Captain_Hilts

242 years - Oooraah!
Semper Fidelis Devildogs.
 
@GalloInfligo

"Don't distress, call wayward express"
 
Have you lost your way?
 
Perhaps you simply overshot your destination, perhaps you flipped your fighter, or perhaps you got caught in cross fire of some battle - no matter. Whatever you reasons, we'll get you where you have to go.
 
Where do you fly?
 
We fly everywhere permitted, all public stations and cities, or as close as permitted, for a fee. We cater to your needs, and attempt to give everyone a cheap and affordable method of space travel should you be unable to purchase/build a ship, or simply lack the desire.
 
How do you handle politics and safety?
 
Wayward Express is intended to be a fully neutral transportation business and will not get involved in any conflicts. Since WE fully intends to provide indiscriminate services to everyone regardless of their ideology or political affiliation, there is little incentive attack WE. We will very obviously benefit all those locations we travel to, with bringing tourists and their money to your locations, pay taxes to cities and stations, and indiscriminate employment and travel options.
 
Its very easy to remove  such boons and benefits if and where need be
Are you hiring?
 
Wayward Express offers employment to everyone seeking to make extra income, regardless of their ideology or political affiliation. It matters not what org you're apart of, so long as you intend to follow our policies and not endanger any of our travelers.
 
What are your requirements?
 
For travelers:
Listen to all safety instructions. Pay your tickets prior to boarding. Find your seat, and do not disturb or otherwise interrupt the flight Do not attempt using our services as a way to ambush or attack travelers or other Noveans at destinations. (you will be blacklisted along with other possible consequences...)  
For pilots:
Know your destinations and how to get there safely. Get there in a timely fashion, reporting any problems to your superiors. Do not make any changes to your flight plan mid-flight, unless you are in immediate danger, this can greatly inconvenience other travelers. Return your WE shuttle at the end of your shift. (stealing WE shuttles will result in blacklisting and other consequences) For Gatekeepers:
Process payments and board travelers. Actively check blacklist. Report problems to superiors.  
Interesed in other services and employment opportunities?
 
Other employment opportunities such as security, construction/maintenance of shuttles, etc will be provided by FEC, and IAI.
 
Wayward Express is a joint venture by FEC, and IAI
 
TO APPLY- Wayward Express

Ever take a friend out to dinner and a show, costs quite a bit more than a month's worth of entertainment in DU. I could easily see people buying subs for friends.

Will be one of the people buying subs for friends so they can play. It's cheaper than going out drinking with all of them. 

Let's all measure speed in Laden Swallow airspeeds.


"How fast is your battlecruiser going?"

"About 150000 Laden Swallows."

"African or European?"

Honestly I was thinking something similar to Eve Online's tower system, where you can't be attacked until your tower shields are dropped. Whether it is because you didn't refuel the tower or someone brought in a siege fleet, either way you're not safe. 
 
The way I would go about safety-when-logged out would be with a layered approach;
     
    The first layer would be to create accountability, specifically showing that an area is claimed by a corp/alliance. Once a corp has claimed an area, it's claim area would show up as a volume when you 'turn on claim boundaries'. When a player damages anything inside the zone it would send a warning to the owner corp/alliance. However, entering an area claim without permission would not have any consequences on it's own. Instead, the owners of the zone would need to place a radar station. The radar station would create a spherical detection volume which would alert the owners in the event that an unauthorized ship/player has entered. The radar could also be integrated with the scripting system to allow for automated warning/defense systems.
 
   The second layer would be to create consequence, specifically creating a threat to dissuade a player from attacking; Auto-turrets and active defenses would fall into this category. Ground-based auto-turret defenses would need to be connect to both a power source and a radar system for target acquisition. There should be a clear progression of ground based turrets, from basic anti-personel/light vehicle to large anti-capital-ship weapons; The cost to build and maintain/power should rise as potential damage increases. Additionally turrets should be balanced to suit their respective roles. For example: an Anti-Capital turret should have a really slow traverse speed and should have difficulty depressing to hit ground targets. Turrets should be something that can be overcome with fleet composition, tactics or clever design and shouldn't offer free protection without a large downside.
 
