MookMcMook

Thanks a lot for your nice comments <3 i´m really happy that you like my fanart :3
 
 
This is my logo. almost an "k" in handwritten (because of my last name "krawczyk") in a circle cause i love the perfection of an circle  
 

Ah, you've captured such poise of movement there, that it feels dynamic, and then there's small details that animate it too, such as especially the fluidity in the fingers and wrists (and ankles now I notice too).
 
I'm definitely "wowed" by this art and I consider myself a harsh critic of art always spotting things to start quibbling about!
 
What is your avatar, OP? Interesting design.

Here you go from the same video guy: The Death of Virtual World Design for Themepark Commercial Success this from the a "lead designer" on SWG at the time reasoning for the NGE. Notice the appeal to EGO? Notice the narrowing of the game experience in favour of "instant gratification". Further, the other notable thing: The devs told the players how they should be experiencing the game: It was not their world or creation!

So, it is done! The first DU-Fanart made by me  Hope you like it!
 

After the rather poor reception of my propose sleep mechanic and more research into combat, I feel I can offer a unique spin on the idea of Food.
 
First and foremost: Food should not be required to survive. This is not a Hard Core survival sim (though I wish it were, sometimes).
 
My proposal is thus:
Food will give bonuses/maluses to stats. These bonuses/maluses will be in the single digit percentage ranges and will cover a few skills at a time, with one primary. (+5% shooting, +2% reload, +1% crafting, +1% dodge) Food items can be combined to improve their "taste" and the bonuses given. (For example: Raw Wheat will give a small malus, raw flour will give a malus, but a cake will give a bonus.) All food items will have "taste" profiles and modifiers. The profile determines what "taste" is added when combined, while the modifiers alter the "taste" of the other ingredients. (This will probably be best displayed as a radar plot) All players will have a randomly generated "palate" that slowly and randomly evolves over time. This "palate" determines how much of a bonus is gained from the food. "Tasty" foods give bigger bonuses, "nasty" foods give maluses. It will take years before a "palate" noticeably changes. This will be shown in the UI when a food is selected. (General Bonuses * Palate modifier = Actual bonuses) Bonuses will last for 3-4 hours, with a slight increase during the first hour and then a steady drop off afterwards. Maluses will only last for 30 minutes and quickly decrease. Every food has a "satiety" value. You can only eat so much before you are full. Once you are full, further eating adds Maluses, rather than stacking Bonuses. The more you eat, the longer the bonuses last. Spices will exist that have small "satiety" levels and limited "taste" profiles, but they will have large "taste" modifiers. (Don't like savory foods? Add cayenne pepper! Make it spicy!) Finally, all plants will take months to grow and harvest, however between planting and harvest, the plants will require minimal supervision. They'll require more supervisor the less friendly the climate is to that plant. Harvests will produce a great quantity of food. (Farmer's should be able to explore the universe too!)  
The purpose here is many-fold:
To encourage economic activity by creating an intuitive category of good. Most people understand food and how good eating is good for them. This idea is focused on organizations as the primary producers and consumers. A solo pilot isn't going to mind being a few percentages slower at mining, or reloading, or crafting. But on the industrial scale of large organizations, these foods will be very important to squeeze out every Quantum. Wars have been fought over spices and I see no reason DU can't be the same. I've always disliked games where plants grew very rapidly. To gather a large stockpile, you were constantly running from plot to plot, planting and then you only have a few hours before you need to go harvest everything. Plants take time and care. Insta-plants aren't fun. The random element to the food is because a) everyone likes different things, and b ) this way there will be no "best" plant. What's in demand will change with the seasons and the years.  
(P.S: Wooo! 100th Post!)

What is not cool about a 'realistic' event of leaving behind what you carry in case you get killed?
IMO games where there is no consequence to this are the bad ones. It creates lazyness and carelessness.

there will be no classes in DU and imho that would not be a good idea, for several reasons:
- newbros aren't useless because everyone can do (nearly) everything right from the start. More skills only mean that this player is more efficient
- it's a sandbox game so you can do whatever you want in DU. This also means that classes are useless: you may start out as a miner but may continue to play as a bounty hunter.
- newbros should get a good impression of the game via a short and very basic, but well made tutorial to learn the ropes and to get a glimpse of what you're able to do in DU. As this is a MMO and a social game, it's up to the players themselves to welcome the new player and introduce him to the game and how to do stuff.

In the time I've spent reading these forums, I see this topic come more than a handful of times on DAC's and DU's subscription system. It's something to be expected, a merchant goes "hey I got a nice product, pay me xyz dollars", then the consumer goes "how can I get this for the best value for my money?".
 
