SGCamera_Beta

Introduce power managment & tiered industry and reset the complete universe but let us keep skillpoints and blueprints. Also a great time to bring the new seed to the planets ^^

Ships in combat or recently fired at should have build mode disabled.

I spoke out of turn, folks! JC bot remains.

I will proudly wear the egg that's now on my face - yes we're doing an audit of our Discord server, and yes bots are part of that, but I misunderstood which bot was being looked at!!

Forgive me - in my rush to be responsive, I was too hasty.

I have no sympathy for people with AGG. It's a broken element/mechanic in the first place. Being able to float forever without using any fuel or energy?  Ya I highly doubt its gonna work that way forever, so basically don't get use to AGG in its current form anyway. 

When making their plane design decisions during WW2, the US-army once concluded that the most-hit areas of planes should be the parts which must be improved by more armor. This seemingly common-sensical conclusion was proven to be false by the statistician Abraham Wald. The issue was that, the Army's conclusions were drawn from planes actually made home after sustaining damage. One would notice a way different damage distribution and draw very different conclusions, if one actually looked at planes that fell down in combat and didn't survive.
 
I suggest that a similar error might be beginning to haunt DU's developmental prioritization. NQ is beginning to take the feedback of the currently surviving DU community very deeply to decide which areas of the game they should improve immediately. While this might seem common sensical, it might also be creating a bias similar to the above example.
 
My (very anecdotal) experience of reading DU community gives me the impression that we have a lot of people here who enjoy making ships and constructs. I know this would be an oversimplication, but let's for the sake of argument categorize these players with othergames they might enjoy. Let's say current DU playerbase has a lot of Minecraft, Satisfactory, Factorio people. This would check out, because voxel building has been one of the most advanced and interesting aspects of DU since early alpha. So people who would enjoy this kind of gameplay came into DU and "survived". The game ended up being interesting to them at the current state.
 
Meanwhile people who would enjoy PvP, dogfights, exploration, empire building, creating huge organizational (managing real people, not factories) tycoons etc. either didn't come into the game yet, or didn't "survive". Eve, Star Citizen, No Man's Sky kind of players didn't fill DU's current playerbase. And I know many of them dropped out after the weak experience in their areas of interest after beta launch. Ofc, there is greater diversity in player mentality compared to alpha, but still insufficient.
 
I would argue in its full potential, DU should appeal to all these types for different reasons. But since the game is still in a very early stage, the population of DU is less diverse across these player mentalities and the effects of this bias are greater. Meanwhile, some developmental prioritization decisions are being made by the influence of the existing playerbase, rather than the playerbase DU should be appealing to. Here are some examples how this happens.
 
1) A feature upvote page was created with no regard to principles like "nobody reads the second page of search results". Then features were upvoted by mostly pre-beta players, cemented on top by the web page's design, and those began taking significant NQ attention. 
 
2) Due to surviving players, ideas like "voxel vertices editor" or "mining bots" are heavily upvoted. These are features which the Satisfactory and Minecraft kind of players would enjoy. They wouldn't enjoy mining so they'd seek ways to build without mining. But DU should be a game which should also appeal to people who like to mine. Bots would devalue their work. Instead of working on an improved mining experience, prioritizing bots is a clear example of survivor bias in development.
 
3) Similarly, voxel builders are already achieving greatness in DU. Instead of elevating their gameplay further, NQ's developmental prioritization should be getting other gameplays to that level of interestingness and fun.
 
4) The incoming PvP patch is grounded on solving shipbuilding problems. But meaningful choices in ship design isn't the only balance domain for a fun PvP experience. In a balanced single-shard sandbox sci-fi MMO there needs to be PvP commitment, non-consensual PvP, and a meaningful risk/reward spread. I would argue the lack of warp disruptors, warp bubbles, webs; the ability of PvP'ers to bail out of any fight even after engaging in it, are more important issues than borg cubes. I'm sure it'd be better for more people if NQ solved the core gameplay experience of looking for meaningful PvP for hours and not finding anything, or the ability to bail your ship out of engagements (thus economics, chance of death, consequences not mattering), rather than fixing the shape of my ship. 
 
Of course, in an ideal world, NQ should keep improving all aspects of the game. I am not arguing at all that the game does not need a vertices editor, nor that borg cubes aren't a big issue. I am just saying that NQ should be wary about de-prioritizing important developmental areas which also happen to have no voice in the community since people who would care about these issues aren't even playing yet.
 
