NanoDot

I attacked your argument, you decided to attack my argument and ad a few ad hominems for good measure, I see. Let's keep it "civilized", shall we ? Modern society evolved to it's current state because threats to that society were severely reduced or removed. The status quo is now well established and maintained by a large and effective police force whose sole function is to protect that society. In first world countries, the police response to calls for help is sufficiently quick that citizens don't have to spend large chunks of their time and income on defending themselves. In RL, the system is designed to make it as hard as possible for criminals to exist. Consequences for being caught are significant (jail time, life imprisonment or even death). In an MMO, there is no parallel to a RL police force, and there never will be. There is no body of players that will sit around waiting for 911 calls and respond immediately. Because it's utterly boring game play. The best an MMO "citizen" can hope for is that their death will be avenged at some point. Having their stolen goods returned is a rare event. In an MMO, the system is designed to allow criminals to exist, because it's considered part of the game play. Consequences for being caught constitute a minor setback, not removal from the game. In RL the low level of risk for the average citizen allows the insurance industry to exist and thrive. That low level of risk underpins the "trust" you speak of. In a FFA-PVP game, insurance premiums would be unaffordable (even if there was a way to avoid widespread insurance fraud). In RL, people try to avoid conflict, because it's disrupts society and normal life, and can kill you. In a game, people seek conflict, because it's fun and exciting game play. That's why FFA-PVP games cannot evolve past tribalism and constant warfare. The players don't want it to be any other way.

I re-read the RDMS blog, and you may be correct. It all depends on where and how the "tags" are defined and linked to players. If it's possible to define a tag and link that tag to any player in the game, then asset management can indeed be done independently of the org and it's members.

Hopelessly flawed argument, I'm afraid. RL works on trust, because the consequences of a major breach of trust are severe (i.e. lifelong bans or permadeath). In any first-world country, the vast majority live to a ripe old age without once being scammed, robbed or murdered. Most people go about their business without looking over their shoulder constantly to see where the next attack may come from. Residential housing is not covered in gun turrets. The pizza delivery guy doesn't have an armed escort. People trust the system, because it allows the vast majority to live without the constant fear of violence or death (damn, those carebears). You are selectively picking aspects (everything is built on trust), while ignoring the conditions that make it possible for that trust to exist in the first place. The things that make "civilised society" work in RL can never be duplicated in an online game. In RL, severely antisocial individuals are removed from society. In a MMO, they just respawn and continue causing mayhem. The highest level of social evolution that a FFA-PVP game can aspire to is well-organised tribalism. Or perhaps a version of Syria or Somalia...

The reference to "auctions" in that blog is in terms of how prices are determined, as opposed to how prices are determined for commodities sold in a "market economy". You can have buy and sell orders for commodities, but you can only have sell orders for constructs, because they are "unique" items. But are constructs still "unique" when you create 100's of the same model from a Master Blueprint ? That blog makes no distinction between creating a "market" and an "auction house": "In Dual Universe, creating a market will require nothing more than setting up a Market Unit, a particular Element that you can craft and install in any construct of yours. The Market Unit requires an energy supply and a container to store the traded goods. It can be as small as a front door market in your little farm, where travelers can buy your local production, to an orbital station sized market where interstellar megaships are traded." I've not seen any references to a "contract market" as yet.

You have a source for that ? I've read so many devblogs and posts in the last few weeks that the details are blurring, lol. I thought DU was only going to have a market with buy and sell orders, i.e. "WTS 100 iron for Q50"...

That's exactly the problem at the moment. Let's say you want to let a room in your hotel to a random player X. You can define a time-limited RDMS rule, like "Player X can enter this door for a period of 30 days". Once saved, that rule cannot be altered until the 30 days have passed. The game will enforce that part of the "contract". But the payment of the "rent" for the room is not automatically deducted from the player, because that's outside the scope of the current RDMS (as it should be). You cannot "sell" that deal in the market, you have to trust the player to hand over the cash, and they have to trust that you've given them 30 days' access. The ideal solution is a contracts system which uses elements of the RDMS mechanism, but where the contract details are visible to all parties before payment is made. EVE's contract system is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Such a system would allow you to offer a 30-day rental contract to player X via the contract market, at a price of Q100. As soon as player X "buys" the contract for Q100, the contract rules are enforced by the RDMS system, which would mean the terms of the contract cannot be changed by anyone for the full duration of the contract. You get your money, and player X gets the room for 30 days, no trust required on either side.

