KlatuSatori

I definitely think there has to be a careful balance between the size, speed, cost, maintenance, and difficulty of operation of spaceships. Since ships are designed and built by players it is the building blocks that need to be balanced rather than ships themselves, but the end goal should be balance between the large and the small. Personally, it makes sense to me that smaller ships will be more easily specialised into a particular role. Smaller generally means cheaper, so if you want your one man ship to be extremely fast then you can pile on the FTL power at the expense of defense/cargo space/weapons/etc. Or you can make it quite slow and leave off an FTL altogether and just have a tank with powerful weaponry - this ship will be powerful in defending a fixed region of space, or reliant on bigger ships carrying it to other sectors. If you try the same thing with a large ship you are glutton for punishment, and the larger the ship the worse it gets. If you try to make a 100 man ship go extremely fast at the expense of defenses it is going to go boom and you will have lost an awful lot of time and money, not to mention respect and probably members. Make it specialise in combat but without an FTL, and it becomes a fixed fortress, again, probably not the best use of resources. You can still specialise big ships, but not to the same extent. Even a large freighter that requires an armed escort cannot truly specialise in speed because it has to have a lot of cargo space, and hence a lot of cargo i.e. mass, to justify its cost and complexity. I also think that there should be an exponential relationship regarding speed and size. The bigger you get the bigger your engines need to be, sure, but as you go bigger and bigger the amount of energy required of your engines starts to become unfeasible, or requires extremely disproportionate specialisation - the freighter needs to ditch 90% of it's cargo hold and costs 10 times as much to build if you want it to reach 1 man scout speeds. I guess that sums up to an opinion that the fastest ships should be small ships that are specialised in speed (it doesn't take nearly as much force to propel a small mass to a high as speed). A ship 1000 times larger can theoretically reach the same speed, but it just isn't practical. That doesn't rule out reasonably fast 100 man ships, just not as fast as 1 man explorers and scouts, or 10 man smugglers, or etc etc etc... EDIT: Speed and range are two different things. I haven't really considered range here. It probably makes sense for a slow massive ship to have a much greater range than a small speeder before needing to stop for petrol. I think there are lots of reasons people would want to fly in large multiplayer ships, but the first thing that comes to mind is that it would be f*ing awesome

Based on my knowledge of what is planned, I think the only specific game mechanic they will have related to colonisation will be claiming territory tiles with territorial units (TU's). Other than that colonisation is simply a group of people injected into an area/territory to live there permanently. There's nothing to stop you doing that (apart from your fellow players, of course). I imagine the size of your empire will be limited mainly by how much it is able to defend, and how much it is able to exploit. If you're strong enough to defend 100km2 area but can only populate/utilise half of that area, you might not bother trying to encompass the less useful parts within your borders. Cities will be built by real players brick by brick. It's unlikely that there will be large quantities of uninhabited buildings and structures. I'm pretty sure there will not be any NPC's that can be used as substitutes for real players. The closest thing will be player built programmable bots which will be able to perform simple tasks. Not sure how cheap these will be or even if they are definitely going to end up in the game. It's also unlikely that we'll see a single empire control an entire planet for a long time, if ever. That example planet looks huge... I think it would take lots of medium sized entities banding together. But we players won't really know how many of us it will take to control a sector until we're actually playing and get a real sense of scale and what is possible. Yeah, you need Nyzaltar to answer this... I have a vague recollection of him answering a similar question but can't find it... I might have imagined it. Interesting. The spirit of the game is player led, so anything self-replicating needs to have strict limitations. But it's an interesting idea, you should post it in the idea box. I think the thing to remember is that players take control of a single character in this game, not an empire. You can (try to) form an empire but it wouldn't be easy as you'll need a lot of real players behind you. Plus an empire is not the only kind of entity you can form by a longshot. In the end there will be very few "emperors" in this game.

Free Death Star for all early backers.

