maximpact

I had the pleasure to talk to JC for about one hour at gamescom. Here are some hopefully new informations I can remember:
JC dont know when the Alpha is ready but it is going to happen in 2018 The Market-Feature is going to be implemented in the first update for the alpha (some weeks after the alpha launch) They havent done much yet to prevent hackers To prevent glitching when standing on moving objects (like space engineers or GTA) they give every construct their own relative coordinate system, called Local-Frame, which the player is bounded to. To detect which Frame is the right one (e.g. jumping from a ship to a planet) they send a ray downwards and the ray detects the Frame underneath the player. Right now only the skybox is rotating, but planet rotation is planned for the future On Tuesday, August 22, Novaquark has implemented a sitting function for the couch (not a joke!) They are hiring several new people starting in september, including a webdeveloper, who is going to work for the first 4 month on the community portal full-time JC itself has written the LUA-Scripting, flight-mechanics, logical-gates and the HTML/SVG Screenunit The Community Managers are really happy seeing such a growing community and that much interest in the game Most of the people at novaquark are playing the game mosty at work, not very often at home You can freely reskin the entire UI of the game, the whole UI is made up of HTML and CSS, NQ wont prevent making changes to the ui Right now, you can embed any HTML-content, except for Javascripts, in the Screen-Unit, e.g. embedding a Youtube-Video works right now, they arent sure, if they continue to allow that The client and the server are written in C++. The client needs C++ for the performance, the server is also written in C++ due to the high amount of the same code with the client. They wished, they could make it in a safer language like Java, but htey simply doesnt have the time to write a lot of code twice. Traveling to other planets takes in average 2 days, to other solar systems 2 weeks When the player has a limited internet-connection, they lower the refresh-rate of constructs and players When the player has a slow computer, they are limiting the viewing distance and also lowering the refresh-rate of constructs and players The goal is to reach 30fps on every mid-sized pc Thats all for now, sorry for my bad english and some typing errors

Let's stay in the frame of the forum etiquette, shall we? Literally insulting your counterpart in a discussion will not make your statements any more credible, don't you think? Because when evading to alternative methods, it's more likely for people to see you as the mentally challenged.
 
I can absolutely see where your arguments are coming from. I was, at first, very disappointed of the seemingly poor marketing choices Novaquark had made. just what you said before was the same I had in mind as well. Almost all the subscription based games turn f2p at some point, and in general, I am in favor of b2p / f2p as well, since it definitely IS the better choice for 95% of games.
 
Sadly for you, nobody was willing to explain the foundation this communitie's opinion is based on, because we discussed it countless times before with no result, as Yamamushi said.
 
 
 
However, with time I, too, realized that there are exceptions. The games that are subscription based are different from the usual mainstream trend of games. Wonderful examples are, as you said, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 11 / 14 and Eve Online. All those games can survive because they provide a special service that the usual MMO-genre fails to deliver. They all deliver content on an exceptional scale, regular updates influenced by its playerbase's wishes and features that you can't find in a similar collection in different games. That's why these games' playerbase is loyal enough to return again and again and is willing to pay the subscription. 
Now if we look at Twerk's statements concerning the marketing philosophy of many eastern publishers, we can see why f2p works for these games, but wouldn't work for subscription based games. 
 
The policy of these publishers is to create cheap games, design them in a way that is easy to attract large masses of people by adding features that are well known in the genre and become genre standards (which for example tab-targeting was for many years), harvest the most out of it by creating a small, but efficiently paying group of fans and then leave the game as far as possible to itself while practivally generating money with few effort.
That's why f2p works these days, because people look for that.
What you misunderstand is that we have the problem that a f2p system is not the guarantee for attracting a large playerbase, but they attraction of a large playerbase through a game's features. And let's be realistic, we all here see that DU has tons of potential, but it's not the right game to attract a playerbase of millions in a short time. For that, DU is too unexplored, too new, too risky so to say. It does not deliver all the standard features an international community is looking for in an MMO, for example the absence of quests and NPCs. 
 
