NanoDot

If there's wreck salvaging, can we also booby-trap the wrecks... ?

The surface area of Alioth is around 45,000 km2... and that's just 1 of the 12 planets in the starter system... Then there's the multiple moons around those planets, and some asteroid fields... We know DU will have more than one solar system once interstellar travel is added (probably the first big expansion after launch). I'm not aware of any MMO that's had anywhere close to the playable surface area that will be in DU at launch, and that surface area will rapidly increase as new solar systems come into play.

Doesn't sound like it will be possible initially. That's a JC quote from: http://massivelyop.com/2018/05/02/massively-op-interview-dual-universe-demo-shows-off-advances-in-city-building-space-travel/ Given what he said there, I'd imagine that if we ever get "planting" in DU, it will be in fixed locations, like a farming field or tree plantation. Perhaps trees and plants can re-grow in the same position every time (using different models for varying growth stages), but that would be contrary to DU's non-regenerating resource design. Wood is a resource, after all.

That can be achieved in different ways. I would guess that DU will be similar to EVE in that regard. In EVE, basic "crafting" is accessible to everyone, but manufacturing gets more time-intensive as the products increase in "tier". EVE's actual crafting is fairly simplistic, but the logistics required to keep it going most definitely is not. Trained crafting skills are required, but managing the economics of the process is the real challenge. In EVE, anyone can train the skills to make a battleship, but unless they're manufacturing in bulk like the dedicated industrial players, they're better off just buying one on the market, because it will be cheaper than making their own. In most themepark MMO's, a high level character buys a few large stacks of resources and just grinds through them to make a max-level "crafting alt". After that, you just login to the alt whenever you need something made. That kind of "accessibility" will not be available in DU.

I would expect that salvaging would be limited in scope, otherwise not enough materials would be lost. That in turn reduces the incentive to prospect and mine for ores, as "recycled" materials re-enter the manufacturing chain. If materials are not constantly removed from the game world, the "pool" of resources in circulation will rapidly grow, and could result in a situation where mining is only worthwhile for the rarest resources. But even "rare" will become common eventually if things are not lost...

If JC is serious about the level of DU's crafting complexity, then I guess you could always just click on that sell order and buy the elements from whomever is making them ?

The rumoured "one-player-per-turret" requirement may have some practical roots though. If turreted ships need multicrew setups, it reduces the number of ships in a battle by a significant amount, which reduces server load. If that battleship didn't need 5 players to man its 5 turrets, there would be 6 battleships in that battle, instead of just one...

You are misunderstanding the nature of the NDA. There are no "secret" devblogs regarding game features that are only available to those in pre-alpha. All NQ's devblogs, feature update posts and even training videos covering pre-alpha features are in the public domain. Anyone can read/watch them and know exactly what features are available and even what's planned in pre-alpha. NQ have never "hidden" game feature devblogs, and I don't believe they ever will.

It does not. The NDA covers everything in the pre-alpha. Crafting is not in the pre-alpha yet. Besides, NQ have released loads of blogs, videos and screenies of things that are in the pre-alpha, but we've had virtually no info regarding crafting yet.

It all depends on economics, really. In RL, nobody uses expensive solutions if there are cheaper ones available, even if the cheaper ones are "not quite as good". The tech that yields the best ROI is always the most widely used (outside of military applications, of course). We had supersonic passenger planes decades ago (Concorde), but we have no commercial supersonic planes anymore, because they are currently uneconomical. Let's face it, we basically have the capability to colonise Mars right now, and we would if there was obvious profit to be made...

Bit of both, the quote I added from the MassivelyOP interview is what really set me off on this line of thought... I particularly like the idea that in DU, the merchant will have to bear the cost of advertising (i.e. visibility range), rather than the customer having to train skills to see markets further away (as is the case in EVE).

