KlatuSatori

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.

You are making me think of Firefly. Central core planets, and outer ring planets.
 
This is exactly what I think will happen also. Because Alioth is the central hub for all new players it is probably going to become the capital world of the universe and be the main place for trade and commerce ect. then everything expanding away from it will be populated by fewer and fewer people giving rise to central and outer planets. Densely populated and lightly populated, it is by a players own choice to go further out than the central hub of players interacts with, and since it is 3D space and not 2D a 2D plan (i think) this gives a smaller and smaller chance of interaction the further you get away from Alioth.
 
So if you are a hermit or explorer be prepared to lose track of all other people in the verse....

I've mentioned this in one or two places but thought it would be good to get it in a thread of its own.
 
Dual Universe is to be a seamless single shard game world with multiple star systems. That means that the space between stars is somewhere players can go. What would be the point in filling vast regions of the game world with nothing but empty space?
 
It follows then that interstellar space should be packed with content. Since DU is to be procedurally generated this shouldn't be difficult to implement. All that's needed is ideas for what to put out there. Some ideas are rogue planets, rogue gas giants with moons, brown dwarf systems, huge asteroid fields, some the size of small solar systems, mysterious wreckages of alien technology such as space stations and spacecraft, or even battlefields. Any other ideas for this kind of content welcome.
 
NQ have said that it will probably be several months after launch before players manage to get into space. While getting into space is an end in and of itself, it is really a stepping stone to the much more glorious end of getting to other worlds. If it takes several months to advance far enough to get to space, how long before the entire starting solar system has been explored and partially colonised?
 
The next step of getting from one solar system to another dwarfs the task of getting from one world to another. Having a rich and dense interstellar medium means getting a foothold on a nearby rogue planet can serve as a stepping stone for getting further out and eventually reaching another star system. This helps with having exploration of the game world flow nicely without requiring sudden leaps in what is possible. It also keeps the sense of wonder alive and maintains that feeling of there always being another frontier to strive for.
 
Having a rich interstellar medium has far reaching gameplay and immersion implications. Keeping the struggle for each greater step into the wider universe is one. But imagine discovering an asteroid field so vast and varied that it's resources could sustain a large group of players for months. You could set up bases in space or on one or two of the larger bodies, become self sufficient, gather riches, grow strong and expand further. A solo or small group of players could find somewhere completely out of the way to construct a base of operations that is unlikely to be found. Or at a more advanced stage of the game, a large organisation could set up secret bases on rogue planets outside a system dominated by a rival organisation in preparation for an attack. The differences in play styles and natural asymmetry that would develop between rivals because of where and how they live and survive would be stark. The possibilities are endless.

I persoanlly prefer a FTL/Warp drive scenario with fictional speeds that are unrealistic in real life, but I would also like the option of warping for 3 hours to some distant galaxy that the rest of you will never vist because you do not want to sit at the PC for 3 hours of warp.
 
I love the concept of no mans sky as far as the size of the universe. What I dislike is the liklihood of you never running into someone else. I think Dual should meet this idea in the middle. Allow for fast "local" systems travel, but with also the ability to reach a distant galaxy.
 
I say this because I am not sure how the pvp balance will eventually work out. In space engineers its difficult to build a medium or large sized ship unless you are playing with a small group of friends. I do not want my work constantly attacked by players (I know there will be safe zones, but still).
 
I have played mostly PVP games in my online gaming life, so it's not a matter of pvp, but more a matter of wanting to create some really cool and fun stuff for the game but have it taken away by a griefer. There has to be a balance.....soooo
 
That being said. I would prefer to build far far away from everyone on some distant planet, even then I will make an underground base and even then it will have locks on the doors and plenty of defense systems. This is also a great way for empires to start forming and riches saved. Attacking a small ship will be fun, but sieging a city with an army will be even more fun....but there has to be some way to regain your stuff. I am just not sure how permanently lost items/resources will be.
 
I would prefer slower combat, combat where it takes a raid a good amount of time to break through a larger ship (unless focus fired by a giant army). Think of it as a boss fight vs getting a 1 shot head kill in an FPS.
 
