DevisDevine

So forgive me if this has been discussed but I have not seen anything on it yet. However I am new here and haven't had time to dig into everything, just skim. I wanted to talk about blueprints in the game and how they will work. I have seen some post that mentioned blueprints for devices, such as motors and drills, but I have seen nothing on blueprints for ships. First lets start with devices, I am sure there will be a number of basic device blueprints that are easily obtained, with some possibly being much harder to find. This is nice to have but not what I am talking about. Something I would like to see with these is research to upgrade the stats on a generic blueprint giving it RNG modifiers, but I will make a specific post about that. The blueprints I am talking about are the unique ones for your creations. Every ship that a player will make has to be made by hand, at least once anyway. I am unsure if they are going to go with a system where you place the blocks in the open world to build it, or design it then have some sort of assembler construct it, but either way I think there needs to be some way to create a blueprint of your ship. The first reason is obvious, to easily reproduce it again, especially for things like fighters that will be used a lot. Personally, in games like Starmade and Space engineers I would spend a lot of time designing and balancing ships to be just right. But if they were blown up I loose all that work and have to try to recreate it from memory. Starmade had a blueprint system which allowed me to make another that was exactly the same, as long as I had the parts. Space Engineers however, at least when I played, did not have any system to do this easily. Space Engineers, I believe has a blueprint projection system to show you where the parts are, but it is only a guide and you can still make errors. Now I would not want a system where I just add the parts into the blueprint and spawn it in. Starmade had this but was fading it out into a shipyard system, you load the blueprint into a construction yard and it slowly assembles it if it has the parts. For a game that plans to be massive scale, I think this would be the preferred method I would choose. The size of the shipyard would dictate the size of ships you could construct, and things like assemblers and CPU power could dictate the scale and speed of the shipyard. An added bonus of this is they could be used to repair damaged ships. When you are in a battle theres sometimes very large damage that is easily caught, but theres always something minor or hidden that you dont always catch. Having some sort of system to help repair this is needed with massive constructs. The second would be to sell them. If I create a really nice, well rounded battle cruiser, people may want to buy it from me, either because they like it or just dont want to be bothered them self. Now selling ships has been mentioned before, and I don't want to get side tracked into the trade system. But if I spend hours shaping and designing this amazing ship, why couldn't I just blueprint it and make another. Maybe I like my ship and want to keep it for myself as well. Or maybe I want to just copy my blueprints and sell them to others so they can make their own. I would like to see 2 types of blueprints, like eve a BP Original and a BP Copy. The copy would have a limited number of uses, 1 or more set by the copy process. It would be to allow you to build my creation in a limited number. Where as the original would be unlimited uses and could make more copies. If a RNG research aspect is introduced this could be a way to sell your research as well. Now with blueprints comes the possibility to steal other peoples designs. Which why not? But I would suggest a system thats not as easy as get in and make a blueprint of a ship. Maybe have a encoded lock so that only the creator can make a blueprint. Possibly be able to hack the system so you can copy a stolen ship for yourself. Maybe it has to deconstruction the ship to know the full details of the blueprint. I would hate to have no way of replicating a stolen ship, but I dont want it to be to easy. So what are yall thoughts on this? Has this been discussed already and where? Any other additions or suggestions you would make on the topic of blueprints? (I will make a separate post about RNG research ideas later.)

Vylqun, I like your ideas. Frankly I was expecting more of set systems like Ripper was describing, with a build system similar to Planet Explorers. Add more modular for various things, but free design on the shape and that determine weight and armor stats. This system seems a bit easier on CPU load. But what I would really love to see is more of what you described. Have you ever played starmade? They have something close but not quite. Certain block types and based on the number and shape you assemble them in and the interconnects it determines functionality and value. However something that I would actually like to see comes from ideas from Limit Theory. It could work with either system, but it is research. Having a standard set of blocks/items gets boring. It static and unchanging, just the quantities can change. But it would be nice to have a research system, maybe even requiring various kinds of labs. Say you want better thrusters, you research them and there can be a RNG system to give some various attribute modifiers to the base. Maybe higher impulse but lower thrust. Weapons could vary damage, accuracy, fire rate, range, heat generation. Then you can use your research to create and sell blueprints to others. That way the universe is infinitly variable. If it is modual over say a set turret design, the stats that that module component provide could be varied. Instead of 1e/s for a power generator block it could be 1.05. I know the indexing of this can be complex, but doable when you're considering what else the game has in store. But I am unsure of how it would effect overall performance with having every single entity on a ship possibly having different values from every other. But it would be amazing, groups could be centered solely around researching better tech for their faction.

Hello all, I am Devis Devine, part of the Redstone Masons. I figure I would drop in and say hi as I am new here and just found out about Dual Universe yesterday. I am one of a hand full of friends that found each other and stay together through gaming of all sorts. From FPS, MCMMO, RTS, and Voxel games. I have to say i am amazed at what I see and the promises it holds. (except for the Daedalus class BC since I wont be the first to make one) I have spent nearly 7 years in EVE and for the last 5 played games like Minecraft, Starmade, and Space Engineers heavily. They all had things I liked about them, but all fell short of what I wanted. I have seen several Early Access games come out that promised something along the lines of Dual Universe but they fell short of what could be accomplished as well as fell short in meeting their goals. I love the idea of an endless open world sandbox with unlimited potential to do as you please with it. Mine, modify, destroy terrain, as well as create buildings, ships, and more without restrictions to features and size. Amongst my group we have a phrases 'Devis Sized' because everything I do in voxel games aims high and large scale, beyond what most consider big. I have spend countless hours in MC building massive structures, but they were just structures, static. With FTB I have build in survival mode massive infrastructure to mine and produce on insane scales, scales that would put the youtubers to shame. Built massive mining ships in Space Enginers and Starmade to havest vast amounts of resources, to have anything I needed at my disposal for my builds, but the structures I built were limited and usually lagged or crashed servers. In Eve II would spend my days harvesting resources and ratting to produce most of my ships and items myself, then sit through hours of waiting and gate camping for the adrenalin rush of finally finding a red, risking it all. My hopes for Dual Universe are really my desires of a game I have wanted since before I heard of it. I want a massive open world sandbox, endless planets and space to roam and explore. The ability to modify every detail of the terrain, and strip out the resources I need. Set up mining and manufacturing to have what I need to begin building any ship I can imagine on a massive scale. Imagine the real world universe, but what people predict it will be in 500 years, the technology to do anything you can think of. I do hope that with the mention of programing and LUA code that we can automate some functions instead of having 100 people man a massive cap ship. We operate with few in numbers, but on the scale of a large group so this would be critical to allowing us to continue operating as the small but skilled group we are. As I have time to browse the forums and see what has been discussed I expect to be posting my own. I have a lot of thoughts and ideas that I would love to see in the game, as well as see what others think of them. But for now hello and thank you Novaquark for working to bring this to a reality.