KlatuSatori

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.

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:

This in particular. Also: [Redacted]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh very cool. I haven't seen that on the DU YouTube channel...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Plus one for undercover FBI agents smoking out corrupt manufacturing orgs.

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.

It's not a stretch to see that an energy source that causes the nearby mines to dry up might be banned. Same with banning the sale of stolen goods. Drugs is not so straight forward, but can still be done. If a drug causes your people to be ineffective at critical moments, or has an impact on your economy, it's conceivable that they could be banned. Are you saying that prohibition is not one of, if not the main reason that black markets exist? Absolutely agree with that, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find ways for prohibition to be a thing too.

Doubtless, allowing everything will be the default position of most territory-holding organisations. Prohibition of drugs or other items will only happen if the negative consequences are great enough they somehow have a direct effect on the running of the organisation or the security of the territory. On the other hand, prohibition of stolen goods is something that many organisations may be forced into. Surely you wouldn't allow the possession and/or sale of goods stolen from your own people, but what about that of your allies and neighbours?

I love this topic. If the right pieces are in place then all kinds of emergent, player-led prohibition/smuggling/black market trading can be made possible. For black markets to exist you need either prohibition, high taxes, or the ability to outlaw particular people/organisations from trading in your territory or on your market units. Plus some way for illegal trading to occur in secret (direct player to player contracts is the most obvious possibility). Prohibition doesn't necessarily have to be of a particular product or class of products - it can be for stolen goods or goods owned by a particular player/organisation. There are a couple of ways to make prohibition exist. One way is for certain items/products/crraftables to have dual or divisive effects. In other words, they need to be (strongly) appealing to some people and (strongly) repellant to others. In this way you'll have something that some people want to use, while others want to abolish its use. Another, perhaps less obvious kind of way is to have highly profitable, taxable items replaceable by something far less profitable or abundant. This is much more complex to implement though. It needs subtlety to ensure it is driven primarily by politics and player interactions. Smuggling can exist either as a result of prohibition, or of scarcity and stockpiling. Smuggling can go two ways - getting something into an area, or out of an area (or both). Prohibiting the possession and sale of stolen goods is probably the most obvious way that smuggling will come into play, because all of the elements are already in the game, more or less. Organisations controlling territory can prohibit the possession of stolen goods by anyone who doesn't have the, say "Security Force" tag. If it's sophisticated enough, which I believe it is, it could even be okay to possess stolen goods originally owned by a particular set of people, i.e. a white list - it's okay to steal from these guys... or a black list - it's okay to steal, but not from these guys. Smugglers may be trying to get goods into an area where selling stolen goods is prohibited in order to sell it on the Black Market (as described above - as Twerk says, Black Markets that have a permanent physical location aren't likely to last long...), or more likely, out of an area where it is prohibited and into an area where it isn't, so that it can be sold normally on a market unit that allows it. Incidentally market units could also be given this kind of control, and if they're breaking the rules of the territory on which they reside then they are liable to be shut down/repossessed/destroyed by the controlling faction (it's a black market!). After that all that's needed is some way of scanning or searching players, vehicles, and market units to see if they are in possession of prohibited goods. And the nature of that system will determine the nature of the smuggler/customs relationship. Some other ideas for particular kinds of goods that may end up being prohibited by players: Weapons - there may be some types of weapons which have a damaging effect on the environment - maybe they destroy one or more kinds of a particular type of ore within a certain radius of its use, or maybe they debuff the stats of the user, and everyone nearby for a given length of time, similar to the trauma idea https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/10334-trauma-mechanics-and-emergent-gameplay-consequences/. Drugs - they heavily increase some stats for a limited period of time but decrease others for a longer period of time. They can have a cooldown timer, again similar to the trauma idea, where if you use them again within that period then the negative effects last longer. Energy/fuel sources - some types of energy/fuel could have a negative effect on the environment/nearby users as with weapons above.

Very nice idea. Personally I'd make the penalty a little more punishing - say [ 5 * (times of death) / 100 ]. That makes running back to continue fighting a battle after dying a couple of times a much more difficult decision to make. Plus it makes drugs a much more tempting prospect if you do hit 25% debuff to all stats. Anything that makes player-led prohibition and smuggling a possibility deserves a look. Or you could have different penalty equations for different types of stats. But that's all just numbers/tweaking, I think the core idea is great.

