Dr Rhubarb

Ha, I was just eyeballing the Elgato last night for streaming. The game is still in early 'development", hence Alpha, and the developers can still control the narrative. Once you let slip the dogs of war, it is much harder to real them back in. I believe that you do not have to go full bore with marketing right now. That effort is better served when the game is out of alpha and has all of its features. I know it is tempting to feel anxious about the possibility of losing players, but it feels to me that NQ has heavily considered the missteps and pitfalls from other recent (or not so recent) sci-fi games and the nightmare PR issues that have arisen. Extending the NDA into ALPHA 1 and maybe 2-3 is a smart measured approach. Believe me, I want to tell everyone about the fun I having with this game. Having played in this past holiday extended period has me very excited for the future of this game and I am not panicked about losing players. One of the reasons that the forums have seen a little reduced traffic is because many of those folks are now able to play in the Alpha and that chatter has moved to the NDA section of the forums.

I am currently under NDA, but these early alphas are limited in players and will increase with each release stage as NQ has said. I can say that I am happy with the amount of player interaction I have had so far, every time I logon. So I am excited to have even more folks gain access.

Same with me. Silver backer, played last night, followed link in my email to Alpha sub forum, logged in to forums, can't find the Alpha sub forum. Thanks in advance for any help.

I agree. Mobility will be an important part of design for large ships. If there were to be teleport pads they should not go far, maybe 10 meters or so, just to be able to go up and down decks. Perhaps they should consume power each time as to not be OP. I wonder if a hovercraft could work aboard a large ship or station.

I haven’t been able to find any info on whether or not a ship/plane can have more than one core, but looking at the videos of the early ship building, there is a 3D grid which is stated as the limits of how big you can build. So I am wondering if you will be able to add another core to build larger. If that is the case, then maybe you can classify ships based on number of cores, big or small cores. For example, this is a 2 large core ship.

I suppose you can always just make small cylinder voxels out of a cheap material. I think it would be nice to have way points like in one of the map mods in Minecraft. They show up only for the user who placed them and they look like light beacons that you can see from a distance. But having them show up just for the creator helps keep the load off of the server and keeps the landscape clean for everyone else. Define Tlt a nice thing to have.

I can't speak for everyone, but one of the most exciting things for me about DU is the ability to design and build ships. I would assume this is a major interest to most folks wanting to play. So how many people don't want to be bothered with building ships and would rather just purchase one? Are we over estimating the demand for buyers and bootleggers? Now a "ship" could be a little single seater fighter type or a massive transport behemoth or something completely bizarre. My uninformed 2 cents would be to see the master blueprint and regular blueprint as the simple elegant solution. Ultimately we need to see how this all plays out in the alpha before suggesting too many changes. As an in-game way to handle infringement, if you are worried about your amazing design getting bootlegged, you perhaps find an in-game way to advertise your creation as the original designer. Perhaps you have unique feature or element to you ship. You can let everyone know that you are the author of the amazing "Triple Power Foil". Like in RL, copyright disputes are researched by looking at who had the design published first. You can use advertising as a type of "first published". Either way it goes, the alpha play will let us see exactly what happens and whether it is a significant issue or not.