Ben Fargo

I think the size of the crew should depend the number of elements that need to be operated, not the size of the ship.  Elements would include not only weapons, but things like sensors and shields.  It would be reasonable for a very large freighter to require fewer crew members than a much smaller warship.

There is a small contradiction between the lore bible and the devblog.  The lore bible was written latter, so I suspect that is the current intention.
 
There was another entry in the devblog that said the following:
 
"Everything else in the universe will be left unchanged, where it is, including your partners, your inventory, your ship or whatever your were doing before you “quantum-died”: everything remains on-site, and you wake up naked in a RN."
 
Whether we lose everything, or almost everything, it seems this will be a game where people will need to take death seriously.

Actually, according to the lore, someone who dies does lose everything.
 
This is a quote from the lore bible:  
 
"The amount of matter to switch increases the energy cost of the operation, so RN teleport only the minimal set of mass to get the desired effect, which is... your naked body."

I think the size of the crew should depend the number of elements that need to be operated, not the size of the ship.  Elements would include not only weapons, but things like sensors and shields.  It would be reasonable for a very large freighter to require fewer crew members than a much smaller warship.

I like this thread. c:
 
Getting back on topic now, no, I don't think that orgs should be limited. While it could make a very small amount of revenue for DU (as a means of controlling one man / not serious orgs), it would be insignificant in value since it is only a one time cost, especially if it's a small fee like $5. Not only that but it could be easily seen as greedy by the player base and that is never a good thing.
 
Also, they don't impact the gameplay, it's just a few words of text, maybe an icon, description, and a little more clutter in the org list; but other than that it's nothing major that would require any sort of limiting by NQ imho.

I like the idea of apprenticeships and this can be done in game to teach others the "soft" skill and by that I mean the skills that the player learns on how to play the game which is completely separate from in game stats/skills.
 
I dislike the fast tracking of skill gains.  This will be abused no matter what form it takes and will narrow the "correct" way to play DU. There should be no "correct" way.

To directly answer your question.
The best chances you can get these days. NQ provided enough information already to convince many of us to get into it. After all disappointments we get from some Alpha titles that put us down this is the 'last man standing'.
 
1. Because it's natural progression in games. Almost a dream game for many sci-fi genre sandbox fans. 
2. They have proved on devblog they know what they talking about.
3. The videos they share with us backs it all up.
4. They are honest, not promising miracles. But within technical constrains telling us what is possible or not.
5. They are passionate about it.
6. They are dedicated.
7. They have been backed up by large community. By us. As long as this feedback loop exist chances are rising.
 
If they will succeed with this project I see new chapter in MMO voxel based games opening up. Many genres could adapt same mechanics. From fantasy, medieval you name it. One thing proved to be effective over the time. Vision, passion and dedication to the project.
 
However, personally I believe we should stay away from direct comparison to games we know. SE, EVE, Minecraft etc. It may only disappoint people, because players coming from these games counting on DU to be an upgrade of it, those will disappointed. They may look for wrong things here, familiar things. It is more like DU will have some of its elements. But you need to get a fresh perspective on it. There is NO voxel based MMO in any form on the market yet. And this fact alone is worth a try. There is no single game when players itself can shape the gameplay to this extend including building game world itself.

Why?
Orgs are one of the primary tools in community creation.
 
But to answer your question more directly, no I dont think so.

@Megaddd:
 
We can understand your concerns, fears and/or doubts.
It's a natural reaction, especially in the era where a lot of projects are either promising the moon (which they can't deliver) or just failing.
So being skeptical is totally understandable. However, allow me to clarify/correct a few of your statements: 
 
1) EVE Online success:
 
EVE Online current gameplay loops are not what they are today just because of CCP designers. They have really talented people, no doubt about that. However, the gameplay loops you are refering haven't been as precise as they are now right from the beginning. There is a lot of work from the designers, that's a fact, but these loops where born from emergent gameplay at first: CCP developers have admitted themselves that when they launched the game in the first year, players have used the game mechanics in ways they hadn't think about. Then, they analysed what people liked to do in game and listen to the community feedback. Saying the success of the game was reached because they had 3-4 absolutely brilliant people is very reductive to say the least:
- They started with good base with open game mechanics.
- They have talented and reactive developers.
- They kept listening to their community. 
It's the combination of these 3 factors (not just one) that brought them success.
 
