fabsch412

Hello, Noveans!
 
With the launch of Dual Universe a month away, we want to talk about how to prepare for the upcoming server reset.
 
We’ve outlined the parts of your gameplay that you’ll keep post-reset in our announcement video and in the letter from our Creative Director. Today, we want to expand on that and discuss how best to prepare for the reset and how to get the most out of it.
 
PREPARE YOUR CORE BLUEPRINTS

Make a Core Blueprint of every construct you want to keep and make sure that you store it in your nanopack or in a container on a construct that you own, though we advise that you keep them in your nanopack as it’s the safest place to store them.
 
If you have Core Blueprints in the care of others or in other locations around Helios, don’t forget to gather them, should you want to keep them. Being the original owner of a Core Blueprint has no impact on Core Blueprints outside of your possession. You will keep only those Core Blueprints in your nanopack and owned containers.
 
The same applies to organization-owned Core Blueprints. If you’re a superlegate of an organization, make sure that you store your Core Blueprints in your nanopack or that they’re stored in a container on a construct owned by your organization, though again, we advise that you keep them in your nanopack.
 
PREPARE YOUR ORGANIZATIONS

Make sure that each organization you want to keep has a player as its superlegate. Any organization without a player as its superlegate will be lost at the reset.
 
Make a list of members you would like to reinvite after the reset. Though any organization with a player as its superlegate will remain after the reset with its Core Blueprints, Name, Logo, and Manifesto intact, membership will be reset.
 
You can use the in-game contacts system (which will remain after the reset) to keep track of your members or simply make a list outside of the game. 
 
DON’T WASTE TIME PREPARING YOUR MINING UNITS

We will reset the ore distribution on each body in Helios. To find good spots for your mining units, you’ll need to re-build your Territory Scanners and hunt the tiles down. None of your pre-reset knowledge of hotspots will be valid post-reset.
 
PIONEER PACKS AND THE TALENT ACCELERATOR 

The Pioneer Packs' items will be delivered in the first month after launch. If you’d like your collectibles, you’ll need an active subscription, and you’ll need to log into the game during its first month after release to receive them.
 
The talent point and quanta awards will be given on the final day of each month for the first six months of release. Again, you’ll need an active subscription to receive them.
 
Finally, if you've subscribed to the game, ensure that you have at least six months of talent training queued up. The talent point accelerator event, which is open to all players, will boost your talent point acquisition in the first six months of launch by:
100% for the first month 50% for months two, three, and four 25% for months five and six   
The launch of Dual Universe will likely be the last time in the game's life where the economy will be an even playing field. Though beta players and backers will gain some advantage by the end of the six-month launch period, the start of the launch will see every player on the same starting line. There’s never been a better time to join! 
 
We’re excited to see you in Helios on the 27th of September. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to share your feedback on reset preparation here.

Imagine my surprise.

Greetings Noveans,
 
Upon popular request from players, we will be holding a live, written Q&A session with the Novaquark Game Design team on Wednesday, December 1st  at 15:00 UTC. 
 
NQ-Kyrios, NQ-Entropy and NQ-Wave will be answering player questions during one hour on a dedicated channel on Discord. We encourage you to prepare your questions in advance, and discuss the hot topics that you have in mind in this thread, with the following caveats:
 
They will not be discussing future plans and upcoming features, as we are planning an update to the roadmap early 2022. The Game Design team will only answer questions in their field. So, questions about performance, bugs or the business of Novaquark will not be answered in this Q&A, for example.  The focus of the Q&A should ideally be on the latest release, Demeter, and any gameplay-related questions you may have following its release. Other questions on existing features may be answered, but Demeter-related questions will be prioritized. Our 3 game designers are very excited to answer your questions, but it goes without saying that the tone should remain courteous and respectful. It is in the interest of the community that these events, which we hope to organize more of in the future, stay well-behaved and that our employees feel a positive connection to our players.   
We realize that not everyone will be able to attend the event, so we encourage you to pass along your questions to your fellow Noveans. Pending unforeseen technical difficulties, our intention is to ensure that the content of the Q&A stays accessible for a few days after the event, so that absentees can still read it through. 
 
We can’t wait to hear your questions!
 
The Novaquark team.
 

I guess they will make that decision when they are close to release.  If they have a large playerbase who is paying lots of money they will probably not wipe ( I acknowledge its unlikely).  However if the player base is small.  Then they might well go for a full wipe.  New players and players who started but never came back might get in knowing that the game is fixed and its a new start.  We probably cant unbreak the egg but I think most of us know the game is in Alpha and really my subscription is a donation.

Me being a person with over 15k scans . This is the right decision. And i get to do more scanning 

Mining units are one of the key features that will be introduced in the upcoming Demeter update. What are they? How do they work? How will they impact the gameplay of Dual Universe? Read on for the answers to those questions and learn more about these handy-dandy little ore vacuums. 
 
HOW DO MINING UNITS WORK?
Let’s start with the basics. 
 