I've been thinking of "markets" in terms of EVE's implementation, but I've just realised I may have fundamentally misunderstood what DU's implementation will look like. Perhaps DU is going to be closer to SWG's "player shops" ! Consider what we know about the mechanics in DU: players will place their own "market terminals" (that sounds like SWG's "player vendors") a container will be attached to the terminal, where the goods for sale will be stored Players will be able to remotely browse the listings on all terminals in a given range, even purchase remotely, BUT items will need to be physically collected from whichever terminal (i.e. shop) they were listed on. Just like in old SWG.... That means the market terminal you place is in fact your shop interface. You will define sales quantities, price, min/max volume, etc. directly on that terminal. If you list buy orders too, you will have to deposit quanta in the terminal so that your buy offers are funded. That would also mean that a "market hub" in DU will actually be a cluster of independent "player shops" ! The "market window" in your UI will simply be an aggregated display of everything on all the player shops who's visibility reaches your current location. Increasing the visibility range will be the responsibility of the shop owner, not dependent on the skills of the potential buyer. Quote from: http://massivelyop.com/2018/05/02/massively-op-interview-dual-universe-demo-shows-off-advances-in-city-building-space-travel/

No, I'm not going "full-fanboi" here, the title refers to something that JC reportedly said in the recent MassivelyOP interview: http://massivelyop.com/2018/05/02/massively-op-interview-dual-universe-demo-shows-off-advances-in-city-building-space-travel/ Here's the full quote: That's a fairly bold claim, given what we've seen in various MMO's over the years ! We know very little about what NQ have planned to implement for crafting, other than some very high-level concepts. So far on these boards, everyone's been focused on building, not crafting. Are we in for a surprise ?

Great effort ! But you're probably going to have to do it all over again once we see what DU's design looks like, a few weeks from now... The question of how building will be done has been raised before. Player inventories will have limited capacity, and having to continuously "refill" the player inventory from various storage containers will become very tedious. Automatically (or manually) "linking" the player inventory to all containers within a given range will make life easier for builders, but represents a bit of a challenge in the UI design, because you still need to be able to see the difference between your inv contents and what's in the containers... I'm not sure that storing a "disassembled" construct across multiple containers is practical. What happens when just one of those containers is destroyed ? Or moved accidentally ? For practical purposes, the "market containers" will probably have to be a special class of container, immovable and with vast (unlimited ?) storage volumes, otherwise managing their contents will become a nightmare. Will the main feature of player settlements be vast "container parks" holding 100's or 1000's of market containers ? I believe a "market" in DU will consist of 3 elements: the market terminal (where the UI displays) a storage container (where the goods are kept) a dispenser (where purchased goods can be retrieved) So the dispenser element will probably "re-assemble" constructs from their stored state. That implies that constructs will ONLY exist in "virtual space" inside market containers, otherwise we are moving into "I have 2 battleships in my backpack" territory...

How that "balance" will be achieved is a mystery to me. I'm genuinely interested to see how it all plays out. Unless by "balance" we're talking about non-PVP'ers playing in 5% of the game world (safezones) and PVP'ers owning the other 95%... I have never seen a MMO with FFA-PVP that was able to sustain a significant community of non-PVP'ers for very long. EVE comes closest, I'd say, but EVE has considerably more protections than DU appears to have, and it has a large amount of PVE content for those that are PVE-focused. Even so, EVE does not have a huge community of non-PVP'ers, but it IS possible to play the game that way. At least it was when I played it...

That's a noble theory, but DU is a game, not RL. A significant proportion of DU's players will be here because they want to wage war, not because they want to maintain peace. Most of the discussions around PVP mechanics on these boards are not on how to avoid combat, but rather on how to effectively kill other players in fun and interesting ways...

"You can have any political system you want, as long as it's Democracy" ! DU's playerbase is not one nation, it's a fractious collection of different groups with widely differing ideas of how the game should be played. DU's design gives those groups complete freedom to choose how they want to organize and rule themselves. Anything else limits that freedom of choice. Democracy is an option, but not a requirement. It will in all likelihood be the least popular form of organization, because it reduces the power of organization leadership. I expect semi-dictatorships and "monarchies" will be the most common forms of organization. The "founders" of organizations in DU are closer to CEO's than to political leaders. They "own" the org by virtue of the fact that they created it. They are the supreme authority in that group, with the power to invite new members or eject existing members as they see fit. Very few of them (if any) will be elected leaders that serve only as long as their "people" approve of them. Anyone that doesn't approve of them will most likely be summarily ejected from the org...