This is a quite normal thought process. I think of it every time when looking at goods and their prices and especially before I check out my products. We value our money because we put time and effort into earning it, and want to maximize our potential with it.
 
Our time on Earth is fairly limited. We'd much rather spend it doing the things we enjoy. Being among family and friends, playing a favorite game or watching a pleasurable TV show, producing something we know others will find value in, enjoying a good drink, or relaxing someplace nice.
 
Our money is also fairly limited. Bills and utilities need to be paid, food stocked in the fridge, insurance for the car, books for the college student, the oldest child needs to borrow $20, again... the list goes on.
 
The means with which we acquire said money is also relatively limited. Businesses are open certain hours, shifts are only so long, and our work is only so interesting before we must devote that remaining days time to the above mentioned.
 
Insert Dual Universe.
 
For those of you that are currently not in the Pre-Alpha tests, you've seen the videos (some more than once) and read the news, you're excited. Pre-Alpha testers are not only excited but are also able to experience this new game and bring some of their dreams to virtual life for others to enjoy.
 
Mind, blown... Everything seems awesome until you meet "subscription" and "Dual Access Coupons". Upon closer inspection, this is, indeed, a subscription-based game... oh no...
 
For those of us that have followed along for a while, we know that a subscription will fall somewhere around $10 to $13 a month, while DAC's will be a bit more expensive at $15 to $20 a month. Not a big deal right? For some, it isn't, but for others, it's a major hurdle. Maybe you've been a free2play player all your life and can't imagine the thought of paying, or perhaps you simply can't afford it.
 
Well friends, hurdles are made for jumping over, sometimes three at a time. and jump we will...
 
If you can't afford a months subscription time, let's dig into this thing called 'our life' and examine what we can do to afford a months worth of game time. 
 
If you don't have time to read, I'll cut this all down to a paragraph for you at the very bottom of this post! 
 
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First off, what is the difference between a subscription and a Dual Access Coupon? What even are they, to begin with?
 
Have you ever been to a fair? For those who haven't, the rides are fun, and the food is more than questionable. From sugar overload to dipped in oil to stuff you've never seen before and never will again...
 
How do you get access to that fair though? You can do two things:
 
Buy an all-day wristband at the gate. Unlimited rides from now until closing time. One person only, or... Buy tickets. The ferris wheel is one ticket, bumper cars are two, etc. You can split it among friends.  
You go for the wristband and wander in. At the fair, there are those booths filled with games that are statistically near improbable to win but among the prizes, you notice that there are tickets, with a grand prize being a roll of 1000 tickets. With some time, you luck out and score that 1000 ticket roll but you have an all-day pass, what do you do with it?
 
You sell it to the kids that need more tickets and make back what you paid for on your all-day pass.
 
Short analogy, lets work with it...
 
All new accounts will start with a free trial. Think of this as being outside the fair, yet still able to see all the rides that are inside. You can enter the game environment and get an idea of what you can do inside of it, but there are limits like skill restrictions, construct sizes and the number of elements that can be placed for example. You can see the rides, you just can't ride them.
 
In Dual Universe, let's say that this all day wristband is the subscription that you buy from the gatekeeper, NovaQuark. It's yours and can not be taken from you in-game. You get thirty days to play, after which your subscription will end and you can either pay for another month or end up unable to play.
 
Dual Access Coupons are like the tickets. You can also get them from NovaQuark and spend them in the game environment however you like. Be it hiring out another players services, using it to fund your own time, or you could give it to a friend. If you put in your own services into the in-game environment, you can get paid in DAC's as well. Since DAC's are not as secure as a subscription and present as an item in the game, you also run the risk of having them taken from you with force by another player.
 
You can buy a subscription, pay for the game, and be perfectly fine. You can also buy Dual Access Coupons or earn them inside the game to also pay for your game. Both achieve the same goal, but what's the difference?
 
A subscription is purchased from NovaQuark and tied to you, it can't be taken in-game, and it can't be sold in-game. A Dual Access Coupon can also be purchased from NovaQuark, unlike with a subscription, however, it is only associated with you. What this means is that the DAC can be stolen from you in the game since it is an in-game item. It can be purchased in-game from another player, and likewise sold as well.  
Now that we've defined what a subscription and DAC is, as well as the differences between them, let's go about discussing how we can pay for our game time.
 
