Caprikel
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Posts posted by Caprikel
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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?
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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.
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Aint that the sad, sad truth.
It is the engine of progress after all!
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Now back to "why" to travel with the whole city.
For me it would be the convenience to have all your stuff always with you when you travel. And to be protected by the sheer numbers of players in the city.
Space stations might be valuable targets for pirates, but are also way harder to crack, than these lonely cargo ships!
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.
- Things in space should orbit around the nearest gravity center, like shown in the following image: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.
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That is some really good feedback all around.
Caprikel if you want we can keep this thread going as a thought experiment. Overall I think we have identified some questions that need to be answered before we can even begin construction.
Here are a few that come to mind at this time.
-What can the ship provide that sets it apart, what is its niche?
-Bulk reduces cost but anything popular enough to be mass produced will be made locally.
-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 sure other people can think of additional questions that need to be answered before development starts.
Of course you can scale it down but then we are talking about a normal container ship. Moving ore or basic elements for high end construction.
Just some food for thought.
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.
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The concept of a travelling city is no way any more new than the reality of caravans and travelling circuses. As others have said before, it is not impossible - however, it is not economically viable in the short run either.
- The cost of acquisition of any machine is just 10-15% of the lifetime operating cost. The remaining 85-90% belongs to maintenance and repair. Frankly, Lethys, Falstaf and MasteredRed are right: this shouldn't be a land based construct. It's an idea better fitted for something in space.
- Now, if you do build such a station, you will be faced with severe competition from smaller and larger stations that are already established in their respective regions. The idea behind profit in trade is making a better offer than your rivals (or at least lying that you can offer more than them). Bringing a moving market may serve as novelty and earn you profit for the first few rounds, yes. By the time this station is coming round by the fourth time, it may have lost all its glitter. I say "may" because there will always be new players awed by such a display...and some people just love to buy from a market with legs. In the long run, it's at risk of becoming another "Wonder" that's lost its original purpose: to make profit.
- You will likely never find all the traders to fill such a station from one place. The best choice would be to offer prospective traders a place to sell on your massive trade station at a price. If you hope to provide such things as accommodation, recreation, hangars, repair facilities, resource processing equipment and the likes on your station, they will come from different places and different people. As the proximity to a market or resource point drops, the price increases. Many of the traders won't be permanent residents: they'll only bunk with you when you're bunking in their territory. And I will be clear with you on this: different organisations will have varying demands for diverse products. The goods won't be at 100% demand everywhere and you will need a good strategy to bulk up on the right goods as you near the hotspot of the demand for those goods and lose the majority of the goods that the local populace won't be interested in before you get there. If you fail to do that, your travelling city will be carrying a load of junk in the long run.
- The cost of the goods sold on such a station will always be higher than what the local market is offering. Let's face the reality here:
- the people behind this venture will want to make their money back. Nothing is for free: you'd better hope they want payment in Quanta than anything else! That money has to come from somewhere: the goods being sold.
- You have to pay for protection. A huge moving trade station is also a big juicy opportunity. Pirates will shadow its movements, mercenaries will doubtlessly accept jobs to reduce the competition this trade station will bring, and people will just be...people. For that, you will need hired or trained guns of your own to protect your investment. You might say, you would work out deals with the Authority in charge of your current territory, but bear in mind that most will impose some sort of sales tax, payment upfront, or reduced cost for goods they will purchase. Then what happens when you're in no man's sky (it's in space, no?)? You will need mobile defences such as crafts and troops. Mounted guns and launchers won't protect you against a determined band of swashbuckling, combat savvy pirates...amongst others for ever.
- Cost of transportation is going to drive whatever you sell upwards. As Falstaf said, moving this market is going to gulp down energy like a black hole. There is a reason most sci-fi trade stations sit in one place till they are towed away, derelict or destroyed. Take a look at countries in which power generation is not stable and in most cases, supplied by private companies: the cost of production goes up, and the consumers have to put more money down. I'm a big fan of things with engines, but the number of engines you will need to move your travelling city will be a sight to see.