Basically, there needs to be away to appeal to casuals or pacifists and a way to appeal to hard core at the same time. My solution is to get the hell away from everyone.

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/42-hello-anyone/?hl=hazeron
 

I mostly agree. What I am against is having more than one character in the game at the same time. Having different characters that you use at different times doesn't bother me too much. If it's easier to enforce one character per player then that would be my strong preference.

I understand the desire and the draw for having alts and playing the spy game, first though Ill just talk of alts in general.
 
If you only have one character per account allowed, you eventually hit a skill cap. Even if they allow you to unlearn and relearn new skills, some people won't be satisfied, and they will demand multiple character slots, or bypass the system with multiple accounts.
 
If you allow people multiple characters, they have almost no sense or responsibility to the game world. Something not going your' way, no problem just log out let someone else fix it. They can also master everything in the game, which maybe that's fine after all they pay for content why get just a slice of the whole pie you pay for. Another problem with having an alt character is the way it interacts with the game, you are an extra dimensional being and break the continuance of each character when you log out to a character select and then go to a loading screen and are back in some other time or place in game.
 
 
A partial mix of both would be a good thing to look into, using in game mechanics. You have multiple bodies, perhaps you train different knowledge into them, and this could also allow you multiple aliases.
As it is with the spy game, its almost perfect if you have totally separate characters, e.ve. However, If all your alt characters were just clones somewhere, you could also monitor other chat systems by proxy without logging out, discretely or not, I dont know how the chat works right now so its hard to say.
 
I know such a method would require some things be developed especially for spies. What Im thinking is spies have a skill they can unlock that allows them to display a different account name, if that is even displayed, or other nefarious things to hide their true identity. It could be either or both for their main character, or their alt clones.
 
The best communities Ive felt that treat the game and other players with the most respect have been ones where you have just one character. The ones that seem washed up and cheap are where someone puts much time into a character, gets bored of it and abandons it. When people abandon characters and don't say anything you lose track of them sometimes they go join a different guild, they take up extra names, and so forth.

I saw a video once about the actual scale of the solar system and they had little marbles almost a kilometre apart to show it correctly. You needed something like 11 Kilometres to show the entire solar system to scale using marbles...
 
That's a lot of empty space.. and I'd like it to be either filled with things to do, or closed down into a more manageable size. The first one more though.
 
Things to do and places to see if better than nothing (meaning space) in my books. Asteroids fields, rouge planets and all that. Especially moving from system to system, if the FTL doesn't work instantly then you're going to be travelling through nothingness a lot without it.

(Posted Friday 24th of May 2016 on the DevBlog) 
 

 
Today is an exciting day! We are proud to reveal the first images of Dual Universe, our futuristic MMORPG where players coexist in a single unbounded game universe (with no instances or loading zones), with the added ability to modify the game environment in ways never before seen on this scale and in such great detail.
 
The images below are all the first publicly available screenshots of the Dual Universe, all images were captured "in game" and represent the game engine and gameplay features in its current pre-alpha state. To put this into context, all the constructions can be built in game by players, all the terrains can be mined and terraformed by the players and all the distant planetary systems can be reached.
 
It all starts on a planet called Alioth, where, as the story goes, you step out of the arkship ready to embark on your adventure and rebuild civilization.
 
      
 
 
As you can see, there are several environments on the planet, like dense forest and arid desert. If you look to the sky you will see neighboring planets with their own unique biospheres awaiting to be explored. While we update the game, we will also add more and more diversity to the many different planet types, so explorers can be sure to encounter a rich and varied world full of surprises (we won?t say any more, because, you know, they are surprises!).
 
Dual Universe is, among many other things, a game where players can get creative and build things. Here is a typical situation where a group of players are collaborating and working together on the construction of an outpost.
 

 
As player?s ambitions grow and the materials required become more obtainable, cities and building will be built. The images below shows how the end result may look.
 
 
    
 
 
Then come the creation of ships and space stations! For example, you can build small personal spacecrafts...
 