Since DAC's are more versatile, in-game items, I will be referencing them in the place of subscriptions. Be sure to also keep in mind that DAC's are a few dollars more expensive than a subscription.
 
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Let's assume for simplicity sake that a single DAC is $15 and expand it over a years time.
$15 x 12 = $180
 
Starbucks ---
Caffe Latte  -  Tall (Small)  -  $2.95
$3 x 5 days = $15
15 x 4 weeks = $60/month --- Not including saved gas money
or
1/3rd of a year's DACs
 
Now that you lasted a month, maybe you want to cut Starbucks out of your life entirely?
 
$60/month x 12 months = $720
720/180 = ...
4 years of DAC's
 
Dropping your coffee habit alone could pay for a year of time playing Dual Universe, AND that of three friends! 
 
Xbox Live ---
12mo = $60 or 1mo x 12 = $120
or
1/3rd to 2/3rds of a years DACs
 
No job ---
If you don't want to give up your console gaming and aren't old enough to hold a job, go shovel snow, rake yards, mow lawns, wash cars, trim bushes etc. $60 is a good weekends worth of work, it's also good exercise too!
 
Additionally, if you're still a kid and you get an allowance from your parents, you are now on my hit-list because I never got one and I'm super duper jealous of those that do. You can put that towards your subscription.
 
If you get paid for doing chores around the house, you are also on my hit-list because I never got paid for doing chores, insanity I say! A roof over my head, food in my stomach, and clothes on my back were payment enough. 
 
Now, if you can hold a job...
 
Yes job ---
How long would you have to work to fund a year's worth of gameplay? Not as much as you might think...
 
Not including tips or lunch breaks ---
180 / 7.25 (US federal minimum wage) = ~25 working hours or just over three days at eight hours/day
180 / 10 = 18 working hours or a little over two days
180 / 15 (some state-mandated minimum wages) = 12 working hours, a day and a half's work, or for some, an all-day shift 
 
Phone plan ---
If you have a phone payment plan through a major wireless carrier, you are messing up, hardcore! Consider looking at a non-major wireless carrier and you could save big.
Verizon: 4 lines - Unlimited talk, text, data, high quality streaming for $160/mo = $1920/yr
*MintSim: 1 line - Unlimited talk, text 10G high-speed data (per mo) then unlimited throttled - $25/mo (if purchasing 1yr bulk package = $300/yr) x 4 lines = $100/mo = $1200/yr
4 lines on MintSim over 4 lines on Verizion makes for a savings of $720/year
4 years of DACs
 
*This is strictly for comparative purposes, I do advocate nor am I paid to on behalf of MintSim, this is strictly for comparison reasons, please don't hurt me.
**MintSim runs on the T-Mobile network so you may or may not have coverage in your area.
 
Cable TV ---
I can only compare this to myself so bear with me.
 
Basic Cable = 20 channels = $20/mo
12mo = $300/yr
TV antenna + coax cable = 9 channels + 6 sub-channels
$40 - one time cost until something breaks
 
Money saved on TV each month could easily pay for your DACs if you're on a limited TV plan or live in a metro area with lots of TV antennas.
 
If you're interested in this, the US FCC has a barebones guide on antennas in your area with only a zip code needed. Of course, this all depends on your immediate controllable environment like the antenna location+height vs trees, other buildings, and things more or less out of your control like a mountain between you and the antennas or living down in a valley, even the weather can be against you. Renters might want to check their building codes when mounting an antenna on the roof or on a mast.
 
College Books ---
If you're buying them outright (from your college bookstore) and not renting them (also bookstore) that's also another issue... Get them, and rent them online, the savings can be massive!
 
Abnormal Psychology 8thEd - Oltmanns and Emery
College bookstore: $278
Amazon: $247 (purchased, new)
Amazon: $35 (rented)
Amazon: $10 (purchased, new, international edition)
 
Savings of $268 off one book for one semester 
17.5 months of DAC 
 
Bigwords is personally recommended for their comparison services.
 
Transportation to and from college ---
Let say you live in a modest town of and college is all the way across town so you drive five miles like I would have to do every weekday, then five miles back home.
Your car gets 30mi/gal on an 8gal tank. 240 miles per tank.
Gas = $2.55 for the state of North Dakota
One tank = $20.40
Your car can make 22 round-trips + 1 for stop/go + 1 for gas if it's strictly for this use. 
 
