Vyz Ejstu

The latest State of Affairs (by Kurock) is out on Outpost Zebra! Kurock's piece covers everything from the Alpha 1: player records, 'noteworthy' diplomatic events, the overall progress of the game and slight evolution of Dual Universe's playerbase. Say what you will, it's arguably worthy of canon status. 
 
You can read it over here on Outpost Zebra. 
Be sure to follow and retweet on Twitter too: 
 
 
Many thanks to Kurock, the many others at Dual Universe Historical Society and contributors from all around Dual Universe for their combined effort in making this possible.
 
Cheers.

(this DevBlog has been posted on the website on April 30th, 2019)

Hey guys!
NQ-Entropy here today with NQ-Wave. 
 
We’ve been working on a significant overhaul of the game’s balancing and we’re going to do our best to explain the big changes we’ve been working on. The main subjects today are the major rebalance of inventory and container capacity, material transportation, crafting recipes, and almost every single step between mining and crafting. Saddle up.
 
Our starting point was the dialogue we had with the community about the issues with containers. We heard everything you guys said, from smaller containers not being useful and crafting times on larger containers being too long. This wasn’t lost on us; we also agreed that it was a little ridiculous at how weak certain containers were as opposed to the Nanoformer inventory, which held a staggering 64m3, the equivalent of a large container, or 64 extra-small containers. There was an issue.
 
What happened in the following weeks was us going down a massive rabbit-hole where we started pulling different strings and unearthing a lot of inconsistencies in our global balancing on almost every level. We decided that we wanted to start over on solid and healthy ground, and make sure that we knew what we were doing, how, and why. We are now at the finish line of the first major pass, and we’re ready to talk to you about it.
 
One of the initial issues excavated from the wreckage of our investigation was the difficulty of transporting materials while in atmosphere. As it turns out, in a realistic physically based system, it's really hard to transport hundreds of cubic meters or potentially tens of thousands of tons in materials. Who saw that one coming? It was a learning experience to see some of you try and transport raw material, only to end up with about 20 large hover engines to lift a couple of containers, which amounted to no material at all.
 
So this is where we began. No matter what happened next, we needed to drastically reduce the amount of weight that a player would have to reasonably move around; even in the context of large transports. As previously mentioned, the main culprit was our overly common use of cubic meters, which artificially drew upwards the volume and weight of everything we did. We globally changed our main volumic unit from m3 to liters. We now had finer control over volumes and had a more human-level metric to base our foundations on. Your inventories will now have a capacity of 4,000 liters; goodbye cubic meter, it was nice knowing you.
 
Having said that, we mostly liked the ratios we had in place for how fast players filled their inventories when mining and made sure to adjust everything so that it remained similar to how mining was done previously.
 
Continuing up the chain, we reached crafting recipes. We were also generally happy with the feedback we received for the crafting mechanic, but our first recipes were more for functional testing than any sort of real balance. Now was the perfect opportunity to take a look at it in more detail.
We want you guys to discover this without too much of a heads up, but there's a couple of cliff-notes we can mention here:
Global rebalance of item volume and weight across the board. Conservation of mass during crafting across materials, parts, and elements during crafting (some exceptions apply). Rebalancing of all ancillary materials recipes (honeycomb, fuel, products and scraps).
  The end result of this is fairly significant, and we’re not quite sure we fully grasp all of the implications at this point. What we are confident in is that we have all of the tools in hand to effectively make adjustments and deal with any issues that arise; something that we couldn't quite say to the same degree before. 
 
In terms of clearer changes:
 
