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KlatuSatori

Alpha Team Vanguard
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  1. I'd just like to add that I'm against timers for many of the reasons already on here. Something I haven't seen mentioned is that these kinds of organised battles also shutdown a whole host of war strategies and grant additional advantage to the side with the most numbers - organisations with more members already have a numbers advantage, they don't need that advantage artificially swelled. I'm also against war declarations for similar reasons. It's also too rigid. I'd like to see, as part of the organisation management tools, a relationships management system, completely customisable by and for each organisation's needs. These shouldn't have any effect on who you can and can't attack though. I also am not in favour of requiring an adjacent territory to be owned by the aggressor. This also shuts down gameplay and warfare options. An organisation should be able to own vast swathes of territory without ever once planting a TU if that is the MO they choose. The difficulty of conquering a territory should be proportional to the strength of that territory's defenses and the effort its owners put into its defence. It shouldn't be arbitrarily difficult or time consuming. If there's no resistance, it should be quick and easy, but that doesn't mean that it should be easy just because you attacked when the owners were asleep. It also shouldn't require shooting at structures by necessity. It's not an easy puzzle to solve. I'm sorry I don't have answers, but at this time I just know what I don't want to see.
  2. This topic was indeed discussed before. but it was quite a while back. The topic is well worth a scan through, because it got a nice response from NQ. In particular, Nyzaltar's post:
  3. This in particular. Also: [Redacted]
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. I can't speak for OP, but it seems this topic was about tech and yet most people are talking mainly about skills - two completely different things. Granted the same structures can be implemented for both, but different mechanisms can be used for their exploitation and discovery. For example, it probably makes sense to have a deterministic, player driven approach to individual character skills development, ala Eve Online. Technology advancement should be a lot more mysterious though, driven by an unknown combination discoveries, cooperation, random chance, dedicated research and more.
  7. This discussion is all very much stick in the Eve mindset. Interdiction bubbles are fine but shouldn't be the only option for pulling people out of warp. It's much more interesting and exciting to be able to chase people down in warp and pull them out of it than to simply deploy a bubble. Either with a module or with some kind of limited FTL weaponry, or both.
  8. Oh very cool. I haven't seen that on the DU YouTube channel...
  9. Yes indeed, there are many possibilities for punishment depending who committed the crime, the severity, even how many times the crime had been committed. A long term alliance member might get a warning, followed by a fine for a second offence, followed by being kicked from the alliance. A new member might get kicked in the first offence. A friendly might just get banished and downgraded. On the other hand a large scale smuggling operation may lead to war. At the same time it is a game. Death isn't the end of the world, so the punishment could easily be death plus one of the above. Perhaps the best way to police your lands is to assign all trusted individuals with a bounty hunter tag. Then if there's a way to apply automatic bounties to anyone who breaks the law, you're set.
  10. Nice idea. It would be cool if DU has it's own periodic table of sorts and a basic system of chemistry that is complex enough to yield interesting and unexpected results. About asteroid vs planetary mining, you're only looking at a single material on your example. Different materials are rare/common in different places. Platinum might scarce on earth but it could be common as mud on another. A planet is more likely to contain a complete set of resources necessary for life, whereas asteroid living is likely to be much harder - the number of players that an organisation would be able to support will be much lower than on a planet. In any case, yes, resource distribution needs to be carefully balanced. Resource depletion goes a long way to solving that balance issue.
  11. There might also be political reasons to ban certain goods/services. Like for example banning possession/sale of all blueprints made by a particular company. Why? Maybe they're somehow affiliated with a rival faction, or maybe their products are just poor and you want your markets to be associated with quality. Or maybe just because you didn''t like the way one of them looked at you one day. If there's a demand for those products despite the ban, cue smuggling/black market opportunities.
