Glowtape

How is this going to be handled? In other games, it's usually for X units of ore you stick into the refining mechanic, you get Y units of refined material and that's that. That usually comes with an implied inventory space reduction. Say if I stick 10 units of iron ore into the refiner, I get one unit of iron out of it, or something, and nothing else. What used to take up 10 slots now only uses 1. Given that with the voxel stuff, everything's measured in volume, will it still follow the same old mechanics, or will refining result in waste material you get rid of? I.e. for 10m3 of low quality iron, you'd get say 3m3 of refined iron, but also 7m3 of useless cinder. How I understood it, there's different material qualities to which you can refine.

Eh, if it's part of a pledge, I guess that's that. Otherwise it'd probably be wiser to save it mostly until the supporter packs are available. If you have a mild interest in the game and YouTube picked up on it, then keeps shoveling these mostly identical interviews up onto you, without anything new (said packs), you might start dismissing videos, which YouTube again picks up on and when there's something new (guess what), it'll fly under your radar. That YouTube metadata also influences your Google searches.

Is there even any point in the different materials, outside of crafting elements? Apart from density giving a dynamic construct weight? Is there some sort of physics simulation that tests strain on the spaceships I'm eventually gonna build? If not, what stops anyone from building a huge dreadnought mostly from wood, or say the cheapest metal in the game, in layers as thin as possible? And I figure, even if stress physics are there in some capacity, depending on how damage mechanics work, you could probably still make a ship somewhat resilient by air gapped layers of cheap material to emulate ablative armor, implying that you probably just need a light and rigid frame.

A rail system would definitely be interesting, because it'd likely allow for train and subway systems over large distances, since rails can be treated in the game code as specialized system with singular purpose, that may not be subjects to scripting limits. Scripts are apparently only supposed to work if there's players around, so if you were to want to call for a subway car, that's currently on the far end of a deserted track, where there's no people, it wouldn't work.

I've watched the early videos where they build a base and then a large spaceship. The asteroid seen seems rather small. Is there any information yet how territory control works on these? Will they be claimed in their entirety? In pieces, too? In any case, I take it there's the same 1km build ceiling soft-limit? I suppose these would be the basis for a space station then?

Things will probably work out towards TCUs only operating if there aren't terrain voxels above it. Static core stuff would presumably be excluded due to being destructible. Then again, that'd prohibit putting the TCU in a cave with an open entrance.

Last official post on the forums touching the topic said Q4/2017 and that work on the revamped site has started. That's about it.

For LUA, I guess starting out on their own tutorial. https://www.lua.org/pil/1.html

Why? If it's in the ground and the ground is uneditable, it's invulnerable. So, TCUs will require resources? I sure hope it requires frequent topping up. Will it degrade in hitpoints if not maintained? If not, you could still fill it up, bury it and maintain timed terrain exclusivity, without giving the enemy any chance to contend the terrain early at all. Also, drawing parallels from EVE (or any other MMO), it seems some people don't have issues to do multi-accounting. I kind of expect organizations to bury one or more secondary player characters loaded with resources in their inventories together with the TCU, to extend the runtime while buried. --edit: The last paragraph actually made me think. Since only people with the right access can dig into the ground, an organization could assign refueling and maintenance "moles". You only need to manage to dig a hole into the ground, hop in and then quickly close the hole above you. Then you're safe from enemy fire. You could maintain a network of maintenance tunnels, to offer a variety places of entry, if you need higher chances of bypassing PVP on top-side. You don't even need the 500m under the ground, if terrain is invulnerable. --edit2: To extend the idea, even if you don't close the top of the hole fast enough, if you put up some double door system, the enemy would still not get access, if they manage to kill you before you close up the top. Essentially, the access point would be a cavity, to which a tunnel leads that's sealed up with terrain material. --edit3: Basically this:

Eh, not really. The enhanced view doesn't highlight the TCU and it's unclear whether it'll show on a scanner, if there's one (wouldn't be able to verify, still waiting for crowdfunding to reopen). The only thing this video shows is that the terrain will become uneditable for people not on the ACL. Putting the TCU in the ground would render it 100% safe currently. Seems kind of a flaw, if territory contention is going to be a gameplay feature (is it?) Maybe ground will shift via weapon damage, but I'd figure it'll rather be homeopathic.

You could just write your own flight control. I'd expect gyroscope (for rates of rotation) and magnetometer (for orientation) objects to be available in LUA, which would allow you to write some simple flight control using PIDs to fire thrusters appropriately.

So I expect territory control will also involve conquering territory of other people or organizations. How is discovery of the control units going to be handled? Do you have to scan for it, or do you have to actually find it? If you can organize access rights via groups and hierarchy, what stops anyone from sticking a TCU into a construct with no doors or other entrances? Any changes to access rights can be done remotely by shuffling people around between groups. I'd figure constructs are going to be destructible, so eventually you'll find it by tearing a hole into aforementioned blackbox. However, what stops me from putting it like 500m under the ground? The thing would need to show up on a scanner, otherwise you'd never find it and get a chance to conquer a specific piece of territory.

I just hope that inventory space for basic materials, like soil and such, is rather sufficiently large. This is mostly about bigger building/excavation projects in tiny guilds or solo. It's one thing that you can't be expected to haul around the same amount of cubicmeters in lead as you could in soil, due to density differences. But still, I hope the limits are generous. If inventory space is small, some things might get weary very quickly, because you're spending way more time on travel (say to dump your excavated materials) than actually building.

From how it looks in the tutorial videos posted today, it appears that any material you want to build up, it needs to touch something else (e.g. the ground, or a core that touches the ground). What'd happen if you were to pull up a single tall stilt, build a huge base on top of it, then erase the stilt? Will it float? Will some physics apply and it'll come down crashing? Is there some code that checks the voxel tree and prevents you from breaking off pieces?