Wyndle

NQ has been struggling with cleaning up (and preventing more of) the hordes of constructs left rusting. They even gave us pocket ships as a direct response to the problem. One of the ideas I wanted to use on my bar/market was to salvage ships and turn them into decoration. I would take all elements and sell/reuse. The honeycomb shell would be cut/paste onto the static construct with some weathering done and honeycomb cinder blocks under it.

If taxation is a requirement to keep the economy balanced then it would make more sense (logically and technically) to apply the taxes directly to units that produce (industry included); tiny amount on a per cycle basis rather than a blanket tax on property without regard for any other activity. Even from a lore perspective this could be called an electric bill.

I never said they had the tech working. Until it does work it would be correct in stating that it isn't of value. If the server tech is no longer being developed then this project is barely more than a graphics intense space clone of Minecraft with vague aspirations of being compared to other games.

Oh yeah, that would entice new players to grind more quanta. If NQ even discussed that prospect in earnest publicly the project would be all but dead in a matter of minutes. I may complain on the forums, but it is because I still (foolishly) want this project to be a success.

I have long suspected that the real money to be made from DU, the actual profit target, was licensing the server tech to other studios. DU itself seemed like more of a passion project meant to showcase a server tech breakthrough, IMO. That is a large part of why JC leaving put a damper on my own enthusiasm for the project. A passion project becomes a rat's nest to anyone missing even a fraction of that passion, and that kills many projects regardless of funding or release status.

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought they were trying to reduce server costs, not double them. Even if we're talking about VMs auto-negotiating between the two realms it would only add to server cost to even attempt, much less maintain that state. If anything, I would think an offline creative mode instead of tandem realms would fill your stated goal and still achieve a reduction in server load. This feature has been requested many times but the logic at the time preferred to keep everyone in a single, online only shard. And I could speculate on a few dozen other scenarios in quite some depth but following cause and effect (with a modicum of corporate IT experience) to the most probable outcome would just bring me right back to:

Ah, another synonym for placeholder. Gee, at what point do we change the name to Duct-tape Unfuniverse? It is a matter of priorities. Right now the priority seems to be wholesale conversion to a F2P system with as much grind as can be humanly tolerated. It worked for Blizzard! (too soon?)

Be careful what you ask for, you may not like the results. I only see two somewhat realistic paths for NQ to make money w/ DU. First would be a bottom up redesign to put 'game' back into the project. Second would be going pay-to-win F2P. My proverbial money is on the first option because it sure as hell won't be going toward the second.

If market storage were subject to the same container distance and RDMS rules as constructs that would eliminate the perceived/actual need for container constructs at markets. It would probably be a considerable reduction in semi-redundant code and server side performance requirements aside from a potential merger of databases. I would recommend against making it accessible via the inventory screen though as that would encourage using markets for 'free' storage.

There was enough of the vision in place to transition to beta. In fact, I complimented JC and NQ at the time for correctly using alpha and beta status in-line with other software industries (outside of games) instead of a greedy "Beta" money grab like so many games. It needs to be moved back to alpha, possibly pre-alpha state based on what has been removed and the stated reasons for it being removed. From my perspective, the changes made since at least 0.23 indicate that the initial design is still out of technical reach and the whole project would be better off with a new ground up approach based on lessons learned rather than counterproductive reactionary "fixes" as we hobble along. I'm not saying to scrap everything, but I don't think the current NQ team and leadership can deliver anything even remotely close to the original vision without it becoming a hyper-realistic mirror of the broken things in the real world (i.e. not fun for anyone).

So the workaround is more transfer units and containers? Yeah, that won't make industry more of a resource hog than it already was. NQ: Maybe have a stack split happen prior to an industry unit calling for material. This would require a flow chart or hierarchy of priority to systematically assign material to connected units. Ideally the player would be able to define the priority with a default based on tier and longest cycle time, but I'm not going to kid myself about THAT being a realistic option.