You see, Bleep_Bloop, you have it mixed up. Being able to attract a larger playerbase does not result from f2p, it's the other way around. F2p results from being able to attract a large playerbase, a larger one than you would see in a subscription game. Because why pay for one game if you can have many of the same features in another one for free? That's completely in your logic, as you said. 
But DU doesn't belong in that category. It relies on a smaller, but more loyal fanbase, similar to Wolrd of Warcraft. Imagine the millions of people that would rush in and start playing if WoW would go f2p tomorrow. But also imagine the small portion that would actually want to pay for a cash shop. And imagine all the people leaving WoW or simply not paying any longer then.
 
But in order to attract that fundamental playerbase, you need to make some compromises. Imagine if the game would actually be on cost of a AAA game. As Novaquark is a completely new studio, it can not guarantee a successful future of the game, so which larger mass of people would actually be willing to throw $60-ish at them when they can't promise anything? No, instead they decided to give you a free trial period. They decided you don't have to buy the game itself. They even chose to allow to sell the playtime for ingame money. 
 
So you have to see the advantages for you as the player from a subscription based game as well.
The devs are forced to continually improve and expand their game, or they will loose customers. They are also forced to deliver higher quality content than the regular publishers. And they are forced to act after the players' wishes. So you will get a game that is far more consistent than the average f2p, as developers can't just leave it to generate money. Additionaly, you can choose when to p(l)ay. You don't have to pay $156 at a fixed interval for as long as the game exists. Before you pay a regular b2p price for a game, you can play it for 3-4 months at minimum, presumably more since DACs can be bought with ingame money. And that's as long as many players will play it. In the end, the $/hr ratio in subscription based games is not rarely better than in b2p games. And that's also why subscriptions work.
 
 
 
I also see that you've already realized that this game can't afford to lose customers, which contradicts a bit with your last post, but only because you didn't yet reach the final conclusion. Losing customers does not equal losing money in our times. things are a bit more complex, it's 2017 after all.
 
From that statement, you also seem to still be ill informed, which is why I can relate to you as I was in the same position for a longer time as well, as I already said. There is nothing "premium" in this game NQ could sell you. There are no permanent assets in this game due to its own nature.
 
What you ultimately failed to realize because of that, and that's the most important point of all, is that this game is so fundamentally structured to rely on a loyal fanbase that is willing to pay the subsciption and even appreciates it as you can see from the previous posts, that it doesn't even have the choice to go f2p/b2p without completely becoming another standard MMO in the long list of quick cashgrabs.
 
 
 
If you read until here, I respect you for your effort. Please don't think ill of the community, we are just all very tired of this ongoing discussion. There are so many reasons why there is just no other way for this game to become what it aims to be, that somewhere along the way trying to fit it into words we lost the motivation because people just turn around and go as soon as they notice they don't meet like-minded people here or it's not going their way.
But here's your chance for you to be better than that. I have given you a guideline for you to think about, and with time you might also learn to trust Novaquark with their choices, just like I did when I was in your position.

When you're tired of playing the same ole sub-par games with zero innovation, then you might want to consider paying a fair price to game companies so they can afford to make better games and provide ongoing support.  If these guys can pull off only half of what they are planning, this will be one of those game companies.

I know that hosting my own servers for the three games I play is costing me a small fortune.  If this one is good, then I won't have to pay for my own servers to play with more than a few people at a time. From my perspective, it could be a big cost savings - and a lot less of a pain in the butt.

You can play for free too if you're active enough and make enough in-game money.
 
If not, there's the door. No one forces you to play
 
And I won't even start on why there is this sub because you know, if you can't ask politely, I won't do either

No, there's no Concord Police Force. I thought it was common knowledge by now, but DU has no NPC anything, safe from some wildlife.
 
There are Safezones where nothing can happen to you (ala NPC stations) but they are having a rental on them, that icnreases with player population. So, if you live in downlown LA of a Safezone, then rent's gonna be high (but so will opportunities for jobs I guess).
 
If I would make a connection between EVE and DU, DU's space is Wormhole Space, no police, no rules. You can;'t defend your space, you lose it, either on a planet or in space. It's the hard fact of life EVE teaches you, to not take things for granted. And I would hope DU will teach the same thing to other people who haven't played EVE.
 
Also, Planets in DU are more like Regions from EVE. You can't lock down a region with one single corporation and some parts of that region may not have NPC stations, but may have player ran Stations / Citadels. Those are Protection Bubbles in DU. But, you guessed it, you pay rent (unless people in them are doing it pro bono... in which case... lol).
 
