Captain_Hilts

What do you all think about keeping your character and things safe while you are offline? How should that work? Should it even be a thing? How do you balance that with the goal of having emergent game play in a single persistent universe? I haven't seen NQ say a whole lot about this. We've got the Ark Ship Safe Zone for sure. Possibly additional Ark Ship Safe Zones as the game expands. They've said they're considering some kind of Auto Defense mechanism and large Ark Ship like shields - but not indestructible that can be built (for a high cost) -- That's all I've seen from NQ about this.... It seems if you went hard core emergent game play in a persistent universe -- then there would be no disappearing and no invulnerability when you log off. But then you would have to either stay in the Ark zone have massive auto defenses or massive shields or a massive alliance that is always online. This would seem to limit small orgs and individuals to staying in the Ark Zone. And limiting smaller groups like this seems to limit the potential of emergent game play. Is there a way to solve this? I agree there should be risk to being outside the safe zone - even for always online alliances with shields and auto defenses. It should be risky -- but it should be doable too. On the flip side I also think it would be bad to have safe zones all over the place. Bad to have invulnerability while offline. Bad to be able to run away by logging off. And bad to have super OP automatic defenses while offline. How do you go about making offline auto defenses effective without being OP? My idea for a possible solution to this would be a way to effectively hide - not in a way that you cannot be found. Just in a way that is really hard to find you. Another idea would be an automatic call for help when you are offline that goes out to everyone online (or in range) whether they are your friends or not. A third idea would be an automatic retreat mechanism that allows you to set waypoint(s) for your character to retreat to if possible if attacked. Any other ideas? What are your thoughts?

Just dreaming here so... It seems at first glance each side of every hinge / turntable / clamp etc. would have to be simulated as a separate dynamic construct. Basically it's own ship. That seems like it would get out of hand really fast. But perhaps they could get it to not be simulated server side - and only have to transmit to the server a changed state. IE when the engines rotate. Hopefully something like that would work. Seems like they must have some really great anti-hack/anti-cheat tech that allows them to allow the client side to run calculations and then just tell the server the result.

Yes this - I don't really understand how they can get ships/buildings that are one piece (ie no moving parts) to work let alone having moving parts. How are they able to process all those unique voxels on their server? I mean - they've said they can do it - and that a large ship would be no more difficult than the planets etc. I get that procedural generation of planets with formulas and variables along with LOD allows a whole planet to be created with very little data (relatively speaking) I just don't get how that can translate into huge structures we have created because - they're not a formula they're a custom design. Nevertheless they've said ships / cities / space stations are no more difficult than the planets. So I am hopeful they will be able to implement moving parts.

It's all good we can discuss blueprints here too. Modules sounds like a good idea to me if the game mechanic allows for connecting them to make a whole - I don't know about that. But good Idea. Only 20 for the death star though? that would be 209,500 km3 each Though I don't see the problem as you say having a single blueprint for the Death Star - it would no more be reproducible in mass than if you made it in 20 chunks. A blueprint is not going to be an insta-create thing. It's still gonna take a hell of a long time to put together after you've got a full blueprint. Whether it be 1 or 20 chunks

