wizardoftrash

There is an opportunity here... I think usernames by-default should be displayed and easy to see. Characters should be easy to identify, ships too. However, there should be items that can scrample or spoof ID information, and consequently items that can un-scramble them. For example, a player could invest the XP and levels into stealth skills on the skill try to be able to use a purchased scrambler (and like any other tool or module, it would require energy or have some sort of cooldown or something). This would let them be anonymous for a period of time, or kick out a dummy name, or censor the name. heck, a really strong/expensive version might even kick out a name of your choice (framing other people). But this would be a huge hoop to jump through, it would have to be a big enough hoop so that people couldn't just set up a burner account just to mess with people, or make trial accounts and run around spoofed.

extending the testing won't be possible for them at least in the short term because of the labor laws in france. They need a special permit to conduct business at night, and it is a tedious process that will be fruitless until they can demonstrate that they are a 24-hour service. The real question is at what point will testing be hands-off, where the servers are running without an NQ employee on standby. They will need to be present to capitalize on the data for the first few tests, and especially to help mitigate issues that come up as the test elapses. We might eventually see longer test periods later down the line, but deff not on the 30th.

I'm building racing craft first, because racing is one of the activities that will be easy to do even in the pre-alpha given that the testers will have access to semi-unlimited materials, and will only really be able to build and fly. That means light-weight, fast, maneuverable, and able to survive a minor crash. Also FLASHY, with some hull space for designs. No one is going to want an ugly speed-monster, its gotta be a pretty speed-monster. Hopefully though that process will give me ideas for where armor is going to need to go, and what impact it has on speed and maneuverability. From there, I'm going to be designing high performance military ships favoring speed and maneuverability over armor and firepower.

bottom line though, NQ stated that there would be no catastrophic super weapons in the game. it is the official stance that players should never be in a position to lose a great deal of work with little to no warning. That means no planet killers, but probably also no 1-shot kill weapons for stations or large ships, no base-cracking nukes, and no cascade failure style "shoot the weak point for massive damage" crit kills.

From what I've heard is that pvp will be a hybrid system, where there are elements that behave like tab-targeting, however you can acquire your targets via cursor/crosshairs. It will not be an FPS in that there is projectile tracking or hitscan based on your redicle, but instead, it'll use where your aiming to determine what construct or character your are "tabbed" to for targeting purposes. You'll need to be pointing in roughly the right direction, and in a situation where there are a ton of targets in a tight area, precision might matter. But then it usses accuracy stats of the character and weapon against the evasiveness stats of the target factoring in distance to determine hit/miss, metrics for damage, its right back to a typical MMO when it comes to actually firing there. The main difference is that you'll be "aiming" for whatever target you are trying to "tab" to attack, instead of selecting your target with the press of a button. Also, this is might only be the case for some weapons. There will likely be weapon systems that won't require an aim-target, but instead purely use a tab-target. This would be a construct-mounted weapon, and it would be the difference between a turret-mounted weapon system and a hull-forward mounted weapon system. There will be a tradeoff where you can have a higher damage weapon that you must aim-target, or a lower damage weapon that will auto-track target so that you won't have to be facing of flying towards your intended target. As far as automated defenses go, there will be basically very little in the way of auto-turret defenses and the like. NQ is trying REALLY HARD to make sure that this game doesn't boil down to who has the most turrets (Space Engineers) or the biggest ship (Starmade), and that means a 1-player 1-gun rule. As far as AFK defenses go, it'll probably be something more like a combination of stealth and shield systems rather than an anti-ship array. We might actually get some anti-personal guns that will shoot at invading characters, but nothing that can hit ships without being manned by a player. The best defenses will be Territory Unit-based defenses, laws, and other players. Settling in a city with a dedicated militia will be immensely helpful, in addition to having a system for setting and collecting bounties. Anti-ship defense turrets could be built as long as they can be manned, so even a small-ish city can defend itself reasonably well if there are even 1 or 2 people around to defend it. Apart from that, avoiding detection will be the best way to go.

If I go to one of my town's microbreweries for a beer, and I pay cash as to not get caught up in the $5 minimum, after a reasonable tip (20% plus round up to nearest dollar) it ends up being about $5. I do that just about every week when I'm taking a break from painting miniatures at my friendly local game store. so yeah, $4 will buy you a really nice craft beer at a brewery, or a pair of pretty decent craft beers if you ate buying 12 packs and breaking it down by unit.

Agreed here. Basically every new monotization thread devolves to a couple people begging and pleading and two dozen regulars going in and saying "no" a bunch of times.

it isn't possible at all *yet*, but we might discover that the Org functionality in the game at release is much more robust that the org system in the community portal. Voting systems, org policy, even hierarchy might be something that can be customized in a strict way in the game's actual architecture. At the very least, it would be easy to make an informal democratic org, and it might rely heavily on the honor system.