Mining units are new elements that you can deploy on your static constructs on the surface of planets. They need to be linked to an output container and, once started, they will autonomously dispense ore at regular intervals into this container without the need for you to be connected to the game. 
 
There is one mining unit for each tier and they are large elements. Each tier of mining unit is able to mine ores of the same tier. In addition to these five large mining units, there is also a small one for tier 1 only. This special small mining unit is intended for beginners.
 
Let’s have a look at these beautiful beasts in action.
 

A minimalist mining building with an active mining unit and its best friend, the container
 
These mining units work only if the mining ray you see in the screenshot above is not obstructed and can reach the ground. The mining ray has a maximum range of 50m.
 
Once the mining unit is deployed, linked to an output container, and in range of the ground, you can select what ore it will mine and start the machine. Once calibrated (more on that below), It will then mine regularly and deliver a batch of ore in the output container every hour. To further automate the process, the output container can be designated as the entry point of an industry line. (Note: If the container is full; the mining unit will no longer collect ore, so you’ll need to empty the output containers from time to time or have them feed directly into an industry line.)
 
There are two primary considerations when deploying mining units. First, you need to make sure the territory where they are deployed actually holds enough ore underground and the units will need to be calibrated before they will begin collecting ore.

TERRITORY POOLS
Various types and tiers of ore are dispersed with limited availability across Dual Universe. You won’t find them all grouped together in a particular place. 
 
To represent that, each territory in the game can provide up to a certain volume of ore each hour. That’s what we call the ‘ore pool’. A territory scan can show the kinds of ore present on a territory tile and their yield rates in liters per hour.
 

This territory is capable of providing a variety of tier 1 ore
 
The image above illustrates the territory-based maximum rate for each ore on this territory. Since there’s a maximum yield per hour, adding more and more mining units becomes useless past a certain point. Each active mining unit “consumes” a part of these available resources. These territory pools represent mining rates, not a total volume of available ore. For example, if a territory has a pool of 100 l/h of a given ore and each mining unit is capable of extracting 50 l/h, then you need two mining units to maximize your extraction capacity, and any additional mining unit beyond two won't give you more yield.
 
Unlike the previous ‘manual mining’ system, the new ore pools are infinite. You will always be able to mine these ores at this rate for as long as you have a calibrated mining unit running here.
 
These territory ore pools are varied and different. On a planetary basis, this new repartition should match more or less the previous allotment for manual underground mining. There are a few changes, but basically a planet that used to contain some tier 3 ore will still contain some tile-wise though, the issuance is very different between low and high tier ores, even from territory tile to territory tile. Typically, you should find tier 1 ore in abundance on nearly every territory tile in the system, but tier 5 ores are only on a few small spots on the most distant planets.

ACTIVE TERRITORIES
For mining units to work, the territory must be active. That simply means that the territory tax for it must be paid. That’s right, if you want the shiny rocks, you gotta pay your taxes. You can learn more about territory upkeep in an upcoming devlog. 

MINING RIGHTS
If you share your territory tile with your friends or organization, you might want to keep the precious underground ores for yourself or, conversely, allow only specific people the ability to operate mining units on your territories. For this purpose, we’re adding the Mining Unit Right. Without this, mining units belonging to other players are unable to access the ore pool and cannot mine on your territories. 

ADJACENCY BONUS
Mining units are social. They like to be around friends. That’s why if you own several active territories near each other, the mining units working on them get an ‘adjacency bonus’ to yield a greater amount of ore beyond the ore pool in each batch. Note that the territories must be owned by the same entity. If you find a great tile with precious ore under it, it might be worth it to own and maintain a few adjacent territories.

EXTRACTING AND CALIBRATION
As explained above, mining units are fully autonomous, doing their appointed duties regardless of where you are and what you’re doing, including when you’re offline having real-world adventures (which you should be enjoying from time to time). The reality is just a bit more complex as mining units need to be calibrated to work efficiently.
 
Each mining unit has a ‘calibration score’ and slowly loses calibration over time if kept unchecked. When the calibration score is below 100%, the mining unit will produce less ore; at 0%, it won’t produce anything at all. To remedy that, it must be calibrated.
 
To calibrate, you will need to enter a specific interface where you will manually probe the territory in search of underground ore. This is ‘extracting’.
 

Manually extracting ore and calibrating the mining unit
 
In this extracting session, you will use several tools to probe the territory tile, but you will need to keep a look at the probe battery at the same time. The goal is to find the optimal point with the best ore density that you’ll select at the end of the process. Depending on the quality of the location, this will have two effects:
It will increase the calibration score so that the mining unit can continue to do its job. It will also extract a few ore rocks in the process and those will pop to the surface of the tile at the selected location. These may be harvested manually at your convenience; they don’t expire.   
Calibration is not unlimited. Each player generates calibration charges at the rate of one charge every few hours. You can use your charges on the mining units owned by other players or organizations as long as you have the rights needed to access them.
 
