Serula

Very nice changes! I was also hoping for a slower efficiency drop over time too but we'll see how this goes. Spawning the nodes underneath the mining units might be a solution but im not sold on it yet. Maybe it's possible to enable detection with the alt + V menu like we see other players and constructs? That might be a better way to spread the rocks instead of stacking them under the mining units. The latter might motivate people to bot the harvesting. Place them in a line and dig a hole so all the nodes are at eye level behind each other and auto press the mousebutton with a macro.

Will this stress be visible? If yes, will it be repairable? If no, players will get an inventory full of nearly broken stuff because they don't want it to break during combat or important situations. Like for instance the antigravity engines on large ships. Instant ship gone if that happens. Based on that you probably want to see the stress. But if you can repair it there won't be a market for the elements and you end up with an inventory full of nearly broken stuff. Or you have to delete them. If things break in mid flight you might trash your ship. And if you have a lot of elements who is going to check them all? So nearly broken items will also need to be visible in a build helper list otherwise its another tedious mechanic if it's not already. What about a giant factory? Isn't that going to be super annoying to have to replace parts on a daily basis?

Apparently there are still collission problems. Or is this a different issue? 1266893313_2022-01-1402-48-46.mp4

Do you remember that time where you moved an element but couldn't but it back in the exact same place. Not even with the undo action? That seems to be all gone now. It was a big frustration of mine. I couldn't touch anything on my ship for the fear of not being able to put it back together again. Now I can see exactly where the problem areas are and fix my ship with a little effort. Is it the best solution? maybe not. But it's definitely a needed solution. We have to bite the bullet from time to time to help NQ make this game better.

The whole MU system is starting to burn me out. The problem is that you are implied to use all your charges and not waste any. It's a dopamine trap like many mobile games are. With the current implementation that means you have to calibrate every single day. I experience this as a somewhat stressfull time pressure. Ofcourse I have 3 alts so I have to spend more time on doing all the calibrations. Since the start of Demeter this is pretty much all I've been doing in DU and I didn't spend any time building. It's really difficult for me to ignore the addicting dopamine triggers but I managed to stop picking up all the surface ores because that was an incredible time sink. I really kinda want to stop mining like this all together but that also means no resources unless I go space mining which requires a very expensive scanner on a ship large enough to support it which I don't have yet and I'm also not looking forward to doing that because it's an even bigger time sink before I can start to mine anything. This mining mechanic is in my opinion compromising one of the few good gameplay systems DU has which is the building system. The simplest solution or at least a better implementation of this system would be to lower the speed at which MU's lose efficiency and also slow the speed at which we get charges so we only have to calibrate every few days or so. That opens up time to do other things. @anyone: How do you feel about the current state of gathering resources?

I was thinking about the exact same thing. You would get a seperate skill tree maybe even for each element or part. That way the choice for what you want to make becomes important and you can't quickly change to make anything else unless you are a long time player. Would that not be an issue?

Sure but where is your arguement? You are just relaying a feeling with no reason to back it up. Should it be easy to change a factory to produce anything? If not then how would you achieve that without quanta? Enforce a long timer between changing recipes?

It's often been discussed that schematics are a pain for anyone that wants to do industry. I understand the goal of the schematics was to make it more difficult and costly to build a factory so you have to commit to a specific product and not so easily be able to change it. I'ts not clear to me if this idea was based on how it works in real life or weather is was done to improve gameplay. Either way it feels as though something needs to change to make it more user friendly without sacrificing what seemed to be the initial intent of schematics. The idea Whenever you place an industry element you have to choose what it will produce and pay x amount of quanta to "repurpose" the unit to produce exactly that. Doing so might create "dynamic properties" on the element, like for instance with scripts in a cockpit or a screen. In this state it either cannot be picked up or it can but cannot be sold since it has dynamic properties. You can remove the dynamic properties for free so you can sell it but will have to pay again for setting anything that it will produce. This way it is easy to start a factory while still costing you and also promotes keeping the factory as it is. Nou obviously it depends on how the software works that will determin weather or not the unit will get dynamic properties or not but the general idea is that you pay for installing the item like schematics do and ideally still be able to pick it up so you can more easily reorganize your factory. This idea would be more closely related to reality however this would also take away the ability to steal schematics. But I don't think that is a big part of the gameplay yet. Stealing schematics would become much more interesting when territory warfare is in effect. Provided that people will actually make factories in the PVP zone.

I'm a builder and I have three accounts. Because of the Demeter changes I am considering to retreat back to sanctuary so I don't have to pay taxes and sell the ores I mine. All my territories on sanctuary are grouped together and I discovered that they mostly only contain quartz. I also discovered that the ores are not evenly spread and there actually are territories that have hematite and presumably bauxite. The materials I build with. I was expecting lower ore values on sanctuary because of the lack of taxes but this not acceptable. You once said to pick our territories carefully because we won't be able to change it after and so I did. But now this seems unfair and I am really not happy with this. So my question is. The ore distribution on sanctuary is uneven and without the ability to change territories. Will we be granted the ability to change territories or will the ore distribution be changed to be more fair?

I second this!

Because the owner will have to pay for 2 weeks of taxes in order to claim the constructs. This way it doesnt become a simple salvage all you can mechanic. Plus friends can also take the territory and not start the reclamation in order to preserve the constructs. It adds more to the gameplay and the options you have.

How will you validate that a construct on a territory that has changed owner will be accessible? Is that up to the player to report? Also what happens if a player is in the process of removing a construct and the player is in build mode when the owner exchange of the construct takes place? Will the player be booted from build mode?

