Code24

Hello Dual Universe! Welcome to Ark Central, the leader in Dual Universe news and updates! We're dedicated to bringing you the latest across the universe and keeping you informed on everything Dual Universe! The Ark Central team provides information across a variety of media, including video and radio broadcasts.
 
We'll keep this thread updated with the latest broadcasts so you won't have to search around for them!
 
*Note: Ark Central was previously known as Cinderfall TV. This partnership has since been terminated.
 
Cheers!
 
Broadcast 1: 
Broadcast 2: 
Broadcast 3:
Broadcast 4 (November 2017):
Broadcast 5 (December 2017):
 
Broadcast 6 (January 2018):
 
Broadcast 7 (February 2018):
 
Broadcast 8 (March 2018):
 

Nice. The Aether, as always, produces great content. 

Hi guys, 
 
As Lethys pointed out, we made an erratum on Twitter because of a mistake with the tiles' area (here and here). 
So it's currently around 0,65 sq km / 0.25 sq mi. Again, sorry for the confusion! 
 
Cheers, 
 
Nomad

Hello, I am Novarkian, The intial founder of The Cluster.
 
The Cluster is a group of spacefaring people living on a perpetually growing Cluster (City Ship). The Cluster travels from system to system to gather resources and wealth. People living in The Cluster are of varying backgrounds and all specialties will be needed to sustain it. There will be boundless oportunities choosing to be a part of a moving society. Will you be part of The Cluster?
 
Please read more about The Cluster here and join us if you want to be a part of something awesome!
 
https://community.dualthegame.com/organization/the-cluster

Hi everyone!
 
As the rules for the Community Portal were a bit unclear on some aspects, we are going to update:
- The "Create a Dual Universe Account" page.
- The "Create a New Organization" page.
 
Here are the texts that will be displayed soon on these pages:
 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------
 
New Text for the “Create a Dual Universe Account” page:
( https://community.dualthegame.com/accounts/register/ )
 
Warning:
By creating a Dual Universe account, you accept and agree to follow the terms and conditions available here.
A reminder of the essential rules:
Account names may not contain any copyrighted material (names, places, Etc)
Account names may not contain any material, references, words, or descriptions deemed offensive by the Community Team.
You agree to post only your own original content or content which you have been given explicit, express permission to post by the creator or the copyright holder.  Do not copy content from copyrighted universes.
Do not spam or post content that could be offensive in any way.
The community team may, at its sole discretion and without warning, remove any content, account, and/or organization it deems to be offensive, inappropriate, in violation of these rules, or for any other reason they deem necessary or appropriate.
   ---------------------------------------------------------------   New Text for “Create a New Organization” page:
( https://community.dualthegame.com/organizations/add )

Warning:
By creating an Organization, you accept and agree to follow the terms and conditions available here.
A reminder of the essential rules:
Organizations may not contain copyright names or other materials.
Organization names may not contain any material, references, words, or descriptions deemed offensive by the Community Team
You agree to post only your own original content or content which you have been given explicit, express permission to post by the creator or the copyright holder. Do not copy content from copyrighted universes.
Do not spam or post content that could be offensive in any way.
Organizations created for the only purpose of offending, provoking, or insulting others will not be tolerated.
Creating multiple ‘fake’ or ‘sock puppet’ accounts for the purposes of inflating the Organization’s size in order to appear in the list of the biggest organizations, or for any other reason, is strictly prohibited.
The community team may, at its sole discretion and without warning, remove any content, account, and/or organization it deems to be offensive, inappropriate, in violation of these rules, or for any other reason they deem necessary or appropriate.


Pre-Alpha stage:
Organizations created here are a provisional step towards building your organizations in-game.
As the game is in development the features and systems in place will evolve and are subject to change over time. Once the game launches the organizations, the members and the information held here will be synchronised with the game world. The organization structure will be composed of Members and Legates with different roles and/or responsibilities. For more information about Dual Universe Organizations and what they will become in the future, check out the Devblog!
 