2) Not much gameplay has been shown until now:
 
Regarding Dual Universe, yes indeed, you have mostly seen technical stuff for the moment and very little from the gameplay.
Is it because we want "to hide" the gameplay side? Jumping to this conclusion is a bit oversimplying the situation.
 
Here are a few facts:
 
- The pros and cons of having proprietary techs:
 
Until a few months ago, the Novaquark team kept prioritizing and building the tech, for several important reasons:
 
The project is technologically ambitious, our studio is coming from nowhere (no past track record for the studio, even in the people in it are experienced), and the combination of these two points made it very hard to be taken seriously right from the beginning, especially in the current context where overpromising has become a common thing. So the first thing we had to address is to show some proof saying "Hey guys, this is really possible!".
 
The other important reason is because it's just common sense to start by building the tech before the gameplay. It's only once we know the capabilities of our tech - after testing it - that we can build a gameplay adapted to it.
 
Some could argue we are taking a very long time to build our tech compared to other studios able to show advanced gameplay just only one year (or sometimes even 6 months) after they started the project. Why is there so much difference between them and us? Simply because they started the project with an engine with many features implemented. This kind of engine is great to have a short development cycle. However, "ready-to-use" game engines have a drawback: you can't expect making a game really different frow what has been done before.
 
Dual Universe is in this case. We tested affordable game engines (Unity and Unreal Engine) in the early days of the studio and we came to the conclusion that they wouldn't allow Novaquark devs to do exactly what they had in mind. We hadn't the time (and the man power) to build a complete game engine from scratch. So we opted for a middleground solution: we've chosen Unigine, which was a very good base to start with (especially for planetary simulation), with not too many technical constraints (generally proportional to the number of features already implemented in the game engine). However, having not many features already implemented in the game engine is a double edged sword: having less features implemented from the start than popular game engines, means more things to develop on our side: the massively multiplayer tech, the voxel tech, and some of the graphics tech (to be optimized for a massively multiplayer context).
 
Then, after all of this reached a reasonably advanced state (it's not finished yet), we were able to start the gameplay development. And that's where Novaquark was a few months ago. As you can imagine, it wasn't possible to show advanced gameplay footage just a few weeks after having seriously started the development of this part. It takes at least months to have something meaningful to show.
 
- The lack of gameplay loops in the early days of sandbox games:
 
As CaptainTwerkMotor stated, you won't find complete predefined game loops, at least not at the beginning. In this regard, we have exactly the same open-minded approach than CCP Developers in the early days of EVE Online. It's also what happened, to some extent, for Minecraft. In the early days of a sandbox game, developers give "tools" to the players and those "create" the gameplay loops they like. Then the developers make improvements to the game to favorize the emergence of popular gameplay loops. That's, in our opinion, how a successful sandbox game can be born: synergy between developers and the community, not just game design decisions made by developers.
 
So yes, you will see gameplay mechanics in the future that could be used as pieces of a gameplay loop. But you probably won't see a complete gameplay loop, or if we do such kind of video, then it will be to show some example, not to say "This is how the game is meant to be played". Moreover, the Alpha will launch with just a few of the gameplay bricks we have planned on the long run, precisely to get feedback on the first ones by alpha testers, and adapt/improve the following ones coming into the game.
 
3) The poor graphical performance in the Dev Diary videos:
 
You're right, the framerate of the recent DevDiary videos is not a decent one.
If you have read the comments under those videos, you might have seen that we already replied regarding this concern.
While we have currently a good framerate in-game on a high-spec machine, when it comes to recording it, the framerate displayed in the video is far from being representative of the current framerate in-game. We made tests with Shadowplay and OBS, and while tweaking the parameters improved a bit the framerate in the videos, this is still far from being perfect. Yes, we admit we haven't any expert (yet) in this domain inside the team at the moment. However, we have taken note of advices made by some professional streamers and youtubers following our Youtube channel and we are going to have a dedicated machine to record videos for DevDiaries in the future. We planned to have it for the March DevDiary of March, but it might be too tight in the schedule to make it happen next week. We will give an update on this topic next week.
 