    The final layer is dissuasion, or simply making it not worth the attackers time. Passive defenses such as shields or E-WAR would fall into this category. Shields and E-War should be a massive power drain and should not allow constructs from inside to fire out. Shields serve as a way to dissuade your average raider from attacking your corporation base. A good example of this would be the way towers work in EVE. The 'bubble' or shield presents pirates with a choice, spend an hour/hours trying to crack the shield or look for juicier prey. A 'bubble' or shield does absolutely nothing to prevent a siege fleet from wrecking your shit. A similar strategy should be employed here; if you have the resources to run one, a shield or E-WAR system should provide a large blocking factor to individual and small group attacks.
 
 
I don't know whether this should be posted here or in the ideas/suggestions sub-forum...

Considering the setup of engines nothing will look exactly as IP builds, and yet because of setup you will take into account efficiency and function first of all.
Fuel consumption, how well it can handle, what's the purpose etc. There is many factors when applied, will determine almost naturally how the ships will start to look.
 
Remember for engineers there is no half empty/full glass. Glass is twice as big as it should be

I think a distinction needs to be made between tech advancement and skill training.  Skill training is character specific and will be time based.  It will unlock certain abilities and/or provide small % improvements in a character's performance of those abilities.  It will be a lot like the skill training system in Eve.  This has been NQ's plan since the early days and hasn't changed as far as I'm aware.  
 
Tech advancement is the discovery of new elements and materials which have the potential to shake up the status quo.  For example in the first couple of months, the discovery of an engine that can make it possible for ships to reach space.  This is something that everyone will eventually benefit from.  New tech will start out being available to a select few, but then more organisations will unconver the secret, some will sell it on for a profit, and eventually it will be become the norm, so that any new player might have access to it in their first week.  This kind of tech advancement, I believe is vaguely planned, but the exact mechanisms are not, as far as I know.
 
Tech advancement is a far more interesting aspect of the game than skill training (i.e. levelling up) if you ask me.

Perhaps offline mode is the wrong terminology for me to have used, as the offline component isn't relevant. The component which is relevant is the capacity to build/revise creations and export to blueprint. This could be integrated into a system wherein the user still had to login, circumventing many of the concerns you mentioned. In fact it could be hosted on a low resource server to address all the concerns, however,  would that really be necessary?
 
Is piracy more possible with a client hosted creative mode? If no then it would bring more content and people to the game than it would likely take.
 
Is piracy a bad thing for a game? Many industries build piracy into their profit models and account for it as a form of loss. Piracy wouldn't take away from the main thing that Novaquark can offer which is access to the game's main population. This is akin to World of Warcraft and the various pirate servers. What's more is that the pirate servers can't keep up technologically. 
 
It is likely that this form of piracy accounts for a percentage of the main games population that is in the lower end of single digit percentages and many of these people are people who wouldn't or couldn't afford to play the main game.

@Bitmouse

Did you notice the game's main sell is the ability to have thousands of people on one place, at one time?

Why would NQ want people to play the game ... offline.

Also, an offline mode will only lead to their work being pirated on an offline mode and inevitably, with Johny McNugget setting up a private server - which is what they wante to avoid. At worst, Chinese MMO "Universe Two" pops up six months later and NQ loses revenue to an F2P piece of crap ripoff MMO, even if it has not the cloud-based algorithms for the netcode.

You want to experiment on building? Do it in-game, online, like everyone else. No, you won't develope your super-weapon without people noticing, deal with it.
 
Yes,. if you don't watch out, people will come and blow your super weapon off the sky - or even worse - people may betray you and steal your ideas, cause that's a legit thing. 

Also, the current version is a test to find bugs, it's not even an MVP (minimum viable product) of a game yet, it's a tech demo.

Peace.

I'd rather have the skill system gently influence tech advancement rather than directly unlock new elements/blueprints.  Tech advancement could be a true system of discovery.  Crafters could experiment with different ores/materials/fuels to discover new ones.  Explorers might discover mysterious ancient or abandoned constructs that give clues as to what might be possible for players to build.  New features could be released without explicit announcement and instead revealed through clues in the environment.  Even destruction could have some chance to create and drop scraps of advanced materials that can be examined.  Or certain weaponry when used on certain materials could yield strange effects that are repeatable and spark the beginning of a race to find the cause and reap the potential benefits.  Tech advancement could be just around the corner for every type of gameplay.

Pfew, that was a lot to read. 
 
