AzureSkye

This. People are always asking for handholding because "mimimi it's too hard, I can't kill/do it" - so what, think of a way to do it yourself or actually talk to others and ask them....just because YOU can't do it, doesn't mean noone can

Won't work, ppl won't follow it. 
 
It's up to the Administration of a city/Hub/spaceport to regulate and enforce these things.
 
While i understand why ppl would want this, I'm against such a thing for one simple reason: diversity. Where's the fun in travelling to different cities when every city looks similar - even If it's only the design of roads or landing pads

Yes unfortunately all we can do is guess but I'm thinking and guessing it will be a hybrid of tab targeting :
 
Tab Targeting vs Action Combat vs PBAOE - MMORPG PvP
 
 
 

This is sci-fi, overpowered engines are standard. It wouldn't be surprising if you could make a straight line to the moon. Though NQ may (hopefully) balance against that. It doesn't make sense to turn off gravity when a ship is moving, either from a programming perspective or an immersion perspective. While you'll save a few cycles, there are far bigger places that can get slashed first. Namely voxel interaction and manipulation. Planets don't spin. The sun is a skybox that revolves around the system. For your hypotheses: They'll probably have Air Brakes and Space Brakes. Space Brakes will only work in space. Air Brakes will only work in atmosphere. There is 100% going to be a speed cap. It's simply not possible to compute required physics over a certain speed. I believe NQ has said that fuel has mass and as it is used, you'll lighten up. You are going seriously in-depth with so few resources! It's pretty awesome to watch.

Hi there DrCat75,

Welcome to the Community and Forums.

To address your concern. This topic has actually been answered multiple times by Novaquark: see here: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/search/&q=model&author=NQ-Nyzaltar&sortby=newest

Here's a nice devblog explaining why a subscription model will be best for Dual Universe: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2016/04/08/monetization-player-happiness-and-economic-viability/


Since this topic often ends up in flamewars with those for subscription vs against subscription, I'll be locking this one. Please refer to the 1st link I posted to see all the answers from Novaquark regarding this topic.
 
 
~ Meldrik
 
 
 

What founders generously received when the supporter packs were announced are mostly cosmetic in-game items and not entire "packs". What those cosmetics are, are listed in the post where that image comes from:
 
https://www.dualthegame.com/en/news/2018/03/07/supporter-rewards-for-founder-backers/
 
Besides cosmetic in-game goodies:
Silver Founders now get access to Alpha 2 (not beta like the would have previously)
Gold Founders gets a name reservation
(Sapphire Founders and up get a few more cosmetics.)
 
NQ have stated that they are looking into allowing upgrading from Founder packs to Supporter packs as there are quite a few people asking for this.
 
Are NQ really treating Founders worse by handing out free stuff?

I've read and watched some NQ statements about CvC combat. And it seems that there will be localised damage (both voxels and elements). Maybe I watched something outdated? What's the most recent article?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efu_129hI9o around 9:45 to 13:00
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/841-ask-us-anything-event/&tab=comments#comment-8072
 
NQ also stated that you can aim at specific point at the ship (which is selected randomly, if the target is too far for you to select anything specific). Then damage is deal within certain sphere from that point. I bet damage will be applied from outside-in, thus it need ray-casting to check what is outside.
And that system need to check if locked target is "valid" which probably means there is clear line of sight, is within weapon reach, ect. So it needs to use ray-casting too.
 
Also don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating for FPS style aiming - it's still done via lock&fire (so AI assisted aiming). Thus it's not affected by lag or interpolation, and not reflex based.
I'm only suggesting (or wildly speculating) how hit chances could be calculated via ray-casting, rather than some arbitrary % numbers.
Only twitch skill I mentioned was evasive manoeuvring in CvC, not aiming. And it only prevents usage of oversized guns against small targets. And it's more of tactical skill to know when and which direction to turn.
 