Parts are generally more coherent in weight and volume with less outliers. Smaller parts will generally take up more space in your base inventory while larger ones will take less. You can still expect large parts to take up significant space, but not multiple base inventories worth.
  Elements operate in the same ballpark of weight and volume as before, but we have less outliers. Smaller elements are not so small and larger elements are not so huge. 
  Generally speaking, honeycomb materials will require more ore to make. The amount of honeycomb material you could acquire previously was a little too high and we wanted to rein that in a little. We don't want you to feel constantly limited by honeycomb material, but we also don't want to make acquiring large quantities of honeycombed materials trivial. It's worth noting that we fixed a bug which changed honeycomb mass; honeycombed material will likely be overall heavier than before.
  Fuel cost and weight have been drastically augmented, but as counterbalance, we reduced both fuel consumption for engines and fuel tank capacity. Hopefully, this ensures that fuel is more difficult to acquire and weighs more, but you will need a lot less of it for similar performance. The end result is that you’ll be able to fly for longer while retaining a similar overall cost per distance traveled as before.
  In regards to scraps, the first thing we did was add scraps for all ore. You can now craft equivalent level scrap from level one to four using any ore that you’d like. Secondly, we had previously done a quick fix adjustment on scrap repair, making it less painful to repair your elements. The new scrap recipes will allow you to make more scrap for less raw ore than previously, hopefully addressing said pain points of having to mine for ages just to repair a single element. It should now be more efficient to repair an element with scrap than to craft that element from scratch.
  Finally, containers. Containers haven't changed at all. Not one bit. An extra large container is still 128m3 of volume. But in a world of liters, 128 cubic meters comes out to just about 128,000 liters of capacity. That’s roughly 32 times the size of your basic inventory, and frankly, that's a hell of a lot of storage.
  Additionally, there’s been a significant revamp of the information displayed in the inventories information panel. We won't go into too much detail here as we hope the new information should be easily understood and explain itself well enough.
 
This was a huge undertaking and we’re confident that we’re going in the right direction, but we expect there to be issues. We’re looking forward to you guys testing everything out, hearing your feedback, and hopefully providing answers.
 
NQ-Entropy and NQ-Wave

Ol' Bessy by Tordan
 

Hi guys, 
 
On March, 6th, we organized a special stress-test with thousands of simulated players. Our objective was to showcase our unique server technology and test it under live conditions! Dozens of human Alpha players were invited and participated as well, as witnesses of the event. You can discover the details on the news here. 
 
Don't hesitate to comment below!
 
Cheers,
The Novaquark Team

Then ppl can just abuse that and use such a core as a forward respawn base. Or bunker all the valuable resource there. No thanks. 
 
As said, that's what safezones are there for. 

Dear Community Members,
 
As some of the Novaquark recent moderation and sanction actions haven’t been clearly understood by some, here are some explanations and clarifications. We are aware that members from “Dark Star Imperium” (DSI) and “New Genesis” think that the decisions taken by Novaquark have been unfair and/or feel like a punishment. It’s not a punishment and we limited the inconvenience to the minimum possible by just resetting the member list of the Organization. This has been done to remove all ghost accounts and make the involved Organizations restart on a healthier basis.
 
We also made sure that at least one person in each of the involved Organizations can re-invite real members in the Organization:
- CN_Firestorm for “Dark Star Imperium”
- Chipfromearth/SpaceKitty for “New Genesis” (until the end of TMA’s ban)
 
You are more than welcome to contact them to join theses Orgs again if you wish to do so.
Keeping in mind that besides the cleaning of ghost accounts, nothing else has been removed. All community work/content related to these Organizations have been left untouched. We are also going to send an email to all ex-members to inform about the member list reset and offer them to join their former organization again.
 
Regarding the ban of the leaders of these Organizations:

We understand that seeing your leader banned might be frustrating. However, we want to make it clear that being at the head of a big Org does not give a free pass on toxic behavior and/or bad practices that could damage the Community as a whole. Being passionate, being young, creating quality content is no free pass for such things either. That’s why all the permanent bans decided recently are final. We are not giving such heavy sanctions with a light heart or on a whim. In more than four years, the number of community members who have been banned permanently from the community can still be counted on the fingers of one hand. We think it speaks volume... Some recent rumors say that the bans may be reversed or canceled. There is no ground to such rumor. It’s just disinformation. The fact that a banned member will “not tolerate that” has no weight either. It’s the Novaquark team’s call and the Novaquark team alone.
 
Now, we want to give a fair warning to anyone wanting to challenge Novaquark’s decisions openly, directly or indirectly. If a community member has been permanently banned from the Community, he’s excluded from the game, which means he shouldn’t be in any Organization anymore. Reinviting or keeping a community member banned permanently could have serious consequences (such as Organization disbanding but not limited to that, as this could trigger other sanctions for those actively supporting banned members).

