MookMcMook

I Play video games -I don't watch TV- I don't smoke cigarettes- I rarely go out for dinner- I don't have a phone data plan for 100$ a month(phones are stupid they just let people interrupt you playing video games)
 
Point is I spend my money where I spend my time & subscriptions keep a large amount of douchbags out. I think its a great idea!!!

In short, as I likely posted elsewhere in time already:
 
The subscription fees make sure the game keeps running or that the devs can calculate better, more or less, while the ability to in theory purchase game time through in-game efforts serves as good compromise or enticer for those who do not necessarily want to pay hard cash for each month.
 
The DAC idea is a good compromise and can get players into the game that would not pay initially. And if they are successful (and / or lucky) in the game, they might not even have to pay a dime, or only rarely, per month.
 
I'd argue that most players can also manage to pay the monthly fee in hard cash, at least initially. Those who have trouble or might have trouble and are aware of this now, or in other words, interested in playing the game, they have plenty of time to save up until it becomes relevant.
 
And for all others or those who cannot, there's still an option in theory: Earn game time by working for organizations without playing the game. You can surely offer some service and earn a DAC or two. Not everything is done in the game.
 
If all of that fails and if you lack money long-term without wanting to contribute to orgs on a meta or out-of-game level, you likely have other problems.

In theory the mechanic Dual universe has in development looks better suited with better overall performance but there will always be trade offs and we will have to wait and see how these pan out.
 
DU will have a long way to go before it can claim to be competing with EVE in sheer player numbers and frankly, while there are similarities between the two, these are very different games. I very much enjoy the fleet roams we have several times a week in EVE, it's a couple of hours of fun, banter and hectic action with often surprising tactical choices being made. As it stands I do not see any such events happen in DU for any number of reasons.
 
While both are open world sandbox style games, EVE does have a developed and strong universe, political system, commerce and Industry. DU has none of these yet and it will take a good bit of time for the development of these. Frankly, I do not take the existing orgs too serious and it's quite obvious many involved really have no idea what they are doing or getting into. The moment some of the bigger alliances in EVE move into DU there will be a number of conflicts between those who think they understand the game and those who bring structure, organisation and leadership. I know some of the bigger EVE alliances will move in to the DU universe once it becomes an actual working game. They will come in force and establish themselves quickly.

If 5% of a 30.000 player alliance makes the move they will instantly have 1500 organized members in game.
I know of at least two big alliances with preparation ongoing to establish a presence in DU. I think you underestimate the organizational strength of some of these alliances.
 

As players design ships it's Not that feasible to introduce Classics or types, I agree. Just give your ships a female name and you're good
 
Eve: 15km/sec
DU: 5,5km/sec
 
EVEs velocities are much higher for small ships. And you can't really compare Eve to Du in terms of PvP, interception maneuvers, tactics and stuff as they both use completely different systems
 
 

Why do people think there will be battles involving thousands of ships? Most players in huge factions (a.k.a. those that could be part of those battles) will not be part of military and those who will be won´t all command their own ship. I think current limit of players per construct at any time is 100, but they want to raise it even higher. We may get to the point where 200 players crew one vessel.
Unless the battle is fought with one-man ships, there will not be battles with thousands of participating ships. My bet is that bigger battles will be on the scale of Scariff and the biggest (equal to those huge EVE battles with dozens of titans) will be on level of Endor.

And that’s precisely how it should be ^
 
Time consuming, but rewarding depending on your goal.
 
That’s the only reason I don’t think we should be able to just jump out of FTL.  It wouldn’t be very difficult at that point, as you just have to jump out of FTL and set up an interdiction point.
 
These things need hours/days/weeks in the planning to be done right.  

As an idle passenger?  I can see transport.
 
I guess I can see large multi-crew ships working well as war/transport ships as people will always want to explore/mine varying worlds and would like a safe way to and from outposts.

I think people coming from an EVE background need to realize that while JQ has on several occasions said EVE is a big influence and inspiration for him and DU, he does not refer to how you fly ships as that is completely and totally different between the two games. DU will not be nor become 'EVE: The Next Generation'.. I see the similarities much more in the political and economical systems and IMO it's there where DU will be 'won or lost' if you like, it's something a lot of people either ignore or do not see and which makes DU even more a community driven game than EVE is (which really is saying something).
 
That said, the 'flying spaceships' factor needs to be done right for the game to work overall.

Difference is that to fly a capital ship in DU you will probably require a good number of player as crew while in EVE you need only 1. Also the chances of this many ships in the same place is much less likely for a number of reasons.
 
i mentioned before I fly 50-80 ship roaming fleets several times a week and frequent specialised 12 ship fleet with logistics in Wormholes. These fleets are a lot of fun for the action in game as well as the banter and enjoyment on comms. I do not see these happening in DU really as focus will be more on multi crew ships and the whole navigation mechanic is much different. 'Roaming' starsystems really does not work in the DU universe.

