DevisDevine

Well I did say I dont expect every planet to have every ore, i expect some systems to be almost void of some ores. Asteroids will be able to be depleted easily, but i expect there to be plent. Planets should have a ton, but i would expect the rarer ores to be more scares and harder to locate. Remember the game is persistent, so unless you impliment an ore generation system, something they said they would try not to, you have to have a lot of resources otherwise immense areas in the universe will be just void of anything after a year. The limiting factor will be 2 fold, one the time it takes to collect the ore, especially for massive projects. 2 will be the constant need to rebuild and replace ships that are destroyed in battle. Even if you can salvage I wouldn't expect it to all be recovered. Also as players join, more ships will be needed and larger ships will be made. I dont want you to have to clean out 5 system to be able to construct a capital ship, its not realistic when you look at the immensity of resources in a system. Now some things tend to be more rare, and those will require you to spread out and search the galaxy

You seem to be thinking of resources in terms of Eve, I am not however. Eve has a few small sites with a low number of asteroids in each. This is a precedurally generated voxel world. I am hoping it is more representative of the real world. Planets have an immense amount of resources, and the deeper you go the more concentrated heavy ores are. It has way more volume than the few million m3 you may pull out of an asteroid belt. And when moving into space, you could have multiple planets and moons in a system, all containing a various assortment of ore. Then theres the comments and asteroids. I expect there to be vast fields of asteroids in belt, similar to our asteroid belt. While they may not be stacked on top each other like in eve, they could be thousands of miles apart, the belt contains countless asteroids varying from tiney pieces, to some miles across. This would provide a lot of materieals for players, especially if factions split across a few system like in eve. I also fully expect to be able to salvage ship remains. Sure some pieces will be blow up and destroyed, but the remainders should be left there to salvage, not blow up in a fireball.

For Alpha sure, a single planet/system. But as soon as the skill training allows someone to create an FTL drive, it will be used, trust me. So if it take 1 month to train for FTL, then in 1 month the first players will leave the system, if it takes 6 months then in 6 months. That will be on the Devs and how they build the skill tree. But I fully expect multiple systems in full release. I plan to be on that first ship out with my group. I agree with you on resource spread. I dont want an even spread, but I also dont huge clusters. It should be more natural and a bit random. So mountain ranges would have denser ores pushed to the surface, as well as volcanic ares. Swampy areas with soft ground would have dense elements settled down deep. And as for interstellar spreads, I would expect to see a lack of denser elements in first generation stars, and slowly increasing as you get to younger stars that formed from the matter of stars like supernovas, which create these denser elements.

Well as one of the guys said, he wrote that. But I would have assumed 'between two systems' would mean just a gate to single gate system, not only one system appart. I fully expect wormholes to beable to go much further than one system. It could be they have a range of so many lightyears, or it coud be they have an energy or fuel cost based on distance to use. Since theoretically if you have the energy wormholes have no range. I think system to system gates will anoy people as much as it does in eve. Afterall the point of stargates are that they are nearly instantaneous travel but come at a high cost. I think your 3 categories are good. should cover everything, as long as we can LUA script auto tag systems. Having a hyperspace drive is interesting, but at least in the theoretical world of SciFi, stargate systems are supposed to be faster. Now it could be cheaper in energy cost, and also doesn't require prebuilt infrastructure. So it could be a goto for explorers and alliances who want to get away and be isolated for a while. I like the idea that you have to set the end point and cant change it, but this fits in more with the idea of warp drive. You preplan your path, it cant be interdicted, and you cant drop out early. Now this tech doesnt really have a reason to give it a minimum range, but its fiction so why not. With eneough energy there is also no limit to this technologies speed, I believe it was stated that it much be a integer multiple of C, but I dont see why. Hyperspace allows you to travel faster than C because you are traveling in an alternate dimension, presumably one with shorter dimensions than our own. Now if your ship is folding the space you travel in, this could allow for different drives to have vastly different travel speed, and it not solely be a multiple of what you can travel under sublight in normal space. So you can slowly develop a faster and faster FTL drive to go further, faster, and without gates. I think your normal sublight speed should have an impact on how fast this method is as well, since you are still moving though the alternate dimention, just at some multiple of the normal. But you can drop out of it when you please, in fact if you cant provide the power or something breaks you would drop out wherever. Slipstream has always been an odd one to me, it seems to be a mix of hyperspace and wormhole travel. If I had to choose, I would suggest this one for your idea on Hyperspace. Predefined end points, and it could be said that to form a slipstream path that ends near its starting point either has enormous energy cost or it collapses itself for whateveer reason. But again we can give whatever reason to it we wish since its scifi. I am just curious what the game mechanics will be. And also, thats my plan, jumping away into the void with my group, returning with a massive fleet. I think several of us agree, it should take some time to get around, but the constant jump after jump manotomy of Eve is what drives me crazy. Warp Jump Warp Jump Warp Jump Warp Jump, 50 times over 2 hours is insane.

