sHuRuLuNi

1. Please make HQ tiles 7 vs. 5 so that way if we need to take a break we can maintain a bonus constellation of hexes if we can't be online to mine it for extended period of time. 5 seems like an arbitrary number out of kneejerk response to appease all the players with torches and pitchforks. 7 on the other hand creates a function & aesthetic number of tiles that feels complete, and allows players to take breaks in case you know their parents has cancer, or they lose their job, or both of these things at the same time.... kind of stuff in life.

2. Make recalibration & drop off after 7 days not 2... (keep the current recharge rates/cap etc.) If I have to login every day to spend my charges, I don't want to do it to nanny the same mining unit I just nannied 48 hours ago, to simply maintain efficiency rates. Some of us can only play on weekends, and work several jobs, so it feels like a punishment for being responsible in real life.

 @NQ-Pann @NQ-Deckard @NQ-Sesch

Please explain your vision for how new and casual players and solo builders should be able to find an enjoyable game loop with Demeter.

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I also used the cone a few times and found it to be useless ... then I only used the "area" tool, with middle mouse button to make it larger or smaller, then I found the brightest spot of ore - which then if you hover over it, shows up to 100% target on the left side bar. I then placed the final point on that spot. And the ore spawned where i placed the point. It also shows the Destination marker on that spot.
I too just blindly "played" with it a bit, because like you, the db101 wasn't any help really. 

Where's the fun? More of a slog than the old mining simulator.

Ah ... those guis, the seating ones. They are the worst.

Actually, originally in the beginning, when I backed the game, the safe zone was only supposed to be a relatively small area (20km) around the Arkship on Alioth and nothing more. There was no stupid "Sanctuary moon" and the ridiculous 150su safe zone which we have now ...
 
 

If Aphelia forgets to pay taxes, does that mean I can grab all her territories and markets and become an Evil Overlord like her?

Then imagine me, as a Ruby Backer, with Lifetime Subscription, lol. I must be a huge thorn in their eye ... but I guess this is compensated through me building ships and NQ featuring them on their Social Media ...
 
Anyway - I sure would like to have the Backer Rewards ... I mean if we don't get them that would be bad, but if us not getting them (and I mean the physical rewards ...) will somehow help the game get better, then at least some good would have come from that whole thing ...

If Aphelia forgets to pay taxes, does that mean I can grab all her territories and markets and become an Evil Overlord like her?

Ditch Atmo brakes. Make an AGG Brake Generator. Then set it so that you can use a max of 1 per XS Core, 4 for S Core, 8 for M Core and 16 for L Core.
This way, you cannot keep slapping more and more Brake Generators for heavier ships. There is a limit, so for the L-Core ships you can have a max of 16 Brake Generators which you also don't have to stick on the outside, but anywhere inside (since they work as an AGG, so they create a "brake bubble" around the ship).
So, if 1 Brake Generator generates say 10MN, then 16 of them, which is a max you can have on an L Core, will generate a max of 160MN - and that's it - this way you cannot keep making the ship heavier and heavier because at one point it will simply not be able to brake in the atmosphere. 
The same goes for Engines, Wings, Ailerons, etc - get rid of the 19th Century technology - and use some Electromagnetic Engines or the like which make it possible (like the AGG) for the ship to float and fly based on the power of the ELMAG Engines. The same here with the limitation per Core.
So, again, you cannot just keep slapping engine walls to the ship - but you have a max of ELMAG Engines you can have on a particular core size - and that's it.

As I pointed out in several posts already - this would make it possible to build actual, era-appropriate, beautiful sci-fi ships with real sci-fi looks and not have to plaster them with engines, wings and brakes.

Why SHOULD brakes be obstructed?
Just tell me WHY it SHOULD. Because there is no reason that it SHOULD. 
The are not obstructed now are they, so why is it so important that they must be obstructed?
Tell me why you so deeply want this feature. I cant think of anyone who wanted to quit this game because the brakes were not visible.
 
