Maxim Kammerer

Who is going to want to build anything on a tile if it can get lost in territory warefare? If the game survives the implementation of TW there will be no static constructs exept mining units on XS cores outside the remaining safe space. Thus, your main pillars are not only arguments against the idea of the OP - they even contratict each other.

I could live with the bugs and performance issues if there only would be gameplay. Currently the only reliable way to get cash for taxes are NPC missions. DU is a sub-based sandbox MMO with a main gameplay loop that would not even be sufficient for a free-to-play browser game! I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

I'm not sure if that is actually the case. It's like video phone calls in science-fiction movies from the 80s. Back than it seemed to be something everybody is interested in. But now that we have it, it is rarely used. I have friends that even prefer written messages over phone calls. It is just an arbitrary assumption that there is or will be a demand for the metaverse that the enthusiasts have in mind. At least nobody seems to be interested in Zuckerberg's metaverse or events like the virtual party for the launch the EU's 'Global Gateway' strategy (with just 5 visitors!). Currently it is not even a hype.

Such a tool actually exists. The support used it for the excavation of underground structures after the Demeter patch. But NQ made pretty clear that they do not want to give it to players.

If they run the irl business like the ingame economy this might indeed be the strategy.

Sorry, my fold. I didn't realize that you excluded docking.

I think you are missing carriers. Now it is sufficient to stack alts with packages on a ship. With your mechanics you would need to stack ships on a ship. That's bit more complicate but not enough to prevent exploits. Maybe another solution would be changing the mission design. With a suitable time limit and several randomized pickup- and delivery locations in a row it would be almost impossible to stack missions.

This! They made an MMO sandbox building game that forces players to run mindless NPC missions! That makes no sense at all. I have once more the impression that DU is in fact not a game but a psychological study and we are the probands.

I say it will look awfully. Do somebody want wo bet against me?

So sad but so true. Many of us know it for years since NQ started the death spiral of limiting progression in order to save costs just to be forced to save even more costs because players are leaving. In a way I even admire NQ for keeping the game alive this way so long. But now the end is in sight. Given the current deflation I will not be able anymore to pay the tax for my tiles in two or three weeks. Than I will move my stuff to Heaven or Sanct and watch the game dying. I really wish the game to survive, but I do not see how that should work. Who would invest the required cash into a project in such a desolate state? Looking at the company formerly known as Facebook it seems not even a good idea anymore to sell it as metaverse. What we need is a miracle and that's very unlikely.

It's not DACs but real cash that keeps lights on and there is no reason why they should run out at the same time. It's much more important when subscriptions of new players expire. That's why I agree with @Rokkur that it is critical for NQ to see what happens outside its bubble.

But they are still there. For me that's the biggest mystery. For years they do everyting to scare paying custumers away but DU and NQ still exist. How is that possible and how long will they keep up beating the odds?

If this is because players level up beyond T2 industry (and therefore generate a higher demand) this will have no significant impact on T1 and T2 products which dominate the market.

I don't belive it until I see it. With the current rate of deflation economy will hit the ground quite soon. No sign of mission runners buying in significant amounts. I reather expect them to wait until everybody else goes bankrupt and than to take over all valuable tiles.

If "we" means those who play this mission game, then yes. But a rich minority doesn't save the economy. It could even make it worse if some of them decide to flood the market with dumping prices just for lulz.

At least they are simians. However, biologic taxonomy is a reather off-topic.

Maybe because end of income = end of game?

Well, if they wait long enough, they can forget the rest of the list as well. Pretty smart strategy.

Remove all options with “one time buy and use forever” schematics. They do not limit production, which is a (if not the) main reason for the new schematics system. But schematics for finished products only would indeed remove the tedium without any drawbacks. As there is no reason for unlimit accumulation of intermediates, there would be the same limit for overall production. Even the total schematics price per product would be unchanged if the sum of intermediate schematics prices would be included into the price for the final product schematics. I do not see any reason for intermediate schematics other than making industry gameplay tedious.

It's just a different name space: NQ.beta = alpha NQ.release = beta

The demand for large quatities of cash resulted from the existence of large factories. I can't see how that could be a problem after the wipe. At release there was no industry at all and getting the schematics would just have been part of building up the industry. The major problem with the current system is the handling that has not been changed since 0.23. Manually checking for missing schematics and placing them into individual industries is no problem if we need to do that only once. But with schematics that get consumed like resources this is simply not acceptable. By changing the schematics system without changing industries accordingly, NQ made it much worse than before. In the early game you might think this is not a problem but if you go for industry gameplay you will see how it turns into a never ending nightmare. Unfortunately this will not change becasue NQ is not willing or able to change it - maybe because they do not have the manpower or because the codebase is a hot steamy mess or just because they like to punish players. In the best case they will do some minor adjustments. But even that is very unlikely.

Maybe it could be better in theory. But the way it is implemented makes it much worse.

Yep, that's what I do as well. Nanocrafting beeing better than industry should tell NQ that something went terribly wrong. At least T1 product material schematics need to go immediately.

It is quite a strange business strategy to keep old players with DACs or even flatrates (Ruby and above) and scare the new paying players away.

NQ assumes LUA scripting as part of the base game. It was even one of the major selling points during the kickstarter. That is indeed a problem. The original industry mechanics was designed in a way that enables player to build factory lines with a single input and a single output where you don't need to care about individual industries. With the new schematics system this is pretty much broken - just for pure laziness. NQ changed the schematics system without changing the industries accordingly. Schematics have been turned into an additional resource but they can't be handled like other recources.