Smacker

litho- a combining form meaning “stone,” used in the formation of compound words - Dictionary.com
 
With the relative thrust to weight ratios in the game, getting to orbit and other planets is fairly easy, but I keep seeing pictures of burned up and crashed ships.  I think this boils down to people making a few simple mistakes when navigating between objects.  So, I wanted to cover the basics of how to navigate around in a space-like environment with gravity wells.  I won't touch the math, so you'll have to figure out the details elsewhere.  Other than that, the goal here is to help people navigate, and do so with better fuel efficiency.
 
First things first, orbits and transfer orbits:
 
When you first get out of atmo, you should be pressing x a couple times to show the line that usually shows an approximation of where you'll hit the ground.  If it's red, you're not in orbit.  You'll need to burn up and away from the planet, usually about 30 degrees, until you're accelerating away from it.  If your ship is light and has a lot of thrust, you might need to cut this early, and thrust again pro-grade(That is, along your current direction of travel) once you're fairly high up.  If not, you might need to slowly angle down to continue thrusting prograde long enough to achieve orbit.  You'll know you've achieved it when your line turns blue, and comes all the way around to the back of your ship.  Congratulations, you're in an orbit!  Odds are, it will have fairly low eccentricity (it will only be slightly egg shaped.)
 
But is it a good orbit for where you're going?  Lets say you want to get to Alioth from Sanctuary, and you're in a pretty heavy ship that takes a while to get going.  Your best bet is to set your orbit up for an approximate Hohmann transfer. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit).  First things first, you need to clean up your orbital inclination.  In the image below, the blue orbit is not aligned with our target planet.  The ideal orbit will be one that is on the same plane as our target, and will require minimal fuel and time to boost out of to get to our target, which is the red orbit. (Attachment orbit1)
 

 
To make the change from the blue to red, we need to adjust our inclination.  This is done by changing are direction 90 degrees up or down along our current path, and firing our engines ~1/4 of an orbit before the area of inclination we want to adjust.  Your orbit will pivot along an axis that extends from your ship, through the planet, to the other side of your orbit, adjusting the downrange portion 1/4 an orbit away up towards the direction you are thrusting.  (attachment orbit2)  If you're flying fully manually, you will have to adjust your angle as the orbit adjusts in order to stay ~90 degrees off of prograde.  You can avoid this problem almost entirely by starting off in the correct direction. Fly east.
 

 
The reason you need to do this is because it's cheaper, fuel wise, to adjust the orbital inclination and do a transfer burn out of it.  DU ships often can just burn through the problem, but it has the same problem as real-world: you go through a lot more fuel trying to fight your current trajectory than you would by making an efficient adjustment.

Note: You should be burning approx where your current orbit crosses the plane of your desired orbit.  See diagram.  It's fairly intuitive once you get the concept, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in the "I accelerate fast this way, I should move this way" sense.
 
Once your orbit is lined up, you need to prepare for your transfer burn.  Your ideal transfer burn will start at a position that is dependent on your total mass, thrust, and target.  Small ships have it pretty easy, and can use a trick that helps many people get to the Mun in KSP.  Since your thrust to weight ratio (twr) is likely pretty high, you can start accelerating once your target is just over the horizon, and reasonably expect your trajectory to bend out towards the planet fairly quickly.  Burn prograde (along your blue line), and watch as it extends out towards your target down range.  It will eventually turn purple, meaning you've broken away from orbit, and you will continue along the purple path toward your destination.  (attachment orbit3)

A ship with a lower twr will want to burn sooner, at approx the opposite side of the planet from their target.  See above link about Hohmann transfer, since that's more detailed.
 

 
Arriving at your target:
 
Once you're flying towards your target, you shouldn't be aimed directly at the ground.  The safest approach is to slide into an orbit around the planet and then begin lowering your periapsis (lowest point of orbit).  You do this by angling your approach past the planet, so that it appears you're going to miss it, and then starting to brake at an appropriate distance out; for my small ship, this actually starts at about 4su out if I'm trying to shed down from 15km/s down to orbital speed.  If timed well, you'll enter an orbit around the planet instead of shooting past it.  Once there are better scripts out there, orbits should be more  predictable, but for now you can usually hit a reasonably decent orbit by feel.  If you're having trouble with inserting into a good orbit, aim further out from the planet, and start braking sooner. Ride the gravity well in and brake on the low side to bring the top of your orbit down.
 