And some people going for that 'more realistic' dont know what they are saying... Going into space after 3400m up in the air? Being 10000 yrs into the future? Having a nanocrafter in your pocket? Ditch that realistic thing please!
 
There is no should, the devs can decide for themselves if its obstructed, how powerful they are, or how big etc. This is their world where they decide the rules. There is absolutely no reason that it SHOULD be this or that. Its just something that they decided to implement now of a sudden and Im wondering what they hope to achieve with this change?
Its not like, more people will come to this game because the brakes are outside of your ship like it SHOULD be...

If Aphelia forgets to pay taxes, does that mean I can grab all her territories and markets and become an Evil Overlord like her?

There should be no brakes at all. We are 10.000 years in the future. We have Anti-gravity, Warp and Teleportation technology, yet somehow we still need engine walls burning fuel and gazillions of "brakes". We could instead have a small anti-gravity generator or some electromagnetic engines or so, which of course would work as propulsion both in the atmosphere and in space. No need for carrying massive amounts of liquid fuel in huge tanks and so on.
 
But no .... we have engine walls, 500 wings per ship,  379 vertical boosters, 498 large atmo brakes and 392 retro rockets. Yay ...

There should be no brakes at all. We are 10.000 years in the future. We have Anti-gravity, Warp and Teleportation technology, yet somehow we still need engine walls burning fuel and gazillions of "brakes". We could instead have a small anti-gravity generator or some electromagnetic engines or so, which of course would work as propulsion both in the atmosphere and in space. No need for carrying massive amounts of liquid fuel in huge tanks and so on.
 
But no .... we have engine walls, 500 wings per ship,  379 vertical boosters, 498 large atmo brakes and 392 retro rockets. Yay ...

Love it how ppl don't see thé problem with their reasoning. If T1 really does generate so much quanta then prices will OF COURSE drop when everybody mines it with Autominers. Thus leading to less winnings. Thus Rendering your little calculation utterly useless

There should be no brakes AT ALL.
 
We are 10.000 years in the future. We have Anti-gravity, Warp and Teleportation technology, yet somehow we still need engine walls burning fuel and gazillions of "brakes"?
 
We could use a small anti-gravity generator for braking and some electromagnetic engines or such for propulsion both in the atmosphere and in space.
 
But why do sci-fi in a sci-fi game? Instead, for an L-Core we need engine walls with 200 Large Engines, 500 wings per ship,  379 vertical boosters, 498 large atmo brakes and 392 retro rockets. Yay ...

Dear NQ,
 
Please stop breaking your players! I'm not talking about physically breaking your players or even breaking the Dual Universe game. I'm talking about breaking the spirits of your customers (aka. players), killing their motivation to play the game, and then shredding any future potential chance to return to the game at a later time (without loosing most of their work/assets). This is mostly done by piling on change upon change, often just eradicating an aspect of game-play that people enjoyed or even started playing the game for. Even one major change to the game can decimate the player-base (0.23 for example) and that was only ONE such a major change. The currently proposed changes to Demeter are multiple major changes. Doing away with mining outside asteroids (especially when asteroid mining is in such an abysmal state), doing away with permanent ownership of tiles outside of ground conquest, introducing taxes on land ownership, redesigning ore distribution in a major way.
 
Now let's talk about changes on PTS that aren't going to be in the Demeter patch: brakes. I can understand that sometime in the future NQ wants to overhaul how certain elements work, in this case the brakes. This of course needs to be tested before implementation. I absolutely understand! But who's bright idea was it to do it at the same time when NQ asked all players to come test Demeter when it goes in test on PTS? Does this person lack any insight and experience with regards to customer interaction, response, and retention? I have no experience in game-development, but 20 years of IT experience in customer support, (migration) projects, and changes. Rule #1 Do not pile a bunch of changes on customers without an absolute (technical) need. And never ever mix testing changes. If you disregard that and push it through anyway, chance are that your internal customers will rebel and the business will force you to roll back, say bye-bye to any promotion oppertunities. If you're dealing with external customers, you'll still have to roll back and they'll go shopping for a different IT provider (possibly even having grounds to break the contract in place).
 
