KlatuSatori

Doesn't that tactic come straight out of Zapp Brannigan's Big Book of War?

Well, it is all on a single continuous instance or shard, i.e. one single, seemless game world. I'm not sure if NQ have ever explicitly announced that there will be space-ground and ground-space interaction in battles but I think it is fair to assume that it is their aim to include it. Hopefully Nyz will make a statement about it in this thread at some point. So assuming that spacecraft/orbital platforms will be able to bombard ground targets with heavy ordnance, there will undoubtedly be counter measures that ground positions can fire into space at those ships/platforms. From an early devblog, "the game design should also be very careful to always add a counter-power to every power you grant in the game." Nyz has also said that rock/paper/scissors is something they plan for the game. Something else that is planned for the game which you can read about here, here and here is that you will be able to set up automated defenses. So for example you might have a huge plasma gun deployed in the centre of your city that automatically fires on any ships or stations in space that come within a certain range and don't have the right permissions to be there. In the case of spaceships who do have the right permissions turning on you and firing without warning, you could also program those defenses to fire on anything in space that is firing on or around it. There's also the arkship secure zone which stops all forms of violence within its sphere of influence and the possibility for players to set up similar secure zones (see here and here). This type of defense will not be widely available though. Something to note is that the combat mechanics have not yet been set in stone and we don't have a lot of information about it yet. But it's safe to say that no matter how powerful certain tactics or abilities may be, there will be sufficient counters to them.

In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out the devblogs if you haven't already. You'll get a good sense of what is trying to be achieved here and all of the entries are interesting reads. And if you're anything like me and others who participate on this forum, you'll be hooked. Welcome to Dual Universe.

I started a thread that discusses war and battles and has a section on weaponry here https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/281-diversity-of-battles-and-wars/. Nyz's comments on the topic: @Semigod I also talk about friendly fire in that thread and get a response from Nyz if you're interested. Anyway, I'm glad you started this thread, because it's good to put ideas out. My opinion is that the more types of damage and types of weaponry there are, the better. Damage Types My ideas for damage types are: Kinetic - objects with mass and velocity colliding with you; Thermal-heat Thermal-cold? Radiative - radioactivity, this might be from a radioactive source, or a weapon that fires a particle beam of gamma rays, or a radioactive chain reaction (I.e. a nuclear explosion) Explosive - any kind of explosive force Electromagnetic - affecting electronic equipment and power sources only Weapon Families Chemically Propelled Projectiles (i.e. "normal" guns) Main advantages: relatively small, you can fit a lot on your vehicle; doesn't require a power source; can run right through energy shielding; space to ground potential? If so, highly inaccurate Main disadvantages: poor performance all around; needs ammo; comparatively limited range Hard counter: Armour EM Propelled Projectiles (i.e. railguns, note these wouldn't do EM damage) Main advantages: powerful; energy shielding can't stop them; space to ground as above Main disadvantages: needs a lot of energy; needs a lot of ammo Hard counter: Heavy armour Missiles (i.e. guided explosives) Main advantages: Chase down their targets (aiming not an issue); can break armour and not stopped by shielding; no energy source needed; Main disadvantages: Relatively slow rate of fire; needs ammo; space missiles and in atmosphere missiles separate Hard counter: point defense systems Particle beams (e.g. lasers, phasors, particle cannons) Main advantages: no ammo, continuous beam; high concentrated damage; very accurate, can pinpoint target systems; excellent range; space to ground and ground to space capabilities Main disadvantages: needs energy source Hard counter: energy shielding Plasma Weapons Main advantages: Very high damage potential, can go through energy shielding and armour quite quickly; good range; space to ground and ground to space capabilities Main disadvantages: needs ammo, needs a lot of energy, very big, needs a lot of space Hard counter: none, but if you're mounting these on your vehicle then it will have some glaring vulnerabilities Bombs (3 kinds: droppable, plantable timed, plantable remote) Main advantages: good damage potential; can go through point defense, armour and shielding; can explode inside a target, space to ground capability Main disadvantages: droppable difficult to aim, plantable needs infiltration and can be diffused Hard counter: none but the disadvantages should be enough Mines (essentially plantable bombs that are proximity triggered) Main advantages: same as bombs but also difficult to detect Main disadvantages: static, once planted can't be moved; Hard counter: mine sweepers; anything that can sweep mines should have virtually no offensive or defensive capability Cloaking devices: not a damage dealing weapon but still a weapon nonetheless. If your ship mounts one of these then it would have had to sacrifice virtually all other forms of defense; I.e cloaked ship = glass cannon. Only work in space, maybe Hard counter: scanners; as the antithesis of cloaking devices, vehicles that mount these will have had to sacrifice virtually all of their offensive capability Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) Main advantages: damages electronic equipment and energy sources within a limited radius, fires through energy shielding and armour Main disadvantages: knocks out your own electronic equipment too; useless against non-electronic equipment Hard counter: heavy metal encasements Each of the headings above would be a family of weapons, and each would possibly have a family of ammo if ammo is required. Regarding damage types, which Nyzaltar mentions there, I think they should be very careful about allowing weapon families to have variations that include any damage type. So my opinion is that all missiles, bombs and mines should be around 80% explosive damage, the other 20% can vary depending on the missiles you have loaded. All projectiles should do around 90% kinetic damage. Plasma weapons should do a combination of thermal and kinetic damage. And particle beam weapons should only be able to do thermal and radiative damage. My reasoning here is to keep the hard counters to these weapons consistent while also avoiding a situation where all weapons become essentially the same. If you have these kinds of strict limitations on damage types that can be dealt by each weapon family, and damage types that can be blocked by defenses, then there are always counters, there is always rock/paper/scissors and tough decisions to be made. If you have an extremely powerful armada of spaceships with nothing but shields and projectile weapons, you will be totally owned by a smaller force that did its homework and built ships with armour and missiles. So a quick addendum on defenses: Armour: absorbs mainly kinetic damage, plus a little explosive Energy Shields: absorbs thermal and radiative damage Point defense: shoots down missiles Cloaking device: renders its bearer invisible Scanners: can detect cloaked vehicles Mine sweepers: can detect and diffuse mines Oh and by the way I love the ramming idea. I was watching The Expanse the other day and a ship fired a small pots hard into an enemy ship, embedding itself into the hull. The pod was packed with a boarding crew. Pretty sure they would all have been crushed by the impact but, well, you know, science fiction and stuff.