Most colleges will offer students a free or discounted pass on public transportation. Let's say that isn't offered and you're stuck paying regular fares. My local bus service charges $1.50/ride for an adult without a student ID, and rides are free with their ID. In this case:
$1.50 x 2 rides/day x 22 round-trips = $66
One tank = $22.40
 
In this case, driving yourself is more economical than riding the bus.  A trip to campus from home for me is 30 minutes so I spend an hour on transportation each day. So considering my student pass makes transportation free, it becomes a value question? What do you value more, your time, or your money?
 
Don't forget that a vehicle needs to be insured so that costs additional money and there are so many variables I won't even bother spelling it out but it is worth remembering.
 
Savings of $43.60 if you drive as opposed to riding the bus
2.75 months of DACs
 
$66 not spent if you can ride for free
4 months of DACs
 
 
Mobile Options ---
Yes, you can use your phone to make money.
 
Some will pay you for installing and trying out various apps. Maybe you have to install it and have a look around, or perhaps you have to achieve a particular objective or rise up to a specific level?
 
Others will pay you to view ads. I'm only familiar with ones that show lock screen ads which only take a fraction of a second to slide away, but there might be other options available too.
 
If you have an Android (not sure about iPhones) and haven't heard, Google Opinion Rewards is a great place to start. The only catch is that you can only spend your credit in the Google Play store.
 
 
Digital Currency Mining ---
I have absolutely no experience in this so forgive me if this is short.
 
By now I'm pretty sure that everyone and their mum have heard of the Bitcoin. If you haven't, what kind of rock have you been living under and can I get one too?
 
Aside from the Bitcoin, there are various other coins out there that hold "value" and are obtained through a process of "mining". Mining involves crunching numbers and verifying the results. This can be a slow process although it can be sped up with more powerful hardware that if bought for the sole purpose of mining, brings the process of Return on Investment (RoI) into play.
 
For individuals, this could be a zero-sum game.
 
While Bitcoin has increased in value over the years, so has the difficulty in mining. Basically, where you could score say once every hour a couple years ago, you'd be lucky today to do so every week, month, quarter, I really don't know. Additionally, more people are mining the currency so that ups the factor now that the Bitcoin pie is being split among more people.
 
Aside from paying off your RoI which could take months, there is also the cost of electricity you need to consider. Sure you could be mining coins, but that money might just be going to your electric company in exchange for the additional power you are consuming from running your equipment 24/7. Not to mention any applicable wear and tear associated with the constant use or pushing your components beyond safe limits.
 
Lets also not forget to talk about the climate that's around you. Since your components need to be kept cool in order for them to work, if you can pull in cool air and exhaust out hot air, you'll be peachy. If you're pulling in already warm air, however, your cooling setup will need to work a lot harder to keep your components from overheating which again you'll also need to consider your electric prices.
 
Did I also mention that you are competing against warehouses of GPU's and CPUs (that sometimes catch fire)?
 
It should also not need mentioning that digital currency is extremely volatile. Indeed, something that might be worth $20,000 one day, might easily be half that the next.
 
 
Above all, digital currency is a gamble, not an investment.
 
That said, there are various digital currencies that can be mined through CPU's and GPU's, although I recently (3/27) just heard about a new currency, Burstcoin, that can be mined using your digital storage devices. If you're so inclined, it might be something worth looking into.
 
 
Work in-game ---
If none of the above is an option and you have a good deal of spare time on your hands, do some work in the in-game economy. Let me explain how this works:
 
There are often two types of people: Those who have a lot of money but not much time, and those who have a lot of time but not much money.
 
Someone will buy a handful of DAC's and exchange them for Quanta, you put in some work and after being paid for your work, you can then use that Quanta to turn around purchase your DAC's in the game environment and be set for another 30 days.
 
Mine, refine, haul, build, design.
 
The only limit to the possibilities is you.
 
 
Not enough in-game time, no outside money ---
 
What kind of pickle are we in here? A big, juicy, fat one. Let it be known on the record, I hate pickles...
 
You have plenty of online and mobile options to choose from but be wary, these can be fairly hit-and-miss. From having a minimum required balance to withdraw to not being able to withdraw in your desired method, these are only the start of your issues.
 
"Get Paid To..." websites are exactly what they sound like. You'll be paid for various things like giving your opinion on surveys, watching videos, and completing tasks. The greatest source of income can be had through purchasing sample packs or getting an item for a discount on the basis that you get a few extra dollars in return (spend 5, get 7).
 
Depending on the website and activity you choose, however, you could be fraught with risks. Are you comfortable with giving your demographics to surveys so they can confirm or deny your participation based on their desire to hear from a subset of people (male, 30s, part-time job, birthday, college educated, married, etc), do you trust your credit card details online in exchange for sample products? 
 