- Independence is going to be a huge bother and it really much sums up everything. The possibility of one organisation doing such a feat are few, but I won't rule it out as impossible. The fact is that, multiple organisations are going to do this thing and each one will have to shoulder one or more responsibilities for the welfare and continued success of this project from start to finish. There will always be this one person that thinks he/she deserves to get more than given. There's going to be serious hurdles to overcome in logistics, security, trade and unity. Many people will indirectly be financing this. Many people will indirectly want to make profit on their investment.
This is looking at things from the financial perspective. I would be optimistic about the idea, where certain prerequisites fulfilled, but for now, I'm much more interested in the specifics of how you plan to make such a thing happen. Remember that it's going to take months to build if you plan to start out large and that means for months it's going to be a sitting duck for people who just like to see things blow up...unless you can provide really dangerous and convincing cover.
Cheers.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Trade routes and caravans will be a thing for sure. Hopefully the population expands enough to support something on this scale.
I would love to see a thing like this happen, moving between planetary systems. Offering exotic goods between remote locations.
Though the cost to set it up would be immense. The construction alone would be astronomical in scope. Perhaps it will evolve out of several trade orgs pooling their resources. Who knows but just like in the real world ships moving containers will gradually grow bigger.
Up until the point that the energy cost moving the goods surpasses the potential profit. And thats where I think your idea hinges on. A ship the size you envision would need a lot of energy to get from A to B.
It will require some serious calculations before construction is even attempted.
DU is going to be a very cool game.
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.
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I see no reason why a market unit couldnt be on a moveable construct. The space station in the demo video's, I thought JC said you could place a market unit on it. And the whole planets being the same as constructs game engine wise.
Would it connect to the data stream while moving? Who knows.
I would invest in some solid protection though. Big (slower) moving construct filled with traders and goods. A pirate's bounty.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.
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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.
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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.
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This would be pretty easy to implement since all they would have to do is have the planet not rotate. Tidally locked planets would be great for people who want it to be daytime all the time or have it be night-time all the time, or Twilight. It would be interesting having hot climate biomes all on the sun side, while having cold climate biomes on the dark side.
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Ok, so if I happen to join 8 different orgs (and they were all ok with it) and war declarations begin involving 2 or more of the 8 orgs I joined, how is that handled then?
It's handled however you want to I guess. It really depends on the Organization. I'm assuming the only organizations that would be going to war would be nations, PvP groups, or maybe large corporations. I doubt Nation Organizations would be ok with you being apart of a rival organization, but they might be ok with you being apart of an ally organization (Kind of like dual-citizenship irl). If you're apart of two Organizations that are at war, then you might have to choose which one to devote your time to, or try to participate in both as long as the battles don't happen at the same time.
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I could see something like this being used for drilling into a larger ship to infiltrate it. You could send a small ship with this drill on the front to latch onto a large ship and bore through to make an opening.
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I think we should just all collectively agree to destroy any ship that looks really ugly. It's our civic duty to destroy ugly things to maintain immersion, and mercilessly slaughter whomever creates those things.
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Alright, now that I've got your attention, I'll explain in detail what exactly I mean by an asteroid Gas-station.
So basically, what I've imagined in my head is a scenario where there's the asteroid belt of a solar system, and this is basically the Wild-West of Dual Universe (At least one of the Wild-Wests).
In this scenario in my head, asteroids will be a rather lucrative business venture, where asteroids are full of rare elements to mine (Like real life) and they would also be full of ice (Like real life).
In this thread: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/10725-food-dispensers/page-2
I mentioned the idea of getting water in space by mining the Ice, and CaptainTwerk mentioned that that Ice would be full of isotopes, and that they could be useful for fusion.
So imagine that you have a mining operation on an asteroid, and there's lots of Ice you have to mine through. There could be an element that basically filters the isotopes, like deuterium and tritium, which could be used for fusion fuel, and the rest of the ice can be used for same consumption. (Assuming people will eventually need water to survive in a future update.)