I was searching for a new game to play. Something spacey and sandboxey. I started looking for single shard MMO and came across DU. I started reading the devblog, I think the first one I read was about the resurrection nodes and the part they are likely to play as war targets. I was hooked, couldn't stop until I'd read every word and clicked every link. It took a while for me to calm myself down and remember it is pre-alpha, years from release. Soon after the forum went up and the rest is history.

Thanks for the response, Nyzaltar. It's great to hear you were already planning this kind of immersive and meaningful experience! There's plenty more to discuss and potential issues to consider, but perhaps it's best left there for now until it comes up in a devblog or something. Cheers!

Welcome Sylverwulf!

Indeed that is why I made some assumptions in my OP. Assuming there is a large player base, it depends on how large the game universe will be, how fast players will be able to travel, and how difficult it will be to travel fast. Lots of variables. Ultimately it depends on whether NQ want the universe to ever become fully "known". Personally I'd like a universe that always has wild, unknown frontiers

I wouldn't underestimate the importance of knowledge of terrain and raw materials locations in a large PvP arena-type game universe though - to my mind this has the greatest potential impact on gameplay. I like the idea of having unique and/or rare items in the universe which add additional types of specialisation for explorers. I view these as separate ideas from exploration though. Just as exploration is separate from mining, even though you can't mine without knowing where to mine first. I think we need to be careful about forcing explorers down a particular path, or into equipping themselves for an activity other than exploring. Some players may only be interested in getting the most basic "images" of each area - those will equip themselves for speed so that they can visit as many places as possible as quickly as possible. Others may want to search nearby, barely explored areas for natural resources - those will need advanced scanning equipment. Others might be on the look out for rare items - those will want a small cargo hold. This kind of specialisation and variety adds richness to the activity. What I'm trying to get at is that exploration is the base activity and should be catered for in and of itself; additional reasons for exploration and things to do while exploring on top of that are a bonus, but shouldn't be forced upon the explorer.

I've been thinking about how explorers might be able to make a living in DU. There is only one game I know of that has it right and that is Elite Dangerous. Explorers fly out into the unknown scanning stars and planets with specialised scanning equipment. When they come back to civilisation they sell the data to NPC empires for a price. This works well for two reasons: E:D is huge so there is always something new to find; NPC empires always want to buy the data. First I have to make a few assumptions because I can't really talk about the first aspect definitively as I don't yet have a good idea of how large DU is going to be. Initially it will be a single planet and even after official release it seems it may be months before any player manages to launch themselves into space. However, the territory control blog entry talks about a 30km planet being divided up into 1km hexes. That would mean over 11,000 territory tiles to explore on the starting planet. I think it is a fair assumption to make that only dedicated explorers are likely to see a sizable fraction of those hexes and that the vast vast majority of those hexes will not have players living in them. Once players start venturing off into space, there will be other stars, planets, moons, asteroids, regions/bubbles of space, etc to explore, also with hexes. So another assumption is that this space will also only be seen by players who make an active effort to go out and see some of it, and that it will largely remain uninhaited by players even once the game is in full swing with thousands of active players. My final assumption is that the DU universe will actually be enlarged as and when the developers see fit and that ensuring explorers always have something new to, uh, explore, is a factor. If a similar, true exploration system were to work in DU it would naturally need to be entirely player-driven, which means there must be a player demand for exploration data. That in turn means that, ideally, players need to start the game starved of map data. The most basic type of exploration data would simply be an image representation of a territory tile. Players can fill out their world map by exploring the world, or by buying map data from people who have already been around. This type of data will also have a "resolution" of sorts once space exploration begins - resolutions may be "solar system", "bubble" (as mentioned in the territory blog), "astronomical body" (i.e. star/planet/etc), "territory tile", and perhaps smaller if there are plans to split tiles up into smaller pieces. Now anyone with feet can go out and pick up that kind of simple data without any kind of specialised equipment and it likely wouldn't sell for very much, or anything at all once a sufficiently large number of players have it. A true explorer will have scanning and analysing equipment of various kinds to retrieve more detailed information. A territory tile could be analysed in detail to provide a terrain map. Other details might include information about flora and fauna, player presence and player built structures, yet more may include some mining information, and the most sophisticated triquarters might be able to give detailed information about the composition of the land and presence and size of underground caves and mines. Now explorers have a reason to exist. Players who want to move to a new, untouched area but don't have the time, resources or inclination to scope out hundreds of potential places for themselves can simply buy it from a professional. Larger organisations may have the resources to employ explorers to search for specific things or specific areas, and during times of war or pre-war explorers may double as scouts and spies. In order for this to work there needs to be a framework in place where exploration data can be reliably traded. NQ have written about the market but exploration data can really only traded in a specific contract. There might be a buy order contract for land within x radius that contains at least y amount of raw material A, for example. I seem to remember NQ saying a contracts system is planned, and if it is anything like as flexible as the RDMS, tagging and organisation systems then it would probably be able to cater for this kind of trading mechanism without too much tweaking. The other requirement is for different types of scanning and analysing equipment to made available or buildable. I think there are lots of players, myself included, who love to go out and explore game universes, but it is always a richer and more rewarding experience when you affect the game and other players in doing so, while also making a little profit. So with a little attention to ensure the game mechanisms support the activity, and keeping in mind my assumptions above, it could be workable.

