Daphne Jones

Please, "Fleet", not "Flotilla"

FUD is usually spread by "bad actors" but in this case it feels like NQ themselves are the ones filling us with Fear for the future, Uncertainty as to which way the wipe hammer will fall and Doubt whether or not NQ can pull this game off when the servers go live.

I was watching DU ads on youtube. I wish we were getting that game instead of the one we're getting.
 
The game is already just barely worth playing. With a wipe, I don't think it will be worth messing with it. My main bases can't be deployed from BPs with the current state of BPs. So I can't realistically recover from a wipe.

In Athena they raised the speed of light to 60K-ish but applied mass based magic speed limits to appease the faux-PVPers who only shoot at unarmed ships. Now if you're hauling cargo you have zero chance of escaping an attacker. That also means that very light ships can cruise aroun 50K. To get over that speed you have to have rockets and you magically fall below 50K when the rocket flames out. Fantasy physics sucks, but whatever.
 
I also designed a light space-capable ship on the assumption that there will be a wipe. My design can be entirely nanocrafted except for the space fuel. I've done a fuel asteroid runs in it. It works well and filling the nano pack with ore is fast enough that you don't get bored lol.
 
The downside is there's no way to carry a DSAT so it's stuck with already broadcast asteroids. Upside is that it's cheap enough to risk in unsafe space and there's nothing to gain for pirates who attack.
 
(My daily flyer is an armed copy of this design, but I expect it can't deliver enough damage to matter if it ever gets in a fight. Guns are basically for flavor.)

Not sure how such an expansive rep system would work or be meaningful, but, otherwise, these ideas seem workable even within NQ's very limited resources.

I believe the sun has been synced for some time now. In fact, almost 100% sure. I was watching a stream and the person was in the US, and I'm in an EU time, yet the sunlight looked the same on my screen as theirs.

I agree that VFX still need work. I think NQ's issue is that they let technical people design the game, do the VFX, implement the UI/UX, underestimating all the skills that aren't technical in nature. Leading to...this. 
 
That said, please don't take this out on LSD -- if anything, it's coming from being stoned and lazy, not having a nice trip. 

I haven't tested running speed since early in beta, but at that time, I got stuck 30km from base and it took almost exactly 30min to get back. So pretty close to 60kph at minimal talents.
 

@SlaySomething  I have a crazy idea.. How about instead of having the ore automatically brought to the container, we have to search for it ourselves... Instead of the ore being generic to an entire hex, NQ could hide the ore deep underground and then players would have to dig and search for it... Then you could use some kind of special tool that transfers the ore to your container.
The ore should be difficult to find so we could use some kind of scanner or radar that tells us the distance... And a skilled miner could then triangulate the location of the ore by moving about and judging the distance.

And the world comes full circle.

It would be nice to be able to do some mining on unowned territories. Currently, there's really no reason to travel to another planet unless you own land there.
 
We've seen the economy build up from zero several times and it always settles out to 1 market on Alioth where you can get everything and all other markets are useless - unless bots are buying/selling everything in which case all markets are equally useful, but not good deals for anyone. So the economy doesn't provide a reason to travel.
 
No one in their right mind would take missions now that the combat system has been skewed so heavily in favor of what we might generously call pirates. Why would you play a game you can't win or even draw?
 
I would like to see ore placed at least 100m down and any contiguous tunnel that goes below -100m should be erased a small number of hours later. That saves needing to designate terraforming you don't want deleted. Maybe make it 200m so you can easily fit a L core underground if you want to.

It would be nice to be able to do some mining on unowned territories. Currently, there's really no reason to travel to another planet unless you own land there.
 
We've seen the economy build up from zero several times and it always settles out to 1 market on Alioth where you can get everything and all other markets are useless - unless bots are buying/selling everything in which case all markets are equally useful, but not good deals for anyone. So the economy doesn't provide a reason to travel.
 
No one in their right mind would take missions now that the combat system has been skewed so heavily in favor of what we might generously call pirates. Why would you play a game you can't win or even draw?
 
I would like to see ore placed at least 100m down and any contiguous tunnel that goes below -100m should be erased a small number of hours later. That saves needing to designate terraforming you don't want deleted. Maybe make it 200m so you can easily fit a L core underground if you want to.

