DevisDevine

That got me thinking of Garys mod with hidden cameras and screens while dug in your hideout killing everyone. It should be feasible and I think it should be done that way we can do alternate views from around the ship.

yes, something like i mention in that post. I hadnt realized how detailed I described it there.

I would really like to see some form of lifesupport. I like what you laid out here, there should be a limit to what each module can handle. But there has to be the ability to detect closed rooms. And what if your ship is damaged in battle and theres a breach? You would have to seal off compartment, but would that also isolate life support to some areas? You may want to distribute the systems across the ship. As far as other support system, radiation would be interesting but more difficult to handle. However heat and cold should defiantly be handled by life support. Oxygen is needed per person and energy based on the space you are trying to heat or cool compared to the environment outside. Most of the others would be some separate system. From the dev blog story I beleve they are already looking at hunger heat and cold as components for survival. I would only assume that we would get artificial gravity as well. It seemed the Ark ship had it based on the description of the ship design and how it functions in space vs on the planet. However any new technology could be explained by the AI doing R&D for 10k years.

This had been one thing on my list to discuss. I really hope they have the ability to work in a Newtonian system for mechanical construct. Making hanger doors, expendable landing gear, traps for squashing people. All the usual things people want to create. So having components to handle these will be crucial.

Well it was the Daedlus that did it, but I thought they did it on an SGA episode. May have been SG1 I havent watched them all in years.

I could see them not wanting the server to crash, but the whole point of the game is to be unlimited on what you can do. So I hope they dont try to restrict it. But it would be a massive project that would consume many worlds. Im game for it. It got me thinking of Stargate Atlantis when they would beam nukes onto the Wrath ships.

Wow I was gone all day and this went a bit crazy. Im going to try to cover responses on the main points. Thats an interesting way to go about it, but I would suggest maybe have a higher end lab more than higher research level. But maybe the research level would come into play on what lab types you can use. I would like there to be some sort of infinite variability, but possibly the chances of bad outcomes start outweighing good ones once your 'n researches in. Like the first time you research you have a good chance at getting a larger and more positive increase, such as +15% range. But as you get more downt he line, say 20th research level on a blueprint, each research could be more costly and less likely of giving good results, maybe only +2% range and often getting -10% fire rate. I agree some balancing but no set limit Regardless of max level you are still limiting it in some aspect. There is still a set limit of variability. And remember in the real world you cant always get the steel to be tougher, its trial and error. and that toughness may come at a cost of weight or flexibility. You never know what type of improvement you will get when doing research, if you get one at all. I completely agree, thats why I suggested some sort of RNG system in the first place. There is always something that can be better or always a different status distribution. I am with you, I tend to play with a small very group of people. I want the ability to do anything in the game with a few people as long as we have the skills needed. I hate requiring a critical mass of members to do things. Especially in a game where meta gaming will be big.

The problem with that in an unlimited game is that it would then be pre defined. Your turret would just be Turret MK 1 Research level 1 or research level 5 or 30. Furthermore I could just do my own research to get the exact same thing as you. It would never be unique. With RNG its more realistic, you may have found a way to use less power in those lasers, or maybe you didnt. Maybe the power reduction even allows for more damage, or maybe its less damage. You then get to decide if you like that aspect. If so then you can research on it more for another RNG outcome. Now I wouldnt expect this to be truly RNG, I would expect limits and ranges on the modifications. But by continuing this process you may end up with a laser that does twice the damage and the same firing rate as normal with only 30% increase in power. Or maybe you took a bit more time and have it do more damage and less power because you researched it until you got exactly what you wanted. And this would be a unique BP because maybe the other guy only has 1.75% damage with a 1.2% fire rate increase and a 0.75 range modifier. You can then decide what aspects you care about more. A fighter, maybe range isnt so important since you will be close range in dogfights, but you are short on power. But your long range bombardment ship needs that range, but has power to spare.

What do you mean by this?

Well you would have to have some type of structure to build things in game that would do that. Its a question of level like were talking about. Now since it supposed to be Newtonian mechanics if you wanna to chunk rocks out of your ship to move then that should work. You just need a method to throw the rocks out.

Give me a good bow any day. Any chance of being able to develop weapons in a voxel editor like Planet Explorers? Because that would be great. It could even lead into a system for making your own ship weapons like turrets.

I agree with you, the game will be to large for this. But it could be useful for the Alpha since there will be far less players. It would give everyone a way to communicate with each other for problems and help during the early stages.