While you can't hide in space, at least, not very easily, you can easily hide on a planet. Dig and build underground. Done, you're safe.
 
 
Also, while Super Weapons in the sense of "Craft MegaLaz0or of Doom" won't be a thing, people need to udnerstand why Destroyers are cfalled Destroyers and not "jacked-up Frigates".
 
 
Add 10 long range guns on a ship, orbit a planet, nuke planet from orbit (latest DevDiary, orbits confirmed, as wel las momentum). 
 
Now, extrapolate the number of weaposn in the scale of a battleship or a dreadnaught. Now we're talking. Have 50 Long Range guns hitting a shield on an area, take down shield, then negotiate. If the onwers don't cooporate, focus down a building or two, if they don't copoeate stil, flatten the city, salvage it later.
 
A warship IS a super-weapon.
 
Just finda few good (or terrible) men, and go out there in the game world, being the Reavers or the Reaper or the Empire and just level cities.
 
But not exploding planets, that would be ridiculous. Having ruins of a city that scavengers pick off like crows on the battlefield, would make for ENDLESS content generated by players down the line, with new players in-game seeing the ruins of a once great city that the Army of the Ponyrider leveled to the ground because the leader of the city and the Eternal Pony Emperor had an arguement over if Goku would beat Superman in a 1 versus 1. 
 
That's nerd history in the making right there.

#1 Rule - You only "own" what you can successfully defend. 

Implants. We need to have some differences from Eve. Anybody else remember proper implant twinking from anarchy online?

When you say "Specialised" you mean Warp Scram and point cheese? "Oh sure, I am twice your size, but sure, keep me in place brave battle Venture"? Can we leave the cancer of a mechanism in EVE? Good.
 
I'd say keep the spool-up for the warp-drive, so that "Scram" actually happes by taking out the propulsion of a ship. If they can't reach x% of maximum speed to enter warp, then they CAN'T enter warp fast enough from being blown to bits.
 
Warp disrupt bubbles are acceptable, but need to have fuel to keep them up, and they should enforce a "Warp Speed Decceeleration", which means if a ship is rigged for SPEED in all fashions, it can't be stopped (i.e. an interceptor).
 
I'd also ask for dymanic tractor beams. Instead of having a contrived webifier shitshow, the Devs can add tractor beams that behave SORTA like Webs. 
 
Case in point. Small Tractor. Excerts a pull of 250 meters per second.
 
BUT, the larger mass wins on the "pull" with the rate being proportional to the differential up to 100%. I.e, a 1 tonne starfighter tractoring a 10 tonne shuttle, won't work, as the shuttle will "drag" the fighter behind it. But what happens if 11 fighters Tractor the shuttle? Their collective mass reduces the Shuttle's speed accordingly, as the shuttle's propulsion can compensate for. If the propulsion can't take on twice the shuttle's weight, then the shuttle's speed drops to speeds that won't actually allow it to warp in time to avoid its propulsion getting picked off, as its acceleration will be miniscule due to the ten fighters "dragging" it.
 
And this is the important part. People need to stop thinking of spaceships only for the sole purpose of blowing shit up. The above tractor beam example? That tractor beam is a tool that a miner ship can use to "pull in" a container with ore from an asteroid operation, while a salvager can use to drag in a module its crew severed off of a derelict.
 
And yes, the above could work for "grappling" and "rappeling" on planets for players. Batmaning our way to victory. 
 
Really? No reason? Like no reason to have a way of preventing an invading force from advancing in a B-line from a point of entry to your planet? Or for the space in between planets to have a meaning? Or for people to have to use their grey matter for piloting through a dangerous territory, due to known pirate ambushes in between warp points?
 
What I'm asking is, do you want the game to be an endless Stargate camping fest? See, warp interdiction is needed. It's a "tar pit" of a device, that has a vast range of a tactical usage beyond offense. Warp Interdiction is the only wall you can put up in space.

