Code24

Interesting, basically the same setup as space engineers, which is fine because it's a good system and that's what I'm used to.The mass production is the exciting part though. Anyone know if concept art has been released for the Factory Unit yet?

Large planets would be great in terms of resource extraction, but I'm not sure there is any amount of tech that would solve the player density issues caused by realistically sized planets. We are still talking about having players in the thousands, which is about the population of a middle sized town. If we want to have the immersion of busy trading hubs and stations I feel 30km is much more reasonable.

This would certainly be a possible strategy... but just as in real life it will be extremely annoying. As discussed in other posts there will have to be downsides to dying, like a recharge time before you can use your resurrection node. In the interest of balance I'd say the devs shouldn't make it possible for you to carry an explosive on you that can do serious damage. A small blast radius that can only take out people and blocks within the immediate vicinity.

Yup, so for the VR unit I'm imagining it as something you can place in any construct. You could have one in your ship, station, or building and use them whenever you are safe from harm and have time to design constructs. The dev's originally suggested the virtual simulator mechanic as an alternative to player-made safezones but the idea here is that you have both, but keep the VR aspect technically within the game world. As for the Ark Unit, I think safezones should be kept exclusively to planets because an ark sphere of protection placed anywhere in space seems OP. For the Ark unit you and other players would group together and place an Ark Unit on a planets surface making one territory tile protected. However the ark unit would require large amounts of power and enough resources that a sustained collective effort would be required over about a week. Essentially the same thing as the 'Ark Token' except that players don't have to discover them as Alien artifacts. This one could actually be thought of more as a blueprint for a construct than an actual "element" because of it's size and complexity.

Communication Unit -Made a post about this one VR Unit - A game element a player would have to get inside similar to a cryopod to use the "Virtual Simulator" building mechanic that was mentioned in this blog post - Meant to be used in conjunction with safe zones, even though the player is in VR they can still be attacked from the outside environment. Ark Unit - An incredibly expensive unit in terms of resources, used to create player-made safe zones after players have expanded out a bit. - Alien "Ark Tokens" have been suggested, but how do those make sense within the lore? Humanity already has the ark tech on the arkship, they should know they are made.

Welcome to the forums Mafoon! I would definitely favor having conveyor systems throughout ships for the reasons you mentioned. Just adds a new level of functionality to ship building and thankfully that is what is planned. I know that you can resize voxels dynamically so you would probably be using larger hull blocks for a capital ship, although you can still use small ones for detail. I've seen that there will be large scale industrial elements for constructing blueprints but after just looking around for info I can't seem to find anything. I just hope to see appropriately large shipyards for building large ships.

Welcome to the forums! I think animated signs and banners would be awesome to up in cities and space stations. It would be really cool if there was way to display an advertisments for a product on the markets like a ship just through in-game customization. That would give a little more consistency in terms of the quality of advertisments/displays. As for paint jobs, I think you will be able to paint each of the individual voxels on the hull. And I think that a single voxel can be as small as 25cm cubed. If that is the case, you could actually make some pretty detailed paint jobs on ships by simply painting voxels. Custom textures would certainly take things to the next level though!

As this is a sandbox game, ship roles will mostly be defined by the way they are constructed. Weapon types will only be one factor. Say you want to build a Scout Ship; you should make it light, stealthy, and fast. A battleship might sacrifice agility for firepower and armor and so on... So in this way I think the devs will have very little to do in terms of defining ship roles.

Yeah having feedback from various parts of a ship would be really cool. The best thing to have in a command center would be a configurable map of your ship/station that will show damage or other events occurring within the ship.

I think you'll be able to add things to your ship anywhere, so long as you have the materials. IIRC it was mentioned in the Multiplayer Crew post that people could be running around the ship repairing things during battle as well. Here's the builder gameplay Dev Blog if you haven't read it yet: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2016/02/20/builder-gameplay-voxel-tools-elements/

Dude... have you been reading my mind? I've been thinking about this issue for like a week too and I made sure to ask about it in the AMA as well. One of the greatest appeals of any sci-fi game is cool looking cities and ships. But in the case of Dual it seems that just one idiot with a mission could do a lot to break the immersion. First off, I really like the ideas you brought up and I think they would actually solve this pretty well. However, I do view them as a last resort. My preference would be to use game mechanics to favor useful designs over useless/joke constructs. Here's my idea: The kind of technology that the ark uses to protect buildings should take up a huge amount energy because it is actively preventing certain players from destroying/modifying voxels, and as more constructs are created it has to protect more. So in order to balance this, players have to actively pay for their use of of the arkified area on a per-voxel basis (whether this should be monetary or resources idk). If the player runs out of resources to maintain the construct within the arkified zone, it temporarily becomes unprotected and players can either destroy it, or start paying for those voxels themselves. This idea assumes that "VR mode" blueprint construction is implemented. This means that players who are just starting out and cannot yet pay for protection of their constructs in the ark-zone can do so by using VR construction and building the actual structure elsewhere. If they (as a new player) want to build their structure within the ark zone must begin a career or coordinate with an established organization to get it built and regularly payed for. While this cost of building in a protected zone is a downside, it can easily be worth the cost. Buildings within this zone are the first constructs players see when the spawn at the ark ship, so these buildings will have more visibility to new players than any other in the game with the added benefit of being indestructible. If you are seeking a place for your market, business, or organization headquarters there is no better location than here. The desired effects of this mechanic: Arkified areas become functioning cities rather than just a mismatched graveyard of unused player constructs. The construct has to be providing value to an active/organization player in order to be worth the cost of it's existence. Buildings within the arkified area will not be on a first come, first serve basis. If a player decides to leave the gave for more than a few weeks, they need to consider whether they have enough resources to pay for it over the long term, and if not, consider giving ownership to someone else who can stay online. And finally, I feel that this would, at the very least, limit the proliferation of the "TTP" problem. Unless an entire organization is very passionate about paying for and maintaining Dickbutt structures it simply won't be worth the resource draw. If you agree or see a major flaw in my reasoning here lmk.

