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hdparm

Alpha Team Vanguard
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  1. Like
    hdparm reacted to m0rrty in ASK APHELIA EPISODE #1- Discussion thread   
    1) I am not very familiar with 'pod-cast' style of answering questions, but I watched a lot of youTube videos, 
      - I definitely wish the answers were prepared in advanced, re-read, re-written, scripted on paper, and recorded nice&clear sentences.
     
    2) As for wipe, - we know it is the hot topic, and we want answers or info about it, we don't want reminders about you knowing it and saying nothing about it.
     
    3) more questions, more answers please.
     
    Thank you.
  2. Like
    hdparm reacted to Gottchar in ASK APHELIA EPISODE #1- Discussion thread   
    Why do you even bother doing these, if you do them like this?

    Same thing as with the discord Q&A, or the youtube ones.
  3. Like
    hdparm reacted to blazemonger in ASK APHELIA EPISODE #1- Discussion thread   
    The coment about the wipe.. 
    Please stop pretending and just say it.. You are mere months away from release and while the details may be not entirely set, you will have made the decision on whether to wipe or not. I will not buy that this is not he case as that would mean you, as NQ really are on the wrong trajectory entirely. Just a quick comment to circumvent the issue is really not good enough. having a generic statement which just rehashes what you said previsouly, which is increasingly unrealistic, is rather sus..
     
    Build box
    do not really see the relevance overall, this, at best, shoudl actually be a very low priority and setting expectations as "it can be done" really is not the right answer
     
    DSAT tutorial
    The answer should be yes.. DSAT is really pretty simple UI based "minigame" a tutorial should not take that much time.
     
    Optimizations
    It feels like NQ doe snot really understand the concept or what it requires and talks about stuff in the periphery of the topic, which is concerning
     
    Small weapon ranges
    This answer felt like NQ is moving even further away from space combat and is trying to gamify it even further to the point where it is going to be entirely unrealistic or immersive.. 
     
     
    Overall, this was a very underwhelming podcast which follows the general NQ line of being vague, missing the point, exposing hte disconnect with the ciopmmunity and avoiding the tough questions for fairly generic ones.
     
    Please, do better.
     
     
  4. Like
    hdparm reacted to StoneSpoons in ASK APHELIA EPISODE #1- Discussion thread   
    HEY NQ: Please tell us what you're going to do with the inevitable wipe so we can work through it and move on.
     
    The rest is filler. Now is not the time for filler.
     
    Rip off the f***ing band-aid and get it over with.
  5. Like
    hdparm reacted to Thunderblaze in Ongoing Discussions   
    @NQ-Nyota Can NQ pause territory tax & subscription fees so we can all take a break while you guys decide?
     
    Thanks.
  6. Like
    hdparm reacted to CptLoRes in Welcome to Limbo! What have you been doing?   
    Problem is that many of those will be "I don't care about a wipe anymore, this was the last straw and I am done with this game". And they are going to be telling this to all their friends, and some of them are also going to be youtubers making reviews.
  7. Like
    hdparm reacted to CptLoRes in DEVBLOG: CONSTRUCTION SLOTS AND STACKED ELEMENTS - discussion thread   
    Oh man..  15 + 10 cores as the max cap for any player regardless is really not that much and it is going to hurt A LOT of people badly.
     
    Just of the top of my head.
    - The new MU system is eating cores like they are candy
    - Ship sellers need lots of cores for demonstration models
    - Ship museums
    - Creative players often use lots of dynamic cores to work around placement limitations for artistic expressions
     
    Right now the only good thing I can think of is that this will limit the usefulness for making those pesky space elevators. But for big projects like race tracks, player driven markets etc.. oh man they are going to struggle.
     
    And this limit will be a large hindrance for the stability of large community projects, since they will now be depending on the good will of players sacrificing slots and not taking them back again later.
  8. Like
    hdparm reacted to JayleBreak in DEVBLOG: PANACEA LUA CHANGES - discussion thread   
    Logging was/is CRITICAL to my development of an enhanced flight script.
    It allowed gathering information essential to understanding how physics in DU work (e.g. air density vs altitude, engine thrust vs. air density, the coefficient of drag etc.). 
    It permitted me to identify (and report) BUGS. E.g. the time when the API (correctly) reported the construct mass sans nanopack mass, but the physics engine was including the nanopack content mass (which caused the ship to crash I might add).
    So to maintain and improve the flight script I log once a second vital flight information (think of it as my BLACK BOX). Removing this capability is  unconscionable, as will become clear as time (and code changes) will prove.
  9. Like
    hdparm reacted to Helediron in DEVBLOG: PANACEA LUA CHANGES - discussion thread   
    I have extensive debug log in my flight script and removal of logging would really hurt. There must be an alternative to extract a debug log. What i have now is that debug logging writes to system log lines with special characters to frame the lines and then a powershell script extracts the lines and imports into VSCode.
     