Finally, a single mining unit cannot be extracted twice in a row. There’s a 24-hour cooldown period before calibrating it again. The upside is that mining units will not lose calibration for two days after being calibrated.

MINING UNIT TALENTS
Since mining units are a big new thing for Dual Universe, they come with a variety of new talents to complement their use.
 
You will have talents that improve the:
mining unit efficiency, on element deploy base mining rate, on element deploy speed at which your character will regenerate calibration charges  maximum mining charges your character can hold amount of ore extracted when calibrating  
GETTING TO THE CORE OF TERRAFORMING
One change we do want to make you all aware of comes as part of the terraforming changes where previously a number of players had dug down to the center of certain planets or moons. Each planet or moon will now have an impenetrable core at the center that forms about 80% of the planet's radius with a minimum digable depth of 5 km below its “sea” level.
 

 
As such, some constructs may be located below this line after the incoming terrain changes. In these cases, we will raise those constructs up to the relevant planet’s surface. (See this article about preparing for the geometry reset for directions on how to request assistance.) 

A CHANGE OF HEART, THE REMOVAL OF SCAN RESULTS
We received a considerable amount of feedback from players who were opposed to keeping old scan results relevant. And following some internal discussions on the topic, we feel that it is indeed in the best interest of the game to provide a clean slate when it comes to mining data to prevent the hottest of hotspots from being immediately taken. As such, we will be clearing all scan results from the game when Demeter goes live. 
 
We realise that this will inconvenience some of the players who have large amounts of scan data; however, we do believe it is the right thing to do.

DO YOU ‘DIG’ THE MINING CHANGES?
Mining units are a significant departure in how mining is done in Dual Universe. The old underground mining system is gone, replaced by mining units and asteroid mining. We hope that you will appreciate the new feature, from territory management and optimization to the extracting sessions. We really think that the new state of mining in DU is more sustainable and hope you’ll agree. Share your feedback here. 
 

DISCLAIMER: below are my thoughts, I am not telling NQ what to do or demanding anything, but I do think it makes sense and would benefit the game as a whole if it were adopted
 
 8< ----
 
Following the latest VLOG we now know NQ intends/plans to allow one free tile outside fo Sanctuary at least. I think that is a good idea in principle and would take away a lot of potential pain points in the tax system but there needs to be some limitations to that idea:
 
The free claim requires a special TU much like the Sanctuary TU, it can't be crafted, only bought. One of these TU is given as a reward following a tutorial where the importance of choosing location wisely is enforced.  By making the tutorial available only after some prereqs are met, you can prevent players from making the wrong decision in choosing their location and it will mean they can only acquire the TU after having been in the game for a bit. You can't pick up the TU again and move it, like the Sanctuary TU. If you pick it up, it either converts to a normal TU You can only claim one free tile per planet/moon with a max of these TU being active at once (3 or 4) Placing a second TU on the same planet or exceeding te quota, you can opt to place it as a "normal" TU and pay taxes. This would convert the TU into a normal one. This special TU does not allow rights to be set for orgs. This would prevent large orgs having access to massive numbers of tiles for free through their members.  
These conditions would remove quite a few loopholes and should really not be very hard to implement. They are vital to these free tiles not getting abused though and so must be in place at the same time these free tiles are implemented. This could be easily achieved if the idea of a special "free claim" TU would be adopted as you could design these so that they only allow player names to be added as actors
 
While this wil be controversial I know, beyond the initial one you'd get following a tutorial, I could see these TUs be for sale in the store for RL $$. In game it would be a sellable item so like DAC it could be used to convert RL $$ to quanta.
 
 
It would really be nice to hear what @NQ-Deckard has to say on this..
 

I usually am not very active on the forums, but I decided I wanted to help combat some of the "hate" people have been spreading about this update and I'll do it in multiple sections to make it easier. I'll also bring some things up that have been put on the back burner, but I believe should be addressed sooner rather than when they become a major issue again.

TAXES
 
Opinion: 1 million quanta in this game is not nearly as much as most people think. If you log in for 7 days, you just paid for your territory tax for a single tile on top of the free one on sanctuary. You do not have to do a single thing other than log in then back out to earn the money for a territory of your choosing. This being said, NQ can easily change the rate after implementing the system and seeing what does happening instead of everyone guessing what might happen. Arguing about the rate before it is even implemented is not useful since everything will remain an "if." 
 
Territory Loss
 
Opinion: The game NEEDS this. We have way too many tiles claimed and too many obtrusive constructs owned by players who left the game. This is making the game feel abandoned in some areas instead of simply "unexplored" or "potentially useful" in those areas. These abandoned cities and towers and outposts are discouraging clutter and need to go. We also do need the system to continue purging abandoned materials from land. For the health and enjoyment for the active players and to attract new ones, we need this system. 
 