First off: Steam reviews
Everyone is biased in some way (depending on your preferred games, played games, media, YT videos, promotions, involvements in some community,....) and only very very few people actually objectively rate a game, based off of facts and not personal interest. Then there are ofc those people (or kids) who think early access = alpha and then realize that this game is buggy as hell and very limited because many mechanics are missing. Part of this problem is the industry, wanting to sell games at an early stage to get money for development, thus releasing those early access games. If this backfires and the game isn't good, buggy, not fun or whatever then the studio will cancel the project and move on. Is this running away with money? I don't think so. I didn't follow those two games you mention but I guess there were cheaper bundles - no one forced you to buy those expensive premium versions. So it's YOUR choice if you want to spend more money (for nostalgia or whatever reason) or not, but I don't think you can blame the devs for it.
 
There are many examples of games which promised a lot...and delivered nothing. But honestly: it's YOUR money. If I pay someone / for something I inform myself BEFOREHAND to know the risks. I watch videos, read the devblogs, watch interviews, compare statements from different interviews in regards of consistency, read the forum, talk to the devs themselves,.... If you don't do that and just throw your money at some random people, well it's your fault then if you never get the game you wanted (yeah, devs can change their mind and change the game too, sucks but happens).
 
So to me, steam reviews are just a general direction indicator because of above reasons. I absolutely LOVED gothic. It was one of the best games I ever played (well, after portal series) and it's not rated that well. Because people are different. Same with Just Cause 3, "only" 70+ % but I just love it.
Steam reviews can be a huge motivator for people but can ruin you at the same time. Take alpha for example. If DU would be on steam and people buy into alpha, because "yay, early access!!!! I'm soooooooooooooooooooooo exited !!!!!!" and then they realize it's a REAL alpha with bugs, lots of testing, crap game mechanics and so on (well I hope not, but you never know ). Do you really think this will help the game? Or will it most likely kill DU completely because some people are just stupid?
 
From my experience with NQ/DU: I'm involved in the community a lot and I talk to NQ about several different topics. They were always open for discussion, answered questions, talked to us (those who would listen) and encouraged our participation in some vital game mechanics.
 
If you want alpha access, it might be a good idea to buy into it before it starts. They'll probably won't sell any more alpha tickets once alpha starts (just my guess, nothing official).

DU is going to be great.
''Lets make Dual Universe great''
Its going to be awesome, I can feel it.
I come from the future, not a distant one, from 2018, and the game is awesome, trust me.
 

 

@Megaddd:
 
We can understand your concerns, fears and/or doubts.
It's a natural reaction, especially in the era where a lot of projects are either promising the moon (which they can't deliver) or just failing.
So being skeptical is totally understandable. However, allow me to clarify/correct a few of your statements: 
 
1) EVE Online success:
 
EVE Online current gameplay loops are not what they are today just because of CCP designers. They have really talented people, no doubt about that. However, the gameplay loops you are refering haven't been as precise as they are now right from the beginning. There is a lot of work from the designers, that's a fact, but these loops where born from emergent gameplay at first: CCP developers have admitted themselves that when they launched the game in the first year, players have used the game mechanics in ways they hadn't think about. Then, they analysed what people liked to do in game and listen to the community feedback. Saying the success of the game was reached because they had 3-4 absolutely brilliant people is very reductive to say the least:
- They started with good base with open game mechanics.
- They have talented and reactive developers.
- They kept listening to their community. 
It's the combination of these 3 factors (not just one) that brought them success.
 
2) Not much gameplay has been shown until now:
 
Regarding Dual Universe, yes indeed, you have mostly seen technical stuff for the moment and very little from the gameplay.
Is it because we want "to hide" the gameplay side? Jumping to this conclusion is a bit oversimplying the situation.
 
Here are a few facts:
 
- The pros and cons of having proprietary techs:
 
Until a few months ago, the Novaquark team kept prioritizing and building the tech, for several important reasons:
 
The project is technologically ambitious, our studio is coming from nowhere (no past track record for the studio, even in the people in it are experienced), and the combination of these two points made it very hard to be taken seriously right from the beginning, especially in the current context where overpromising has become a common thing. So the first thing we had to address is to show some proof saying "Hey guys, this is really possible!".
 
The other important reason is because it's just common sense to start by building the tech before the gameplay. It's only once we know the capabilities of our tech - after testing it - that we can build a gameplay adapted to it.
 
