Aesir

If you read everything that Twerk said here, and you didn't get it, then try to have a look at The Elder Scrol Online gameplay and imagine the same with starship. Won't be the same, but it is an entry point. I am sorry I probably didn't explain it correctly. My concept is not to replace the existing server implementation and design, but use it, see it as a plus on TOP of the existing. I do not have all the answer of course, I don't have enough knowledge and I don't even know how really the server is implemented (and I'll nerver know unless I join NQ). But I had a talk with few friends who actually personnaly know the guy who implemented a part of the server we are all from the same school but my friends (as the said guy from NQ) did network and security specialization. They told me that my idea could work, maybe, somehow ALERT: this is not what NQ MUST DO, this is an idea, I'm not saying it has to be like this in anyway, it is more an idea from a brainstorming and certainly not a prove concept. So I try to explain it better: You have your normal DU implementation with the combat system that Twerk described earlier. If I do a short recap of the system it could be something like this : I'm sitting in my spacecrat and I see a foe, I want to agress him. I lock my target (rather soft lock) by aiming at it, I do see on my UI that i'm locking him. Depending of my weapons stats, speed, direction and resistances of my target, I will do a certain amount of damage when firing (they will be probably much more parameters) In my scenario it would be: I'm sitting in my spacecrat and I see a foe, I want to agress him. I aim at it, using a crosshair. There is no lock. If after firing, a bullet hit then, depending of my weapons stats, speed, direction and resistances of my target, I will do a certain amount of damage when firing (they will be probably much more parameters, we could also thing about where did the bullets hits the target) As explained by Twerk, my scenario is for now impossible with the current implementation of the game because of techical limitation of the current design. Now, the concept to make it POTENTIALLY possible : I'm sitting in my spacecrat and I see a foe, I want to agress him. *At this point, My game client already have a list of other player's client that I can connect in P2P, they have been selected because they are availible and they have a good ping with me. Let's call this list, "HostList". I aim at it, using a crosshair. There is no lock. *That's a lie, there is actually a lock but invisible for the player, this lock is actually a list of several potential targets: Knowing the physic of my weapon, ie bullet speed and vector, and because their is already a movement prediction implementation, I can know who may be hit by the bullet, before I press the fire button. With this "maybe hit" list, I start a P2P connection to have their "real time position" and therefore by pass the server prediction, but not with everyone, just this short list. This list must be dynamic someone can enter or leave it. Let's call this list "TargetList" *At this point, no physics have been done, only few P2P connections with 2 lists the "HostList" and the "TargetList", only the TargetList is really used to retrieve exact position of the objects of this list. Now I'm firing, hopping to reach my target. *When I fire, my weapon create a bullet which is a vector and a speed (as said earlier), I send those information to my HostList, I also send the TargetList to the HostList. Now, the HostList will perform the physics for me, they will retrieve the position of the objects (ships) from my TargetList and with the information of the bullet they will be able to determine who get hit, if anyone did. *When the Hostlist have finished the compute, they send the result to : Me, the server, the player who get hit (if any). *Everyone able to see my shot will see it (like expected, whatever the scenario), including the hit on the target. *Damage are computed, depending of the different parameters. There is a lot of things to improve and this is just a concept, for exemple, can we have one list instead of 2 ? Wouldn't be better to have a "turn on weapon system" ? (because you could use the delay of the animation to open the P2P list as well as prevent thosands of list to be opened if people don't actually want to fight). What is the acceptable delay between the moment I fire and the moment the server is able to say what damage have been done to who. That's not perfect. Yet I just wanted to explain the idea, and hopefully it is more understandable than before. Remember that I see it as a feature in plus of the existing and probably just for certain type of weapon, missille and long range weapon should still works on the lock system as explained previously by Twerk.

From my understanding it cannot be like this as your orientation will probably not matter for damage calculation you receive. Yet it does matter for the damage that YOU deal if your target is in front of you or not. I mean, it's beside the Action Prediction model, it should not impact it, just do the physics on the client, the server doesn't have to care about it, it just want the result. Actually, In a blockchain concept, I wonder ... you see ? Like a bunch of guys arround compute your physics and the majorties win the decision, would probably be hack free. But I see a delay issue here, hard to estimate how much and if it is doable. Anyway, certainly not soon, but would be nice if the Devs could do some POCs arround this, or totally anhilate the idea because of some programming design reasons.