Next thing: Communication consistency or lack thereof. If people are seeing unexpected changes on PTS and then notice that Space Cores can't run factories anymore, people will panic! When we're asked to give our feedback on the forum due to NQ reading that and Discord being a pain due to how it's structured (I agree), I expect NQ to also communicate via that same forum with us. You have pins on those sub boards, is a top posted pin with a list of known bugs on PTS to much to ask from NQ? Now there are luckily some posters that have other sources (Discord?) that are sharing that info. That is not our job, that's NQ's job. Why is that important? Because players who initially read that have (in most cases) a negative emotion associated with your product, that just doesn't disappear when someone yells "It's a bug!" later in the thread. This doesn't solve bugs, people's exposure to them or their initial bad reactions to them. But at least they aren't stuck with the feeling that they are posting their findings/opinions on a forum that NQ wants you to use, but doesn't use it themselves in any kind of proactive method. Now, maybe there is such a post somewhere on the forum by an NQ employee, but I couldn't find it! I do get alerts of achievements (first post, one year, etc.), but I prefer alerts on bugs (on PTS)...
 
When I first watched the "Inside Novaquark: Demeter Edition", I had this bad feeling, and I kept telling myself "Just wait and see the actual implementation...". I can see why mining on planets needs to go (from a cost perspective). I could life with that if another solution is found (I'll leave it for another thread my opinion if the in place solution is adequate, Spoiler: It isn't). But ontop of that major core game mechanic change, a couple of other core game-mechanic altering stuff is hitched, while imho those aren't necessary for the change.to happen, this makes the mining change feel far, far worse. But the participants of the video gave some hints for hope or at least just being so vague that I could file certain stuff under my misunderstanding the situation. No actual announcement of when the Demeter patch would go live on PTS was a concern, that concern became even greate when with very little notification Demeter went live on PTS, for less then three days... WTF! After all the pushing by NQ personnel to check the PTS test, how can it be live for less then three days with so little lead time? Another POSSIBLE test would be also less then three days... I wasn't able to test PTS yesterday, but I read the forums, more bad feelings. I was able to test today and the bad feelings keep getting worse, this killing the motivation to continue to play DU...
 
But that happens! You can't please everyone. People change, they might change their minds down the road, and come back to your game... But wait! That can't happen anymore due to tile taxes and people loosing the stuff they build on it, not to mention breaking most dynamic constructs due to continues construct breaking changes. We knew that the possibility of loosing your tiles outside of the core safe zone (Alioth/Madis/Thades) would eventually happen with the introduction of ground combat/conquest. Some of us took the long view and started making large infra in the safe zone and lesser infra on the outer worlds. No ground combat/conquest in sight, imho still years of. But we're loosing the ability to own the tiles we claimed everywhere (except the starter moon, which most of us haven't touched since we started over a year ago). So if I leave for six months or a year, I have almost zero motivation to go back because I either didn't build anything outside of the starter moon or I lost everything outside of the starter moon... If that's the case, many people will loose any motivation to play right now, because why start building when you're going to loose everything anyway to rent/taxes? It's not like in RL where you can't check out for a few months/years. The only way people check out of RL is permanently... We don't work for fun to pay rent/taxes, we do it to live, we play games to 'escape' RL to a different universe, and entertainment. We do not want another job to work in DU.
 