 
A “Legate” status is currently NOT reversible (it is planned to be reversible at some point though), so choose your legates wisely! What you do here matters, so be careful what you promise!
   ---------------------------------------------------------------   Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

A great cinematic track composed for ODY by our friend The Epic Composer. You can check out his other music  here.

A great cinematic track composed for ODY by our friend The Epic Composer. You can check out his other music  here.

A great cinematic track composed for ODY by our friend The Epic Composer. You can check out his other music  here.

A great cinematic track composed for ODY by our friend The Epic Composer. You can check out his other music  here.

A great cinematic track composed for ODY by our friend The Epic Composer. You can check out his other music  here.

Chuckling Casket
www.ChucklingCasket.com
 
A thousand years before the SKiD our ancestors sailed the seas of Old Earth preying on the shipping lanes of the British Empire and any other merchants who were unlucky enough to cross paths with them. From Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard; to "Calico Jack" Rackham and Anne Bonny; to Admiral Sir Henry Morgan. These names struck fear into the hardest of hearts.
 
Pirates are not just thieves and murderers, though. We are farmers and miners and engineers and businessmen. Being a pirate in Dual Universe will be far more challenging than this profession is in any other game. Becoming a pirate will be a complete life choice, it will take cooperation and communication. Most of all, the Pirate lifestyle will take dedication. 
 
Do you have what it takes to dedicate yourself to the life of a Pirate? We will, among other activities, provide those fringe services the law-abiding folk don’t want to dirty their hands with, but do have need of- smuggling, spying, espionage, sabotage, information brokering, the opportunities are endless and limited only by what our clients are willing to ask us to do. This may include raids against settlements or bases or space stations or convoys for specific items or because our client may want that piece of land (or sector of space). We may be needed to quietly extract an asset, whether a person or a piece of gear or a ship that needs to be transported to our client’s research lab or military installation, or some neutral sector of space, maybe even to a third party station or city. Maybe someone needs revenge, but can’t carry it out themselves. We can help with that too!
 
While we are a part of the Cinderfall Syndicate, we also have some tentative agreements in place with some other organizations. As with anything, we need the game to be up and running in order to finalize these agreements. These agreements are in place for equipment, information, and an open line of communication for engaging our services.
 
 
What are we looking for? The whole shebang!
 
Pilots (All classes, fighter to capital)
Gunners
Medics
Engineers (Build and Repair)
Scripters
Marines (Ground/Shipboard combat infantry)
Farmers
Miners
Explorers
 
Want to fill a role or position not listed here? Have a group of friends who'd like to be on the same ship? Or have enough to crew your own ship but don't want to deal with the overhead? Contact us with your proposal! Get in on the ground floor and have some fun with us!
 
 
The first thing you’ll want to do is read over our Articles of Agreement, which are based on our ancient Pirate ancestor’s own Articles. We allow gambling though, because what pirate doesn’t enjoy gambling on anything and everything? Article III is likely to be modified once the game is released so we have pertinent officer occupations. If you have questions, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us! You can use the Contact Form if you like, or Sign Up for an account on our site and post in the forums. You can also jump on our Discord if you like- https://discord.gg/x928Zpm
 
 
*Chuckling Casket is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

With the bounty system being the next stretch goal, I thought it was high time we take a look at what it could mean to "set the bounty and put a price on somebody's head".
For me at least, there are three factors that are important in a bounty system:
Fun: That bounty hunting *feels* like bounty hunting, not an unlucrative fetch quest.  That it is challenging to succeed at collecting a bounty and the bounty provides a suitable reward. Fair: The average player is (relatively) safe.  The system should ensure that the game does not devolve into a gank fest. Less abusable: Ideally a system should *not* be abusable at all, but in an MMO setting where alt's are cheap, this is very difficult to achieve.  So minimizing abuse is the goal here. First, I will go through how MMO's in the past, present and future will have done their bounty system and then give a suggestion of one that could work in Dual Universe.  This might get a little long, so strap in or just skip to the suggested system at the end.
 