I think the game would have to get very big indeed for that to be a problem. But if it does, would you personally have a reason to go from one end of inhabited space to the other on a daily basis? Remember this won't be empty systems like in Eve Online, there will be hundreds or thousands of players in living in each system, probably no less than a few dozen in frontier systems. An empty system wouldn't have a stargate. Only space truckers will have a reason to chain gate jumps every single day.

That's a fair assessment.

That's not necessarily the case. NQ have said that it will be dangerous and risky to undertake such a journey, which implies it will require attention and care to ensure your ship isn't destroyed. If a 20 man ship needs a minimum skeleton crew of at least 2 people actively manning the ship at all times that doesn't leave much time for anything else is most people average 4 hours a day. And if a ship needs to be halted completely when no one is logged in, that will greatly extend the travel time for smaller ships. Even if a significant portion of time can be spent AFK travelling through interstellar space (which would be very disappointing), the hardware is still absent from any useful location while in transit, which is a cost. Again, you're ignoring the fact that complete control of a solar system by a single faction is not likely to happen for a very long time if at all. Seeing an enemy fleet at the edge of your peaceful solar system is a lot more warning time than coming from a neighbouring planet, or an army drive/march over from a couple of hundred kilometres away. It's not about switching them on and off, it's about giving permission for them to be used. Nice maths Actually 256 one man scout ships being able to give a 20 minute warning of incursion to the edge of a solar system from any direction sounds very reasonable. There are many reasons why - first you wouldn't even necessarily need 100% coverage, and certainly not at all times, because you should have an idea of whether an enemy is launching an attack (remember it takes weeks to travel through interstellar space, you should have some intelligence), attacks are much more likely to come roughly in the direction of other stars (granted, not necessarily, but most likely), and you should have outposts set up around the solar system which should be able to take up some of the slack. However those aren't the main reasons that 256 is a very reasonable, relatively low number of people for the kind of scouting you're asking for. How many players do you think need to be allied in order for an entire planet to be under a single banner? Looking at the size of the planets, I doubt it would take less than several hundred players at a conservative estimate. For an entire solar system to be united - planets, moons, asteroids, stargates, space stations, comets, (kuiper belts and dwarf planets?) - under a single entity or group of allied entities you surely have to be looking at several thousand players at the very least. Remember, if there is even a single moon or stargate that is controlled by a hostile organisation, travelling for weeks from another solar system to attack becomes largely irrelevant. Compare also, the number of players it takes for full coverage of a solar system with the number of players it takes to cover a single 1km hexagon on a planet. If the perimeter is 6km, sensor range is 1km, and tanks can travel at 10m/s (22mph, pretty slow), you're looking at around 35-40 players patrolling 5km out from the edge of their territory in order to give a 10 minute warning to incursion to the edge of their territory. That's only a single order of magnitude in difference from being able to guard an entire solar system. Obviously it's not as straightforward as any of this (what you're saying or what I'm saying) as there are many game mechanics neither of us know about, but I think it is worth keeping these things in perspective... plus it is fun to theorycraft like this The point is, holding an entire solar system should be hard, and travelling for a month with your fleet to launch a single attack is far far far away from being anywhere near OP. It's a good idea. I'd be okay with it if it were implemented, perhaps with tweaks, like it takes a specialised kind of sensor that takes a lot of energy to power, and hence a specialised kind of ship to detect them. But for the reasons I've given above, I don't think it's really necessary. At the very least NQ may as well wait until entire solar systems are united before considering anything like it. If it turns out that month-long travel between solar systems for military reasons becomes a thing and is OP, then this might be a good thing for them to consider implementing.

