wizardoftrash

None of what you stated there answers the primary negative impact that it would have, that is for every player spending time messing around in creative zone, that is a player who isn't actually playing the game. They aren't in the world space, they are not contributing to societies, and the only thing they are adding to the world is blueprints. people are going to be building all the time as it is, blueprints will be everywhere, and having a way to produce blueprints in-game without any access to the material de-values blueprints as a commodity. by far the most dangerous thing suggested here though is the idea that you would be able to test pvp with multiple players in creative mode. That would badly fracture the player popularion, as the only pvp-minded player left in the actual world then would be pirates and conquerers. All of us folks who want to fight, but who don't take any pleasure in ruining other people's creations would be playing effectively a whole other game in creative instead of bounty hunting or joining a militia. the backbone of this game is the number of people actually playing it. If you are testing blueprints, you'll need the resources and space to do so. If you are testing military tech, it'll need field tests. That's just what an emergent gameplay environment is all about. If that's exciting to you, join a military tech development org (heck I started one, the Alchemists, and thats exactly what I plan on spending my time doing).

Or you could go the other route ans add vestigal legs and make it still mostly ship See Einhander

I'm arguing that its not worth it. how many man hours and money would this take to put into place (quite a bit) and delay other features of the game while its being developed. How many players lose interest while the feature they were primised is on ice and lapse their sub. weight that against the people who would only sub if this feature is implemented. we are looking at a minescule gain against a significant cost *and* a risk that might out-stretch the gain. and you might argue that the ability to test creative-mode built constructs would be worth it? What about the odds that a player will spend their time simulationg and not actually playing (therefor contributing nothing). What about the odds that a player will spend time simulating, and get frustrated with how hard their construct is to actually build and quit? What about the odds that a player will spend a month finishing their construct and then lose it to a raid or to pirates because they couldn't simulate pvp, or because they didn't actually spend time gaining experience in the game. what you are asking for here is a neat feature, but a costly one, and that has he potential to cause more harm than good.

As far as what we've been hinted at from NQ officially so far, that won't be possible. For one, there is a 1 player 1 gun policy, meaning a ship without a pilot won't be able to shoot. That means no hostile action. There might be other reasons that will make that impossible too.

When people are asking you how the pre-alpha went and you [REDACTED]

Here is my in-depth review of the pre-alpha

that makes more sense. From how enthusiastic the ATV crowd is, I'm pretty sure everyone is being extremely careful NDA wise as to not risk losing their access.

Yeah piracy is generally something you want to avoid. But lets think nice and hard about what you are asking for here. Either creating yet another parallel server, hosting private instances for each player who is experimenting with creative mode, or building a whole accessory program that allows a player to run a creative mode single player client offline... so that the people what are already playing the game and building stuff can build blueprints of things they can't afford to build in-game. I just don't see how that could possibly be worth the money or man-hours it would take to make it work. It would add so little to the game, it would actually reduce the active player count and run counter the game's purpose, and it decreases the actual construct count in-game to boot (because if you are building something in creative, that same construct isn't being built in the actual game, and there is no guarantee it ever will). Just wait till Saturday hits and try-out what they already have. then re-visit if you think something like that would really actually add to the game.

It really only works with Empyrion and Space Engineers *because* the game is built to be run single-player and run like garbage in multiplayer. If you take a game like DU that isn't built to be run in single player, there is just no easy way to simply add single player without creating serious problems. And then what, you end up with a free modded version of the game getting shared on 4chan and private servers popping up that look more like 2nd life and all that work is for nothing. Now the ability to use creative mode to blueprint a construct while online, I could see that being a feature that could eventually be added post-release (having a prototyping bay or something), however it would get pretty dang complicated if you also needed to be able to test those constructs. Its one thing if you are plopping down voxels and elements you don't have just to produce a file, but for the game to make an instanced version that works gets tricky, and opens up the door for potential exploits. I think the way constructs will behave during the construction process should be pretty predictable, and between in-game tutorials, wikis, and safe zones, there should be plenty of ways to mess around with building constructs that doesn't involve creative mode equivalent.

NQ talked about the possibility for a "creative mode" for building yes, but not for an offline mode. If the game functioned on any significant level offline, piracy, modding, and private servers could become an issue. Monetization could become an issue (as it would be challenging to get the "offline" class of player to pay). And again most importantly, people using creative mode would therefor not actually be logged on, they would not be participating in the same game as the rest of us. The main reason that we have something *like* creative mode during the pre-alpha is due to the lack of a crafting system, and the need to test construct mechanics including flight on a large scale with many players (and the easiest way to do that apart from spawning a bunch of free ships, is by giving everyone all the parts). An offline mode simply might not be possible, especially if so much of the game's mechanics are server-side.