 
Past: Ultima Online
I have fond memories of my years spent in this fantasy MMORPG in the early 2000's.  PvP was changed multiple times over the course of the game and a bounty system was one aspect of PvP.  
 
This was "justice system" which could be triggered when a player was murdered by a player killer. Usually after a number of murders, a bounty from the victims own pocket could be placed on the murderers head.  A list of bounties could be looked up at a nearest bank.  If the murder could be found, killed, butchered and his head returned to a guard, the full bounty would be awarded.  
 
In some cases the head could be ransomed back to the murder or the murder would suffer a stat decrease for a defined period. In other cases, the murderer would lose his own money from the bank and it would be placed on his head as a bounty.  In yet other cases the murderer would suffer stat penalties for dying at the hands of a "blue" player.
 
In short, there were many different variations, but most revolved around the concept of a justice system specifically targeting perpetual player killers.
 
 
Present: EVE Online
There is no justice here: only money.  
 
Bounties in EVE can by placed on anyone, by anyone. And everyone can see all the bounties.  But a player having a bounty does not give all other players the right to kill that player anywhere, for example a bounty hunter attempting to collect in high-sec will still be attacked by the ever vigilant defenders, CONCORD. Although any where else, all bets are off.
 
The bounty is not paid to the bounty hunter in full, but is instead based on the value of the bounty targets destroyed ship starting at 20% of the actual bounty value. While this system reduces collusion to split the bounty between the bounty hunter and target, it also reduces the potential earnings of a bounty hunter, making bounty hunting less viable.
 
 
Future: Star Citizen
I say "future" because the game is not technically released yet.  The idea is that the bounty system is a justice system: bad guys (both PC and NPC) could have a bounty and good guys attempt to collect it.  That's it. Moving on.
 
But wait, you say, surely there is more?  Well yes.  But at this point it is conjecture.  For example some bounties may be "capture alive" some may be "dead or alive" perhaps depending on their misdeeds.  Star Citizen plans to have a legacy system where, after a random amount of lives , characters are permanently killed and replaced with their offspring. The offspring do get a bit of inheritance (and/or debt) and there is a slight neutralizing of reputation.  The bounties will probably simply disappear on death.
 
The take home point here is that this is a justice system.
 
 
A note on abusing bounty systems
The simplest way to abuse a bounty system in a free trade game is to have the bounty target and the bounty hunter collude.  The bounty hunter brings in the target and they split the bounty 50/50.
In Ultima Online, there was an inherent loss of skills at death and skills are really difficult to increase. 
In EVE the target must lose more than the bounty but bounties are so unlucrative that they no longer feel like bounty hunting.
In Star Citizen, a character will have limited number of lives (for that character at least), so death may mean losing that incarnation of your character.
But why collusion is not an issue is that it requires trust.  Trust that the bounty hunter will not just take all the money after the bounty target rolls over.
I am sure there are other ways to abuse a bounty system but these I leave for another post.
Suggestion for Dual Universe
Dual Universe is about giving players tools to run systems, not to have systems run the players.  That said, none of the above example bounty systems really tick all the boxes. So a suggestion is as follows:
Create a bounty: A bounty can be placed on anyone by anyone (minimum amounts on the bounty apply).  This moves the bounty system away from being a justice system tied to reputation and makes it another useful tool in the DU belt.  This, on its own, does break the "fair" goal, since anyone can be targeted but a single point does not a system make. Read on.
  Get the contract: A bounty contract can only be picked up at a special terminal and is chosen from a randomly generated list of say 10 nameless bounties with a last known location (with a possibility of a reroll within a set time frame). Only those with the correct bounty contract can claim the bounty.  This means a list of bounties may be optionally published, but they will have no effect since only allowed bounty hunters with the correct contracts will be able to collect.  This makes investing into bounty hunting skills viable as it would be possible to tier bounties.
But why contracts?  This means the game won't devolve into a griefer gank-fest.
  Accept the contract: Once a contract is accepted, the bounty's name is revealed can track the target, the name remains unknown. A bounty hunter can only have a set number of bounty contracts active at one time and this does not preclude others from gaining the same contract. There should be some potential for competition after all. Also there is no auto tracking built in at best a proximity beep.
  Completing the bounty: The bounty hunter kills the target and gains the full bounty amount.  A bounty should be completed within a time frame (say a month) of being accepted or the bounty hunter will suffer a penalty (e.g. monetary loss and/or temporary loss of skills). Likewise the target could suffer a temporary loss of skills. This is a broad outline of a system and definitely still needs details filled in, but as you can see from the earlier examples, a bounty system is far from easy and straight forward.
 