The road trip is often more enjoyable than the destination. To each their own. No limitations? Everything I've said is about limitations. Strategy goes out the window when movement is removed from the equation... i.e. when you can travel vast distances quickly and without consequence. When you want to get from point A to point B there are a lot of decisions to make. How long will it take? What/who will I take with me? What/who will I leave behind? Do I need to keep the journey secret? How? What happens if we're discovered? Home base is attacked while the main force is in the middle of nowhere? What route do we take? What obstacles (environmental and man made) might we encounter. These are things that matter when travel times and routes are an issue. Mobility is one of the most critical military issues. There is no "jumping". Your fleet has to travel the whole way. Much riskier than throwing out a probe! There's no "suddenly, fleet". It has to travel the whole way. I agree there should be a spool up time, a spool down time, and a scalable fuel requirement for every stargate jump. Jump drive (for individual ships) should definitely not exist (and thankfully NQ have said that it won't). As I was thinking about it I came to the same conclusion that stargate probes have to have a long standing time once they reach their destination before anything can jump to them in order to limit their use as mobile jump gates. Something on the order of 6-24 hours. I'm pretty sure you're making this up. Stargates will all be player built and therefore player owned. The RDMS system will allow the owner to decide who can use it and under what circumstances. Stargates would have to be a strange exception for this not to be the case and I haven't read that anywhere. If I find a direct quote on this I'll post it. No, I said that there don't need to be any different rules/elements for intercepting ships in interstellar space. They are traveling so slowly anyway - at the same speed as ships traveling between planets within a single solar system - so the same rules should apply. Regarding interception of ships traveling at FTL, I much prefer Elite Dangerous' interdiction method to Eve's. I was just reading the ask us anything event and Nyzaltar has actually said that nothing will stop players from making interstellar journeys on their normal FTL drives, just that it will be long and difficult and risky, so probes will probably be the preferred method. This is exactly what I'm talking about except I'd prefer if they balanced the two methods by making probes much slower. EDIT (quote from Nyzaltar) We will make a devblog when we have finalized all the details. The preferred method will probably be to use SG probes, but you could very well travel to the destination directly with your ship or your colony. However, it's likely going to be very hard to get there and survive. Think about energy, fuel, and all these elements that will be difficult to acquire on the way. But it could be a hell of a journey, yes!

I'm talking about a real voyage through space that takes time. Instant jumping/stargates is just teleporting, where's the journey? It sounds like you're now advocating for jump drives on ships... that seems to go against everything you've said until now. I'm not talking about instant jump drives, I'm talking about the same FTL that is used for interplanetary travel where it takes weeks or even months to go from one system to another. On the occasions where it's actually used to launch an attack it would be a massive and risky undertaking, and it would still be relatively easy for the system owners to see it coming once the enemy fleet enters the solar system. We're still talking about an hour to get from the edge of a system to its centre, depending on its size. If the defenders also have some small outposts on the outskirts of the system they can give themselves even more time. And I'm also talking about interceptible FTL, so enemy ships can be intercepted before they reach their targets. But let's consider stargates in this scenario. You're talking about an alliance that has colonised/claimed an entire solar system, right? Assuming this happens at some point (presumably years after launch), that alliance will have control over all stargates in the system. An enemy wouldn't be able to use stargates to get into the system anyway. The only way an enemy could get in would be to send their own stargate probe, which could be sent to anywhere of their choosing. Once it arrives, instead of jumping through equipment to build a stargate, they jump a fleet through. In this scenario they've bypassed the defenses and can attack in the same way as I describe above, except without the difficult journey. A smart commander might send several probes so that they can attack from different angles and guard against the possibility of some probes being spotted and destroyed before they reach their destination. This pretty much ruins your entire argument. However there's an elephant in the room here. We're talking as though single organisations will control entire solar systems. That seems really unlikely to happen within any reasonable time frame. Have you seen the size of individual planets? Tens of thousands of hexes, hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, quadrillions of voxels. I don't see any single organisation controlling even a single planet, let alone a whole solar system. Wars are more likely to occur between organisations living on the same planets and the same solar systems. EDIT: Missed this bit. Again, we're not talking about any different kind of travel. Just the same "normal" FTL that would be used for interplanetary travel.

I agree it exists, but that it's trivial. However, I think you're right that there isn't really any need to have sensors/interdictions at interstellar ranges anyway. I agree with all of that except there shouldn't be literally nothing out there. There's lots of potential for things to be out there.