A couple of other risks entail spam. Although I had received very little spam in my email inbox prior, that certainly ticked up after I started earning through this method. I haven't received any physical spam in the mailbox, but it's been years since I used this service so things may have changed.
 
Additionally, if you truly value your time, this might not be the best option. While doing surveys, I can not tell you how many times I was booted at the very end because the survey reached their participation goal, my demographics were undesirable, or a question I answered had screened me out. Having spent, in some cases 30 minutes, it is very rage inducing. The fact that you may not even get a few cents in compensation for your time that is now wasted is one major reason why I would not endorse this, although being a teenager with no income, I muscled through.
 
I could go at this activity all day and sometimes not even break a dollar, although, on a good day when I was blessed by the gods, $10 was mine for the taking. Of course, if you have a job then you'll be guaranteed payment for your time, whereas here, you obviously have no such thing which is one of the reasons why you won't find me doing this.
 
All that said, I consider myself a personal success story, having earned almost $600 in the time I spent doing this which I think is no small feat, although there are some who have gone on to earn thousands (yes, plural) over an extended period of time.
https://snag.gy/tbLmMC.jpg 
 
If you recognize this website, please do not speak of it by name. I broke away after they implemented their 3-month timeout mechanism that locks your earnings which I wholly protest, so I can not, and will not endorse them. Yes, this is one such feature you might have to put up with...
 
I won't promote any single site by name but if you google around, finding one should not be an issue.
 
With all this in mind, this really is a last-ditch effort which is why I have moved this to the bottom of the stack.
 
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Now, this is all strictly an example, it obviously won't fit everyone.
 
There are so many things you can either do without or adjust your spending on when it comes to saving money that it really is a no-brainer when it comes to paying for your game time. Sure when you look at $120 to $180, it can be a big number all by itself, but when you do a bunch of small things over the course of time, it really starts to add up. Hey, isn't that a saying somewhere? 
 
Why do I bring this up when $10 isn't a big deal like I said in the intro? Because it is a big deal.
 
Again, little savings do add up over time when compared to societies current habit of spend spend spend, swipe swipe swipe. 
 
Do you really need to go out for dinner every other night at the corner restaurant when a homemade meal can cost a fraction of that and still take just as much time to prepare as it would driving to the restaurant and waiting?
 
Do you really need that thousand dollar iPhone when your current model is just fine? Need more storage, buy an SD card or use the cloud. Need more battery life, buy a power pack. Need a faster phone, drop Apple and take a bite out of a $480 OnePlus5, it's got six gigs of ram and SD 435 for its CPU. Yeah, that's right, it's an android. Bite me you expensive fruit, cheap candy is the way to go! 
 
Yeah, it's nice to splurge those savings on something once in a while when you feel like you deserve it, case-in-point, I'm a ruby founder.
 
Also, pay with cash over using a credit card, it's an easy way to visualize how much you're actually spending in between paychecks.
 
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In closing, yes, you can afford a DAC, you can afford tons of them, you just don't know how to do so. Luckily now you do.
 
These few examples are just ones I pulled off the top of my head that I have either seen or experience in my personal life, I'm sure folks can come up with so much more to add here so I'll just leave it at that to get you started! 
 
Please suggest something and I'll add it to this post!
 
Hope this helped!  
 
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If you skipped all the way to the bottom and didn't bother to read everything I laboriously took the time to write, here's what you can do to afford your Dual Universe subscription.
 
Cut out Starbucks, stop playing on Xbox Live, mow lawns, wash cars, shovel driveways, re-evaluate your phone and cable TV plans, rent your college books online, consider using public transportation to and from college if your pass makes it free to do so, do some in-game work, or consider looking for ways to make money doing things online.

Personally I find subscription games better over the long haul. First it cuts out many of those players that enjoy ruining a game for new players and stifling enjoyable play for others, what we often see on free to play servers. Also nothing spurs developers like a drop in revenue if the content gets stale. Lastly any other compromise method will lead to a pay to win scenario.  Just my opinion on this topic.

I'm dead set against small gates.
 
1. Star Gates or "wormhole quantum entanglement nodes" should be massive and rare and expensive for solar system hopping aka INTER-SOLAR SYSTEM travel.
2. INTRA-SOLAR SYSTEM travel should be some sort of engine on the actual vessel itself. So larger ships have these huge engines but smaller ships do not. Thus introducing carrier classes and LOCALIZING smaller ship activity.
 