DU doesn't have a contracts system AFAIK. Even if there is a contracts system, it's unsuitable for barter, because barter often involves negotiation. I may put up a contract asking for 50 copper as "payment" for my 100 iron offered. But I may be just as willing to accept 2 gold and 20 copper, or 6 silver and 25 tin, etc. A formal contract system doesn't allow the flexibility required for a barter system. Your suggestion that the NQ bots will benefit new players by setting a kind of "minimum wage" is very weak, because that benefit vanishes as soon as NQ withdraw the bots. And in EVE, new players can run missions, they don't have to mine at all.

In DU, we have a very sophisticated RDMS system, but I think the rules defined in it only apply to members of the org that defined it. That implies that to formally rent land from org X (via a RDMS-governed agreement), you'd have to join org X. If that is not the case, then this suggestion is not needed. In EVE, your "career history" shows a complete list of which organisations you were a member of, and for how long. It is frequently used as an initial "background check" to see who you associated with previously, and can have significant political implications. I don't know if DU will have a similar "career history" feature, but even if it doesn't, some people will informally track org memberships anyway (i.e. "know your enemy"). Ideally, I would like to see something like a "commercial org" entity in DU (or a contracts system), which has no formal political function, and exists purely to allow contracts to be defined and enforced via RDMS rules. That would allow a formal rental system to exist for land or accommodation units, for instance, without the political implications of being associated with a political player org. I hope there will be cities that would offer solo and small group players land to rent, while affording them a measure of security in exchange, without requiring them to become active members of the org that controls that city and land. By using a commercial contract, all the flexibility of the RDMS can be used, without involving the tenant in the political machinations of the landlord.

I may be wrong, but perhaps what the OP was suggesting was something like EVE's "contracts" system, where a list of diverse items can be bundled together and sold in one transaction for a single price. In EVE, that allows you to bundle a ship blueprint + the materials to build it, or perhaps a pre-built ship + modules, for instance. The whole package is then listed for a single price.

I wanted to make my reasoning very clear. NQ are currently suggesting that they will stop pumping "new" money into the system once they feel there is "enough" money in the game. After that, it becomes a closed system, which means that the only way to get money will be to take it from someone else, either by peaceful means (commerce, services) or by criminal means (piracy, theft, scams, etc.). So for someone to get "richer", somebody else has to get "poorer", and vice versa. Now, money is not necessary in itself. We could barter... But the whole reason why money exists in the first place is because bartering is very slow and inefficient. It results in a lot of haggling and requires person-to-person transactions. I may have 100 iron, but I need copper. Jimmy has 200 copper, but he wants coal. So now I have to find someone that will swap my iron for coal, so I can swap coal for copper from Jimmy. All those piles of resources have to be kept in storage lockers somewhere in the world, which implies a great deal of risk, whereas "money" reserves in DU will carry no risk. How do I find someone that wants to swap coal for iron ? Spam in chat ? Simple things like a buy order for copper can't exist without a neutral exchange medium like money. The problem with NQ generating buy orders for resources is that those orders will set the "floor price" for resources, which in turn will affect the minimum price for everything that uses those resources. That removes an element of freedom from the player-driven economy.

None of the activities you describe generate "new" money, they just redistribute the existing money. Therefore, if any group or individual becomes very good at one or more of those activities, they will be very rich, while everyone else will be very poor, unless "new" money keeps on entering the system. In EVE, the NPC missions and belt-ratting bounties continuously pump "new" money into the game. In DU, the market orders placed by NQ will be the only way to get money into the system, which makes mining is the sole source of "new" money in DU.

Sovereign territory is important, because it allows a certain group to define "laws" for that territory (via RDMS). That allows the group to define things like land use permissions, taxes, etc. Those laws will also affect the exploitation of resources in that territory. Sovereignty allows you to shape your territory as you see fit. NQ have also floated the idea of allowing sovereign space claims, and ultimately the possibility of claiming entire planets and even solar systems.

