AzureSkye

That has been and still is a very hot debate. 
 
I'm for lootable once you decide to sell it or once it changes hands. Because I don't think it makes sense to have a resource in game that is completely safe. Naturally there are many good reasons for and against. 
 
The thread about DAC being lootable linked earlier is a treasure of interesting opinions. Albeit a bit heated at times. 

I don't do Starbucks, play Xbox, or any of that. 
 
I do have a life time subscription. 
But those are definitely some cuts you could make to play the game. 

I don't know if you are a customer of Starbucks but for those that are, it's a prime example.
Caffe Latte  -  Tall (Small)  -  $2.95
$3 x 5 days = $15
 
Cut out a week of your morning coffee and you'll never have to worry about a subscription. Unless of course, you have an addiction and get migraines when you go without caffeine for a period of time (like my mother and her Coca-Cola). Cut it out entirely and you be peachy free of headaches by the end of the month.
 
If you play Xbox Live, stop, play DU instead.
 
A year's membership of trigger fingers and YOLO over there gets you half a year of teamwork and fellowship here. 
 
If you have a job, it's not hard. If you don't have a job, be a productive member of the neighborhood and shovel, rake, mow, etc. 

I gladly buy every DAC someone throws at me in the first year

I think another important aspect of gameplay to consider is shipping costs of goods. NQ can easily implement mechanics that make it beneficial to process material on site. Example raw Iron ore weighs 10 and refines to something usable that weighs 1. If you want to be safe and process the ore at your MSA you have to transport 10x the weight as someone who risks refining on/close to the source of ore. Another example is fuel/power, small bases may only require some solar panels to keep the lights on. Large factories may require harvest-able material to generate large amounts of power. If you want to have a "safe" factory you will have to import/transport both material for ships and for power. You are far better of partnering with a mining company and building your factory with them, sharing the protection bubble and making it stronger and greatly saving on transport costs and risks(pirates). So the only thing that would be safe at MSA would be finished products which I am ok with, there is still lots of opportunity to pvp, steal, and pirate.

DU is first a community/society building MMO with PVP elements to be implemented at a later phase (but prior to release). 
 
As always the PVP oriented players will complain about anything that prevents their preferred play style as will those who are not PVP oriented will about the lack of 'safe guards' against PVP. With the known 'limitations' and requirements for these STUs and the need to still get whatever you want to do there into it there is opportunities for the war/conflict seeking play styles to try and get a hit off. It's a matter of balance and frankly, this sounds to me like a pretty decent one.
 
This also opens up a number of possible options for PVP not as obvious as firing guns.. Infiltration being one of them.. 
 

Fact of life is, you can't live in a constant state of fear. 
 
There needs to be a moment where you can relax, breath and enjoy what's in front of you. Nothing but the fear of death all the time would get boring for a lot of people. So I think these safe tiles are a great addition to the game. 
 
I don't think diminishing pvp is a concern, just the opposite in fact. They create yet another way to express yourself beyond "blowing things up". It creates the mechanics for blockades and a lot more that I can't think of. 
 
In the end I see this as just another way by NQ to bring some balance between 2 opposing spectrums. The builders and the destroyers. 
 
If you can sell your MSA tile it might become even more interesting. 

I see little issues with this. In fact, I like the idea of STUs. An okay-ish or good compromise catering to different audiences while those using them will still not be completely untouchable. 
 
Why or how has been mentioned prior by various people. 
 
In turn let's say there will be some war. Enemy might have backup materials or valuables stored in STUs area. You might not be able to target it directly but it can essentially turn into a material war. If the other side gets blockaded or if they run out of resources, use up the things in the STU and can't throw more at you, then that's also damage to them or victory for you. 
 
I again think the general idea is good and while it might prolong some wars, it also gives builders or creators (or businessmen) a place to live or act in relative peace. 
 
A compromise of sorts, bridging various types of players. 

Remember these new packs will grant access to Alpha2 where we are currently still in pre-Alpa.

You have this problem in minecraft because inventories are incredibly unrealistic and you can also destroy matter by dropping it in a fire or lava. So people tend to strip mine because there is no penalty for having tons of cobble stone in the inventory.
 
I hope they go for the more space engineers type system, that you cant really destroy matter so you either have to build warehouses full of rock or dump it back into the world, people will still trash areas but having areas that are that "mined down the bedrock" would not happen because people would need to fill in the hole with waste material because otherwise they would have to take it with them.

Regardless of the system used it should just be universal throughout the whole game and only use that one system. Would be rather clunky and awkward if you have some players using one system and some players using another, just one system and that's it.

SI units - there's no sense and use in using an old, outdated, useless system which is only used by 3 countries. Unify the world and start using SI, it makes much more sense

People should really not be trying to mix units of measurement in space travel, does anyone remember what happened to the Mars Climate Orbiter?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16422070-900-schoolkid-blunder-brought-down-mars-probe/

Ugh I'm American and I hate everything about the imperial system (except temperature; Fahrenheit is a good measurement for human comfort). Especially unit conversions... Freaking slugs and kips and horsepower... Like come on.
 