Holy F***, I missed that detail before. My opinion about the direction NQ seems to be taking this project (can no longer call it a game) actually got worse with reading that, and there wasn't much room for that to happen. Well played. Except for the fact that the bots don't change their prices based on market conditions, so new players are ensured a certain amount of income compared to what an org can achieve (rough paraphrase). Wasn't that also about the same time they started UBI (daily login quanta)? Both now completely screw the new player for much longer than any sane person would grind in the client (formerly known as a game) without some fun. I seem to recall there being discussion of hiring someone who understood economics to help balance the market. Either that didn't happen or the person they hired said some of the same things about free markets and was let go or, more likely, ran to the nearest Austrian economics facility for personal safety. That works this time, but eventually all of those rocks will be gone too. Then the only rocks would be on actively controlled tiles. Guess what you get when you combine planned/limited income growth and selective price controls at the same time? Stagflation... and war/conflict. Too bad we don't have AvA or functional space PvP to at least salvage that part of the project. (Edit: The previous sentence was pure snark. If you don't have a functional economy then war and conflict would decimate what little is left of the project).

I hoped the map crash was a temporary issue and would automagically disappear after the patch but no such luck. I guess I'll try again sometime next year, if at all.

Sorry, but the root of the problem is that the initial game concept was designed around a free market which no longer exists and does not appear to be coming back. Central planning of complex systems inevitably leads to corruption and/or failure. Single points of failure are the bane of complex systems, and central planning is the worst example of a single point of failure.

If it were strictly issues of game development I doubt there would be anywhere near this much turmoil. The corporate leadership over the dev team has as much to do with the problems as undeliverable promises of any or all of dev team. When JC left I considered leaving right then and there. I took a break instead, keeping an eye on updates and logging in every so often. I have been less than impressed with the changes since (being nice), but the Demeter changes that I have interacted with so far are unbearable IMO. If the stated reasons for the map wipe hold true then I expect a future patch to nerf (and eventually remove) terraforming on some or all planets. It wouldn't be the end of the game per se, but it would pull the rug out from under more than a few creative players. We already had the "player run economy" gutted and all but removed early on. Now terrestrial mining has been gutted completely and heaped onto the already broken market bots. What few features that have been added only add to the sense of performing chores rather than playing in a sandbox. I have enough chores, I play games to get away from chores. F*** busy work and shoehorned gating mechanics. I don't have much to say about PvP, but I've seen others say plenty. That just leaves constructs and space travel, for which there are better games. I don't think I'll bail just yet, but I suspect I won't be given any significant reasons to play DU anytime soon. Mega: I hear ya, and good luck out there.

I haven't spent much time on the forums lately, but I see that many share or exceed my complaints about the lack of 'game' in this game. Worse still on my part; for the last several days my client crashes every time I try to open the map (even after all the normal debug tricks short of uninstall since I probably won't reinstall). In essence that makes what little game that was left completely unplayable for me. No map? No navigation (HUD autopilot aside). I was in the process of shutting down my tiles outside of Sanctuary but I can't even do that now. I think I can still use waypoints from the mission system but that doesn't help much and it won't help me find my tiles.

IMO, I believe there should be unmanned defense options. I see it as a dangerous form of chess. Can I either outwit or roll over the defense system? That nuance is one of the reasons I PvP other than defending what is mine. Killing for the sake of taking what belongs to others doesn't hold weight for me, but give me a strategic puzzle under fire and I would lend myself to an effort in that vein.

No longer looking

I would absolutely LOVE to be capable of moving like in Starseige Tribes: Ascend. If you have AvA combat like that then a ground battle for a zone will be mind-blowing fun.

I would love to have the dynamic elements. I had so much inspiration from just watching the interactive elements & linking video. As much as I hate to admit it, I can't imagine the surge in physics compute power required to make it truly adjustable thus unshackling the creative geniuses out there. Give us the ability to script moving parts and there will be competition for various categories and sizes of mech. Not to mention all of the Anime inspired designs from shows such as Robotech, Voltron, Transformers, and a ton more. I could even see a few nuts making *gasp* practical devices/robots/hidden doors/etc.