I currently run four characters in DU, not 'free' KS/promo accounts, but accounts I bought time for. Those accounts all run out at the end of the year, and with rumors abound these last couple of months I was wondering if I would extend my four characters for another year ($280). And currently, if those changes go live as is, that just isn't going to happen. Not even one account. I have many issues to a lesser or greater extend with the changes on PTS, but the one that breaks the camels back for me is the loss of tiles due to unpaid rent/taxes. I'm just not interested in playing DU for the next 15+ years on a continuous basis, there will be times when I loose interest (or hope in DU), but I expect to eventually return and resubscribe. We all know that a lot of inspiration was taken from EVE, a LOT of use played it or play it still. My main in EVE (same name as here) started in December 2005, over the years I've added many accounts and have taken many (long) breaks, but I always come back (you never quit EVE permanently). I was (until recently) convinced that DU was a similar game, you never quit DU permanently. But it seems I was wrong... Side-note: This year I've spent over $750 on EVE game-time and packs, because every time I come back to EVE I do not have to start from scratch...
 
NQ, please stop breaking your players, because after the Demeter patch, they'll never come back!

There should be no brakes AT ALL.
 
We are 10.000 years in the future. We have Anti-gravity, Warp and Teleportation technology, yet somehow we still need engine walls burning fuel and gazillions of "brakes"?
 
We could use a small anti-gravity generator for braking and some electromagnetic engines or such for propulsion both in the atmosphere and in space.
 
But why do sci-fi in a sci-fi game? Instead, for an L-Core we need engine walls with 200 Large Engines, 500 wings per ship,  379 vertical boosters, 498 large atmo brakes and 392 retro rockets. Yay ...

Try a fully loaded 'runway landing' on Ion ..... a planet of mountains.

Yeah, BISHA, my L-Core, which, oh the Irony, was just featured in NQs Community Showcase, has over 70 Large Air Brakes.
There is no way I can "redesign" the ship without making it effing UGLY and basically COMPLETELY COVER THE OUTSIDE of the ship with BRAKES ... Bye bye nice polished voxel body ...

Don't even get me started on my KOKRRA, SPHERE SHIP .... haha 

Yeah, BISHA, my L-Core, which, oh the Irony, was just featured in NQs Community Showcase, has over 70 Large Air Brakes.
There is no way I can "redesign" the ship without making it effing UGLY and basically COMPLETELY COVER THE OUTSIDE of the ship with BRAKES ... Bye bye nice polished voxel body ...

Don't even get me started on my KOKRRA, SPHERE SHIP .... haha 

Large ships stack them because so many atmo brakes are required.
 
Maybe you could point us to your ships so we can compare. Large ships may have 60+ atmo brakes. I am curious how you do that without stacking them.
 
Let’s also skip the “don’t make large ships argument.” This is a simpler problem for smaller ships.

I am SO excited for the vertex precision tool. In my experience, Voxelmancy is more difficult to use than actual necromancy.

At the moment, you can see an enormous grind at NewWorld. There, however, it is tolerated and seen as a way to reach the goal of skilling professions in order to get equipment and consumables.
But in DualUniverse there is no real goal, you don't have any equipment to improve, you don't need food or potions or gems or.....
One has no choice of ores-plant-herbs-trees, fishing, hunting, lacing, ....es generally lack "professions to specialise in. In DualUniverse I can build a propeller but also engines, toilets, other ship elements. But anyone who wants to can do that. But what do you need all that for anyway? For many players, T1 ores are enough to build voxels from in order to then implement their building projects. Everything else makes no sense, because you don't have to find and fight monsters, there are no dungeons, raids, open-world bosses,... so what's the point of collecting higher-value ores - if you don't need them?
The only thing to do now would be to call it "PvP" - but what for? Only a small part of the community is interested in PvP, as in other games. The PvP in DualUniverse is not even good or balanced. If you have the meta, you win. If your opponent also has the meta, the one with more meta ships or those who currently have fewer bugs (shield bug, warp bug) wins.
But what exactly happens in PvP? Broken down, it only destroys and shifts resources that previously had to be collected at great expense. War is very expensive, so you have to be able to afford PvP and put a lot of time into the game.
DualUniverse itself is for me still in an alpha state and therefore far away from a beta or even further away from a release that would really attract a larger player mass and keep it permanently. There is simply an insane lack of game content, tools and balance. I won't mention that the performance is also a major construction site for now - I think everyone is aware of that anyway.