Suggestion: I'm not sure of the capabilities of linking in-game information to external registered accounts, but I believe we are seeing more and more need for a external connection to certain information. This territory loss mechanic is the largest need so far. We really do need a way by email to receive a notification of an abandoned tile construct being marked for excavation by another player. If someone is taking a break from the game but still has their active subscription and maybe ran out of tax funds, they shouldn't have to log in continuously to make sure their constructs aren't marked for excavation. A simple email notification from an in-game connection to it would go miles for relieving players of their worries and would be less deterring for players to branch out. I'll address another crucial need for this system under Player Communication.
 
Brakes
 
Opinion: To those complaining about new obstruction: I'm sorry, but move on. The obstruction arrows and indicators have been on the elements since the beginning of Beta. You should have known better and cannot act surprised that they are fixing what has clearly been a bug for ages. 
 
Question: Are we going to see the intended animation for the air brakes at some point?
Question: Will the obstruction areas be changed for the air brakes? Currently the area is towards the front of the model, but wouldn't they logically open upwards and it not matter what's in front of them so long as they can open?
 
Mining
 
Opinion: I'm on board with all the changes honestly. I will not miss digging holes being the most profitable source of income. Also thank you for increasing asteroids in the safe zone because the current 12-ish was definitely NOT enough. I get it low risk is low reward, but we're just talking wanting some tier 1 and 2 ore. My only complaint with the mining changes is some of the tier 2 ore scarcity is a little too extreme. Out of over 50 tiles on Alioth absolutely zero of them had any tier 2 or 3. I get it for the tier 3+ maybe this scarcity will make the game more interesting. However, the bare necessity of this game is fuel, specifically space fuel. How are people supposed to play the game if you can only make space fuel to start exploring on less than 2% of the tiles. This is too extreme. As for a scan wipe, I don't personally care. It's better to not wipe and see how it goes and maybe wipe and regenerate the ore pools later than to wipe it and then realize you shouldn't have.
 
Suggestion: We need more tier 2 ore in the ore pools. New players can't play this game if they have to scan 100 tiles to start making fuel to start playing the rest of the game. Sure they could theoretically buy space fuel, but that's not going to be affordable for new players if there's, again, less than 2% of tiles ever capable of producing it on the entire main planet.
 
Suggestion: Keep the majority of asteroids spawning on the weekend if that's the route you think is best, but maybe make some spawn during the week (unannounced). You could potentially try and use the ratio of online players. Example: if you have 70 players online Friday-Sunday and 30 online Monday-Thursday then 70% of the weekly asteroids spawn on the weekend and 30% spawn during the week. 
 
Mining Units
 
Opinion: The current production method is rather ridiculous that you're required to have tier 3 ore to be able to mine tier 3 ore. You mention it's a "chicken and egg" situation, but this is a game where you (Devs) can change what turns into a chicken. 
 
Suggestion: Just make the mining units function as the industry units do that works fairly well. Basic mining units can mine basic and uncommon ore to make the next one up. Uncommon mining units can mine basic, uncommon, and advanced ore to make the next unit up. Seems to make sense to me since you've already implemented this system with industry and it works pretty well in my opinion.
 
Subscription Price Increase
 
Opinion: Fine by me. I was afraid you were about to start charging up to $15 a month which would be absurd. $9.99 USD for a single month and if you buy a year it's still only $6.99 USD? As a few friends of mine constantly repeat and is still true: if you sacrifice two *insert popular coffee brand name here* drinks per month you just got 30 days access to a fully customizable sci-fi server world.
 
Now onto some older business that has, in my opinion, gotten pushed to the back of discussions
 
Warp Drives
 
Opinion: Love the speed reduction in making it feel like a real journey again instead of it being 5 seconds and you're at the farthest place you can get in this world. You could probably slow it down even more and I'd be okay with it even at 1,000,000 km/h instead of 2,500,000 km/h. My only sadness is with the still removed Lua functionality. 
 
Suggestion: After all the balances and adjustments to prevent PVP exploitation, and maybe one or two more to prevent unfair auto-warp, can we please get warp drive control back through Lua? What might help is if there is a way to prevent warp activation through Lua just in the PVP zone to stop the auto-warp on radar contact. There are so many projects I had to throw in a box and pack away for later because we don't have warp drive control anymore. The biggest problem I have with the system right now is there's NO way to block people from dropping out of warp on a ship they have access to. Would be real nice to un-bind alt+j from stopping warp at the very least so we can remove users ability to forcibly bring a ship into PVP space that we coded to not allow users to do. . If we could have full Lua control back that would be even better to make cool warp control scripts for more immersion. 
 
Question: Are we getting Lua control back someday?
 
Industry in General
 
Opinion: Please for the love of Novea fix these talent applications. I have some seriously cool projects I'm working on for industry display and control, but this guessing game of which talents are currently being applied to the schematics and how are they affecting the schematics and which version am I looking at is insanity. Sometimes efficiency skills reduce time, but sometimes it increases its production output and then also requires more material at a certain unknown threshold. Some talents are applying when looking at a schematic in the machine and some won't show their affect until you already started it and who knows which ones did what. 
 