Remember large ships are going to need full crews to fully function at 100%... this is the big big idea of space constructs that seems to be under-appreciated as to how consequential it will be.
 
Of course the big criticism is what will a lot of players stuck on one ship do that is boring? They'll be working together against other such ships or else being dominated if they resort to smaller ships in large clashes... of course lots of small ships LOCALLY are going to be useful to kick ass...
 
Again this all has impact on PvP which we all know is very impactful. And distances should never be uniform but FRACTAL.

Sundies can't spawn vehicles, only infantry. And for that we have spawn room.
 
I'd rather have all short-distance travel conventional. Wan't reinforcements? Bring carriers full of fighters (so your downed pilots can fly something again). Retreat and repair larger units. Protect those carriers by either placing them in safe distance (at cost of slower reinforcement) or escorting them.
In general pay adequate price to tactical advantage.

I personally dont like the idea as its easier to travel that way, even if it is only avatar only. When its easier it reduces the amount of emergent game play, which is what I am in DU to enjoy.
 
Also, i believe a wormhole gate should be BIG! As the power requirements to create wormholes are HUGE! So make it big baby, really BIG!
 

Unfortunately thats the way it will work in game for the forseeable future as it is possible to dig the entire foundation out from under a mountain and have the mountain just float there. That may change some time in the far future, but for now thats the way it is
 

To be honest, I totally agree with this statement. If the Player Contracting System is done perfect, there's really no reason to have also a Bounty Hunting system. I'm sure NQ is looking to making this happen... ~(°-°)~
 
But yeah,  Full fledged contracting system should cover that too...
 
 
 
 
Knowing TutsieRoll he'd be the 1st one to put a bounty on my head and have Swifty collect it :/ 
 
 
Cheers,
Comrademoco

This is sci-fi, overpowered engines are standard. It wouldn't be surprising if you could make a straight line to the moon. Though NQ may (hopefully) balance against that. It doesn't make sense to turn off gravity when a ship is moving, either from a programming perspective or an immersion perspective. While you'll save a few cycles, there are far bigger places that can get slashed first. Namely voxel interaction and manipulation. Planets don't spin. The sun is a skybox that revolves around the system. For your hypotheses: They'll probably have Air Brakes and Space Brakes. Space Brakes will only work in space. Air Brakes will only work in atmosphere. There is 100% going to be a speed cap. It's simply not possible to compute required physics over a certain speed. I believe NQ has said that fuel has mass and as it is used, you'll lighten up. You are going seriously in-depth with so few resources! It's pretty awesome to watch.

I've read and watched some NQ statements about CvC combat. And it seems that there will be localised damage (both voxels and elements). Maybe I watched something outdated? What's the most recent article?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efu_129hI9o around 9:45 to 13:00
https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/841-ask-us-anything-event/&tab=comments#comment-8072
 
NQ also stated that you can aim at specific point at the ship (which is selected randomly, if the target is too far for you to select anything specific). Then damage is deal within certain sphere from that point. I bet damage will be applied from outside-in, thus it need ray-casting to check what is outside.
And that system need to check if locked target is "valid" which probably means there is clear line of sight, is within weapon reach, ect. So it needs to use ray-casting too.
 
Also don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating for FPS style aiming - it's still done via lock&fire (so AI assisted aiming). Thus it's not affected by lag or interpolation, and not reflex based.
I'm only suggesting (or wildly speculating) how hit chances could be calculated via ray-casting, rather than some arbitrary % numbers.
Only twitch skill I mentioned was evasive manoeuvring in CvC, not aiming. And it only prevents usage of oversized guns against small targets. And it's more of tactical skill to know when and which direction to turn.
 
Unlike FTD and other games, DU have one huge advantage: voxels are small. 64 times smaller compared to FTD. Thus we don't need any elaborate penetration calculations, going through voxels without destroying them, partially damaging voxels, ect. We can have just 0/1 system where voxels are either alive or dead. If projectile (ray) damage potential is higher than voxel resistance, remove it. Then damage potential is reduced accordingly, and proceed to the next voxel. Repeat until damage potential is lower than voxel resistance.
Weapons with high AP would be simply those with high damage potential per shoot, while low AP would just spray small bullets.
My main concern regarding shields is that they protect weak-spots in armour. Things like engines, radiators, gates, weapons. With shields, all those parts are virtually as durable as anything else. Complete mitigation of damage for the winning side is also important though.
I went for "simply no shields" as that's the good point to start balancing from. Your idea may work, but IMO protection should just reduce % of damage potential, preferably for both incoming and outgoing shoots. Thus armour design and proper positioning is still important, and shield is something you use when you really need extra protection, not all the time.
Of course large vs smaller is always going to larger.
The question is: what if one large ship worth 100kk with 20 crew members fight twenty small, single crewed ships worth 5kk each?
Not so obvious any more.
Small ones have advantage in positioning, agility and acceleration. Large one has much thicker armour, and higher repair ability. Small ships have too small caliber to kill large ship, but they can disable some external equipment. While large ship have it's main armament too clumsy to hit small targets, and secondary armament is out-shoot by small crafts, due to being more stationary.
 
