DevisDevine

Napalm bombs? I fully expect there to be explosive items like C4 in the game. Load your shell with them and detonate on impact. Or go with your idea and shell a few dozen shells full of fuel down followed by an ignition source, followed by marshmallows.

I was thinking an acceleration channel down the spine of a ship. Using gravity generators or magnetic coils to accelerate voxel shells I create. Maybe even putting in explosive material inside it. Accelerate it to insane speeds down on stationary or slow moving targets.

I like the idea of certain mechanics being out of reach for some. You can learn it or stick to the aspects of games you are good at. This is in every game already, DU is just brining in coding as well. Besides we have some interesting ideas for system and would want people to buy our ships at low prices Hey, what other ship would you recommend to fly around in when screwing other people out of their hard earned resources? A government building? The devs have mentioned putting out a standard set of basic control systems for players to use at the start. Beyond that you can buy from the market. Certain sellers will gain a reputation from their products and everyone will want them. Or maybe you run across someone who has an amazing ship setup and he tells you hes using XXXXX's control system. But he tried YYYs and it was garbage. They have already said they want a completely player driven market and game, so let it be that way. And sure their goals are high, but thats how you get a next gen game. And it wont start with millions, just thousands. And grow from there but remember technology is growing as well. How dare you try to blow my ship up.

Ill wipe your missiles from the sky with my rail gun cakes. Then my LASERS will carve a giant heart shaped hole in your hull. Matching the hearts on my companion cube ship. (I actually did this in Starmade to people) I hope the implement systems so I can turn my ship into a rail gun to launch massive planetary bombardment kinetic kill shells. Maybe use gravity drives to accelerate it.

No, no he doesnt. Because he is dead.

I would assume any construct acts the same, station or ship. I hope they do not put in a system to anchor stations to one point in space since that isnt realistic. And if they dont then a station is just a ship in orbit. So if one has gravity both would.

I know the lore only discuss one Ark ship landing, but multiple were built. I think it was more indirect reference that I assumed there would be more than one Ark ship and protected zone to accommodate a growing server. I may have to go back and read some of the Dev blogs, I thought I remember references to multiple ark ships, possibly in the RM discussions. I know they always speak of Alioth and no other planet, but I just assumed it would be the first of several. Think about a game like eve, if all players started in one location it and they only had that small protected area it would be packed. I expect DU to grow beyond what Eve did. And everyone will like having that safe protected zone in the Ark shield. Sure it may be possible to create your own, and that is being discussed. But how many wont ever want to leave the shield in order to do what is necessary to find and create more safe zones. As much as I would like to have multiple to choose from in the beginning, if they only wish to release the game with 1 at first, they could implement a system so you slowly discover more Ark ships for new players to spawn at. It could be assumed that as people explore and spread out the population is growing, requiring more protected zone. And it would fit with the lore since we had no contact with them until someone discovered a planet with an Ark ship landing on it, maybe it didn't function properly and went derelict when landing. A pilot would then have to activate it, maybe it would be a community event type thing. You need certain components and power to get it functioning again so it can begin reviving the crew. As for your comment on decay, I agree most of the world should remain persistent. Thats why I suggested a system to remove ownership tags inside the Ark zone after a certain time of inactivity. You could easily build lore around the mechanism, and it could be assumed the Arks AI is doing it, hence why it doesnt happen elsewhere in the universe.

So I wanted to see if anyone had a better grasp on how players will enter DU after release. I know that the Alpha will be one ARK on a single planet, and likely Beta will be the same, although I would expect in Beta for people to begin traveling to other planets and testing those mechanics. However I am curious about after release. I know it has been mentioned there being multiple Arks, but no set number and no clue on if they will exist from the start or be discovered later. I was thinking it could be interesting to have a dozen or so Arks for players to choose from. When you first create your character you would be given a selection of Ark planets and maybe an estimate of how many players are currently within the protected zone of that Ark. So if you wanted a populated place that is more likely to have a developed market at the start then you can go there, if you prefer the loner lifestyle you can go to a barren Ark. Maybe each Ark could even have some back story, and you choose the one that fits your play style so you start with like minded players until you are ready to venture out. Or will the whole system be random? When one Ark reaches a certain capacity another comes online. I dont like this method because, what if 2 months down the line a friend wanted to join me. With multiple Arks how can we ensure he will start on the same planet. After all it may not be feasible to travel to his spawn location to join him yet. Does anyone have more information on what the Devs intend to do for this, or maybe some other ideas on how it can be handled.

