willolake

In advance - I know that we have to always expect that specific log entries will be gone some day and have no rights on keeping them.
 
Anyway asking doesn't hurt.
Background:
i made a site https://www.dumap.de that is available for free for the complete DU community to manage their scans and share them with friends and fellow org members. It is currently used by almost 200 people storing around 30k scans.
And yes i know you improved the ingame visualization, but sadly i have to say it's not enough to manage a few thousand scans or even share them with friends /orgs
 
For this site i made a companion app that completly automatically send scan results of just made scans to the site which is working wonderful with the current production build logs.
With the PTS version i still have log entries for
- scan start
- scan end
- scan ::pos link
but there is no log entry anymore for the ore pool results discovered by the scan.
 
We will have to reenter our old scans by hand already (for me thats something above 5k scans) and without this logentry we will also have to enter all new scans manually. Which really is very inconvenient.
 
So on behalf of my site and those almost 200 people that use/used my service i would like to ask if it is possible to readd/create this log entry so my companion app will be still usefull and make the life of scanning people more convenient.
Btw if there is a chance to get the values of old scans in the inventory to the log i know several people that will be very happy if i could add those old scans from the log or by ingame copy&paste of the result to my site and reduce the amount of work needed to walk through all those old scans

Auto-Mining:
Before I get into my major concerns I would like to say thank you for replacing the current system of mining underground with something better than "click, watch circle get big, release." I think the system holds a lot of potential if balanced right, will be more rewarding than the current mining system, and I am glad that it can help NQ unburden some overhead cost, especially as the player base must be much smaller than NQ's business model accounted for.

My only concern with mining-units is the "chicken or egg" dynamic of need to have same tier ore to build the mining unit. Where I feel it would be more sensible to require T2 ore for a T3 unit, T3 ore for a T4 unit, etc. Otherwise NQ risks progression locking players with a mechanic that subjects them to predatory exploitation of players who have gotten to T4 and T5 already. 

If players are willing to exploit mechanics to gain billions in quanta they will not hesitate to exploit players to stratify the economy and widen the gap between a few with everything and the mass majority with the left overs.


Territory Tax:
NQ claims that a player driven economy and player made content is the backbone of the game. Yet builders who are working hundreds if not thousands of hours over the past two years risk losing the most with projects that are focused on building unique locations for others to visit.

Building and selling blueprints is simply not competitive with the earnings made through current mining, and with changes to the economy sales of ship and building designs has gone off the cliff as everyone hoards currency and materials to survive upcoming changes.

I also feel that a clear and final tile tax rates MUST be announced 30-60 days before Demeter release to give adequate time for organization of assets to prevent huge and punishing loses to the creative community within Dual Universe.

People simply need to know what they will and won't lose and what to do to safeguard their hard work, NQ's ambiguity simply drives ambiguity, and snarky responses from support team when players want to know if they can reasonably expect to earn enough from auto-mining to cover taxes for the number of tiles they own is simply inflammatory.
 

In-Game Abuse Reports:
I am hoping bans won't become automated, and will also have a review system that takes context of the situation into account. It is well known we have members of the community who bait, troll, and instigate to produce reactions that they can then report to weaponize the NQ support staff against players.

Some of these people are the same individuals who have exploited, and abused mechanics to gain advantage over the players they taunt and bait with their comments.

Also feel rule #10 of the Code of Conduct should be removed from the CoC, as the demographic of the player base on average is well above 30 years of age, and there are things that 8 year old's say these days that make me blush. It is no secret that colorful language is often present in passionate expression ideals, dissatisfaction etc. 

The rule is ambiguous as to how much profanity is excessive, and it is well known players purposefully instigate and antagonize others into the point of frustration where profanity is used and then weaponize abuse reports against them. 

It is a highly dishonorable tactic that needs addressing.

My use of a four letter word, or expression of frustration is by no means as harmful to the community as the exploits, use of alt accounts, etc. for players to manipulate the economy, and gain huge material advantage over those they taunt and troll.

This while seeming off topic I believe will become highly relevant with in game abuse reports coming in Demeter.


Voxelmancy Tools:
Last but not least I want to thank you for working to provide tools to make building more accessible to everyone, I think this is awesome. My only concern here is will this cause more "invalid cell error" issues in the future?


Closing Summary:
Thank you very much for the work being put into DU, I know I am critical of some of the decisions. Mainly I just have a huge fear of losing hundreds if not thousands of hours of work. Dual Universe is the one place I feel I have my little slice of peace to escape from RL stress. 

I don't need to be rich, or have the best guns, or even biggest ship... I treat my tile territories as a carefully maintained zen garden, and right now I see fire burning all around that garden threatening to take it away. To take away the very little peace I have some days.

I work with victims of violent crime, sexual assault and domestic abuse with my job as a government contractor, trying to help them rebuild after horrible events. It is a job that is emotionally taxing, and Dual Universe is how I cope with the stresses of that job, and the risks of harm and even death from violent people who would do me harm to get to the survivors they have victimized.

