Daphne Jones

Generally, I'd say DU is losing it fast. MUs were a proposal even before JC was promoted to irrelevance, but I'm pretty sure they were intended to work along side hand mining. I understand the performance reason for cutting hand mining... but as game design, they cut an actual game loop (even if some found it tedious) and replaced it chores that are not fun for anyone that I've heard of. Better game design would have been some combination of collapsing tunnels after a time, slowing hand ore extraction, regenerating ore - maybe with diminishing returns so a mine would need to be mined over a period of time but would eventually become exhausted, and, of course, MUs as an adjunct on player-owned tiles. Before shields, combat involved team work with a pilot, some gunners shooting, and some engineers keeping the ship from blowing up. But with shields and now core stress, engineers will never again be a thing since core stress will kill the ship after the shield goes down before any serious repairs are needed. If we had fighter plane tactics (not planes-in-space mechanics - just tactics) or fleet tactics in game, we might still have some team work in the game, but those aren't really a thing and not likely to be because of the very long distance targeting plus RNG nature of the combat. I like the shield based combat when I don't want to fight, but it's boring when I do. Demeter has pretty much killed the economy. There's no reason to do business with other players now. I've stopped mining above T1 (except for the chromite and natron I need to make fuel) because the market on higher tiers is too low to justify hauling the ore to market, and generally sell T1 to bots at the market near my moon base - because the player price isn't enough better to justify dealing with landing on Alioth and fighting the lag at D6. So I rate DU as a total fail in 2021. Maybe they should start 2022 by hiring some game designers 'cause game design seems to be where the big failures are.

The whole MU game loop sucks. I have found it's much more bearable if you don't bother to harvest the bonus ore after calibrating and don't care about winning the mini-game. Just plop down three area scans and take the best spot you see... I still get over 90% more than half the time doing that (which should not be the case, so I suspect the game is manipulating the mini-game to make it winnable most of the time). Most of my mining is on HQ hexes and Sanc, so I can safely let them go inactive when ore prices are too low to pay the tax... if they're too low to pay the tax, they're low enough to just buy the ore I need. Since it looks like ore prices will continue in free fall for a while, I have other revenue streams to pay taxes - primarily Aphelia missions and mining T1 on asteroids and selling it to the bots (which doesn't require high grav/atmo/lag fest landing at D6.) I'm not sure it's a good idea for the only viable revenue streams to be selling/providing services to NPCs. But unless the market gets substantially stronger or taxes are substantially reduced, bots are really the only income option.

This seems like a bug rather than an exploit, but I agree NQ should clarify whether this is intended game play. It does not seem to be of great concern. I suspect it's hard for the the attacking ship to synchronize warp with the target adequately to be be warping within targeting range. And if they do, I doubt any arrangement of weapons on a single ship could take down a L shield during the time spent in warp on a single leg. If getting hit during warp knocks a ship out of warp. we may need to use atmo radar before warping to be sure no enemies are in targeting range.

Yes. And a gunner in the seat, since I fly those ships from a gunner seat with a remote. And custom gunner software for separate Friends and Foes radars lists and more info on the targeted ship etc.

Have the door owned by an alt and don't give your main acct or anyone else perms to open the door. Or... If you're using a detector, just set the detector so its range is longer than the range for F and no one will get close enough to use F before the door opens. Arrange the door to be completely within voxels when open and you won't have to worry about anyone closing the door while standing in the detector's area.

I have some haulers with guns and some without guns (mostly light enough to warp). I did say within reason... that would include some thought at the design level to how your ship will defend itself.

A L core hauler should be viable against xs cube (or real non-BS ships) with xs guns on them. But some reasonable number of those xs ships should be a threat, i.e., the hauler should be able to defend itself, but not just ignore the smaller ships. This is a tough game design issue. PVP is always a tough game design issue. (which is especially funny since the prime reason to design a PVP game is devs trying to avoid work - thus PVP usually sucks.) It's hard to do, but everything should be able to defend itself and everything within reason should be a threat. I think the best way to do this is to emphasize player skill, but that ship has sailed and reached the new world already in DU.

Well, lead at 11 kg/L is much less dense than gold. But depleted uranium rounds exist in RL (for shooting through tank armor) and that's just a smidgeon lighter than gold (19.1 kg/L vs 19.3 kg/L)

ROFLMAO. DU might have to actually be a game first. SC has an army of A-list devs. DU doesn't (on either point). BTW, atm, I like DU better because I can have exactly the ship I want. And if my whim changes, I can have that ship too. And it doesn't cost real money.

"ratting" - like putting rats on other people's ships? Nasty.

I've lost maybe 100 million in ships doing asteroids, but I've made 500 million. Not currently doing it though because ore prices are too low to be worth the risk. Not even doing sz asteroids because ore prices are so low. You can watch the radar while mining by having a programming board attached to a radar. This may limit the distance you can get from your ship - or make a follower construct with the PB on it. Mining followers used to be quite popular. You do need some scripting skills or a friend with scripting skills to build one. The number one thing that has kept me off the PVP asteroids since Demeter dropped is that res nodes aren't reliable. My pre-Demeter practice was to mine till I heard shooting, res back to my ship (which has a L shield so is still OK at that point) and take off. Unless I was outnumbered 10 to 1, I usually got away before my shield failed.. But if I have to dig 300m back to my ship, it will already be destroyed by the time I get there. I may get back out there when they fix res nodes. Unless the prices keep crashing.

Probably true, but at some point they have to design a game and then make it work. Otherwise... no game.

I like it. We definitely need valid reasons to go small. As it stands going small just means you stay out of PVP or die. Shields should light you up like a Christmas tree too.

Have you tried to land at D6 Market - on the actual landing pad - since docking was updated? You can't do it. All those dynamic "container" cores under the landing pad will push you the (expletive) off because you're not allowed to (expletive) dock with them. I have solutions: 1. Let people put their containers on a static core by making an exception to the static core rules in market hexes - 1 per player, not blocking the pad or market. I think the reason those cores are clustered right under the market is that their owners VR to the market and linked container range in VR is very short (250m? iirc) so... 2. Make linked container range an exception to loss of talents in VR. 3. Require a control unit on a dynamic construct for docking features. Most of those things are some containers and maybe a VR pad - no control unit... so there would be no "you can't dock here (expletive)." I like solution 2. The reason I was doing something as idiotic as trying to land on the D6 M platform is that my customer is planning to VR to the market and load the ship from his market container. If we didn't have to deal with (expletive) VR linked range restrictions, I would have parked on the outermost ring of pads. (All the inner pads there are cluttered with ships owned by players who have long since quit the game in disgust. I actually know where I am on those pads by which ships are permanently parked near me.)

I like SL and I like building space ships in SL. It's easier to build space ships in DU and flight model is better. I'm perfectly happy with DU as SL in space. JC did say once that it's not SL in space, because SL doesn't really have any game play loops... but I guess DU meets that test pretty well now, lol. To be SL in space, DU would need to add tools for players to make game play loops. SL has some pretty amazing player-made game loops.