Sounds like all you need is a second Death Star with nothing but fuel in it to move the thing. I could live with that

There is type of player that is missed out in this analysis. Players who don't have a large disposable income and don't have a lot of spare time either. There are a lot of people that fall into this category. A median or lower salary, a spouse and two kids covers a lot of people. In my opinion these people are locked out by this system. Let me say again: I support strongly a P2P model, and having means to convert between in-game currency and game time, but something new and more inclusive would be most welcome.

Grand theft auto San Andreas had a radio station that played music from a player made playlist. You just put the tracks in a specific directory and when you tuned in to that station they'd play. So I'm guessing there are no major legal obstacles.

@Hylios, it's not selfish. You represent a demographic of potential customers who can and do put in a lot of hours of gaming. Likewise I represent a demographic who don't have that much spare time. 30-40 hours of gameplay is the minimum I would expect from a game that cost ?40/?50/$60 at launch but those are also flexible hours. I can play those hours in two days, or in two years depending on the time I have available, and I can always revisit the game whenever I like at any time in the future. Paying ?20/?25/$28 a month for a game that you only get to play for about 20 hours is not justifiable when you're on a tight budget and have to balance work, family and personal time. And yet, it probably is a very fair price for someone like Hylios who plays nearly 200 hours a month. So the more I think about it the more I think tariffs are the way to go. Here's an example pricing model. ?20/?25/$28 - 1 month unlimited access ?10/?12.50/$14 - 1 month access up to 50 hours playing time ?5/?6.25/$7 - 1 month access up to 20 hours playing time Playing time top ups at ?0.50/?0.63/$0.70 per hour for if you run out before the end of the month. You could argue that you may find you get more customers this way as people who would not or could not subscribe at ?20/month for whatever reason - be it time or money availability or a combination of both - may subscribe at ?5/month.