Some could argue we are taking a very long time to build our tech compared to other studios able to show advanced gameplay just only one year (or sometimes even 6 months) after they started the project. Why is there so much difference between them and us? Simply because they started the project with an engine with many features implemented. This kind of engine is great to have a short development cycle. However, "ready-to-use" game engines have a drawback: you can't expect making a game really different frow what has been done before.
 
Dual Universe is in this case. We tested affordable game engines (Unity and Unreal Engine) in the early days of the studio and we came to the conclusion that they wouldn't allow Novaquark devs to do exactly what they had in mind. We hadn't the time (and the man power) to build a complete game engine from scratch. So we opted for a middleground solution: we've chosen Unigine, which was a very good base to start with (especially for planetary simulation), with not too many technical constraints (generally proportional to the number of features already implemented in the game engine). However, having not many features already implemented in the game engine is a double edged sword: having less features implemented from the start than popular game engines, means more things to develop on our side: the massively multiplayer tech, the voxel tech, and some of the graphics tech (to be optimized for a massively multiplayer context).
 
Then, after all of this reached a reasonably advanced state (it's not finished yet), we were able to start the gameplay development. And that's where Novaquark was a few months ago. As you can imagine, it wasn't possible to show advanced gameplay footage just a few weeks after having seriously started the development of this part. It takes at least months to have something meaningful to show.
 
- The lack of gameplay loops in the early days of sandbox games:
 
As CaptainTwerkMotor stated, you won't find complete predefined game loops, at least not at the beginning. In this regard, we have exactly the same open-minded approach than CCP Developers in the early days of EVE Online. It's also what happened, to some extent, for Minecraft. In the early days of a sandbox game, developers give "tools" to the players and those "create" the gameplay loops they like. Then the developers make improvements to the game to favorize the emergence of popular gameplay loops. That's, in our opinion, how a successful sandbox game can be born: synergy between developers and the community, not just game design decisions made by developers.
 
So yes, you will see gameplay mechanics in the future that could be used as pieces of a gameplay loop. But you probably won't see a complete gameplay loop, or if we do such kind of video, then it will be to show some example, not to say "This is how the game is meant to be played". Moreover, the Alpha will launch with just a few of the gameplay bricks we have planned on the long run, precisely to get feedback on the first ones by alpha testers, and adapt/improve the following ones coming into the game.
 
3) The poor graphical performance in the Dev Diary videos:
 
You're right, the framerate of the recent DevDiary videos is not a decent one.
If you have read the comments under those videos, you might have seen that we already replied regarding this concern.
While we have currently a good framerate in-game on a high-spec machine, when it comes to recording it, the framerate displayed in the video is far from being representative of the current framerate in-game. We made tests with Shadowplay and OBS, and while tweaking the parameters improved a bit the framerate in the videos, this is still far from being perfect. Yes, we admit we haven't any expert (yet) in this domain inside the team at the moment. However, we have taken note of advices made by some professional streamers and youtubers following our Youtube channel and we are going to have a dedicated machine to record videos for DevDiaries in the future. We planned to have it for the March DevDiary of March, but it might be too tight in the schedule to make it happen next week. We will give an update on this topic next week.
 
Long story short:
If you have questions, ask them. We will do our best to answer them
We can't promise we will be able to give you only satisfying answers (as you might have a lot of "too soon to give you a detailed answer on this gameplay aspect") but it's sure you won't have any answer if you don't ask first. 
 
@All:
 
If you would like to see some dedicated videos to a specific topic already presented in the previous videos, just let us know: I can't promise anything right now, but I can transmit to the devs what are the topics you would like to see developed.
 
@Bleep_Bloop:
 
We won't go "Early Access" on Steam any time soon (if we go one day, as it's not even certain either). We want to wait until we're close to have all the main gameplay mechanics implemented in game and a decent stable version. We are very well aware that the Steam Community is composed of a lot more people that want to play a nearly-finished game than testing a game in its early stages... And that's perfectly fine: we totally understand that a lot of people are not interested in experiencing the intermediate stages of a game development. As for your question "what are the chances of this game reaching its full potential?", unless someone has a working crystal ball... No one can answer this question accurately. The chances are something that can vary a lot in a development process, according to the decisions taken and the unexpected events. So far, we think (but you are free to think otherwise) the odds are good, as we haven't hit any "wall" that seems like an impossible obstacle. Our private investors, who saw the success of the Kickstarter campaign, are ready to help even further in the game development, as promised. So as far as we know, there is no dark cloud in the sky at the moment.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi Bleep_Bloop and welcome to our forum.
 