Yes - THIS

Wow guys - Ok. I am not suggesting as some have said - that a builder should be able to gather the resources for a huge ship in a flash that a builder should be able to design a full new huge ship in a flash or that that design and resources should be able to be assembled in a flash these things should and as they have said - will take time. Now I guess I was kind of assuming there would end up being a build mode for designing blueprints that you would then need to gather the required resources to actually build. Maybe a build mode won't be in the game - I know they have talked about it. But it doesn't sound set in stone from what I read. That could be a little inconvenient. How will I know which and how much resources to gather if I don't make the plan first. If there is not a build mode - all the more reason to be precise - if your 1km cube accidentally has an extra 25cm on one whole face that's a lot of wasted resources that will be very hard to see by eyeballing at that scale. But anyway I don't really know how blueprints will work - and maybe I've missed something but I don't think they've had details like that. We do know there will be blueprints. We know once you build something the first time you can make a blueprint of it. We know this thing will be (shocker) a blueprint. We know that you will be able to reproduce things using blueprints. I don't think there are any other details yet revealed about blueprints. One of you guys - not me - was the one that assumed once you got a blueprint a supper rich alliance would be able to pop out a capital ship every second. (therefore designing a large ship should be made to take a long time) WHAT? I'll talk about that one later. Let me calm your fears - popping out a capital ship every second will not happen. How do I know this? Well as you pointed out that would very obviously unbalance and wreck the game. I sure NQ being smart guys are able to see something that obvious. But blueprints are not the topic here - so -- IRL we don't have a device that can suck up matter and spit it out in any shape we want - but even when we were making giant rockets to go to the moon with paper and slide rulers we still had the ability to plan out our designs with precise dimensions before we started melting steel and welding it together. That's all I am asking for. Now I am all for the immersive game play - it's really exciting and I'm looking forward to it. Therefore I am against importing designs from outside sources - everything should be built in game. Therefore you need a way to design it in game. Now I wasn't even thinking to ask for speed movement while building (now maybe there's an idea..) I just want after walking 1km to lay down the keel of my ship to know that it is 1km and not 990m. Walking out the rough dimensions will take a while I just want it to be precise. OK here's the thing about making ship designing take a long time - 1 It is going to take a long time to make a good ship design especially a large one EVEN IF you could plop down a 1km cube instantly - making something that large into a good ship will take time. 2 if blueprints instantly pop out a ship how will making designing the ship take forever fix that? People would just pop out thousands of pre-designed ships with their unlimited resources and insta-factories. Why bother with a new design? Unlimited resources and insta factories will not be a thing. OK moving on Sure maybe a game mechanic will be you have to train your building skills. That very well may be - yet it is irrelevant to the topic. If I have trained my building skills to level - All The Skills - and plop down a 5km by 1km by 2km rectangle - I want to be able to know it is the exact dimensions I want without counting squares after the fact. Maybe some are ok with eyeballing it and saying - "meh give or take a few hundred meters is good enough for me" - Me I'd ask for more. If not being able to set dimensions at least be able to see the dimensions dynamically as you add on to it. Saying that plopping down a 1km cube slapping on engines and cockpit and guns then flying into battle - saying that is cheating well 1 that's pretty much what they've shown building small fighters. 2 if you think building a huge ship that way will result in an optimized ship with optimal use of resources..... hahaha - uh good luck with that. Slapped together ships will be a thing - they will be cheap (small) and they will have a use. They will not be 1km cubes and such (unless you have gobs of resources to waist - I don't think that will be a thing) Large ships will need to be carefully put together to justify their cost. Whether that means an accurate model; say, of a Star Destroyer (ie cosmetics) , or a ship with superior game play performance.

Here's my list of top things I'd like to see in the game regarding building. 1 It'd be nice if we could have a way to set the X,Y,Z dimensions of a voxel shape we are going to deploy. You know, rather than counting by 25cm increments until I get to 1600m x 890m x 530m for my Star Destroyer. Seems that could be tedious. 2 It'd be nice to be able to have a map of my ship I am making; its internal elements and internal voxel structure. Otherwise I think I could get lost inside my ship while I'm building it. ; ) I'd like to see a few dynamic elements added - 3 A clamp element that can connect/disconnect a dynamic construct to another dynamic construct or to a static construct. 4 A turntable element that can be used to create a hinge, turret, or axle. 5 A linear motor - something that can move groups of voxels parallel to each other like a train on a track or a sliding door. 6 Some kind of layer / grouping tool - would be useful especially for very complex constructs Yes I am thinking like I'm building with legos only unlimited pieces - awesome! Anyway, the game looks amazing already and I'm looking forward to the end of the month. Hopefully these things will end up in the game at some point in the future.

Greetings, I've looked around and haven't seen this discussed anywhere.... So here goes. There should be a building tool that allows you to place a shape (eg a cube) and then define it's x, y, z, dimensions by quickly entering a set of numbers. For example with the cube - Width = 500m Depth = 5m Length = 5694m. This would be very beneficial for large constructs as placing such a large thing seems it would be hard to do by "hand" as shown in the building demos. Also it would allow more precise measurements of what you are building verses having to count "blocks" which could be very tedious - especially for large constructs. Anyway if this is not a thing already - I'd like to see it done. Captain_Hilts out. "You make good stuff Hilts."