The game is very early and I'm eager to see how things will develop. This post is meant to be more of an early warning to NQ and a conversation initiation. I hope they keep the great work up.
 
o7

Idea: 
 
As a small addition to the changes proposed in the Intellectual Property Devblog, players or organizations can now transfer "creator" titles over "master constructs" to others, solving problems and opening up further possibilities.
 
Why:  
 
The new intellectual property management system will solve some problems. Namely, individual ship sellers can sell ships without giving the buyer the ability to infinitely copy it. Also there will be organizational IP ownership. However, it would be way better if the system was also deployed with the above modification for following reasons.
 
Firstly, the proposed system is still too focused on dynamic-construct trading. Dynamic constructs projects are typically short term. People wrap them up, begin selling their ships. Static constructs, such as factories, are ever-evolving projects with several players getting involved. Since the beta launch we are tending to our factory. We plan to do modifications for years. As such, people come and go, the projects change hands. One issue my own organization faces right now is how one of the currently inactive legates dropped the cores of our factories. This legate realized perhaps 30% of the current progress, was voluntarily demoted, and went inactive. Since the factory is not in his ownership, he couldn't make an RDMS policy for us to be able to keep blueprinting the new iterations of the factory. And now we are in a situation which we worked on this factory hundreds of hours, but are unable to blueprint it, copy it, and so on. To prevent such situations and ensure continuity in long-term projects, we need a system which allows us to fully transfer IP just like how there is such a possibility in real-life. Yes, the new system will let organizations own these long-term projects. But then one might not want to yield all legates the same IP power over the construct. The game would be better off with further granularity, and letting players hand over the creator titles over master constructs.
 
Secondly, the proposed system is still too individual-focused. Yes we have ship designers selling ships in DU. But we could go one step further, and we could have shipyards employing ship designers. Yes, organizational 'creator' title will be possible. But this creates three limitations. (1) Designers will need to be legates in the organization. (2) They will need to deploy the cores in the organization's name. (3) Every legate in the organization will have access to master blueprints. There are many scenarios in which this won't be enough. Running a shipyard like this would have many trust-barriers; giving all designers access to each other's IP, giving all designers modification rights of the RDMS and assets of the organization. Again, in real-world, we need a capability to fully transfer IP from one agent to another. Then the system would let people manage their IP relationships however they want.
 
Technical Clarification: 
 
The server doesn't have to continually track creators of constructs for changes in the "creator". Once a copy is made, the creator title can stick to it. And the new creator can only apply to new copies.

The game needs to slow down the availability of bigger elements to new players in order for them to first learn how to fly smaller ships and encounter situations where using understanding of build helper will prepare them for bigger ships.
 
One of my objections against the whole "ship shop" idea was that by allowing experienced players to "donate" ships you put "ships with a manual" in to the hands of newbies.. Too many times I've seen noobs crash a hover because it's loaded up too heavy and they do not account for the time the construct takes to adjust height (and generally  fly too fast.
 
A big part of this is the talent tree which really is not in any way structured to support "normal" progression in flying ships like it does in EVE for example. In EVE bigger ships are gates and are often only available once certain skills have been trained allowing for the piloting of the ship in a somewhat "money proof" way while at the same time setting up the in game experience for the player. A new player should not be allowed to jump in a hauler with 200T cargo (and be expected to understand the required techniques to break orbit and/or re-entry and safe landing on a planet with twice the gravity)
 
A big problem is the lack of supporting mechanics and the requirement to gain actual experience before getting access to bigger/better/faster .. That only leads to frustration and disengagement.
 
And yes, that means I am advocating putting access to bigger elements and driving bigger loads behind talents combined with the tutorials/missions to learn these. Besides providing better preparation and building experience, it also gives new players a longer path of activities while they grow into the game.
 

Naunet running by with a quick edit for clarity: Element Destruction will be applied to all damages sustained, both in and outside of PvP battles.

Will the regular blue prints (not the master ones) be unique? Ie will they stack, will we be able to put them in dispensers as currently we can't.

Only need to look at Worlds Adrift's player  bleed to see the fate of an MMO that has too little content, chooses PvP focused community as the "advisers", and has massive future promises (territory control, and new regions in the case of Worlds Adrift and here).
 
WA even had the same PvP problems of time to kills being too short (especially for level of grind), building/design aesthetics being a PvP disadvantage, and over engine-ing ships being the meta.
 