  
 
 
...in which case you get a Cockpit UI when you enter one of these.
 
  
 
 
But you can also build far bigger, multiplayer ships...
 
  
 
 
...to the point where you can build really huge behemoths! This is something that has never been done in any builder game that we know of, especially not in a continuous single-shard MMO.  When we say ?behemoth?, we mean a space station that is 1.5km long, entirely made with voxels, as in the images below.
 

 
Perhaps even more importantly than size, which of course matters, is the fact that multiplayer ships and orbital stations are inhabitable: you can walk in it, meet some friends in it, discuss, play and coordinate your actions with them.
 
You can see below a screenshot showing an interior command room of a space station.
 

 
Then, there is space. The big vast blackness of space interrupted by the enigmatic flickers of light from distant stars, each one representing a possible new world to explore and conquer. This exploration will most likely arrive in a later stage in the game, when players will have mastered the technologies for warp drives and even later, stargates. But we give you a taste of it, because we find it awe-inspiringly beautiful.
 

 
That?s it for now! We hope you like what you see. Again, remember that everything you see here is in-game, all constructions can be built and edited by players. Add the fact that everything takes place in the same continuous universe and we believe that we have a game that is really new and exciting. But the only thing that matters for us now is what you think! So feel free to give us feedback and suggestions. We won?t be able to integrate all ideas in the short time that separates us from the alpha, but we will keep in mind and care about everything you say.
 
By the way, we have a new official website.
If you haven't seen it already, you will find useful additional on it!
 
JC Baillie,
Project Lead.

To our engines we will need a fuel. It would be cool if they were different blends of fuel.
 
From where we can take fuel ?? :
 
1) we can produce the fuel from a variety of materials found on planets or moons,
2) we can collect fuel from the stars if we have on our ship the appropriate module,
 
Whot determines the quality of the fuel mixture in these two cases ? ....
 
to point 1) the type of used raw materials, the amount of the raw materials. We may also enter the "quality factor" for such materials. The better the quality of the raw material, the better the mixture of fuel.
 
to point 2) the quality of fuel depends on: type of stars from which we collect fuel, the type of module we used.
 
Fuel quality would be an important factor for pilots. Could affect of range of our ship, amount of fuel consumed by the engine.
 
We can add a cool thing: when you have in a tank fuel of quality 80% and form star you collect fuel of quality 45%......then your fuel losing quality to for example 60%.
 
Quality of fuel mixture can also be an interesting factor in the trade, PvP. Better fuel mixture is a better price. Corporations of players will always want to take control of areas of planets where are key raw materials for the production of fuel.
   

so i don't like the idea of being able to have several characters in DU.
it kinda breaks the game.
 
for example when you are part of 1 empire and being able to make a second char joining the hostile empire.
also, dual universe would be way more serious to the player if you had only 1 character.
 
i dont like the idea.

I  couldn't agree more on 'increasing awareness and develop countermeasures'. This is preferable than uber control over every aspect of the game. 

All CCP had to do was put a cycle on the cloak module, say 25 mins so people could go for a cig or bio break. But no, they never really liked that idea, regardless of how many times it was suggested. I guess it increases the friction between groups and to be honest it is an easy one to work around in Eve.
 
Ive been a cloaky camper and ive dealt with cloaky campers. There are worse things in space MMOs, I refer to CODE. Hopefully DU will have a better system to deal with people like that.
 
People play games their way, and ive never had an issue with how they play using their money, BUT I think devs need to look after rookies who are generally unfamiliar with game mechanics or have not yet joined a group/corp/clan/guild.
 
I know this goes against a true sandbox gaming experience, but new members are a games best asset and without them the veterans will soon become bored.
 
I think what I am trying to say is this. Regardless of if its a cloaky ship, a trade mechanic that is not well understood (re. Jita scam), a pirate lifestyle, a monopoly on a specific trade item or an uber high ground rent on a planet. The most important thing is to let it continue, but increase the awareness and develop a countermeasure.

