NanoDot

There's only one thing that will stop DU from becoming "Rust in Space", and that's very careful game design. That does not imply "rules to prevent PVP", but rather mechanics that make it less attractive as a primary game activity. Let's face it, if destruction is easier, cheaper and more fun than building, we'll very quickly establish a dominant playstyle in DU. Very few players are going to last long in DU if they never leave the arkship safezone. There are only basic resources there, and it represents... maybe 1% of DU's entire game world ? The MSA's have no resources at all, so what will anyone do all day if they don't leave that safezone ? I have no idea what NQ have planned with regards to keeping DU balanced, but a handful of safezones is certainly not going to cut it.

ARK and DU are very different games. Survival games like ARK are designed to work with many independent small-population servers that are wiped intermittently to "refresh" the game world. DU is a "true" MMO, the world will be persistent, and the player population (and game world) will be several orders of magnitude greater than in ARK. Player progress in ARK, Rust and DayZ is also very fast compared to what we can expect in DU. ARK servers are "fast cycle" games, where you reach max level in a month or two of game play. It will most likely take years to get to "max level" in DU, if it's even possible to do so. ARK's resources respawn quickly, DU's resources don't respawn at all, which will slow down the pace of play quite a bit compared to ARK. ARK's game world is tiny compared to that of DU, and DU's game world will continue to expand. So far, NQ have shown no signs of "rushing" development. If anything, the opposite is true. NQ also have an overall "vision" for what they want DU to be, and their design and implementation both reflect that goal. The safezones in DU are a case in point, games like ARK simply dump new players into their small game worlds, with no support systems. They are "pure survival" games, and that is not what NQ intend for DU. Theoretically, a mega-org could dominate DU. But theoretically, it could also happen in EVE. It has never happened in EVE in the 15 years that EVE has existed. EVE has had some very powerful alliances in its history, but none of them ever had complete control over more than half of the game world, if that much. It will in all likelihood never happen in DU for much the same reasons as it did not happen in EVE. Keep in mind that a "mega-org" in a game like ARK seldom has more than 40-50 members, and that's typically a very large slice of the total server pop. In DU, something of that size probably wouldn't even make the top 100. EVE has had alliances with 5K members...

Monopolies are the "natural state" of business in the world, it's the most logical way to do business, lol That's why all developed economies have a raft of legislation enacted to prevent monopolies. In the absence of those laws, I'm quite certain that monopolies and cartels would dominate the business world...

I really can't see how construct-based mining will not kill mining as an entry-level activity for new players. Unless perhaps those tools are only meant for things like asteroid mining, which will not really be something a new player will have the skills and equipment for. Large auto-miners will increase the supply of low-level materials massively, which will drop the price and make it very unprofitable to do by hand.

Do some reading about how these "base shields" work in EVE, DU's implementation will probably be similar. In EVE, a "scout" with a popgun cannot put a base shield into reinforced mode. It requires a battle fleet to do that. If that wasn't the case, all the base shields in EVE would probably be in reinforced mode permanently, lol So you won't be getting spammed with warning emails, because the effort required to drop that base shield is so great that nobody is going to do it by themselves for the "lulz".

Don't confuse the tactical and strategic use of shields. The proposed base defense shield in DU is a strategic application, it behaves in a specific way, and that mechanism is independent of how much weapon damage is applied. The "reinforced mode" works on a fixed timer, combat damage is irrelevant. Things like construct shields are tactical uses, their effectiveness is directly proportional to the amount of damage they take. Hit them hard enough and they drop in a matter of seconds...

If there is radar, then jamming (ECM) should follow ! Stealth tech would be the next level, with reduced radar signatures via special coatings and/or careful ship design. Things like "invisibility cloaks" should be a distant third, and only be useful in extremely situational applications.

"100% of gamers" ? Hmmm... I must have missed the part where you campaigned for a native OSX version of DU ! Linux may be the fastest growing platform currently, but that is commercially irrelevant if it means the user base is going from 0.5% to 1% in a year. No company spends money making a product for a target market that might be economically significant 10 years from now... Porting to Linux (or any other OS) is not a "one-time cost". Those skills have to be retained in the company permanently, to ensure that any future changes to the game work on all the supported OS's. That's why trying to "crowdfund" a Linux version is impractical.