Could be that a couple of ATV members that were backers broke NDA. Not sure though

My guess is that this probably won't happen. I bet a significant part of the essential game functions are server-side, which would make this basically impossible. EDIT: Also, it would be then *easier* for people to do their building offline, drastically cutting the number of players that would play online at all. You'd end up with a class of "player" who plays offline only just for creative mode.

I wouldn't be shocked if we had some extremely close-range weapon options at some point. We probably won't have articulating arms holding beam sabers or axes, but a lance with an exploding tip, or a nose-mounted shotgun would be appropriate "melee" weapons for spaceships. However nothing prevents you from building your flying ship to look like a mech, infact that kinda sounds like it could be fun (landing-gear legs, something like Macross). The arms and legs wouldn't really be functional, and unless we get pistons or rotors they wouldn't even be posable, but still would be kinda neat. Another thing that comes to mind here are some of the ships from R-type Final, many of them have robotic arms and legs but still totally look like space ships (also gave me some ideas for ship-based melee weapons like a drill or a pile-driver). I've built ships like this before in Space Entineers and Starmade, and some of my designs actually sorta worked (but I'll tell ya, ramming-based weapons like lances are super taboo in Space Engineers due to how destructive they are alongside bugs which can glitch you through their armor. Explosive-tip sensor based so they detonate prior to impact is the only "fair" way there).

I woke up early for the test and [Redacted]

Pretty much this. Apart from someone stealing the Legate's actual login credentials (which would be a ban-worthy offense), the only real way for an org to lose something of tremendous value is for the legate to actually surrender the goods, or for claimed tiles to be physically attacked (TU destroyed, and construct cores tunneled-to and destroyed). If someone is running a democratic org, then I guess the org could get Trumped (where someone tricks people into voting for them, and then actively erodes the org from the top). A military org could suffer from a coup (where a higher-up commander sabotages a tile, destroying a TU and core from within permission'ed areas). But really the smart way to go is to be the single legate with permission on the structures guarding TU's, and guarding key structure cores, and distribute permissions to other facilities accordingly. Split up treasuries, and divy-up the rights to use those treasuries across several trusted members. Maybe even only play with people you know IRL, or elect only people you know IRL to high positions.There are plenty of mostly low-risk ways to avoid some of this stuff. I do think though that there is plenty of room for major thefts and security breeches due to cyber warfare in-game. I'm talking character-based hacking and stealth skills, hacking implements, EMP weapons, ID scramblers (to behave anonymously) and ID spoofers (so that you can act with permissions from another specific player). If these implements are in the game, then the org-infiltration espionage and corporate espionage is not necessary for large heists.

Bye, nice chatting with you.

I absolutely agree that PVP is a key feature in the game, but to say it is the most important feature is an overstatement. It defiantly needs to be present, and its the thing I'm most excited for above all else in DU too (I'm aboslutely jazzed to build military tech). However, the destructive capability of individual players, and even groups of players, has to be pretty limited for a game to actually build anything that resembles a civilization. If it is too easy to destroy, and too difficult to create, then it would only take a few very destructive players to destroy the work of dozens and cripple entire cities. One of the many reasons we don't see large clans doing large scale battles in Space Engineers (apart from the fact that it would melt the servers) is because of how destructive ramming is. A dirt cheap ship can cripple a large station (built to withstand traditional weapons) just by ramming it at the normal max speed (which is pretty low). In Eve though, its easy to repair and replace ships. It will be far harder to do so in DU, so for there to be player-built civilizations (as the devs intend) it will have to be harder to destroy than to create, and you can do that in a game. Anybody who expects they will be able to play around a little, hop into a ship, and play through battle after battle after battle is totally delusional. There will be serious limitations in how many large fleets and large structures can be built in a given time, since it all needs to be made by players. Theoretically there will be a time where ships can be mass-produced in factories, but that will still be much more work and complexity than the click of a button. I think we'll see that TU's and the ability to set protections and laws will have a serious impact on the number of "murder-hobo" players that'll enjoy the game. There will be parts of the universe that feel a bit more like Rust (where clans are routinely killing off newbies for little-no reson and raiding each other all the time), but those battles will be more like skirmishes and less like the huge wars in EVE.