Awesome linkage.

Welcome!

I was under the impression that the Arkship Secure zone would be the only place that "indestructibles" could exist. I remember reading in one of the dev blogs that players could set up safe zones outside but that a concentrated effort by determined players could bring it down. Have I not understood this correctly? Maybe I should go back and read that again...

Thank you for the detailed reply, Nyzaltar. While many of the things mentioned are related to strategy, usually planned in advance, the friendly fire / manual targetting issues are really the only ones that specifically ensure individual pilot and fleet commander skills and tactics play a big part. Obviously, I completely understand if implementing such features is I feasible, but how do you plan to ensure massive fleet battles don't devolve into a single guy on each side ordering "Everyone destroy target A"? Perhaps some kind of targetting interference mechanic?

Not sure I'd like a skill that reduces damage taken from friendly as it dilutes the purpose without any kind of compromise. That skill would become essential training for anyone who flies in a combat fleet. How about being able to adjust shields to match the frequency of the phasors Star Trek style. The risk is that spies could discover the frequency and adjust their shields too. This could be a simple system or something more complex depending on what they want. I actually think super-capitals will have less balancing problems than they do in other games because of multi-crew ships. In other games a single player can operate a ship the size of a small moon, but here it will be a massive coordinated effort to fly one effectively. Traveling in one will be interesting. As you say the engines will need to be something more and more incredibly the bigger the ship gets, but they should also have serious acceleration and manouevrability issues. Again, it depends on what space travel and spacecraft piloting mechanics will be like in the game. Nyzaltar has said that there may be consequences for mistreating or over-exploiting planets so in the long term resource replishment could be related to that somehow.

I agree keeping a character that is flagged as "in combat" spawned in game and limp even when the player has logged out is essential in this kind of game. The body and vehicle the the body is in remain in game until their timer runs down and during that time they can be killed by the enemy. Jails and the ability to keep another player captive is an interesting concept. Captors could try to extort money, or they could have deeper motives: information, vehicles/building designs, tags/functions, or even getting a legate to vote a certain way. Most of the time the captive player will commit suicide, but if the captors plan carefully at a time when death would be more costly than complying, it could work. I think I like it. On dead player bodies, some players might like to keep them as trophies (not me, honest...), but yes, if a body is left alone it should definitely despawn after a few minutes. Massive graveyards commemorating huge battles might be cool... until the next empire comes along and builds a metropolis on it. Sorry if this isn't entirely on topic but you brought up some cool talking points.