AFAIK, NQ are planning to introduce FTL drives a few months after launch, with stargates possibly being a few months later in the first big "expansion" for DU. I may be wrong, but I got the idea that FTL drives may be restricted to "larger ships" (possibly because of power needs). If that is the case, then carriers may become very important for quick travel travel in-system between planets. Protecting that carrier would also be vital, unless you want a very long flight home on your fighter's conventional engines. Any ship class can presumably use a stargate, but getting to that gate may take a while if you have to fly there on sub-light engines.

Cloaking tech probably won't be in before launch. Adding cloaking will also require a whole range of countermeasures and game play rules, so it represents a significant body of work.

The "harder" you make the game, the smaller you make the player base. The smaller the player base, the less money NQ has to spend on improving and expanding the game.

Ah yes, the "silent majority" theory... the 100's of millions of Linux gamers don't show up on Steam, because Steam mostly sells games for Windows OS... If Linux gamers really are a strong economic force, there must be an online game store that's selling to them, surely ? Just use the sales figures of that store as a way to persuade NQ. Money talks, after all. That's why I suggested that NQ do a survey of the player base. If the results of that survey show that Linux gamers are a significant % of the total players, I've no doubt they will make every effort to accommodate them, simply because it would make good business sense.

The simplest test to "gauge support for a Linux version" would be for NQ to do a survey amongst the player base to see what their primary gaming OS is. I'd be surprised if it differs substantially from Steam's own surveys. Gabe must choke every time he sees those survey results, despite his best efforts, only 0.33% of his customers use Linux currently...

The more risk and danger you introduce to the game, the more it becomes an "ultra-hardcore PVP game", which does not seem to be what NQ are aiming for. There is an audience for that kind of game play in an MMO, but it's a small one. The design that NQ has shown us so far indicates that they plan on appealing to a wider audience. They probably need a wider audience, DU is a subscription game after all, and it's not going to survive with a few thousand players...

If NQ can justify the additional expense and manhours of developing DU for multiple platforms, I'm sure they will do so. The fact that they have not done so already is telling, however. I'm quite sure that identifying a target market was a very important aspect of their early design decisions, and I've no doubt that they would have made the most cost-effective choice. It is entertaining to see the Linux evangelists at work though... Some day, their paradise may be delivered, but until then, we have Windows !

I'd guess it's a really a question of "How much opportunity cost will be involved by playing with this group ?" For instance, if you like fighting in squads, then joining a military org will carry ZERO opportunity cost, it will in fact have bonuses ! But if you like building nice city layouts, joining a military org may severely limit the amount of your game time that can be spent on doing the things that you prefer doing. That's a very simplistic example, but it illustrates the point. Things are usually a bit more nuanced. If you like building, you can join a group that's focused on building, but you may find that you're spending most of your time as a worker building whatever the "chief architect" of the group has designed. And there is usually only one "chief architect", so unless your part of the senior leadership, it's unlikely to be you... Joining a group inevitably means spending time on things the group has prioritised. The trick is finding the right group so that your interests align as closely as possible with that of the group in general. Some people simply aren't prepared to make those compromises.

It is possible that DU's game play may turn out to be far too "slow and boring" for the average EVE pilot ! In DU fuel is real requirement, plan badly and you're going to be "floating dead in space". Take 1000's of fuel units with you and suffer the consequences of the performance hit. Roaming around searching for "targets of opportunity" is going to burn fuel (i.e. it costs money !), specially in atmospheric flight. And the question of exactly what happens to constructs when you logout hasn't been settled yet. If constructs don't despawn with the player avatar (like in EVE) or can be effectively "hidden" by a logoff cloak, then when and where you logoff could become a serious issue. Then there's the economic implications: in DU there's no NPC's to farm for quick cash, no NPC missions to run, no "faction point rewards" or "rare drops" that can be sold off to raise funds. Replacing losses in DU will not be as easy as it is in EVE.