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the impact a pay by hour system would have on the play experience. Perhaps concider this is not how NQ looks at the player experience they want to offer. 
 
Pay by the hour would mean a certain segment of the player base would be cut of from many aspects of the game. Imagine trying to build a ship or building while counting your minutes. No time to relax and socialize or explore the universe. You certainly wouldn't be able to build constructs with enough quality to sell. As such your player contribution would be second grade. Ask yourself if this fits with the games philosophy. 
 
Talking about actual experience, how would a pay by the hour player even advance his skills? If you reduce the rate of xp gathering you would have a play experience that is just not viable. You play 5 hours per X, you wouldn't be able to advance or compete with a monthly sub player.
 
In the end even if it was a good idea to pay by the hour, it would create a second class player. That's not smart business. Nor is it the experience I think NQ is trying to create for their game. 

"Emergent gameplay" generated by AI will never ever get even close to what emerges in contact with a real person. And even if that person has less time to spend in game than me I would never neglect his potential to have an impact on community and me. There are some conversations with people that happened in games years ago... we met once and never spoke again... but either they said something interesting, or we did some extremely fun things... and I still remember it now. Who knows how long did they play... who cares... all that matters is that their presence made an impact on me... and sometimes (I'd even say... often) you don't need much time for that. Even stupid actions of some players might become a legend - mind a "LEEROY JENKINS" from WoW - who knows if that guy ever played anything after his infamous adventure in a virtual dungeon. But these few minutes recorded years ago became "something". Some players don't even know where all this came from, but they'll understand what you mean if you'll say "don't leeroy on that boss", or you'll get all your team in a good mood if you'll shout "LEEROY!!!" before attack 
 
Yes, I know how fun is to have a dedicated group of friends and play with them. But even the most dedicated and nice team will get dull and you'll get bored if you won't see new faces in a long time.
 
So no, I won't agree with you, wizardoftrash, noone is worth loosing and everyone is valuable - even those whom I don't like... and those who hate me are needed too 

Keep
It
Simple
Stupid
 
A flat rate of fifteen dollars per month. Either play enough hours and feel satisfied that you got $15 worth of enjoyment out of it, or play fewer hours and feel like it was money wasted. A monthly sub is the price of 4  Caramel Macchiatos or almost a weeks worth of starbucks. Those four drinks can provide you with, oh let's say an hours pleasure if each drink went down in 15 minutes. A sub can give you at most ~720 hours for those of you no-lifers that have no social life, no job, don't sleep, use a bucket for a toilet, and whose diet consists of mt dew and doritos.
 
Let's look at me personally... Being a modestly healthy person, I try to get eight hours of sleep a day. Boom 1/3rd of my day already gone. Time dedicated to studies, in-class time, working on my distance class homework, homework homework, and transport to and from college, ehhh that's 4 hours a day. Now half a day is gone. I'll be going back to work soon now that summer is over and I'm acclimated to my class schedule, that will be another 3 - 6 hours gone.
 
Now I'm left with 6 to 9 hours of free time and let's say I dedicate 4 of those hours to DU to set aside the rest for personal care and social life. Let's multiply those hours out over the course of a month and to keep it nice and even, go with 30 days. That's 120 hours per month, 1440 per year.
 
Is $15 a month,  $180 a year really all that much considering I can get two full months of entertainment over the course of a year?
 
Considering a lot of the other entertainment choices out there, I don't go to bars personally but I have a friend who spent 200 with some friends at a bar one weekend and guess what. It either went down the toilet or ended up in the trash.
 
What is $180 to you, two months of meeting a bunch of online people and hanging with your org and doing fun stuff, or is it a bad hangover and a soiled pair of jeans?
 
Maybe it's a bad comparison, I don't know. If fifteen dollars a month is what you would call a stretch then I, like some have said already, would strongly urge you to reconsider your priorities.
 
Edit: I got into such a rant I forgot about what I said about the pricing scheme at the start of my post.  
 
While what you have seems like an admirable idea, in hindsight it seems like a bad idea for reasons that have been already mentioned before. I cant endorse it. Keep it simple.

Ok, so your things in the game  are still using service at some level, even if it's server space. 
 
I can accept this response, it's a reasonable argument. 

Your constructs (bases, ships, ...) stay in the game 24/7. As your skills need to be stored and tracked 24/7. 
We had this discussion already in several posts over the years

Why can't the skills tick real time while what you pay for tick when you actually play? 
 
