Anopheles

I personally love forums and find them quite useful. They're the perfect spot to house (and organize) information long-term.  

Discord is obviously great for quick, real-time communication. When NQ had fewer community team members, it made sense to spend more time in a space where announcements could be pushed and reacted to quickly - especially with the game in Beta now, being able to gather player insights immediately is extremely useful to the devs.

Forum communications take a bit more time to thoughtfully write and need, to some degree, to be planned in advance. Now that there are more community-focused staffers, adequate time can be spent planning out posts, organizing the information and engaging with everyone here properly. ❤️ 

Hopefully that makes sense!

- Edited to say: SpaceMom can't be everywhere at once! (Even if I do regard her as some kind of community super woman!) I'm happy I can now split her duties with her! -  

Although I agree with everything you say I was distracted by my ironimeter exploding.

I wouldn't mind a "main org" tag either, but that's an omega stretch, I know.

"But Why?"
 
That question, right there, is the crux of it. Yes, the game has significant issues in a lot of ways, but for me none are more significant than the lack of reasons for players to interact.

As it stands, you can mine to get mats, build industry to make things, make ships from those things, and then go fighting. You can do any one of those stages and sell your stuff on to people who want to do the next stage.

But there is no reason to fight, as fighting is space only, and there is nothing in space to fight over. Safe space has everything you need, without risk, so there's no point going out into PvP space unless you want to go for a fight, and sadly combat is not a satisfying experience in and of itself.

Without people losing ships or equipment, the demand for new ships is minimal, which affects the builders. The builders have no customers, which means they don't interact with the industrialists, who don't interact with the miners.

Just one example, but it follows through for the rest of the game. You cant be a trader when no-one's buying goods, etc etc.

I'm really glad you asked this, as a new player. My org had a big influx of players as Beta launched, and nearly all of them have since unsubscribed, as there is nothing meaningful for them to do now that we've got everything established, so you're far from alone in thinking it.

There really is a lot of potential in this game, which is why I've been playing it, but I must admit to asking myself that same "But Why?" question a lot of late, and I really don't like that.

It's not an, um, ah, traditional beta.

Please forgive the impertinent question but is English your first language?
 
I only ask because there have been cases of warnings given because nuances in meaning and tone have, in the forum Moderator's own words, been missed by them not having English, in an English language Forum, as their primary language.
 
(Though,  it goes without saying, their English seems technically excellent).
 
 
 

They locked the thread because you lose your shit like a 2 year old, and then name call.

A destroyed core, regardless of it being due to crash or abandonment, should be repairable and the construct salvageable. This just takes away yet another game mechanics and it seems NQ though they'd get away with it by conveniently excluding it from their release notes when it was changed.
 
This appears to once again be a change to cover up symptoms (of a broken or unbalanced mechanic used for griefing) like fly and warp traps, single voxel "towers", Glass panels placed in the sky/space, instead of actually dealing with the issue.
 
The technical debt keeps piling up.

And a big thing I think people forget is....its a game. 
 
I want challenge.  If i fuck up and a pirate gets me, thats ok.  I mean NQ is doing everything they can to give you options, i mean hell, there is a whole moon/planet called "sanctuary" and even recent interviews JC basically confirmed the current blue circle isnt going away.  If you cant stand to lose a ship, a base, or competition then maybe this game isn't for you.  Been saying that for years now.

I sympathize -- and sometimes wonder why PvPers still have enough patience for this game. 
 
People have talked about NQ's mountain of technical debt before, but I wonder about this a lot.
 
Even if they wanted to work on PvP exclusively for the next year straight, I wonder if they'd be able to accomplish much. How many outstanding issues would they need to fix before they can make progress on PvP features...? 
 
Even with a year, they'd probably make some really bad choices because NQ doesn't really care about game design as a discipline -- they prefer the "use JC's intuition then fix it" model. This...isn't so great for game dev. 
 
If every player on this forum (which NQ doesn't read lol) banded together to push NQ to move PvP forward, I bet it'd just be business as usual for NQ...especially if they have so much tech debt that they can't make progress on any content in general which seems to be the case. And when they do finally drop a PvP feature...? It'd probably be a buggy, poorly balanced compromise that pleases no one. 
 
I wouldn't be that surprised if PvP remains "as-is" for a long, long while because of their ever-growing technical debt. When you have a bunch of tech debt, the last thing you want to do is start touching a feature that you have no confidence about -- and its really clear that NQ has no confidence in their understanding of PvP (or hell, player interaction in general).
 