I'm honestly too hyped. I'll be excited to have some of this hype out of my system, but I'm concerned that even if I'm running hard for the whole test session, that it might make me hungrier for more. Odds are high that I'll have to run Starmade or Space Engineers to wind myself back-down after the test window is closed. In the mean time, gotta start sketching some ideas for repeating construct patterns! already got some neat ideas for how to make great use of the surface-connect feature!

that is, assuming that there is no collision damage mechanic in-place. Not sure that collision damage y/n was a settled matter yet (though for a game like this, its probably for the best that construct-on-construct collision damage is not a thing).

Part of the trouble is that setting up an org, and attracting members to an org can be a lot of work. The people that go out of their way to do this are often the legates themselves, who want to be managing/leading something. Why would someone go through the trouble of setting up an org and attracting members... if someone else will end up in-charge? It is entirely possible though that once the game actually is released, or there is a version with 24/7 uptime, that democratic orgs could organically form through the players that are physically in a tight proximity. This works because the players will physically come together, iron out and codefy their laws, then post an actual digital version of the org from there. In the mean-time though, most orgs are meaningless and therefor no-one is motivated to form a functioning democracy when there is nothing for that democracy to actually do.

The harsh reality of it. A game with emergent play is better when the community is dedicated, allowing more people in at a discount won't improve it (aside from the fact that it might also cost more money than it makes). The people in the category that would not play the game with its current sub, but would if it were pay-per-hour are worth losing.

I believe there is room for some variation in mining speed/sizes, but I'm not of the opinion that the speed shown is too fast, or too large an area. Without the ability to mine with a construct (like in Space Engineers), then there is no real way to "work up-to" mass-mining. In Space Engineers you can build bigger and bigger mining ships, making your task of excavating a lot of earth easier. NQ doesn't have any plans at all to allow constructs to mine, which means it'll all be by-hand, one shape at a time. This is very very slow compared to even a "small" mining ship in SE. That being said, this is an MMO after all. I'd love to see there be different variations of mining module for the nano-former. We might discover that in order to mine certain minerals, you need a higher-tier mining module that mines a smaller area, but can pick up heavier ores. We might find that there is also a higher tier nanoformer that can dig a much larger area, but only lighter ores as well, and a successful minor might alternate between two or three mining modules during a mining run. Perhaps there might even be a very high tier that is big, quick, and can pick-up everything but the heaviest ore. Plus you've got scanning to think about too. In SE, it requires almost no investment to actually detect specific ores, you just add the right part to your ship and you can detect them. The biggest chore was actually finding sources of each ore. In DU though, scanning will be a skill that you spec into and invest gear in. That alone might be enough to keep mining entertaining.

If we want to make that argument based on a users contribution to the forums, I see a little over a dozen posts on Monatization threads, and 2 about pvp. That tells me that someone is really only invested in how much the game is going to cost, and not so invested in the mechanics of the game itself. I agree that people deserve an opinion, and they have the right to express them. However, the weight of those suggestions are not all equal. If we want to weigh this user's suggestions based on their contributions to the community, it boils down to complaints about the game's cost and the user explicitly stated that they were not in the "this changes or I won't play" category. I woudn't weight those contributions highly.

There we go, so you aren't even the example of a player who would play if it were pay per hour, but wouldn't play if it were a normal subscription. So where are these mysterious potentially lost customers then, and are there enough of them to out-weight the loss in revenue for players like you who don't need pay per hour but would use it if it were cheaper. This is a no-brainer, don't rock the boat.

Also. OP seems to think the devs will make more money if those "on the fence" players have a way to play per-hour, but the reality is that the number of players for whom the monthly subscription is a deal-breaker is very very small. The devs stand to lose only a handfull of players at a discounted rate by sticking with a monthly sub, but stand to lose a lot per-player of the people who would happily pay the monthly sub if that was the only option. flat-out, the devs will lose money. I'd rather they collect that money and use some of it to improve the game.

Which is better, devaluing your own product by letting less-dedicated people play, or provide a better experience for all players? You are making the argument that a significant slice of the potential player base will just opt not to play if there is no per-hour option. Sounds like you are one of those players, and given that you aren't a founder or a backer, that means that you aren't a customer. Why should they or any of us listen to you? "hey but it worked for someone else" and NQ isn't CCCP. DU isn't EVE. this is a doozey of a false-equivalency. Most of us are here to play the game we are paying for, we aren't here to play EVE.

we might have people begging for DAC's right out of the gate. There will be a "trial period" where people can try out the game, and can in-theory earn a DAC to start their subscription before their trial period runs out. You can bet your butt that there will be a slice of players who instead of just paying IRL money, try to earn a DAC, give up part way through and resort to begging. Heck, I started an ORG dedicated to providing DAC's to poor players who can fill a reasonable mining/refining contract.