Agreed, but it could just be a decay or abandonment system. If you dont long on in a month your constructs in a protected zone become abandoned. Maybe even for protected zone you have to interact with them every so often. Non protected zones will deal with themself. Besides it would be cool to see wreckage from a massive battle 2 years later.

i dont recall what dev blog and the exact words used but in short yes. Ships will be like any other player construct, just like a house you can interact with it.

I agree, let us build and code as complex as we like. This is supposed to be an unrestricted free range game so let it be. Just like in the real world you will have some players better at things than others. I know from my time in eve I suck at market trading, lost out every time I tried it. But I can organize and run massive mining fleets as well as knowing whats profitable to manufacture with the goods. My friend however did amazing at trading with even low skills. And you can always buy an advanced constructs made by someone who can code. The better ones will cost more but be worth it.

I am sure there are a few grammar nazis that are having a fit with your post but they will live. With your experience I am sure you can contribute a lot to the community with suggestions to the devs. Maybe make a post sometime in the builders section on pros and cons of the different building features you have used in the past.

Um I have a few hours clocked in on the game. But was busy and never got a chance to play to much. When the released a full priced expansion it kinda pissed me off as the game had just released so I hadn't gone back yet. I have 7 years in Eve Online though as well as the last 5 in various voxel games where we tended to implement emergency systems for large projects similar to here.

As far as what ships get what, I hope they dont put restrictions. If we truly are able to do as we please, then as long as we meet the requirements (power, cpu, space and what not) then we should be able to put what modules we want on any ship.l Sure a fighter wont have a massive rail gun, but thats because of size and weight not that the game will limit you. If I want to put mining drills on my capital ship then why not? I have always hated games that did that, and I get balance issues. But when you can make your own ships balance is out the window. It becomes more of a real world scenario. Clearly some setups will be superior to other, and DU should not cater to those who wine that it needs to be fixed. Railguns, Missiles, Projectiles, and Lasers are not all equal all around. Each has advantages and disadvantages in various aspect. But depending on technology, one may be a clear cut winner all around. Let the players decide what modules and components they want on what class ships

Well in SE I set up small turret satellites. They were just a reactor mass block and a turret. I then put a few dozen in orbit around my base in a gravity canal that I created. They were constantly in motion so no one could hide from them. And it also made them more difficult to shoot down or even know where they are. Id like the ability to do something like that.

But what if we want to have orbiting satellites as defense platforms?

Liar, its at 303

I agree, I think its something players will do. You could set up tournaments for it. That is until some pirate comes in with a planetary bombardment ship as people are gathered to watch.

As much as I would love to play around with the various aspects of DU while waiting for full release, I hope they never cut it up into bits and pieces. I would rather them focus on the game and get it done a month sooner than toss us little scraps along the way.

Dont feel bad man, we are all in the same boat. I am going to drive myself insane waiting 2+ years for full release. Well I am already insane, but I may just get myself locked up this time.

I like that. Pick up enemy broadcast and begin rubbing them through slight modifications and re-broadcSt them in hopes of screwing something up. You could also go the route of jamming them by sending out loads of junk messages.

Welcome. Take a seat and enjoy the wait with the rest of us man. I really hope DU pulls through. I got tired of waiting for SC and so many other games as they fall short on promises and only provide half a game. I have high hopes for DU as they are attempting to make the game I have been wanting for years now. Tobad I have to wait a few more before it is fully playable

You can send your money to me. I can't promise you anything game related for it however. I do have some beany babies if you want. Like the others said, read the dev blogs and discuss in the forums like the rest of us while we wait to throw money their way.