Also had the same issue of being a game that advertised as being about more than PvP.  Just to have dev focus and obsess on PvP.   (Along with the PvP community chasing out other communities, and lack of nonPvP updates causing those that aren’t  concern about PvP/being hunted to walk away as well).
 
————
 
it’s like the Devs didn’t  bother to analyze what other and especially similar companies have done recently.  
 
Especially in this game’s cause because they have truly atrocious design insight/skill.  demonstrated by believing That each tier of ore has 5x difficulty, a 2 year puzzle getting solved in 2 weeks (believing players won’t use tools available to them is an absurd design oversight), and being surprised at how quickly players can grind through industry/to space/optimal builds (mmo players are expert grinders there aren’t any loops in this game to surprise anyone).

Has NQ ever done any kind of reliable polling to see what percentage of the players don't like a certain mechanic? Seems to me it shouldn't be terribly hard to have an ingame poll thing for hard numbers. Tie it to some kind of reward so people are encouraged to participate. Like .. maybe the daily bonus?

As a backend / frontend developer myself for many years:
1) UI / UX for this game is... not made by designers but by engineers. In this regard it is horrible from a designer standpoint. Not to knock the work of the engineers but this is... not a game ui. I'm sorry. This is a product of a bygone era. Modular ui is generally cancer in a game. And when you're married to it, it spawns very very bad children.

2) LUA API is abysmally incomplete. Simple things like knowing what is in a container, or better yet, what is the actual capacity of a container WITH talents... is not a thing. Another example: for some odd reason getYaw() was removed from gyro api. And that was bloody useful... And the list here goes on and on and on. Features that are missing, features that disappeared, etc... Which leads to lots of arcane, frankly, bad code going around, some of which I myself wrote.

3) Market 15... was ... well.. that is a rather permanent face of NQ now. Not to mention poor communication. Not to mention grey rules that you twist in your own favor just to save face.

4) Game has no progression. Literally nothing to do. Players don't care, everyone is self sufficient. Markets are a joke, it's easy to get whatever you want pretty fast. Resources are uniform. All elements are the same regardless who made them, etc... everything becomes more of a chore rather than less, there is hardly any automation, and the stuff we do with LUA are just silly work-arounds that in the end are NOT automation. This game is the opposite of what MMOs generally are: the more time you spend in DU the more labor intensive and less automated things become.

5) Less Content, More Grind. NQ, especially JC keeps throwing around statements such as:  "we expected people to get to space from starting planet in X days" (took me 15 minutes, took other players even less). "Mining is too fast for our liking", "brakes are too effective".... these are all statements that lead me to believe JC didn't mine for his castle, and has probably never built an M or L core all by himself with his own in-game resources. All of this in summation is rhetoric that I interpret this way: We can't provide content fast enough, lets slow the game waaaaaaay down and make it more grindy, more time consuming, because well... uh... we don't have content for you...sorry. It would have been a LOT MORE helpful to the community if NQ actually was transparent as to what is going on there.
 
6) PVP. Geez.. so much to say here... a lot of it has already been said better than I could ever say it. Seems like from the get-go casuals weren't clued in to how to make transport ships viable for slowboating... like for example... putting some voxels on the boat for a start. There was so much whining about one shot kills that I believe NQ was pushed into the direction of not removing planet safezones. We need atmo pvp, we need interdiction, we need material variability, we need to fight for something. Radars need to be fixed. Guns widgets need rework (ui / ux is so terrible and non-ergonomic I can't believe this is 2020).
 
7) Lots more... but I will stop.

I mean....that alone would be a start.
 
You think mining would be what it is today if JC had to mine all the ore to build his castle?

I'm going to be honest here but I read a lot of subjective arguments here which really have nothing to do with why DU is not in the place it should be. Most of these arguments are based on expectations which are not met and generally these are not met because people come into the game or play the game based on what they want to see and not what is there.
 
just a few..
Flight model in DU is not the best sure, but it's not terrible and generally woks well. That you crash (and burn) a lot probably is because you are too heavy, come in too steep or simply did not design your ship well enough for it's purpose. I know I've done it but I analyze why it happens, fix it and try again until it works. If you want to argue that he engine elements are too bulky and thus prevent building nice looking ships as there's engines sticking out everywhere sure, I take that point but he mechanic is solid enough.
 