    Suggestion: the Lua log chat tab should allow to copy it to clipboard. It should contain full log of a session - not truncate it as now. The log may grow to megabytes.
  10. Like
    hdparm reacted to Merzie in DEVBLOG: PANACEA LUA CHANGES - discussion thread   
    Another request if you remove the obvious way to get stuff from the logfile: A nice json file with all itemnames, descriptions, ID's and recipeID's etc. Stuff like that is very hard to get out of the game otherwise...
  11. Like
    hdparm reacted to Ashford in DEVBLOG: PANACEA LUA CHANGES - discussion thread   
    Since the log function has been removed, there is no longer a way to copy text from within the game. So it would be nice if there was another possibility, e.g. to copy and paste in the LUA chat window or a edit contant button for the database in order to use this item to get text in and out.
  12. Like
    hdparm reacted to CptLoRes in Wipe the damn servers!   
    Wiping will solve nothing. It will not magically improve the game in any way, and there will be even less content since all user made stuff will now also be gone.
  13. Like
    hdparm reacted to CptLoRes in What do you think about tax suspension?   
    This constant 'play to keep' pressure is fundamentally wrong for a subscription game.
     
    DU is the type of game where players will play for long periods, but then want to take a brake for something else. But not being able to do so and continue where they left of (in a building focused game with subscription no less), only makes them quit instead.
     
    I would compare the DU subscription to cloud storage. Meaning as long as you keep paying the subscription you are also paying for NQ to maintain your current state in the game while you are away.
     
    And if this does not scale economically, then NQ should stop beating around the bush and put a hard cap on what and single account can actually do in the game. But this would be admitting that the entire premise for the game is broken, so...
  14. Like
    hdparm reacted to CptLoRes in DEVBLOG: TERRITORY UPKEEP - Discussion Thread   
    I have restricted myself to a single HQ tile close to district 6. And even that single tile is such a chore that I am starting to dread login in to maintain it.
    And I cannot believe I am saying this, but it is even more boring and repetitive then mining ever was.
     
    And as Yoarii just said, at least with mining you could choose when to do the chore and gather enough resources in one session to last a while.
  15. Like
    hdparm got a reaction from Hirnsausen in Industry schematic replacement   
    In a game that's described as "the space MMO entirely built and driven by the players", a currency issued by NPCs (quanta) should not be required for anything. Not for unlocking or changes recipes, not for territory upkeep, not for anything else. Quanta should only be used to optionally trade on NPC markets.
  16. Like
    hdparm reacted to Roustabout in Mining Units: A weeklong in-depth review   
    Background / Summary
    I backed DU early on and have three accounts - honestly, I tried to give my beta keys away to friends, but no one wanted them.  So, I have a character dedicated to mining / refining, one to piloting, and one to industry.  All three have some combination of radar, gunnery, and ammo skills.  Each of them is around 50M skill points.
     
    My play time prior to Demeter could be classified into three categories, active, passive, and mindless.  The active playtime involved building, pvp, asteroid mining, or using the markets.  I’m sure most of you reading this know the autopilot time as you scanned an asteroid or traveled to a planet.  This is the passive; dare I say AFK time.   What I call mindless time includes digging around in an unclaimed tile, you could simply zone out, watch a video, or listen to music.  I liked this time, it was relaxing, easy, and still offered progression without any risk.
     
    Prior to Demeter, On average, I spent about 3 hours each day playing DU.  About half of this time was active or mindless mining and the other half was some mix of ship building, industry, or solo pvp.  Occasionally, I would spend an entire session repairing my ship because...well you dicks with the giant towers know why.
     
    On an average day, I would generate $46M.  About half was ground mining and the other half Asteroid mining.  This worked out to about $30M / hour of money making activity.

    With the advent of Demeter, the mindless playtime has disappeared.  My playtime has shifted to only two categories and the overwhelming majority of my playtime is now active and focused on three tasks - calibrating, hauling ore, and picking up ore from the bonus ground spawn.  The passive time is almost non-existent and involves flying 60km on the same planet.
     