 
The bigger your ship, or the less braking power it has, the sooner you should be slowing down.  If you're 5 su out going 29,999, you're not gonna stop in time.  If you overshoot, don't just brake.  You can burn at a weird, off angle, that is retrograde, and thrusting in the same direction as the curve in the purple line.  This will slow you down as well as change your heading, giving you the ability to come back around into an orbit, rather than simply coming to a dead stop and having to rebuild speed to avoid an awkward re-entry.  Your goal is to retain *some* velocity, but to direct it tangential to the surface of the planet.
 
Once you're in orbit, set your ground target, and again adjust your inclination to bring your orbit over your target.  Remember, you want to be a quarter orbit off of your target to be able to bring your orbit over it, either approaching or past.  Once that's done, it's usually easiest to wait until you're about a quarter orbit or less away from your target and start braking.  Most ships I've seen will be able to brake down to an atmospheric entry vector in that amount of time, and bring themselves in at a reasonable speed.  If your orbit is too high, you might come in at an awkwardly steep angle.  Depending on how good your braking is, you might even come in too fast.  If you're too low, you'll probably come in way too fast, not being able to shed enough speed before kissing the atmosphere.  One of the most confounding things about orbits is that a lower orbit is much faster over the ground.  Since brakes are so effective, and don't consume propellant, I strongly recommend coming in from a higher orbit.  Trial and balls of fire here until better tools are available.  You should also, ideally, be entering with the rotation of the planet (west to east), but I'm not sure if that really applies with DU.

Adjusting an orbit:

The rules here are pretty simple:  If you want to adjust your orbits height, you burn on the far side from the side you want to adjust.  Burn pro-grade to raise, and retro-grade to lower.  Inclination, we've already covered.  You can also burn 'straight up' away from the planet to walk an orbit out on the close side and in on the far side, which will translate the entire orbit in the direction you're burning without changing the shape of it too much.  Same goes for burning in, towards the ground.  That's useful for cleaning up a mostly circular orbit, although it's not great on fuel usage.  I'm not sure if there are any in-game tools for adjusting apo/peri, but I can say it's entirely doable with pen/paper/time and knowledge of your weight/thrust.
 
(Paint 3D is hard to use, okay?)


Notes:

DU isn't nearly as difficult to hit a target as a game like KSP.  You can eyeball the crap out of things and still get where you're going, just by using more fuel and thrusting through the problem.  Things like Hohmann transfers are less useful given the acceleration of ships, but the concepts mostly still apply.  I don't expect people to really need this information for their first ship built on a Dynamic Core S with 4 Space Engine Ms attached, but I'm hoping it helps people who have ships that require rockets to get out of atmo, and take a long time to get up/down to speed.  There's also absolute mountains of information skimmed over here, especially concerning orbital inclination adjustment, and quite a bit that I don't know about how DU works.

Hopefully this helps someone get around easier.  There are probably errors in here, and bad explanations, so certainly call them out I'll be happy to update.

A territory scanner on an M core anti gravity ship floating from hex to hex can be very relaxing (Ts's take 15 minutes to scan an hex). 
 
Ts's are large, ungainly things and you have to build the ship accordingly.  In Alpha, I built a simple + shaped craft with an anti gravity generator and 6 anti gravity pods to carry a ts and a large container.
 
Imagine that's quite the solo build in beta, though.

The non-newbie method involves using a territory scanner - or 3 of them - to scan a bunch of hexes and find the ones that have the most of what you want. Then you dig down to the right depth and dig in a pattern that lets you scan the entire hex at that depth. You know exactly how much there is to find (because of the TS scans), so you know when you've found it all.

The two T2 ores on Alioth, Malachite and Limestone, are both about 500 m below the surface.
 
The newbie mining method is 
Dig down 500m. Dig in a spiral so you can get back out. You may be mining to your nano pack so you can't force respawn back up. pick a direction and dig horizontally while scanning. You may have to go a ways (kilometers) to pick anything up. When you see T2 on the scanner, play hot/cold just like you do on the surface. If you started 500m down, the T2 ore will usually be below you when you minimize the distance. It may be above you. I usually dig a tunnel up and run up it a bit to see which way the line goes, but fore committing to going down. For T3 (only acanthite on Alioth) dig down 800 and do the same process.
 