Well you could impliment frequencies if the devs want, or just channels. This would help players seperate traffic their systems will handle. But the point of me utilizing an identifier tag is to know what it means. And sure you can attempt to spoof it, but you have to know what it means to utilize it right, maybe I throw in a time code in there. If you copy my passcode later in from one you read it will flag it as outdated and invalid. But yes it would allow attempts for having and espionage. But players could Impliment their own countermeasures and codes. Triangulating is a different mechNic they would have to code for specifically, but it would be interesting. I'm something similar to scanning in Eve. Except you broadcast a signal. I see a strength amdaybe basic direction. I'd then need at least 2 more detector points to determine your broadcast location. Or maybe my ships movement tied in with a scan log can allow for pinpointing the location as I get more signals. It could then he an interesting strategy to locate and take out my command centers TX antenna to hibder the fleet. Oraybe in a fleet battle, determine which is the flagship.

So going through the scenario I wrote up I started looking at what game features would be required for it to happen. AI and mechanical interaction components are needed, but both have a few discussions going. The one see lacking is a transmit receive function. What I mean by this is a system to send out commands that can be received by a module and used to execute a LUA script. It could be one combined unit or 2 seperate ones that would allow trabsfer of commands between ships. I have seen one post mention access codes on ships, but it didn't discuss how those codes would be sent/received. For red/blue statuses we could imminent a way to set friend of foe of players and corps in game, but what's the fun in that. After all DU is about letting the player have the freedom to implement what they want. What I propose is a 2 module system that can tie into a ships DAU system, and through it LUA scripting. A transmit module and a receive module. What is would transmit could be simple bytes, maybe 8 or 16 bytes per execution. The players can then build their own communication system around that. Example 1: I have a TX module on every ship of mine. They are set to send out a command ever 60 seconds (or when pinged but that's more complicated) I warp into an allied controlled region and it broadcast "AA BB 1A 2B 01 02 03 04" a 8 byte hex string. My Allies pick it up on their receivers. Now to some people it looks like junk, but we have a predefined code so to them they see "AA BB": FOF signature tag. That tells them how to interpret the rest of the message. "1A" indicates Sylph alliance "2B" is Redstone Masons. The final sequence code "01 02 03 04" I my unique identifier, either Corp or player specific. It checks out, weapons stand down and let me enter. Now if the code was wrong they could have their own scripts to act on it. Maybe it's an expired code or someone who was discovered to be a spy. Instead of blowing them up you could send alerts and track their movement. Example 2, the fun stuff: We know AI will be a thing, however the level likely limited to the programmer. Imagine I have some decent AI drones, eneough to identify individual targets and attack when it's flagged as an enemy. So I have a few drones orvitig above my base. When an enemy comes in they attack it, but if I had ally defenses present and visible, not only would an enemy know my full force, but they could also drop in and attack them without warning. So I have a few dozen drones that are powered down and hidden in various locations. The scanners pick up eny ships, they see that there are 4 ships and a total mass of 20k tons. I have them programed to activate the sleepers if over 5 enemies or a total mass greater than 5 tons. Failing the second check it sends the command activating dozen more drones who begin engaging the enemies. Now maybe I give my drones a priority list to target ships by mass or range, or maybe it's fire at will. These tactics may not be the best to engage with. Down below I enter the command center when the enemy alert went out. I issue another command that tells the drones they are under my control now and begin tagging targets by priority. The drones begin converging and instead of scattered fire they all target a destroyer, high damage low armor I want it's DPS eliminated quickly. Once it is down I then send a command to frigate drones only, switch to eliminating their fighters while the rest move onto the carrier itself. All of these commands would be predefined commands I encoded for targeting priority while they follow their normal attack routines. All handled by a few simple bytes transmitted. All sent from my command chair where I could have a combination of buttons for message tag types where I just enter the ship ID that is displayed on screen from a satellite in orbit as it streams data packets of what it sees. Having this function would allow a new level if interaction with every system you have, and the basic TX/RX system I described is the core of every water currently communicate digitally right now.