How would this be unfair to the company if the players would of had access to that amount of time if they could have been  online 24/7? 

This, while a great suggestion, does not work if the skill training will tick in real-world time when you are offline.

Like I said in another thread on the same topic, we'll need some actual metrics (gathered in game and probably via polls or something) post-launch to see whether something like this would be worth it to NQ. The model itself seems sound, it's just that we don't know if the solution to the optimization problem it entails includes this kind of alternate model or not, without the requisite data.
 
Arguing based on gut-feeling whether there would be enough call for this to make it viable or not is a waste of time. In principle the concept is sound, and though a couple of valid concerns have been raised, I don't think they're insurmountable. Ultimately NQ's the one who has to run the numbers to figure out if it's worth pursuing.

I tried to write as simple as possible, but it seems that people just see what they want to see, not what's written...
 
I DO NOT SUGGEST TO GIVE GAME FOR FREE OR TO GIVE IT CHEEPER TO ANYONE.
 
All I say - it would be beneficial both for the developer and for the players to have an option to buy a subscription based on time they intend to spend in game.
 
What I see now is the same if you would come to a food store for the milk and you'd be given the only option - to buy a 200 liter barrel of milk. And if you'd say, that you need only 1 liter bottle, there comes a "smartie" and says: "if I would have money only for 1 liter of milk I would not drink milk, neither go to food store until I would afford to buy a barrel". Yes, guys, your arguments are that stupid.  It's not about afford or not afford... expensive or cheep... There are simply people who don't need full month subscription. They can afford it, but they count their money and they don't want to buy a barrel, when actually they need half of it or even 1/200... Or lets put it another way: they agree to pay for a 200 liter barrel, but they ask: " can I pay for all these 200 liters in advance, but let me come to you and take 1 liter or even 0.5 liter at a time of fresh milk, when I need it instead of taking all the barrel at once and throwing most of it out as it will get spoiled in few days (in one month as we talk about monthly subscription). Yes, you can get stubborn and say: "either full barrel at once or no milk for you", but in that case this person won't buy from you and everyone looses - you sold nothing and he got no milk...
 
And I am sure, that most players will be fine with monthly subscription even if they won't play a lot. There has been a case in my own life that I was playing subscription based game for a while and paying by credit card and then I moved to another project, but few months later I noticed that the old project kept charging my credit card monthly, though I did not play it. I noticed it only several months later and it wasn't a big deal for me. Yea, I could start arguing, and could prove that I did not use their product, I could require refund, but I just forgot it and moved on. But this is me - other people count their money  better that I do and they would not let such thing to happen. And these players, even if they'll be just a small fraction of all the player base, can still bring in some extra income to the project if they'll get heard and offered service on the terms acceptable for them.

I’m not sure why you assume I have not read all of Novaquark’s articles and watched all the videos or use the search function for the forum. Indeed I have done all of those. Perhaps I fail to remember details I’ve read from time to time - or express similar ideas with different words (thus not finding them in the forum search),
 But I think that is largely irrelevant - these are my own ideas, thoughts and perspective not Novaquark’s, - other people may or may not have thought the same things. I merely desire to share my thoughts with you all.
 
 
 

Actually that’s incorrect - if you would read this devblog post ; p
https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2016/04/08/monetization-player-happiness-and-economic-viability/
You would see this. 
Possible (cosmetic only) Cash Shop. If deployed, we will make it in order that every month, players who have paid a subscription will be able to get some cash shop items for free.
 
 

The argument that I am advocating concepts that have been tried before and failed therefore don’t advocate them anymore is invalid.
   The whole idea of this game is something that has never been accomplished before.
Yes take a look at why it’s failed before. Yes take a look at what the real problems are with these ideas. But don’t assume that solutions to problems cannot be found.
 
 
 
 

Yes that is the obvious hurdle to overcome for player created content. I guess where we differ is you are like ‘can’t be done ever’  -- I’m like what are the solutions to overcoming this hurdle. These same types of limitations are what would lead one to think DU could never actually be a thing - yet here we are. Now is the time to look for solutions to old problems not say -- the way they did it in the past is the only way and that didn’t work.
 