Unlike FTD and other games, DU have one huge advantage: voxels are small. 64 times smaller compared to FTD. Thus we don't need any elaborate penetration calculations, going through voxels without destroying them, partially damaging voxels, ect. We can have just 0/1 system where voxels are either alive or dead. If projectile (ray) damage potential is higher than voxel resistance, remove it. Then damage potential is reduced accordingly, and proceed to the next voxel. Repeat until damage potential is lower than voxel resistance.
Weapons with high AP would be simply those with high damage potential per shoot, while low AP would just spray small bullets.
My main concern regarding shields is that they protect weak-spots in armour. Things like engines, radiators, gates, weapons. With shields, all those parts are virtually as durable as anything else. Complete mitigation of damage for the winning side is also important though.
I went for "simply no shields" as that's the good point to start balancing from. Your idea may work, but IMO protection should just reduce % of damage potential, preferably for both incoming and outgoing shoots. Thus armour design and proper positioning is still important, and shield is something you use when you really need extra protection, not all the time.
Of course large vs smaller is always going to larger.
The question is: what if one large ship worth 100kk with 20 crew members fight twenty small, single crewed ships worth 5kk each?
Not so obvious any more.
Small ones have advantage in positioning, agility and acceleration. Large one has much thicker armour, and higher repair ability. Small ships have too small caliber to kill large ship, but they can disable some external equipment. While large ship have it's main armament too clumsy to hit small targets, and secondary armament is out-shoot by small crafts, due to being more stationary.
 
Or situation where two large ships meet fleet with one large and 20 small ships. IMO mixed fleet should win, by first disabling enemy with small ships, then entering with large ship for some deep-penetration.
 
Just like tanks IRL - they are much more powerful than infantry. But for a reason they never fight alone, without infantry support.
And battle-cruisers required cover of destroyers for protection from torpedo-boats.

2: Investigating orbital mechanics
What we know from our gravity analysis
Judging by the velocities and fuel time of the spacecraft in the videos, the delta-v supplied by the specific impulse must be huge. So huge it is plausible to simply make for the moon in a perfectly straight line. It is also important to note the planet, alioth, and its moon a very small in relation to our earth/moon pair and the distance between them is also very small in comparison. When all the engines on a craft are turned off, standard Newtonian mechanics apply to it causing it to orbit around the planet. This is only in this context. For all we know the gravity field of the planet could become ineffective as soon as you start moving your craft around. The sun and the planets do not move. Planets may spin in future but will never orbit their stars. It is a possibility an antigravity ring is encapsulating every celestial body.  
Deducing the nature of external forces on a vessel
 
Predictions:
If the vessel was under no external force the acceleration should be constant (due to constant mass). There is no uncertainty to take into consideration here. No air resistance, constant mass and constant force in a straight line should give the same mass every time. Alternatively if there are no external forces on the craft but its mass is changing due to fuel depletion we should observe a more or less constant increase in acceleration If the vessel is under the external force of gravitational pull, acceleration should vary with respect to the path of the vessel. Take a look at this diagram of a simplified situation (not to scale):
The vessel is at point A. The red vector is the acceleration of the ship, the blue vectors are the gravitational accelerations of the planet and moon (big one=moon, small one=planet) on the ship. The difference between them is the resultant acceleration due to gravity. On the left, the ship is making a bee line from the centre of the moon to the centre of the planet. Vector of resultant acceleration on it in green. On the right the ship has adjusted its course but still has the same magnitude of throttle. Vector of resultant acceleration on it in orange. We can see the further one deviates their flight path from the shortest path the lesser the magnitude of acceleration. This only applies to when the gravity is acting in the opposite direction to flight path. When you get closer to the planet you should get more acceleration.
 
If the vessel is at full throttle, the red vector will be unable to be any larger. So we are guaranteed to have less acceleration.
 
In the context of moving from moon to planet, since the field strength diminishes with distance, we should see greater accelerations of the vessel closer to the planet as the gravity will act as a ‘booster’.
Method: Using this pre-alpha footage, I took the acceleration of the vessel at discrete, arbitrary points at times when the craft was going straight forwards at full throttle (600 kN) and put them on a graph to illustrate the data. It is important to note these are arbitrary values and the graph is roughly showing how the acceleration varies throughout the journey.
Results:

Looking at the purple ‘SetAvg’ graph, we can clearly see the case is that prediction 1 is does not apply as the acceleration varies between points. This means predictions 2 and 3 may hold. But there is no fuel in the vessel. We can see the gauges are 0% meaning the fuel is cheated. So prediction 2 does not hold. Up to point 10 we observe a relatively steady rise in acceleration, the vessel is moving toward equator of moon in the vertical direction. However, there are some anomalous readings. At points 4 and 11 we see a decrease in acceleration – negative acceleration at point 11 even. At point 11 it is also important to not the ‘space thrust’ is decreasing
 
My theories as to what the graph as whole represents, ranked in order of feasibility, are as follows:
 
A:
Gravity exists with engines on. The gradual change in acceleration is due to the deviation of the flight path towards the equator.  We observe a deviation toward the equator as the ship starts at one of the poles of the moon and moves to the equator of the planet.
 