Interesting concept. I like the idea of using something like these to drop resources. Even near the surface they could have a chance at dropping some rarer resources only found in the deep. NQ has stated that they didnt plan on replenishing resources, but as discussed, mob drops could be a way to always have a supply. However in the future they could always impliment something like this, maybe its discovered on a new planet and spread across the galaxy like rats were, as stowaways. Although I would prefer this be used only in noob locations, starter areas. Since once you have a resource base you can move locations when needed. It is only new players that need a supply of resources in one location. So they could be found only on Alioth, or incase we ever get more than one Ark ship (something I fully expect in the long term) it could be a property of them interacting with the Kyrium or the Ark shield that allows them to survive and replenish the land. And finally someone else writing a story besides me.

Saffi, I had forgotten the no ramming thing, but possibly in a few years. I hope I can get my corpse collection back. I had a few hundred in cans in Eve and always kept one with me in my cargohold for company. There will be FTL, just likely not in alpha since it will be a single system. They may focus on imimenting other things first. @nora, I would assume the game mechanics worked that if a sensor couldn't detect you are there then the tag system wouldn't work either. It should be the tag systems scanner has to detect someone to tag them. But I like the idea of jammers for things like that, more ecm than just cloaks.

Hmm. Interesting. With a possible infinite amount of people you would expect prices to drop as sales go up. But I assumed as more people ventured in an area more would sell their data, dropping prices for that info more. But if you are the only one to a location then it's rare data and worth more, until people venture that way more. This would allow you to make a better profit on new data and not just somewhere everyone is. But having a limited number of copies is interesting. Each scan yields maybe 5 copies of the data, keep it or sell it all off. Better equient will yield more copies, but it will always be finite. Rapidly developing places will have higher demand for updated maps, but also likely more people are making them. It would split groups into the true explorers and just the urban surveyors. I did eleude to the fact it would be data at that time. Having a date of when it was taken would be useful to determining how accurate it is. Maybe when you warp in there's a massive military base built there.

What do you mean by dormant performances? And I was thinking about this more. They may push more of the CPU stuff to the servers and just push the clients the data to render. Meaning it would be more memory GPU heavy. They could go so many ways, I'm unsure of what's the best way for performance with a game this scale.

Well I would think orbital scans give you images, atmospheric comp, maybe population. That level data. I'd think details on each hex grid, including geological surveys, would be something you either enter the atmosphere for or drop a probe. It could tell you this grid has x amount of this ore and y of this. That could also open up another level of geological detail showing where exactly in the hex the ore is. And you would know the locataion the data you are buying is. But yes someone could say platinum deposit in the description (but then you could just go there yourself if he tells you). He could be lying, but I think explorers would begin getting a reputation. But I guess prices would be set, but then only the first person to scan from it could profit, unless the acquired more detailed scans.

