Skeeter

After rewatching alien and playing quite a bit of starcraft (them zerg).
I came up with the idea of a parasite-like alien species, basicly they would live on large ships and be a minor annoyance but could grow to a larger one if unattended.
 
How would they work? Basicly they would be small fast creaturs dwelling in the shadows or small unused shafts of your ship, they could use transport pipes (if implemented) or other components that are probably hollow (containers) or/and simply walk through your ship trying to avoid any player contact.
The way they would add to the gameplay would be by having them "eat" components (slowly damaging components they hide in/around) or energy (think the weird alien things Han and Leia encountered in the Space Worm in Star Wars the empire strikes back) increasing the energy maintenace of your ship, if they stayed unattended they would reproduce and start increasing the energy cost so much that you ship would start to lose function. This would create a need to start "Bug Hunts" clearing your ship/station of the parasites.
 
They would spread by entering your ship if you land on a planet and then start to spread through that ship and even enter other ships/stations when you dock with them, resulting in entire sectors beeing plagued by a parasite swarm.
 
I dont think they should be a threat to the player simply trying to run away from them and hiding but to effectivly find them they should require a special "Bug Scan" Skill allowing for players or groups to specialise in removing parasites form ships adding more gameplay.
 
Or we go the Alien and Aliens route of things and have them be a horrible nightmare taking out entire ships, stations or even colonies.
Imagine the need to quarantine a planet/sector because of large amounts of horrible murder machines.
IF these (nightmare) kind of parasites exist they should only spawn in wreckage/ruins (nuke it from orbit its the only way to be sure) and should have a high risk/reward ratio to justify exploring or even returning to the site they live in.

Welcome to the game! It seems you share most of the same sentiments I do about it. I'm a long time space engineers and EVE player and this game is appearing to be a combination of the two.

From what I know there are anti-gravity engines commonly discussed for this game. The devs even have a concept drawing for a hovercraft engine found here. From the E3 trailer I can deduce that something like this is already implemented as you will see massive ships suspended in mid air hovering over a planet's surface.
 
I made this thread because I think that the hovercraft engine is cool but I don't think it should be the only means of mobility on a planet's surface. I would like to see trains and automobiles still in use as I feel like they could achieve certain tasks that certain ships couldn't. A maglev or a hyperloop train for instance would probably be very effective at hauling massive amounts of cargo or people safely, reliably, and quickly at a fraction of the cost of a full size cargo ship. Cars/Rovers would still be effective at moving individuals and small amounts of materials in a local area while being fairly inexpensive.
 
Plus the infrastructure of building roads and rails would really bring character to a planet or colonization. Hovercraft should definitely have their place but I think that there should be other forms of surface transportation.

I was thinking today that there could be two options to haul materials in Dual Universe.
 
The Cargo Hold
This option would be a conventional room simply meant for storing raw materials, manufactured parts, food, people, ammunition, or just about any other conceivable thing.
 
Pros
-Incredibly cheap to build
-Very durable
-Can haul ANYTHING
 
Cons
-Not nearly as much storage space as a ship size Kadpak
-Requires a relatively large amount of room
 
The Ship-Size Kadpak (Name subject to change)
This option would be a scaled up version of what every player has on their back. Essentially it will allow for storage of massive amounts of raw materials in a very small space. This means it would be quite ideal for miners and certain cargo vessels.
 
Pros
-Can haul many times more raw materials per volume than a Cargo hold.
-Doesn't require near the amount of space as a cargo hold.
 
Cons
-Is much more expensive to build than a cargo hold.
-Can only hold raw materials.
-Requires a steady flow of energy to maintain compressed matter.
-If power is cut or it is badly damaged by a weapon the matter inside of it will rapidly become uncompressed causing catastrophic damage to the surrounding structure.
 
I just thought this would be interesting as it would add more options for any spaceship engineers out there.
 
Space pirates would also have to be a bit more careful with their work as rupturing a Ship Size Kadpak could mean the destruction of everything they are trying to steal. This would more than likely save lots of people from being totally annihilated as many pirates would rather hold people up and steal their stuff than just blow them up.