I am for P2P too but at ?10/month max. New games tend to cost ?40 flat fee so more than ?10/month is excessive, especially for people that are only able to play 20-30 hours a month due to life. Which leads to a thought - paying by the hour instead of the month. Say 100 hours of game time for ?40 for example (off the top of my head). Though there are all sorts of potential issues that could crop up with that, I'm sure. Or you could combine monthly subscription with actual usage kind of like with phone tariffs. For example ?5 a month allows you to play 20 hours a month, ?30/month is unlimited, and more options in between, with options to top up your monthly allowance if you overused this month. @BatGojko the paying with in-game currency idea comes from Eve Online and wouldn't lose the developer any money. The way it works is that players can buy game time from the dev for real money, which they can then either add to their account, or convert to an in-game item that represents game time (in Eve it is an item called a Pilot's Licence Extension or PLEX). You then put this item up on the in-game market for sale. So basically some players pay for other players' game time in exchange for in game currency.

I wouldn't be kidding. Blast a hole in an enemy ship's hull then jet pack a squad of players over to kill the crew and steal the ship. Oh yes.

Welcome to the family

Welcome, mere semigod. Glad to have you.

Point taken and I like your ideas. I see no reason why all of these types of finds along with other similar ideas can't be included in the game.

I've only just got around to reading all five parts of the short story, and I wanted to say that it sounds excellent. Plus, it's a great and original way to reveal gameplay elements and features. Lore-wise, perhaps it is a little convenient, but I can suspend disbelief if this is the type of reward you decide to give. I think there are serious potential issues with providing people with a source of indestructible units, and those issues are not solved by making those materials rare and random. Just some of the issues I can think of off the top of my head: - the rewards for hitting the jackpot while exploring will skew the popularity of that profession - the lucky few who get these indestructible units/materials blueprints will have something of a monopoly on that unit which detracts from competitiveness in the free market which is a major aspect of the game - nothing anyone else can design will be as good as an indestructible unit so there will be little point trying to compete in that field of construction/design - new lucky discoveries of this kind has the potential to change the course of even large scale wars if sprung at critical moments - this is not a good thing in this type of game which should reward planning, strategy and tactics rather than luck I actually had some vague ideas for archaeology and discovery of alien artifacts a few weeks ago that I never got around to sharing. Rather than having a completed blueprint handed to you, have the discovery of alien items. These items will be found alone - a single item at a time. Now this item will have amazing stats in one or two areas, average stats in other areas, and poor stats in a couple of other areas, but overall will have a higher number of stat points than normal. In an extremely simplified example, let's say a proton gun is a typical energy weapon with stats like so: Damage: 7 Rate of fire: 2s Mass: 5 Hitpoints: 4 Heat limit: 50 Ammo per load: 10 An alien proton gun might have stats like this: Damage: 15 Rate of fire: 0.2s Mass: 6 Hitpoints: 3 Heat limit: 35 Ammo per load: 100 Like I said, an extremely simplified example but hopefully it illustrates what I'm getting at. Now, archaeologists who make these discoveries have a choice. They can use these items for themselves, sell them on the open market, or use them to design and/or build improved blueprints/units. This process, however, is destructive, and the rewards to the stats of the unit you're designing are much less pronounced than in the weapon itself. In the example above, if you try to make a better proton gun using the alien gun, you might end up building a gun that improves damage to 10 and rate of fire to 1.5s. So you can have a single, unique, awesome unit, or you can destroy it in exchange for the ability to build slightly better than normal units in any quantity you have the capacity for. I see these artifacts as being randomly generated. What needs to be randomly generated? First the unit type, then the unit size, then which stat(s) are improved, then the amount of improvement of that stat, then the stat(s) that are deteriorated, then the level of deterioration of that stat (which should always be less than the level of improvement), and finally the name of the unit. So the permutations are for all intents and purposes unlimited. And some artifacts will be far more useful than others. Obviously this needs to fit in with the building and designing process that you guys are working on, so my exact implementation is undoubtedly not right, but perhaps you can adapt the general idea if you like it. Lore-wise there's clearly no longer any problem.

From the multiplayer ship crew thread. Bear in mind that was almost a year ago, pretty early in development so who knows if it will change.

Information Unit monopolisation wars...

I'm with Ellegos on this. Having alts that specialise in different things is one thing, but having them online at the same time, helping each other out defeats the purpose. Basically, I'm strongly against multiboxing in all shapes and forms. If a task can be done more efficiently with two or three toons than with one that should necessarily mean you need two or three players in order to gain that efficiency. I'd love to see a response from Nyz on this topic.