    After playing the minigame 15 times, trudging out to some random spot to collect between 2 and 4k ore, and then doing my best impression of a garbage man picking up all the auto-ore from 14 containers, I generate on average $10M over 90 minutes or about $6.7M / hour.  I could probably generate $30M / hour asteroid mining again but that would be at an opportunity cost of the passive ore mining or I would have to fully dedicate my entire 3 hour play time to money making activities.
     
    The real takeaway here is that my money making active playtime has shifted from scanning and mining to babysitting autominers and picking up ground ore - both steps down in the level of fun and engagement. Sure, I could go back to asteroid mining exclusively and will likely get to that point but for the purposes of this dsicussion, I focused on really exercising the auto mining system.  
    Additionally, to keep the automiers at a reasonable level (not even optimal) I have had to set timers, reminders, and build a spreadsheet to track the decay so I’m hitting the right autominers at the right times and carefully balancing my calibration charges.  While I’m perfectly capable of managing all this, it is quite annoying and doesn’t lead to long term engaging gameplay.
    At the current market rates, I’m able to generate about $5M per tile per week.   My tiles are probably slightly above average but are all T1 and similar to most of everything else I have seen around Alioth - so nothing special here.  
     
    I have seen several posts of people complaining the taxes are too high and hopefully the next section will help show how to make automining profitable.
     

    Setup
    I put some of the refunded mining skills into the “on deploy” auto mining skills on my main mining character and had all three characters train to 4 4 3 3 (Calibration Charge Optimization / Efficiency at 4 and Improved versions at 3).  So, as far as investment into auto mining goes, I’m pretty deep but not outside of what most folks can do with a week of skill training.  This gives the three characters the ability to comfortably manage 60+ autominers across 14 territories.   A single character with 10 days of training can easily handle 7 territories - perhaps not at a perfectly optimal level but enough for a good profit margin.
     
    While I was fortunate enough to have some scanners already available, I haven't found many territories that couldn't turn a profit with proper management.  The tiles that had 500 of one ore are best as you can get 4 miners working that tile with no leftover.  But most tiles offered at least 3 full miners and some partial miners.  The proximity bonus is key so simply picking a spot that has 7 open tiles will almost always yield a profit.
     
    I currently have 14 T1 Territories with 7 being very bauxite heavy and the other 7 evenly distributed across all 4 T1 ore types.  There are 63 autominers currently running with the lowest base rate being 70 and the highest being 125.  With the territory bonus, the optimal rate ranges from 126 to 226 per hour with most clustered at 183 per hour.
     
    For production bonus purposes, the tiles are clustered around a center which means one tile gets a 60% bump and all others get a 30% bump.
     
    In order to maintain this, I do need to log in every day so I don’t overcap my calibration charges.  My characters generate 5.7 calibration charges per day and if I don’t use them every day, I lose 1.4 charges.  With current skills I can refill between 60% and 72% if I get lucky with the minigame.  If I don't get lucky, it's around 57% which means I need to calibrate when a mining unit decays to between 30% and 50%.  While I may over cap the 100%, I found calibrating when the unit is between 40% and 45% is the safest time.  The tracking sheet below highlight the units that need adjusting.
     
    Given the base rate of 125 for most of the miners, I can usually get 4 full miners on a tile and one partial. On the 60% bonus tile I see around 1.1KL / hr of total ore and my lowest tile currently generating around 500 L / hr.  Optimal generation is around 700 L / hr on average.  I have also found that unless the unit is on a 60% tile, a rate below 90 would be better deployed elsewhere as it relates to spending calibration charges - there is something to be said about convenience so I have a few mining below that rate, but they are lower priority to calibrate.
     
    Bonus Ore
    Each day I spend about 15 calibration points and get an average of 3k bonus ore which works out to 45,000 L in bonus ore or about $2M income.  Getting the bonus ore is relatively quick but tedious and feels like a chore.  The bonus ore makes up 20% of the weekly income so it is unfortunately required to maximize the tile.  Without the bonus ore, I would still see a profit but it would reduce down to $44M / week (still not bad).
     
    Sample Tracking

     
     
    Financial Analysis
    Initial Investment
    Territory Unit: $175k -> $2.45M
    Territory Claim Fee: $500k -> $7M
    Small Static Core: 12K -> $168K
    Basic Mining Unit L: $175K -> $11M
    Container L: $300K -> $4.2M
    -------------------------------------
    Total Investment: $24,800,000
    Time to setup: 8 Hours
     
    I should note I have a ship with two L containers that handles the logistics.  This ship costs about $15M.
     