From a utilitarian standpoint, I see a player's home/ apartment as a place for someone to set up their first resurrection node as well as a storage area for their first items in game. I would also suggest a "VR unit" for blueprint construction but I think I'll actually make a separate post about that. Of course, having an apartment would be for players who get the game after cities have already been established. I can imagine a lot of organizations and players catering to the needs of new players in this way, by offering them ready-made apartments for a price. Later game players will probably see apartments as status symbols that they can show off to other players. So I imagine there will be an emerging market for more expensive luxury housing. Some really cool possibilities here if done right!

Currently watching the video... Nice job guys, some really good discussion, and hopefully this becomes a regular thing.

Cargo hauling might end up being an emergent profession because some people will be willing to pay extra for express shipping. Might be a good way for new players to make some easy money. Then eventually someone might make a good autopilot script for trading ships and put a bunch of people out of work just like what will be happening with truck drivers IRL.

Just curious, is 2-3 years your personal guess or something NovaQuark said?

Wow. So cool to see an organization so well prepared already. Good luck in the Dual universe, Vulture Corp .

The awesome thing is you won't have to build ships if you don't want to! So long as you can find another way to make money, you can buy whichever player-made ship blueprints you like best off the market. As others have already said, NQ will provide some basic blueprints at the start of the game before the market is populated with player-made ships. And also if you haven't played Space Engineers, that game will definitely help you improve your voxel building skills in the meantime.

I was also wondering this... I like 1.2 (cryosleep), and a mix of both 2.2 and 2.3 (ship autopilot + turning off detectable systems). In any case, having to log off in the middle of a battle will always suck unless you have crew members to take over.

I have a slight disagreement. I'm not sure if this is what you are suggesting but I don't think you should be able to arkify an area as an individual player. Arkification needs to be a cooperative effort that takes a huge amount of resources, energy, and time. Otherwise you end up with too many arkified areas all devoted to tiny groups of players.

I believe Anti-Grav is already planned. Im not 100% sure, but I think that is how the ships were floating in the trailer. The other possibility is that they had downward thrusters. And I agree that normal constructs that lack anti-grav should fall towards the ground if not supported, otherwise you would get weird floating buildings all over the place.

Well with anti-grav technology being part of the universe I'm imagining that most planetary vehicles will mostly be of the "hover car" type. Wheels and fluid mechanics are certainly possible but if it saves them dev. time I would wan't this to be implemented later.

Great to hear that the game already has a working demo thats playable on a laptop. I'm HYPED for this even though it's at least 6 months away.

Yeah if they can find a way to make it scalable that would great! Yeah I agree that in game comms will be easily circumvented and I'm okay with that because the Communication Unit would be more about information transfer (accessing news, markets, etc.) than actual voice comms between faction members. The only situation were you would want in-game voice chat will be talking to players you don't know. And you gave me an idea... How about a universal distress call, so that if you are being attacked by pirates other players will be able to see your distress call if they are in Comms range.

I propose that there should be a universal Communicator Element that comes in various sizes. Communication Unit Handheld (Default)- Range ~5km, Can be Embedded in Nanopack Small- Range: ~50km, Used on Small ships Medium- Range: Whole Star System, Used on Large Ships Large - Range: Nearby Star Systems, Used on Stations Each would have a sphere of communication range. The energy draw by each can be adjusted, to increase/decrease range. Communicator has a transmitter and a receiver, each can be switched off if necessary Capabilities -Access Public Markets -Access Public News Feeds -Relay Signals through other Communicators -Can Broadcast a continuous Message/Signal -Send a Message to a specific ship or player within range -Basis for In-Game Communications Purpose This is meant to place a counter-force on expansion. Let’s say there are 10,000 players online at a given moment on average. Rapid expansion in the early game to 100+ star systems would quickly make face to face player interaction rare because you would have an average of less than 100 players in each system. Communicators impact an organization's choice about where to base their operations: Establish a base farther from Alioth- Pros: Less resource competition, constructs harder to find Cons: Must maintain a long chain of relay stations to reach Alioth based markets Establish a base closer to Alioth- Pros: Less relay stations necessary, shorter trade routes Cons: More easily discover-able constructs, more defense required This mechanic will not limit Explorers. Exploration ships will have to be designed around supplies for long journeys with no access to the markets. However, it will force them to return to populated space before selling star maps. Thanks for reading, and I'm open to hearing alternative ideas!

I hope that this doesn't get blown out of proportion. I would like to get some clarification from the devs on this though. Would make me feel a bit better. EDIT: Woops, devs literally just made a post.