Ezghoul

@Wardonis I agree that creating a blueprint shouldn't cost resources, which is why an ingame planning/wireframe mode would be amazing. 
 
However you would probably want to know if the design would work as intended. Just like in the real world prototyping is not free of cost. BUT people tend to use low cost materials for prototyping. This is were the trial and error stage comes into play. 
 

Yup, something to save custom shapes for later would be incredibly useful.
 
There's not much to add to the topic. ?
I agree with both brushes and custom shapes. 
 

I call them brushes because of the ability to add and remove mass with them. From an artistic standpoint it may not look like a brush but it's your only tool to create or sculpt with.

This idea I hope gets implemented. 
 
As ship builders and architects get more accustomed to using the Toolsets provided, we are going to start developing our own brushes (custom shapes). Either by merging shapes, creating stamps/molds. From what I have seen it's possible to create duplicates of these forms which is great. 
 
The problem is, how do we store these for later use. Sure we can create giant tool boards in our workshops but this leaves our biggest asset open to being copied, griefed, destroyed or lost if our land area is taken in PvP. 
 
I would like to request a way to store, name and sort custom shapes (brushes) for later use, hopefully in a similar way the primitives are.

I'd like to be able to select and copy a section of a piece that I've carved out to save for later use, I guess what you would refer to as a "brush".
 
I'd like to be able to design something, and then "paste" it later in a different material, and to store lots of detailed voxels in a personal list so that I don't necessarily have to make tiny details over and over again for everything I make. 
 
 

This idea I hope gets implemented. 
 
As ship builders and architects get more accustomed to using the Toolsets provided, we are going to start developing our own brushes (custom shapes). Either by merging shapes, creating stamps/molds. From what I have seen it's possible to create duplicates of these forms which is great. 
 
The problem is, how do we store these for later use. Sure we can create giant tool boards in our workshops but this leaves our biggest asset open to being copied, griefed, destroyed or lost if our land area is taken in PvP. 
 
I would like to request a way to store, name and sort custom shapes (brushes) for later use, hopefully in a similar way the primitives are.

Anyone who wants their ship to have NPCs crewing it, is a carebear. 

In Band of Outlaws, we hunt down carebears. Their tears sustain Cybrex's beard lotion. 
 
@Ezghoul sure thing, it's easier to put 1000 people in Fighters (bombers have crews, it's no longer WW1, Bombers are not solo flown). Guess what, your fighter's pewp ew 50mm Autocannon won't even phase the 1 GigaWatt supplied EM Screen of a battleship. Capital Ships, are meant to battle capital ships. Star Wars or Star Citizen, are as unrealistic as they can get in regards to space dogfights. You have more of a shot by boarding an enemy battleship than sending 1000 Fighters to their doom.
 
Also, here's the beef of the situation. in games like EVE Online (the only game able to compare with DU on an MMO standpoint), an alliance of 8000 people haas segmented portions of its players. Industry, Warfare, Citizens, etcetera.

In Warfare, there are scouts, logistics (healer or repair ships) and of course, WolfPack (ships that lock down biggerships) and then, there's my kind of jazz, Black Ops.
 
One "org" won't build a capital ship. That takes a lot of logistics, like mining, refining ,shipping, building ,security and a lot other things, including, but not limited to, proper management.
 
So, a solo organisation in DU, has more chance at being "Ground Forces" than actually being "nation". Nations are built by conglorisation, not by "we say we are superpower, we are nation".
 
Good points though you put up, in stark contrast with others on this thread. 

Lack of resources would turn a 1 week project into a 1-3 month project depending on rarity, I am all for a creative mode for design, but requiring the actual resources to build. I have nearly 2 dozen ship designs planned out a ready to go. Instead of it taking a year to get them out it'd take like 10. The design aspect of the game is what I am drawn too and requiring resources just to design would be a major blow to the game IMO. You don't need resources in real life to create a blue print, why should we in-game?

Another approach would to be implementing a wireframe blueprint mode. It would show in the DU world as if your building a ship but you would only be using place holders/empty blocks. 
 