Not sure if this is the best way to introduce yourself in a positive way, but that's your choice.
We know our project is ambitious and we don't force anyone to believe the Novaquark team on words alone. We communicate as much as possible on the game development, we show what we can show. We do our best to avoid overpromising things (we stick to what seems to be technically feasible to us) and we try to be as transparent as possible in the development process, then it's up to the players to make their own opinion. 
 
If you have a hard time to imagine how a game can contain many planets without being extremely unstable, keep in mind that the game world won't be hosted on just one single hardware server, but hosted on a server cluster. 
 
we suggest to look at:
- This page on our website describing the "single shard" technology: http://www.dualthegame.com/technology
- This devblog post: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/09/26/a-single-shard-continuous-universe-one-world-no-boundaries/
- This video explaining visually how the game world is splitted in real time across many servers to keep a global stability and handle the workload proportionally to the number of players gathering in specific areas: 
 
After that, if you still have questions, feel free to ask.
 
About Brian Fargo:
You might not like the games delivered by his studio (maybe they don't suit your tastes) but they have been successful and the numbers disagree with your opinion. The fact that you don't like them doesn't mean they are bad. Beside, it would make no sense to compare Wasteland 2/Torment: Tides of Numenera with Dual Universe as they are two completely different types of games (the first ones are rpg solo games with deep storyteling designed by developers in 3D isometric view, the other one is a Massively Multiplayer Online RPG Sandbox in first person view where the story is made by players).
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! 
 
So we had an internal discussion on this topic in the team.
 
Here are the main points:
 
1) We still think that the DAC as a Monthly Subscription Token remains the easiest form to understand for new players about its use and primary goal (enabling players who can't afford a monthly subcription to be able to play the game by remaining reasonably active in-game).
 
2) As the merge of such currencies makes PLEXes a virtual item accessible from anywhere, and as we had already a lengthy discussion on the forum several months ago about the same topic for DACs, we saw this side effect as a negative point. So, in the case we would go for a more divisible currency, we will think of the possibility while keeping the following constraint: once the currency token is dropped into the game from the external inventory (being called "Vault" or "Account's Redeeming System"), it will be tagged if it is returned to the external inventory. It will then be only droppable to the last location it was redeemed in-game (just like the PLEXes work in EVE Online at the moment).
 
3) The move from merging PLEX and Aurum currencies makes sense as it simplifies the whole system: one currency for both the monthly subscription model and the in-game cosmetic cash shop. However, as it's not even confirmed that there will be a cosmetic shop (still currently being discussed) in Dual Universe, this positive point doesn't apply to our context at the moment. If at some point, a cosmetic cash shop is integrated to the game, it's possible that the DAC will be converted in a more divisible currency, to avoid deploying several currencies for the same purpose.
 
4) Going for more divisible DACs will require extra development time that could delay the official game release, and that's another negative point.
 
So, in a nutshell, it's not planned to do any changes regarding the DACs at the moment.
We stick to the plan with DACs being usable as monthly subscrition tokens.
If something isn't clear or if you have questions, just let us know!
 
@Lynkx:
- We are aware that the PLEX system is not perfect, but in our opinion (the Novaquark team) the best compromise we can find.
We have in the team players who have played many MMORPGs: EVE Online, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Neverwinter, Archeage, Elder Scrolls Online, Elite Dangerous, Wildstar, etc. So we aren't just looking to the EVE Online model while ignoring completely what has been done elsewhere. It's just that the EVE Online model seems to be the most balanced one so far (even if it has flaws). 
- A minimal alien fauna is planned for the official release (and will probably grow in diversity afterwards)
- Having a few NPC helpers visible in-game for the tutorial is something considered, but we can't promise anything on that topic right now (we have also some ideas for tutorials without involving visible NPCs in the game world).
- On a last note, please avoid to reply to other community members in an ironical/provocative way (this doesn't add anything to the discussion)
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

I don't think they're neccessary. It would be annoying to constantly hear those booms everywhere.
 