Starbase arriving (if it does) next year may have an impact but not because it s  a better game. It may have an impact because it's a different game which may suit some (or many) better and thus they move on. It does not mean DU is worse, just different.
 
The building tools in DU are not terrible, they allow you to create constructs of all sorts and while the argument can be made that they are to basic and will in general lead to shoeboxes and the fact that elements are designed in such a way they do not easily "disappear" into the design means most ships look alike as the used elements are the same. Frankly, that is an aesthetic thing and doe  not affect the game mechanics, just he looks. NQ needs to improve on that for sure but it's not a game breaking or crucial thing to do _now_.
 
 
Frankly, what is going on is something I have been bringing up for years now, as have others; NQ does not listen. NQ works/lives in their own little bubble and have a grossly over-optimistic outlook on the state of the game and where they are going. IMO they have spent (and lost) a lot of time with logistical and organizational issues which also gobbled up a lot of money. NQ is way to concerned about image and keeping people happy which mans they are not able to make the choices they need to make and in the end.. do not make people happy. It is a structural issue with the company which has led them to the point where they are out here, without funding basically and forced to do what they never wanted to do  which is to be in open development.

I've been berated, threatened, called names and what have you but I can only say.. I was not wrong. DU is a game which hold an immense promise and potential and is based on a vision and dream which is great. But it's being build by a company where the mantra seems to be to sweep what does not work under the rug by working around the symptoms to make them go away instead of taking on the cause of the issue head on. And the result is that the cause of these issues keeps popping up as time goes on which is manifested in the same issues reappearing time after time.
 
It's no secret NQ is operating an a very limited budget, it's been pretty much stated in several interview and even used as an excuse for not doing some things. And NQ is not learning as they continue to set themselves up for more setbacks by backing themselves into a corner regarding their options to progress the game and continuing to project an unrealistic roadmap.
 
I'm going to say it; there is no way for NQ to have DU in a state ready for "release" in the 10 months or so they have left to get there, it's just not going to happen. JC can say he believes they can all he wants, but I am pretty sure he knows he is trying to sell a deadline that is not possible to meet with the current amount of work that remains to be done. I really hope that NQ comes to their senses and get back to a more realistic timeline which puts "release" at least 18-24 months away.
 
Right now, the technical debt that has been built up alone will take months to get resolved, all the features NQ wants to get in to the game at release will not get done in 10 months. I'm just afraid, NQ will keep sweeping stuff under the rug and push more features into the game try try and make it to release in 10 months or so but that will only mean that he game arrives in a bad state. Right now the game is far from being "beta".. I would not even classify it's state as Alpha, more pre-Alpha still.
 
NQ needs to stop painting an unrealistic picture for the state of the game. They need to start allowing their community to get involved by opening up the game through an API so that an ecosystem can be built around the game by the community. 
 
The outstanding issues at the core of the game, some of which  have been there since pre-alpha, need to be addressed and that includes a more stable backend. Frankly, the game world cluster itself seems to be pretty stable, it's the backend which is causing most of the issues we see. As long as these structural issues are not addressed, they will keep showing up which will continue to mean delays in getting features into the game and working smoothly.
 
The fact (as he literally stated) JC sees no red flags preventing a "release ready" state for the game in the next 10 months or so is just that.. a huge, big red flag
 
Can NQ get Dual Universe over the finish line? I do not see why not but they won't be able to do so unless they start injecting some reality into their own expectations, communication and roadmap as well as start accepting that he game is far from the state they think/hoped/expected it to be right now. NQ says they still expect to deliver DU as a released game within a year from now. That is an unrealistic projection and they should know that.

The definition of a 'beta' has dramatically shifted over the past 15 years - at least in the gaming world - the definition  remains:
A Beta phase generally begins when the software is feature complete but likely to contain a number of known or unknown bugs.  
15 years ago an MMO beta was a largely finished game. Maybe some end game content missing, some placeholder assets, a few quests unfinished, balance issues and so on...
 
But you'd get a full vertical slice of the game. Meaning - every single core feature of the game was functional. For example, Anarchy Online went into beta in 2000 and released in 2001. By the time it was beta, the bulk of the game was done - it was buggy, unbalanced and riddled with exploits - but the content was there. 
 
Now you have DU 'beta' - and core features of the game are actually non existent entirely and those that exist are all dysfunctional in some way. There isn't a single thing in the game right now that I would consider ready for release. 
 