Or situation where two large ships meet fleet with one large and 20 small ships. IMO mixed fleet should win, by first disabling enemy with small ships, then entering with large ship for some deep-penetration.
 
Just like tanks IRL - they are much more powerful than infantry. But for a reason they never fight alone, without infantry support.
And battle-cruisers required cover of destroyers for protection from torpedo-boats.

To be a bit more accurate, NQ's definition of g is g(r0) from your equation. In NQ's equation, r is reffered as x.
 
The point is to make the gravity field being zero in some points. Then in these points you will no longer "feel" the gravity field and if your velocity is null then you will stay on these points and so you are able to have an orbital "floating" station without needing it to have a velocity (as it's supposed to be built using static cores in the game) on the orbit of a planet. But by doing this you have to put your object very accurately otherwise it will oscillate indefinitely around the point (depending how far you placed the object from the equilibrium point supposing that the gravity field is the only force). So i guess they will likely introduce some friction (or anything that dissipates energy) to stabilize the position.

2: Investigating orbital mechanics
What we know from our gravity analysis
Judging by the velocities and fuel time of the spacecraft in the videos, the delta-v supplied by the specific impulse must be huge. So huge it is plausible to simply make for the moon in a perfectly straight line. It is also important to note the planet, alioth, and its moon a very small in relation to our earth/moon pair and the distance between them is also very small in comparison. When all the engines on a craft are turned off, standard Newtonian mechanics apply to it causing it to orbit around the planet. This is only in this context. For all we know the gravity field of the planet could become ineffective as soon as you start moving your craft around. The sun and the planets do not move. Planets may spin in future but will never orbit their stars. It is a possibility an antigravity ring is encapsulating every celestial body.  
Deducing the nature of external forces on a vessel
 
Predictions:
If the vessel was under no external force the acceleration should be constant (due to constant mass). There is no uncertainty to take into consideration here. No air resistance, constant mass and constant force in a straight line should give the same mass every time. Alternatively if there are no external forces on the craft but its mass is changing due to fuel depletion we should observe a more or less constant increase in acceleration If the vessel is under the external force of gravitational pull, acceleration should vary with respect to the path of the vessel. Take a look at this diagram of a simplified situation (not to scale):
The vessel is at point A. The red vector is the acceleration of the ship, the blue vectors are the gravitational accelerations of the planet and moon (big one=moon, small one=planet) on the ship. The difference between them is the resultant acceleration due to gravity. On the left, the ship is making a bee line from the centre of the moon to the centre of the planet. Vector of resultant acceleration on it in green. On the right the ship has adjusted its course but still has the same magnitude of throttle. Vector of resultant acceleration on it in orange. We can see the further one deviates their flight path from the shortest path the lesser the magnitude of acceleration. This only applies to when the gravity is acting in the opposite direction to flight path. When you get closer to the planet you should get more acceleration.
 
If the vessel is at full throttle, the red vector will be unable to be any larger. So we are guaranteed to have less acceleration.
 
In the context of moving from moon to planet, since the field strength diminishes with distance, we should see greater accelerations of the vessel closer to the planet as the gravity will act as a ‘booster’.
Method: Using this pre-alpha footage, I took the acceleration of the vessel at discrete, arbitrary points at times when the craft was going straight forwards at full throttle (600 kN) and put them on a graph to illustrate the data. It is important to note these are arbitrary values and the graph is roughly showing how the acceleration varies throughout the journey.
Results:

Looking at the purple ‘SetAvg’ graph, we can clearly see the case is that prediction 1 is does not apply as the acceleration varies between points. This means predictions 2 and 3 may hold. But there is no fuel in the vessel. We can see the gauges are 0% meaning the fuel is cheated. So prediction 2 does not hold. Up to point 10 we observe a relatively steady rise in acceleration, the vessel is moving toward equator of moon in the vertical direction. However, there are some anomalous readings. At points 4 and 11 we see a decrease in acceleration – negative acceleration at point 11 even. At point 11 it is also important to not the ‘space thrust’ is decreasing
 
My theories as to what the graph as whole represents, ranked in order of feasibility, are as follows:
 
A:
Gravity exists with engines on. The gradual change in acceleration is due to the deviation of the flight path towards the equator.  We observe a deviation toward the equator as the ship starts at one of the poles of the moon and moves to the equator of the planet.
 
