CyberCrunch

I don't feel like the stories are missing anything. For the setting and overall story ark everything fits together perfectly. Most importantly the scenario gives very realistic motives/explanations to the already existing DU-Lore. In my opinion NQ should consider making these stories an official part of the lore. It would give the universe of DU a lot more meaning/depth. It would make the game a lot more immersive by having a more drawn out background story than the one we currently have. Also @Ben Fargo: you seem to be quite involved in current real world AI research problems, especially based on your accurate descriptions in your newest story. You probably already know about most current AI Experts, but just in case I highly recommend the YT channel of my favorite AI-safety expert Robert Miles: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLB7AzTwc6VFZrBsO2ucBMg Maybe you can draw some inspiration from his videos for your current storyline...

Another great story! Looks like you are going for an actual multi part series for this. Can’t wait for the next one!^^ The way the interaction with AI is depicted reminds me of the movie Her. Seems you will even be going for the same type of ending… :'( Well, I really can’t wait to have my personal AI assistant in rl! Let’s see how that will work out…

It seems all discussions converge to the same old topics over and over again. Well that probably just shows how controversial the opinions here are. Regarding automated building I don’t actually think that’s an issue worth arguing too much about. NQ already confirmed that there will be factory units, and the benefits of that have already been discussed in other topics on this forum. However they will of course be limited(e.g. less efficient, slower) compared to manual building, so conventional builders won’t lose their jobs. Adding a system to auto construct capital ships using robot-drones wouldn’t be a big deal, because it’s based on the same limitations as factory units. Besides the fact that recourses still need to be gathered manually; this is a far bigger hurdle than the actual building process. One genuinely new idea I take away from the OP is a free camera system for building. This would actually be a huge improvement compared to the current building-system. So many times I fiddled around with the character-movement system, just to get my cursor on the right voxel. An advanced building interface where you could freely move the camera around, and even fly through voxels would be a great help. Essentially providing a typical 3D CAD camera interface in the game. Ingame it could be implemented through a little drone item that has a nanoformer attached to it. Maybe NQ is already thinking about some drone systems, as I hope this thing -> will do more than just look good... This should only be intended as a late game item used by high level builder. For small ships a CAD-system would be a bit overkill, but builders on a large scale project would definitely benefit from this!

“No, I found her program on old archives and brought her online. She’s done more to develop the New Hope and its drive systems than I have.” Best Quote of this story, in my opinion!! Of course those incredible technological breakthroughs would've never be achieved by mere humans, there had to be some sort of AI involved! xD This would also explain why humans on the Arkships forgot how all the advanced technology works. It was technically not even developed by them in the first place… This story is really great; however it could be even better if you would've let a native speaker proofread the story first. As Kurock said there are a lot of small errors, which are a bit weird to read. The ending seemed also a bit rushed, but I guess you were just forced to publish it in time.^^ It would be great if you could upload the story again in a more polished form. Preferably with your original formatting, using a link to sth. like GoogleDrive, to avoid the 500kb limit. It really deserves to be presented in a proper form.

Yep. this just kills the actuall discussion, as always... I'm really sad this is the way it works on this forum. (EDIT: this was a respons to this post...) @0something0 A short comment on your initial thoughts: It's not at all contradictory to limit automation!! I think NQ would want to give us as much freedom in DU as possible, including automation! However they are essentially forced to limit certain aspects of it for gameplay reasons. The core gameloop is based on competition, and you wouldn't want to play a game that just feels unfair(pay2win). It's a bit difficult where to draw the line, but thats exacly why we are discussing this. Also the term automation has a very negative bias in this community because the only thing people can think of is guns and PvP. But just like in RL automation can have many benefits. It would help manage the economy in big organizations (e.g. building ATMs), or enable new ways of mobility by scripting a sort of car-sharing service. Also for recreational activities you could build very complex minigames or amuesment parks with the help of automation. I'd really love to get more into detail about this topic, but I don't want to write another textwall, and this forum isn't the right place for it... In conclusion I think NQ is doing a great job so far, as they implemented amazing scripting possibilities in the game already. I'm sure that stuff will only get limited, if it's actually harming the gameplay.