I think this is a very important game design issue that needs to be addressed and re-addressed. How to avoid the single strategy that more numbers = win. Now, there is nothing wrong with the zergling strategy - it should be as viable as the next and I don't think the game should prevent organisations from adopting it. The problem occurs when it becomes the onlycounter to itself. A game that has only one viable strategy is either broken or boring. The key is in providing variability and making combat complex enough that the difficulty in leading players into a battle becomes exponentially higher with larger and larger groups. Here are some specific features that I think would ensure that wars and battles remain dynamic. Each topic could probably have an entire thread to itself so I'll try to be brief. Friendly Fire If you accidentally shoot your guildmate, he is shot and takes no less damage than an enemy would have. Ideally, this would be implemented by making projectiles, missiles, lasers, etc actually have to travel to their target, and if they hit something else on the way, then so be it. Manual Targetting If weapons have some kind of auto-targetting feature, it should be sub-optimal and unreliable. If there is some way for weapon designers to increase auto-targetting effectiveness it should come at a large cost of compromising with damage, range, mass, etc. Bigger Means More Complex There should be nothing from stopping players building a massive mothership with thousands of players and dozens of capabilities, but piloting and maintaining such a ship should be extremely difficult, and the ship itself should have weaknesses and be very far from invulnerable. Terrain This is less of an issue on planets as there will always be hills, forests, mountains, rivers, etc, etc that make natural choke points and affect what kind of tactics will be most effective. In space it is less obvious, but equally doable. Have vast regions of space encompassing multiple star systems that are saturated by nebulae. Include dense asteroid clusters, regions of space that are more rocky, planets with immense rings. There could also be regions affected by strong gravitational fields caused by black holes or neutron stars, and many other possibilities, and they could all be intertwined and overlapping. Each of these features would have some effect on travel and/or weaponry and defences just like "normal" geographical features do. Terrain on the battlefield and on the meta-scale creates opportunities for inventive leaders to shine and take a larger force by surprise. Resource Distribution My thought on this is to avoid static, infinite, and clustered sets of resources, particularly high-end resources. If there is a portion of the map that contains a lot of one particular type of resource then this will encourage "turtling" and make the acquisition of more players unto a single organisation easier. At the same time, a perfectly even distribution means trade between regions is less profitable, perhaps even not required, so this is a tough topic. One option is to have resources be finite at their given sources, but to have sources re-spawn elsewhere in the universe keeping the meta-game dynamic and ever changing. Arms Diversity and Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock Something that DU already has going for it is that all ships will be designed by individual players/organisations so we should expect a lot of diversity. However, there are bound to be certain a types of weapon and defences that can be mounted. I like GalCiv's system of having weapon types lasers/missiles/projectiles and their corresponding defences shields/point defence/armour. In addition to that, adding in mines, mine sweepers, cloaking devices, stealth detection, more and less effective propulsion systems, hangars for carrier capability, and Death Star type weaponry are all elements which can be included, each with their own advantages and drawbacks not just on the battlefield but in including them in a given ship design. And that's before mentioning ground weaponry (although I'm sure there will be a lot of overlapping) and the possibility of space-ground/ground-space interaction in battles. This kind of diversity provides more opportunities for inventive leaders to do something special against a superior force. Now, with these elements I believe it becomes much more difficult to adopt a zerg strategy. A massive army/fleet necessarily requires a practical chain of command, training drills, and disciplined soldiers who have been briefed by competent commanders who have a plan and can think on their feet. The more players in the fleet, the more difficult management of it becomes and large numbers of inexperienced and undisciplined soldiers will be a liability. Knowing and understanding the terrain gives a kind of "home advantage" for smart generals, and appropriate use of a variety of different kinds of ships/weapons, or having intelligence on the enemy's new ship designs could be put to devastating use. A quick note: we tend to think of a blob as lots of little ships, but in DU a blob could be a single super-massive ship with hundreds or thousands of players on board. In this thread when I say "zerglings" I mean massive numbers of players, but not necessarily massive numbers of ships.