Anyway... They did show in the latest video that you can use html and css to create widgets with information about the construct you're in. So as far as that goes, I have a feeling you could make an option to switch between metric and imperial units, or just have widgets in imperial entirely. And ship cockpit interfaces are programmable with Lua. So I don't think you'll have much trouble interpreting things in the game as it will probably be easy to have non-hud information displayed in whatever units you like.

Now if we could just get space weather xD
 
Love me a good solar wind.

It basically comes down to preference, not (solely) pros and cons if I think about it. On one end of the spectrum you have the "hardcore survival crowd" and on the other, the ones with a more casual or hassle-free mindset in that regard. 
 
I doubt you can change many stances solely through debate (here). I think it kinda boils down to "how many are in favor, against or indifferent about it and what would NQ's state be about it. 
 
I for one can only suggest a survival system where you have to eat maybe 1 to 2 times per real day. Or 3 maybe. By that I mean played time. A good balance can surely be found.
 
But why am I in favor of it? 
 
1) Challenges. This adds another layer to the game. As trivial as eating may sound, it adds logistics and planning and in some situations maybe reliance on others. 
 
2) Jobs. Farming, industry and maybe a further options to use some stuff for chemicals and further refining. Or beer brewing. If food items are planned without survival, adding survival (to be precise, need to eat)  would make all those objects more useful beyond "fluff or buff". 
 
3) Other stuff I can't think of right now and stay is not covered by 1 or 2
 
The need to eat could open a whole new market and I think this is not too much to ask for if you have to use various items only a few times per day (real hours). 

This has been discussed to death. However I feel that it's been a year since the F2P thread started, so everything does deserve a valid answer.
 
So, there was actually a way to avoid the subscription. That is to get a lifetime subscription in the kickstarter and crowdfunding period. How much? $475 USD for the physical rewards pack offered with the kickstarter. I think $425 USD for the digital rewards. I got the lifetime subscription for these reasons. A) I wanted to support Dual Universe and B ) I know that I'll be playing Dual Universe for the amount of time that my investment turns back, which is over two years.
 
Now Lethys has been doing an excellent job explaining this. There is also a dev blog about it here:
https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2016/04/08/monetization-player-happiness-and-economic-viability/
You can hear it explained by the people personally working on the game that way.
 
Along with that, here's the way I'm going to put it. Let's take a look at a game like Space Engineers. It's been a big hit, selling many copies, and so on. However you should have noticed that it hit beta at a certain point, with a release planned at some point evidently. This is a simple problem of the fact that not everyone is going to buy Space Engineers at the same rate for extended periods of time. KSH is likely planning to put the cap on it when it no longer has enough profit(if it hasn't already done that). So you will see Space Engineers have a life cycle that's impressive for a B2P game, but would not cut it for an MMO. Infact I'd call myself a detriment due to my status not having to pay monthly.
 
That's a summary of it all. I tried to touch on points that Lethys didn't cover. Hope you were able to get some more information from it.

Doubt it. Those kinds of offers are expensive for the devs over time; they effectively remove a player from the funding stream once their package cost is exceeded by whatever the subs would have cost to that point. They are a reward for very early backers with deep pockets who take a chance on an early concept. Once early backing is done, the life-sub offers always vanish, and never return. 

- Subscriptions are the best and most honest revenue model for a MMO in my opinion. No extras, no pay2win, no item-shop bs for any player. Everyone is equal. How far You get is all about Your skill and what You make and build in the game.
- There indeed were lifetime subscriptions within some of the old pledge packages. Probably similiar offers will come back one day...
- No need to buy overpriced ships You can't design, change or modify Yourself like in Star Citizen.
 

This has been discussed to death in several threads here and there will always be those who feel they can't afford/think it will not work/need something different. Point is that for a game such as DU a subscription model is simply the most efficient. If you can't afford to pay roughly $4/week to pay for a sub you can choose to put in the effort to make the money in game and sub that way.
 
This is not a 'play the loop, solve the game, move on' kind of experience.. There is no real endgame here and you will get many, many hours of ongoing playtime out of the game which more justify the subscription fee IMO. While my backer package will give me well over 4 years of playtime I doubt I will need the DAC for that after maybe a few months at most and make enough in game to pay for playtime. It's how I run all my accounts in EVE (about 7 right now) which is similar in that regard although EVE is probably easier to fund in-game subs due to the amount of NPC/PVE content with a good to excellent payout.
 
Part of the fun will be to build a business model in game which will make it profitable to the point where the game characters can sustain themselves. And like myself I'm sure there's a good number of players already developing these plans.

NQ shouldnt do shit, it should be the players community which decides how to deal with copyright infringement