I am with you on that. While I understand they cannot create infinite meshes and modules for us to use, but allowing us to modify their attributes in some infinite way shouldnt be that hard. Check out my post on what my thoughts were. Its based off of Limit Theories' planned system. https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/475-component-research/

Thats interesting, so gravity wont interact with the planets own voxels then? Just voxel entities? As for moving the planet itself, while it should be doable, I dont think it should be implemented. While I would love building a huge planet moving machine there are thousands of territory claims that may be activated on there. I would expect the whole planet to be made different than other voxel constructs. However I would expect there to be smaller, voxel asteroids that dont follow these restrictions and act more like the constructs we will be making. I would expect that you could attach thrusters to these or even just push them with your ship and they move freely in space. Think Starmade, the planets orbit the sun but you cant move them. However the asteroids that are smaller you can. If they arent putting limits to size, I fully expect someone to make a ring world in a few years from the release. And if thats the case it should be movable, just requires a lot of thrusters and powers. And while I dont think full sized planets will be possible I fully expect to be able to launch kinetic weapons at max speed using captures asteroids. Launch them at an enemies base on a planet before attacking with your fleet.

I disagree on the complexity issue. As long as there are some basic modules for people to work with at the start then its all good. Eventually people that are good at it will put their designs on the market for others to buy and use. Novaquark is already relying on this model for their control systems, as discussed in their dev blog. Well at first I was going to say this leads to sever imbalance issues. But you aren't saying give them the design tools to make their own like the devs do. It seems like it would be more of a point system based on research that you can spec where you wish. It would have to use the same meshes but just change their meta data. I could go for something like this, it gives infinite variability. I actually posted a topic on this today about component research, some way to add variability to the limited number of modules the devs will put out. Adding research that you pour resources into for a chance of upgrading is a way to give the older players something to work towards. I do like the idea of a RNG aspect to it and not just 'put x of this material, y of this material and wait z hours' and bam youve got a tier 2 module. That would be no different than them having it there already designed in game and would still be limited.

I agree with you man. When i first came across the game I was hoping that would be the method. Now I am not against the pre-defined modules except for the fact that its limited in variety. It is possible they were doing it for CPU resources. For things like power and shields you can always just add more modules. I am assuming they arent limiting it to 'you can only have 4 of this module' type limits. But what about weapons, sure I can double my number for the DPS but what if I wanted more range, or one massive cannon thats half the size of my ship for a huge alpha or planetary bombardment? However I was hoping to see something more like starmade's system with moduals. You want a rapid fire cannon, add a cannon module with speed modifiers. But what if you want a long range artillery, then add range modules. This would definitely open up design possibilities.

Nah man you got it wrong. The radiation didnt kill people on Earth when they warped it. They just forgot to calibrate it to warp the people with the planet when they jumped it. So theres a giant orbiting blob of humans where the earth once was. And yes I would assume the planets are stationary. But what about asteroids and smaller rocky bodies?

Nothing, except that you loose all its resources. This option would have to be more of a hacking or possibly chance of failure thing. And I am ok with this except for the scenario i mentioned about me modifying my own ship in the real world and wanting a bp of it for saving. Your situation only allows you to bp things made in the virtual world, but not the main world.

Currently we know there is blueprints for components that would go on your creations (power, thrusters, controls, shields). Each of these will have its own mesh that would be placed on a ship with certain attribute values. I hope there are dozens of variants of each component type to give some versatility in choices. But these will be limited by the number of components the Devs create and implement. While being able to use as many of these as we please on our creations is great, it is still a limiting factor, especially if space is a factor. What I would like to see is a research system to have RNG modifiers to these base components. This is not a unique idea, and has been done to various degrees in games, but Limit Theory is the only one to my knowledge attempting to implement it in this manner. It is actually where I got the idea from. We will already have a RNG universe so why not RNG other things. The way it could work is to have the basic BPs that the ark provides. You can then do research on these blueprints (maybe in some special lab that requires resources) for a chance to produce a new BP with RNG modifiers to its base attributes. These could be good or bad, i.e. +5% to turret damage as well as -3% turning speed. There could even be a chance you would get all positive or all negative modifiers or maybe dont get any at all. You could then take this researched BP and attempt to research it further for more modifiers. The component could share the same name and mesh model as the parent component, just containing a different meta tag. This would allow for truly unique designs as maybe I dont care about component weight but need fire power. Or I dont care about power storage capacity, just power generation. So I could have more ability to customize my creations by choosing a blueprint with the attributes I want. This could even open a whole new market as you could sell your blueprints that you have researched and modified. Entire business could be started solely as a research lab producing these things. Now heres where it could be interesting, imagine you buy someones fighter BP to make and it requires 12 MK 1 thrusters and 3 guns. If you had modified versions of this it would be awesome to tell it use your version (remember it has the same model and ID) instead of the basic version. So now you can have 2 identical looking ships but with different performance metrics. I think for a game with unlimited variability in everything else, this would help remove the one major limitation I see. Now indexing these meta tags may become complex, but in a game that plans to implement such a detailed but complexed permissions system I think it is doable. What does everyone else thing about this?

