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KlatuSatori

Alpha Team Vanguard
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Everything posted by KlatuSatori

  1. As code24 alludes to, nothing will stop you from building a ship that fills multiple roles. The kind of balancing that NQ are going for is at the design level. Size, power consumption, placement, mass, etc. So the more abilities you attempt to give your construct, the less efficient it is likely to be at each of them. Design decisions will have to be made on improving one aspect at the expense of another; strengths, weaknesses and mediocrity.
  2. Well, that is basically what I said, except all those games may have tools with unexpected abilities they are still all "working as intended" and they are all completely within the confines of the game universes and physics. My point, however, was that none of that is relevant to the conversation about multiboxing. I definitely disagree about CCP. A solo player who isn't multiboxing is at a disadvantage in Eve whether it is PvP or PvE. The low-end ore market is completely dominated by high-sec multiboxers (at least last time I was there, but I doubt it's changed) and that has a knock-on effect to the whole economy. Maybe CCP designed their game to be that way, but I wouldn't want that for DU.
  3. Yeah but we're talking about in the safe zones. God and His White Knights are powerless before the might of the Arkship.
  4. I think I like the idea of letting democracy take control of the situation. Remember though, that safe areas are supposed to be primarily for noobies to learn the game, so I don't think you should need to apply for a plot to build something. Paying to rent space in safe areas is less suitable. Rather than a council that has lots of responsibilities I would just have an elected Board of Town Planning who make decisions on demolition of existing buildings only. There are still problems here. One is the board destroying any buildings they see fit and timing it with their friends so that they can build their own stuff there. So there needs to be some kind of waiting period and appeals process. Say a one month waiting period before a building can be torn down, where the building is marked for destruction and players can appeal. The board then either withdraws the destruction or gives the appealing player the option to appeal to directly to NQ. NQ then make the final decision. If board members risk losing their position and player risk warnings and account bans for obviously bogus appeals then hopefully NQ won't get too many appeals deferred to them. Another problem is players who have left the game for a time and aren't around to appeal come back and find their stuff gone. Safe areas are supposed to be permanently safe and there is nowhere else for players to keep their things long term. I'm not sure what the solution is to this problem with this system without giving NQ full control over what goes and what stays in safe zones.
  5. There's a devblog on this topic. https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/09/13/arkship-security-or-where-does-pvp-starts/ This part in particular sums up NQ's vision on base defense and losing constructs.
  6. If you're talking about the mechanics of buying something from a distance, I'd say there could maybe be a brief grace period where the item is still held in the Market Unit, say 1-12 hours or something, then it's moved to a holding area that doesn't have the same protective features of the Market Unit. That's assuming Market Units have invulnerability timers as I described above.
  7. You can't make Market Units invulnerable for the reasons stated here and many more. I think the best option is to have an invulnerability timer when a Market Unit is reduced in health by a certain amount, similar to the system they have mentioned will likely be used for Territory Units (similar to Eve's system). Everyone who has buy/sell orders on the unit and is within x radius gets an in-game notification. They can then either go and get their stuff, write it off, or help defend it. In this way heavily used market units may become very difficult to destroy.
  8. The purpose of a sandbox game is to provide a game universe that doesn't have any predefined goals - nothing more; nothing less. The tools/abilities/environment/physics provided in a game define what can and can't be done and there may be some things which can be done that the developers did not expect or did not intend. If it's something they didn't intend - i.e. it is not something they want to be possible, then they will change it. If it's something they didn't expect, but still falls within what they intend for the game, then it's fine. This is nothing particular to sandbox games, it is true of any game. A game feature is either working as intended or it isn't and needs to be changed. The only difference is that some or many unexpected consequences may fall within what is intended. All of that is within the game universe. Multiboxing is entirely outside of the game universe and has nothing to do with the whether the game is a sandbox, simulator, arcade or anything else. It is a type of hacking, of getting around the in-game mechanics to accomplish things which would otherwise not be possible. You could design a game that is intended to be multiboxed, but that would be an entirely different concept and that game may or may not be a sandbox game.
  9. As long as it's not too intrusive, I'd be okay with a hunger mechanic. Say, for example you just have to ensure you have some kind of food stored on you, which slowly depletes - you don't have to actually click a button to eat it. When it's on zero you suffer some minor stat penalties and your health very slowly decreases. You could die eventually from starvation/thirst, but it would take a long time. Some numbers: it takes 24 hours for your food store to deplete from full, and it takes another 24 hours to die from starvation from full health (assuming no other damage is taken). Food/health only depletes when you are logged in and playing. I think something like this would fit with the FB quote yamamushi found. Once a planet is colonised and filled with players, food will be so plentiful that "refueling" is a non-issue, but when setting out to explore the unknown you need to be well-prepared, whether that's ensuring you have enough food with you, growing some in a hydroponics bay, or hunting & gathering.