I think this may be a more useful implementation when working as a team anyway. The team foreman could layout placeholders or "guide" blocks as needed to help direct the rest of the people building.
 
Another benefit is you wouldn't require the skills to place or use specific blocks (if that's a thing) to guide your crew. 
 
In my opinion it would be a mistake to split the community of builders off into a creative/offline mode.

I have the feeling that until the game/community grows more, bigger ships may be possible but not profitable.
 
It's easier to get 100 people into fighters/bombers feeling all bada*# for a fight then just a hand full of bigger ships. I'm sure there will be many smaller multicrew ships but battleship/cruiser+ is asking for a lot of commitment. Manpower, resources and manning are probably going to be the limits. Not restrictions set by NQ.
 
I'm willing to bet that many orgs will be Building massive ships. Unfortunately the first org to complete such an undertaking will be the first one to LOSE it. From my experience in other MMO s it's better for a clan/org to have steady progression then to do one massive project that may fail as soon as it's finished.
 
Edit: Sorry for rambling a bit. My biggest point is Eve's golden rule "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose". Every noobie hears it and almost every noobie disregards this until they feel the pain of loss.

I was beginning to find it frustrating trying to hunt down little bits of information in videos in order to help people out so I thought that I would make a summary of the Dev Diaries.
 
December
Dev Team Territory Units Rendering/Lighting Beginning bot test server Ore Scanning  
January
Biomes Day/Night Cycle Smoother & Undo Tool Building Jetpack Engine Force Physics POV details Test server with 100s of bots  
February
Ship element redesign Some example ships Ghost Preview of elements Copy tool Started cockpit widgets (HTML/CSS) New Texture Baking Alpha moved to September  
March
Further cockpit widget work Atmospheric/Orbital Physics Improved Interpolation Detector & Logic Gates Interactive Component Demonstration (Laser Trap Puzzle)  
April
€650,000 milestone (construct vs. construct) Refined total flight Physics Ice Biome Crafting Basics Build Mode Detailed Information (w/ live element ghost updating)  
May
3rd Party Play-Testing Interplanetary Flight Work Stardust & Trajectory Monitor (Orange Sanic Rings) Artificial-Friction Generating Retro Engines Reentry Heating Effects 3D Planet map w/ hexagonal tiles Bookmarking Destination Tracking Pulser Unit & Pressure Plate Logic Component Redesign  
June
Alpha Information Building Brush Shapes Building on 2D plane Remote Ship Control Player Momentum Continuity 1000 bots & 100 constructs test server  
July
LUA scripting
Control Unit & Script Editor Window
Element Events & Functions
Screen Unit
Text & HTML/SVG
Imported Images
LUA programing
Emergency Control Unit Simple Damage Model & Repairing  

(Posted Friday 4th of November 2016 on the DevBlog)
 
 