The first anomalous reading represents the vessel’s diminished acceleration after change in trajectory due to velocity change needed (see theory B for velocity change explanation). The second is due to braking, atmospheric drag and larger velocity change needed.
 
It can be argued that if the gravity of the two bodies was remotely significant, considering the pilot starts from the one of the poles of the moon, that he would veer way off course. But the ship is scripted so that when the pilot moves the vessel to a different point in the field, the auxiliary thrusters act accordingly to keep it going straight. He clearly has a vertical booster and RCS. This would mean he would be accelerating downwards but the booster/RCS could easily compensate for the downward component of his acceleration. This is backed up by pre-alpha footage where you can see a ship’s VTOL thruster and main thruster acting in conjunction with one another.
 
As per prediction 3, gravity would cause smaller accelerations for changes in flight path.  However, this only warrants a dip in acceleration. Not a plummet into negative acceleration as we see with the second reading. To add to the deviant appearance of this anomaly from the first, at the point in the video where it is observed the acceleration due to gravity should be going towards the planet. This means the pilot should gain more acceleration for changes in trajectory toward the equator and not slow down.
 
It is suspected that the pilot entered an upper atmospheric layer of the planet here. This is backed up by the fact his space thrust is decreasing. When the pilot entered the layer he was relatively nose down to the surface so their drag force wasn’t enough to slow them to terminal velocity. But just before the spike in negative acceleration the craft rotates, exposing its underbelly to the ‘airflow’.  This meant a sharp increase in drag force occurred and the vessel was slowed to terminal velocity until the velocity vector straightened out with the nose of the vessel making the drag force in that new direction inadequate to cancel out the acceleration again
 
An alternate idea is the pilot applied their brakes here to slow themselves down and thus give negative acceleration. They did this as they were nearing the planet at 12000km/h which would make them burn up at such a steep ascent.
 
The problem with this theory is there are some factors you can't isolate.
  
B: 
 Gravity does not exist with engines on. Both anomalous readings represent the vessel after rather significant changes in trajectory at points where velocity was low and high. At the lower velocity closer to the starting point at the moon the vessel made a change in course which required little acceleration because of the small velocity. Conversely, at the higher velocity close to the planet the vessel made a change in course which required a larger acceleration due to its higher velocity:

In the diagram above we see a ship with velocity vector in black. To get the ship on the red velocity vector to change path we need to have velocity vector in blue acting on the ship. To get the blue vector, an acceleration over a certain time needs to be produced to get velocity components in purple (one braking and one lifting).
 
A problem with this theory is that you can't actually tell whether you're still accelerating up and back after you've straighten out without a close point of reference. The main problem is how can it explain non constant acceleration in a straight line?
 
C:
Gravity does not exist with engines on. Both anomalous readings represent some sort of ‘anti-gravity ring’ that encapsulates all celestial bodies and the second one was larger due to braking and atmospheric drag. This could be the space station ‘static orbit ring’ previously discussed. brake the vessel if coming in at break neck speeds. This is because the ships in game have potential for massive delta-v and could accelerate to very high velocities. This would make braking incredibly hard and frustrating for players. You would have to start braking your craft ages before you even arrived, travel very slowly or have the velocity of vessels capped.
 
The first issue with this theory is that the brakes could just be made more powerful and the velocity could be capped. In the atmospheric flight video we see a small braking force in the spec. But for a space vessel that could be a different case. This is probably the reason they chose different fuels for atmosphere and vacuum as everyone would just use space brakes in the atmosphere to stop almost instantly; which would be completely ridiculous to watch and potentially harmful to game balance.
 
Secondly, what if I have a slow moving vessel? I wouldn't be able to penetrate the field. It makes more sense to just have the antigravity generator as part of the space station rather than the planet so you don’t enforce your anti-gravity on anyone else.
 
Thirdly, the tweet where JC was working on antigravity is dated to early 2018 whereas the moon flight video is dated to late 2017. So it is unlikely antigravity was developed by this point. Especially for effective use in orbit.
 
Finally the major issue is that, like theory B, this cannot explain the changing acceleration in a straight line.
 