Suggestion: Please just add a way for us to query a schematic's adjusted time, input, and output before and after talents and/or show us in the schematic info panel inside the industry unit what is happening from which talents. If you feel extra nice it would be great to have a blog/forum post somewhere as to how in the world they are supposed to be calculated to be able to figure out what materials we'll need for what without having to build the entire factory and start the machines first. 
 
Markets
 
Opinion: API when? With all these changes coming to ore acquisition which will help stabilize markets with static ore influx rates, we could really use something to get market data in game instead of all these semi-allowed "market log file readers" floating around. 
 
Suggestion: Lua API for highest buy/sell order, lowest buy/sell order, and average buy/sell order values and amounts for target item please. Would be even cooler if you added a planet ID parameter where if left blank it will query the entire market but if specified it will only query the data from the specified planetary body's markets. 
 
DRM Flag System
 
Opinion: Love it. I just want more control over it. Right now there is no way to sell someone a protected script. The only way to do so is to put the script on a new construct, DRM protect it, and sell the entire construct. There's no way currently to sell someone a protected script to add to an existing construct. If you think there's a work around through trading/tokenization/flag activation/deactivation/trading, there isn't trust me. I've tried every method and the buyer can always open and edit/take the script.
 
Suggestion: Please add a way to DRM a programming board with the Lua script on it. They have "dynamic properties" so is it difficult to add a DRM to one of those dynamic properties to communicate with the DRM flags when placed down after trading? 
 
Element Destruction
 
Opinion: The ownership loss on core destruction was obviously a terrible idea especially in the game's current state. Great for PVP and makes sense, but terrible for flying around the safe zone on planets. I don't fully understand why cores are no longer destroyed on ground collision anymore since they were previously before that PTS version and didn't result in the loss of your ship. Also what happened to recyclers actually recycling? I digress. I have some suggestions on how to bring all this back in a healthy way.
 
Suggestion: Before addressing the core lives and ownership loss, maybe just throw in element lives on the other stuff first. It would help the economy a lot to make people replace their wings after crashing so many times. 3 lives is definitely a little too harsh given the current game state. Maybe start off with 10 until it's more stable from all the client crashes. That may seem like too many lives to some, but we have infinite right now for collisions in the safe zone so 10 is better. 
 
Suggestion: Allow recyclers to break elements back down into parts based on lives. if an element requires 20 screw and has 9/10 lives left, allow it to be broken down for 18 of the 20 original screws. If an element takes a single large reinforced frame, then if its missing a life, the frame is damaged so you don.t get the 1 item back. Basically if the percent of lives left multiplied by the number of parts is less than 1, you don't get any of that part back because all of them are damaged. 
 
Suggestion: For core destruction, first of all, maybe there's a way to introduce another "type" of damage? So you have thermal damage/resistance, electromagnetic, and others. Maybe add another type call "structural" damage/resistance. This is so that the PVP damage and environmental damage are separately controllable by you guys (Devs). A core unit could have a much higher structural resistance so that core loss is more likely in PVP rather than accidentally crashing into a rock. A laser should be able to do much more damage to a core than a lump of snow. Secondly, maybe put a timer for ownership loss in the safe zone? This might be harder to implement since it would need to have different mechanics in the safe zone vs PVP zone, but it would be logical. If you blow the core on your ship, you already get a waypoint to where you died so add a 24 or 48 hours timer to it when it blows in the safe zone so you can decide if its worth going back for and can without losing everything.
 
Player Communications
 
Opinion: We really need a way to leave messages for players and/or be notified of communications outside the game. 
 
Suggestion: As I mentioned earlier in Territory Loss we really need some connection between in-game and out-of-game. Would be nice to get an email when someone wants to reach out to you in game or simply when you get a friend request. Would also be super useful if we had an inbox to send/check messages with for when you need to talk to someone who isn't online. Discord just isn't good enough since there's no guarantee they have the same name on Discord as the person you're trying to reach out to in game.
 
Energy Management
 
Question: Is this still a future thing?
 
Suggestion: This should be a thing.
 
Shoutout to @NQ-Deckard for being the Lua master who probably has all the answers and good luck reading all this Deckard/Pann
Keep going with the video Q&As I love these and it's why I decided to be involved on the forums again. You might need a whole other video just from my questions/suggestion in this one post!

According to Gottchar himself it's like 30-60min a day, pretty much every day (every 35 hours with max skills). Also you're just assuming 7 tiles, but that's not optimal and not how Gottchar was calculating it all. You also need the tiles around those 7 tiles for optimal results, and other factors. His exact words:
 
That leaves you with ~700.000 worth of ore if you want to use it yourself. IF you can find the ideal patch.
 
A LOT of players are solo players, only choosing (sometimes) when they do stuff with others. One of the more relaxing activities in DU is mining in a tile that doesn't have anyone near it, just you with the soil and ore! So Zen! ? The current implementation of the asteroid system is anything but relaxing nor Zen. When I want to go mining in pvp space for rich rewards, I can, but relaxed mining with a ton of others around, I cannot do anymore.
 