CCTV cameras and view screens!  They can be used for all kinds of things like having different views from inside a multiplayer ship (including Star Trek style massive front view screen), or for surveillance of your territory and surrounding areas.  Don't know how feasible it is, but thought I'd throw it out there.

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

I imagine this could be taken much further in DU than in E:D.
 
Naming stars / solar systems?
Naming planets and moons?
How about naming continents or oceans?
Or naming individual territory tiles?
Renaming them if you claim them?

A neat concept from No Man's Sky:
 
It would be nice to have a system that would either:
 
1. Allow a system whereby the player and/or group name which discovers a planet, solar system, or star to be displayed when that object is either neared or targetted.
 
2. Allow for the player and/or group which discovers a planet, solar system, or star to name that entity.

This is the only thing I've ever read about seas.  From the multiplayer ship crew blog:
 
 
 
 

Since it's all completely fictional, no, nothing requires anything.
 
I can make up the fact that warp drives can move ships at thousands of times the speed of light and now I'm right.
 
Anyways, the point I'm making here is that all of this completely fabricated so no one can say anything is or isn't required.
 
I just prefer getting ships up to speed and having some travel time aboard them. Gates seem like a cop out. Plus they'll become huge points of PvP contention where jerks will camp and everyone else gets obliterated unless they concoct some reason to prevent PvP around them but then how do you destroy one?
 
Anyways, just give us really dope Alcubierre drives.

The 47th Legion is a military themed, North American based player association. The 47th engages in a wide variety of in-game activities to include PvE, PvP, crafting/trading, exploration, and colonization.

The 47th prides itself on professionalism and esprit de corps which are our core principles. We hold our Legionaries to a high standard and prohibit any and all types of exploiting and cheating.


Teamwork and collective effort are mantras the 47th Legion lives by. We explore in a squad, move in a squad, and we all do what we can to contribute to the Legion. Our Legionaries provide materials for the crafters who in turn provide gear back to the Legionaries. If you like to go and do things your own way, then the 47th isn't for you.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Remember, if you are looking for an active, organized, fun, and professional guild, then you've found it in the 47th Legion!




While the 47th is military themed with great interest in PvP our ultimate goal is the creation of our own castrum (fort) and the creation of a multi-national alliance, if not full society, all with a very heavy emphasis on mechanized combat. Tanks, APCs, mechs, exoskeletons, powered armor, fighters, bombers, capital ships, et cetera. It's the future, baby, let's roll with tech on our side!

The various play-styles would rank in Legion-wide interest as such:
 
PvP: ►►►►►►► The 47th will be heavily engaged in PvP and it will be one of our primary activities. PvE: ►►► We can't PvP all of the time so while PvE doesn't take priority it's obviously going to be an important activity. Colonization: ►►►►►► This our primary motivating factor above all else and will be heavily facilitated by our PvP and exploration play. Construction: ►►►►► A combat unit is only as strong as it's supply chain. The 47th Legion features a robust crafting infrastructure on our website centered around a functioning supply section which gives our crafters the ability to quickly advertise items and our Legionaries the ability to easily request them! No other nation offers infrastructure like this! Exploration: ►►►►►►► This will be a cornerstone that will heavily influence city building and PvP. Scouts definitely have a place in our Legion. Socialization: ►►► We like people! Someone has to run those shady bars just off post where our Legionaries will relax in their downtime. We have big plans for building an alliance and a cities so diplomats will be needed.
We strive to provide our Legionaries with a semi-realistic military simulation environment. This involves some light roleplaying elements but our rank structure, personal awards, training exercises, and camaraderie constitute the bulk of the atmosphere.

Additionally, the 47th recognizes the contributions our Legionaries make to the unit. Whether it's something as simple as creating some artwork, recruiting friends into the unit, or capturing a ship single-handedly we have a plethora of rewards to publicly honor our Legionaries with.

Our legionaries proudly display their ribbons in a display case on their profiles. If you'd like to learn more about our awards system you can view them and their descriptions here.