I suspect the more powerful and effective weapon systems to be only viable in bigger vessels due their large size and weight.
 
As far as idling goes,that's entirely up for the player's decisions to act upon and avoid at all costs.
Like everything else DU related  - good organization is the key factor. 
 

RIP those who anti social but think they are the main character, who can make big org have to scare when hear their name .
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But who know maybe some lonewolf can do that, i will interesting to see if they once appear.

@ShioriStein Why not build said monument in memory of said player?! Then 50yrs (in-game time) later when the revolution erupts players can haul down such a symbol of tyranny and oppression and smelt it for building something new "in the new ""Eternal Empire"" 's name!"

I mean "huge area to build" = "huge area to build that is protected to begin with". Devs already said the current areas are big calculating how many hexes and km^2 that is.
 
So there should be a clear message that "pure builders" will have a place to enjoy the game. Bear in mind this is a bootstrap effect of the Early Phase of the game's development: When actual large player orgs develop with large territory control then, builders can find places inside such creations.
 
Bear in mind player orgs elsewhere (in pvp space) will have a wider net of variable resource qualities and types giving them competitive advantage: Everyone wins.

@MookMcMook RIP =]]

@ShioriStein Why not build said monument in memory of said player?! Then 50yrs (in-game time) later when the revolution erupts players can haul down such a symbol of tyranny and oppression and smelt it for building something new "in the new ""Eternal Empire"" 's name!"

The main DU website mentions the word noveans as the name for the players, so therefore I believe that the name for the DU citizens should be noveans. And also because the arkship is called Novark, so it makes sense. 

not sure if this information is under NDA.
But lets just say it's just a game - like all the others. So you can take an educated guess

I believe this human to be on to something. 
 
Clever girl.

- Yes, the one who claims a territory in an ASA or MSA first owns it for as long as the player is active.
That would make no sense to give the ability to expulse a player from his safe territory if he's active and would lead to massive abuses / harassment. 
 
- The Force Field Unit / Protection Bubble mechanics are meant to help players defend themselves in Unsecure Areas. Again, that would make no sense to implement this feature in Secure Areas where players are already permanently protected, and would lead to massive abuses.
 
In any case if some unexpected abuses appear, the dev team will react with fixes accordingly.
Game design isn't something graved into stone: It evolves with time, especially in MMORPGS.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! 
Here are some answers to your questions and additional information to your feedback

@FleetAdmiralCoke
We are not sure to understand what you call "safe building zones to very small areas in very specific places". Moons having MSA will have thousands of territories each. Arkship Secure Areas will also contain thousands of safe territories. Those are not particularly "very small" areas. Planets will be huge, and safe areas, while limited, will be huge too.
 
About choosing the location of a city outside the MSA and the ASA, it has never been confirmed that we will let players choose a place for a city, then make it officially invulnerable. The idea may have been mentioned somewhere, but it was just an idea and with this idea comes a lot of issues of game balance. The most obvious possible abuse is the following: 
 
If we let players choose which location should become permanently safe, then you will have very big organizations, able to mobilize hundreds or even thousands of players installing invulnerable cities just next to their smaller opponents, giving endless possibilities of harassing theme easily. That would give an unfair advantage to big organizations. Abuses can be made by installing invulnerable cities on high value resources with no revert that once it has happened. Unless we find a reasonable way to prevent such issues, it's unlikely that the Secure Areas location could be decided by players.
 
Now, all the explanations above are for MSA and ASA, for areas 100% safe with no exception.
However, that won't prevent players to build heavily protected cities in Unsecure Areas. A city built in an Unsecure Area will still have a chance to be attacked and destroyed. We won't start to give details here of what could be reinforce defense for such cases (cities in Unsecure Areas) but it could be the topic of a new DevBlog in the future. The present DevBlog was released mainly to answer the recurrent questions of "Will Dual Universe be a complete Free For All game ?", the answer is "No, there will be room for very different player types, but it doesn't mean it will appeal to everyone either."

@Lethys
- If we were to use domes instead of bubbles, what would happen if an agressor starts to dig a tunnel under the dome?
- About DPS saturation and the risk of player blobs, we will take that into consideration. For now, it's still too early to confirm how PvP Mechanics will work.
- MSA can't be placed anywhere as those will be located on specific moons, decided by Novaquark.
 