If the reason for phasing out planet mining is saving money on server resources for the always persistent ant tunnels we've dug under there. There is a very simple, yet effective solution. Make an asteroid belt that goes through both the safe zone and pvp space. Just create tens of thousands of asteroids, the moment someone mines or terraforms the first voxel on an asteroid a 7 day timer starts to run, after which the asteroid despawns and a new rock spawns. In safe zone you'll have access to everything, but the higher tier ores are more abundant in pvp space. There are many variations of this concept possible, instead of automatically despawning and respawning you can have an attached missioning system where if an asteroid has more then x amount of tunnels (costs x amount of data on the server) it's marked as a missioning target by Aphellia, 90% of the asteroid ore needs to be mined out and then a charge set at the center of the asteroid, which despawns it. You get Y amount of quanta based on how bad the asteroid is on the server (higher load, more quanta). Or asteroids do not automagically respawn, respawn only happens every x months or once a year.
 
There are a ton of options which don't require us to run like a bunch of lemmings on an asteroid and then quickly mine it out as fast as possible. That sounds to much like work, just like having to log in every day or every 1.5 days to set 7-10 autominers via an annoying mini game...
 

Since the Ares Q&A video seemed to be pretty popular, we're planning to do another to answer your questions related to the approaching Demeter update. Please drop them in this thread. 

SUPER IMPORTANT STUFF PLEASE READ EVEN IF YOU HATE READING (yes, even you): 
We politely yet strongly request that you wait until after you've explored the Demeter content on PTS a bit before posing questions. A lot of the information you seek may be discovered through your hands-on gameplay adventures.  Likewise, you should watch the Demeter vlog before asking questions here. Many questions we've seen this week were accompanied by people admitting that they hadn't watched the video.  We know it's long and cannot compete with great videos like this and this, but it's really important stuff. Maybe watch in increments, taking a snack break here and there. (Protip: The segment with Deckard pairs well with cheesy poofs.) We will only answer Demeter-related questions.   
Thanks in advance for your participation and what I'm sure will be superamazingbangerangadelic questions. 

Calling all Noveans! 
 
We’re nearing the final stages of preparing the Dual Universe public test server (PTS) for its upcoming grand opening, and we need your help. 

If you are an active DU subscriber, please join us for a PTS load test. During this test, we will be gathering data related to server capacity and performance and trying out the new launcher. What’s more, you’ll be getting your first taste of the 0.24 build that’s currently in development. Your character and assets from the Live server will be mirrored on PTS. 
 
Your account login information will be the same for both the Live server and PTS; however, access to PTS requires downloading, installing and running a separate client, as well as the testing of the new launcher we’re rolling out with 0.24. 
 
Get the PTS client here. 
 
Feedback and bug reports related to PTS should be posted in this designated forum. 
 
Note that we anticipate that the performance won’t be smooth. They never are with these sorts of tests - and that’s a big part of what makes them important. 
 
It’s important to mention that PTS is solely for testing purposes. We’d like to manage expectations that PTS updates may include feature prototypes and gameplay changes that might not ever come to the Live server.
 
We understand that some players prefer a more stable and polished gameplay experience. Test servers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Updates will be unpolished. There will be no Customer Support. The server may be offline for extended periods, wiped or taken offline without advance notice. 
 
That being said, those who choose to brave the raw environment of the PTS will find there are certain advantages. Participation on PTS will give you the chance to help shape DU by sharing your insights and constructive criticism earlier in the development process. You’ll also get sneak peeks at content before it’s deployed on the Live server and impacts the persistent universe of DU. This will afford you the chance to formulate strategies for how to get the most out of upcoming changes. In addition, there may be times when we ease the experience by providing necessary equipment and resources on a discretionary basis. For example, if we need to test a new weapon, we may provide it for free to save PTS players the time and effort of creating it for themselves.                   
                                                                    
The Novaquark team hopes that many players will choose to help us test features on the PTS in the future, as it is one of the steps we are taking to further improve the quality of our releases, make sure our features are relevant, and overall have a development approach that further involves our community of players.
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team
 

Hey Noveans,

Joining an organization in Dual Universe has many advantages, especially when it comes to pooling and sharing resources. The introduction of org wallets in the upcoming 0.24 update will add a convenient way to transfer money to and from organizations, just as players have been requesting.
 
But wallets aren’t limited to organizations alone. Many of these features will be useful to individual players as well. This should be welcome news to everyone who will be raking in the quanta via the new Mission system.
 
Let’s take a closer look at all the wonderful things wallets can do.
 
WALLETS 101

Each organization now has a wallet.
 
There are two new rights related to organization wallet management in the Right and Duty Management System (RDMS):
 
Consult wallet: Gives the right to members to simply know the current balance of the organization. Edit wallet: Gives the right to do all the wallet operations available to the organization wallet. It includes buying, selling (and paying taxes by doing so), browsing the log and transferring money (see below).

            Giving the right to edit the wallet of Wave Corp to another player.
 