DU is by no means a 'beta' in a traditional definition - there is no justification for calling any product that is missing fundamental core features a 'beta'. By definition beta is feature complete, but buggy. DU is at best Alpha. It doesn't matter what NQ choose to call it - it's Alpha. By definition.
 
So that's why people are complaining. You can't really sell DU as a 'beta' and have so many features not just 'not developed' - but apparently still in the drawing board stages. 
 
All the interviews with JC and the rest of NQ staff have been pretty indicative that they do not have any idea how atmo pvp will actually work, how avatar pvp will work or how territory control pvp will work - I don't mean that they don't have it in game - I mean that they appear to have no idea how it will work at all besides theory crafting how they 'envision' it. It's gotten no further than what JC was talking about during the kickstarter in 2016.
 
Anyone with any history in development looking at just the planned features on https://upvote.dualuniverse.game/ sees a solid 2 years of work. When those are complete, assuming DU doesn't go the way of Worlds Adrift - then the game will be in Beta - meaning another year of polish to iron out the bugs.
 
So players have every right to be upset about how incomplete this beta is. 
 
With that said - the harsh reality of life is that games are not developed for free. Given the staff levels and funding, and expected burn rate, it's extremely likely that the decision to launch Alpha in the current state was to create some kind of cashflow - even if only to further use that cashflow to secure loans and investments for future development. I do not blame NQ for launching the 'beta' as is, or for charging for it, AWS doesn't host their servers out of charity and NQ devs do not pay their rent with their passion for game development.  
 
I do think that the bulk of the community gets that point as well - but are still disappointed by the current state of the game. 
 
That's exactly where I am. I am disappointed by DU.  I kickstarted, and have 2 paid accounts on top of my 2 pre-paid ones, and will keep the subs going because despite the fact that the game isn't in the state where I want it to be - I realize that it will never get to a state that I want it to be in without continued cashflow. On the other hand I can understand why someone may not wish to pay monthly for a game they don't even log into anymore....

I know I already posted once...but also Xsolla. 
 
If NQ had an actual subscription system, maybe they wouldn't need to ask players to dump in a forum because they would have proper exit surveys.
 
If the process to cancel wasn't so scammy and purposefully obfuscated, people would be less angry and provide better feedback. 
 
Asking why people are quitting really shouldn't be an afterthought because you won't get objective, actionable data.
 
It's too easy to dismiss complaints here as "just one opinion" when you don't have real data...devs are human beings that become intensely personally attached to projects, especially after so long. Objective exit survey data might help cut through some of that anxiety.

Dear Noveans, it's time for another DevBlog!
 
Dual Universe is a vast game. Its gameplay has layers, and we keep adding depth to them as often as possible (though not nearly as frequently as we would like to!). As developers, we love to dive into these depths. Moreover, we want to make sure everybody understands why we design features the way we do. DevBlogs are perfect to address these topics, so here we are!
 
Today, we will tackle two major features which shall be released in an upcoming patch: Construct Intellectual Property Protection and Blueprints Duplication. Without further ado, let's jump right into it.

CONSTRUCT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION
 
The objective of this feature is quite simple: allow a player to protect their creations when they distribute them in game (whether it is by selling them or trading them). We want to make sure that no unauthorized player will access the intellectual property content of a construct they did not create themselves. In particular, we want to protect:
 
The possibility to create a Blueprint of the construct The possibility to copy voxels from the construct to another construct (however, intra construct copies are still allowed) The access to Lua scripts from Control Units The access to HTML content from Screen Units  
This is how it works: each construct has a creator. A creator can be either the player or the Organization who deployed the original Core Unit. We can call this initial construct the “Master Construct”. When an Organization is the creator, any legate will be considered to be the creator.

When making a copy of a Master Construct via a Blueprint, a set of Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection flags are set automatically, both on the construct as a whole AND individually on each of the Control Units and Screen Units in the Blueprint. The newly created construct can have a new owner, different from its creator, but it remembers who was its creator. When trying to access Lua or Html content, the DRM flag of the corresponding Element (i.e. a Control Unit or a Screen Unit) will be checked to determine if the new owner is allowed to do this action. The creator is always allowed to do that. 
 
Similarly, when trying to make a Blueprint or to copy voxels, the DRM flag of the whole construct is checked. By default, since the original Blueprint sets all the flags to “not allowed”, a new owner will have no rights to do these actions.