Long story short:
If you have questions, ask them. We will do our best to answer them
We can't promise we will be able to give you only satisfying answers (as you might have a lot of "too soon to give you a detailed answer on this gameplay aspect") but it's sure you won't have any answer if you don't ask first. 
 
@All:
 
If you would like to see some dedicated videos to a specific topic already presented in the previous videos, just let us know: I can't promise anything right now, but I can transmit to the devs what are the topics you would like to see developed.
 
@Bleep_Bloop:
 
We won't go "Early Access" on Steam any time soon (if we go one day, as it's not even certain either). We want to wait until we're close to have all the main gameplay mechanics implemented in game and a decent stable version. We are very well aware that the Steam Community is composed of a lot more people that want to play a nearly-finished game than testing a game in its early stages... And that's perfectly fine: we totally understand that a lot of people are not interested in experiencing the intermediate stages of a game development. As for your question "what are the chances of this game reaching its full potential?", unless someone has a working crystal ball... No one can answer this question accurately. The chances are something that can vary a lot in a development process, according to the decisions taken and the unexpected events. So far, we think (but you are free to think otherwise) the odds are good, as we haven't hit any "wall" that seems like an impossible obstacle. Our private investors, who saw the success of the Kickstarter campaign, are ready to help even further in the game development, as promised. So as far as we know, there is no dark cloud in the sky at the moment.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

That would interfere with the lore of DU, as AIs shut themselves down a long time ago (in 2145 - Novark leaves Earth in 2536 - read here for more info) and as such it would not be logical for AIs to exist.
 
Price fixing, destruction, pirates, noblemen, some crisis, some doomsday device and every other interesting gameplay should come from players, and not from some random, stupid NPC AI or something.

One way of implementing roads would be to make the amount of energy a hovercraft uses depend on the height it hovers at.  Hovering at ten meters would use more energy than hovering at a few centimeters.  It would be difficult to hover that low on rough terrain without colliding with the ground, so it would only be practical on flat surfaces.  This seems realistic and it does not require any special elements or materials.  Roads would just be long, flat voxel constructions.  Since they would save energy, there would be an economic incentive to build them on frequently traveled routes.

In Dual Universe, just about anything players use will have been designed and constructed by players. Aside from the Arkship and the odd ‘relic’ if it’s something players use, it’s also something players made from scratch. Literally. No magic box for placing materials in then pressing a button and Poof! a hovercraft sits before you. Making stuff in Dual Universe will take time, more than a few people, materials and a bit of focus on the tasks at hand. Not to mention the design work needed to figure what needs building and the best way to go about it. For new designs this may result in the development of prototypes for testing and refinement. It all results in significant effort  and thought for creating the items and equipment and structures we intend on using.
  In time, and after experiencing sufficient loss, the things players go to lengths to create will take on a value beyond their utility. A person will think twice before doing away with an item, given what it took to bring the item into existence. This will only increase, likely exponentially, for larger structures like buildings, stations and large vehicles. The investment deepens as an organization grows and prospers through those creations.   That value will translate into wars as well. Organizations will seek to oust the owners of a given property rather than destroy it. Wars of ownership will be more prevalent than wars of destruction. Wars can even resolve with a treaty following a form of payment to the ousted owners in exchange for a transfer of ownership. The alternative would be complete destruction of said property, so cutting one's losses would likely take precedence. Only in the most prejudiced wars would annihilation be uniformly on the agenda.   That brings me to those players we have seen who only want to watch the world burn. This type of player will certainly get to do that in Dual Universe, a place where everything out there is built by players and therefore is vulnerable. I’m pretty sure they will be a minority, but of that percentage those players will have absolutely nothing to lose. Stations and ships will have their uses for them but only as a means to an ends. Once their usefulness is ended, these world burners will destroy it. Because of that they will be unlike the vast majority of players in Dual Universe who see the enduring value of what is made.   For the sake of this discussion I’ll call these world burners ‘Reavers,’ using Firefly terminology. I suspect if the Reavers in Dual Universe become too numerous that there will be wars against them and they’ll be pretty hard fought struggles. At stake will be literally everything out there not behind a perma-shield. That could actually become a historically significant event in Dual Universe. It could also turn cyclical.    In any case it’s something to think about.  