HOW IT WORKS

Any player with the “edit from wallet” right of an organization can:
Sell unclaimed items or items claimed by the organization in the name of the org. Once sold, the money goes to the organization wallets. Buy items in the name of the organization. When doing so, the wallet of the org is used instead of the wallet of the player. Also, the item is then automatically claimed by the org when purchased. Edit and/or delete orders owned by the organization. NOTE: Going to the “My Orders” panel of the market UI, allows the player to see their own orders as well as the orders of all organizations for which they have the appropriate rights.
  Payable dispensers owned by organizations will use the organization wallet, instead of the Superlegate wallet.

TRANSFERING QUANTA

All players can give any amount of quanta to any other player or organization. Players with the necessary wallet rights of an organization can also transfer money from the organization wallet to any other entity. Transfers are tracked in the wallet logs of both the sender and the recipient.
 
There are a few rules regarding quanta transfer, mainly intended to protect players from griefing through spamming the recipient’s wallet log :
A transfer requires a minimum amount of 1,000 quanta. There is a cooldown period of 10 minutes between two transactions with both the same sender and the same recipient.

            Transfering money to the organization Wave Corp.
 
THE WALLET LOG

Managing an organization and giving the right for wallet operations to several players requires basic management functions. That is why we are adding the wallet log.
All entities (players and organizations) have access to a wallet log that reflects all transactions related to their wallets.
 
Each entry contains the date of the operation, the type of operation (such as money transfer, market transaction, various fees, etc.), and additional information, such as the name of the player who completed the operation, for instance.

            
            The wallet log.
 
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS!

What do you think of the plans so far? Is this a good starting point or are there additional functions you think wallets will need? We look forward to reading your feedback in this forum thread. ?
 

The points will be applied after a brief downtime starting at 9 am UTC | 4 am EST on December 17th.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
Hello Noveans,
 
December is halfway over, meaning the arrival of the new year is tantalizingly close! 2021 is sure to usher in some big changes, and we couldn’t be more excited to experience those with you. ?
 
While we were rolling out 0.23.1, we noticed that players who had talents in training lost what was accumulated during our downtime. So, in the spirit of bringing out the old and ringing in the new we would like to offer everyone 1 million talent points (~1 week’s worth) to not only replace lost points, but also as a bit of a holiday gift! Build, explore and be merry!
 
Thank you for your continued support. We sincerely hope that you and yours enjoy a restful holiday season!

Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team
 

Hi Noveans, 
 
A new update is available today. It brings bug fixes and should also allow some performance improvements. Dual Universe is now in r0.22.9 version. The changelog is available below: 
 
Bug Fixes
[Market] Fixed the "sell to this buyer" / "buy from this seller" context menu and improved the label’s description. [Market] Fixed Market quantity notifications. [Market] Fixed Market seller/buyer source information for normal and updated orders to show more relevant information about transactions. [Market] Fixed reminder notification for Market purchases. It will now only notify players after completing a local instant buy. [Barter] Quanta symbol in quanta input no longer overlaps the value in the quanta input in barter. [Barter] Fixed a bug in which Quanta wasn’t displayed to both participants. [Barter] Fixed a bug in which players could not move items from their basket to empty slots in their inventory. Fixed issues between Linked Containers and Container Hubs. Please note that a possible delay of 10 seconds may occur before the Linked Container right/distance is updated. Build Helper now performs a full element update even in piloting mode. [SFX] Fixed harvest tool sound effects.
Gameplay/Changes/Improvements
All Institute buildings have been removed from the Alioth and Sanctuary District Areas to improve performance. A new district has been created near the Arkship that is not a starting district but has the Institutes. Each District in the Alioth starting area has a dedicated teleporter in the “District Center” construct (previously District Market) to visit the new Institute District. 10 new markets have been added near each District in the starting area on Alioth. All market functions have been removed from the Districts themselves, and existing market orders have moved to these new nearby standalone markets.  This change is intended to reduce the number of ships parked in the starting Districts, which was causing framerate issues for starting players. Anyone returning to the starting area (Pioneer zone) to use the markets should instead go to the standalone Markets nearby.    Removed "Share Publicly for all" as some players accidentally misuse it. Using the maneuver tool now prevents damage. [GUI] Various interface sound effect changes. An error now displays when players try to convert organization constructs to personal ones when max construct limits have been reached. [PVP] Alerts are no longer displayed in safe zones. [FTUE] Updated First Time User Experience according to the District refactor (Institutes and Markets). [FTUE] Robustification of tutorials has been reintroduced. Players can no longer close windows or click when important actions are taking place.  
Known Issues
Windows certificate is not up to date. This may prompt a warning message for new players during the first install. It can safely be ignored. The starting FTUE tutorial notes the location of tutorial teleporters as being in the District Center  (previously District Marketplace) where the market pods used to be. As a workaround, these tutorials can now be found in the new Institute District. Uninstalling the game directly from Windows will leave the game files on the disk. Please use the game dedicated unins000.exe uninstaller located in the game directory for that. Numerous French and German localization issues have already been spotted. In some situations, you may not be able to place a Static Core Unit on your claimed Sanctuary Territory. An error message saying that it's too close to another construct is displayed. This may occur due to being too close to a District. Trying again from a further distance should solve this issue for now. A random rendering crash may occur under some conditions due to low GPU/driver resources. Voxel crashes may occur due to low disk/memory. [SFX] Only blue fireworks currently function. [Industries] Talents that impact ingredients of recipe products are not displayed client-side, but the recipe updates with the server recipe when starting.
  Cheers, 
Nomad