Interesting questions. I intended to setup my own tag systems for FOF and use them in my defense. I didn't think of an overreaching player group, sort of like the NPC's in Eve forming very quickly. But I guess it is inevitable. First, you mention being able to purchase them and go through a Stargate, but what if they are close eneough or just prefer to use FTL? I'd suggest a nearby beacon that is out of the range of the market. Any defenses there are set to only fire when fired upon, allowing anyone to purchase whatever token/tag system you impliment. And the market defenses could be only fire on reds. But to make this work, the one thing I am am uncertain of is automatic tag assignment. The rest seems like you will be able to manage with the tag system described. I know I can contract with you using tags, you pay me x amount and I give you a neutral tag, permanent or a timer, so you can enter the area without the turrets firing. But can I setup an automatic terminal that issues them somewhere? Will it be flexible eneough to detect when you attack a friendly and automatically revoke a tag, possibly issuing a new red status tag? I know you can set surities, but how flexible are they? Can it tell that entity A fired upon entity B, entity Bs owner is part of corp xxx, assign entity As owner red status towards corp xxx? What about ramming? Is that an attack or a slight bump. Im glad I'm not the only one thinking of this system. I can't wait to get more info from the Devs. I have so many have finished ideas, or systems thatay or may not work because I'm unsure if some of the crucial details needed are even possible.

Ah ok, my bad. Well my way would work but I get you now.something similar to the solar panel concept posted. I misinterpreted your idea. MC did this too, when multiple monitors were tiled together in a rectangle they combined. There may be a limit DU would set as the max size though, could cause lag updating images on a 1km wide screen. Then I could pay you to display a big target on your billboard, then precede to use it while sighting my guns in.

Admit it, you didn't want us to leave you out Nora. And yes, I agree with you I didn't mention anything about how you obtain the data, obviously there will be scanners and possibly soles involved. Upgrades can get data faster and further away, you'd have to fly to the planets orbit to get more data than its there and this mass. These methods are a fairly common thing in games, so I focused on the sale and trade of the data, what would make it a viable occupation. I would like to point out, even today we can get detailed surface scans of the planet from orbit. Spectrochromogrophy can get accurate readings of atmospheric compositions from viewing it. Sometimes with various sensors we can detect areas of denser ore pockets. So I wouldn't say they need to be there with a test tube and lab set saying it, but I would expect it to take unique and specialized equipment.

pixel art, sure you could make your billboard like that. It just isn't easily changed but some grouos wouldn't care. They may even want to hire someone to make it for them. And one of the Dev blogs at least mentioned changing the voxels to change colors like painting, but I recall it was a block change (ie with different properties) not just am appearance. I would expect to get some sort of paint tool though. I just suggested a computer screen so it's easily changeable and can be used for flashing images, more like modern billboards.

This is really a question for the Devs. I know it is early in the game development but how many threads do you expect DU to be able to run? I know multi threading is common now in games, especially voxel games, but most are limited to how many threads they can run at once. Typically I will see 4, but sometimes they go higher. One of the main reasons I am asking is in the next 6 months to a year I will start putting together a new computer to build (my current one runs great but the GF needs a hand me down so I get a new one) I am looking at getting a 6 core, but if I sacrifice a bit of clock speed I can go with an 8-core for nearly the same price. But if DU only runs 4 cores it isnt worth it.

It would be cool, but I dont know if it will happen, not in the near future. I would assume moons would be of the same construct type as planets. Now as it was said, you can essentially destroy a planet, but bombarding its surface over and over until you destroy all the pieces. But as far as something that cracks it open and sends pieces flying in all directions, that seems to be a no for now. However I do hope that asteroids are constructed differently and allow you to move and destroy them, even use them to crater a planet. I'm going to find a planet with dinosaurs and attempt to recreate earth.