This procedure works on other planets too, but the depths and available ores are different.

I made a city, solo, in alpha, with 3 large cores (admittedly easier to do back then), it was part tourist attraction, part residential (with slums that had semi dismantled speeders outside), part huge ziggurat/visitor centre for human sacrifices.
 
Some of it was underground (before I learnt of the terror of landscape wipes - hopefully a thing of the past.)
 
It had minarets, booths, park seating, plants,  skyways and I plastered a lot of it in steel panels and cabling for where it needed to be grungy. (Again, tbf, easier in Alpha).
 
The ground can be flattened, as someone said and I think you would benefit from finding some of the voxelmancy tutorials.
 
 
 

Hi Noveans, 
 
This is it! After almost three years of regular live testing in Pre-Alpha, and three different Alpha versions, Dual Universe now enters its first Beta phase!
This also means that the NDA is finally lifted. 
 
The team worked extremely hard for you to discover this new milestone for our crazy dream project! We hope you'll see its potential and will continue helping us fixing, refining, and improving everything. Thanks for your awesome support since the beginning, it means so much to us... But enough of this, please find below the lastest release note: 
 
New Feature
 
Screen Unit image upload verification In order to see your content displayed on a Screen Unit, you now have to upload your images on our new website. Note that all images uploaded will be 100% public. To do so: 
Go to dualuniverse.game and after logging in via the upper right corner panel, you will be able to go to the “upload image” page You’ll then be asked to open your Windows explorer and select your file, provided it’s in .jpeg or .png format (that’s right, no gif allowed) and that it’s under 5MB. Please note that drag & drop is not functioning at the moment, contrary to what’s written on the page There’s no feedback yet, but your image should appear after a few seconds in the “Pending Review” section on the page. Refresh it if needed. This review process can take about one week for now but we’re doing our best to proceed as quickly as possible. For now, you have to go back to the page to know its current status (this will be improved after the Beta launch) If rejected, you won’t be able to use your image, obviously If accepted, the image will appear on the dedicated section of the page. A mouse-hover will allow you to click on the link button to copy the link. No feedback will be displayed yet, but it works You now have a link starting with assets.prod.novaquark.com/XXXXX. With this copied link, you’ll then be able to insert it in a Screen Unit Right-click on your Screen Unit and use the “Quick Image” function. Paste the link in the pop-up field, validate, and ta-daaaaa. (You can also use it in any HTML content if you like) You can have 5 images validated at the same time For now, you can’t delete an image. This possibility will be added soon Remember that your content must comply with our EULA and ToS. If, for any reason, you find a way to circumvent the moderation process and display offensive content, you’ll be eligible for a sanction. Be responsible and have fun!  
Note: On a more general note, that verification applies to all external URL used in HTML content in the game. Any external URL used must be validated or it will not be ever loaded in-game. This includes custom HUD on piloting seats, manifesto and organization logos, info button, and or course, Screen Units. 
 
Improvements
 
Added a clear warning about death and inventory loss [GUI] Added a confirmation message when using Force Respawn in a Tutorial session [LOC] Updated text for English, German and French languages [GUI] Added a red warning on inventory loss in confirmation popup for respawn, and removed the settings that allowed to skip confirmation [GUI] Improved display of quantas in dispensers (separate thousands with spaces, not commas, to be locale-independent) [Codex] Standardization of the codex font sizes between HUD mode and dashboard and fix of stretched images [Market] Buy/Sell orders are now sorted from lowest price to highest The downloadable package has been shrunk to 5.9 GB and the unzipped assets to 15 GB  
Gameplay Balancing/Changes
 
[Control] Removed reminder about ‘Shift + i’ shortcut to toggle container in the consumable bar [Voxels] It's now forbidden to put planet voxels 100m above the original ground height. There is still no restriction on constructs Temporarily removed wrecks Removed red watermark from the game Updated Beta disclaimers (long and short one) [PvP] Radar identification uses the construct center position [Organization] Removed the possibility for non-legate to deploy in the name of the organization  
Crash Fixes
 