Respectfully,

Creator

 

There is no hint in the skill tree (see photo) that the bonuses on ores only count on asteroids and not on e.g. the ore deposit on the planet surface (20L).
New players might misunderstand this.

So, here are some questions. This time I even spent time on the PTS and watched the full video first

-Demeter fees will pull a lot of money "out of the system" and slow the inflation or even reverse it (deflation). The 1M per week fee is set now, at a time when it is equivalent to only 10kl or hematite, or one t2 engine L. Will you adjust the fee should the buying power of the quanta change significantly? The whole "player driven economy" is, by far, not really player driven anymore, and this patch is yet another step in that direction, the fixed rates for schematics, missions, other bot buy and sell orders, and now territory fees see to that.

-I generally like airbrakes now finally getting an obstruction zone, however the current direction indicated by the yellow arrows is not only unintuitive but would also just lead to players stacking them on the inside of the craft pointing outwards to the sides. On the current PTS it appears the obstruction is checked above the brakes (if placed on horizontal surface). What are the plans for the direction of the obstruction directions for the airbrakes?
 
-This is a nice reminder that plenty of items have obstruction zones which dictate a certain usage, which is often not visually pleasing, intuitive or, for better lack of word, "feels right". Any plans for an overall overhaul of obstruction mechanics and directions?
 
-To use mining units to their full potention, by at least never wasting charges because the charge pool is already full, you have to log in almost daily (every 30h with no talents, every 35h with full charge gain and pool talents). It feels rather tight. Do you think DU is a game for casuals, RP players, weekend warriors and others who are not playing in a regular profit oriented way? (So not like me   ).
 
-My first ever ship sale was to a player who just travels the planets and maintains a little base on almost every planet and moon. Quite serene and dreamy actually. He will now have to set up mining units and get into business, or collect rocks, or quit. He is not allowed to continue the way he is used to play. The fee is too high for that. Patch .23 stopped groups of people from having autonomous outposts and building civilisation away from alioth. Demeter now stops another group of players from playing their way. What is the intended and therefore likely future-proof way to play DU? 
 
-With planet based mining gone, yet another thing to actually do in the game is removed. For players who have time on saturdays there is still asteroid mining, for the rest there are AI missions, which consist of taking off and waiting for 5h to arrive, assuming you do one that actually pays something. Player made long distance haul missions can not compete with AI missions. Any plans on revisiting Apelia missions, their payout, or the fact that the long distance ones are overly profitable with multiple accounts or "car sharing" via VR?
 
-Related to above: Any plans to add anything to the game that is fun to do and at the same time brings an amount of resources?

-In order to find asteroids you need access to a DSAT which is t3. In order to mine t3 via units you also need t3 ore for the advanced autominer. Will it be impossible to get t3 ore without already existing t3 ore?
 
 
 
 

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

Some basic warp cell calculator.
Key features:
Includes all planets and all moons Shows entire trip cost, fourth and back with option to define weight on trip back. In case you plan to mine 2KT of ore you can always calculate how much it will cost you Finds cheapest warp route if end destination is further than 500SU Has 4 different view modes where you can only show solar map Option to click on planet in solar map to select it Automatic selection of the planet if you have selected warp destination Fully 3D solar map which can be dragged around to rotate it. Dragging screen edges will rotate map in single axis Fully colorizable. Right click on PB, go into Advanced and click on "Edit Lua parameters" Shows actual or approximate TimeTillDestination in case you decided to fly there instead of warping Using databank will save current map view state with map rotation, so once set it will remain same Multiscreen supported  
Requirements:
One Programable Board, Warp Drive (optional), DataBank (Strongly recommended), Screen(s) Installation:
Connect Programable Board (PB) to ships core Connect PB to WarpDrive Connect PB to data bank Connect PB to one or more screens. Screens should be connected last otherwise you might encounter issue with screens not being clickable. Copy LUA code from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GcGoat/WarpMap/main/JSON then right click on PB in game, go into Advanced and click "Paste lua configuration from clipboard" Turn on PB and you are done. Known issues:
Ships weight might not be accurate until you sit on ships control seat

Continuing on beyond the original 2D Voxel Planner, I'm releasing today a new in-game building tool: Reactor/2D+ Voxel Planner. It extends the original 2D Voxel Planner's limited layer support with a Layer definition screen while adding a tool to design the 3 dimensional shape of a single voxel.
To support these features, a new XS Dynamic core construct has been built with a unique Voxel stack (derived from the NRD Voxel Cube which also inspired some aspects of the interface). The construct also has new Reactor frame
The blueprints (at nominal cost) for the construct and the original 2D Voxel planner are available at the Objective Driveyards headquarters at the open space location which will hold their future sales office. There is plenty of parking! In game location: ::pos{0,2,23.2925,73.1635,9.1008}
Also available is a limited number of blueprint+elements+voxels from a dispensor. These will cost 100 000 quanta and are limited to 1 per player.
More information can be found on this short  Video tour.

While the docking is nice, I am firmly against the Eject players.
 
SInce the dawn of time, stowaways have been a staple of history. If someone is able to infiltrate a ship, they should be able to. 