I'm an Elite player, when I get the chance. DU will be a very different beast to anything that's out there, I think. Welcome to the family

I was actually thinking that "normal" travel would be as I described, but that you'd also have a different kind of engine (call it warp, FTL, Alcubierre, whatever) which can effectively break the speed limit for all practical purposes.

Funny you say that I've been thinking about this lately. Maybe not the timey-wimey stuff, that's just too trippy, but the cosmic speed limit. So instead of F=ma, use E=mc^2/(sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2)). i.e. as speed increases and gets closer to c it's gets harder and harder to increase speed more. This is all nicely self balancing and doesn't require weird speed limits like in Eve and Elite. Also, just imagine massive space battles if you've got engines good enough to propel little fighters up to 80% of c, hundreds of them zooming around the solar system...

That's what I'm hoping for as well and it seems that something like that is what is planned. OP quotes the devblog on "Information Units" which are used to see what prices are in different markets from a distance. I would like to see the range of Information Units to be quite limited, but really we don't know anything about how they work yet.

It will be really interesting to see how this goes down. It makes sense to have a centralised trading hub where a significant percentage of the entire game's trading takes place. It is mainly a convenience issue, like supermarkets. In Eve, Jita is so damn huge because it is a high sec system where piracy is not always profitable and has consequences, because goods in stations are perfectly safe, and because it is easily accessible. In DU, things will be a little different and perhaps a little more complicated. A central trade hub will have to be in the/an ASA or in an arkified territory (if they happen), in order to keep goods safe. However, Jita is convenient for most because it's reachable from anywhere on the map in less than an hour, but it sounds like DU will be a lot bigger than Eve. Once players start living on different planets, it seems unlikely that that same trading hub on planet A will still be the convenient place to go to do your shopping. So then perhaps you'll have big hubs on a per planet basis, with the size of the hub related to how many people actually live on the planet. And then there is off-worlders. People who live in space and for whom travelling down to a planet is an inconvenience or a once every now and then affair. These players will prefer trading hubs that are IN SPACE. We don't know if there will be any way to make space stations perfectly safe, yet space stations will undoubtedly be the most convenient place to have a trading hub for many players once the game reaches a certain stage in its evolution. There will obviously still be a "largest trading hub in the game", but I think it will contain a much smaller percentage of the game's total trade volume than Jita does in Eve. And I think it will be far more interesting to have hubs of different kinds that meet different people's needs and in different areas of the galaxy with comparable volumes being traded.