@Hades
It's still too early to give details on the final mechanics for the Protection Bubble. As said to FleetAdmiralCoke, this Devblog was meant to address recurrent questions from newcomers. We won't give right now the details regarding the protection bubble.
 
@AeonReign
Well, for game balance reason, basic protection (protection bubble mechanics) should be affordable and not that expensive, otherwise playing in Unsecure Areas will be only viable for people that never disconnect from the game (and we don't want to encourage such behavior).
 
 
@Takao
 
Thanks for reporting the typos.
1) In Arkship & Moon Secure Areas, you CAN'T claim an already claimed territory, for obvious reasons.
2) If you install Forcefields in a certain manner, it may lead to a situation where you can prevent people to enter a territory.
3) MSA won't be on every moon. There will be MSA only on moons decided by Novaquark.
As said to Hades, we won't go into details for now.
 
@PerksPlus
Moons with MSA won't be next to planets with valuable resources.
Or else, it would nullify the concept of "risk vs reward".
Moons with MSA will be near planets with ASA, or with low valuable resources.
That means that if some pirate want to ambush miners gathering valuable resources, he will need some time to go back to the safest area (and plenty of time to be intercepted). Moreover, we are considering also game mechanics that could discourage greatly the behavior "Go In/Go Out" from a Secure Area abusively, just to ambush people without taking any risk.
 
@Shadow 
@Ben Fargo
We won't go into the details of the Protection Bubble mechanics yet.
As said to Hades, this Devblog was meant to address recurrent questions from newcomers.
There will be another Devblog later giving more details on that aspect, and it will most likely be when we will talk about PvP
 
@Zamarus
The difference between ASA and MSA:
- ASA will get have basic, low-value material in the ground. Players who just want to build things without being bothered by PvP (and aren't interested to compete with other players in terms of construct optimization or combat) will be advised to stay in this type of safe area.
- MSA are Safe Areas with no other perks than being a safe place. So yes, if you want to build in Sanctuary Areas, it will necessitate to bring resources from outside.
 
@lethak
@yamamushi
@LittleJoe
Of course, we have considered APIs.
But as already said before, it means additional development time (far more than just an email alert) and we want to stay focus on the features promised during the Kickstarter first, for the official release. However, there is a high chance that the dev team plan something on this topic once the game will be launched (we prefer to take the proper time to develop one if we want to avoid issues)
 
@mrjacobean
@Kurock
- There will be MSA only on moons decided by Novaquark, nowhere else.
- If a moon has a MSA, it will cover the whole moon (unlike ASA, which will cover only a part of the planet where it's located).
- No, "Sanctuary tile" can't be taken by military means, just like territories in an ASA.
- Moons with a MSA will be always near a planet having an ASA (there might be reasons for that reccuring "coincidence") so only near no to low value resources, nowhere near high value resources.
- Yes, We plan some means to gain ownership of a Sanctuary tile that is occupied by a owner inactive for a long time (and one of the current idea considered is that inactive user assets will be archived but not lost. The inactive user would just lose the ownership of the territory).
 
@supermega
Sending a notification to a Discord in case of agression has been added in the Feature Suggestion list and will be discussed with the developer team. However, depending of the feasibility and the amount of time to develop such a feature, it may or may not be implemented. If the idea is validated, it may also be implemented after the official release.  In any case, thanks for giving the idea!
 
@Setzar
the "Force Field" Unit doesn't create a "Safe Zone" (if we stick to our definition of Safe Zone in Dual Universe), it's indeed more like a barrier that prevents entry from unauthorized entity. 
 
@CyberCrunch
This is a bit too soon to talk advanced game mechanics regarding cities located in Unsecure Areas.
Let's just say that the dev team is currently thinking of something that has similar points with what you suggested (not to the point to make permanent Safe Areas decided by the players though), but again, we will talk advanced mechanics in another DevBlog. This one was made to give only the basics
 
@Fins_T
We have several Ogame players among Novaquark staff so we know (and understand) what you're taking about
We totally agree that needing to check regularly if you're attacked is tiring (even if there are fleetsaving strategies and the use of moons to temper that) and that's why Protection Bubble mechanics, with email alert/notification will be put in place: to inform you only when necessary without having to check constantly in-game if you're attacked or not, and giving you the opportunity to manage your real life without being permenanently worried of what's happening to your assets in-game.

However, in terms of gameplay, combat mechanics will far more similar to EVE Online than Ogame: You can't just assume in advance what will be the strength of the defense, the number of player coming to defend a territory, etc. Moreover, one player can't have an overwhelming force built by himself alone. So, a combat result will be far less predictable than in Ogame. Player numbers, the involvement, and the skills of each of them are all factor that will impact victory or defeat, because no matter how much spaceships has... it can only use one at a time, and even a huge battleship with lots of weapon turret won't be used efficiently by a player alone.
 
