have any prior experience in game development; but as others have said, his CV shows that he is very capable in coding and software development, plus he hired people which do have experience in the gaming industry and he evidently has an open ear to suggestions and criticism. Overall I've seen enough that I'm actually pondering to increase my pledge a bit further.

I don't see why such limitations would be necessary if hacking requires direct access to the parts you want to take over. This is done in Space Engineers, where "hacking" requires a buzzsaw and a welder. Why would you even care to board a ship if you need to destroy parts of it to take control anyway? Boarding is already bound to be a highly risky undertaking, I have no problem with the potential reward being complete control of the ship.

Space legs are a feature planned for future expansions. It's going to be interesting how they'll handle it, since the game lore doesn't feature artificial gravity (which is why all the larger space stations are rotating). Personally I'm not expecting walking being a thing in Elite before 2018 at the earliest, they'll probably want to add atmospheric planets first. It's also going to be interesting if / how they'll make walking VR-friendly; Elite Dangerous is currently pretty much the poster child of the fledgling home VR market, they probably wouldn't want to lose that status if they can help it.

I imagine it's a stretch goal because the in-game technological development is planned to be slow enough that its absence would be excusable for a several months after launch. The same reason stargates and FTL drives aren't high priority atm: people are supposed to slowboat everywhere for a while anyway, so it's not necessary to launch the game with those features.