 
Some progress on the mining game mechanics
 
 
In this Devblog, we aim to shed some light on a very important part of the future gameplay of Dual Universe: scanning & mining. What follows is our current thinking on these features, as we are currently implementing them. This may still evolve in the future, in particular thanks to your feedback! So, let’s have a look.   Scanning is the activity of prospecting to find new resources in the ground on planets. Resources are physically geographically located, they have a span and a size, and they are generated via our procedural algorithms together with the planet as voxel blobs. They will be spread on the planets based on rarity and how important they actually are in crafting recipes. Some rare resources will not be found on Alioth, the starting planet, so you will have to journey out into the universe to locate them.. Each biome will have a set of typical resources associated with it, so prospecting starts by “knowing your biomes” The table below presents a simple rough description of how we plan to stage the levels of difficulty for materials:           Our current plans for prospecting are focused on two scanning techniques: radial scanning and directional scanning.   Radial scanning will allow you to probe for a given class of material in a given radius: the scanner will be able to show you what percentage of the area you’re scanning is made up of the class of material you are seeking. It’s only partial information. You won’t know where it is exactly, just that 1.6% of the volume of your scanning sphere is filled with metal, for example. A scan “operation” will take some time. Longer scans will yield more precise measurements. There will be a level of imprecision in the exact size of the radius, which you will be able to improve via skills.   How does it work? Well, most of the time, the thing you are looking for will not be in the sphere you are probing. So, you’ll see a 0% signal reading. You will then move and suddenly, a signal will show up. You know that your sphere has just “hit” a vein of what you are searching for. At this moment, you will be able to deploy a sphere marker, that will basically help you to visualize the volume where your target material is likely located.. The marker will stay there while you move to another location and start again. By intersecting markers you will start to be able to pinpoint more precisely where your precious material is located. This is the general idea.   Now, the exact technique you will use will also depend on the type of veins that correspond to the material you are looking for and what kind scanner you have. Consider these two schema that illustrate different strategies depending on the relative size of the average vein compared to the radius of the scanner (the double circling of the spheres illustrate the imprecision on the radius):                 These strategies will be important to master, because mining randomly will just exhaust your time and resources and will usually return only very common and not very worthwhile materials. Mining gear will have fixed scanning ranges that correspond to their levels. You won’t be able to adjust these ranges or change the scanning radius. They’re fixed. So, no choice: you need to move!   Now, once you start to have a better idea where you material is, you might start to use the directional scanner. This is much more straightforward. The directional scanner will give you the amount of the 4 or 5  most significant materials within a cone of a few degrees in the direction you’ve pointed your scanner.. The max distance will be a level dependent parameter, but will remain relatively small so you need to use radial scanning first to narrow your search area. The signal received for a given piece of material will decrease with distance, which should give you precious “gradient” information to follow. This is roughly how this could look:           In some future expansion we will probably add some more advanced tools for prospectors as well as planetary scale global information to help you judge the potential of newly discovered planets.   Our vision for this gameplay (as well as most of the gameplay of Dual) is to make it deep. We want players to be able to develop their own very real expertise on best practice, specializations, etc. We want the activity of prospectors to remain challenging even when you master it, so that a good prospector will have a very high value as part of a team. Now, for easy and abundant materials, it will be possible to find resources much more easily (we are considering a simple local highlight of what is there, so you just “see” it). But for the more rare and uncommon materials, we want it to be rewarding and feel like a real achievement. We provide the tools, but players will have to come up with the best strategies to get to the most precious material. The way you dig for gold as a beginner, and the way you will approach it after 100 hours of being a prospector are totally different. Sure there is a skill tree, but the actual trial and error experience also makes a difference. For a MMO game that is supposed to be played for hundreds of hours, anything not challenging quickly becomes a chore. We want to prevent that.   Now, about mining: it will be done via your Nanoformer. The harder the material and the larger the volume collected, the longer it will take. We have chosen an energy-based model where each material is capable of absorbing a certain level of energy before being “mined”. So, you will be able to upgrade your Nanoformer energy throughput to improve your mining as well as various mining skills. For more advanced mining, and possibly some rare materials, dedicated tools will enter the scene, but this might not be available at release, but rather in a future expansion. We are considering the possibility of Mining Units inside your constructs, but this will be in an expansion after release and it will require some careful balancing to make sure standard mining is still an option, in particular for beginners.   Interestingly, we imagine that the “profession” of prospector/scanner and the “profession” of miner could very well be separate. Some people will specialize in finding large veins of important materials (and possibly sell the intel about the location), while some others will specialize in mining it, focusing on a mining site for several weeks or months. When you exploit a deep vein, you will need to install things like lifts, vehicles, containers, and clean wide shafts to ease material and dirt evacuation. Maybe even factories close to the vein to transform the ore into pure material. This differs from most other games where scanning and mining are usually very similar and the activity of mining and scanning alternate frequently as you jump from one asteroid to another, or one mining spot to the other.   We hope you enjoyed this short intro and, as usual, we are very excited to hear your feedback and ideas! We are developing this at the moment, so it’s a good time for the community to share your thoughts and influence what is going on!     JC Baillie, Project Lead.  

Another approach would to be implementing a wireframe blueprint mode. It would show in the DU world as if your building a ship but you would only be using place holders/empty blocks. 
 