Personally, I don't think PvP will ever really "work" in DU -- it just isn't remotely thought out, even today...I'd be really shocked if NQ manages to improvise their way into a well considered well balanced version of PvP. If they do pull that off, it'll take a long, long time and a lot of painful trial and error. 
 
TLDR: I don't believe NQ has the design or technical experience to create a good PvP experience...not without a ton of iterations they can't afford. 

All I see is pve'ers intimating that pvpers just want to destroy things without challenge.   Edit (Some Pve'ers are) Refusing to see any nuance, refusing to help themselves, refusing to cooperate in any burgeoning civilisation and trying to get NQ to make a different game.

Complaining about pvp now is like complaining about the colour of a wall that's not been painted yet.

Complaining about pvp now is like complaining about the colour of a wall that's not been painted yet.

Flying Faster with less
or
...Dual Universe and the cross section calculation
 
I quite enjoy building small efficient atmo flyers (you probably know the Hagboard)
The key to the fun factor of these little ships is keeping the Frontal Cross section as low as possible. For the Hagboard it is usually 0.38 which is the smallest value that is possible if you still want to have the comfort of a hover engine on your construct.
But since some months, DU is not making it easy for these little ships. There is a bad bug with the cross section calculation which usually leads to a wrong (higher) calculation of the frontal cross section.
You can easily see the problem by entering build mode and having a look at your max speed & frontal cross section. In most cases you first see lower speeds and a higher cross section, and after some additional seconds this value changes to the "real" values.
So the frontal cross section is supposed to be the total surface of the ship when looking from the front. This should be a static value, but due to the bug, we get 2 separate values.
Even worse: when starting a flight DU usually takes the "worse" value to calculate the flight physics.
I assume that the first "bad" calculation is done on the client side, and the second "real" values somehow come either from the server or using some values being loaded fro the server.
As sometimes the server is slow, we get into a situation where the "better" values might even never get loaded to the client.
As well during flight, DU re-calculates this values. So even if we manage to start a flight with the "better" values, we might get faster speed & Acceleration at first, but after some control movements DU usually falls back to the slow values.
There is 1 trick how you can do a test flight and "force" DU into the faster values.. give this a try:
1. place your construct flight ready, pointing towards a wide open area ( e.g. a big water surface)
2. enter build mode and look at your max speed / frontal cross section
3. wait for the max Speed & Cross section to be displayed with the "better" values
4. exit build mode and directly activate the seat/remote controller
5. give full throttle, avoid steering and try to stay between 100 and 300 m...
By following these steps you should be able to do a flight with the "full potential" of your construct.
Another possibility to increase the speed of your construct is to remove ALL Honeycomb from it. The cross section calculation only fails if there is at least 1 honeycomb voxel on your construct. so without them, it should always use the "better" values.
i have 2 tickets around this topic open now for 1-2 months, but obviously NQ has more important things  to fix right now. But as i get asked multiple times a day, i thought it would be easier to give the explanation here so i could point people to it ?

Have fun flying,

Hagbard
 
 

Too bad everything you wrote here is way off.  You obviously haven't pvp'd at all.  Second, its a choice to enter the pvp zone defenseless. If a hauler does so, especially with no radar, then I have no sympathy.  But ya know what, I haven't even killed a hauler cause all the content is 100% in the safe zone right now.  Let me guess, your suggestion would be to have the game 100% builing game with no pvp?  I think that game was called landmark and its no longer around.  

Silly idea, a small object should be less easy to lock, regardless of radar size. The radar size should maybe increase the lock chance/time, have a longer lock range and in return require more power (once introduced). You also mentioned just now that they said that this depends on both having the same radar.. How woudl the size of my radar affect your ability to lock me.. That is such sideways thinking..
 
Artificial balance idea unless the lock chance actually changes if the relative position and orientation is taken into account by this.
 
 
Another short sighted and knee jerk "solution"
 
Cores should have a power capacity, weapons/shields/engines/radar/countermeasures should require power. You can fit whatever as long as it stays within the power capacity of the core. You fit large weapons, no or minimal shields or only a small radar operating a limited capacity so you need to get close which opens you up to attack. You may be able to add power by adding batteries but they have limited use and will impact mass and agility with it.
 
 
Once more, NQ shows their inability to be creative and really come up with good ideas as well as being oblivious to anything the community may discuss suggest. If these things are al they can come up with after nearly a year since they introduces PVP.. I don't know but it's meager at best..
 
 
EDIT: Posted update on this further down after hearing what was actually said and frankly, it's not that bad and actually pretty decent as far as ideas go.
 
 

I think this is meant to be the 'difficult early period' in DU civilisation building.
 