Hello Noveans,
 
We realize that the districts currently represent a performance bottleneck, as they are a choke point between markets, institutes and the starting zone for new players. Even though we have identified performance improvements that should help solve these issues, we have decided to make some immediate changes to prevent these issues from affecting the performance for new players, until we are able to roll out these improvements.
 
So we are making some temporary changes such as relocating many of the services you have come to know and expect in the districts: 
New Stand Alone Markets will be moved approx. 2km from the associated district.  All pending orders will be transferred to the new market building.  All institutes will be removed from districts on Alioth and Sanctuary.  A new single Institute will be created near the Arkship.  Transport stations will be placed at all Districts to be able to get to the Institutes.   
The institutes appear to be a heavy driver of performance issues, by removing them from higher traffic areas we hope to provide a better market experience for players overall. 
 
Players who log out on one of the affected construct buildings may find themselves in a new location when returning post maintenance. We recommend bookmarking important places and construct locations. 
 
As always, we appreciate your patience while we work, and welcome your feedback on the changes and performance improvements once complete.  We expect these changes will occur over the next few update cycles during October. 
 
Sincerely,

The Novaquark Team
 

They should ban them too.  If but just because they haven't been banned yet, doesn't mean THESE people should get off.  At some point NQ needs to start enforcing rules and handing out BANS.  This is a step in the right direction regardless of their failures before this.  If someone steals using an EXPLOIT in RDMS, and epsecially doesn't report.  Perma ban.  If someone sets a perm or gives someone access, then thats intended gameplay.  I would be very frustrated if I lost my base to an exploit, especially if the people involved didn't get banned and there was evidence.  This is still a good thing.  NQ needs to grow a backbone.  Hopefully more bans will be coming in the future. 

Grow up. All they had to do was report the bug. If you use bugs for gain without reporting I have no sympathy for those banned. Good riddance. 

Hello, I'm Dak. I just started testing the Alpha this past weekend and I'm having all kinds of fun. I even decided to up my pledge so I could get one of the territory elements.  I can't wait to see what the future holds. The devs seem down to earth and the possibilities are endless. I literally can not wait for beta!! I'm so excited to build an explorer type ship and check out all of the cool planets. I even have a really cool blueprint I made that modified the hovercraft into a little atmo hauler plane. My 'spaceship' needs a bigger rocket engine I think to get back into space since i loaded a few boxes onto it afterwards to store fuel.
 
Can't wait to see everyone's ships!
 
-Dak
 
PS: Anyone here looking to add a +1 to your org? I don't really have anyone to talk to or learn from and I'm a solo player generally but I'd like to find a small group of like minded adults to play with. I'm middle aged, quiet, and am a pretty quick learner (I made it to space this weekend somehow lol) and I love flight and space sims.

Hello Noveans! 
 
As NQ-Nyzaltar said, I just joined the team here in Montreal. I'm very happy to be here, and excited to continue this amazing journey with all of you. I am quite new to the company so I do ask for a little patience while I get sorted here, I may not have all the answers right away but do know I will do my best to help make your experience with us the best it can be. 
 
A bit about my background, I've worked on quite a few games of all varieties (MMO, Table Top, Card, Collectible, Board and more) for more years than I care to admit. I'm definitely an MMO fanatic and will be spending just as much of my free time along side you (in secret ) as you do. I'm convinced I'm a cat whisperer (though the same can be said for coffee), and a sci-fi fan. 
 
I can't wait to see, share and celebrate all that you build in this amazing universe together!
 
 

How is everyone? Checking out the game and forums. Can't wait to see this all fully completed.

Maj. Meroran Colm,
In the past Tranquility contacted your previous leader with some proposals for a joined venture. It is good to see your organization active again in the social corner of DU. Therefor my question here, if your interested in the details of the proposal please contact me on discord or pm me here and lets continue the nice talks we as organizations had in the past.
 
Greetz Aaron

I don't mind the size; I feel that it is important to not have people getting bored with mining, especially considering the massive amount of mining that will need to be done for things. I do wish that there as a bit more control over it. I feel like with that tool they just sort of carved out a random blob of space. I would want to be able to create a fairly coherent shape when mining. 

wall of german text crits you for over 9000 points...
 
@Antiker, are you addressing NC a french company on a English board in German, i like your optimism .

Novaquark already plans extensive customization (and scripting) for HUDs in cockpits and interfaces.