I think this may be a more useful implementation when working as a team anyway. The team foreman could layout placeholders or "guide" blocks as needed to help direct the rest of the people building.
 
Another benefit is you wouldn't require the skills to place or use specific blocks (if that's a thing) to guide your crew. 
 
In my opinion it would be a mistake to split the community of builders off into a creative/offline mode.

As Lethys said, such a system would simply put too much strain on the server to be worth it. JC has also said (I believe it was in the Q&A session) that they won't be doing something like this because of how difficult it is to do right, with there being little gameplay benefit. 
 
I understand the desire for such a system, because realism and complexity are cool and fun. However, DU isn't a survival game, or a hyper-realistic space sim, it's a game about empire building, exploration, and the emergent experiences that come with a single-handed universe, and so that level of realism and complexity wouldn't really benefit DU.
 
Great ideas though.

This is more of a request than an "idea" because I think they're going to add an API at some point it just doesn't really have a high priority at the moment.
 
I think it would be a good idea to have a simple API launched alongside the skill system when implemented during Alpha or Beta so that we can start working on skill management tools before the launch of the game. 
 
Maybe I'm just cherry-picking here, but I think that having skill training tools readily available to new players at launch will drastically help improve the new player experience. 
 
Since the skill system is going to be time-based like Eve, I think it's fair to use Eve as an example here. I think that the majority of Eve players use some type of skill management system, whether through their phones or desktops, so they can keep track of things while they're away from the game. It's much more convenient than setting alarms for when your skills are about to be complete. 
 
 
I don't think it needs to be a fully featured crazy API, but just something that we can use to list skills, a skill queue (if that's going to be a thing), and a current skill in training. 
 
Otherwise, there are some of us that will probably still be working on skill training tools if there's no API to use, it's just going to be a bit tougher on the users to set up. 
 
 
I know some people want to go further and have an API for managing characters, and interacting with all sorts of things that have to do with the game, but I think the single most needed feature to do with an API would be the ability to track skills. 
 

They have indicated that there will be both. You can do some basic crafting/refining in your inventory but in order to do anything larger than a few basic elements, you will need to construct refineries and more advanced production chains. To build anything larger than basic things you will probably need a fairly large production set up. 

This was originally posted back in April, but I've just now gotten around to having it translated for those non-French speakers among us:
 
 
 
English translation/transcription available with timestamps @ https://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/Archive:Devoxx_France_-_April_24th_2017  
 
Please feel free to edit it as necessary, as it's mostly translated, but has some minor errors here and there (like the word Technology being translated as "Techno's")
 
 
 
 
 

I think should be available: First name + Nickname + Last name
 
Nickname being the ingame name (if chosen) or name plate.
First name + Last name being the default requirement (as in EVE), unless a Nickname is chosen. If a Nickname is chosen, first and last names would only be shown in player's description / bio.
 
Example 1:
 
Leonard Paslow
 
- Name plate -
Leonard Paslow
 
- Character info -
First name: Leonard
Last name: Paslow
 
Nickname: n/a
 
Example 2:
 
Leonard "Lion" Paslow
 
- Name plate -
Lion
 
- Character info -
First name: Leonard
Last name: Paslow
Nickname: Lion
 
I think behind every character should just exist a unique ID number, which would allow any modification later in-game (could be some specific "citizen administrative item" allowing to change a name).
 
Also, I think the option to choose what to show on the plate name would make things even more simple.
 
Example of setting panel:
 
- Show on nameplate -
¤ First name
¤ Last name
¤ Nickname
 
And the player would just check what he wants to see in-game.
Maybe even better would be to also be able to choose what we want to show, depending if the other player looking is friendly / neutral / ennemy. That would be perfect.
 
Example of setting panel:
 
- Display on nameplate (friendly) -
¤ First name
¤ Last name
¤ Nickname
 
 
- Display on nameplate (enemy) -
¤ First name
¤ Last name
¤ Nickname
 
 
- Display on nameplate (neutral) -
¤ First name
¤ Last name
¤ Nickname
¤ "Unknown"

First "Call Sign" Last