First of all thank you for the other link I'll read it carefully. I did a search but didn't find this article. Now, I am listening to Twerk and thanks to his answer I do have a better idea of what the community agreed about, as you mentionned. But I also feel like it's a forum and I can discuss those ideas The limitations you mentionned above are indeed the reason why you can't simply add bullet physics, I'm not questioning this. Yet i'm just expressing a wish, like I guess a lot of players, to see physics based combat, regardless of the technical issues. And as I dont like to add a concern without proposing a solution, I imagined a P2P physics emulation, which would need to be in plus of the current system. I'm not saying it must be, but "could it be". As I said, only the client shooting would be calculating the bullet's movement and as well as retrieving in P2P targets location, those targets being pre selected again by the client depending on who you are aiming at when you press the fire button. And I'm not saying it's possible to implement this, I have no clue, but I imagine this as a server free implementation, almost. Edit: but the real topic was more about, can it be fun combat to have a lock system in a this game ? Twerk convince me half a way I would say, I'm still not sure about the overall feeling/gameplay limitation due to certain combinaison like fps, dice, build your ship (very hard to balance right ?), etc.

No and I didn't, I said hopefully it won't. Again I'm absolutly not suggesting it, I'm rather saying hopefully it won't be like that. If i understand you well, you're suggesting that DU should use a "passive/automatic" targeting system which lock the first things in front of you or let you select somehow only the target with a clear view. Could be, but in no way you will be able to hide behind something after someone already shot at you. ie, if a missille is going for you, it will go through everything, unless it has its own "targeting" system which regullary check if the target is reachable or not, which is a very heavy implementation in DU case, because DU is not about "physical" fight. Ho that's fore sure it shouldn't be. But as you mentionned earlier, it's in Pre-Alpha and we don't know much yet. I see you have strong expectation for the game, as I do. You have to admit that this is something. A kinda ESO system may works (even if I always find it very frustrating to have your arrow not hitting because you are out of targeting range). I mean a ESO 2.0 sounds certainly better than EVE 2.0. But to be honest I would like something more advanced, probably it won't be, but an emulation of physical fight like maybe Elite Dangerous would be nice. from this https://lavewiki.com/network I'm wondering if it could be possible to open a P2P once you locked someone, I mean, DU is based on message programming model, and as the client does have a lot of code similar to the server, it should be possible to do so. Or with some kind of "most likely to be hit" open a P2P, simulate the physics on your side, listen to them telling you their position, evaluate who you shot if you did, send the answer to the poor guy and the server. Net code is definitly not my speciallity so I may be totally wrong there. PS: Any Link ? I didn't recall this.

That's not what i meant, I meant precise postion like a shooter, sure position is a key like any good pvp game, but its not <200ms and it is anyway predictable when you gonna be in range or not. That's something, yet you actually need to be already in movement to see the math, because inertia and stuff its not gonna be instant. Overall everything you said looks good, but don't tell me it is fast gameplay, there is a lot of action happening in EvE and in ESO thats, giving you the feeling that this is fast, in fact it's not that fast. How many action are you gonna do in DU ? Especially if you pilot your starship (even small ?) with a crew, it may feel slow and quite boring with one or two weapon, of couple of LUA script that you gonna activate sometimes depending fo the situation, and then the control of your ship. In EvE/ESO you have multiple things to look at and care about, yet DU looks more simple and should be more simple even at the release, there is so much stuff to care about before implementing more weapon/defense system. Now that i'm more thinking about Elite Dangerous, it does actually looks like what you describe, but the gameplay is a bit boring in fighting, it is all about "you track ?" no-> you lose, yes->does the ennemy shoot at you ? no -> you win, yes -> who got the better stats ? It's very simplified but it's more or less that. LUA moves could be a thing in that case, adding some special moves that may change the deal. I hope DU aint gonna be a simple rock paper scissors, especially for beginners. We are not that far from seing boring gameplay with "meta" ship like a gigantic box of vexel with big guns and a couple of thruster to turn your ship in order to track you target and simply press fire. When players build their weapons, you can be sure that they will exploit any weak points in the gameplay. If you ever played Robocraft or Crossout, you should understand what I mean. Well, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it gonna be bad, I'm not pescimist neither, I just want to share my previous experiences and point now what NQ should be carefull about before it's to late.

