Thokan

The problem with this, is expectations.

Case in point, people don't even understand what a ship class is and what a ship size is.

The USS George H. W. Bush, is one of the Nimitz-Class Carrier Capital ships the US Navy has in its disposal. They are referred to as "Super Carriers", they can easily repell other nations' entire navy on their own.

The ship size is Capital, the ship type is Carrier. The ship Class is Nimitz.
 
You CAN name your own ship classes, that's going without a saying. You can't though assume what a "capital ship" is. It's the ships that helm entire formations. You don't helm a formation around a cruiser or a frigate. A capital ship relies on its escort ships for protection - like how the USS George W. Bush is relying on frigates and destroyers to keep enemy vessels from coming too close.

And in that frame of referrence, you can't redefine what a Carrier is. A Carrier is a Line-of-Battle ship. Line-of-Battle, is all Capital ships, like Battleships and Battlecruisers (now makes sense why the Battle- prefix, doesn't it? ). If a "carrier" is as small as a frigate, it's not a carrier, since it's not a Line-of-Battle ship, it's a Line-of-Defense ship - a frigate.
 
People may say "but hey, they had cruisers in WW2 that could launch two planes, what about dat?!". Yes, and launching two planes doesn't put you on the same level with a carrier, which can launch 40 of them.
 
A dreadnaught is but a class of battleship. Heavy Cruiser is a class of Cruiser. And depending on who you ask, Destroyers and Hunter-Killers are just a ship class of frigate. 
 
People can name their frigates as "battleships" to satisfy their e-peen, my RADAR won't lie like they do and I will DO write my radar to identify ships as of their mass and size. Oh, their mass is way more than their size should allow? I guess that's a flying pinyata then of a freighter. Oh it's too big to be a freighter?  I guesss it's a carrier.
 
And no, Freighter is not a combat ship, Han Solo is just a truck driver and George Lucas is a hack..

Battlestar Galactica? Just a fancy name for a Carrier.

Super Star Destroyers? Dreadnaughts, plain and simple.
 
Titans from EVE Online? Still, just another class of capital ships, despite EVE insisiting on the term "super-capital", which is ridiculous, like saying "Eternal Forever Trumandane Leader".

TL;DR : People should not try to reinvent the wheel, it's too much effort for nothing.

It's been awhile since I posted this, and since then I realized it was arbitrary.
 
I actually had a classmate do a small, extraneous speech on why we should switch to metric, and part of his argument was this chart.
 

 
Now that's just... bonkers. Metric is on the right for a comparison, by the way. This got me thinking.
 
"Why do we always have to make things weird and complicated."
 
Fun Fact, did you know the speed of light is 16,999,000,000,000 Twips/Second?

if you want to eat etc in game it should be an option, not a game mechanic.....  I have enough of that mundane stuff in real life

IMO food would just add tedium to the gameplay if it was required to survive, I'd rather it only give some kind of bonus.

The fact that you compare this game to games not PvP-centered does not make DU all about crafting. Heck, those games aren't even MMOs (except maybe that Dark and Light one, looks like a weird mix between a traditional grindfest MMO and ARK) and offer to perspective on the massive Org vs. Org PvP meta that might occur in DU because of it's scale and PvP elements.
 
Yes, a lot of time will be spent on crafting and resource gathering for most people. PvP will however not be a "minigame to take a break" in this Sandbox MMO PvP Game, but instead a core element - at least certainly for the bigger organizations.
 
Sometimes I get the feeling people forget this is a MMO.
 
 

It's not like PvPers ever needed a logical reason as to compete and wage wars with others

Howdy hi ho, fellow architects of this fine world! Since scripting will be a big part of the game and not everyone grew up indulging themselves in various programming languages, I thought I'd link this little LUA tutorial here that I stumbled upon while improving my own LUA skills. 
 
 

Also for those interested, there is a very highly acclaimed book written by the same people that made the language itself, called "Programming in Lua". The latest edition is the 4th edition. You can also find the last versions for much cheaper.
 
WARNING: Do not search for a pdf version of the book. There is a pdf version available for free, but of course it is illegal. Again, do NOT search for the pdf version of the 4th edition, or you will find the free illegal version.

Eh. I think the idea of having some advanced copyright protection mechanism in the game would be a bit dumb. Once the game starts people are going to start creating a wide variety of designs and after a year or two, many of the most common designs will already be 'taken'. Anyone who joined after would be at a disadvantage since they have to try and create something new or lose most of their income to someone else. 
 
I think some people overestimate exactly how creative they can be as well. You're not going to create some innovative design that will change the face of the game and no one else thought of so everyone will want to copy its not rocket science to figure out that reducing mass makes the ship faster, or adding more thrusters makes in more maneuverable. No one is going to 'discover a way to make engines perform 30% better that no one else thought of'. The game may not have predefined ship types but general ship classes will emerge anyways. The point of blueprints is less about protecting you intellectual property than it is about facilitating production.
 
Succeeding at industry will be less about 'having amazing designs that no one else has ever thought of' and more about delivering the right quantity ships to the right locations at the right price. 