Personally I'd like to see a carrier that uses some combination of stealth, speed, and range to defeat a battleship. Battleships are all about firepower and armour, carriers should use that against them. Carriers should try to fight a one-sided battle, where lots of small, difficult to hit bombers bombard the battleships while they cannot hit the carriers because the flight range of the bombers is too high and the carrier is either too fast (not amazingly fast, just faster than a slow hulking behemoth of a battleship) to catch, or hidden away somewhere behind a moon or something. Add in some fighters to protect the bombers from smaller ships and to do some screening, maybe throw in some supporting cruisers and you've got a force to be reckoned with. Of course, there'll always be a counter. Battleships should be accompanied by battlecruisers and cruisers, either of which should be faster and more powerful than a lone carrier caught with its trousers down.

Good point. Although, carrying around a node on your ship when exploring is risky too. It's fine once you land, but while travelling, if your ship is destroyed and you are killed, then your node is either destroyed with it or drifting in space, defeating the purpose. In fact explorers who do that will be juicy targets for pirates and bounty hunters.

I think the devs want to make sure that nodes can't be used for teleporting about, which is a valid concern. But it could be that "your" nearest node is simply the nearest node to you that you have been given the tag for (which may also have a duty on it, like a flat or regular fee). I think that would be a good balance. You wouldn't want to give out the power to use a single node to too many people as if someone dies it will need to charge up again before you can use it (and then you will be teleported to a further node if you die before it is re-charged). I really like the implications of this, because it means organisations will want to set up lots of them for their people, or there may even be "Resurrection Node Rental" corporations. I actually wouldn't mind potentially losing your position when exploring far from home. It makes the game universe bigger and the risk/reward of deep exploration greater.

@astrov I think resurrection nodes do need to be charged to work and that you respawn at your nearest charged node when you die. I think that presumes that your original node which is pre-setup in your home arkship area is always charged. Perhaps losses will be proportional to how far away you have to "teleport" to be resurrected when you die. @saffi that is a smart way of dealing out bounty contracts though you would have to be careful who you give the bounty hunting out to. Otherwise if someone find out Guild-Banan-O-Rama has put a bounty on their head they could get their friend to get hold of a tag and them kill them and split the reward. In fact, even trusted people might do that and the bounty hunting MO could even just become advertising for the target to come out to be killed and split the reward. Having said that, the system you mention would work pretty well for hired guns and mercs contracted to destroy expensive equipment.

Well, it depends. If somone moved to a planet and has just one resurrection node on it, then losing that node and then being killed, thereby sending them back to their "home" planet, could be a real pain. Plus losing the node itself would be a massive loss. But yeah, if you want to inflict economic damage on someone you'd state in the contract that bounty is paid out in some proportion to the money they lose when dying (e.g. ship or items destroyed/lost). The dev blog on resurrection mechanics had something about items being lost when you die, but it didn't say exactly how it works and how severe it is.