We don't plan to copy Ogame much in this regard, because in Dual Universe, you play a colonist, not a governor managing an empire with many planets and a whole fleet at your command from the start (unless you achieve the difficult goal of having many real players accepting your rulership to colonize planets and pilot the said fleet under your command, but even then, there will be natural limits of how much firepower you will be able to bring to take down opponent bases).
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
 

Yes I do: "Be a big fish in a small pond", captures this I think?
 
These planets are going to be VAST. The Solar Systems and Moons are going to be VAST and Interstellar distance to more Solar Systems are going to be even more VAST.
 
I think Lone Wolves will do just fine, as above finding  a small cave etc. Then and again, Planets are so big some Lone Wolves putting on mutual recognitiion agreements (MRAs) with big orgs will or can work just fine too: "There's Old Man Bob doing his thing again over yonder..."

I think it would work perfectly for DU.  If you don't visit the territory, you shouldn't hold it.  It would require careful planning before placing down a territory.  It would also make territories more fluid, as an old vet doesn't need, or utilize, their MSAs on the starting zone... but a new player would.  And if you have a huge market rolling in the starting system, you better be visiting more than 1ce every 3 weeks.
 
However, I do think it should be dictated by the RDMS.  You could give certain people access to the ability to manage your territory controllers.  This would be mighty useful for a large org.
 
Also, travel times will decrease as technology grows.
 
As an aside, I think it should be relatively simple to retrieve a territory control unit.
 
Edit:
I would like to reiterate, the timer should only be for MSAs and ASAs.  If your defenses can hold a territory in UA territory, by all means... it’s yours

I was going to make a post about energy as a crucial variable. That can wait however since the validity of this thread depends on the maths checking out. This is what I found:


 
The first figure this thread gave me was the surface area of a planet; 50 862 km2. Note that I am avoiding both points and comma’s here and that I will write down integers only, even though I did the calculations up untill several digits after the comma.


 
I converted the 50 862 km2 surface area (PA) into a radius using this formula:


 
PA = 4R2 Substituting PA for 50 862 km2 finds:


 
50 862 km2 = 4piR2 

Apparently this forum is unable to handle the Word symbol for pi) 12 716 km2 = piR2

4 048 km2 = R2

64 km = R


 
That means this planet would have a radius of 64 km, 63,62 km actually, very close to the 65 km number I have seen before and therefore very useful to work with.


 
Next, I converted this radius into a planetary volume (PV) using the following formula:


 
PV = 4/3piR3  Inserting R = 63,62 km I found:


 
PV = 4/3pi 257 510 km3
PV = 4/3 808 968 km3

PV = 1 078 625 km3


 
Finally, I took the excavation rate (ER) from the Twitter message; 56 m3/s to figure out how many seconds it would take for one person to dig up this entire planet:


 
ER = 56 m3/s = 0,000 000 056 km3/s


 
PV / ER  = 1 078 625 km3 / 0,000 000 056 km3/s = 19 261 155 654 102 s.


 
This huge number equals to:


 
222 930 042 days (24 hours) or


 
610 767 years for one person to dig up an entire planet.


 
1000 pleople would thus take 611 years and if they do so in 8 hours per day instead of 24, multiply by 3 to get:


 
1 832 years for the whole planet.


 
That would mean that moving 1 % of this planetary volume would indeed take 1000 people about 18,32 years. So this number matches the Twitter post closely, probably a spot on if a 65 km radius is taken instead.


 
I am reluctant however to consider planetary bodies invioable to high rate strip mining or obvious attempt by players to vandalize planets. That 1% of planetary volume still acounts for more than 10 cubic kilometers of matter to be dumped somewhere. Its because of that that the amount of energy required to mine resources and the varying rate of return per unit of energy may bet he crucial variable in further adressing the effect of mining on planetary integrity and resource limits.

In principle I welcome the provision of additional "safe spaces" for those that are PVP-averse, but I'm also considering the consequences.
 
Safe zones protect the righteous from attack, but they also protect the evildoer's from reprisal...
 
I would like to suggest that not ALL moons should have MSA's, and that some planets should have NO moons with MSA's at all. When we start branching out to new solar systems, I'd also like to see some of them have no MSA's at all in the entire system. That would leave the possibility for some orgs to establish effective control over their entire system, with no "pockets of invulnerability" to create chaos.
 
The presence of MSA's in any area of space makes the work of player police and security services that much harder. Criminals now have a potential invulnerable logoff area, where their ships and assets cannot be touched, regardless of whether the location is known to the forces of law and order.