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Ben Fargo

Alpha Team Vanguard
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Everything posted by Ben Fargo

  1. Thank you for giving us access to the Community Suggestions Trello. I found the information in it very helpful.
  2. This story began as an entry for Novawrimo2017. I started it, but it did not seem right, so I abandoned it for a while. Eventually, I had a new idea for it and then it all fell into place. By then it was much too late for the contest, but I wanted to share it anyway. I invite you to join me in an investigation of the relationship between a man and his AI in the fateful year of 2145. MaybeNextWeek.pdf This story is part of the AI Series.
  3. What I said was somewhat unclear. I did not mean one person would be located in each tile. I was guessing the size of an organization that would be needed to defend a planet and I think it would need at least as many members as tiles. I agree they would be organized into patrols, but there would need to be enough to keep the whole planet under constant surveillance. Most members will probably only play a few hours a day and some will be administrators and support people, so I am assuming the number actively patrolling at any time would be much less than the total number of members. They would need to have constant surveillance to keep anyone from quickly claiming unclaimed tiles. Even if the organization has the strength to defeat anyone who makes those claims, doing that would probably take more resources than making a TCU for the tile themselves.
  4. I would imagine any organization large enough to defend a planet from intruders would have the resources to create enough TCU's to cover it. Alioth for example has over 50,000 tiles and I would expect an organization would need at least one member per tile to defend a planet effectively. The real number will probably be higher than that, but that is still a huge organization. If the organization has not claimed all the tiles, then any organization that manages to sneak or fight their way in will be able to place their own TCU. While the intruder's claim would probably not last long, it would still be easier for the organization controlling the planet to place their own.
  5. I also like Empyrion (http://www.empyriongame.com). It is similar to Space Engineers with more survival aspects.
  6. Flipmaze A Flipmaze playfield is a surface divided into eighty one squares, arranged in nine rows and nine columns. On the ground between each square is a force field emitter, which can be activated to prevent movement between two adjacent squares. This means each square (except those on the outer edge) is surrounded by four emitters. The squares in the corners have two emitters and are open on the other two sides. These serve as the entrances to the playfield. The other squares on the outside have three emitters and a wall on the fourth side. Each square is in either an open or a closed state. If an emitter is between two closed squares or between one open and one closed square, it is activated. If both squares are open, the emitter goes off and players can move between the squares. Changing a square from either open to closed or from closed to open is called flipping it. There are two teams of three players. Two of the players on each team are mazerunners. The mazerunners start at the corners and try to reach the square in the middle. The third player is the flipper. The flippers operate a control panel overlooking the playfield. They push buttons to flip squares, to let their mazerunners reach the middle and to block the mazerunners on the other team. The control panel has eighteen switches, one for each row and one for each column. When the flipper hits a switch, it flips all of the squares in the corresponding row or column. Note that it is the squares that flip, not the emitters. If an emitter is between an open and a closed square and both flip, the emitter will remain activated. The game starts with all of the squares closed. As the flippers hit the switches, some of the squares will flip. The mazerunners move through open squares, trying to reach the center square. The center square contains a button. The first team to push this button wins the game. A nine by nine playfield seems like a good size, big enough to be interesting but not overwhelming. However, when the game is actually played, we may find a different size is better.
  7. @Red_Dirt_Gamer I see this is your first post, so welcome to Dual Universe. Seeing this post makes me wonder how much you understand the game. It will allow customization to an extent that is far beyond what you are suggesting. Implementing your idea would take away the freedom that I find so attractive.
  8. It sounds like you have a good plan. Welcome to DU.
  9. I'm planning for a cargo ship, eventually about 50 to 60 m, although I expect it will need to be smaller at first.
  10. Welcome to DU. I was programming before I even heard of DOS, so I've been around a while myself.
  11. @Iskiox Sorry, I missed a couple words when I read your post, which changed the meaning significantly. Are you suggesting this would be a replacement for the current tile system or just another option? I would not like to see it as a replacement, because it would make it more difficult for organizations with limited resources to claim just one tile. If it was an option, I do not see why anyone would choose it unless the overall cost of a core and its surrounding tiles was significantly less than getting the tiles individually. The chance of losing several tiles by losing just one unit seems like a serious disadvantage compared to only losing one tile for each unit.
