NanoDot

It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it will fit the kind of game play that DU is aiming for... DU is all about doing things in a "realistically plausible" way. Inanimate objects like ships can't "learn" skills or become tougher to kill simply because they survived combat. In DU that ship only becomes tougher to kill when the owner decides to upgrade the armour. The players themselves are the only ones who can learn new "skills" to improve their combat proficiency.

I was replying to the suggestion that lasers "don't need complicated bullet physics calculations", which looked like an argument for lasers being "twitch-based" weapons. Given the likely distances at which AvA combat will happen in DU, it's a reasonable argument, but I'm just saying that you can't mix twitch and RNG systems.

That may be so, but DU will (hopefully) have more than just laser-based weaponry, and you can't have one weapon using twitch skills and another using target-lock and RNG mechanics, because it will totally unbalance the whole combat system.

I meant "last core feature". Things like inter-system travel will expand the core feature of Space Travel, which will only be possible at sub-light speed at launch. Things like warp drives and stargates will expand the travel options post launch. There will be many additional features and expansions of existing features after launch, NQ have made that very clear. It's an MMO, after all, the game is never "finished"... But none of those additions and expansions will fundamentally change the core game play of DU, because that's a recipe for disaster...

AFAIK, the combat systems will be the last major game feature to be implemented, so it will be many months yet before there's video's of combat mechanics available. NQ want to implement the "full game loop" in sequence, so first scanning and mining, then refining, then crafting and building. Creation of things will come first, destruction will come last. In a way, I think NQ want to send a message that DU is not intended to be "all about combat"...

Just keep in mind that with so few systems actually fleshed-out and implemented, the possibilities in DU appear to be endless and limited only by your imagination. As we get closer to launch, the limitless possibilities will start shrinking as the reality of game design limits start making their presence felt...

The problem with the minimum voxel size is that it makes small details extremely hard to produce reliably. DU's construction scale is more suited to building space stations, rather than desk ornaments...

It's not currently possible to "paint" voxels a different colour. There is a tool that will allow you to change the material type of any voxel in a construct, which is shown in the tutorial video. But using that "feature" means that if I want a yellow spaceship, I have to replace all the alumin voxels with "yellow plastic" voxels. My spaceship will now be yellow, but it will also be made out of plastic, not out of metal.... So, yes, as things currently stand in DU, all constructs made out of the same material will be the same colour. I certainly hope there will be a way to "paint" the exterior of my construct, even if it's only limited to the outward-facing surfaces of the voxels...

I don't think the terrain should "magically" regenerate, I think it should just VERY slowly (weeks or months of RL time) round the sharp edges and cover everything with whatever terrain cover (grass, trees, shrubs, etc) exists in the general area. If anyone plugs a mine tunnel entrance with some dirt, grass will slowly cover it and the bare earth will blend in with the natural terrain over time. The tunnel itself will remain, and may "collapse" after a year or so, but nobody will know it exists. If the entrance is blocked and covered with grass, the mine itself will not be an eyesore.

Not really a problem if copper is one of the most abundant resources in the galaxy, and not used for too many different purposes. There need to be entry level items that novice crafters can make and sell. I'd expect hovercaft parts to largely fall into that category, for instance. A well-balanced crafting system takes into account which resources are common and which are rare, so that recipes for common things don't end up needing rare resources, for instance. And components that are widely used in many recipes will only require resources that are abundantly available in the world. That can be taken a step further, where recipes might only call for a certain class of resources, therefore allowing substitution depending on local availability of certain things (SWG did that in many recipes, because the resource classifications were quite deep).

I think there's great potential for using hovercraft as "bumper-cars"....

These commonly used classifications come from RL, and even there they are "flexible", so any system used in DU will most probably be very broad and largely "org-specific". DU will impose it's own rules, of course, due to the existence of well-defined element sizes and the associated fuel/power/manning needs.

I'm speculating here, but what are players going to do with the thousands of cubic meters of dirt they will need to clear to get to resource deposits that are at 500m or deeper underground ? I'm also quite sure that inventory space will not be infinite in the final version of DU. Deleting of items is always a tricky feature in games involving full-loot PVP, but it has to be addressed somehow...

The more complex the crafting process becomes, the greater the need for trade and logistics, and the greater the opportunity for additional players to enter the production chain. All those sub-assemblies have to be manufactured, stored, bought and sold and ultimately moved around in the world (logistics). The various tiers of manufacturing may require varied skill specialisations and industrial elements, which will stimulate the need for interaction and co-operation between players. A wide variety of traded goods stimulates the economy and spreads money around. The more players involved in the production chain, the greater the competition, which inevitably leads to lower prices for everything (EVE is a fine example in this regard). A deep crafting process also allows for richer game play, as each step in the process can possibly be used to influence the quality and volume of the eventual end product. A deep crafting process also paves the way for a substantial R&D system. As a player that loves the crafting and industrial side of games, I would be hoping for MORE complexity in this area, not less !

Why not just delete it ? I can't imagine that there will be giant minedumps next to each shaft that gets dug in DU, lol

Different strokes for different folks... I played SWG for 3 years without engaging in armed conflict with other players. PVP was not the driving factor there, but it had a thriving player-driven economy nevertheless. I played a full 2-year cycle of "A tale in the Desert", which required extensive co-operation between players, but the game had no combat whatsoever. PVP is not the only possible motivating factor in MMO's, it's simply the easiest.

