LurkNautili

I would like it in terms of the aesthetic and in terms of having a justification for making space even harder to get to, but in terms of what it would do to the flow of the game I'm not on board with the idea. You can raise the delta-v requirement of getting into space even without the crutch if it makes sense from a balance perspective (as in you don't need extra justification in the form of having an easy way to get out of the gravity well). I do agree that the lore is kind of silly in many places. The whole notion of "kyrium can absorb energy and therefore a container made of ky

I'm pretty sure French timezone was implied. But like I said, I'm not too fussed about it personally -- so long as the game gets made eventually.

It is technically delayed, actually, since they did say when. But no big deal, really, these things are expected to happen. Try not to stress too much about it, NQ team.

It's not just the Minds, though, it's the lack of the right mix of cultural values, as well as some other things.

There are a few reasons why I feel its unlikely we can recreate anything that has values similar to the Culture within the confines of the game, or even a similar structure "politically", or at least not one that would be stable. Banks' own notes on the socioeconomical underpinnings and background/prerequisites of the Culture are a good read: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm. I found them quite enlightening. But I do think it would be cool to have a structure/group similar to the Culture in game, I just don't see how that would be feasible within the gi

How is that supposed to resemble the Culture, exaclty? As an avid Banks fan, I'm a bit confused here. I'm pretty sure they don't have a political system like that, or those kinds of goals/values either.

Hoo boy... I don't think I could come up with a comprehensive list even if I tried... There have been far too many. Here are some off the top of my head: - Minecraft - FortressCraft Evolved - Interstellar Rift - Natural Selection 2 - PULSAR: Lost Colony - Avorion - Empyrion - Endless Legend - C&C (Tiberian Sun, Red Alerts, etc.) - Zero-K - Global Agenda - A bit of EVE online - Planetary Annihilation - Firefall - Fallout (all of them) - The Black Watchmen + The Secret World(Do these count? A&B ga

Well, despite being a huge Blender fanboy... For a simple use case like that, I agree with others above who've recommended Sketchup, it's probably striking the best balance between easy and feature rich enough for your purposes. If you were doing more detailed modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering, etc... I'd recommend Blender. But for quick ship concepts for a novice? Definitely Sketchup.

Well, I've already reserved "Bob"... [EDIT: For the 6K reward... My ID card will have LurkNautili]

Like I said in another thread on the same topic, we'll need some actual metrics (gathered in game and probably via polls or something) post-launch to see whether something like this would be worth it to NQ. The model itself seems sound, it's just that we don't know if the solution to the optimization problem it entails includes this kind of alternate model or not, without the requisite data. Arguing based on gut-feeling whether there would be enough call for this to make it viable or not is a waste of time. In principle the concept is sound, and though a couple of valid concerns ha

You're assuming that you can create an alt that can generate a DAC with only a very small amount of play-time. I don't think that assumption is justified -- but we'll have to wait to either hear from NQ or see the game economy live to draw any definitive conclusions.

For games where the play is carefully curated and balanced, p2w is possible to thwart. Take for example a game like counter-strike or something, where every aspect of the game is controlled, and there's no progression/time element when it comes to in game power etc. In these kinds of situations, it's quite easy to prevent RL structures of socioeconomic stratification from bleeding over into the in-game world, and "p2w or not" as well as "is or isn't mechanic X p2w" are valid discussions, whenever you allow people some small avenue of influencing the game with money (cosmetics, boosters, etc).

Doesn't that logic apply regardless of payment model? Even with DACs you could: 1. Create an alt (or just use your main) 2. Train that account to become very effective in generating quanta, via trading or whatever 3. Use the profits to buy DACs and keep playing for free I think I'm missing some underlying assumption that's not mentioned here.

They wouldn't need to pay more, though, assuming this payment model would be deployed as an addition to the subscription and DAC based systems some time after launch. If price per game time is determined by the subscription cost per month divided by average play time per month per player over the entire player base, plus a margin to compensate for the loss in revenue from people switching to a more favorable payment model, the people who play more than that average get to keep doing what they're doing with subscriptions, and people playing far less than that average can get a sligh