Code24

Oh yeah, looks like my Co-Founder Sgt.Toothpaste put that in there and I didn't even notice Another perspective is that reverse engineering isn't such a bad thing in the long run, so long as you aren't creating direct copies. As players continue to produce more and more quality designs, you would hope that best-practices become common knowledge in the universe. I guess the key is to make reverse engineering challenging enough that it can't be abused.

I'm concerned about this too. I do think using tags will be one way to do it. The only problem I see is if you only give a person the "pilot" tag are they not allowed to repair it? Wouldn't they be able to figure out most of the engineering just by looking at the exterior anyway? Maybe the developers can create a script that evaluates any ship/weapon for similarity to other assets on the market? Like if your ship is greater than 80% similar it won't be allowed to be put on the market until you make further changes... Unfortunately, I can see a system like this having workarounds. I also think that you should be able to but your design on the market to be mass produced by other players, just so long as the original designer gets payed a cut every time the ship is produced. I'm interested to see if anyone else has ideas for a solution to this.

Space elevators would be cool and hopefully the devs make it possible. It would be quite an undertaking though. Lot's of materials, energy, as well as plenty of defense (it would be a pretty obvious target in a war).

Hehe, I was thinking about how this game will take up a large portion of my life if it lives up to the hype, and had a funny thought... What if in the context of the lore, every time we log off the game, we are really entering into a VR experience of the good old days back when Earth was not destroyed. And these push notifications are warnings for us to get back to reality because some serious things are happening in the 'real world'. Woah...

I have seen some talk lately of how exactly to make sure that there is consistent and balanced PvP within the Dual universe. One suggestion I have is seen is "PvP battlegrounds" or pre-determined areas that will create balanced matches between factions. I am not a fan of this idea because I think there are better ways of achieving this. One of the great things about this game that is that it has the potential to offer something for everyone. A large amount of those people will be looking to play this game for the PvP and will not want to spend all their time mining/designing/building guilds etc. Ideally, a player should be able to get in the game, buy a decent player-made ship, and head out to do some PvP without worrying about spending the entire day trying to find one. I think "battlegrounds" should be determined by scarcity of valuable resources, not a preset, static area. If you have ever played Space Engineers you know that PvP is rare and frustrating in survival servers. Why? 1. There aren't enough players in a single server 2. It quickly becomes extremely hard to actually find other players 3. All the resources are fairly abundant, meaning there is no need to fight over them 4. "Territory" is non-existent, beyond setting up a beacon on antenna saying "this here is mine" your faction wont have territory I believe that there are possible solutions to each of these problems: 1. As a single shard universe there will be as many players in the universe as are online which will (hopefully) be a lot! 2. Dual may need a galaxy map or some other system to show where the largest volume of players actually are. If you are a large organization of players you should not be able to hide it very well unless you are using stealth tech. Once you get to a system or planet, you should be able to detect ships that are relatively close by and intercept them similar to Elite Dangerous. Whether you will be able to intercept them depends on the capabilities of your ship. This will allow for piracy, bounty hunting, and mercenary work. 3. While some materials, like the ones that allow you to create a functioning ship, should be fairly accessible all across the universe, others should be very scarce. For example: the material used to refine fuel for FTL (assuming FTL is a thing), only exists in a handful of locations within a system. These will be the strategic locations that eventually become battlegrounds for factions to struggle over. So if you want to participate in more cooperative PvP, you join a warring organization of your choice and head to one of these contested locations. Will these locations always have balanced and fair fights? Of course not. It is the responsibility of factions as a whole to gain the unperhand strategically, not individual players. 4. Dual Universe already has a very solid territory system that makes it clear who owns land on planets. I don't know about Space/Asteroids ownership yet though. Let me know what you guys think!

I totally agree and here is what they are implementing to avoid this very problem (taken from the short wiki post on Resurrection Nodes):

I did like that aspect of Space Engineers, mainly because the default sky box was terrible and there where some really cool ones on the workshop. Of course, in Space Engineers, there are still no actual stars. The only 'real' things that are in the sky are the planets and asteroids. So I'm guessing the sky box will be more similar to Elite Dangerous where the sky is filled with actual stars that you can travel to. So I think the sky box texture should just be an ambient spacey glow at most.

From what I have read on the DevBlogs, there will be only one default safe zone. However, as the game progresses it is technically possible for players to build their own safezone using the arkship technology. To balance this tech they will have to be incredibly costly to build and maintain. So much so, that their value is questionable. I also recall reading that these player made safezones are not completely indestructible and that given an overwhelming assaulting force, they can be taken down. I think this is a great compromise, because it means only one safezone actually managed by the Dev's. while also providing a way for civilization to thrive.

I am actually pretty pleased with the way death works within the current lore. When you die, you are resurrected at the nearest arkship. Whats the motivation to not die? Having to start far away from where you left all your constructs. You might have to buy or build a new ship just to get back to where you died. AFAIK, eventually, large organizations will be able to create their own resurrection technology, thus making it so you do not have to spawn so far away if you die.

The good news is that most of what you are suggesting is already being planned, especially for the crafting part. There will be physical "market modules" as well as organization controlled markets. To what extent there will be actual store fronts I don't know. I really like the idea of work orders though, this is great for players who don't have the time or skill to do something, but do have the resources.

The way I see it, the whole point of Dual is to break free from limitations like these. Battles will occur spontaneously, arising due to the political, territorial, and economic pressures that are inherent in the game. Having equally matched and balanced battles just limits the realism that DU is going for. That may sound overly ambitious but that is in line with what little we know about combat from the devs. Inevitably there will be unfair fights, for example 20 players vs. 5 players. But if you think about it that more closely resembles reality and will determine which empires rise and fall over the course of the game.

I actually really like this idea and I think this would also be a good way for organizations (once they get quite large) to keep tabs on their players without direct communications. Perhaps an organization could require that players share their game logs with the organization. A player could be caught colluding with the enemy or violating organization law. This would be brought to the attention of an organization authority and prompt a decision on whether to kick them out or not. This has the added benefit of giving leaders something to manage. In organizations that use elections or want to hire players based off more than just their word, a player log could be used to determine who is most qualified for the position. Instead of the typical "Skill Level: 14 for crafting/ship building" player would be able to point toward their player log and say "my ship designs have sold quite well on the markets". Of course, spy's and criminals would want to avoid player log modules as part of their profession. So they benefit by not having a record of their illegal activity, but also would be negatively affected by their lack of a player log when joining an organization.

Thanks for your input Astrophil! You have a very good point about the lack of a dedicated marketing department within ODY. Under the current structure, marketing of ships and weapons would be handled by Industrial Operations. Contracting of security services on the other hand would be handled by ODYN. However, the structure of ODY is still flexible, so we will consider adding a 4th branch to handle marketing and advertisement of our ships or possibly adding a sub-department with Indi. Ops.