     
    Maintenance Costs
    Nitron Fuel: $70,000 / week
    Scrap for those unexpected times:  $250,000 / week
    Territory Tax: $1,000,000 / week -> $14,000,000 / week
    -------------------------------------
    Total Maintenance per week: $14,320,000
    Maintenance Time: 90 minutes / day or 10 hours each week
     
     
    Income
    Raw Sales: $72,000,000
     
     
    Balance Sheet (Week to Week expectation)
    Expenses: $14,320,000
    Income: $72,000,000
    -------------------------------------
    Net: $57,680,000
     
    Given the initial investment of $24,800,000, I fully covered this investment in 4 days and had a first week pure profit of about $16,600,000.  
    This works out to a little over $1.7M / Hour of play time in the first week. I expect around $6M / hour of playtime next week
     
    Territory Summary

     
    Daily Log

     
     
     
    Bugs
    Can’t access the Calibration menu that tells me things like when it was last calibrated and the location of the surface ore pop if I have no calibration charges Tooltip on Adjacency doesn’t have a % indicator -  should be  “a 30% bonus” not "a 30 bonus" The small 50L of ore are physically much smaller than the normal surface rocks that only deliver 20L of ore The harvest time on the bonus ore is not scaled with the regular surface ore - it takes less time to harvest the 50L and 150L rocks than it does the normal 20L ore The bonus rocks are labeled incorrectly, they show up as their pure counterparts instead of the raw ore label; Aluminum Rock vs Bauxite Rock
    Improvement Suggestions
    As mentioned in the Q&A, the transition screens on the minigame are painfully slow.  Can we eliminate or speed them up? The current reasonable cap of calibration charges is 9.  You can get more by investing more skill points but 9 feels like where most folks will end up given there are far more interesting skills to train.  I’d like to see this cap at least doubled if not tripled (or removed all together, why cap it?)  If I decide not to play for a few days, I over cap and there is an opportunity loss. Where can I see my current calibration charges?  Or is the Autominer UI the only spot?  I’d like to be able to see the current calibration charges on some character screen. The minigame is prone to RNG which causes a reduction in income for things that are outside of my control.  Could we have some of the mining unit skills affect the size off the tools in the minigame so that if I choose to invest points in those skills, I see my efforts less affected by RNG? The bonus ore is nice for the minigame but it's a chore to go out and collect it.  Can we have it simply deposited into the container The surface rocks offer a performant way to create a small faucet and give new players a way to earn money.  However, the way they are designed is both tedious to gather and painful to look at. Could we instead have larger nodes that leverage the mining talents spawn on the surface and offer the same amount of ore just more concentrated?  We could even add a piece of equipment that allows me to scan my territory to identify these pockets or leverage the territory scanner.
     
  17. Like
    hdparm reacted to Knight-Sevy in Is it me or has the community changed?   
    We are there because NQ has always had an ultra capitalist vision of them.
     
    The most glaring example is the system of organizations. It is a copy of a (foul) ideology of an ultra liberal "start up nation".
     
    For NQ you MUST be a self-employed entrepreneur and have your own business to generate profit because that is how the world works or has to work for them. If you listen to them, it is the only way a civilization has to be born and prosper.
     
    It is completely to deny several millinear years of human history.
    Civilizations have developed because there have been state organizations with inalienable sovereignties.
    In Dual Universe if you make an organization you are a legate and the one and only boss, you can leave with the fund whenever you want.
    There is no democratic process, you cannot choose to integrate homework and homework.
     
    Example: impossible for an organization to vote spending limits for its members / legates. No way to protect assets for projects other than personal enrichment.
     
    It is not the fault of the community.
    It's NQ's fault.
  18. Like
    hdparm reacted to Stormis in Is it me or has the community changed?   
    Unfortunately, with the introduction of Schematics, you won't get very far without Quanta. If you want to build something, first buy the schematics for it. Depending on what kind of schematic it is, the costs can go up into the billion. It continues with the introduction of the mining units. No quanta, no mining units and no tiles. So it is not only up to the players but also to the gameplay that is currently available.
  19. Like
    hdparm reacted to vylqun in Is it me or has the community changed?   
    maybe, just maybe, this is because players are now required to pay taxes?
    I'm one of those builders who were scanning, selling and buying the past 2 weeks, even tho i normally wouldnt do this, and this is simply because i have more than 5 hexes where i built purely non-functional stuff and need to finance it. But whenever i said, that those taxes will kill large projects everyone only answered "but you have 5 HQ hexes, learn how to make quanta"
    But at least i have found another quanta faucet now, getting stuff from the ppl i played with a lot and who left over the past 2 weeks.
  20. Like
    hdparm reacted to Stormis in Demeter 0.27 Release - Discussion Thread   
    Make the missions usable again with VR.
    Players with many ALTS didn't mind the change anyway and players who flown these missions for many other players are the only ones who have disadvantages as a result. Together with taxes, this change makes absolutely no sense.
    Currently the game only consists of calibrating the mining units and flying mission stations to accept missions and give them back.. The gamestyle isnt really funny anymore.
     