Now to address some specific questions/rumors:

We exceptionally give some details to the Community to show that we are not banning randomly or without a serious reason. We do it only because some banned members try to take advantage of the confidentiality policy to enforce their own narrative and play the victim, and attempt to misinform other players. Don’t expect the Novaquark team to give anymore information on this case or the possible future ones.
 
“Banning Sakej99 was a mistake. He’s a different person from FullSend/Lime”.
The Novaquark team is aware that Sakej99 and FullSend/Lime are different persons. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the permanent ban affects FullSend/Lime will also affect accounts he may have access to (by account sharing, which is forbidden in our EULA). This is one of the main reasons why we are so serious about forbidding account sharing. If someone sanctioned got access to your account, the sanction can be extended to the said account even if you haven’t done anything wrong.
 
“FullSend/Lime has been unfairly banned, with no prior warning.”
First, for the infraction this community member has committed, there will never be a warning as it was obviously utterly wrong: if a false report is sent to the Customer Support in an attempt to make another community member banned, the one getting the ban is the one who sent the false report. And in this case, indeed, there is no prior warning.

Second, FullSend/Lime is probably the person in the community who would deserve multiple permanent bans (if it was possible), due to previous infractions in addition to the most recent one. Playing the card “no prior warning” is just complete dishonesty and denial of assuming the consequences of his actions during the past couple of years. Here is a short list of the infractions he has done in the past:
- Asking members of one of his former organization to give login and password of their accounts to him.
- Using accounts of other players.
- Creating ghost accounts.
- Using a loophole in the organization management system on the Community Portal in an attempt to sabotage/destroy an organization by using the account of another player.
- Participating in a doxxing attempt.
- Always denying the facts or trying to minimize them, to the point of reaching self-absolving, to avoid dealing with the consequences (a practice reiterated with his last infraction).
Due to the history of this community member, there was no reason for “prior warning” with his last infraction. He has been warned too many times already. Mistakes are not erased just because it happened “long ago”.
 
By default, Organisations where FullSend was the founder have their ownership transmitted to the oldest member with the ability to create an organization, which gave the following results:
- CN_Firestorm becomes the new owner of “Dual Insider”.
- Gravetender becomes the new owner of “Project Azimuth”.
If you are a member of one of these organisations and you want to discuss these changes, please contact the new owner of the Organization.
 
(About DSI) “There has been a total wipe of the parties to kill the conflict”     
Wrong. If that was the case, we would have dismantled “DSI” directly and ban both DSI leaders, which would have included CN_Firestorm. You can assume that if it’s not the case, this is precisely because there is a difference between CN_Firestorm and Primarch. This sanction wasn’t against DSI. The sanction was against Primarch.
 
Some of the banned members may say “They will be back”.
It’s up to them. However, if we catch them, they will be banned without further notice.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark team.
 

-Moved to different location

Dear community members,
 
A few weeks ago, we took a stance regarding “out of the game”/IRL-related practices to discredit, threaten or shame publicly another Community Member (even if the involved person is guilty of several infractions) that could be an opponent in-game.
 
As the DSI (Dark Star Imperium) / TSU (Trinary Star Union)  / UEE (United Earth Empire) case blew out of proportion during January, we investigated.
 
We are really serious about differentiating real life from the game itself. Unfortunately some didn’t take our stance seriously. We gave them a chance to come clean in a private discussion and restart on an healthier basis. They didn’t take the opportunity for what it was: a last chance.
As they preferred “playing dumb” with Novaquark staff, we can’t have any trust that they won’t continue. Therefore we have decided to ban permanently those Community Members for various reasons (all not being banned for the same reason(s)):
Not being honest towards Novaquark staff. Making and encouraging ghost accounts. Abusive recruitment practices. Practising real life harassment and/or threatening another player. Making false report to Novaquark’s Customer Support in an attempt to make ban someone they dislike. Spreading real life information without the involved person’s consent, aka Doxxing.  
(strong reminder: even if a person gives you real life information about him/her, it’s not okay to share these information with ANYONE else without his/her consent. You can’t predict how the other person(s) will use this information and if he/she/they won’t share it again. If some trouble occurs following this sharing, you can be held legally responsible).
 