Old dead post but I'm going to be Lazareth today because it is an idea we should make sure is implemented in some way. I cant say I disagree with anything really said here, so I will just give my take on the idea, which really is just a suggestion on how to carry it out. So a player stepping out of the Ark has no idea what is around him, you can assume he gets visual data as he explores the area around him but not much else. But I want to jump back a bit from here. I love the idea of data resolution, I can sell you a map of the continent, but that doesnt mean I have sold you geological surveys as well. So lets look at this from the point of view of the player looking to set out into space, but does not want to do the exploring himself, he would rather buy data that people aready have. Lets assume somehow he already has a spacecraft, flying in orbit. I would make the assumption that if you are navigating in space you have the ability to easily determine where stars are located, and possibly some basic data (mass estimate and class of star). But I have no clue whats there, is it worth my time and fuel even jumping to the star system? What if there are no habitable worlds, or worlds at all in that system. I que up the nav menu and select a nearby star I was interested in. From there I can see that someone has system scans on the market for XXX credits, maybe this is the lowest offer of 3 players. Its worth it to save me the time so I buy it and see there are 4 planets. Now this data is encrypted unless I were to go there and make a new scan of the system so I cant sell it to anyone else, allowing the buyer to sell it again, keeping his sell price low for his invested time. Of the 4 planets I see one is barren rock, 2 gas giants, and one habitable world. I can then select one to buy more detailed data about it (surface maps, weather, claimed territories, maybe last known population estimates, general things you would get from viewing it). Only 3 of the sellers actually have the data on all 4 planets. Maybe one of the sellers offers a package deal thats 25% off when buying the data for all 4. I have no interest in the gas giants ATM, and could eventually scan them myself if I decide to make the planet my home so I only buy the data on the habitable planet. I see that someone was bored and decided to take geological surveys of the whole planet (now this could be a tedious task, or maybe with advanced tech a few probes could scan the whole surface, who knows) Since I know that there are some crucial ores I require I buy the geological surveys as well. This provides me with all the data on the planet I would need and can even begin determine the best location for settlement while I warp there. This could be extended to possibly include geological surveys of asteroid belts as well (depends if they are local sites like most games or a true, massive belt around the sun). If I dont find what I like I can buy data on another system and see about it. And if the seller has a way to sell the data multiple times, it could become really cheap to make it worth his wild. A description could be entered into the data package by the seller as well. Maybe he wants to tag it outright that there is a habitable planet there so more people purchase that particular data package, of course he could be lying about it and you wont know until you buy the data. It's a bit complex but it would make explorer a profession. Especially for an alliance who wants to locate in a resource rich area. Or needs to know whats the best place to set up a stargate so their miners can travel quickly to a system rich in ore. Now that is a player driven system, but you could go the Elite Dangerous route and have the Ark AI purchasing this data from explorers, then it could either be freely provided to colonist or still have a purchase system of some sort. This would be one method of adding money into the economy, and possibly taking it out if they add the purchase system for the data. However I would think if you go the NPC purchase route it just be for the high level data. If someone spends a lot of time surveying for rare ores, it is best if they have some way of profiting from it, and not just everyone being able to tell. Now the Ark could pay a premium for data on different ore deposits, but I think a player can do better by selling the location to a player miner or faction. Although I am not that big on exploring myself, I hope Nova-quark implements something along these lines.

Minecraft had that, at least in the FTB packages. There were computers that ran on LUA. You could even watch an 8bit starwars on it. Give it the ability to load in images and text, make a super sized screen and you have a billboard. Or maybe even a video billboard.

Yeah. I was thinking the same, like computers in MC FTB, you could program them for various thing. Including display screens for external camera you use when maneuvering. Just stand there in front a wall of screens as you pilot

I like it, I'm thinking a giant quafe bilboard. Assuming there are displays where people can place images and text it would be possible. Companies could sell space on billboards they maintain, using a tag system where you pay so much a day while you're image is there. They would then be responsible for maintaining them and keeping players from blowing it up.

I agree the tag system could easily be used to manage this, but it was more of a question on IF it should be allowed. Usually friendlies can bypass shields, and we could easily come up with lore on the tech allowing it. But imagine if you had to shut your shields down to pass. It would defiantly make sieging a place more interesting. I truly hope there is no limit to how many of each component you can place. If you can power 50 shield emitters go for it.