I am very proud to introduce the latest product from Evil, Inc!
 
We have been working to develop tools that benefit the community, and the first such tool is a new data tracking website for Dual Universe at www.du-stats.com
 
This site will function very much like zkillboard.com does for EVE Online. Right now it is very basic and only shows a map of the community. This will expand as time goes on with new features coming online over time. Most of the back end tools have already been built and feature development is now more a matter of web design than anything else! Upcoming features include forum statistics, friends list tracking, in depth user profiles, change over time displays, alt detection and organization auditing! 
 
Now for some FAQ:
 
What can I use this for? This is a good tool for checking on people who are in your organization, or want to be. It's also a good tool to see which orgs share a lot of members or figure out who that person you are talking to is.
 
Is the data real time? No. The data is not real time and represents the last time when the website refreshed its data.
 
How often does the data update? Depends. It generally is updated once every two days, but sometimes can be a bit faster or slower.
 
Why isn't it real time? There is no need for real time data at this stage. Updating that frequently takes a lot of server resources. The update time will be reduced once there is a need for faster data. When the game comes out, the goal is for a 15 minute update time.
 
Will there be new features? Yes. This is very much an in-development project. Also, I'm not great at web design, so it will be simplistic for a while.
 
How long have you been working on it? About 4 months.
 
What do I do if I found a bug or security flaw? Please either report it here or pm me. 
 
I want my org to be excluded from this, can you remove it? Nope. If it exists on the official site, it exists here. If you don't want people to see it, don't create it.
 
I searched for my name and didn't find anything. Why? The map that is currently there only shows people who are in an organization. If you are not in an org, your name will not appear. Future features will show accounts even if they are not in any orgs.
 
Does it work on mobile devices? Maybe. It isn't currently designed for that, but hopefully will be in the future.

As last time, I object. As last time, this is a bad, standard mechanic for bad gameplay. As last time, it only favors players who participate in that "raid"

Welcome to the forums!
 
The complete destruction of planets, by any means, is not something that the developers are interested in allowing to happen. NPCs and aliens, too, are something the developers are trying to stray away from. They want the game to be a civilization simulator, and throwing in a giant NPC creature that destroys the work of players goes against their aim. It would be fun for a typical game, but for what the developers are trying to do, I doubt something like this will make it in to the game.

AND NOW IS THE TIME TO OPEN THE CURTAINS !!!
I AM PROUD TO RELEASE OUR FIRST CONCEPT SHIP !! 
MEET THE TOKUSATSU OUR FIRST CARGO SHIP !!!
 

 
 

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

 
 
 
 

See, the issue with your idea is that a mining unit needs to be constructed.
 
Mining as it is right now at the basic level doesnt need anything beyond your nanoformer. You start the game you can start mining your way up. You lost everything in some high stakes game, go dig a hole. It is a self contained loop that doesn't need external help to get a player started.
 
I'm not saying it couldn't work your idea for a unit to freeze the auto refill script. Though resources are finite as a design rule, that includes planets as a whole.
 
And me personally, if someone digs a big hole I want it to persist until another player fills it back up.
 
Alioth as a starter planet is huge, I dont think swiss cheese will be that big of an issue.

I think the transporter should be able to steal the cargo, but there should be consequences for doing that.  The consequences, however, should be determined and enforced by the social structures the players create, not by the mechanics of the game.  To me, this is primarily a game about building a civilization.  That means the game must allow problems like this to exist, so players can try to find a way to solve them.
 
The conditions of the job, including who takes the risks and what happens if the cargo is not delivered, should be determined by the transporter and the customer, or by the organizations they belong to.  Having the solution built into the game would probably be more effective, but to me, much less interesting.