How about tweaking it a little so that the three ruling bodies each have more clearly defined roles. The Empire is still a trifector, but the three parts instead are considered to be equally powerful, at least in theory. In practice they will have different roles and different numbers of members so you won't really be able to compare the amount of "power" they have, but they will certainly have equal ownership of the Empire. The three parts are the Emperorship - responsible for military matters, the Senate - responsible for internal politics and laws, and the Guild - responsible for financial matters. Composition The Emperorship consists of a single person - the Emperor. She/he can use however many advisors, and delegate whatever powers she/he likes to whomever she/he likes, but ultimate power of the responsibilities of the Emperorship belongs to the Emperor. The first Emperor is likely to be the leader of the organisation(s) from which the Empire was born. If an Empress decides to abdicate the Emperorship, she selects her successor, and the Guild and Senate must then each cast a vote of confidence for the succession to take place. The Senate consists of a number of elected Senators. Senators are elected per territory that the Empire controls. Anyone who lives in the territory (how this is defined and controlled is not clear) can run to be the Senator representing it, and only people living in that territory may vote. There may also have to be an additional Senatorship for members who do not have a fixed abode within or without the Empire's borders. Elections take place once per defined term (a year?). After elections of Senators, the Senators vote amongst themselves for a President of the Senate who has certain executive powers. The Senate vote on the vast majority of matters that are within their power and the voting system can be as complex or as simple as they collectively decide. It will be a living, breathing political system. The Guild consists mainly of leaders of prominent organisations and super-rich players in the empire. There are three ways to become a Guild legate - buy your way in; be voted in by Guild legates; or through an empire member organisation. The price for buying your way in is decided by the Guild and can be whatever the Guild chooses it to be for each individual case. The percentage of votes required to be voted in as a member should be 67% although the Guild can change this figure via an internal voting system. The third way is to ensure inclusion in the Guild of newer or growing member organisations. Any organisation within the Empire that has a minimum number of members must have at least one player in the Guild. Say the limit is 100. If that organisation does not yet have a Guild member in its ranks then it can select any one of its player members for accession into the Guild. The Senate decides what this minimum is within pre-defined (probably by the Emperorship), unalterable percentage limits. The Guild can decide and change its internal structure as it sees fit, can have a leader with a few or many powers, but leadership must be termed and decided democratically amongst Guild legates. I've thought about how the legate and member system defined in the devblog https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/32-devblog-organizations-build-your-corporation-faction-nation-or-empire/can be used to put this together and it shouldn't be too difficult. I won't go into it here, but if anyone wants to know, I'll explain. Powers and Responsibilities The Emperorship's main power resides in the control of the military and war. Its main responsibility is in the protection and expansion of territorial borders. The Emperorship has complete control over the recruitment, training and deployment of forces and can unilaterally declare war or peace. The Senate's main responsibility is to keep the every day members of the Empire entertained, provide content, listen to and understand their needs, wants and concerns. The Senate also decides on Empire-wide laws which apply to its members, what is and is not allowed, and resolves disputes between member organisations. Each Senator has some devolved powers which allow her/him to apply laws to the territory she/he represents, and resolve disputes between members. The Senate and each Senator are also responsible for the deployment of police and militia forces provided by the Emperorship. The Senate should also have certain powers which temper the powers of the Guild and Emperorship, but I haven't thought that through properly. The Guild's first responsibility is to ensure that the Empire is rich, and gets richer. Where the Emperorship's power are mostly outward-facing, and the Senate's are inward-facing, the Guild's crosses both lines. Externally they have most of the powers over foreign policy and are responsible for maintaining and nurturing alliances and relationships with other large organisations. They are also responsible for espionage, diplomacy. Internally, they have the power to decide taxation limits, can grant/deny access to important natural resources, and can grant major contracts on the Empire level to its member organisations or external organisations. Some powers should be shared between two or all three of the trifector. Such as deciding to admit new members / member organisations to the Empire. Or overruling destructive decisions made by one of the three, by having the other two unite against it. Or major Empire-wide decisions such as relocating the entire Empire (although if it is a military necessity the Emperorship can decide this on its own). I see this kind of structure possibly working for an organisation that has a fair bit of territory - at least 20 claimed territory tiles, and at least a few hundred members. Less than that and it is too much for too little gain. I know I've missed plenty out, but I thought I'd add my ideas to the mix. Now that I read my post back I wonder whether it should have been a separate thread, but hopfeully it's okay.

I asked about whether or not players will be able to create their own currencies and the answer I got from Nyzaltar was no, and for good reasons. Thread: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/21-devblog-from-barter-to-market-economy/ That same devblog talks about market units which can be placed in any player made construct and just require energy and storage space for goods being traded. I think the intention is also to have the ASA have a few NPC markets which sell some basic stuff to help kickstart the process. The system sounds really flexible. So you can build a shop, or you can have a little market stall, or you might be a mobile caravan (except more sci-fi-ey), or you could be on a huge space ship, or a dedicated orbital space station with masses and masses of goods from all over the galaxy! An implication I can see is the potential for destroying market units and stealing the goods inside. I'm guessing they'll need an immunity timer once they are damaged a certain amount to give people a chance to get their stuff out, otherwise the economy would suffer greatly because the rewards for destroying market units would just be too great to pass up. Imagine that orbital space station being blown up with all the goods on-board, just floating in space... salvagers flying in from wherever they can to get a piece of the pie... As for business ventures, I wonder whether it will be more profitable to specialise in a particular area. Say you build small spaceships near a reasonably populated area. Rather than transporting your ships to a market, you decide you have enough clout to set up a market - to sell your ships, yes, but also to attract people who sell the materials you need to build your goods. Probably the most profitable will be the generalist who manages a large market unit in the centre of a bustling city of a major organisation. I wonder if the market unit owner gets to claim a percentage of all transactions. The more transactions the richer you get. Realistically the organisation itself will get be the owner of the market unit and most of the money will go in their coffers.

Shipyards in space...