  10. Welcome to the forums, WorldsNoob! Good luck in your quest for global domination
  11. I think what people need to remember is that this game is pure PvP. PvE is not really a good way to look at the starting zone or any other safe zones. Trading on the market, buy low, sell high? Pure PvP because you are buying from and selling to others players and competing with other traders. Building a spaceship? PvP because you are going to either use that spaceship against other players in some other way, or sell it to another player. If selling, you are competing with other ship builders, and negotiating the PvP market. Mining? PvP because you are going to sell that stuff to other players for profit. You are competing with other miners directly, but you are also affecting the supply of that resource which will have PvP implications. Exploring? Still PvP because you are finding new areas and selling the information to other players for exploitation, which, again, leads to PvP. In short, anything you do that involves creation, destruction, discovery or profit is PvP. Having said that, there needs to be some safe areas for players to learn how to play the game and to bootstrap the creation part of the creation/destruction cycle. So a limited number of safe zones which are free for anyone to use for learning purposes is necessary, but these areas should not be a source of wealth, ownership, exploitation, or advantage.
  12. I am very strongly against multiboxing. It is, frankly, a form of cheating. It is immersion-breaking. It is a form of pay2win. It is contrary to the player-driven, cooperative/competitive MMO philosophy of the game on many levels. It affects the emergent story of the game on a deep level. It has far-reaching consequence for the player-driven economy and the cycle of creation/destruction. It drastically affects what is possible for a solo player to do, and this relates back to my other points. I would very much like to see multiboxing as strictly prohibited as is realistically possible.
  13. Now you are just making up mechanics and situations to suit your argument. Who said it was uninhabited just because it doesn't have a gate? Maybe the gate hasn't been built yet, or maybe it was destroyed. Maybe the system is not yet completely inhabited but it is valuable for some reason or other and organisations are fighting over its position or resources. Why do battles occur in the oceans? Lots of reasons. You are inventing the consequences of destroying a gate. There is no information anywhere about gate destruction causing massive explosions. In fact there is no information on star gate destruction at all. All we know is that they will be player made and that destruction of player made constructs will be an integral part of the economic systems of the game. So you are saying that only systems with gates will have any "value", and that players in a system with no gate will be imprisoned. Those are wildly presumptive statements. I am assuming that a solar system would be able to support literally thousands of players for many years. I think that is a fair assumption to make given that we know the size of voxels and we know the size of planets - huge; quadrillions of voxels in a single large planet. We also know how the territory system will work and how many individual territories each planet is likely to have - thousands. So calling an entire solar system a prison just does not make sense. Continuing from that I can think of lots of reasons you might want to destroy a gate. It's an important strategic war target. Why would you want to destroy a trading port, or an airfield, or a mine? Lots of reasons. If you can gain control of it, that may be better, but it may not, it is entirely situational and dependent on a lot of variables. I am not wishing anything away. I am comparing one ship's capabilities to another's. It is you who are bringing things in to suit your argument. Based on the system you've described and the example given, it certainly does not sound as though the two forms of travel are about equal within a solar system or between systems with gates. And even if it were, that would still break game balance. As for using these things for exploration of new systems being an edge case, I think you don't understand the power of your own mechanic compared with the mechanics that we know about. It has been said that travel to new systems will take literally months. If you can bypass that by doing it in an hour, who wouldn't? Well, small exploration organisations sure won't because they won't be able to build one of your super ships. I think you're making a lot of assumptions about how things will work. To be fair, so am I, but at least I am basing them on things we actually know about the game. Like I said, let's wait for more information on travel before making further assumptions. There's not much more to be said about this idea until NQ give us more information.
  14. But this fundamentally about balance. I believe this idea as you have explained it and I have read it would have serious balance issues. We will have to wait and see what specific ideas NQ have and when that happens we can all express our opinions on them constructively.
  15. Here is where I see the crux of our disagreement. What you see as evening things up a bit I see as bypassing an important and fundamental disadvantage. What if there's no gate in the system? Ask again how I think this mechanic makes big ships super fast. You have to compare like for like, you can't just throw in a star gate when it suits you.
  16. I'll just respond to this. What I want to see is for all sizes of organisation to remain relevant and to be able to hold their own. I want smaller, but smarter organisations to be able to hurt or even defeat larger ones. I want it to be difficult to hold huge swaths of territory for extended periods of time. I want the geopolitical map to be dynamic and ever changing. I want trade offs between advantages and disadvantages of different playing styles, different designs, different strategies, and I want them to scale. I want ground based or single planet organisations to be relevant - and just as powerful as multi planet organisations of similar resources. Super weapons and super fast travel are contrary these ideals.