Fixed a crash when sharing Construct [Warp] Fixed a crash when coming out of a warp  
Bug Fixes
 
[Rendering] Fixed ice moon position that was rendered on top of Sanctuary Moon [Rendering] Reverted voxel material shader to fix colored steels [Rendering] Fixed rendering order of clouds [Physics] Fixed an exploit where indefinite lift is possible when hover pads interact with a child construct Fixed ‘Share Element Publicly’ for all that did not work [Container] Fixed a bug where items from linked container was not added to the consumable bar when double-clicked [Inventory] Fixed sub-menu ‘Tool compatible’ that did not update itself when switching tool [Tuto] Fixed an exploit when dying in Tutorial sessions [PvP] Fixed a weapon exploit [Art] Fixed asset textures for Radar Atmo S and Radar Space Medium [Build] Fixed offset when placing Commander Seat [SFX] Fixed fireworks that did not explode in the sky Fixed some bugs with Sell orders from active container to distant market [Market] Fixed confusing message when player doesn’t have enough inventory space to retrieve an item from the market [Market] Fixed current scroll being lost on market update [LOC] Fixed typo in an error notification (inventory full on dispenser) [Sound] Fixed multiple audio cues that were triggered when selecting Exit on the Main menu [FTUE] Fixed the green marker that was larger than the window in the Codex sequence Fixed an issue that allowed to use items from the active container to create a sell order on a distance market [Market] Displayed average price and best offers were confused in Buy/Sell order windows (not instant one), Sell order windows displayed the prices of Buy orders, and vice-versa  
Known Issues
 
Windows certificate is not up to date. This issue will be fixed soon. This may prompt a warning message for new players in the first install. It can safely be ignored Beta keys system to distribute codes to your friends doesn't work for existing account yet. This will be fixed in the coming days Language selection from the game is not saved on exit Numerous French and German localization issues have already been spotted and we’ll fix them as time goes by In the previous Beta Release Candidate version of the game, ore veins were absent in the Sanctuary Moon. This has been fixed. However, any previous territory scan is now obsolete In some situations, you may not be able to place a Static Core Unit on your claimed Sanctuary Territory. An error message saying that it's too close to another construct is even displayed. It may be due to being too close to a District. Trying again from a bigger distance should solve the issue for now A random rendering crash can occur in many places because of some exhaustion of GPU/driver resource Voxel crash about disk/memory exhaustion [PvP] Slight difference between radar and 3D marker distance displays because radar uses the construct center as origin while 3D markers use the player position [SFX] Only blue fireworks may work for the moment If the game is set in German, Aphelia sometimes mixes German and English languages while speaking. A fix is coming for this very soon [Image upload] Regarding the new image upload feature on the new website, when clicking the copy link icon on the validated image section, there is no feedback to say that the link has been copied (it’s copied nonetheless) [Image upload] Drag & drop is not functioning at the moment, contrary to what’s written on the dedicated web page [Image upload] For now, you can’t delete an image. This possibility will be added soon [Image upload] Delay to display uploaded images in the pending review section can be long. Refresh the page after 10 seconds if needed [Image upload] There’s no feedback saying if an image is properly uploaded, nor rejected or accepted after review. You have to check directly by yourself on the dedicated page Uninstalling the game directly from Windows will leave the game’s files on the disk anyway. Please use the game's dedicated unins000.exe uninstaller in the game's directory for that. This will be fixed soon!  
Cheers, 
Nomad

Hi guys, 
 
The game is now in Beta 1 r0.21.1. Here's the latest patch note: 
 
Bug Fixes
Fixed the German voice issue of Aphelia in the tutorial Replacement of the correct quanta character in the variable currency symbol and removed the uppercase style on this kind of values (market/all player wallet...) Fixed non-localized notifications in French and German Fixed a shadow issue with the hand tool
Crash Fixes
Fixed two crashes when exiting the game Fixed a crash and handle nanocraft item quantity notification  
Cheers, 
Nomad

If you accelerate to light speed, you will undergo massive time dilation so it may seem like 24 years have passed on the ship but 100,000 years would have passed to a stationary observer. Physics is weird
 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration