KlatuSatori

Ah fair enough.

What I meant was that you could create a BP from something you build in the VS or from an original creation you build in the "real" world. But yes, that does leave the problem of how to deal with creating BPs from modified non-original creations (I'll call them copy creations). The tagging system could provide the answer in this case. You wouldn't lose your creation as soon as you sell it once. Any BP you sell is one of a kind and cannot be copied. The purchaser of your BP has one and cannot have another one unless he buys another one from you. All he gets is the ability to build as many of those contructs as he likes/is able to. You control the supply of your BPs because you are the only person who can create more of them, therefore you have a monopoly over the BPs. If you have a good product you can sell a BP to lots of different players/organisations, and some will even want multiples so that they can build multiple units simultaneously and in different locations. So the creator is still empowered, but to maximise profits the creator has to keep creating new things. BPOs and BPCs make sense in Eve because no one designs anything new. You skill up your science and create a BPO for a predefined item, you then use that to create BPCs that you sell to manufacturers. If there were no BPCs eventually everyone could have a BPO for every item in existence so science would be a completely worthless profession. In DU there are no such limitations because there is actual intellectual property being made, and the possibilities are literally infinite.

DU will be a single seemless game world, Eve is split up into separate regions (solar systems). It's a subtle but significant difference.

Population density is an important factor for the devs to consider in a game that has territorial control and political/military conflict between player factions. I completely agree that the population of Earth is not a useful metric though. I also agree a 30km radius planet had 100,000 regular players playing on it it would be way over populated, but that is only one planet of many (hundreds? thousands?).

When I say extra content between solar systems I mean loads of it. Between two solar systems that are 10 hours travel time apart there'd be dozens or even hundreds of locales in the space between and around them - some ideas are rogues planets, rogue gas giants with moons, rogue asteroid belts, brown dwarf systems, abandoned/ruined space stations of alien civilisations, ruined space ships, sites of ancient battles with vast open space filled with salvageable wreckage, random natural anomalies, anything else you can think of.

The problem with these discussions is that we are missing certain vital pieces of information, namely how fast you can travel, and perhaps more importantly, how dense the universe will be in terms of useful content - i.e. locations where players can regularly and purposefully extract gameplay. We only have a couple of pieces of information here. One is that the game universe will be"virtually unlimited". Another is the planets will be huge. The example planet in the territories devblog has a surface area of over 11,000km2 which corresponds to over 5,000 1km/side hexes. Pretty big. Another is that the devs expect it will be quite some time, perhaps several months, before players manage to make it into space. To me this suggests that it will be a very dense game universe. If that is the case, then "virtually unlimited" does not have to mean millions of stars, billions of planets, like in Elite Dangerous. A few thousand stars can be a virtually unlimited game universe if that universe is densely packed with deeply exploitable content combined with a relatively slow top speed. 40 minutes to get from one solar system to a neighbouring one is a long time if there is nothing in between the systems. Regularly travelling for 40 minutes through nothingness would get old if you had to do it all the time (hence build a stargate). However, if the space between those systems is packed with content, then 40 minutes is nothing at all. So really we need more information. The game I imagine is a rich and content dense one, where travel to distant locales (i.e. solar systems at or beyond the frontier of claimed territory) is something left to players who dedicate their game play to that style.

Pretty sure the single shard continuous universe is unique to DU. Then throw in incredible amounts of creative and destructive freedom.

Nice post. I'm curious about what kind of political structure you'll have. DU will allow for crazy freedom and flexibility in how organisations govern themselves.

Yeah I extrapolated when I said 30km was a typical planet radius. I'm guessing that the smallest might be around 5km radius and the largest around 50km and 20-30 is typical, but obviously I don't know this for sure. I would also be interested to see a 5km planet split up into hexes like the one in the devblog. I agree that distances between planets and stars needs to be very carefully considered but it is not the whole story on its own, because it also depends greatly on how fast ships can traverse space. Your numbers which allow getting from one system to another in ~40minutes without even firing up the FTL drive sounds much too quick to me, but it depends on how many systems there will be in the game. ~40 minutes at max FTL in a small ship might be okay but still has problems. My hope is that interstellar space will be populated by rogue planets and anomalies so that there is a reason to be out there. Then the time it takes to get to the next solar system without stargates is less of a factor. It can be 10 hours at top speed if you like, and if someone wants to beeline for it that's fine, but most will build outposts in interstellar space at locations of interest and value.

Well a typical planet radius will be about 30km which corresponds to a surface area ~10,000 times less than the surface area of the Earth. So to have a comparable population density to that of the earth on such a planet would require ~100,000 people. If DU becomes highly successful and has 1 million active players, 100,000 on the starting planet doesn't sound out of the bounds of reason. However, a planet does not need to have a population density similar to Earth to feel fully inhabited. Also, the aim is not to have a fully populated universe throughout. There will and should always be unexplored regions of planets and space. Here are a couple of threads worth checking out. https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/296-devblog-territory-control/ https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/327-theres-gold-in-them-there-hills/?hl=gold https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/431-thoughts-on-stargates-and-ftl/

I believe the answer to this is a resounding "yes" and it should be seriously awesome. This is from the devblog on multiplayer ship crews. https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/22-devblog-multiplayer-ship-crew/?hl=%20multiplayer%20%20ship

Haha that's from my thread which is the one Saffi linked above. Nyzaltar's reply:

My interpretation is that the virtual simulator will provide everything builders need to protect the time they spend creating things. I think it would make sense to have save functionality in the VS. Players can save anything and everything they like in the VS and use those saves to build "real" Blueprints in the actual game universe. In this way a player never lose their own creations - even if their BPs are all stolen/lost/sold they can always create another BP from their saved creation in the VS. In the "real" world I'd say BPs can be made only from original creations - i.e. something that was put together manually, voxel by voxel as opposed to something that was built using a BP. So if you steal an original creation you can create a BP from it easily. If you steal a production line creation made from a BP you'll have to reverse engineer your own version and make a BP from that if you want to build more of them. The only problem I see here is how/whether an original creation made in the real world can be saved to the VS, and if not what incentive is there to do so, especially outside of protected areas. Personally I don't like the idea of BPCs and BPOs. A BP is a BP and can be reused ad infinitum to build the creation they represent (assuming the materials are available), but a BP cannot be "copied". BPs can only be created in the ways I describe above. I think this has far better immersion and gameplay prospects. BPs for the best creations will have a higher price tag. It also incentivises creators to release newer improved versions of their creations. This way creators are creators and have all the strengths and weaknesses inherent to that professions. The BPO/BPC system makes sense in Eve's predefined universe, where there are no true creators, but in DU I think it would be counter-productive. EDIT: Just to be clear, my post is my interpretation, opinion, and ideas. NQ may already have their own solid plans for the creating/building/copying system and it may be completely different to what I have posted!

Looks like Saffi beat me to it in linking you that thread I think allowing clients to perform the hit detection algorithms would be vulnerable to cheating. Something so important needs to be done entirely server I think. What would stop clients transmitting hits at a 100% success rate every 0.1s or something? What I would really like to see is a system that incorporates the possibility of friendly fire, but Nyz has said it is highly unlikely. But as you guys say there is already an issue with location of a hit on huge vessels. That would require some kind of pointing/line of sight mechanism, so perhaps the solution to that would allow for FF.

Well, there's nothing that was removed from the forum as far as I know. What kind of stuff were you looking for specifically?

"Warp" is just a convenient word to describe a kind of FTL travel that is not akin to teleportation. You can call it whatever you like and be as specific or as vague as necessary in describing how it works for the purpose of creating a game. I'm sure resurrection nodes are unlikely to ever exist either but they will be a fundamental part of the game. One of the foundations of the game is that it will be a continuous single shard universe and one of the very first devblogs was about this very concept.

I wouldn't say this conversation is entirely moot. The devs have very clear ideas on some aspects, but I believe others are still work in progress and my impression is that they take on board ideas and considerations they like. I personally see no problem with a warp drive being able to transport at ship at 70kc. To me it is just semantics to say that a warp drive can make you go at 70kc getting you there in an hour and a stargate can make you go at 10Mc to get you there in a few seconds. You can create the game mechanics and then make up the lore around it. One idea is that you could have "gears" for FTL with each gear providing an order of magnitude more propulsion than the last. Having said that, even in the case of travelling at ~100,000c, travelling for an hour through completely empty space would lose its appeal pretty quickly. There needs to be something out there in interstellar space to break up these journeys. If there are points of interest for mining operations in interstellar space that can be encountered relatively frequently, then the time it takes to FTL between solar systems is somewhat less important. It could be 10 hours for a straight journey between two neighbouring solar systems that don't yet have jump gates set up, but if there are dozens, even hundreds of points of interest between them, spaced out at <20 minutes travel time or so, then it doesn't matter so much. Points of interest could be rogue planets and moons, rogue asteroid belts of varying size, abandoned/ruined alien space stations / capital ships, or anything else you can think of. Regarding sizes of engines and force applied - that is of course true in newtonian physics. An Alcubierre Drive doesn't actually apply any propulsive force though. It warps the space around your vessel, which rides the space like a wave (in my primitive understanding). Regardless, it is probably a good idea to have both acceleration and velocity limits in a game. Don't get me wrong, I agree there probably needs to be three modes of travel - "normal", "warp", and "jump" - it is just the implementation that I think should be done a little differently than normal, and I think that "jump" should be limited, costly, disruptable, and entirely player-led. I've looked around briefly and couldn't find anything from Nyz on this topic though I am certain there are snippets out there.

I think it would be awesome I also think it would take a lot of people and a lot of time. Not to mention a lot of defences. It is something a lot of people would get behind, but it is also something a lot of people would want to destroy. Where there's a will there's a way!

Travel time is a very important factor and one that should not be leapt into without thinking. In an arena/area of control style game, quick travel by large numbers of players and hardware is game breaking, or at least game changing. It also devalues or completely removes true exploration and scouting as professions. NQ have only touched on these issues in the past but you can get an idea of where their heads are by reading the devblogs and some of the threads. While some form of the standard/warp/jump system seems probable, check out this thread for some other ideas (including my own ). If I recall correctly, I don't think there will be any pre-made stargates. Only player-made stargates. I believe the idea is that FTL will be the only form of interstellar travel to begin with, but then players who travel to neighbouring systems will be able to settle there and build stargates to link to where they came from. I think this would be a great system and it is in keeping with progression from starting out on the ground, building settlements, building ships to get into space, etc. Progressive exploration and improvement. As a side note, however, I think it is important that stargates are extremely limited in range - depending on the size of the game universe, of course. Regarding warp/alcubierre drives being "too big" to fit on small ships, I couldn't disagree more. These are fictional engines, so the limiting factor is only in your head. These should scale and balance in the same way that "normal" engines do, i.e. the bigger the drive, the faster you can go, but the heavier the payload/ship, the slower it goes. Hence great behemoth ships should need massive FTLs and would still be relatively slow. Light-weight explorers could go much faster with a much smaller FTL. Check out this devblog thread to get an idea of the direction NQ are thinking and for an insight into the importance of not making fast travel too easy. Oh and this one too. Forgot about choke points, which is a really important point. Forced choked points are not necessary. Simply ensuring that there are exploitable assets in space, in solar systems and on planets is enough to encourage conflict. However there is also area control, player ambition and politics at work. That is more than enough to make players fight each other. Player-made stargates are actually an example of this at work. If an organisation of players built a stargate for fast travel to a neighbouring system, they must have had a reason to do that. Exploiting resources, controlling a region/planet, trading, something. This is something to fight over. However, I think that macroscale terrain in space that affects how ships fly, engines work, and weapons operate in varying ways and degrees is a way to create choke points in space in the way that they are created on the ground by terrain such as hills and rivers that we are more familiar with.

Finally get to see some screenshots and they do not disappoint! It all looks very impressive and awe-inspiring. I mean, we've discussed huge structures in space, but seeing that space station just puts it into perspective - stuff like that will be player-made brick by brick! For some reason the forest pic really stands out for me... something about exploring the untouched, unknown terrain...

Awesome! Looking forward to the screenshots!

Beautiful . Looking forward to it!

/backhander (strike and challenge to a duel)

Assuming we're right on the flexibility of assigning buttons and lever to complex lua scripts, there are some very interesting possibilities available. On large ships you can have lua scripts that allow the main controls to be overriden by support controls in another section of the ship - security against boarding parties!

I wonder if Lua scripting will come into play with piloting, especially with larger ships. From simple scripts that change the attitude of the ship to fit the requirement of a course change, to more complicated ones that adjust ship settings and perform pre-programmed manoeuvres.