Your question gets jumped around several times in the DU Explorers Interview last year (https://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/Archive:DU_Explorers_Interview_(Sep_17,_2016)).  From briefly reading through the relevant sections (i searched for the word "build"), it sounds like the plan is to definitely have manufacturing elements/facilities possible, which likely means refining to be able to create an assembly line.  He also talks about power generation and how you will need to generate power on-site to build all these things.
 
So in theory you would need your own space to create this assembly line or factory, as well as a nuclear power planet or a solar farm maybe?  Check it out, lots of info hidden in the wiki's archive (https://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/Archive)

Sure, make it a thing that has to be bought and you have to sacrifice armor wattage / cpu to use. No Empyrion crap, no cheat-sheet peak-around-corners without costing people a dime. Call it ''Tactical Drone'' or something like that. Just no ''free'' drones,
 
 
Cheerios.

I would like to compliment the artists who are designing the elements.  I thought the early placeholders where good, but when I see the recent designs, I am impressed that they have become even better.  In a science fiction setting, it seems easy to make things appear either too mundane or too fantastic, but I feel the artists are getting the balance just right and giving the elements a strong sense of believably. 
 
These are obviously very talented people who put a large amount of care into their work and I thank them for their contribution to DU.

Meh, still. Private server hosted Crafting-Survival games like ARK and Conan Exiles, and what not, are terrible examples for comparing with MMOs. The whole dimension of the scale is lost.
 
Why would they accrue that material if not to defend their territory and acquire more? For most large organizations this will be the main goal. Large organization versus organization PvP. That is, argueably, the end-game of an Open World Sandbox Game with Claims and PvP.

Meh, still. Private server hosted Crafting-Survival games like ARK and Conan Exiles, and what not, are terrible examples for comparing with MMOs. The whole dimension of the scale is lost.
 
Why would they accrue that material if not to defend their territory and acquire more? For most large organizations this will be the main goal. Large organization versus organization PvP. That is, argueably, the end-game of an Open World Sandbox Game with Claims and PvP.

This may be true for some groups, but certainly not all. I am the head diplomat for Band of Outlaws (the 2nd largest group currently) and we largely have PvP as one of our core attractions. We very much intend to expend a large amount of resources fighting other groups, either in full wars or fun skirmishes. We also shun the idea of too many alliances, wanting to avoid the "blue donut" as we call it. 
 
 
It was planned for after release, but now that that stretch goal was hit it will be available at release instead of a few months after release. 

Space Engineers
Star Wars Galaxies
Stellaris
XCOM 2
Warframe
Act of Aggression
Command & Conquer (Tiberium, Red Alert and Generals)
Borderlands
Elite: Dangerous
Endless Space
FTL: Faster Than Light
Homeworld
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident
Planetary Annihilation
Shadowrun 4th Edition
Space Pirates and Zombies
Starbound
Supreme Commander
Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War (1 and 2)
 
Yeah, quite the science fiction library. Story to come...

Doesn't matter! The thread base been created!! Welcome btw
 
The new screens look amazing! Since it can load svg data I could theoretically recreate du-stats in game, or at least part of it. People can create games, or if we can hook sensor data into it we could make radar stations (sort of) that would give sensor readouts visually!
 
This is amazing! 
 
And the damage model is good to see too makes it so people have to be careful when they fly. Graphically, everything is looking good. 
 
Honestly, if you can get alpha out before SC gets their alpha 3.0 out, DU is going to make some huge waves in the gaming world. (And will anyways, but getting out before would put DU way ahead in 'the race')

Eve online
World of tanks (while waiting for the trap to spring in eve)
 
Everything else....doesn't really matter
 
P.s.: yeah, I'm dedicated

You don't know, but JC secretly always wanted an Arcade hall with penny munchers.

Well, that's subjective to the idea of "full scale wars". I'd say there will be Org vs. Org conflicts involving a lot of players as soon as the first bubbles goes up, no matter what size or quantity of military materiel, arsenal or vehicles there is at the time.
 
 
Build a bubble, build friendship.
 
As sure as the large PvP Organizations will look for someone to fight, they will also look for friends and allies - cause you cant have too many of those. In my experience, the harsher the sandbox, open-world PvP is, the more valuable allies and friendly strangers are.

English (Translator used)
 
I just want to share my opinion. Maybe others see it as the same way.
 
 
German (orginal)
 
Ich möchte nur meine Meinung dazu kund tun. Vielleicht sehen es andere auch so.
 
 
mfG Die Waldfee

Yes, indeed. In a game where most people probably will play in/on/from claimed, protected territory, I don't think ugly planets will be a problem at all.

I would agree that the most effective method will most likely involve skilled pilots acting as the equivalent of captains by positioning their ships and relying on the crew to act accordingly. That person could essentially be the captain of a small to medium warship, and a single FC (basically a Commodore or Admiral) would be in charge of directing the movements of the fleet as a whole. However, DU being a game with limited complexity and no moral and legal ramifications (as in real life war) the members of ships could be relied upon to learn what they need to do in battle, and to do it without being told. This will probably require a little bit of training to get right, but it's really the most efficient means of conducting combat, and should be pretty easy, assuming DU doesn't have a massively complex combat system. 

Then you're just a very bad captain/pilot and shouldn't do that at all. Go for engineering. Or janitor