I think the transporter should be able to steal the cargo, but there should be consequences for doing that.  The consequences, however, should be determined and enforced by the social structures the players create, not by the mechanics of the game.  To me, this is primarily a game about building a civilization.  That means the game must allow problems like this to exist, so players can try to find a way to solve them.
 
The conditions of the job, including who takes the risks and what happens if the cargo is not delivered, should be determined by the transporter and the customer, or by the organizations they belong to.  Having the solution built into the game would probably be more effective, but to me, much less interesting.

I think the transporter should be able to steal the cargo, but there should be consequences for doing that.  The consequences, however, should be determined and enforced by the social structures the players create, not by the mechanics of the game.  To me, this is primarily a game about building a civilization.  That means the game must allow problems like this to exist, so players can try to find a way to solve them.
 
The conditions of the job, including who takes the risks and what happens if the cargo is not delivered, should be determined by the transporter and the customer, or by the organizations they belong to.  Having the solution built into the game would probably be more effective, but to me, much less interesting.

No worries, EVE Online's contract system has you covered. TL; DR : the hauler puts up a collateral fee for the cargo, that the person issued the cotnract evaluated his cargo as.

If I wanted to move 10 billions worth of minerals to my factory, I would take into account :

1) the price of my minerals

2) the time I would invest on them if I was to refine or manufacture through them.

3) how much I would actually make in the market.

Then I set up a collateral of 20 billions on my 10 billion cargo. If the cargo hauler does not deliver the cargo within a certain window, I get the collateral the hauler put up to undertake the contract. If the Hauler delivers the cargo to the cargo container I designated for him to put the cargo in, he gets paid as the contract is fulfilled. 

And that's how it's done. A simple mechanism of contracts. Contracts in EVE == player quests. Some may ask you to bring the body of a particular person to them to be rewarded. Other contracts may be for minerals, while others use contracts to sell stuff.

Yes, this can be used to scam noobs that can't tell what contract is a scam, but hey, ce la vie.

So yeah, cargo should be stealable, but if you put up collateral for it when issueing the contract, you are covered. It's the hauler's problem to make sure they deliver the cargo.

So as most of you know there was a small meet up and livestream with JC tonight. I was there with a few other people and got to chat with JC and see the version of the game they currently have.
 
While I was already very excited for this game, and confident about it's future, I am now doubly excited and confident in this project. For so long this game has been nothing but a few trailers and a forum to me, so to finally see it in person was incredible. The game was not perfect; there were some bugs and moments when things did not quite render properly (really they just took a moment to load in) but the sheer immensity of the game and the moments that created were astonishing. Watching the sun peak over the horizon, and the shadows being cast by objects in the world. When JC got lost flying between worlds. Zooming from the surface to orbit and then back to another point on the surface. Pointing to a spot in the sky and then flying to it, only to discover a whole new planet with entirely different terrain. Looking at an island from space and then Zooming in on it to see just how big it really is.
There was moment in particular that struck me: JC was showing us Alioth from orbit when suddenly a large dark spot started to move across it. It took a moment for us to recognize what was happening; there was an eclipse going on. For a game this early in development, the world already feels quite vivid and immersive, and I'm sure it will only get more refined as time goes on.
JC himself is also quite fun to talk to. His enthusiasm for the game is quite evident and his passion is contagious as I could not help but get more excited the more I heard him talk. He is both the dreamer who dreams big, and the realistic one who can make those dreams into a tangible reality. This game could have no one better at the helm than him.
Having seen some of the backend technology that runs the game, I can attest that this game seems to be literally built for success. It's built to deal with the challenges of a single shard mmo voxel based game.
 
In summary, NQ believe in their project and they care about their community. The biggest thing that strikes me is their openness and honesty; the way they present their game is sincerely genuine. They truly believe in DU, and that makes me believe.
 
Dual Universe is going to be amazing.

I have “transcribed” the Q&A from the video of the conference that was held on February 28th. This is not a direct transcription; I have cut out general conversation, anything that was repeated, and just put in an overall format change to make the discussion that occurred more appropriate for reading. The idea was to isolate information. It was often difficult to hear exactly what was being said, so this was further reason not to quote the conference verbatim. I have not added anything that was not said (there were times when I was tempted to add in some of the things I know about the game, but I didn’t!). If you feel that anything is left out, or that something should be changed, then please let me know!
 