Loss of planetary mining I'm saddened by the choice to remove planetary mining. I liked to mine from time to time. It was a quick and practical way to get some resources and it was a nice break from other activities. But I understand the choice and I really like the performance improvements. I hope to see it return in the future where the terrain simply regenerates after some time. suggestion: Add another smaller cheaper DSAT that only detects asteroids in the savezone. I feel like asteroid mining is too far away with the cost of the DSAT for starting players. Especially knowing that you also need a space worthy ship and possibly one that can carry any amount of ore. I hope there will be some alternatives to gaining resources in the future though. The loss of planetary mining is a pretty big one and mining units are not a suitable replacement for it and neither are asteroids. Resource aquisition for starting players Beginning players can only mine surface ore and nothing else. There is no quick resource injection like we had with mining. They can create mining units from that but it will be a very slow and boring start to gaining your first resources I fear. They won't be able to mine asteroids without a DSAT which is really expensive to make currently. suggestion: Allow the "baby" mining unit to extract all resources at the same time assuming you only get one of them where also the harvestable nodes are a mix of T1 ores. Mining units and min/maxing If you want to become a fulltime miner using mining units you will need a lot of cores. So much so that you may not even have enough to fully utilize your charges in an optimum way depending on how fast MU efficiency will drop over time. Ofcourse you can make an org but it can't be intentional that you need an org just for that and I don't think it should be that way either. suggestion: allow one free static core per hex that only counts as free if it's the only static core you own on that hex that is also owned by you. Territory value and warfare To my understanding the mining units were created in part to instigate territory warfare by giving territories value. With the values i've seen I don't expect anyone to want to war over these territories. Is this done deliberately because everything is still in savezone and cannot be faught over? Or will the values change when territory warfare is introduced or can we expect other changes to drive the war?

Do the surface nodes that spawn after calibrating a MU also get a bonus from adjacent territories?

Wings and engines have two orientation/placement challenges. The obstruction area and the effective orientation. Both in the same direction. But the atmo brakes now have only the obstruction in a different direction and no effective orientation? Will they also get an effective orientation in the future? And what will that direction be?

Territories will get a permanent value because of the mining units but there is no territory warfare yet and Alioth will never have that. So territories can't be taken from other players and some players that don't have scanners or don't like that gameplay can't rush for territories and are left behind. So why will sanctuary get equal territory values and Alioth or any of the other planets in the save zone won't?

Will the taxes on planets that will get PVP be lower than in the safe zone?

So I find the hotspot in the mining minigame that said 100% full score. But I only get 57% calibration gain with a bonus of 14%. Why don't I get 100% efficiency gain. Also why is it called "gain" if it turns out to be the actual efficiency that is only 57L/h. Also why is it called "Base rate" if in reality it's the "Max rate". I feel cheated out of my achievement of finding the hotspot. Getting less than what feels like should be the "base" or minimum rate. I think clarity is important here and what does the calibration bonus mean or come from and what is this Ore quantity value. So many questions! I also think it's important that when you do well in the minigame you feel like you actually did well and not get less than you might expect. Very anti climactic. And what is that white thing in the top middle of the screen? I do really like how the minigame works though.

If old constructs that exceed the voxel complexity limitations cannot be altered. Will we still be able to repair them or place them with blueprints or place them from compactification?

Whoa, very exited about the vertex editor! This will change the game for builders. But I would like to know what exactly is meant by voxel complexity and how it's measured. After all we will need to be able to alter voxels in such a way that we can prevent the complexity from becomming too high.

You'll want to give different sized ships a different strategic advantage that promotes good gameplay. Changing values like this barely affect the gameplay. What NQ did was change the weapon tracking speed which is a much better solution because that promotes good gameplay. Balancing that property will have a very similar effect combined with what the player chooses to do. Getting in close should make it hard for big weapons to hit. So another thing that might need some tweeking is the speed and maneuvreability of smaller ships vs bigger ships in order to get a good balance.

It's a bit off topic but I agree. The thing you forget in this gameplay mechanic is that you need the engine with you in order to replace it. How many engines are you willing to risk bringing with you and take up valuable cargo space?

I travel often from place to place and I have containers in different places. Every time I move I have to set my linked container. I wish the game would know the container I always link to when I get to an area. So this is my idea: The ability to set any amount of containers as a favorite container that you link to automatically if you are in range you are not linked to your "main linked container" you are farther away from all other favorite containers. It might be desireable to disable automatic linking when multiple favorite containers are in range and require manual setting of the main linked container.

This looks like a really neet feature. Some thoughts and questions from me. What happens when a player is repulsed from a ship that is docked on another ship they are allowed to board. Will they be outside of the carrier? Does the docking right include the rights to board the target construct? It seems strange to be able to walk out of your ship onto the carrier to then be repulsed. Some time ago there were talks about boarding an enemy vessel in an attempt to locate the core and destroy it. This feature would make that impossible in many situations. What are the thoughts on that? If at some point in the future we can steal ships and you have a team of people doing it they will be repulsed after the pilot activates the ship. What happens to docked ships that lose their rights to be docked? Will the repulsion mechanic work properly in a nesting doll type situation when you have carrier docked to carrier docked to carrier?

I'll keep it short and simple. - Surface rock gathering should not have a delay. You should instantly pick up rocks so it becomes more of a skill to gather them fast or seek out the T2 rocks rather than the waiting game it is now. Just give less resources per rock. - It will be more interactive and less tedious because you are more active and constantly pressing buttons. - The walking or running talent will play a more interesting role because you can get to the next rock faster.