But the fundamental gameplay mechanics are vastly different. The overlaps are smaller than you'd think, and as such it'll attract a larger proportion of very different playstyles. There will probably be proper wars, but probably not "huge battles". Building a ship in DU will be a lot of work even for a small ship, and even when there is a ton of infrastructure for producing ships in factories, it is far far less conveninet that producing ships in EVE. It would be an order of magnitude more man-power to produce very large ships in DU, and you would need lots of ships of varying sizes for a "huge battle". Those ships won't just be purchasable from NPC's, people won't be making ships to sell with a click of a button. In a game where everything must be physically moved and housed, and where goods are physically housed in 3-dimentional space, even the "largest" orgs would struggle to physically organize a fleet. To top it off, there will be protections for players who will be AFK, ways to protect entire tiles from attack. We have no idea what defenses will even look like, and we only have the faintest idea of what will be possible with ships. Combat will be *much more action based* than in eve just based on the flight mechanics in DU, and that also attracts a very different kind of player. Lastly, and this is a doozey, with the "1 player per weapon" philosophy that NQ has for pvp in DU, and their straight-up aknowledging that the destructive capabilities of one player's weapons will be very limited, there will be no bunker-busting guns out there, no weapon that'll require a massive ship to fire. One of the reasons I brought up Space Engineers is because all of the super-destructive weapons players build simply won't be possible in DU. even more prominant, the "cover your ship with turrets" strategy won't be an option either, as again your ship would be limited to 1 gun unless its multi-crew. That means no 1-player destroyer ships, no 1-player long range missile support ships. no drone armies, no death boxes, no doom-stick ships. If the devs really want to build this as a game that encourages cooperation, where pvp is a feature but not the focus, they can make it very difficult for player so ruin the game for others. Expect some effort in that respect.

I honestly don't think this is going to be as much of an issue as it looks like it might. For one, the game isn't really even up yet at all. It'll be months at least before we can transition into any kind of beta, which means only a slice of the player basis will be hands-on with the software, and there will be nothing really worth stealing until the full release unless there is a way to reverse-engineer a blueprint that can be saved in a wipe-proof way (for now we have an idea that your character will get to keep long-term construct data on anything you built, but unless its turned into a physical item, it cannot be stolen or copied). During that time period, people will really just be building and exploring, since there would be no way to accumulate wealth. Once beta hits, there will be more actual gameplay in the mix, but no real way to accumulate wealth that'll matter in the full release. Wealth in the Beta will matter strictly insofar as it allows you more access to travel and material for testing designs, since designs are the only thing that will follow you to release. Having an org for the purpose of producing designs that can be used in the full release will be the most valid org for people looking forward, however orgs dedicated to pvp and raiding might get some play during beta as soon as weapons are implemented. By the time we are through all this, the people who are talking up a storm on the forums and messing up each-others orgs on the community page (which might not even have any function at all in the full game, since an in-game system might replace it completely), they will probably lose interest. I suspect most of them (and again by "them" i mean people who want to commit corperate espionage in a game) will lose interest when they find out that DU is really actually very different from eve. The player basis will be smaller, producing items and making money will be much much slower (as there will be limits on how much actual currency will be circulating because of the temporary nature of the merchant npc's). The largest orgs might not have enough org-specifically allocated resources to make this process worth it. DU isn't EVE, the similarities are almost strictly that its a sub-based scifi with a sellable subscription item. The two games play so drastically differently that the target audiences will have much less overlap than you'd think.

Yes, and the slogan is "rebuild civilization together" which means that co-operating will be easy, and destroying each other will probably be mechanically difficult. PVP is not the focus of the game as it is presented, it'll be one of many features. Expect there to be plenty of mechanics to protect people and their constructs, and substantially fewer to allow players to compete or destroy.