Something else that I have added in is ‘extra info’. This is stuff which was not directly asked about, but which came up in discussion and I thought appropriate to add.
 
This documentation begins around the 30 minute mark of the video (which can currently be found on their Facebook page), when the Q&A started.
 
 
How in depth will the mechanics of refining resources and creating alloys be?
There will be some pretty deep recipe networks, which will make building complex or high-end elements quite complicated, to the point where the specializations required will be so varied that some of the components will most likely have to be purchased from the market. There will be different alloys which can be created by combining different resources and materials, which can be used to create interesting materials and properties. Alloys may be something that the player can research, to allow for them to find new ways of combining different resources to achieve different properties.
 
Can you transport hover vehicles inside of larger ships; in other words, transport small ships inside of larger ships?
Definitely yes, this is the whole architecture of the game. The technology of the servers are all made for that, so yes.
 
How is in-game currency generated? Do you do missions, sell stuff, buy orders?
It is unlikely there will be missions, but this is not completely ruled out. They may be added later, but the main source will be from NPCs/bots on the market, where you can spend your money or sell your stuff. One of the issues with bots however is that they have to be designed such that they do not disrupt the economy; the economy is intended to be shaped by players. The intent is that market bots will amplify or emulate transactions that are occurring between players.
 
Will market bots be permanent, or will they come and go away after a while?
The idea is that, if there is a lot of activity by players, they should go away, but this is not final. They may be used later in the game's life to make changes to the amount of money in circulation to regulate the economy. The main thing is that the amount of money in the game should be proportional to the number of players, as well as the type of activity taking place and the amount of the respective activity.
 
Extra Info:
The name of the currency in the game will be quanta. Quanta, the plural of quantum, is a unit of energy; since the currency will sort of be the “energy” of a lot of the game, the name quanta is appropriate.
 
Does having things in your inventory increase your mass, and does that influence construct physics?
Definitely yes. If a player has a lot of things in their inventory, and they step into a ship, they might push the ship down. A ship with lots of containers may fly well with no cargo, but if the containers are filled up then the ship may not be able to fly anymore.
 
Will there be chat systems? Global, regional, planetary?
There will be some sort of local regional chat. However, regional is not easily defined in the game; for example, a planet could have hundreds of thousands of people on it, so regional is not something that is precisely defined yet. But there needs to be something at least that allows players to talk to other nearby players.
 
Will there be such a thing as ship linking; will there be docking ports?
Small ships docking inside of larger ships is definitely a planned feature. However, docking two ships of the same size together gets a little bit more messy. With that feature, large layers and chains of ships could be created. At this point, which player is controlling the physics?
 
How will construct repair work?  Will there be repair units, or will it all have to be done by hand?
It will always be possible to repair by hand, but there will be repair units that will be able to restore a ship back to what it initially was before it was damaged, provided the unit has the required resources, energy, and time. The repair unit will know what the construct it is a part of is supposed to look like, and it will have the capability of restoring a construct back to that original image if the construct is damaged.
 
How does the production of ships from blueprints work? Is it an instantaneous process, does it happen after a specific time, part by part?
It is not going to be instantaneous, it is going to take time. It will take resources and energy, and probably if it is significant then it will need to be defended in some way, unless it’s happening in the safe zone. The required time will be proportional to the size of what is being built, so mass producing battle cruisers is not something that will be able to be done overnight.
 
What happens to a flying ship when I destroy its engine in space? Does it just come to a stop or does it continue at the last known speed?
Engines are physical. So if there are two engines, one on each side of a ship, and one of the engines is destroyed, then the ship is going to spin. The core idea is that engines are physical, so if they are destroyed then that can impact how the ship moves. There is a very good chance that, given that there is no friction in space, a ship will continue to move if its engines are shut off. However, if a player were to be in a moving ship, log off, and come back three weeks later, they would find themselves in the middle of nowhere; this is not desirable.
 