The bottom line is this theory is too far-fetched and illogical from a design point of view.
Conclusion
Confident orbital mechanics still apply with engines on. Don’t really need to test for myself, the evidence is here. No fuel depletion means there must be constant acceleration in a straight line unless an external force of gravity is acting on it. It is possible an outer atmospheric layer exists rather high above the planet. I believe the velocity will be capped to stop people from performing the following: If you’re being chased you could accelerate to an incredibly high velocity then brake. Your assailant would be miles ahead of you before he could react and you would have escaped. What is likely is a combination of more brake force and capped velocity in space vessels. A sweet spot between the two, so to speak, to make stopping easier but not exploitable. Also too high velocities would be impossible to compute. Inconclusive as to if fuel has mass or not since it is not present but cheated in.

The function seems to describe the variation of the gravity field (unit : m.s-2, just like g) created by an object located at x=0 (probably a planet). x is the radius distance between the planet core and the position where you are.
r0 is probably the radius of the planet which creates this field and h the altitude from the sea level of this planet. So r0+h is the distance from the core of the planet and from the graphic, in this case, it values something around 32 (kilometers i guess). In the exponential term, s is a term that indicates how large is the well. a indicates how deep is the well.
So by choosing ro+h you can set where you want your gravity well to be, choose s to set how large it is and a to set how deep it is. If you want to have anti-gravity (so that the function is negative somewhere), you have to choose a wisely. If you choose a=0, then you have the standard field of gravity (the green curve).
 
I hope it will help some of you to understand but it's mostly maths and does not have much to do whith physics. To sum up, by adding a gaussian function to the standard gravity field you are able to create a given area where g is negative (=anti-gravity). The only trick is that you want it to be on a specific location and that's why you use a gaussian function (it does not have much effect at distances greater than a few s).
 
N.B : english is not my mother tongue so you may have some difficulties to understand what i meant only due to my poor english skills

Why is there any need for a separate bounty hunting system? This whole premise should be covered under a player contracting system. 
 
If you want to place a bounty on someone, you create an Open contract with a target, price, and request specified. With a Smart Contract system, the bounty will automatically complete once conditions are met.

@molemoore Unfortunately, Founders cannot upgrade their pledges at this time. You will have to wait until the devs upgrade the Pledge Portal to support Founder pledges again.

Founders cannot upgrade/change to supporter packs with the same account.
 
This may change in the future, but for now, it is not possible.
 
There are a few founders that want to upgrade, so you are not alone.
 
Edit: ninja'd by the sky xD

Does not have to be 8 hours, but generally yes, it can be expected. Maybe you would not do it, maybe - subjectively seen - many others would not like this.
 
But for some it's fun. For some it's RP. For some it's thrill or just what they want to do, or at least do for a bit as they play and do other things. If you can't imagine this, there are easy examples that highlight that people exist that want to do this - at least a bit.
 
Roleplaying games (online), such as MMORPGs. Or, more actively, games like ARMA III (and any version before) where people play online in some sort of "cops vs robbers" mode where civilians can do certain jobs, become criminals or where emergency services exist including police that drive around and patrol, respond to incidents, etc. Then there is private security, mercenaries, etc.
 
It's all players doing this. So with those good examples, I think it can be said that it can generally be expected that people contribute to major projects once they come home, in whatever capacity that may be. And if that may be "menial" guard duty or similar, then so be it. Some people will sign up for it and at least do it partially, and with more people you can have shorter "shifts".
 
Some games will simply be relentless. If no one watches your hide-outs, caches, etc, then someone might steal from them or someone might damage them. To prevent or lower this, you need to deal with better or more coverage.
 
In an RP game (G-Mod, Half-Life 2 RP) I once stood at a subway checkpoint for what felt like 8 actual hours (or must've been between 6-8 hours). It's menial, it's repetitive at times or for many, but so is life. You would not believe how many citizens I kept away from the restricted area just by being there and showing presence, and I could do it all from a comfy control room that would control the doors if need be. For some it is boring, but it still served a vital job in the bigger picture.
 
And if players can understand that those jobs can be very vital, their acceptance may rise notably.

Another wild and crazy idea for you all!
 
From what we've seen in the game, from the trailers and videos, is all metal building voxels and terrain voxels. All the rocks and trees, while detailed, appear to be "elements", which can't be mined. I'm proposing that trees and bushes, while not necessarily made from voxels themselves, generate or release materials that can be made into wood voxels. Especially if there are a variety of types of wood colors and grains.
 
Why? Because nothing says luxury like an all wood interior!
 
Hmm... that wasn't wild or crazy...

No. Terrain Voxels cannot move. However, the rest, (Orbits, station keeping, transfer orbits) is in there.
Yes. However, I had to spell it out as, for example, Space Engineers does an Inverse Seventh rule.