It's a very poor example you quoted there. If any member of an org does something that damages the other members, that player will be rapidly ejected from the org and its territory. Members of an org in DU are not like the faceless citizens of a city like New York. In DU, everyone knows everyone else, because you need to watch for spies all the time. If an org in DU outlaws a drug, your life span as a potential customer for that drug will be extremely short in that org...

I can think of one major reason to work with others in the absence of "bad guys": Time ! On my own, do I want to derp around for 6 months waiting for my avatar to train all the skills needed so I can spend the next 3 months building a stargate ? Working with others will get me to that next system in a fraction of the time... Groups and co-operation get things done MUCH faster than solo players, and certain features can be designed in such a way that only groups can achieve them in any reasonable time frame. Who'll be the first to slap down a TCU on that tile containing the big gold deposit ? A group or a solo player ? Who'll be the first to build an impressive city ? Who'll be the first to build a network of refuelling stations throughout the system ? Non-combat games are quite possible, I played "A Tale in the Desert" with great enjoyment...

Drugs would just be the equivalent of "buffs or potions" in other MMO's. If the positive effects outweigh the negatives, everyone that can afford them will use them. No group will want to ban them, hence no need for "smuggling". If the negative effects outweigh the positives, nobody will use them. No group will need to ban them, again resulting in no need for "smuggling". Historically in RL smugglers existed primarily to avoid taxes charged by governments on various imported commercial goods. It's only in modern times that smuggling "illicit substances" became big business.

We tend to use our past experiences in other games as the basis for forming our ideas of what game play will be like in DU. But based on what we know of DU's intended design at this stage, many of the lessons learned in other games will quite possibly not apply in DU. It certainly looks like DU's game play will be "slower" than most other games with similar features. Travel takes significant time in DU. Scanning for minerals will take time. Mining is not done on industrial scale. Expansion to other systems will be slow. Constructs remain in the game world when the player logs out. EVERYTHING is player-built. All those features may not seem very important when considered individually, but all together they may well produce game play unlike any other game. For instance, EVE players may vastly underestimate the effects of the long travel times in DU, because that's simply not a significant factor in EVE. If your fleet in DU ends up in the wrong place, it make take several hours to get it to the right place... Simple things like scouting ahead become far more tricky in DU. You can't just login an alt, scout an area and then warp to a safespot and logout the alt AND their ship. In DU, the ship stays in the game world, which means it can be scanned down and destroyed. Replacing the ship may be trivial, but the 2 hours flying required to put that alt scout in place won't be...

Game play design decisions trump all "logical arguments" as to why things should be a certain way. If NQ don't want a single player to control multiple turrets on a ship, they'll simply design the game in such a way that it becomes impossible. If players find "workarounds", NQ will patch them out. We have no idea at this point how NQ will enforce the one-player-per-weapon design, or whether that will apply to turrets only. Fixed forward-facing weapons may or may not be subject to that rule, because if you can only fire at what's in front of you, combat becomes a lot more tricky. IIRC, all weapons in EVE are turreted, i.e. the direction your ship is facing is not important for firing solutions, and target locking doesn't require keeping a reticle on a target (you simply select the target from a menu and initiate locking).

DU will eventually get to that same level, yes, probably 2 -3 years after launch... To match EVE's "deep alliance territory" paradigm, players will first have to construct a web of stargates in DU. And that is going to be a slow and expensive exercise by all accounts. The first year or so, everyone will be mixed together in the "starter-system pressure cooker", where the borders will be arbitrary and porous as a sieve, and "buffer zones" will be relatively tiny and crossed in minutes. AWACS ships may help in this regard, provided that scanner ranges are adequate to provide sufficient early warning times.

I guess it all depends on how closely DU follows EVE's combat design. Force fields (a.k.a shields) and armour are standard tropes in any space game with combat, but implementations vary widely between different games. If the OP's referring to the force fields that were shown in the tutorial video, those will definitely be elements that can be integrated into any construct, be they bases, space stations or even bigger ships. But those force fields are intended to block access (e.g. doorways, passages, etc.) , rather than to protect ships from weapons fire.

AFAIK, resource distribution on a planet will be determined by the seed number used to procedurally generate the planet. That implies that the amount of resources in the starter solar system will pretty much be fixed at launch. So NQ will have to guess how many resources are "enough" for an unknown number of players, who'll pretty much be confined to that starter solar system for the first 9-12 months after launch (the arrival of stargates will allow commercial exploitation of new systems). If certain resources start running short after a few months, I guess NQ could always generate a few random asteroids to ease the shortage...

AFAIK NQ are not planning to add stress mechanics for either static or dynamic constructs, so you could probably build plastic spaceships if you wanted to, or an elevated city balanced on a single voxel column. However, I'm quite sure that material properties will be a factor in damage calculations eventually. There is a graphic that simulates heat friction when you enter a planet's atmosphere. Perhaps it will include a damage calculation. Constructs take damage when colliding with planets, moons and asteroids. Material properties will probably factor in those calculations. How combat damage will be handled is unknown at this point, and will most probably remain a mystery until NQ start implementing PVP in alpha-2...