 
 
 

Actually no - I mean to say some people buy a Starbucks 1 a week others 1 a day. Giving your customers different price point options gets you a wider customer base. It’s just common sense sales. Which I’m sure Novaquark has thought plenty about - they’re pretty smart guys; and know all the details of what it will take to make their business profitable in their context. I as an outsider am just offering my perspective as a customer. It’s a fact that there are a lot of people for whom this game is outside of their price point.
  It may be that the cost of servers for this tech is so high that this is the only choice. I’m merely suggesting possible solutions. Of course Novaquark needs to cover their costs and make a profit.  
 
 
Yep, yep that is totally what I said; you can read almost the exact same words here.
 
 
 
 

Yep I agree. With the exception that - not everyone who enjoys playing COD falls into the trap of buying each repeat/expansion whatever; and thus can enjoy it for a one time cost.  Pretty much what I said here.
 

Great so we agree COD and DU have a similar price point at the high end.
And we agree that DU cannot allow people to play a 3 year old version of the game like is possible with other games.
So I’m just suggesting  a possible way Novaquark could also offer lower price point options.
When you offer a product at a lower price point you don’t just give the same thing for a cheaper price.
Obviously you would loose money that way.
No your lower price point products have less value to the customer and less cost to you - so you can still make a profit at the lower price. That’s why the cheaper options in my proposal have a limit to how much you can play. If you want unlimited hours you have to pay more.
Now how much you would have to restrict cheaper options would have to be determined by Novaquark.
That’s why I said.
 
 

I haven’t seen Novaquark talk about these details. And I would be surprised if they did. I would be very interested to read it if that is around somewhere.
Point me to it.
I mean their annual taxes, salaries, business operating expenses, server costs, cost per offline player, cost per online player, forecasted number of players buying the game, forecasted number of offline and online players at any given time. Those are the things you need to know to figure how much to charge and make a profit.
 
Maybe after all those calculations you get to where they are right now and determine that $10/month subscription is the only viable way.
 
If that ends up being the case then I’ll dump my Eve subscription and pay $120 or whatever a year. And none of my friends will join me. Just the way it is - they’re not second class people for saying that is outside of their price point. And Novaquark is not evil for doing what it takes to be a successful business. Just calm down.
 
I have no way of knowing these details so I’m just offering a concept as a possible solution from my perspective.
 
 
Of course that is an option for people with lots of time to play; and their reward for building up the game universe.
That could work for a kid living at home with nothing to do. Doesn’t work so well for people with families expenses and limited time for playing games.
 
All in all good criticisms from smart people. And mostly I agree with the concerns brought up. Good on ya for not looking at ideas with rose colored glasses - but critically looking at the problems.
   Just don’t be negative nancy’s - critically looking at problems shouldn’t automatically lead to “it can’t be done”
It should make you aware that there is a problem in the way - and help you see how to overcome it.
 
It seems the one thing I disagree with a lot of you is the benefit of a large player base. Seems a lot of you have the perspective the cost level has the added benefit of keeping unwanted riff raff out. While I agree there are certain people you want to keep out. I think it would be better to rely on other methods to achieve that - not just cost.
BECAUSE - I believe that a larger player base would improve what this game is trying to be and make for much deeper and more dynamic emergent gameplay.
 
That is the primary reason I started thinking about these things.
 
On a final note - I appreciate people who bluntly speak their minds and I get great enjoyment out of a good argument - so thanks and carry on.
I apologize if my response is anything less then the appropriate level of tact - sometimes because the way I enjoy arguments people think I am offended -
that is not my intent at all.
 
Fly Wrecklessly,
Semper Fidelis,
Captain Hilts

I will most likely claim a bit of land before it is to late,, so I can have a home base.

You're assuming that you can create an alt that can generate a DAC with only a very small amount of play-time. I don't think that assumption is justified -- but we'll have to wait to either hear from NQ or see the game economy live to draw any definitive conclusions.

This post really confuse me. 
I never asked for anything to be given for free. 
 
Firstly, I can agree with whatever amount of people I want to, and never said everyone else were wrong. I actually accepted counters and reasonable arguments. Don't be sour now because yours isn't one of them. 

I'm currently looking for an org and playing as part of a democracy intrigues me, but almost all orgs seem to be empires, corporations, or oligarchies of some kind.  Are there any democratic orgs of at least reasonable size?