This might seem an extreme sanction but this shows how serious we are when we say we are not going to let toxic attitude and practices spread in the Community. Our goal to build a healthy and friendly community isn’t just a figure of speech. Anyone caught to spread or encourage any toxic behavior will be removed from the Community as it will be considered as damaging the Community and negating Novaquark staff efforts (without saying that it’s time consuming and a waste of our resources).
 
Saying it’s a long time grudge coming from before the arrival in the Dual Universe community is absolutely not a valid excuse. If someone has a personal grudge with another community member, he/she should either:
Leave it at the doorstep and/or settle it in private and peacefully with no one else involved. Contact directly (and only) Novaquark staff if the issue persists.
The moment someone uses the Dual Universe community as a tool for IRL revenge, he/she is not welcome anymore. We’re all here to have fun. It should always stay that way.
 
Therefore, the following Community Members have been permanently banned from the Community:
Lime / Fullsend / mmtheboss / Sakej99 [DSI] Primarch Zelevas / TharisUEE Melkor_Morgoth
  In addition the DSI Organization member list has been reset, and the Novaquark Team has appointed CN_Firestorm as the new owner of the Organization, should he accept to take a fresh start on a healthy basis.
 
We also give a warning to all those who were indirectly involved (with the evidence we found) but not actively participating in the recent community troubles. Next time, there won’t be any new warning. If you become involved against your will in some shady real life activities, you have only two healthy options:
Leaving the group doing such activity immediately. Report it to Novaquark staff.  
If you stay in such group without leaving or reporting it and the group is caught, you take the risk to get the same sanction as those actively involved.
This investigation has taken (or more precisely wasted) a lot of time from Novaquark staff. We really don’t like to intervene in players affairs. However, if there is a chance that such affairs damage the Community by toxic behavior, you can expect Novaquark staff to step in. We hope we won’t have to take the same measures again.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Dear community,
 
We’re expanding! Novaquark opens a new studio in Montreal to accelerate the development of Dual Universe!
With the hiring of Stéphane D’Astous as General Manager and 50 positions open, if you think you have the skills required (and/or know people who have them), don't hesitate to apply to join the first true Metaverse!
 

 
You can find the complete news here.
You can find the job opportunities on this page of the official website.
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Objective Driveyards [ODY] has a particular management structure that forsees to regularly replace members in management and leadership roles to keep up a quality standard, lessen stress on individuals selected for these roles and ensure the corresponding activites to be handled sufficiently and regularly developed further. In an evolving world and community like Dual Universe, you need to stay dynamic and adapt to situations at hand.
Due to the restrictions with real life and the natural process of varying interest and motivation in a single game for most players, the vast majority of leadership roles in ODY are temporary.

The active line-up of ODY members can't always fill these management roles to a satisfactory degree.  For this reason, we are opening the positions in question up to people from outside our corporate-state. This means that you can be recruited into ODY and put into a leadership position right away - for many people, exactly what they want and for us an opportunity to expand our roster of talented and dedicated individuals. 

What you should know about Objective Driveyards

What requirements do we have for leadership recruitment?


What we offer you




Currently available positions
You can apply to the following positions:
 
Objective Dynamics: Head of the Design Academy

How to apply
As you need to be recruited into ODY first, the regular recruitment process applies. Send us a written application on our website and join our Discord server and we'll move from there.
Naturally, you can contact us at any point before that. Ask your questions in the topic, as personal message on the forums or on Discord. We'd love to have a chat with you.
 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
 
This post is updated regularly
Last update: 14th February 2019

With the Kindness of the people of Outpost Zebra:
 
The first chapters of the Chronicles of Tranquility
 
https://www.outpostzebra.com/chronicles-of-tranquillity-daybreak/

'
In the third episode of the Organisation Insight series, Oz staff managed to post an Eldritch Nation interview in a public domain. While it does sound underwhelming, it is from a 90% military organisation with questionable freedom of press practices. With a name that is as foreboding as its hospitality, it is a small miracle Oz is still here at all. 
This time, Zamaro from The Eldritch Nation (TEN) permitted a discussion within the sovereign territory of his organisation. 
 
Head over here to read all about it. You can also share and like on Twitter: 
 
 
 
Cheers.'

It is a pleasant read as well ?