This is an interesting concept. I would say it depends if they differ things like asteroids from things like ships. I would assume a planet is a special entity and not just a voxel creation as they intend to have claim zones on the surface. But asteroids and comets without these could just be a massive voxel construct. And like Planetary Annihilation it would be awesome to use them and crash into planets on top of an enemy base. It could also lead into the idea of kinetic kill weapon systems to launch ahead of an assault.

Why the concern with population density at all? Earth is only partially land, and some places are more populated than others. Frankly Earth is overcrowded when looking at a game like this. Do you really want to have to fight to find land and have to pay an enormous portion of what little you can own working in someone else''s company. It would just be another mortgage you would have to work and pay for. With high density there become more scarcities, some natural some artificial. Having a lower density lessens this burden and gives people the space required to do as they please. And remember in the dev blogs they talk about tile sets for claiming land. I believe these were said to be ~1km each. So how would you manage land ownership for thousands of people inside there if they all require the same access tags.I think one person per tile on a planet if all occupied will be crowded. Now I dont ever see this happening. It is likely groups will claim a tile clustered around other groups leaving most of a planet unclaimed.

Well in the story posted in the Dev blogs they do have anti-gravity technology. So maybe this becomes available and is used in the jetpacks. Once you negate gravity the thrust is reduced drastically.

I am not against your interpretation if thats they way they choose to do it. But consider this. I build my Daedalus class BC in Virtual Virtual Reality. Its all working so I decided to build it in the real virtual world. Since it is my first massive ship I obviously don't get it all right. So i decided to upgrade it in the real world. (this will happen often with large creations) Now how could I make a blueprint from this since it is not in VR. Now I could have modified it in VR, but then what do i do. Do i tear apart my existing one for the resources to make the upgraded one? So I think having the ability to create blueprints in the real world is required. Some people prefer to work only in the real world. Remember the VR is there for those who choose to use it, not a necessity. But there is the concern of protections. Now I like the idea that a BP can only be made from an original creation, but what if I make a ship, loose it, make a new one from a BP, then modify it. Do I loose the ability to make a new BP of the modified version. Also consider this, I build a core fighter module and use a BP to make several then modify them for specific roles. I would want a BP for each of these. This is why I like the idea of creator tags. If I start the creation it is tagged with my name in the meta data. This can be compared with the owners tag and if they match it would allow an easy BP creation. That way even if you modify a ship from one of your BPs you can save it easily. However I do like the idea that someone can steal your designs. But I dont think it should be so easy, not just saving when your in the ship. I like the idea of brining it into a shipyard and have it deconstruction piece by piece and make yourself a BP of it. This process could remove the creator tag that would have been embedded into it. And I would have to disagree with you on the BPC and BPO. Since the BPs are digital you could have them embedded with destructive routines that destroy them after being used so many times. It could also be possible to use this to protect it from copying. Also since we already have the tagging system outlined by the Devs, this could be used to essentially create a BPC. I could sell you the right to use my BPO once or maybe 10 times. Or maybe an unlimited use at 1k credits a use. The problem is with a BPO, unlimited access to it, you loose your creation as soon as you sell it once. But I would have to say that needing BPOs and BPCs may not be a necessity depending on the creation system and if they utilize embedded tags.

Yes, it did seem there is the real world building as well as a virtual. If you create a blueprint in the virtual that is all fine and good, but what about once you make it and then modify it later? Can you recreate blueprints or are you stuck to snapshots? I understand that you wont have the answers, I am just stating the questions I still have. And if I sell you a BPC then I wouldnt expect you to be able to copy it. But if you build the ship and there is a way to make a BP out of a ship crafted in the real world (game) then could they make one them self? Because then once you sell it once it almost becomes pointless.

Thanks for the info guys. I actually went through and read all the Dev post today. They definitely have put a lot of thought and detail into it. The question still remains though at what it will take to get a snapshot and blueprint of your construct. Can anyone in it snapshot it or just the owner? What is required to create the BP over a snapshot? Will you be able to set permissions for creating blueprints? Can you sell the blueprint or just the construct? Assuming you can sell the BP, the ship is likely to be fully theirs as if they created it. If so are there any protections from them snapshotting or blueprinting it?