Agree, but they really should just tell us whether there will be a wipe. If I know a wipe is coming I can just ignore all of my territories because they're going away anyway.

I like the BP visualization. If it's good enough, I might be able to recover my bases after a wipe.
 
The rest of it? Don't care.

But those redesigns get tiresome real quick, and how can you sell such ships in good faith when they will stop functioning any time NQ feels like rearranging the deck just for fun of it?

One less reason to use voxels..

Completely agree with this!

Completely agree with this!

Long story short, I would have only one reason to visit this new space outpost: to see it once out of curiosity, and then never again.
Why should I bother going to a market that's further away from most of the actual trading going on? Fuel costs money. Travel time slow-boating is already obscene. Why should I bother going to a market whose only draw is that it's in space with 0G? Others have pointed out that moons already fill this role, but...no surprise, Alioth Market 6 is still the trade hub of choice for most people. Once something is established, it's hard to de-establish it for something else without a REALLY good reason. Why should I bother going to a market that is not near the base that took my org insane amounts of time to build? Do a full wipe, then we'll talk...but by the time I can even get there after a wipe, Alioth Market 6 will probably be re-established as the trade hub simply because, you know, it's easier to reach than space, and we come full circle to the "hard to de-establish" issue. As to other suggestions about putting markets in PVP space...
Pirates own PVP space. Few orgs/players contest them. Until that changes, PVP space markets are worthless to anyone but pirates and those who can warp into their safe zones...which...why bother when you can just as easily warp to a moon and do business there? More warp locations in dangerous places doesn't entice me to use those locations. Slowboating is already a full day of time invested into doing nothing if you're going a moderate distance round trip. With the changes to max speed, where's the motivation to slowboat at all? It seems like they're just listening to the complaints from pirates (and noticing that, surprise surprise, their system of NPC missions makes it easy to make a fortune quickly using a bunch of alts on a large hauler. Almost like it was predictable. Like they could have devoted time to developing something else that wouldn't be so obviously exploited and force them to ruin space travel even more, rather than change the mission system) and completely ignoring the fact that space travel is a huge time sink already. If it takes an hour to go between Madis and Alioth at max speed (including accelerating up/down) with low/high mass, and they change the max speed to the degree that it appears they will, then going from Madis to Alioth will take multiple hours for even medium haulers. It's like they're trying to make space hauling less appealing than it already is. Now add back in the fact that it's PVP space, or rather, pirate territory...and again, what's the motivation? Find other ways to make PVP relevant to non-pirates, and to NQ, stop coddling pirates at the expense of everyone else. Balance your gameplay so that pirate trolls don't rule/ruin the PVP world as in so many other games. All told, I'm not really impressed with how NQ is doing things. Some stuff, sure, but they're going farther and farther away from the "player created content" that was PROMISED.
Alien cores for space defense/mining? Sure, why not. A reason to go to PVP space, except that you still have to deal with the heavy pirate troll advantage and the serious lack of non-pirate players in non-pirate orgs dedicated to PVP. Mission system? Cool. It adds content for players who want to run missions (to a very small degree. It's still not highly used). Escort missions? Are you joking, or what? Slowboating is tedious and can go for 6 hours or longer. You SERIOUSLY think that anyone would do escort missions like that and not expect a high reward that would not only potentially overshoot any potential profits from the haul, but also be better spent buying a lot of warp cells and just warping between planets? You would need to hire at least 2 escorts to be reasonably secure against pirates. Find two non-pirate (because pirates get hard thinking about trolling) players or teams of players willing to waste 4-8 hours constantly watching their radar, and you'll be lucky...and that's before the mass/speed update, which will make those travel times ludicrously longer. More NPC markets instead of player-owned markets? Wasted time that could have been spent improving the actual game or adding features that people actually ask for. Space wrecks? Okay, sure, except for the fact that they apparently took pre-DRM blueprints to be used in their wrecks, opening up code to public distribution that should be locked. Making space wrecks really rare to the point of "you have to accidentally stumble on them once in a blue moon, under the proper star sign, and only if a 2-hump camel farts while facing north," and putting the ones of actual value in pirate territory? Wasted time that could have been spent improving the actual game or adding features that people actually ask for. New stasis weapons? Sounds good. Lowering the max speed based on ship mass? Wasted time that could have been spent improving the actual game or adding features that people actually ask for, and seriously makes me glad that my org can afford to make/buy enough cells to warp heavy loads, because slowboating just went from bad to worse. At least until they decide that pirates don't get enough action and make warping more expensive and interruptible during transit. I can totally see that happening with the way things are going. Different weapon types and sizes? Great. Versatility. Forcing people wanting to specialize in large weapon types to first train all of the sizes below, or people wanting to specialize in other talents being required to train everything else that precedes that talent (like having to get talents in T1-4 ore refining just to focus on T5), and other talents that don't feed into the one they want to specialize in? So much for specialization, when you have to get everything to specialize in something else, making you waste so much time on things that don't make sense. This may seem like a long complaint-filled rant, but honestly, I don't think NQ actually listens to most of the issues that people bring up based on their development priorities, and the lack of real interaction between devs/admin and players. So, here's some feedback, NQ. I'm FAR from the first one to put it out there. Let's see what you decide to DU with it.