RL comparisons always suck but here we go:
And yes, sonic speeds would be definitely too much for DU. That would take away emergent gameplay and response time.
If we take Alioth with 100km radius as a model then it's roughly 1/60 the radius of earth. So an appropriate speed would be 340/60 = 5,6m/s for traveling. Since this is boring, it will be something like 50-100 m/s, depending on engines. This leads to traveling times between 3,4hours to 1,7 hours. So if your outpost is on the other side of the planet you'd roughly need 100 - 50 min to reach your target.
To me this would make much more sense and gameplay more interesting because:
- planets should feel big
- players are forced to build outposts to defend vast territories
- a response force has an actual meaning (people ready to go anywhere all the time - because every minute counts)
- it should be a huge task and would need thousands of players to own a whole planet - not 50 because they can be anywhere within seconds
- once space travel is invented and even if a planet is more or less under the control of one org or an alliance, this speed makes sure invasions have a chance. It adds a timer to be able to build a bridgehead

!00 Km = planet's radius, radius being the distance from the center of the planet to its surface. 2R = Diameter.
 
Circumference = the perimeter of a circle? Same thing but for a Sphere. Aka 2πR (2 * 3.142 * 100000 meters). That's the circumference.
 
Unless your fighter jets can tunnel through a planet, I guess you'll have go around the planet , and since there's no faster route than the shortest one (no obstacles altitude), we take the circumference of a planet, divide it to seconds of an hour, find out how many meters per second you need to travel at to do a full "orbit" around a planet. With the 100 kilometer planet adius, at 174 m/s on a fighter, a planet can be cruised around in 1 hour.
 
And yes, YOU CAN do a high altitude dart to a location, however, it may not be possible to have both atmospheric and vacuum enngines on the same fighter. They are fighters, not frigates. You can't fly an F-16 in space, its atmospheric engines do not work without that thing called "air pressure" or "oxygen". And let's face it, in a futurespace with machines that can warp space-time, I bet F-16 technology is dirt-cheap and affordable for fighter / interceptors, let alone, fuel efficient. If NQ was to add "gravity stops working at 50km off the ground, but atmosphere ends at 40 km off the ground" your F-16 could get itself into vacuum (no friction = more acceleration) and do an arc as it re-enters the atmoshpere. Sure, it would be badass, and the sonic boom would be something to alert people "oh, the sky-knights are coming".
 
Thing is, the GDC stream proved one thing. Inertia is a beast. If you were to re-enter an atmosphere at mach 5, with a craft meant to tolerate at a bare maximum 1 Mach top speed, and atmosphere of 40km height from the graound, you would end up having about 23 seconds to brake enough to not become acquainted with the ground. Oh, and that gravity thing? Yeah, it's gonna make your slowing down even worse, o na fighter that has a maximum possible manevuerability of 1/5 of its main propulsion. 
 
So, all in all, sure, you COULD try a "sky-dive" with an F-16 in an arc through higher orbit, just don't expect to be able to brake fast enough before you become one with the ground.
 
Also, I never said the feature is stupid. I just want things to have meaning in the game. If the Sonic Boom can be something that a veteran can hear and be like "loud boom, little duration, lower on the spectrum, definitely a cruiser entering the atmosphere", as well as the aforementioned "trajcetory landing" to avoid making a heckton of a noise and having time for our Lord and Savior, Impulse, to deliver us from inertia.

It's not a difficult thing to implement. Just add a sound cue when a craft exceeds the speed of sound in atmoshpere and tune the bass / reverb / tremple on the sound effect depending on the ship's mass and volume.
 
Why, would the devs, allow for an in-atmosphere craft, to exceed 340 m/s? So the size of the planet to look even smaller?
 
Planets in DU are (at maximum) 100 Km in radius. That means their cirmuference averages 628~ Km. That means that if you were to reach the speed of sound, it would take half an hour to go around a planet tracing a flat surface without any mountains in front of you. Adjust for a bit of height at 10km altitude above surface, that's about 34 minutes. You see the issue with having sonic booms now, right? It means that higher-speeds could be achieved, bringing down the scale of the planet, because sonic booms, mandate hypersonic speeds.
 
