Devinous

I couldn't agree with this more - there are a ton of players that play MMOs solo and do not have the time to join large guilds that make unreasonable demands due to their leader or leadership not having a job and playing from their parents basement.   I on the other hand (and I am sure many many more playing) have a 6 figure/60 hour professional career and family and very limited time to enjoy games like this,  and lets be honest its not fair to those that can play hours and hours on end in a group for me to try and join when I will have to cut it short or deal with life and/or work.  However by alienating myself and people like myself with large disposable incomes (whom are more than glad to or already have dropped serious coin into a good game) DU is shooting themselves in the foot.  Eve is a failed endeavor that should not be a "schematic" for how to build sandbox games,   the only reason it is still alive today is because of several extremely/filthy rich clients,  who from what I understand have left the game and that is the main reason it is now a sinking ship.   The only reason it isn't dead yet,  and we have all seen this before,  the longer an MMO runs the longer it takes to die.    The reason I bring up Eve is because this is a tactic that is used in EVE,  and it would be a horrendous shame to see such a beautiful and well designed game such as DU with its extreme potential turn into a bot riddled,  scam laden,  inferiority complex haven of a game that Eve truly is.   
 
There are several ways of doing this to allow all players to enjoy the game on all sides and that includes those that do wish to play multiplayer,  but to force multiplayer will kill the potential of this game and their profit margin.  Eventually large areas and portions of the game will be cut off to the general public as you will have to join one of a small handful of large corps and small businesses will never survive,  this will also kill the diversity of the game and with a game that is built on invention that is a death sentence.  
 
This is of course only beta,  and discussions like this are what is needed for the developers to read both sides of the coin and to see what their player base is looking for so I am sure that they will make the right decision in the end.   There has been way to much blood and sweat poured into this game to turn it into another Eve Online,  unless of course I was wrong about the leadership and developers and they are not the forward thinking, creatives that are pushing a new form of gaming on to the market but rather just a copy cat of CCP or Electronic Arts and others like them looking to just milk multiplayer for the cash.  

I'll never understand why some people are so intent on prescribing how other peoples playstyles should be. It just so happens some people enjoy the challenge of trying to do it all. You want to limit yourself to the boring task of producing one item be my guest. I buy multiple accounts just so I can "do it all" ...now it seems that playstyle is not in the vision so my multiple accounts have been unsubbed. What folks don't realize is that solo players are actually the majority of paying customers is these games, not because of the number of individual solo players but because we usually have multiple accounts. (it's hard to be self sufficient with one character)
 
What should have been done would have been to offer the basic schems needed to get a start in the game for free. Then as items produced get more complex they could start charging for them, with the more common ones being dirt cheap and the most rare being the most expensive and difficult to acquire.
 
We also should not need a schematic for each machine. This could have been handled by uploading them to database's of varying sizes that could then be linked to a series of industries. Small factories would only need the smaller, relatively inexpensive db's, while the mega-factories would need many much larger, much more expensive db's to operate. 
 
I understand why they did it this way ...IMO they tripped over themselves in the process. The upcoming need for power generation will accomplish their goal. The current implementation of schematics has come in as more of a wall than the curb they intended.
 
Schematics are good and should stay as they add a level of complexity. But implement them so as to add to the fun, not impede it.

I upgraded from Bronze kickstarter to Patron and paid the 180$ USD but outside of all the stuff there is the 12 months of subscription included and that is basically from 100-150$ USD value right there.  I believe most stuff is at the 15 bucks a month price point for a sub so paying really an extra 30ish bucks for all that extra stuff is a deal.   I would buy in now as later on this stuff will most likely get alot more expensive.   Plus to be honest I am looking forward to the game so the 200ish $ I spent so far is a good deal to support the devs and game.