Do you like what you see here? Do you have ideas for a bounty system? Feel free to discuss.
 
P.S. A further insightful video on the subject.

Woo, it made it into the Newsletter today!

http://mailchi.mp/novaquark/dual-universe-april-news-1546758?e=99e0476b5a 

This makes me so happy 

HALLO yuss this is VELN
 
I have created a new blueprint for a thing that could do stuff in the future times :T
 
BEHOLD

 
The WhirlyDoop tm is the numbur won solution to pesky annoying ground troops that are grouped up. If you see a bunch of peoples with guns standing around you might be like:
 
"HEY YOU PUNKS, GET OFF MAH LAWN" and normally you would just shake your fist and go GRRRRR
 
But not today!!! NOW all you gotta say is "RELEASE THE WHIRLYDOOP tm" and watch the majik merry-go-round of death shotgun those punks in the face until you have plenty of red juicy fertilizer for your beautiful sexy lawn.
 
Some of you might be saying "But that thingy has 4 rockets propelling it :T what if I breaks a rocket?" Well thanks to the MAJIK of scripting, the WhirlyDoop tm will adjust propulsion to keep it on a continuous spinning warpath.
 
Call now and you can order your own WhirlyDoop tm for only 5 easy payments of $29.99!!! BUT WAIT THERES MORE @______@
We'll throw in a free pair of INDUSTRIAL STREGNTH googly eyes to make your WhirlyDoop tm 50% less threatening!!! They'll never even see it coming :T
 
ORDER A WHIRLYDOOP tm TODAY!!!

Here's the second of the 3 ship profiles for GLSQ: The Raydr Class. Enjoy!

Yeah, but having Space Engineers trollships is kind of a cancer.
 
"Attack my propulsion, good luck, it's in the center of the ship".
 
 
Even Empyrion is adding explosive damage whne fuel tansk are destroyed to prevent the "box everything together" designs.
 
That's called "challenge", it's integral for seperating the good builders from the bad.

"Those who have no lives".... since I don't see many of us having one outside DU once it's out.

It's a game, not a medicine. You pay for commodities - like games. Welcome to reality.

Woops.

One discord to display them all
One discord to find them
One discord to link them all
and on the discord bind them.

Well let's see what a DAC can get you in-game.
 
MONEY.
 
Maybe a lot, who knows. With that, you can buy basically anything on the market, including ships others have built, resources, locations to who-knows-what.
 
What Can't a DAC buy?
 
A crew. Coding skills. Building skills. (Talking not in-game skills.)
 
Without those ^^^^^^^^^ You can't fly some of the ships you buy, you can't build one (A good one), and good luck getting to that location without one.
 
So I don't foresee DAC's becoming anywhere near Pay-To-Win. You can drop $1000 to buy a battleship, but it'll end up being just an empty metal can.

Exactly. Kurock brings up excellent points and arguments, but I am unconcerned regardless. My goals in DU will be things such as building spaceships and attempting to optimize their efficiency, Lua scripting, and messing around with interactive elements to make practical contraptions with them. Whether I succeed or spectacularly fail at doing any or all of those things, I won't mind much, as long as I enjoy it; I know no one can buy their way to innovation.