If you deploy a new Control Unit, or a new Screen Unit on your construct that is DRM protected, they will be deployed without the DRM flag activated; therefore, you will be allowed to modify these Elements in particular. 
 
Moreover, the creator of the construct can also decide to come and remove the DRM protection of the whole construct (by right-clicking on the Core Unit), or of one particular Control Unit/Screen Unit if he wants to (warning: this action is not reversible). Make sure, however, to check if the DRM flag for voxels is global or not. If it is, and you add a beautiful sculpture to the construct, you will not be able to copy-paste it out of the construct. You should rather make your own Master Construct for this kind of action.
 
BLUEPRINT DUPLICATION

The Blueprint duplication will let players create copies of Blueprints, which in turns other players will use to generate a limited quantity of constructs.
To understand this feature better, allow us to make the distinction between Core Blueprints and regular Blueprints.
 
Core Blueprints
When the creator of a construct, or any player owning the right to create a Blueprint from a construct generates a Blueprint from said construct, this is a Core Blueprint.

Its creation is free. It can be used as the simple construct-save it used to be. But more importantly, this is what you’ll use to generate Regular Blueprints.

It is stored in the player inventory and behaves as a regular information item. A Core Blueprint is never lost on death. However, a player can generate a core Blueprint only if he is the creator of a construct or if the DRM flag of the construct has been lifted.

All ancient Blueprints (as in, Blueprints from before the Blueprint Duplication patch) will be converted into Core Blueprints.
 
Regular Blueprints

By right-clicking on a Core blueprint, a player can choose to generate a regular Blueprint, or just “Blueprint” for short. A regular Blueprint, is in reality a one-run Blueprint, and is always the result of a duplication of a Core Blueprint.

It is a standard information item, and because it is a one-run Blueprint, it can only be used once and disappears on use.

Once created, regular Blueprints are delivered at once in the player’s inventory as soon as he validates the duplication. Regular Blueprints are weight-less and volume-less.
 
We hope this DevBlog gives you better visibility and understanding of what’s coming next in Dual Universe. Don’t hesitate to tell us what you would like to see next!
 
See you very soon in Dual Universe

 
Want to discuss this announcement? Click HERE. ?

 

The game has an extremely high initial bump which, combined with the very rough state of the game's development and rushed move into open and paid "beta" makes it hard to get into. Much of what is missing or what is not working well has been brought up and discussed long before beta started. NQ has never acknowledged any of this and has never shown any indication of being able or willing to adjust their development plans to accommodate this.
 
Most of the game is very much still in Alpha state, if not pre-alpha. When a "major overhaul of the UI" is announced, what basically happens is a reskin of it. The core UI is very basic and not suitable for several of the intended uses cases, most obviously the talent system. It does not appear there is any central management of the project and it appears "coding" devs are tasked with designing the UI and UX which leads to too much information and overly complex actions with too many clicks and important detail 2 or three levels down where they should be at the surface. The general UI design really has not changed at all, except for a different theme, since pre-alpha.
 
It's not helpful when, from the occasional communication, NQ paints a picture which wants to tell a story of "everything is great, we're pretty much on track and where we need to be" when the facts in front of us show that that is not the case.  And now we hear JC pretty much roll back core promises and vision for the game where "unlimited possibilities" have now become "we will limit what you can do to preserve performance". The amount of work NQ has set up for themselves combined wit he mountain of work that needs to be done to clear technical debt and core issues in the game should be a guide in understanding that it is not possible to get to the state NQ claims the game will be in a year when they intend to "release". The stubborn attitude of not wanting to move the roadmap out and by now plain unrealistic expectation being set by NQ is just not good and will make (new) players tag off and disengage.
 
I get that much of this will probably be due to the fact that NQ is not in a very good situation financially and needs to work on a very tight and limited budget, but it's hurting the game's progress quite obviously. The amount of work needed to be done to work around the roadblock of "no wipe until absolutely required" for the sake of keeping people subbed is causing ore pain than NQ is letting on. Th underlying tone of NQ having pretty much beg for players to get back to the game or fill out a survey where NQ should and probably does know very well what the pain points are is rather obviously  a PR stunt more than anything else.
 
From podcasts it seems that NQ in general overthinks what we, as the community brings up in the rarae cases there is a response, which is generally only happening on an ad hoc basis when confronted with a live question, and the "solutions" are often overly complex and in effect miss the mark as far as addressing the intended problem. IN general, NQ seems hellbent on reinventing the wheel over and over while solutions are often readily available.
 