You must have noticed that all content creator activity has stopped until we hear about the wipe. Otherwise we could be wasting our time. Let's get down to business please.

I've seen this statement often, please explain.
 
Because from my perspective, if there's a wipe-wipe, I won't be returning. Actually, I would strongly advise people against playing DU if it happens.
 
A wipe-wipe, won't change anything for 99% of the players in a month. As the same dedicated players with too much time, corp players, RL money, etc. will be in the same top positions. New players won't have a chance in hell to compete with that. In the mean time, getting started in DU for new players will be HELL! As nothing will be available that's player made, at a low price (as it is now). So leaving Haven/Sanctuary will be virtually impossible as people can't build or buy a territory control unit...
 
Look, I loved getting started with beta, but it was a completely different game then. For one, Schematics, for another planet mining or surface ore respawning. You looked at what some of the Alpha players where doing in the first weeks/months and you got inspired. Doing that again under the current restrictions wouldn't be much fun (for me) imho...
 
As for current new player being left behind? They can sell their ore, and it will be bought. Just look at the current ore sell prices, see many Sanctuary sell orders or small sell orders? Would certain people have the quanta to buy that from new players if there is a wipe-wipe? No. New players can/could often pick up nice BPCs from builder characters like Hagbard, would the be able to now? No! Because Hagbard can't produce a dispenser after the wipe-wipe, he wouldn't even be able to buy one...
 
So new players wouldn't be able to get the much wanted resources like specific tiles with ore, that's just for the big dedicated corps. Hell, 99% of the current players wouldn't be able to get to them either, unless you are a highly placed person in one of the big dedicated corps. It didn't happen with the last landwipe, it won't suddenly happen now. Scanning for a new player sounds like a good way to get started, but how exactly would you get that scanner? Those Schematics are expensive! No big corp would sell their scanners before they are done scanning themselves...
 
And if you think that there will be no new player due to the 'inequality', what would happen to new players six months down the road, a year, two years? The only similar MMO i'm familiar with that has a similar concept (of persistence) is EVE Online. When I started EVE in 2005, I was already late to the party by two years. Large corps ruled Null Sec, many have risen and fallen since then, I have never been part of that (by choice). What I have done in the last 17 years (often many years off) is control certain items on the markets or even the market in a certain section of space. The big strength of EVE is imho that even if I've taken off years, I can always get back and pick up my chars where I left them. Doing new things, trying the old things in a different environment, etc. NQ has already pretty much said that if no subscription, then everything not on Sanctuary (and I expect Haven) will go POOF!(tm) eventually. The problem is that people are not trusting NQ enough at the moment that even the Sanctuary/Haven space will be save from deletion (eventually), people are not trusting NQ because they might wipe-wipe again. There goes the whole persistence concept...

If you hit tab and hover the mouse over the colliding element(s) in that list,  then hit tab, the colliding element will remain red.  

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.

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.

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.

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.)