This will lead to a Post release AVA problem but thats nothing more than disabling the repulse in contested territories.
 
Not tested yet but something is missing here. If someone unauthorised approches in a shuttle, there should be a quick fire request 1 time authorisation to dock and the parent owner gets to accept or reject. Anyone interested in Taxi services, giving newbies rides etc etc should not have to mess about with RDMS pages every time, thats mind numbing.

I'm glad NQ is acknowledging the poor quality releases; meaning the obvious broken behaviors in new and changed features.
 
I'm hearing a huge reliance on the PTS for farming out play testing, but I'm not hearing anything about what is supposed to motivate players to spend their time and energy in PTS. At the moment, I will never play in PTS when I could be "earning" with my time on the live server. I hope there are enough souls with time to spare to cycle on PTS changes for the thrill of bug hunting; may you be blessed.

Hello again Noveans,
 
While this year may be winding down, the Dual Universe team is winding up for all the great things players can look forward to 2021.
 
 In this video, Creative Director J.C. Baillie highlights a number of upcoming features and improvements that will take DU to the next level, including: 
 
Beautiful graphics enhancements A mission system that will create more emergent gameplay Wallets for organizations let you share (and protect) your organization’s financial assets Territory warfare to entice more gritty player-versus-player action  
Watch now to hear more about all of this and much, much more! ❤️
 

 

@Aaron Cain That would fall under not being in a cryo-chamber or safe zone and thus means your avatar would stay in the chair/cockpit until you log back in or it is murdered. I'd say you also block the use of the chair/cockpit while doing so.
 
I was attempting to imply you can logout anywhere. So under my statements, you have plenty of room to log out. If you're implying some "safety" aspect to the chair/cockpit, I'd say the cockpit would have HP like the cryo-chamber, but a chair should have been protected by the voxels/elements surrounding it.

Thanks for mentioning those, as I'd not called them out specifically.

Just voicing my opinion in this thread for the sake of sharing with NQ on this topic.
 
I agree with others concerning persistence of the world should also mean persistence of the people. I actually don't think live avatars should disappear at all. People taking space in the world is a physical motivation to build safe spaces and provide restricted access to areas. I'd want any toon not online to be asleep with their inventory accessible to everyone; doing so means you inherit risk when you don't log out in a secured location place. The exception to avatars existing in the world would be for "high security" areas like the ark ship; there the players could disappear immediately in complete safety (barring any combat timer).
 
For those concerned with bodies littering the land, slaying the asleep person would relegate them to the heavens, troubling your frame rate no more. An alternate option to requiring death for entrance to the heavens would be, as some have stated, to have a "cryo-chamber" to logout in. I'd be fine with a chamber that shows the last player in the chamber and makes it inaccessible to entrance for 5 minutes, after which time the player toon vanishes allowing another to enter the chamber. Having multiple cryo-chambers is thus incentivized by the the speed of logout, but does not prevent a group using only one in their building. Any player capable of reaching the cryo-chamber should be able to see who is in the chamber and have access to all embodied toon's inventories (no magical permissions, if you're in range to activate the cryo-chamber, you can loot it).
 
Taking this sentiment to death, if killed, instead of a toon being asleep, their inventory would drop in the form of a container. The items in these containers should begin randomly despawning after a grace period until the container is empty (this is to prevent using death containers as storage). Empty containers would despawn immediately, and you'd not be able to put anything in a death container, only remove. Regarding destruction of a cryo-chamber, it too would generate a container if any toon inside had items. It is important that these "death containers" be bound to any dynamic construct they are in such that the weight of them is not ignored. I'd gladly murder my teammates in order to get a ship into space with their inventories for free. This also means dying on a ship in space makes the container follow the ship. Outside of a constructs influence, I'd like the containers to maintain some velocity and react to gravity until the influence of a construct interceded, but I can understand if that is too much effort on the server; thus having space-born death containers hold position in the world should be OK.
 
Respawning would be allowed at any spawn point that is not under cool-down, and the cool down time for any given spawn point should increase after each use. Additionally, as I think others mentioned, there should be a spawn delay based on distance to the spawn point. That is, something like 5 seconds per SU of distance traveled. The reality is that any spawning mechanic is going to provide "fast travel" capabilities. People will kill each-other and themselves for the sake of travel. The disincentive for that is that you never carry your inventory through death, and regardless of a spawn point's cool-down state, you have to wait to spawn when doing so over distance. There will still be a benefit to death-traveling long distances, but it simply won't be free and people can work with that. In order to make respawn waits not entirely boring, we could allow the player to perhaps "follow a friend" through their eyes while dead (first person perspective only).
 
As far as default spawn points, the ark ship should always be available but still require the spawn distance time cost. I'd possibly include some player agnostic spawn points on sanctuary moons, but perhaps those would continue to have cool-down timers per player. I mention the sanctuary moons because I fear having the ark ship as the only always-available spawn point puts too much emphasis on Alioth as a home planet and would discourage more emergent activity in the outer planets.