An example is the call for better building tools, NQ will mostly translate this into "we want a vertex editor" and then go into detail on how difficult that is and how much resources it takes. What we actually need is more options to build without resorting to voxelmancy.. More brush options like slopes broken into two voxels, corner pieces and things like that. Making smooth and beautiful ships using voxeltech is great and some designs are amazing but there is no middle ground here between that and basic blocks/boxes. Why can't we have basic shapes like the ones we see in (or instance) Space Engineers? Why is there no single voxel size tetrahedron making it possible to make corners. here's basic block which IMO should be readily available in game (old SE source but valid here)..


 
 
 
The "general" public is not looking for a vertex editor, they just want/need more variation in basic blocks and would be perfectly happy with these. The argument "use a voxel library" pretty much rolls back to my earlier comment about NQ (and a good number of experienced players) not seeing the issue of  this being to complex for an entry level player.
 
What we need is:
In build mode, select voxel placement tool press E to cycle though basic shapes press-hold E to bring up either a radial menu, use scroll wheel to cycle through all available blocks or the option to "click and pick" from a more varied choice of block "brushes"  
Another example is power management. It has been discussed with some good suggestions provided since Alpha but NQ never acknowledged any of it or engaged with us on these ideas.
 
Then, while it's unfortunately a meme by now, the question is a valid one, where is the canopy glass? Why has NQ not ever acknowledged this and why is this element on display in game but not available to players? It is another simple option to make designs easier to make "pretty".
 
 
Lastly, it is _very_ disappointing and a tell tale sign of how NQ thinks that the NDA forum section has been archived and is no longer accessible. It means a wealth of information and content which could be reused in beta is now lost. Arguments to maintain access to these clearly, and frankly expectedly, fell on deaf ears as NQ does what NQ does regardless of what we, as a community think. Why make a post in the tone of an invite to discussion when you really just make an announcement?
 
If you, as NQ, intent to do things your way anyway, why pretend to care enough to ask for our input/feedback. I know this post will no doubt trigger the fanbois in the community once more but he fact I get quite a few messages from community members when I make posts like this saying how they agree tells me I'm not wrong. What we're seeing now is pretty much what happened when Naerais joined and it lasted for maybe a month or two before NQ fell right back to being their usual self. I hope I am wrong and this time NQ will move in a different direction but I reserve the right to expect they won't and it's just a temp  band-aid before it's back to business as usual. I'll be happy to be proven wrong though, we'll see.

For a number of reasons, RP opportunity for one, it would be really good for DU to have VoIP available. Based on the current state of development it should not take much to implement a 3rd party solution quickly and fairly easily.
 
VoIP should always be optional. While many would like to use it and it will certainly attract players from the RP communities (where many are _really_ looking for a good SciFi themed RP opportunity). Here is how I could see this option implemented:
 
In settings, by default VoIP is inactive, it should be an opt-in feature. The VoIP solution would easily slot into the current way chat is working. players will have local, construct or private channel access, depending on whether they have enable VoIP. Right clicking a player would show a "muted" icon next to the talk option indicating this player has VoIP disabled and will not be able to hear you if you start a conversation so chat needs to be used.  
An obvious option here would be Vivox which is both well known, inexpensive and easy to implement.
 
This would be a very welcome addition to the game, attract new players and generally improve QoL for many players. It  would be good to learn how NQ feels about this without simply referring to the upvote page as this is more about expanding the potential userbase and not cater to existing players (even when many will welcome it).
 
 

I think element destruction beyond repair should be a thing...

Two ideas I had were:

1) There could be a salvage skill.. When you pick up a damaged item, instead of it being destroyed, a certain percentage of the value in elements/materials is recovered just like the recycler above.

2) IMO this more nuanced version would be better.  XS and S sized T1 components can be recycled in the Nanopack as above, but with dynamic attributes now being a thing, there should be no reason why we shouldn't be able to pick up damaged and broken elements and take them back for salvage. Obviously, unless completely 100% broken (Dull red in repair view and not smoking), they won't stack in the container slots but we should still be able to pick them up at least.

These could then be transported to the currently under-used recyclers which could turn them into a collection of elements or pure/product materials for reuse.

In any case, as someone mentioned above there is definitely room for a decently detailed salvage skill tree, but it is contingent on NQ introducing a "damaged components cannot be repaired to 100%" or "destroyed components are actually destroyed" type rules.