I think this would lead to some interesting business ventures, where your mining operation can basically have a gas-starion (fuel-station) out in a desolate asteroid wasteland. While they're at it they might as well have a pub/motel to go along with it, and then a neat lil asteroid Wild-West themed town is born!
I think this would be a creative way of making asteroids more practical for actually settling, and create a fun Wild-West atmosphere to deep space.
- yamamushi, Halo381, ForlornFoe and 5 others
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I chose Desert, I'm not entirely sure why I like deserts so much, but something about having a nice little desert settlement in the middle of the desert seems so comfy.
Also it reminds me of the show Trigun, which kind of has a similar backstory to the lore of DU, which isn't too surprising since it's a common trope, but it still gives me that Western/Sci-fi feeling.
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Well, there is already some rudimentary code for path-finding (that is currently being used for testing) that could be extended to create the AI for these "Monsters". However, there is the question on how to populate many life-bearing planets with unique creatures (unless it is the colonists that introduce the fauna into the ecosystem). Also, I think planets that have any life on them should be rare (to begin with).
There is a few ways to explain only having a small set of monsters and having it still make sense lore-wise. For example, there's the common trope in science-fiction where there's a race of bugs that colonize all over the galaxy, so it would make sense to find these bugs almost anywhere. Those bugs could have also brought other creatures with them, so it wouldn't be unusual to have similar monsters throughout the galaxy.
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I like this idea. And certainly hope there will be some PvE aspect in the future. As we know, it most likely won't be implemented at launch, probably a year or two later. And because of that, players will be set up with resources guns, ships, whatever. I think the monsters spawned should be difficult to take down, and a proper challenge (for moderatly geared people). This means there is a need for well equipped players to actually go out and take down these nests.
Regarding the nests, I don't think there should be something limiting a planet getting overrun by these monsters (please be bugs). This will mean you can't just leave the nest. The only proper way to stop them is to take out the nest. Although there should be a limit for how close these nests will spawn. My thoughts is have a pretty large distance between nests, but have their nests zones/territory intersected.
Lore wise, I definitly think we need monsters. Unknown planet with completely new ecosystem? Gotta be guys on the top of the food chain before we arrived.
Hmm, I do like the idea of arriving on a new planet, and then finding out that it's infested with bugs. It would be really cool to find a spot safe from the bugs, set up a military base of sorts, and work with groups of monster hunters to eradicate the bugs to claim the planet to use for habitation.
Also having a planet infested with monsters would make having hover battle vehicles much more useful, since you would actually need to be near the ground and defended to take down hoards of them. Imagine arriving on an infested planet on a large cargo ship, and then a battalion of hovertanks are deployed, and an epic battle of man vs. bug takes place.
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You guys are seriously overthinking the whole issue of getting water in space. In real life, asteroids have ICE in them. Just mine the ice, then you have water. All this talk about turning carbon into water is just so cringy when you actually know how extremely impractical and wasteful it would actually to turn carbon into oxygen just for the sake of drinking water.
Besides, mining for ice to get water is so much cooler.
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I pretty much just want agriculture for the Aesthetics and for creating a new job type. One of Dual Universe's greatest strengths is job variety, so in other words just more stuff to do. If you're tired of being a miner, you can become a trucker. If you're tired of being a trucker, you can become a farmer. If you're tired of being a farmer, you can become a hunter! And so on and so on. Basically I welcome any new activity to Dual Universe, for the sake of variety.
Also back to Aesthetics, just imagine gorgeous meadows of wheat surrounding a cool futuristic city. Imagine being in a small quaint farming town, and in the distance there's a futuristic city that contrasts the quaint rural town. There's just something about having a the contrast of a low-tech village next to a high-tech city which just seems very beautiful. As long as farms look beautiful, they're worth it.
- Kuritho and Anaximander
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From Eve to DU - Endless Possibilities (article)
in General Discussions
Posted
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!