The thing is automated turrets would be able to get spammed on a huge ship, and be basically make one invincible = Pay to Win I don’t see a problem with the “big guns” scenario, because NQ can limit how big those guns will be, so they won't really be "unfair". Also as others have said before realism should not be a reason to support automation. The top1 priority for NQ should be to design this universe so it is fun to play for everyone. All other aspects of this game e.g. the Lore, are only designed in order to support features which are actually “fun”. That said IMO its fun to play/coordinate together with other people, and we should thing of features how to encourage that. So instead of automating everything on a huge ship we could think about mechanics to give the crew meaningful tasks to do. Organizing a ship with 100 individuals should be very complex, as this is part of the fun! A mechanic that gives an individual player (with enough Quanta) SIGNIFICANTLY more power over other players should be prevented. The 2 especially delicate aspects are: - For military: using automation to increase the amount of DPS a player can deal is a no-go - For economics: using automated mining to basically create a Quanta printing machine is also a no-go Now on the other hand there are aspects of the game where automation would make sense: For me it’s not fun to invest countless hours into building a huge base, just to have it all destroyed over night, without even having the chance to defend it. -> NQ agrees to that and will provide features like shields, and maybe limited auto turrets for base defense. This will have to be properly balanced, so that attacking a base should also still be fun!! It’s also not fun to have to rebuild your ship by hand every time, because it’s been destroyed for the 10th time during a war against another org. -> That’s why NQ provides factory units for automated ship building. Even flying a ship for hours could become a bit boring, so NQ allows us to script an autopilot in Lua for that. The important thing is that none of the above examples is giving an individual player a significant advantage over others. I hope it’s clear now that automation is not a yes-or-no question. It’s rather a question of finding the right balance. -> NQ should use automation to encourage the fun parts of the game while preventing boring, or unfair situations. Actually I think even fully automated turrets are kind of a gray area. If NQ could find some game mechanic so that a player won’t gain any real advantage by having auto-turrets, it could work. Wizardoftrash made an interesting suggestion about this a while ago: I don’t want to repeat everything, as this post has already gotten too long… this topic has been popping up for years even though NQ is still far away of implementing these PVP features. Unfortunately automation is somehow a buzzword that gets Twerk triggered, but I hope this discussion won’t get as heated as last time…

Agreed. Scarcity of ressources should actually be a feature, if everything is regenerating there would be no reason to fight for the best spots! And when when one spot is no longer valueble it would give the perfect incentive to move to another planet, or solar-system! Ok, I’m not saying we should ever be able to run out of basic resources like iron… but even in Minecraft you never have scarcity of iron. It’s sth. you can collect along the way without thinking much about it. But what you really care about in MC are the diamonds, which can actually become very hard to find in a crowded server... Similarly I think “Endgame” resources of DU should be hard to get. You will probably not even find these resources on Alioth, but only on a few moons on distant planets. And that’s where the fighting will start. So in conclusion: - Beginners should have no trouble to get into the game. They essentially dig a whole, get some dirt, and build their dirt ship. = basic resources are pretty much infinite. - Competitive players however should go hunting for the best spots to be able to produce the highest tier of engine/fuel/gun/ammunition. This concept is also very scalable. So in the first month the hot-spots might be on Alioth, in the first year on some moons, after 3 years on another solar system, ect.. Of course the issue Warden has stated should also be kept in mind. If a 50k org manages to get control over the only moon which supplies an endgame resource this could collapse the economy. But I think I remember in some interview JC said they want to use asteroids to balance out these resource shortages, so players will be able to mine from asteroids instead of the moon, which is temporarily looked down.

While I support the intention of lowering the expectations for actual content of the game, I think we should still try to have fun in the pre-alpha events. Of course NQ does these events mainly to get feedback to find problems with the game, which we as the community should definitely report. But even in this current state there are so many things you can do / build in the game. I don’t like how so many posts basically tell people to stay away as if DU would be practically unplayable at the moment! I was actually playing an earlier version of DU at Gamescom last month, and had a lot of fun! As long as you can keep your mindset to be: “all the bad parts of the game are going to improve” you’ll still have a great time... Regarding the time zone problem, I’d suggest NQ extends future pre-alpha events to be 24 hours. There should be no problem leaving the servers running a bit longer, and the oceanics won't get screwed next time.

