Caprikel

I'm really excited for the kind of Politics and complex interactions that will be created within DU. I've never played EVE, but I've been somewhat curious about it. I never really ended up trying it out though, partly because I didn't want to join a game like that where I would be late to the party essentially. With Dual Universe though, not only will I have the opportunity to get a start on it early on, I'll also be able to enjoy the building aspect of it, since I have played a ton of Minecraft. So in other words, I'm just really hyped for the game!

So basically what are some somewhat obscure or rarely mentioned features that Novaquark has mentioned that they will or may be adding that you are especially excited for? For example, I'm very intrigued by the idea mentioned by J.C. for "low-tech" planets where he mentioned that a planet could be limited to something like medieval technology. I can't remember which interview this was from, but I think it would be very interesting to visit a planet where people role-play a medieval society with castles and feudalism. I think it would add quite a bit of variety and role-playing opportunities to the game that would be fun to try out. So what Odd features are you looking forward to?

I plan on building ships and buildings to develop my building experience and hopefully becoming good enough to sell custom ships at a decent profit, and maybe even mass producing a ship type with blueprints if it becomes popular. I also hope to find other ways to make good money, and maybe one day organize several organizations together and design a super-ship that can act as a caravan/city. I also at some point want to build sci-fi versions of ancient civilizations, like ancient Egypt, Rome, the Wild-West, etc.

It is the engine of progress after all!

I do hope they implement various activities that can be done on a ship while waiting to get to a destination. Maybe you'll be able to use that time manufacturing or refining resources that you have on you if it's a big enough ship to fit the devices for that.

I didn't even think about the potential protection that would be provided by all the people on board. If there's even just 50 people who have battle ready ships, or there are plenty of battle-ready ships made for this purpose, then all that is needed is plenty of people to man these ships. I'm sure any traveling merchant will be willing to help defend against the pirates when they have many of their goods on the ship, and so the number of people would make the city-ship well protected. Also as for travel, when star-gates are added, a city-ship will be capable of traveling to different star systems even with it going at a slow speed. One thing i'm unsure about is whether there will be any kind of orbiting in the game. Currently we know that planets and asteroids won't orbit, but it would be interesting if ships could orbit around a star or planet.

If there's anything I love more than a thought experiment, I would be hard pressed to think of it. -What can the ship provide that sets it apart, what is its niche? What I have envisioned is a giant, possibly modular, spectacle of a ship that would not only provide all the services of a city, but also function as a well-known caravan to make money in. In order to attract people to it, it would have to be iconic as a great place to spend time and make/spend money. For example, if gambling becomes a thing in DU, this construct would make a great Las Vegas as you can just let it come to your area for you to try it out. If the ship is capable of entering the planets atmosphere, you could have it land in a major city, and attract the many people who are intrigued in this wonderful super-ship. So basically the niche would be people who want to travel/live in a traveling city, so that they can visit many planets, and meet all sorts of new people. -Bulk reduces cost but anything popular enough to be mass produced will be made locally. One of the main selling points of the project would be that it provides many goods that won't be available at a local market, including materials unique to other planets, unique constructs/vehicles, and whatever else DU makes available. Also JC mentioned that you can order a product from a market unit, which leaves the need to actually go get your purchase from the market unit. With this caravan-like ship, you can simply wait for the ship to arrive in your area, where you can pick it up without ever having to hire a risky middleman. So basically, if the market unit of this ship has a cool vehicle you want that isn't available locally, you can purchase it from the market unit on the ship, and wait for it to arrive and you will have saved money not hiring a middleman, who could potentially lose your ship to pirates or steal it. It basically provides what you would want from a foreign market, except without the middleman/self-traveling. -How would "we" off set the transportation cost so you can offer goods cheaper than local sources. The transportation energy costs are usually the biggest costs in a products lifecycle. I'm unsure if it will be able to compete with local markets over goods that they can produce readily. Like I said in response to the previous question, it's mainly going to be competition with foreign sources rather than local.

These are some good points to consider, I'll see if I can address each one if I have anything relevant to add. 1. You may have got the wrong idea about what I was envisioning based on what I mentioned in my first post, I was only using the land-based sand-streamer as an inspiration rather than a literal translation. What I envision is basically a space-based super-caravan, which has many of the same functions as a city/town. The costs are definitely an issue, and a project like this might have to be made with the assumption that it might not even make a profit, like with building a death-star. 2. Basically the point of the moving market is that you can eliminate the middleman that you would deal with when purchasing goods from far off markets, and you would have many of the goods that wouldn't be available at the local market. Also a big part about making something like this work is for it to be very well known. Since this construct would be traveling in a cycle, it would have an established schedule so that people will know when it will be at their planet or area. It would also help if the thing just looked amazing, and attracted players who just want to see what it's like. 3. As for traders, the only permanent residents will likely be those who were part of the organization who build it, and actually live there. Most traders will only stay there while the ship is staying in the region, or go on a cycle. A trader could pay to ride on the ship for one cycle, and use this opportunity to sell to all kinds of people from different planets. This of course requires that lots of people actually want to go into the ship and look around and buy things, and as such this would require lots of people in the game of DU. So basically the trader pays for one cycle trip, in which they get the opportunity to sell to many people all around the travel course, all without needing their own ship. Some people also might just pay for a one way trip on something like this, for those who don't have a ship of their own, and with the added benefit of things to do on their ride. 4. Like I said before, it would provide goods that aren't available at local markets. This includes materials unique to different regions, actual constructs that people are selling, and whatever else DU has in store for us. As for protection, this will definitely be one of the most difficult issues. They would need to pay for protection from the money they make from taxing transactions made on their market unit, but it's hard to guess how much protection they would need. One idea I have is that they could have this giant construct be modular, so in other words it could split into multiple moving ships, which could split up in an emergency and all fly in different directions if they face an overwhelming threat. I would like to see what something like this looks like, personally a giant ship splitting into parts and flying in different directions sounds really cool to me. Or maybe instead of flying away it would make it more usable for battle and fight off the pirates. As for the cost of travel, that would also definitely be a big hurdle. For now we just need to know how expensive travel is. Obviously something of this magnitude will only be possible or practical when/if Dual Universe has a huge amount of players, so we will have plenty of time to figure out the practicalities. Hopefully it does become a reality, and I'll be able to chill in a casino on a giant traveling city, making money as a trader/ship designer.