  17. No, this idea reduces the amount of time it takes for powerful hardware to cross the universe. It creates a mystical alternate dimension that exclusively allows big ships to travel long distances by only traveling a short distance. I get it, I don't like it. Except the small ship cannot punch through into hyperspace without the big ship, can it? It is entirely dependent on it for interstellar travel. If you make hyperspace engines something that any ship of any size can equip, perhaps in different sizes, then maybe we could about the mechanic in more detail. I imagine it would still come up short for various reasons. These points you list exist without the need for your hyperspace. If you include this idea these points are less prominent. The difference is that you are adding fuel to the fire by providing work arounds for disadvantages. I am not against large groups of people rallying together and accomplishing great things, far from it. I am against providing exclusive benefits to a particular play style. Like I said, agree to disagree because we are getting nowhere.
  18. Again, providing massive organisations with an exclusive superweapon is bad for balanced and strategic gameplay. Carriers in real life are slow, and only carry a handful of aircraft. Carriers in space can exist without the need for near-instantaneous travel mechanics. Hyperspace seems unnecessary in your analogy. Space is the sea and planets are land, simple. And again, getting around restrictions because you are rich is a bad mechanic. This type of gameplay is much more plausible without these super ships. Star gates are science fiction. They do not have to create an explosion so big that anyone nearby would be destroyed. In fact making star gates permanent in this way would be a terrible idea from a gameplay perspective. And my point was that the tactic of cutting others off from the solar system is not possible because of these jump capable ships. If jump capable ships don't exist then it is a viable plan. These drawbacks are minute compared to the advantages and the disadvantages of actually having to travel in the same way as every other ship. 1. If you have to travel as normal then you could be ambushed en route by a fleet that exploits your weaknesses (not just a gamey disablement mechanic, actual strategy). So you will need to scout ahead, bring a support fleet, etc. 2. If you are not certain of your intelligence you could be diverted to the wrong location and end up leaving the wrong place undefended. You always need to be aware of how far you are actually able to project your most powerful hardware into your defensive and offensive strategies. You can still build carriers, just not absurdly fast ones. I think the opposite. This system restricts varied skirmishes because it means that you can always bring everything and the kitchen sink to an engagement. I agree with this but it doesn't really have anything to do with making powerful ships fast. We're beginning to go around in circles. I think we're going to have to respectfully agree to disagree.
  19. Yes, star gates have been described by NQ as massive structures that will require a large amount of time, resources and cooperation to build. Note however, that these structures are entirely dedicated to a single task, and cannot travel fast themselves. It is not a given that the same technology can be used to send itself across space. Much like a catapult can propel a rock at high speed, but not itself. Allowing 67% payload and structures on a ship that can travel so incredibly fast is amazingly efficient. So you are proposing a stargate that can not only transport itself, but transport up to twice its own weight in additional payload and structures! This is all just conjecture. We have no idea what ship and vehicle designs will or won't be effective or possible in the game. I'm sorry but this system does remove a strategic layer from warfare. And it is a complex layer that has more implications than you or I can reason about. My point is still valid. Solar systems are not all the same size and are not all the same distance apart. Imagine a solar system that is five times larger than the one in your example. Besides the fact that 10 minutes to cross a solar system sounds too fast to me. You are drastically reducing the importance of fast travel within a solar system by bypassing the stargates and allowing powerful ships to land anywhere in a system that they like. In your vision these ships have so much spare capacity that they can then deploy an entire fleet of ships that move fast within a solar system. Requiring resources does not fix the problem. Cars need petrol every couple of hundred miles but they can still go a lot faster than bicycles. It doesn't matter how much petrol you put in the bicycle, it still can't catch up to the car. Requiring additional resources only exacerbates the problem by providing exclusive advantages to those that already have a large pool of resources. How about a large organisation of several hundred players that prides itself on its vast fleet of small to medium size ships, each crewed by between 1 and 30 players. This type of fleet is unviable because they cannot travel fast on the same scale no matter how many resources they throw into their engines. Your system forces them to build a massive jump capable ship and shrink the size of their signature fleet and change their distinctive fighting style. Can you not see how limiting this is on gameplay? How about a small organisation that wants to take a small piece of real estate away from a much larger organisation that is spread thin? If they concentrate their forces on a weak area, can they destroy the local star gate, take and hold the territory and then demand a settlement? No, because the large organisation has a superweapon that can deploy a significant force to anywhere they like in a matter of minutes. Destroying the star gate in this scenario was a waste of time. I understand what you are proposing. You are proposing that every organisation build a large ship that requires dozens or hundreds of players to build and operate or else be severely restricted in movement capabilities. Making it require a lot of resources only exacerbates the problem by providing additional advantages to the large and wealthy. It also shrinks the universe and makes the claiming of large swaths of territory too easy. The amount of territory that can be claimed and defended by a given number of people is directly proportional to the time it takes to deploy a force across a given distance. When I say "bigger" I mean more defenses, more weapons, more storage capacity, more capabilities, more players, more resources. "Bigger" on its own of course does not mean better. More of those things is its own reward, it does not need additional incentive.