This is really a well thought out and structured idea to simplify recruitment on the forum. However I doubt that it’s going to see much usage, due to the fact that only a small fraction of players actually register to the forum. The few people who post on the forum especially to get themselves recruited mostly don’t read much other topics beforehand, or want to do a more free introduction of themselves. So even if the post is pinned, it might be ignored by newcomers. However I agree that the current organization recruitment system might is very limited, and a centralized job board would definitely help new players and orgs. Maybe NQ can integrate your forum-post as a template for a future job board on the community portal. They would just need to add another tab for people looking for orgs, in addition to the already existing tab of orgs looking for people... This should not be too hard to implement, it would be enough if newcomers could fill out the template, which is then automatically deleted after 1 week to not overcrowd the job board. Also if the player joins an org on its own the post should also be automatically deleted. >No moderation from mods necessary. This is more relevant once the game picks up speed, so it might be far into alpha/beta before NQ will implement this… But I definitely hope it’s on their roadmap.

The thing about mass production is that it should not give you an unfair advantage over new players… players that want to “craft all the little parts” can do so, and still be able to compete against ships from the production line. Using a factory unit should help you save time to build a ship, but it should also be more costly. So the factory should have high maintenance costs. Also the higher the core-unit-level the more expensive the factory unit… Being able to produce smaller elements with “sub-blueprints” would also be a neat idea. Then you would have to manage the logistics of a whole line of suppliers to build a capital ship. Maybe there could be a sub-factory only specialized in producing different capital-class engines from sub-blueprints. This system will probably not be in release, but could add another level of depth to the industry-game.

Exactly that! I was a bit worried that what we saw at Gamescom would be the "design" they would go for pre-alpha release... but the new stuff has a much more "polished" feel to it! I wonder why they didn't show us that build at Gamescom... probably they just finished it a few days ago! xD Also that autonomous drone is amazing! ...to make it follow someone around is neat, but I wonder if you could program a fully fledged autopilot using that new radar unit shown in the end. (e.g. navigating to a certain waypoint using collision avoidance) Ok, they said automation will be very limited, but we'll see!

Actually it could really help us if NQ would provide some mechanics for that... To my understanding the goal of creating a cryptocurrency for DU would be that you can program it to have certain properties, so that the currency is useful in DU. NQ would not need to actually provide dedicated cryptocurrency system. An API to get some relevant ingame values would be enough... With that players could program their own currencies externaly to generate coins based on values from this API where the value is tethered to the amount of Quanta an org has, or iron, or DACs, or any other value you can get from this API. Possibly you could also create a currency that rewards players with coins based on there ontime. (ok, that would probably not work out xD) Since the value is practally "hard coded" into the currency it would be very reliable asset for trading. But that’s only the beginning. With smart contracts even more things are possible. Maybe someone wants to create a DAU in DU. I’m actually a big fan of Ethereum myself. They also provide a very simple way to create so called ERC20 tokens based on the Ethereum-platform. https://www.ethereum.org/token They seem also quite successful as there are currently 5892 different currencys based on ERC20! However it’s actually tied to the ETH-blockchain, so you have to pay “gas” for each transaction which might be a bit tricky for a game-currency... I never heard of Open Transactions but since yama said in his cryptocurrency-topic... This might even be a much better platform than with ERC20 tokens. I’m not really an expert on this, but I look forward to see yamamushi will come up with for our DU-cryptocurrency!

@RightBigToe unfortunately construct shadows are limited to a few 100 meters, and will probably not be visible from orbit. But if I remember correctly at Gamescom planetoids do obscure the sunlight on a global scale. I think I actually saw an eclipse where the moon of Alioth was shaded by the planet while the sun passed behind Alioth! However since all planetoids are static, eclipses should happen at exactly the same time every day! It would be actually a very unique and pretty feature to have on a planet. xD

I mean it just "felt" unintuitive/unresponsive... but then again, it was my first time playing DU; without any tutorial! So such things are probably to be expected! xD