Personally I would like to see both types. Smaller modular shields that you piece together like panels to surround thigs like ships. This allows you versatility as well as strategic thinking in combat. (I come in head-on, letting my front shields absorb the alpha strike, then turn broadside where the sage will be spread out across more shield emitters) But for massive city shields who wants to deal with small panels for a huge area. Besides you can't rotate the city to spread the damage. So install a huge dome emitter. It would be cook if you could adjust its size to. Say from a small room forcefield to one covering an entire territory. And energy consumption could be proportional to the shield's area with a recharge rate modifier. Although in reality I would think a shield would have a maximum force limit It can stop, anything above that would bleed through. And it would have a give power draw that was constant to sustain it. However having it draw more power as it 'repairs' ads and interesting level to it since you're now oven to being sieged. The question is, can friendly ships and weapons pass through the shield? Or is it a barrier to all?

While hope some planets offer unique challenges, remember we have spacesuits and can survive in a vacuum. I'm sure, at least at first, your suit will protect you from the environment. It would be nice if later on you could remove your suit on habitable planets, or non habitable if you wish to die. The lore does mention oxygen co tent and temp ranges of Alioth, slim sure it is being discussed

In the lore it is mentioned that the Ark provides plans on how to construct a shield to protect yourself with. "During the simulation, Aphelia nonetheless explained to me how to duplicate the Novark’s force field defense shields on a small scale. Always good to know" It is towards the end of Part 3.So we can expect at least base shielding. And I agree with Vylqun, I dont think this one is ment to be invulnerable, and it shouln't be. I would be ok with it being able to recharge as fast as you can feed it power, since this would still allow you to overwhelm it. But there must be some way to break it. And while the Boeing tech is cool, it really isnt a shield system, it is more of a reactive armor. There have been proposals on how you could lock hydrogen atoms into a solid wall forming a real shield though.