I assume your concern is balance of the territory system? I think that should be discussed in more general terms at this stage rather than suggesting specific mechanics, otherwise it is just too speculative.

DU is a social game. Why do ppl always want to give solo players the same protection/tools as orgs?
You CAN play DU on your own and that should be possible, I agree there. But placing a TU is a group effort (or a very long solo effort). A new player can ofc venture outside the safezones to do stuff but building a base (even a small one) is a big undertaking (and should be!). You have to make decisions here and it all boils down to risk vs reward.
Go alone and just dig in - cheap but dangerous
go alone and place a TCU - expensive but a bit safer
go alone, place a TCU and shield - very expensive but very safe
find a group to play with and do stuff with them - cheap and safe
 
Your suggestion would only lead to trolls (like me) annoying ppl by placing those anti-TCU elements everywhere but I won't reiterate the points already made by others here.
 

So here's one from the discord. Idea courtesy of TheGreatPigeon who assures me he's too lazy to post it. I like it enough I'll put it up and give my thoughts on it.
 
The basic gist is to allow a construct made from a blueprint to be edited, and for those changes to, themselves, be saved as a blueprint. Unlike a normal blueprint, this new type (We'll call it a 'schematic' for now,) can't be used in a factory by itself or to make new constructs. In order to be used, it requires either a construct the original blueprint was for, or a copy of that blueprint alongside it.
 
A usage case:
X designs a fightercraft that's fairly popular. Z finds that it's undergunned and a little slow for his tastes. He adds some more weapons, changes the materials to lighten it up, and adds a sick spoiler just for fun. When he saves this, it becomes a schematic. If he has a copy of X's fighter, he can apply that schematic, in a factory or some other industrial unit, or possibly directly to the construct using guides and his nanoformer. If he has a BP, he can put both into a factory and produce a copy of the fighter with his schematic already applied.
 
If he has neither the fighter or the blueprint, his schematic doesn't do anything at all.
 
So this achieves a few things:
1: It allows iterative creativity while still protecting the IP of the original creator.
2: It can drive market sales for all parties. If Z's schematic is really popular, People are going to want to buy a lot more of X's fighter to get to use it!
3: It can allow players/orgs to customize their own variants of a construct without needing the original designer to do the work themselves, but still get paid for their original work.

Now obviously, as a toggle, a BP could still have an "Allow/Disallow schematics" sort of option, to give the original IP holder more control. But I think a system like this could allow for some very interesting interactions to take place, without any enormous degree of additional complexity.

With the RDMS system anticipated to be able to execute Smart Contracts, I see no reason that an exchange can't be self regulating, without requiring external policing. 

Building in Dual Universe could do with a simple basis font that is small so that it can create any letter, and the larger the font is the more different it can become. for the limited options of small sized fonts a simple name for that font would be useful; Which I propose as Ennea Font. (Ennea is greek for 9; the amount of voxels this type of font takes up per letter.
There is also a Hexa Font. Alas, some letters are hard to read at this level.
W and M require a minimum of 4 voxels wide, and I doesn't need any width. S is actually more legible as 2 voxels wide. 
I hope having names for these fonts and the font being available to be copied for in game will speed up some design processes.
 
~Loughlin

There shouldn’t be an arbitrary system in place to do most of this.  Safezones are enough on that front.
 
If you want policing, form an organization and keep an open ear to the larger organizations.  That’s the whole point of civilization building :).

Another wild and crazy idea for you all!
 
From what we've seen in the game, from the trailers and videos, is all metal building voxels and terrain voxels. All the rocks and trees, while detailed, appear to be "elements", which can't be mined. I'm proposing that trees and bushes, while not necessarily made from voxels themselves, generate or release materials that can be made into wood voxels. Especially if there are a variety of types of wood colors and grains.
 
Why? Because nothing says luxury like an all wood interior!
 
Hmm... that wasn't wild or crazy...

Another wild and crazy idea for you all!
 
From what we've seen in the game, from the trailers and videos, is all metal building voxels and terrain voxels. All the rocks and trees, while detailed, appear to be "elements", which can't be mined. I'm proposing that trees and bushes, while not necessarily made from voxels themselves, generate or release materials that can be made into wood voxels. Especially if there are a variety of types of wood colors and grains.
 
Why? Because nothing says luxury like an all wood interior!
 
Hmm... that wasn't wild or crazy...

*holds her tight* I love you Alioth-chan, but I need to mine you for minerals. I'm sorry