I hope I'll be able to get Beta access after Alpha comes out, as I won't have money to spend until I get a job in the summer. Maybe if the Alpha comes out late enough I'll be able to get in, but I'm not sure if I even want in on the Alpha, or if I should wait for the Beta where things are a bit less buggy and more refined.

Insurance sounds the riskiest, since if you insure a ship, a person could get their friend to "steal" it and then they collect insurance money and still have the ship. Ship insurance could work if limited to an organization with trusted members. As for building insurance, this would be more practical as a building can't be stolen, and a person isn't likely to destroy their building just to get insurance money. Although with insuring structures, I don't see many situations where this would make much sense. For an insurer, you wouldn't want to insure an unprotected players home as it's at high risk, and insuring something large like a town/city would also be risky, since in a successful attack the whole town/city is likely to be destroyed/looted. I just don't think a lot of people would want to be insurers, or want to get insurance. As for banking, I could see that as a possibility with a trusted organization. Basically people would agree to give their money to the bank, and the bank would make investments with the money to make more money. loans/investments will likely only happen with trusted players/organizations. If someone/some organization gets a large loan and never pays it off, they'll need to be able to be held accountable, so a military force would be needed to make sure they pay. Basically people would only really use a bank if the bank reliably makes their customers money, so they would need to build up a very good reputation.

One of the best things about a traveling city for caravans is that they can just park all of their ships inside the city-ship, so that way they don't have to drive themselves. They can basically just pay to hitch a ride and either stay to trade, or just use it for transporting their ship without having to actually drive it themselves. One solution to the extreme cost of setting it up would be to do the "Frankensteins-ship" solution, where you basically add more and more onto it as it is required. It could potentially start out as just a somewhat big trade ship that keeps getting bigger and bigger.

I imagine a traveling city would be the ultimate pirate's bounty, especially since it could have many, many ships on board since ship trading would be a really big thing with something like this. The reason being is that you could order a ship off of this traveling city, and instead of taking the huge risk of hiring some trucker, the city will on your planet in a couple days or less, and as such is the ultimate trucker in and of itself. Basically the traveling city cuts out the middleman, thus making it much cheaper than buying from other far off markets, making it even more useful. Now that I think about it, this kind of mobile-city play-style is inevitable, since there's so much potential wealth that can be created with a marketplace that cuts out the middleman transporter. It's definitely a high-risk investment with it being the ultimate target for pirates, and as such will require lots of paid protection. Whichever organization pulls it off successfully will definitely become quite rich. Maybe one day when Dual Universe is developed enough, I'll try to organize an effort to create something like this.

So I was looking at the thread for nomadic life in DU, and that got me thinking about what kind of potential societies could exist in a nomadic life. Then I remembered the Sandsteamer from Trigun, which is basically a huge land-ship that travels the desert, and is basically a traveling city. Assuming that the market unit, or whatever it's called, can be on a ship, this means that you could basically have a major economic hub traveling from planet to planet to trade goods for profit. This would create a very interesting gamestyle, where people could pay to travel with them, they could wait until this major trade hub is in their area to sell their goods, or they could live on the ship and make money simply trading. The organization that owns the ship would make lots of money from the market unit, and they would need to use that money for protection and for their crew to operate the whole thing and make it worth it for them to work on this ship rather than just mining. People could also set up their businesses there, such as a bank, a casino, a general store or even a full blown stock exchange. I'm pretty sure this is already possible in DU for what is planned, so all that would be needed is a large number of people working together to make something like this happen. I'm guessing something like this will end up popping up as people will be incentivized to make like this once DU becomes developed enough with many people on many planets.

Why an element for roads? That would just be limiting and boring. Why not a special material that makes vehicles that travel over it go faster. That way there would still be the incentive for roads without having a weird road element.

So I looked through the discussions and couldn't find any topics on terraforming, so I decided I should start a discussion about it. So far we know we can break and collect the natural terrain, but so far we've only seen the placement of geometric voxels. I'm assuming we'll be able to place natural terrain at some point, but I have no idea when, or whether they already have. Anyway, I think it's very very important that we're able to place natural terrain and create our own natural structures. First of all it's very important for fixing errors and patching up ugly player-made terrain abominations. Without being able to place natural terrain a griefer or noob would ruin nice looking terrain and we wouldn't be able to properly fix it. It's also very important for making our own beautiful terraformed structures. When I used to play Minecraft, one of the best parts of the building process for me was using the voxelsniper plugin for creating mountains, rivers, oceans, caves, ravines, and whatever else imaginable. Having the ability to create beautiful environments allows for much more creativity in what we can do. In order for us to terraform effectively, we'll need many different tools for it. We'll need a smoothing tool, a flattening tool, a raising tool, a lowering tool, etc. We'll need the ability to place trees, shrubbery, those little rocks, water, grass, and other terrain elements. What other tools do you think would be useful? I'm curious as to the difficulty of implementing terraforming. It seems weird that we haven't seen any of it yet (aside from breaking terrain of course), so I'm assuming it might be difficult to implement. Hopefully it gets into the game soon, since it seems like it's a pretty important aspect for the building part of the game.