Will there be cloaking?
There will be cloaking. It will probably not be around at release, but it is one of the features that seems obvious for a game like Dual Universe. This is desirable for a player than may want to log off for a while; they can cloak and lock a ship to keep it safe.
 
What methods will be available to detect constructs, and to avoid being detected?
There needs to be a way to detect others in the game. There will be ways to scan for players, whether on or below ground; and similarly there will be something like a distortion field that allows you to be hidden from sensors. But, there should never be a totally foolproof way to hide without some weakness. It will also be possible to put trackers on ships, and a corresponding countermeasure to that.
 
Extra info:
The nanoformer will be able to 3D print basic and fundamental parts and components for the player to use.
Ships can be stolen and reverse engineered; Lua scripts can be read by those who steal a ship with a script on it.
 
How are scripts shared between players; a script runs client side, but is it shared with players?
Scripts are always running on the players machine, but the text of the script is synchronized, so everybody can see it. So if there are different control units with different scripts in them, one player can start one of them and another can start the other script, and they will run in parallel. Similarly, whatever the scripts do is synchronized by the server for all players. Scripts are run on the clients computer, but several players can be simultaneously running and using different scripts which are all made by a single player (and thus running on that players computer), and all players can see the effects of the scripts. One exception is that you cannot have two players controlling the same element at the same time.
 
Can scripts be hacked?
Hacking will be a skill within the game which will allow a player to bypass RDMS systems. It will require time, and is a planned feature, but may not be present at release.
 
Extra Info:
Locations are something that can be itemized; as an example, the coordinates of a vein of ore within a planet can be “itemized” whereby it can be sold on the market.
Reputation will be a mechanic within the game, but exactly how it will work is not completely finalized.
 
Will armors for players be modular (i.e. heavy armor chestpiece type-A with legpiece type- B ), or are we looking forward to a single-piece type of armor, and in an extent, will weapons be a part of an armor or are they separate customizable entities?
Armor will be separate; that is for sure. It is likely, certainly at release and at least for a while, that player armor mechanics will remain simplified, but the concept has potential to expand.
 
Can a solo player fly a warship with many weapons, or does each weapon need a player?
There needs to be a player for every weapon; that is the requirement. This is for several reasons, one being that the game is an MMO intended to have players working together, another that it doesn’t make sense for one person to single-handedly control a huge warship.
 
Have you considered how you are going to do the updates?
There will be expansions every ~6-12 months. Updates with new features will come out at regular intervals.
 
If you claim two territories next to each other, do they fuse together as one big one?
There will be ways to link territory units. Players will also have the option of having lots of little territory units, or one big territory unit that links everything. This gives the option of having one large easily defended tile which covers a huge area, or lots of distributed and less easily defendable tiles which only allow access to the local territory. One mechanic which may be present is that a claimed territory tile cannot be attacked if it is surrounded by other claimed territory tiles, provided they all have the same owner.
 
Will players ever need food?
The question of food is linked to survival gameplay. There probably will not be survival gameplay at the beginning, because it requires so much work to be functional, but it is something that has the potential to be added later.
 
Extra Info:
A bowl of rice is 8 dollars in San Francisco.

So, you mean these containers here connected with particle relay looking like this ??? Both images are on their Twitter page. theya re supposed to be relays from contaienrs to other Elements (notice how the containers have "plugs" for the relays" ).

My expectation is that instead of a few large organizations, there will be a multitude of small to medium-sized ones, each with its own specialty.  These will not be connected by a hierarchy, but by a network of commercial transactions.  They will interdependent, so none of them will really dominate the others.
 
If I am right, organizations will not have the resources to build whole cities.  There will be organizations that govern cities, but the buildings in them will belong to many different organizations, who will usually hire other organizations to design and build them.
 
I do not know if this has happened in any other game, but I expect Dual Universe to be different than anything that has come before.  In particular, it will have a very powerful system for defining organizations and with it, I think the organizations will resemble those in the real world, more than those in other games.  Companies are outsourcing functions they formerly had internal departments for.  Cities that were built around one huge factory are now surrounded by industrial parks filled with many different businesses.  It is just my guess, but I think we will see those same trends in Dual Universe.