  12. Contracts can be complicated but they don't have to be. They can simply be goods exchanged for currency. If formal advertising of contracts requires a physical location - which makes sense, then tax avoidance becomes a bit more of an effort. You'd need to use word of mouth to form contacts then meet at a designated place and set up the contract and deal it there and then - direct player to player, no middle man or intermediate step. No need for a formal advertising board. This is a black market that takes some effort to deal in. This could be done on a large scale between organisations, too, but it would be all the more difficult to avoid detection by the controlling faction. Not sure what I said in my post that made you assume I didn't understand how monopolies work. I understand well enough how they work. What you describe here is how to keep a monopoly relatively hidden in an anonymous market. Incidentally I hope the DU market is not anonymous, like the one in Eve... Anyway, what's more interesting and complex is the relationship between the monopoly holding organisation, the territory holding organisation (not necessarily different entities), the punters, and how new competition is held back. These interactions are what define how the monopoly is maintained, and the nature of any black market that may form as a result. I agree with the bold bit. But if you're not authorised to sell on a particular market unit then you won't be able to, you'll need to find some other way to sell it (i.e. arrange a time and place to make the trade as I say above). The smuggling part is getting the goods across the border without being detected. If the market unit is owned by the controlling faction your job is much harder. If it's privately held, and they allow you to use it, then that makes things easier, but as I said previously, that would be conferring risk onto the market unit owner. In any case those are definitely some very interesting interactions, especially the espionage elements... Black markets are about circumventing the law. That includes trading in illegal goods. I wouldn't say it's the only solution. And I don't think it's a viable one. You are essentially saying that players won't be able to play for a certain length of time if they take drugs. I'm not sure that would go down well. I would try out less extreme ideas first and see how it plays out. Let's say a single dose of a drug gives a 25% boost to all (for example) physical stats for 1 hour and then a 5% penalty to all physical stats for 5 hours, and then a cool-off period of 25 hours. You can definitely see how combat oriented players would want to use that. Now, if you take a second dose at some point during those 31 hours, you get a stronger bonus for a longer period of time (but with diminishing returns), but you also get a stronger penalty for a longer period of time, and a longer cool off period. If your soldiers get hooked on that stuff (which is definitely conceivable!) during peace time, they might become ineffective when it really matters. And they might be diverting too much wealth to the drug manufacturers. You might outlaw the drug. Another aspect you could look at is production techniques. Let's say that player-characters' dead bodies can be harvested for certain materials/chemicals and used to craft drugs, or any other kind of good. You might want to outlaw its sale and/or production in your territory to prevent cold blooded murder in and around your land. You never said anything about my thoughts on stolen goods, weapons and energy sources.
  13. The ability to ban the possession of certain items within your borders is already planned in the game using the RDMS/tagging system. The question is whether there will be a reason for orgs to do it. Another thought stemming from that - you might ban everyone from possessing/trading weapons bigger than a certain size unless they have a "gun licence" tag. You give the tag out to your soldiers and police/security force plus trusted indivudals. Not really sure what you mean by that.
  14. Plus one for undercover FBI agents smoking out corrupt manufacturing orgs.
  15. I didn't mention the drug-fiend thing because I doubt NQ would consider it. The only way you could do it is if you have toons becoming crazy NPCs when the player is offline. Assuming that the primary source of a heavily taxed good is from a law-abiding organisation, that kind of tax avoidance wouldn't really be illegal unless there was a either a tax on imports/exports or a ban on importing/exporting goods altogether (none of that foreign stuff allowed). Taxing/banning of imports/exports would probably be pretty hard but to enforce unless you have terrain on your side, or your territory is pretty small relative to the size of your border patrols. And that's just the ground, what about flying out? Smuggling = illegal transportation of goods across borders OR transportation of illegal goods across borders. If it's legal it's not smuggling, it's just running trade routes/trucking. Alternatively, if smuggling is so easy because enforcement is difficult, and everyone does it, you may as well lift the tax/ban. But if you just want to avoid taxes on everything/anything, that's pretty easy. What's required for tax avoidance to be completely illegal is a ban on direct player-player contracts. Let me try to explain using my assumptions. - Territory holding organisation sets the taxes for all trading within its borders - Market units owners set the taxes on their own unit. If they are law-abiding tax payers then they'll set the taxes at greater or equal to the taxes set by the territory owner. They can set up an auto-payment to the territory owner in this way. If they set it lower than this and don't have auto-payment of taxes set up then they'll get shut down if they are discovered. - Player to player one-off contracts can happen anywhere and at any time as opposed to market units which are anchored to a specific location. So tax avoidance here is easy. No smuggling is required to avoid taxation.
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