You may say "what happens if someone attacks a miner on the other side of the planet and I need to get there fast? What? Should I take 15 minutes to get there?" and the answer is "yes".  It's the same in EVE. Planets in DU are more like Regions from EVE. If an attack happens on a remote location, chances are people won't get there to save you in time, let alone manage to set up a squad to come rush to a person's aid.
 
And this ties to the subject at hand very much. People need to stop assuming "My org will single-handedly dominate a planet". No you won't. You will be just be spread thin and be punched through like a 1 mm thin paper. You'll need multiple outposts manned to deal with their TOR (Territory Of Responsibility), like an actual army does. Which is why I advcoate against hypersonic vehicles.
 
Although if the Devs were to add sonic booms, they should add them for ships ENTERING and EXITING the planet. That way people may actually get a "Heads-up" notice of "someone entered the planet", without having to rely on a terrible and shitty mechanism like a "Local Chat" and actually have a thing about pilots and manufacturers scripting in "trajectory landings" in order to not make a shit load of sound entering a plnaet, letting everyone and their mother know "HEY WE ARE HERE TO RAID Y'ALL, COME AND WRECK US, JUST FOLLOW THE ABNOXIOUS WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZZZ".
 
So yeah, add sonic booms on entering and exiting a planet, make the different with the good ol' Doppler effect. Having sonic SPEEDS and sonic booms on planetary aircraft? No thanks, I like my immersion working by admiring the forests and meadows of a planet. Possible tool for trolls? Maybe, but it's their fuel they waste and it's your responsibility to shoot those trolls out off the sky.
 
 
Cheers.

Agree 100%. All those haters based on one game. If that is the worst thing that happened in their lives (so far) then they got to get out more.

I don't really get why people always think it's the most important thing to have huge numbers. Numbers alone never make up a good org or a successful one. It's the people who make it good at certain tasks.
Even when you're talking about pvp/military/tactics huge numbers don't change that much because of several things:
- people are stup....special. Half of the people online will not get the commands (fly there!) because they're rambling or not focused enough
- many of them don't even have pvp experience and just can't handle all the information, commands and chaos thus making them slow and/or not effective
- you'd need huge amounts of bandwidth to handle such numbers on teamspeak or any other server. Or you split all those people but then you need some to pass information to others which confuses many and they then can't fight effectively
- Timezones and playtimes. Lots of people think that 1000 people is a huge number for a military for example, while the truth is: it's not. Considering playtimes and timezones you probably have 50-100 people online at any given time
 
Smaller orgs can be way more effective and fun to play in because you don't have to deal with bloated inside-politics, such orgs consist of friends with similar playtimes and no special snowflakes.
 
I need to quote the kitty here:
"Everyone always wants to play a leader or a soldier. No one wants to play support"

hey all, i have been following since the game was announced on kickstarted, could not back then but i made up for it today, grabbed me a gold membership so WOOT!! now give us the ALPHA!!! i wanna play so bad lmao!

this isn't primarily a space exploration game... it's a civilization building game.  While it's set in a scifi setting and some exploration is necessary to expand to new territory for the civilization to grow... If you're expecting a free roaming space exploration game... you'll be disappointed.

But if everyone watches the videos and reads the dev blogs, our usefulness as educators will be at an end.

For your consern, yes we shal do so. Why? May you wonder. Perhaps we simply should do whats needed to make everyone happy about this game. Share and care. We need to show the world that we are in fact a nice communtity. Only then could the dream of Dual Univers be truly realized.

Novaquark will not be hosting a black tie sit down dinner with JC Baillie and your favorite Novaquark employees in the street outside Novaquark headquarters in Paris.
 
We do not request the pleasure of your company.
 
Where: Not on the street outside Novaquark headquarters in Paris.
When: Not on 1 April 2017, 19:00
Catering: The three course meal will not be catered for by Olivier Amestoy and his talented chefs from the nearby Auxria Restaurant.
RSVP: Do not RSVP.
 
 
Instead of paying for the ticket to this dinner, the cost of renting/buying formal wear, and the cost of travel and potentially an hotel for one night (shared or not), consider purchasing a Dual Universe pledge of equal value here: https://community.dualthegame.com/pledge

Why is this topic still going. I thought the first post was a troll. Don't feed the troll.

Implants like in anarchy online