  21. Like
    hdparm reacted to Creator in CURRENT DISINTEREST THROUGH YOUR WIPE STATEMENTS   
    I believe this community deserves some acknowledgement for those who have stayed through all the choices of NQ.

    Some here don't seem to get it and just call us "bitter veterans" but we knew what the game was like before some of these changes (the good and the bad), and though we may raise some hell, we do it cause we love the game.

    My major concern is that the number of players willing to sit by and wait for another few years dwindles with every stunt NQ pulls that shows their disrespect and disregard for the community. We have been placed in limbo on prospects of a wipe, which honestly I am pretty sure is going to roll out in 2022 at this point if they decide to rush to "launch" before 2023 due to funding issues.

    I speak from experience in development myself and I've never put a customer through this roller coaster. They have a community expectations management problem, because they themselves lack the ability to gauge of what they can and can't deliver on.

    "The era of trust us we know better than you" needs to come to an end cause we have some super smart people in this community.

    The developers need to be honest and state the reality of where things are at not a propaganda vlog/video/newsletter.
    What they are confident they can do before release. What they want to try but aren't sure if it will work. What we want that isn't going to happen before release. The conditions for a wipe scenario, and conditions for a no wipe scenario.
      Wipe or no wipe I don't mind as long as I have a relative idea what to expect (a deadline for when, what would be wiped, etc). This gives me as the player the ability to choose okay do I need to wait a bit, or how to play in a way I am okay losing all progress, or am I falling behind others by waiting?

     
  22. Like
    hdparm reacted to Sabretooth in CURRENT DISINTEREST THROUGH YOUR WIPE STATEMENTS   
    Im sorry, but 10 hours to rebuild an m-core? I think YOU are trolling.
    Even with the ore present, you would still have to fabricate the elements. On a decent m-core that would be at least 10 L engines for atmo alone. Never mind the other elements.
    An L-core takes 3 days to produce and thats just the core.
    Impossible to do in 10hrs. I would say. I have lots of L and XL containers, please tell me the amount of elements you have and do a realistic calculation of how long it will take you to rebuild them. Your base, storage, ships.
    Im sure it will take you at least a month of subscription.
     
    So it seems you dont mind paying for a game and waste your time doing the same stuff twice. Thats not something for me to be doing. My time is precious to me.
     
    Its these 'positive lies' of players like you that try to convince people that the game is still simple, easy and the same as NQ is advertising, while it is not.
    This mining system is only nice if you are into making money.
    If you entered this game a year ago to be an artistic builder, then the game has now changed for the worse. 
    That is a fact.
     
     
  23. Like
    hdparm reacted to Doombad in CURRENT DISINTEREST THROUGH YOUR WIPE STATEMENTS   
    I truly hope they don’t wipe. If NQ does decide to do so, I will continue to play until the announcement and then move on. I know I am just one player, but I suspect there are many like me who joined the Beta with the impression what we built would carry forward.
  24. Like
    hdparm reacted to CMDRTaco in DEVBLOG: TERRITORY UPKEEP - Discussion Thread   
    After the dev Discord Q&A a few days ago, it's clear the devs don't even play this game. They are completely out of touch of how much this update has turned this "GAME" into a 2nd job. The taxes are too high for the effort required. NQ admitted they set the tax to be 50% of what you could mine at 100% efficiency. No society flourishes when everything is taxed at a 50% rate. On top of this, many of the miners we put down are bugged and will not pull at the rate they are suppose to. It's like other miners are already pulling the vast majority of the available pool, but there are no other miners on the territory.
  25. Like
    hdparm reacted to CptLoRes in CURRENT DISINTEREST THROUGH YOUR WIPE STATEMENTS   
    We all know from the Kickstarter that even straight up promises hold little value, and that the narrative from NQ will change as it suits them.
     
    But NQ's unwillingness to give a clear answer about a wipe, shows that they know they have made certain expectations (look mum! I did not use the word promise!) when they soft-released the "beta". And that breaking those expectations will come with consequences.
     
    Another thing to consider is that there is little reason to think that a release in a years time, will be for a proper finished game. So how long will it take before people start talking about needing another wipe even after release?
     
    So the question then I guess, is how much distrust from players NQ think they can get away with in the long run?
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