'It's the first fan-fiction up on Outpost Zebra in a while. @Aaron Cain's Chronicles of Tranquility delves into the survival and short adventure of Bladesin Mercenary Corporation's Aaron. 

Feel free to give it a read and a comment. Head here to share the inspiration on Twitter: 

Cheers.'

'It's the first fan-fiction up on Outpost Zebra in a while. @Aaron Cain's Chronicles of Tranquility delves into the survival and short adventure of Bladesin Mercenary Corporation's Aaron. 

Feel free to give it a read and a comment. Head here to share the inspiration on Twitter: 

Cheers.'

removed

'
The second piece of the series is up on Outpost Zebra. In this article, the Outpost Zebra staff take a closer look at the ever stable Empire. 
Kytheum was kind enough to share his thoughts about his organisation and answer some questions about the organisation's history and character. 
 
Be sure to read it over here . 
 
Cheers.
'

'
The second piece of the series is up on Outpost Zebra. In this article, the Outpost Zebra staff take a closer look at the ever stable Empire. 
Kytheum was kind enough to share his thoughts about his organisation and answer some questions about the organisation's history and character. 
 
Be sure to read it over here . 
 
Cheers.
'

'
The second piece of the series is up on Outpost Zebra. In this article, the Outpost Zebra staff take a closer look at the ever stable Empire. 
Kytheum was kind enough to share his thoughts about his organisation and answer some questions about the organisation's history and character. 
 
Be sure to read it over here . 
 
Cheers.
'

'
The second piece of the series is up on Outpost Zebra. In this article, the Outpost Zebra staff take a closer look at the ever stable Empire. 
Kytheum was kind enough to share his thoughts about his organisation and answer some questions about the organisation's history and character. 
 
Be sure to read it over here . 
 
Cheers.
'

Not resurrecting a necropost, but https://t.co/wgiIFo8FQk
 
The SI Kilogram has just been officially redefined

I agree with @ShioriStein. RDMS can be used to sort this out. You can assign special roles/rags for each residence, and only the tenant of said residence would be able to affect the residence itself. This way, you would only need one static core for the entire building while still providing access to the people who pay to live there (and JC already confirmed that there will be the ability to charge people monthly or weekly with RDMS).

Although, to be fair, I didn't really leave, just went quiet. Technically I was on digital walkabout.
 
"... walkabout will occur in more remote areas such as the outback to create a break from modern culture, in order to then create a connection with traditional, spiritual roots"
 
"... a man breaks off from the daily grind and walks in solitude across desert and bush country on a spiritual quest... The walker finds his way, it is believed, under the guidance of a spiritual power".
 
Anyway, I'm "back".
 
First things first - how the hell do I change my forum avatar from that 2 year old thing I knocked up in 5 minutes so long ago...
 
(Seriously - have searched everywhere to no avail...)

The focus isn't on you - If you don't claim a tile then noone will instantly know you're there. But ppl like me will try to find ppl in their hideouts. Yes there are thousands of players and in that alone is a huge advantage. Ppl will have a hard time finding YOU anyway. But you can't hide forever and shouldn't bei allowed to do so. Only when you take extreme measures like flying far away, Not building big things, Not claiming territories and other stuff.
 
Claimed territory needs to be marked somehow though. Imagine entering orbit and doing a quick long range scan. Then you just knowe that 6 of 55894 tiles are taken. Nothing more. Then you have to fly there to get a better scan which allows you (because of skills, modules and such) to determine which org or player claimed that tile. 
 
Who knows If there will be scanners for players? But structures like TCUs, bases and ships can be detected via radar. It would bei much more fun and better gameplay If they did some countermeasures to that. Build your base out of antiradarium to block radar. Then the guy needs to do a thermal scan. If you have a major mining base there which needs alot of heat to run (furnaces) then you'll emit thermal energy which can be detected. If you build so deep that even that is blocked then you still need electricity which could emit EM-waves which could bei detected via some other scanner.
 
All those scanners and countermeasures would need special skills and special modules, need energy and fuel to balance them. Such a system would be way more fun to have because it doesn't make you inherently stealthy or inherently good at detecting others but it would need critical thinking, good planning and actual work to stay hidden or detect others.