First thanks for the detailled answer, and please be carefull with your english, not saying it aint good, just that english isn't the mother tongue of most of us and some of your sentences are "wuuttt". Yeah I do understand your point, you may be right, if NQ ever go in that way. I mean, my concern isn't about being technically possible or not. I played hours on ESO and to be honest, I quit a couple of times because of the gameplay (also because of the lie about "do the char you want" which is actually "please pickup one of the already formated class"). Well from my understanding DU should be somewhere between, kinda like you said. Point is, in ESO rather your face rather not, but there is not such angular calculation, there is in EvE, but because you're not gonna do awesome instant turn back to escape any missile going at you, it's kinda slow acceleration an a lot of inertia which both helps in the "action predicition" model. And you may notice that both EvE and ESO have a third peron view which is more related to "slower" let's say tactical gameplay, position/movement is not really a thing in those games. But In DU that's another story, I mean, first person and fast movement with LUA scripting ? it looks like it should be like "dodgefight", now I'm not saying it's not possible to do a mix, it should exist something in the middle, but emergent gameplay is difficult and it is something to work on carefully. It could be total crap or a revolution, and that's my concern.

Hi Everyone, If you did gather all the info on this game you may have notice 3 things: - JC said (approximately) : "would be cool to have a lua script which make your ship doing an automatic front to back (180° turn) with one button so you can face a foe behind you" - The game will be first person view. - As everyone know, pvp will be lock then fight depending of characteristic of your ship, I guess he has EvE gameplay in mind. Problem: This 3 "things" belong to very different game design choices, because the first one is "arcade" or "simulation" gameplay, where you need to react fast to face your taget (and aim?) in order to shoot at it correctly. The second, FPS mode, is also arcade gameplay where you have the limitation of the view angle and camera, increasing the difficulty of finding your target compared to a third person. Last is tactical gameplay, where you certainly have to react fast as well, but more important, have to do choices giving a certain situation, you analyze and react, prepare the situation before it comes (design your fit). It is all but arcade mechanics, compare EvE online against Elite Dangerous and you'll get what I have in mind. Well, it is emergent gameplay ! Why not mix ? Well ... because you are manoeuvring your ship in an arcade way, you expect to eventually dodge, do nice things moves and enjoy a dogfight ... while the damage you do and you suffer are actually not dependent of this here... In a more technical way, the game is using position prediction to simulate smooth movement while the position information of player are updated not frequently enough to simulate a dogfight. You may say, it is not the goal of the game, indeed, so why would we even need "arcade" mechanics ? Just put a ship list on the right of your cockpit UI and click on "target" then "orbit at 10km" if you know what I mean. I could also add to this the concept of big ship with plenty of automatic weapons < big ship with plenty of manual weapons controlled by several players, (why would I ever want to sit on cockpit and click on "target" then "fire", then "target, then "fire", etc). I am not shooting at the game right now, I just want to expose my concern about the risk of such a gameplay, it could be very frustrating to have smooth and cool control of your ship but with no relevant impact in a fight. Overall, the mix is dangerous and could lead to unhappy or unpleasant gameplay feeling. And yes I know that there is technical reason underneath, but here we may need an emergent technology to solve this... (Lock then P2P to avoid Server overload, would be like P2P on the fly with your target ? I'm not really a specialist in that specific domain you probably thought of this already) That's an open topic, please throw your thoughts. Aesir

Hello Everyone, Let's do it short, not as usual. I am Aesir, yet an old pseudo but I like the grammar and pronunciation is fairly the same whatever your tongue. I played, like a lot of us, thousands of games of any kinds. I am 29 yo, and guess what, my first MMO was Dark age of Camelot at its very beginning i was 13 yo, not very impressive you would say. But back in that time internet was very expensive and slow as FK. Since I played a lot of MMO, not all of them, but I tried most of them (even some very bad one). So obviously yes, I played EvE online my main char was born in 2007, I still play with it from time to time. I played also Minecraft, Robocraft and other "DIY" games, I won't say Sandbox, not because I don't like the concept, but rather that what I do love is building my own machine and express my creativity with big guns (Did I say I'm a male ?). Guess what, I am a engineer in real life now, in computer science, mechanics and electronics, make sens right ? My favorite games ? Yet: Battlerite, Path of Exile (best game ever, I mean honestly the overall is fantastic), EvE Online (even if I get bored), and cooperative games in general (playing with a small team of 2 to 6 guys). And finally, I am encyclopedia man: I read, learn, know everything about the game I like, from game-play mechanics to Health point curve progress and so on. Then I do the math and optimize, in my way ... I basically spend as much time learning and doing theory-craft than as playing. I like to find the limit and play with them. Giving that, Dual Universe seems to be the prefect game for me, despite one or two things but I have the feeling that Novaquark really love their game and want to offer the best for players, that is probably the most important ingredient for a great game. So I pledged (gold :s) to the crowdfunding, probably not a wise decision, but wise decision are often boring right ? And here I am, to complain about balance, wrong gameplay direction and spit on bugs (but I'll create a ticket for all of them, no worries). See you in Game, Aesir