  20. I don't think that is logical at all. We are in the realms of science fiction here, so you can make up any lore you like, and more advanced technology is most certainly not necessarily bigger or heavier. However, with real propulsion bigger only means faster if you don't increase the payload. Put massive engines on a tiny structure and it may go very fast but it can't carry anything. You can't be serious about not being able to think why anyone would want to build a giant ship... How about consolidating a massive amount of firepower and personnel behind extremely strong defences? Transporting massive amounts of goods? An achievement to rally people behind? Your argument of effectiveness against smaller ships is invalid because ships are entirely player designed. You could design a ship to have hundreds of small weapon batteries if you like. I would argue that the only negative of having a large ship is that it's very slow, but you're campaigning to remove this lone disadvantage. In war, mobilisation of force is key. Generally mobilising a small amount of force is easy, a large amount difficult. Take that away and not only is the balance broken, but a massive layer of strategy is removed. You absolutely must remove jump gates from the equation when comparing the speed of two ships. I don't care how fast the jump gate "engine" goes, I care how fast the ship's engines go. Not least because it makes your example contrived. What if I want to go to point D in solar system B? Point D is 5 times further from the gate than point C. So the small ship now takes 55 minutes and the large takes 45.01 minutes. Your resources argument is also bad for gameplay. It is yet another point in making bigger and richer exponentially superior to smaller and poorer. Bigger and richer are intrinsically advantaged. There is no need to give them additional advantages.
  21. I agree completely that safe zones should exist, be rare, and be public. Being public is especially important. No entity should be able to have a claimed territory that is completely safe. I also agree that there shouldn't be any rare resources in or around safe zones. Ideally they would have no strategic value of any kind, inconvenient even, other than the fact that they are destruction free. I'm not sure anything needs to be said about banks in safe zones. Players should be able to build facilities with locks on them. In a safe zone such a facility would be accessible only to players with the correct permissions, and would otherwise be completely impenetrable. I'm not sure how I feel about limiting the size of buildings and constructs... maybe. Renting the land is an interesting idea. There is a potential issue with safe zone land running out, or becoming clutered with unused, indestructible buildings. But who are you paying the rent to? And what happens if you stop paying? It's supposed to be a completely safe place so the punishment for not paying rent is not really clear. A system similar to Eve has been mentioned by NQ, but what I wouldn't want to see is claimed territory being protected by some bubble that keeps trespassers out automatically. I want to see the possibility for small groups to squat on other organisations' land, or wage guerilla warfare that doesn't require a full frontal assault. Only the Territory Unit should be protected from immediate destruction with a timer, so you can't lose your claim on the land while you're asleep. I disagree that there should be any mechanic that makes players outlawed by the game. Define an outlaw? Outlawed by whom? This game is pure PvP, pure player-led. If safe zones are public, who is it that has outlawed a player? Organisation should be able to label other entities as "outlaws" or any other label they see fit. They can then define how their own players and automated constructs react to those players. Other than that I disagree that there should be any official definition for an "outlawed" player, or that there should be any mechanics that make them different from "law-abiding" citizens. Arkification isn't confirmed yet and when NQ were talking about it they explicitly said that it would not be intended to be a benefit for large or rich organisations. They also said that it would have to be permanent for it to be meaningful.
  22. This is misleading because the small ship in this example is using a jumpgate and the mothership is not. Using the gate in System A is just a matter of saving resources, and not required. If you remove the jumpgates from the equation the small ship is virtually immobile compared to the mothership. The opposite should be true. The mothership would be vulnerable to interception if it also had to use the jumpgate and then slowly travel across the system to point C. And this would make for more interesting warfare dynamics than appearing at a point and then having to wait a while to become fully functional. As for resources, I would expect that jumpgates would need to be larger and spend more resources to send larger ships through them in any case.
  23. I really dislike this idea of making large ships incredibly fast. It is the antithesis of balanced gameplay.
  24. Yes, I mention that in my thread, but how severe a punishment would you want to see for death? At the moment it's loss of position, loss of what you're carrying and random inventory losses. That's from a very early devblog, so unlikely to change just for the sake of making bounty hunting realistic.
  25. Say you put a hefty bounty on my head. I strip myself of all valuables, and get a friend to kill me. He then goes and claims the bounty and splits it with me. This was a common problem in Eve. As much as I love the idea of bounty hunting it cannot be a simple kill/get money mechanic in this type of game. I had some ideas on this topic a while back. A short summary is that there need to be dynamic ways for players to put stipulations on their bounty contracts. https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/274-bounty-hunting/?hl=%2Bbounty+%2Bhunting
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