Hate to break it to you, but the full subscription is a "fair price", even if you can only play one session per week. Compare it to other forms of leisure activity, it is not uncommon to blow the full price of the DU monthly subscription in just one session of other leisure activities. I find the price to be fair despite the fact that I'll be able to commit one, maybe two, evenings per-week to play at the most. play or don't, that's up to you. Not to mention, those of us who have the money where the price is no-object, often don't actually have the time to play a ton. Those of us who can actually afford to spend money on DAC's to use in contracts in-exchange for the stuff we'd have to grind for. The folks that actually do have the time to play tons and tons of hours (students, underemployed) woundn't be able to afford an hourly rate that would be player-footprint neutral.

Also this argument is a bit of a hair-splitting fest. Willing to pay to play for a period of time, but not willing to shell out for the price for a full month... There is no way the monthly sub is so expensive that it warrants alternative/smaller options. Either the game is worth its full fee or its not, fortunately once the game is actually released, a player would only need to "waste" 1 month's fee to discover that the game isn't something they like. In this case though, the monthly fee is about as much as a Magic the Gathering player spends in a *week* drafting. This is about the cost of going to the shooting range once for a short session if you add in the cost of ammunition. This is the price of 1 decent meal at a restaurant, or an OK meal if you are drinking. This is about the cost of seeing 2 movies, or 1 movie and snacks at a theater. Consider that so many leisure activities cost this amount in 1 session, but this fee pays for the full month. Even if you only play 1 weekend session per-week, that's 4x the entertainment-hours-per-dollar as those activities listed above. I'd say we've exhausted this topic by now.

This contest is complete, and the judges will now determine a winner based on whoever had the last post. And the winner is.... Wizardoftrash, based on the end-of-contest announcement post! congratulations!

I would love to set up a Hub for my org the Alchemists in the city. This will give me an opportunity to experiment with structures and save architectural snapshots for future use. I expect to be very active building during the pre-alpha, and I plan to have my org in-general be active during that time as well.

According to the most recent Dev Diary, the pre-alpha stage testers will have access to "everything they need to build" out of the gate (without mining, refining, or crafting). The stuff we actually end up building likely won't survive between the test versions and the actual release... But the blueprints will. As a sapphire founder, you will have access to the pre-alpha, which means you can start building Blueprints for these large ships in effectively a creative mode. Now we might not have the right ship elements to get something with so much mass to actually fly yet, there might be extra large thrusters or something that are required but not implemented yet. However, you should be able to build the ship hulls, with whatever ship elements we currently have, and re-fit them in future iterations with newer elements to make them space-worthy.

The model is still currently DAC's and Quanta as non-lootable non-physical objects. As far as I know, the heart of the argument for these things being non-lootable is that having them is not risky, but anything and everything you can spend them on is at risk of theft or destruction (with the exception if simply turning DAC's into subscription time, which takes them off the market, increases demand for them, and thus makes NQ more income). The fact that the ship or resources you spend your Quanta and DAC's on can be looted or destroyed is risk enough.

My main concern with Collision Damage as a concept comes from the punishing effect it has on any connectivity dips or drops. Yes, connectivity issues will always be a problem for an MMO, if you have a connectivity issue during combat, you will be at a disadvantage. That being said, having a collision damage mechanic turns simple transportation into the most dangerous and potentially punishing game-play activity. I see this constantly during games of Space Engineers. I'm flying a mining craft to an asteroid, at a reasonable pace, on a course where even if I overshoot I won't crash into it. -I brake and slow my craft near the asteroid, and briefly fire engines to approach at the desired angle. -My connection slows/drops briefly, my ship continues to accellerate despite the fact that I'm holding brake and pulling up. -I crash into the asteroid full-speed, front half of the ship pops including the cockpit and gyroscope, my ship spins wildly out of control away from me. I'm out a ship, stranded on the other side of the system. This is not a poorly build ship mind you, the drill components were extended beyond the nose of the ship several blocks, and there was even an "oopse" cage around the cockpit. In that above scenario I did everything right: I had a responsible approach vector, I used light touches to navigate, the ship was built well. I STILL managed to crash, lose my ship, and die in the middle of nowhere due to a two-second connectivity hiccup. This has occurred dozens of times, often during times where I don't have the resources to replace a whole ship, and it is often enough for me to need to re-start from scratch. If what the devs have mentioned so far is correct, that building a ship capable of leaving a planet was something you would have to work towards for a while, any collision damage mechanic that can outright disable or destroy a ship with no fault of the player is far too punishing. If a collision damage mechanic is put into place, the most basic shielding system needs to be able to mostly or fully negate any kind of crash caused by a hiccup or piloting error that would occur outside of combat. I would propose that shielding systems, for as long as you have at least 1% of your shields, ought to prevent you from disabling or destroying your ship in a collision (though it might drop your shields if they are low). This would make maneuvering carefully critical during combat, but would prevent your ship being destroyed crashing into a moon you intended to orbit just because you had a brief latency issue. TLDR: Collission damage is bad for the game if shields don't mostly or fully mitigate it. Crashing, after your shields are dropped, should hurt you bad. Crashing during a routine flight because your internet crapped out for two seconds should not.