This would make salvaging a valid and tenable career path in game.  Personally, this is something I would love to do, since the Reclaimer is my favourite ship in Star Citizen.

I personally love forums and find them quite useful. They're the perfect spot to house (and organize) information long-term.  

Discord is obviously great for quick, real-time communication. When NQ had fewer community team members, it made sense to spend more time in a space where announcements could be pushed and reacted to quickly - especially with the game in Beta now, being able to gather player insights immediately is extremely useful to the devs.

Forum communications take a bit more time to thoughtfully write and need, to some degree, to be planned in advance. Now that there are more community-focused staffers, adequate time can be spent planning out posts, organizing the information and engaging with everyone here properly. ❤️ 

Hopefully that makes sense!

- Edited to say: SpaceMom can't be everywhere at once! (Even if I do regard her as some kind of community super woman!) I'm happy I can now split her duties with her! -  

You get to ask questions. NQ gets to pick if they're worth answering.
 
You get to ask detailed questions and get detailed answers. (maybe)
 
Others get to add their opinions to it as well. It's interactions with the entire group involved.
 
The current "Go on twitch at the right time and beg a streamer to ask your question" is a massive turnoff for me.  Streamers have their own ideas of what DU should be and should not serve as the go between the community and NQ.
 
In the past I've seen this managed by the CM creating a weekly "Ask the Devs" thread where people get to post questions. Then the CM pushes the popular questions from the community to the dev and comes back with answers and these are archived for future reference. 

Currently the way that we use voxels is in an additive way and we can only delete with the limited predefined shapes that are available to us by default.
 
My idea would be that when you use the select tool and copy an area of voxels, you can use them (holding Alt) to remove the copied voxels from the shape which you are Alt-clicking on after pasting with ctrl-v.
 
Imagine the shapes that could be created using such a mechanic. There would be an endless possibility or shapes and ships and people would pretty much be able to create their own "brushes" and shapes to carve out of their ships and buildings.

Hey everybody!
 
This post is about the sad state of the "Scavenging" "Profession" in DU currently - resulting from the gimped status of salvaging gameplay. Even though not documented, salvaging gameplay changed drastically in the last few days/couple weeks. While we, the players exploring and salvaging crashed ships and left alone static cores, were able to make somewhat of a living from exploring and salvaging until about a couple weeks ago, now, with the undocumented and unannounced changes to salvaging gameplay, we are no longer able to sustain this lifestyle.
 
Previously, when a gold digger on Lacobus overloaded their ship and crashed back down on the planet trying to make their way out of the atmosphere, we were able to benefit from that. We were able to find, locate and salvage the ship as well as reap in the rewards. Now though, there is neither a risk for ignorant players overloading their ships or carelessly flying and crashing into everything anymore. We cannot claim cores anymore that were destroyed (only in the sad, completely avoidable, tiny bit of pvp space we have left) - only cores that were abandoned by the owner by intention.
 
Here's the story unfolding pieced together from the DU Discord (just search for salvaging and get an impression of the confusion and frustration due to these unannounced and undocumented changes) :
 








 
Scavenging used to be a viable way of living. And a nice way to combine flying, exploring and making some money to pay for the fuel and upkeep. We are now forced into digging in mines underground instead of flying about and exploring this world you created for us to explore and conquer.
 
I'd like to end this post with a proposal and at the same time ask for feedback from the fellow DU player base:
Constructs which core get destroyed should be salvageable by anybody in general (on planets/moons and in space) - with the only exceptions being: On Sanctuary - cause it's the "safe zone" by definition and a place were no bad things should ever happen to you Within the wider "safe zone" (as announced by JC in recent interviews) - namely Alioth, Thades and Madis - but only on market tiles or your own/your org tiles - your destroyed construct should be salvageable by anybody on tiles of others (not yours or your orgs) and unclaimed tiles  
There should be no need for the owner to abandon a destroyed core/construct in order to make it salvageable by others taking above proposal into account. This mechanic takes scavenging/salvaging out of the game as a "profession". It takes the primarily reason to play the game away from me and a whole lot of others.
 
"Please fix" - as they say....
 
Best regards - former scavenger,
Bobbylord
 
 
 

I've been here since pre alpha and not a single change in the choices of engines. I'm so sick of the medium engines with their weird hitbox and unnecessary hump on the back. can we please have multipart engines where they have a central engine like AGs have with thruster parts and possibly intakes? or at least more variety!