  12. MMORPG ( www.mmorpg.com ) is giving people the chance to vote for "the most wanted MMO of 2018". Dual Universe is one of the choices.
  13. I completely disagree with this idea. Claiming a planet should require claiming every tile on it. It should be very difficult for even a very large organization to accomplish. Of course an organization that controls most of a planet would probably have enough power to dominate anyone else on it, but they should not automatically control anything more than the tiles they have claimed.
  14. I would like to thank Falstaf and everyone at Outpost Zebra for the article featuring the Blue Moon Crew and for all they do to keep us informed about Dual Universe.
  15. I do not remember seeing information on sizes, but what you are calling blocks are referred to as elements in Dual Universe. You may have more luck if you search for that.
  16. The motif of the Blue Moon Crew will be a blue crescent.
  17. I agree there are good reasons not to build real spacecraft with cockpits like those. However, in any science fiction setting, there needs to be a balance between what seems probable and what is recognizable to people. We do not know what the equivalent of a cockpit will actually look like in the future, but people in the future are likely to instantly recognize it when they see it. Making the cockpits resemble ones we are familiar at least captures that feeling.
  18. There is a difference between ships being similar because they are the same type of craft and one being a replica of another. You were asking about making replicas and legally the IP owner can choose to not allow that. Disney in particular has the reputation of being fiercely protective of their IP. What the players or developers would like this game to be does not change what the laws are.
  19. I would like to suggest a different aspect of pay-to-win. Instead of considering whether another player has an advantage over me because they sell DACs, I am going to talk about how I feel about selling them myself. I do not intend to sell any. When I play a game like DU, it is to see what I can accomplish in it, but it is the struggle that makes it satisfying, not the accomplishment itself. In the sense that it would allow me to accomplish more with less effort in the game, selling DACs could be called pay-to-win, but it would be more accurate to call it paying someone else to play the game for me. I only play games if I enjoy them, so to me it does not make sense to pay another player to enjoy it for me. Everyone does not have the same idea of what is enjoyable, so I do not mind if other players sell DACs, but I consider the ones I got as a founder only as a pre-paid subscription.
  20. That is reasonable, but I would prefer to not be able to turn them on or off. If they do not use wormholes, then I wonder what they could use. It could be something we have not even imagined, but I like science fiction better when we can at least speculate how things work.
  21. I would prefer the fixed connections. To me, the fixed connections seem much more believable. If stargates use wormholes, they could only connect two places, the ends of the wormhole. This fits with the need to send the probe, since a tiny wormhole would be created, the probe would carry one end to another location where it would be expanded into a stargate. I find it difficult to even speculate how a dialing stargate would be connected. Aside from that, I also think the fixed connections would make the game more interesting. If they have fixed connections and are expensive to build, there will be a tendency to use existing stargates, so going between two stars would often require using a series of stargates. This makes controlling the territory on those routes important. With the dialing stargates, if a system has one, it is essentially connected to everywhere and trips will be directly from one star to the destination. The fixed connections would give a structure to space that would otherwise be lost.
  22. I was searching for some game I might like in Google. I didn't have a clear idea of what I was looking for, but nothing I saw seemed to be what I wanted until I found Dual Universe. I don't remember what the first thing I found in the search was, but it was enough to interest me. Everything I've seen since then convinces me I made the right choice.
  23. The Blue Moon Crew has a new post in the community portal--Ferry Tales. Either it never got listed in the Latest Posts column or it slipped through very fast. Since I didn't see it there, I thought I would mention it here. https://community.dualthegame.com/organization/blue-moon-crew
  24. I was a professional programmer for forty years, just retired. I love programming, so I think using Lua will be a lot of fun. If the first question had an option between the first and second choices, I would have picked that. I expect to do things more advanced than just the basics, but I do not claim I will be a master.
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