Why does DU need a "Bounty System" ? And who will administer it, the arkship AI ? Is the "system" there to protect "official" bounty hunters from being scammed by the people who hire them ? Does the arkship AI keep the bounty payout in escrow until the mark has been hit ? Or is the "system" there to allow people to place bounties anonymously without any fear of reprisal ? Or does the system allow the "Bounty Hunter class" to do things that other players cannot do (like killing people in the safezone) ? Bounties (a.k.a. assassination contracts) will exist in DU with or without an "official" system provided by the game designers. That's part of emergent gameplay that cannot be stopped. It will be freewheeling and risky and dangerous to all concerned. There will be scams and double-crossing and back-stabbing and all the shenanigans that players can conceive of. And that is how it should be... DU only needs a "Bounty System" if said bounty hunters have special privileges that allow them to do things that the game rules prevent others from doing.

As I've said before elsewhere, what we currently know about DU's mechanics makes me believe that the "civilization" we'll be building in DU will be similar to the Medieval era on earth. That means outside of the arkship safezone, there will be fortified "city states" that exist in a semi-permanent state of war. The prospect of complete destruction of those city states will be a daily reality, and military preparedness and vigilance will be the highest priority for any group choosing to live in the FFA-PVP zone. So before you start building office towers and parks and bars, you'll be building shields, turrets, bunkers and walls. And "zoning regulations" will favour good fields of fire and restricting the movement of attackers...

NQ burned their fingers badly with the original estimate for the start of alpha. I'm sure they're going to do everything in their power to avoid a repetition of that scenario. DU turned out to be a bit more complicated to put together than anyone thought, including NQ. It's no biggie, the game is very ambitious and delays are inevitable. That's why they've completely avoided talking about the start date for alpha1 so far. I'd be surprised if the coming roadmap has any dates at all. It will probably be a "planned sequence of events", rather than pinning things to specific quarters of the year. That's why I don't consider this next patch to be an indication that alpha1 is "imminent". Unless you think that "imminent" covers the next 6 months to a year...

Depleting resources means that a powerful org or alliance cannot "settle" in a given area of space and spend years fortifying that home system with its constantly respawning resources. Sooner or later they will need to venture outside of that area to find new deposits of the rarer resources, which takes them outside of their comfort zone and starts stretching their borders ever wider. It will take many years to completely strip a system of resources, and it's quite possible that NQ might introduce new uses for land on "mined-out" planets. There's plenty of time for that though, it's unlikely that it will become a pressing matter in the first 5 years after launch...

We don't know how big the arkship safezone will be at launch, NQ have not made a final decision on that yet AFAIK. It will probably be decided during the beta phase, when all the different game features are in place and NQ can see what players are doing and where they're doing it.

NQ have never mentioned anything that sounds remotely like EVE's "clone-jumping" mechanic. The devblog that deals with resurrection mechanics makes it very clear that death is NOT intended as a "fast travel option". We cannot predict how DU will change in the first 5-10 years after launch, so clone-jumping may well become a feature at some point in the future, when DU's game world spans 1000+ systems...

I'd expect that NQ will ramp-up the PR image of DU once we get to alpha, because the game's general exposure will increase massively at that point, given that there will be no further NDA constraints. Traffic on the DU website will increase substantially, and it will be important to make a good first impression on new visitors. The current "News" page is very dry and unappealing, DU needs a more exciting face to show to the world.

It's an interesting question that has no clear answer at the moment. The arkship safezone will have "basic" resources, which will be heavily mined initially, for obvious reasons. It's 100% safe, and will be closest to the arkship market terminals where the NQ buy orders for minerals can be filled in complete safety. The arkship safezone is also the only place where players that want to avoid PVP can live and build. I'd expect the arkship safezone to be stripped of all resources in the first few months after launch, because it's the easiest and safest way for anyone to "make money" in DU. The NQ buy orders for resources will be the ONLY way to bring new money (quanta) into the game. The only way to prevent rapid depletion of the arkship safezone would be for NQ to not buy some (or all) of the basic resources in the safezone. That would extend the lifespan of the arkship resource deposits a bit. It would give new players the chance to build a basic hovercraft before they venture out into the PVP areas to gather more useful resources. Other than the arkship safezone, the MSA (Moon Secure Area) safezones will have no resources at all. Outside of the arkship safezone lies DU's massive game world, where it will take years to strip just one planet of all resources. The "rare" resources may not last very long, but as long as NQ get the balance right, resources should not be a problem in the "starter system" for years, and we'll be expanding the play area to new systems long before that. The whole concept of "finite resources" is a bit tricky really, because it essentially can't be allowed to "run out" entirely, otherwise the game simply dies.