The pace of game play in DU will most probably have a marked effect on the volume of market transactions. In EVE, gathering resources is a large-scale operation that produces huge volumes of material in a relatively short time. The processing of those resources into ships is a simple operation (compared to DU). EVE needs to produce 1000's of ships and modules a day, because 1000's are destroyed every day. In DU, the industrial output will be much lower than EVE, because every step in the production chain is slower and more complicated. In DU, resources have to be located, then mined by hand, which is a few orders of magnitude slower than EVE, where the location of resources are a known quantity, and mining is done on an industrial scale. And not only will the daily volume of resources in DU be lower, but the potential use of those resources will be split between infrastructure (planetary base building, space stations, stargate construction, etc) and shipbuilding. So demand for resources might be much higher than supply. In EVE, there are many small-scale mining ops (commercial mining) that continuously bring resources to market. In DU, much of that small-scale mining output will be consumed by personal building projects, which means less resources going to market. In EVE, ship losses can be replaced by making money from NPC missions or belt-ratting. That allows many players to exist purely as consumers of player-made goods. DU doesn't have that option, so everyone will be ultimately dependant on mining to generate income.

I have no idea what I will be doing ! The game systems are so undefined at the moment that "anything you dream of is possible", but those options will shrink as the game mechanics are implemented. I don't want to end up spending a year dreaming that I'll be doing X, only to find that it's not practical due to the way the game world works. I'm planning on joining a medium to large org, because I think that will give me the option of trying the most varied amount of activities in the game.

Programming is my job and often becomes a leisure activity as well. I have no problem with the idea of doing it 24/7, lol

I'm expecting pre-alpha to last until December (i.e. 3 months). Hopefully with more hours of server access added as it progresses.

Delivery may be tricky, how will you get back ? So many things to consider in DU...

In a single-seat fighter, the pilot will do everything. So, when does a ship become "large enough" to start splitting functions into different roles (i.e crew positions) ? Will it be decided on module size (small, medium, large) ? For instance, would a "large" turret require a dedicated player as gunner ?

I guess we'll have to see what kind of scanners will be implemented, as well as the skill training time associated with them. The entrance of your underground base will be hard to hide, it has to be big enough to allow your ship to pass through, of course, otherwise the parked ship on the surface will be a dead giveaway...

Seems like everyone has a slightly different idea of exactly how the BP system will work ! As usual, the devil is in the details, as they say.

As I understand it, you can only ever make ONE blueprint from a specific construct (Master Blueprint). Could be that the construct pattern is "locked" in some way after the MBP is made, which prevents any further MBP being made. That MBP is tradeable afaik, which means it may also be lootable/destructable. It is also used to make copies. It's not clear to me if you can alter the construct after making a MBP, or if that altered construct can then be used to create a new MBP after the changes. There's also mention of a "snapshot" of a construct, which seems to be a personal "BP" that can be used to reconstruct the original construct (by using a Repair Unit). Sounds like the snapshot is not tradeable/lootable in any way, as it's linked exclusively to your character.

If there are pinpad door lock elements, you could possibly use the RDMS to give a player permission to change the pinpad code for a certain period of time (e.g. 30 days)

I'd imagine that all elements (engines, guns, cockpits, etc) will be made in factory units from BP's or BPC's. There may be different-sized factory modules to produce the diff sized versions (small, medium, large) of these elements. Once you've hand-built and entire construct, you then create a Master Blueprint. Copies (BPC) of that MBP can then be made, and either sold to others or used in your own factories. The MBP or BPC is then loaded into a factory unit, along with all the elements and materials required, and after a set time the factory spits out an assembled construct. I cannot imagine how you would use a MBP or BPC unless it's loaded into a factory unit. In EVE, your industry skills give various benefits to factory production. I'd imagine it working similarly in DU. I also expect that everything described above will be there at release. From the KS page: "Mass-produce your custom designed ships to sell them in-game"

I imagine the money supply in DU will grow MUCH more slowly than it did (and still does) in EVE. Mining is the only way to generate money in DU AFAIK. And mining is all done by hand, from ore that doesn't respawn. Like I said earlier, you clearly see the massive inflation in EVE when you compare the price of NPC "rare drop" modules. Those modules enter the market very slowly, so more and more money chases them as the money supply increases much faster than the supply of those modules does. The huge competition between player manufacturers very effectively keeps the price of player-made ships and modules low.

It will be interesting to see how this discussion progresses as we get closer to beta. We have a very small community active on the forums at present, and I suspect that many of them are organisation-oriented, because orgs take advance planning. The lone-wolves and small-group players will tend to become active much later.