So since it was requested, I decided to continue writing my story, but I wanted to start from the beginning. I will likely rewrite Alpha Base Discovered when I get to that point. Keeping the majority of the story intact but some details may change. Unless requested otherwise, as I get new piece I will add them in a reply to this thread to keep the topic count down. I will warn you I am not a very good writer so if you are a grammar nazi it may cause you to cringe. Note: Some of the time frames mentioned may not be viable in game as I have no idea of the learning times for certain skills. Suggestions and feed back, good or bad, welcomed. A new World It has been quite the week, when the ark landed it was a bit chaotic with everyone pouring out into the world. We already had our game plan, each of us had our specialties and knew what to do. I headed out straight East, scanning for ore deposits on my way. We knew the general area we would set up a temporary base, near the shields edge, but there was no point in me rushing there. After all we would need ores, and my task was to find and collect what I could. Once I was a few Km from the Ark I began flagging a few locations I found, and even mined a bit of Iron and Copper to have from the start. By the time I reached the others Drakyn Ral already had a primitive wood hut for us to hold out in for a few nights and was clearing land for crops. Kloydeb was out searching for energy sources and collecting more wood while Hartomo was hunting for meat for the time being. Dirk was inside the hut in VR, starting to play around with a primitive control system. No doubt when Kloydeb got back he would be doing the same, we needed a hover craft for land travel. I dropped off my nanocells of ore with Drak and headed back out, there was a mountain range close by that I hoped held veins of ore. By the time I got back it was dark, but I had gotten fairly lucky with ores, collecting a few untouched veins. Between Drak and Dirk they had a simple havercraft designed, but it would be another day before Drak had the skills required to build the necessary components and I needed a few more resources that I have not located yet. However Kloydeb was lucky and found a swamp full of some plant that could be used for fuel. Within a week we were beginning test flights for our orbiter prototype. It was mostly a proof of concept, just a control seat with basic thrusters and power, but Kloydeb and Dirk wanted to test and refine the control systems. Drak was beginning to construct the real craft, although it wasn’t much more than the prototype. But it would get us to our goal, FTL in a month. Hartomo was working solely on learning the necessary skills to craft and operate the FTL drive, the rest of us focused on what else was needed. Until then the hopes were that we could find some rich asteroids in orbit. It was another 3 days before we were ready to launch, but it allowed time for refinement of control systems. There were several promising asteroids and a few turned out to be worth the effort. A few days later we retrofitted the launch vehicle with a mining drill that allowed faster collection of ores. We also added turrets, although we hadn’t encountered anyone else outside the protected zone we knew it wouldn’t be long. Drak began a new vessel, a bit larger, and would serve as our base and allow us to travel in search of a new planet. By week 3 the new vessel was completed and been through several test runs. That did not stop Kloydeb and Dirk from tinkering with the control systems more. We had already made a few enemies, and a few friends. After being attacked while mining, Hartomo constructed a fighter to escort me as I mined from then on. It was just a few guys who seemed to be focused on harassing other. After taking 2 of their ships out with it people took notice. Drak traded the basic flight systems for Hartomos fighter for some of the rare resources we needed to make the FTL drive. From then on we just collected more ore and fuel while we waited. We were not sure how long it would take us to find a livable planet, so we wanted all the fuel we could get. When I wasn’t mining I was in VR working on the next ship upgrades. First was a new and bigger miner, taking a few lessons learned and incorporating them in the new design. We ensured we had the necessary components, but decided to wait to build it until we found a new home. When that was mostly complete I began outlining the Asteria’s hull. From the initial plans I estimated 2 weeks and 2 miners just to build the hull. But the Asteria will be dwarfed by what Drak is working on. I would likely build a larger miner first and hopefully the new drill I am learning to construct will prove to be even faster. The last day of Hartomos training for the FTL drive we left the planet. No one knew of our plans, but we quietly disassembled everything we had at the base including the miner. With 2 fighter escorts we lifted off and headed into deep space under sublight. When we cleared scanner range we disassembled the fighters and all boarded the Puddle Jumper. It was crammed but we managed, most of us sat in VR anyway as we slowly traveled further from Alioth. After about 2 hours of us sitting there Hartomo informed us he could finally craft the FTL drive and made his way to the fabricator. Taking up most of the ships rear it was massive compared to our living space, but it was necessary since we decided to debark early. He began crafting the FTL drive and the rest of us went back to our VR ship designs. Finally Hartomo told us it was ready, and Drak installed it in the ship as Hartomo took the pilot seat. It was primitive and inefficient but it would work. We hadn’t a clue what was out there, but we had plenty of fuel to jump around until we found a place. There was a nearby cluster of star system, about a dozen in total within 4 light years but we figured that would be the natural expansion path of the next explorer so we headed off, nearly perpendicular to the path. The first star system we would encounter was nearly 12 light years out, and after 3 hours of FTL and 16% of our fuel reserves depleted we found a small barely habitable planet with a ring system containing plenty of ice and asteroids. It was fairly ideal, but still too close to Alioth. Although we burned a bit more fuel than expected we still had plenty and continued on. We bypassed the closeted 3 systems and jumped to one 15 light years out from our current position, hoping to find a viable planet there.

I dont wanna get into it to much since its the wrong thread. Hopefully we see something from the devs soon on the faucet and sink mechanics they are thinking of. If not maybe we will have to start a thread to prompts it. They did state one currency but no mention of how they will control the amount. And that currently there will be no player made currency, at least not to work on the markets like the game currency. My concern was that we know there will be no missions, and if there is no ratting then you eliminate the 2 standard ways of introducing money into a game where you can control its flow. And without regular NPC ratting or combat missions for the combat oriented pilots to run, there will be no steady way for these players to make money, let along occupy their time. Sure they could go attack enemies, but a few guys against a large group will likely get wiped. And if they loose their ship then what do they do. I would expect bigger alliances to eventually pay salaries to their combat guys, but what about until then. NPC's give them a method until then. Furthermore having a standard set of npc enemies gives people a metric to test new ships on and against, with a much lower risk of loss than random PVP against an unknown force.