Professionally built website and forum based on IPS Community Suite; Image galleries, downloads, blogging, and social media support; Unit supply section; Discord VOIP service; Unique rank structure and awards systems; Weekly scheduled operations; Personalized 47th Legion e-mail accounts; Dual Universe newswire service; and Real military leadership and experience.
Must be at Least 19 years of age (exceptions considered on case by case basis); Willingness to engage in PvP; Willingness to casually roleplay; and All alternate characters must be tagged with the unit.
 
 

The 47th was originally established in 2007 as an offshoot of a Star Wars Galaxies guild from the Chilastra server.

By the time of the NGE a lot of interest in SWG had been permanently lost. A deployment or two later I became highly interested in Tabula Rasa and chose to start my own player organization for the game with a few SWG guildmates which came to be known as the 47th A.F.S. Expeditionary Force, or 47th A.F.S.E.F..

Around the time of TR's closure Earthrise caught the 47th's interest. We waited for Earthrise for over three years and were finally able to step foot on Enterran soil at game launch.

Unfortunately Earthrise was plagued with launch issues, lacked basic and rudimentary features, had an extremely unoptimized client which ran very poorly, had a small community, and incredibly slow patch releases. In June of 2011 we decided to quit Earthrise.

Moving on from there we briefly dabbled in Star Wars: The Old Republic though in the end the game was simply the antithesis in design of everything we actually enjoy in an MMO.

A few months later we started following the development of the Trion Worlds and SyFy collaboration known as Defiance. We greatly enjoyed the game and show and quickly rose to being the most dominant guild on the PC platform. Unfortunately, Trion World's interest in future development of the title quickly waned and the game is all but abandon-ware at this point.

After exiting Defiance we've focused mainly on multiplayer sandboxes such as Empyrion: Galactic Survival, Space Engineers, Miscreated, DayZ, Ark: Survival Evolved, RUST, and various ArmA 3 mods over MMOs.



The 47th is an excellent environment for current and past members of the armed forces. Many of our Legionaries are prior service (I personally served in the U.S. Army for seven years as a 19D Cavalry Scout: FIRST TEAM!) and enjoy being around other prior service Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines; we welcome and encourage you to join!




At present we are currently gathering intelligence and planning the best path through the game to achieve our goals as quickly as we can after launch.

All recruits who enlist prior to the launch of Dual Universe will be entered into our NCO Development program upon completion of their Battle Readiness Checklist. Additionally, all Legionaries who successfully recruit another member into the 47th will be automatically promoted up to and including the rank of Miles Gregarius [E3].




The 47th currently has Legionaries deployed in many titles as we await the launch of Dual Universe. We are currently officially supporting Empyrion: Galactic Survival, Star Citizen, Rust, and Osiris: New Dawn. We also have dedicated ARK and Space Engineer servers.

Why wait months to play with an organization when you can join us online right now?
 
 

To be perfectly honest, I think the bridge of any ship should be located in the center of the ship, or at least nestled within some considerable armor. Observation decks are find, but I would apply liberal usage of bulkheads between them and the rest of the ship. I'm one for utility, rather than aesthetics.

/backhander (strike and challenge to a duel)

How will piloting function as the scale of ships get larger? Say I want to build a Battlestar or Macross, and have some consoles set up in
 
command bridge to maneuver the ship. Will my pilot(s) have to do that by sight? Or will there be some sort of display on the console for the
 
pilot(s) to use?

It's always exciting to see another devblog! It looks like you're putting together a powerful and versatile set of tools.
 
Are any of the three types of safe zones confirmed? Is the virtual simulator essentially a creative mode where you have access to all standard parts or perhaps all unlocked or discovered parts, which you can use to create your own blueprint? Then build it in the real world by gathering the required materials, etc? If so I think it's a great idea. The others are also great ideas if done right, but I've already given my ideas on that elsewhere.
 
Are the elements fixed and unmodifiable? Or will it be possible to change their shape, size, color, material, etc? Will players be able to create their own versions of these elements?
 
EDIT: BTW I think it's a very smart move to implement constructive gameplay elements before destructive ones.

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.