The moment you step out of the safezone, you will be "prone to getting ganked". Mining some valuable resource will simply increase that risk. And dying means you lose your ship and everything in your inventory (except the cash in your wallet, which is always safe). But there are no fixed "best resource areas" in DU. Resources will be spread all over the planets, moons and asteroids in the systems, and will have to be found and mined. And once a specific deposit is mined out, it doesn't respawn (ever), you have to find a new deposit somewhere else. There are no specific places where the "best" resources can always be found. So it won't be possible for criminals to "camp the high value nodes", because that mechanic does not exist in DU. The outer planets in any system will most likely have the best chance for valuable resources, but the planets in DU are VERY large, searching an entire planet to find miners will take considerable amounts of time... and time is money in DU. Every minute you spend searching for targets costs fuel...

"How big can we make ships ?" That depends directly on how much you enjoy mining for the resources...

I have no idea what NQ have planned regarding the accessibility of force-fields, I was merely expressing what seems to be the most commonly held view I've seen on these forums in the last 6 months. If every 2-man base in DU is going to have a force-field, some people are going to be very unhappy. NQ surprised me with the MSA announcement, there may indeed be yet more "surprises" in the future...

The REAL use for static defenses would be for those that cannot afford to build/buy and maintain a force-field bubble. The general opinion is that those force-field bubbles are going to be out of reach of single players and small orgs, due to their cost. The same applies to TCU's (territory control units). If an attacking force was strong enough to bring down the shield bubble, then any "automated defenses" you have deployed will most likely be no more effective than a speed-bump...

It's an interesting scenario, but "across the street" competition will only be possible in safezones, of course. I'd imagine the "central market" will be in the arkship safezone right after launch, but that will move to a MSA fairly soon as players start spreading outward. If anyone succeeds in building a "market station" in a convenient location outside the safezone, that will most probably become THE market for the entire system, but keeping THAT safe will be a monumental task. In EVE with its massive game world, Jita reigns supreme as the "central market". Players always prefer a "one-stop-shop", that has been the pattern since the "East Commonlands Trading Tunnel" became a thing in old EQ...

I have no doubt that there will be some serious instances of market-manipulation in DU. People have had 15 years of practice doing it in EVE, after all. But in DU, it may be a bit more tricky than it is in EVE, because any resource stockpiles will have to be kept in physical storage somewhere in the game world. In EVE, you can sit in a station in Jita and buy millions of tons of ore on the market, it is automatically transferred to your hangar without ever entering the game world, and nobody ever knows that you've bought it, so you can operate with complete anonimity. When conditions are favourable, you can dump that massive stockpile onto the market again with the click of a button. The goods are never at risk, as long as you don't remove them from the station, and nobody has the slightest clue what your hangar contains, or how much of it. You don't even need to own a single ship to play the market in Jita. If my understanding of DU's mechanics is correct, then anything bought at a market terminal will have to be collected from a dispenser attached to that market terminal. Those goods will then have to be transported to a container that you own, or kept onboard your ship. Presumably there will be some time limit on the collection, otherwise people will just use the dispensers as infinite "meta-storage". People may not know what you're collecting, but they will notice if somebody is a regular "collector", but doesn't ever appear to be selling anything... Those kinds of complications could make market manipulation a whole lot trickier in DU than it is in EVE.

The most significant difference between DU's markets/Auction House/shops and other MMO's is that in DU, the trade goods all have to be stored in the game world. In DU, when you list an item for sale, it doesn't vanish from your inventory into an alternate dimension (the Auction House), from where it magically pops into the inventory of the person that buys it. Anything listed for sale on a market terminal has to be placed in a storage container attached to that terminal. So "big markets" will need "big storage". And I have no idea how constructs will be handled. So your scenario of "many smaller shops" may actually materialise...

I'm basing my view on what we currently know regarding the DU design. At this point, we know the game world will be massive, but the "safezones" only cover a tiny % of that play area. That is the current reality, and NQ have not given any indication that the ratio will change significantly. We can use "what if" to turn DU into anything we want to, but that's the realm of daydreams. I prefer to work with what we know, rather than how we wish it to be. Sure, creative games like Minecraft have become hugely popular, but none of them are set in a single-shard FFA-PVP environment. If anyone can prove that the Minecraft servers featuring PVP are by far the most popular and numerous, then I'll accept that that audience has a home in DU. I'm intentionally highlighting the harsh realities of DU, because players that enter the game with illusions will be the most vicious haters of the game when those illusions are shattered.