This is in fact a sandbox game above all. It'll be build-centric, so completing a build would be an end of itself. So far it seems that a large percentage of the player population are people from Landmark, and their goals are going to be way way different from people who play Eve. Plus one potential benefit of a megastructure as I see it is what a mega-structure can offer in defense. In games like Starmade and Space Engineers, for ship construction, mobility and efficiency are both limiting factors in structure-size. In starmade some systems have diminishing returns as you scale-up, so at a certain point bigger is not better, where in Space Engineers, things scale pretty linearly but larger constructs stress servers to a point where they can no longer track Missile impacts and only gatling guns matter or a large enough ship crashes the whole server as soon as guns turn on or it gently bumps into something. But for static structures instead of ships... the only thing limiting you size-wise is resources. If you don't ever have to move a construct, more mass means more power, more storage, more shields, and more weapons (yeah it might not mean more weapons in DU due to their 1 player 1 weapon philosophy, but there might be some limited automated defense options for static constructs). Most importantly it means more structure HP and more mass worth of blocks you need to chew through in order to compromise the structure. A large station in Space Engineers where a team can afford several layers of advanced/heavy armor plating even laid out in an inefficient patter can withstand a sustained bombardment from a large ship without a breech. I've seen attacks that fail because the attacking player runs out of ammunition before the station suffered a breech, and the main reason we don't see super-stations in Space Engineers be successful is because of the catastrophic effect ramming has due to collision related bugs. In starmade, an org has the ability to make 1 "home base" literally indestructible including anything docked to it, which is a great system in my opinion because it offers the same level of protection to small orgs as it offers to huge one, limiting the oppressive effect large orgs can have on smaller ones and completely eliminating AFK raiding. Even then, the only effective way players have of taking down a very large station in Starmade is to spoof the turret AI by dipping in and out of maximum tracking range of unmanned turrets (as you can't run out of ammo or fuel in that game, you can take pot-shots forever). In Rust, it takes the combined effort of a massive clan to raid a well-fortifide base structure, and it takes tons and tons of explosives to successfully raid one even when 100% of the defending org is AFK, *and structures rapidly decay without upkeep in rust*. Without a decay mechanic, a megastructure might become practically impossible to compromise or destroy with weapons given that NQ is opposed to any super-weapon category. With a fairly low hard-cap on the maximum damage output per player, and the theoretically unlimited cap on the size of a mega-structure, the only viable way to comprimize a mega-structure would be a coordinated espionage effort (rogue-one anybody?). This would make a mega-structure the optimal location for a large org's treasury, rare material storage depot, or ship manufacturing facility.

Critics claimed "it occured" and "it is a game"

Given that Avatar vs Avatar and Construct vs Construct were both stretch goals that were hit, I think we can expect both forms of combat to be present in the game at launch. Now the thing is, by launch here, I'm talking about after beta is officially over, and players are paying subscription fees. This could be a pretty far-off point in time, as we haven't even really started Alpha yet (I'm not really going to count pre-alpha here, given that there will be potentially frequent wipes and limited uptime). We likely won't have any pvp content at all in the alpha stage, and NQ might/should use the later stages of beta to test and balance combat elements. I suspect that the first round of pvp elements will be pretty simple. We might only get a couple of weapon categories, we might find that the same weapon elements will work in atmosphere, in space, and under water, or that no weapons work underwater and there is 1 class of weapon for atmo, and 1 class of weapon for space. There is also a good chance that weapon range will be pretty limited (as in, no orbital-to-surface weapons). Even if it is that simple however, that should be enough to do be entertaining for quite a long time. Space Engineers for example only has 1 class of player weapon (4 variations), and 3 different classes of weapon (each with 2 sizes, 2 of which have fixed-versions and turret versions). Even with the limited selection there, pvp and pve combat continues to be very exciting when it doesn't cause the game to crash or KLANG doesn't claim your ship. DU is in the perfect position to do a lot with very little, there are so many possible variables with constructs that it won't take much weapon variety to create a ton of combat variety.

Indeed, there is really no more need for this kind of discussion. NQ has pretty clearly laid out how they want to proceed with monetization, and even though they are borrowing from EVE's system, enough of DU is wildly different form EVE that I don't think this is really going to be an issue. Even at release, there is no way that the player population will be able to support players (plural) injecting $200 worth of DAC into the market at a time and still value the DAC highly as a commodity. We have no idea how much quanta will actually be floating around, or how easy it will be to get given that its introduction to the market will be carefully restricted. NPC's will not be a bottomless supply of money in DU, that makes it pretty much impossible to compare the two game's economies, especially since the DU economy hasn't formed yet. Plus DU has to go through alpha AND beta before DAC's even exist in the economy. Whole versions of the game will be playable without the impact of DAC's whatsoever. Given that Quanta will not be readily available, and that we don't really know what the capacity will be for the NPC traders to distribute quanta, I suspect that DAC's will likely be traded for raw or finished goods instead, or as payment for a fulfilled contract. *mostly* I suspect it'll boil down to DAC's being traded for time not spent mining/refining material. I suspect that the players that are willing to inject money into DAC's as a currency will be using it to "catch up" to players who have more free time, probably professionals and/or people with a family or other hobbies (like myself). Now that being said, this has been discussed to death, but there isn't going to be a way to form a valid argument that the monetization scheme is somehow bad for players without any good data. DU is different enough from EVE that data from EVE is bad data.