The periods/eons of Dual Universe will look something like this, or at least NQ should expect this.
 
Eon 1: Wild West.  No law anywhere, micropolities with no real power,   no one is safe anywhere. Claims are staked.
 
Eon 2: The law comes to Dodge City. Small polities.  Small pockets of planets or space become policed, often by "poachers turned gamekeepers'.  Still lawless outside 'Dodge' but punitive raids may occur.
 
Eon 3: Tortuga. Medium sized and large polities.  Most places are lawful now, with only notable badlands where no one can hold for long or disputed lands where law is 'flexible'.
 
Eon 4: Space Sweden.  Huge Polities.  Law strong everywhere.  Criminal gangs are small and live in the walls or on the constant move, to avoid constant surveillance and pursuit.  At this stage the game needs to open up new territories to reset part of space to Eon 1/2.
 
....
 
Once you see this you can understand that criminality and violence is meant to be the driver towards making an organic creation of a lawful state.
 
You will eventually be safe everywhere.
 
This makes the artificial positioning of the game straight into Eon 2 or Eon 3 with over large safe zones a thin gruel.
 
It will also artificialise corp warfare into "we violently disagree, lets settle this 2500 su away"  because fake safe zones also means fake danger zones.
 
For a lot of us, Eon 1 or 2 is what excites us.  I can understand other people preferring Eons 3 or 4, but please dont ask NQ to takes us there too quickly.
 
 

No, not literally.   I want violence because I came in for the politics and intra Corp and interpersonal violence is part of a living civilisation.
 
I'm happy with safety zones but they should be one olavet and one moon.  

I think this is meant to be the 'difficult early period' in DU civilisation building.
 
The periods/eons of Dual Universe will look something like this, or at least NQ should expect this.
 
Eon 1: Wild West.  No law anywhere, micropolities with no real power,   no one is safe anywhere. Claims are staked.
 
Eon 2: The law comes to Dodge City. Small polities.  Small pockets of planets or space become policed, often by "poachers turned gamekeepers'.  Still lawless outside 'Dodge' but punitive raids may occur.
 
Eon 3: Tortuga. Medium sized and large polities.  Most places are lawful now, with only notable badlands where no one can hold for long or disputed lands where law is 'flexible'.
 
Eon 4: Space Sweden.  Huge Polities.  Law strong everywhere.  Criminal gangs are small and live in the walls or on the constant move, to avoid constant surveillance and pursuit.  At this stage the game needs to open up new territories to reset part of space to Eon 1/2.
 
....
 
Once you see this you can understand that criminality and violence is meant to be the driver towards making an organic creation of a lawful state.
 
You will eventually be safe everywhere.
 
This makes the artificial positioning of the game straight into Eon 2 or Eon 3 with over large safe zones a thin gruel.
 
It will also artificialise corp warfare into "we violently disagree, lets settle this 2500 su away"  because fake safe zones also means fake danger zones.
 
For a lot of us, Eon 1 or 2 is what excites us.  I can understand other people preferring Eons 3 or 4, but please dont ask NQ to takes us there too quickly.
 
 

Girls, girls!
 
I simply won't accept harsh words in the orangery!  Now, back to the embroidery.

No, not literally.   I want violence because I came in for the politics and intra Corp and interpersonal violence is part of a living civilisation.
 
I'm happy with safety zones but they should be one olavet and one moon.  

99% of games have info on forums. It's just off putting for new players to have to do something particular.   Every hurdle prevents engagement.

What this dyng fire requires is a Daphne grenade to put it out.
 
I do feel for you Daphne, forced at gunpoint to play a game with explicit open world pvp in it.  Especially one with extensive safe zones where you can sit tutting to your heart's content.
 

That's fair enough.. but I just feel NQ is not very creative in what they think up and generally do not seem to really think through consequences of what they do.
 
 
If I were in charge of this here is what I would have done:
Communicate the plan as outlined here in advance. Create a large, flat and open space, 4 large cores in the center as market area  surrounded by L core landing pads. at least 2 tiles over from the district it is part of. Center 4 L cores are a no fly zone and attempt to land there will fling you off away from the location Designate this as the player's market/mall Players can submit their shop design to NQ for approval,  shops can only be XS core and must be static. On approval, NQ places the store on the center L platforms, creating the mall Constructs not suitable/enabled for flight can't be spawned at District markets Any constructs left on the District markets for more than 24 hours will be impounded and can be recovered through paying a fee to the "District harbormaster's office".

No. I vehemently refuse to register on ANOTHER social media network. Why have the game Forums if they will not post such things here. Then NQ should delete the bloody forum and only use the hip adhd social media channels.