Saul Retav

@falstaf:
If they would use the weapon damage system, this could be easily balanced, because you would also be able to have shields against that.
 
Maybe they have some kind of kinetic damage weapon type, then this could also be used as damage type for collisions.
Shields that are effective against kinetic weapon damage would then also be effective against collisions.
 
I really don't think this system would lead to amounts of ramming ships that are really worth mentioning, because if you put the same effort and resources into building a standard ship with moderate weapons, you would most likely have something much more effective.
 
As I said, since JC mentioned that resources will be a crucial part of the game, I think that ramming would cause too much damage to your own ship (repair costs), so most people won't go for this.
A turret can deal damage without taking damage itself, that doesn't work for collisions.
 
If I didn't get JC completely wrong, the main reason for saying no was, that a realistic collision damage model is not yet doable in such a large MMO for technical reasons.
Being asked about this again, Novaquark said that they know it's not the best in terms of immersion and that they remain open for workaround suggestions (which is what this topic is about )
 
I get your point / JC's point, that you don't want to have everyone ramming ships into each other, but I actually think that a balanced collision damage model is a way to do that.
 
Think about it that way: the game already does collision checks, so if there's no damage, people might very often collide with buildings and other ships (cause there's no real downside to this) - so the engine could be very busy with collisions.
If there's a risk of damaging your own ship, you would have a good reason to avoid collisions.
 
@lurknautili:
Glad to see another one on the pro-collision-damage side
I already was worrying I could be pretty much alone with my hopes for at least a very basic collision damage model.

They won't be valuable .... no need to work towards grabbing these you guys .... these aren't the droids you are looking for .... you can just go about your business ... move along
 

A city draws people in because of services and because it is cheaper. Services that require many people to be supported can only be in major cities as people have the easiest access to them. Typically in real world cities the first service any town is able to support is a bar (rough population 75-150) and a small town may have two before even a gas station. Bigger services that have more coverage such as lawyers, accountants, specialized dealers all must serve a larger number of people and area in order to stay in business. 
The threshold is the minimum number of customers the market or service needs to remain in business; where as, the range is the maximum distance a customer is willing to travel for a market or service.
 
you wouldn't drive 30 miles to go to a McDonalds, but you would to go to a lawyer
 
Its really nice when you actually get to use what you learned in AP Human Geography.

I have yet to play a game where the act of mining (or resource gathering in general) was itself fun. That is the other balance to the equation.
 
I'll quote Sid on this one. The fun in games is "a series of interesting choices." Game mechanics that stabilize into a status quo (Rust and infinite oil) will result in a boring game for all sides. Mechanics that never result in a stable equilibrium (Rust with limited oil) requires individuals and groups to reevaluate and iterate on their systems if they want to keep the status quo.
 
Here is my ideal:
 
* Everyone can get some basic resources and build simple constructs (like a small hover bike) themselves so they can bootstrap on their first play or after a total loss, but most will purchase from the market to fullfill most their resource and construction needs.
 
* The players we consider miners wont really mine themselves, mining is generally automated and the miners manage more of the logistic side of things, be it keeping a cheap mining rig functioning or a massive pit quarry with numerous automated drones. A player who is good can run a massive rig, or a smaller one and pursue other gameplay.
 
* Player choice is needed to keep it running. Neglect the mines too long and they will begin to not produce at capacity and even break down.
 
* Profit = Income - Expenses.  Even a cheap rig will cost some money to run. If "everyone" is mining then mineral prices will drop to the point of being a loss. Others will flock to more profitable gameplay and prices will rise again.

Scalable Components
 
Everyone expects that there will be bigger and bigger things built in this game. So I was thinking about how are you planning to do it with the pre-set functional components. Those seem to have static size and static stats/power. That would seriously limit some ships and when you look at 10 different capital-class ships, they would have same looking engines for example, just different number of them. And if someone made really big thing and wanted to move it, it would be bad if he had resources for it but was limited by too small sizes of components.
 
How about introducing scalable-components where it's reasonable? Let's start with power plant (reactor or core, you name it), then continue with engines. These are components that I'm most afraid of as different size ships will need different size components. As these should always follow some pattern, you could let us to simply choose the intended power of the Engine (using slider) and that's it. You could drag these around as any other component, change it's size and the textures of object would simply adjust automatically. It's no hard thing to code with the tech you already have and simple to balance with those pre-set tiers (you can also add new ones in updates anytime). When you make something X times bigger, it will simply need X times more + Y extra resources (Y resources is kind of technological fee, so the price of big stuff rises exponentially).
 
This example can of course be taken to any scale stuff, not only the biggest ships.
 
 
Future idea -> Functional Component Blueprints
 
And if you wanted to eventually bring this one level higher, there could be new type of blueprint: Functional Component. Players could design own components using voxels, colors, etc. and select their type. The resources and stats would be depending on mass of the object and player could see them during the process. During this process he could also select one of his ship blueprints and this would show little frame on the screen with information how much power would this component give to the ship. For example, you would make small engine and select your cruiser, the tooltip would say "Engines: 12% of optimal power, current max speed: 15 m/s".
 
While this could be super useful to many components, weapon systems would still have to be limited and couldn't be created this tool. Probably...

First and foremost DAC represent a real world "investment" and as such should not be loot-able. It should be protected 100% and easier to access from anywhere in the game world for the buyer of said DAC.
 
A second hand market where DAC's are vulnerable to theft could be a good thing, but too prevent asshats from manipulating the DAC market and there by hurting the entire community and company some form of limits should be enforced, maybe a mini hacking game where you can steal the DAC from people that has hoarded  more then X amount, you know pvp is pvp im sure they would not mind.
 
In the end, the first buyer should be protected 100% no questions asked.
 
edit: maybe this is out of the scope of  this discussion, but theft and destruction will be keyfactors in how many and what kind of players we will get.

Some other games with game tokens limit the token to single sale, i.e., player 1 buys it for cash and can only sell it for game money, then player 2 buys from player 1 for game money and can only use the token for game time.
 
That seems to be a good approach - if that's done, game money will have no cash value.

Or single-use one-way portals to get rid of anyone. Send them right into a crossfire and you're done.

Howdy Community,
 
hm.. I love Scrap! SCRAP! Stylesheet, SCRAP!
 
My Ideas  :
- A Scrap collecting Ship or smaller Base in Space with a Workshop for Mechs.. called Rusty Monkey
- a neutral Space Pub with the name Rusty's and the slogan Carry a break , we take care of your old bird!
- Heavy Metal and SCRAP!
- a small planetary research or manufacturing base for cheap weapons and so on
 
...and eventually any time in a distant galaxy a Arena for Mechs to fight for the cup! YEAH!
 
(erm.. the y between Rust>y<'s .. written ie or y? .. sorry for this question, but i don't know xD)