Bounty hunting is an activity that many players find alluring but there aren't really any games that do it well, at least not PvP bounty hunting. The problem with bounty hunting is that hunters expect to be reasonably well-rewarded for their efforts, but a reasonable reward does not usually scale well with the damage inflicted on the victim - death simply isn't costly enough in most situations. If a victim discovers that there is a bounty on her head, she might let a friend kill her so they can split the reward. Reducing the reward won't work because hunters just won't bother putting in the effort. The consequences of dying can't really be changed either for many reasons that go well beyond the scope of bounty hunting. I think the answer lies in redefining bounty hunting to fit the game world, and in keeping with the features that have been introduced so far, my idea is essentially to allow players to define what it means. Similar to the Market Unit, there will be a Bounty Unit, which players can set up in their own self-styled Bounty Offices. If an entity (i.e. player or organisation) wishes to place a bounty on another entity, they go to a local bounty office and set up a contract. The contract is defined by the entity setting it up. Some of the options available could be availability, i.e. who can claim the bounty, a certain amount of damage inflicted in pure currency, specific items being destroyed or stolen, number of times killed, reward, how the reward is granted, etc. Entities could even specify that the body (or head...?), or other item belonging to that entity be delivered to the Bounty Unit for collection as a trophy. Example. Player A has decided that he wants player B to suffer for reasons unknown and unimportant. He places a bounty at a local bounty office of 1000000credits. The contract states that for every time player B is killed, 50% of the monetary losses he suffers as a result of the death are paid out from the bounty up to the 1000000 total of whatever remains. Another example. Player C wants player D out of the picture. He puts a bounty of 100,000,000 credits to be paid out in full to the first entity who kills player D causing a respawn at least Xkm away from the office. (This may involve necessarily destroying one or more resurrection nodes, though perhaps a more reliable way to do this would be to include a resurrection node's destruction as part of the contractual obligation, i.e. the bounty is only released to the single entity who both destroys one or more specific resurrection nodes and then subsequently collects and delivers player D's head). This obviously isn't a polished idea and it depends largely on what other features and mechanics the devs have in mind, but it's a start and I thought I'd throw it out there and see what people think.

+1 to "speed dial" comms

In a single shard MMO I feel players have additional incentive to band together because their actions and achievements have wide-reaching and long-lasting effects. The idea of being able to shape the political, economic, or industrial landscape is a huge draw for me at least and that is far more easily done in a group. What a group can achieve depends on how large they are, how well organised they are, and how good and well-implemented their plans are. I feel strongly that a well-organised, highly skilled (read: actual player skill not in-game stats skills), group of players should be able to defeat or outplay even a much larger, less prepared group. Pure numbers should not be the only, or most important aspect of what makes a gang successful. Having said that, I don't think smaller groups should be given artificial incentives or advantages, it should simply be a consideration throughout development: does this particular mechanic/map/landscape/item/etc give an unfair advantage to a blob? In other words always ensure that superior numbers is not an I-win card. @astrophil I don't think a nation should be restricted in any way on who they can and can't declare war on. If a legate of a nation is a rival electronics company, why should they not expect their nation to drive off the opposition? This is player driven content generation! Consider this scenario. A "nation" XNation is made up of a military and multiple mining and manufacturing corporations. Up until now the military has claimed territory for the nation by crushing poorly defended mining corps and driving them away from where the best resources are. Electronica is a small company living not too far away and so far XNation has ignored them because they are not a threat and there is no overlap in interests. A group within XNation finds out that the electronics business is very lucrative and wants to give it a go. XNation declares war on Electronica to drive off the competition and increase profits. Electronica, being rich and well organised, have a base with a lot of defenses but they are hugely outnumbered and aren't really great combatants. They hire a mercenary gang to help. The mercenary gang are superior warriors because fighting is all they do, and despite being outnumbered they manage to continually rout XNation's military. Eventually a peace agreement is reached. These kinds of interactions create "jobs" or "market niches" for other players and player organisations - such as mercenary, spy, arms manufacturers, hostile market traders, etc - and should not be restricted. Crucially, these emerging roles have the potential to give players/guilds a sense of real purpose within the game.

My initial reaction to this was that it doesn't really have a place in this kind of game. On the other hand, assuming it is a purely aesthetic feature that costs very little development effort to include, it's not really much different to other aesthetic features. Even hardcore players interested only in racking up kills or credits take time to make their avatars look cool, or spend time/money on clothes, or decorations, or an interesting bio description. If the ability to marry were an extension of those kinds of "fluff" features then I wouldn't be opposed to it. If it were implemented I would go even further than some others have and say that there should be no limitations on it at all. Players should be able to marry any gender/race, or marry more than one other player, or enter into multi-person marriages, get divorced, etc. Marriage should not have any financial impact whatsoever; there should not be a marital estate or complicated divorce proceedings - one person wants to get divorced, they click divorce and they are divorced, nothing else happens.