The first anomalous reading represents the vessel’s diminished acceleration after change in trajectory due to velocity change needed (see theory B for velocity change explanation). The second is due to braking, atmospheric drag and larger velocity change needed.
 
It can be argued that if the gravity of the two bodies was remotely significant, considering the pilot starts from the one of the poles of the moon, that he would veer way off course. But the ship is scripted so that when the pilot moves the vessel to a different point in the field, the auxiliary thrusters act accordingly to keep it going straight. He clearly has a vertical booster and RCS. This would mean he would be accelerating downwards but the booster/RCS could easily compensate for the downward component of his acceleration. This is backed up by pre-alpha footage where you can see a ship’s VTOL thruster and main thruster acting in conjunction with one another.
 
As per prediction 3, gravity would cause smaller accelerations for changes in flight path.  However, this only warrants a dip in acceleration. Not a plummet into negative acceleration as we see with the second reading. To add to the deviant appearance of this anomaly from the first, at the point in the video where it is observed the acceleration due to gravity should be going towards the planet. This means the pilot should gain more acceleration for changes in trajectory toward the equator and not slow down.
 
It is suspected that the pilot entered an upper atmospheric layer of the planet here. This is backed up by the fact his space thrust is decreasing. When the pilot entered the layer he was relatively nose down to the surface so their drag force wasn’t enough to slow them to terminal velocity. But just before the spike in negative acceleration the craft rotates, exposing its underbelly to the ‘airflow’.  This meant a sharp increase in drag force occurred and the vessel was slowed to terminal velocity until the velocity vector straightened out with the nose of the vessel making the drag force in that new direction inadequate to cancel out the acceleration again
 
An alternate idea is the pilot applied their brakes here to slow themselves down and thus give negative acceleration. They did this as they were nearing the planet at 12000km/h which would make them burn up at such a steep ascent.
 
The problem with this theory is there are some factors you can't isolate.
  
B: 
 Gravity does not exist with engines on. Both anomalous readings represent the vessel after rather significant changes in trajectory at points where velocity was low and high. At the lower velocity closer to the starting point at the moon the vessel made a change in course which required little acceleration because of the small velocity. Conversely, at the higher velocity close to the planet the vessel made a change in course which required a larger acceleration due to its higher velocity:

In the diagram above we see a ship with velocity vector in black. To get the ship on the red velocity vector to change path we need to have velocity vector in blue acting on the ship. To get the blue vector, an acceleration over a certain time needs to be produced to get velocity components in purple (one braking and one lifting).
 
A problem with this theory is that you can't actually tell whether you're still accelerating up and back after you've straighten out without a close point of reference. The main problem is how can it explain non constant acceleration in a straight line?
 
C:
Gravity does not exist with engines on. Both anomalous readings represent some sort of ‘anti-gravity ring’ that encapsulates all celestial bodies and the second one was larger due to braking and atmospheric drag. This could be the space station ‘static orbit ring’ previously discussed. brake the vessel if coming in at break neck speeds. This is because the ships in game have potential for massive delta-v and could accelerate to very high velocities. This would make braking incredibly hard and frustrating for players. You would have to start braking your craft ages before you even arrived, travel very slowly or have the velocity of vessels capped.
 
The first issue with this theory is that the brakes could just be made more powerful and the velocity could be capped. In the atmospheric flight video we see a small braking force in the spec. But for a space vessel that could be a different case. This is probably the reason they chose different fuels for atmosphere and vacuum as everyone would just use space brakes in the atmosphere to stop almost instantly; which would be completely ridiculous to watch and potentially harmful to game balance.
 
Secondly, what if I have a slow moving vessel? I wouldn't be able to penetrate the field. It makes more sense to just have the antigravity generator as part of the space station rather than the planet so you don’t enforce your anti-gravity on anyone else.
 
Thirdly, the tweet where JC was working on antigravity is dated to early 2018 whereas the moon flight video is dated to late 2017. So it is unlikely antigravity was developed by this point. Especially for effective use in orbit.
 
Finally the major issue is that, like theory B, this cannot explain the changing acceleration in a straight line.
 
The bottom line is this theory is too far-fetched and illogical from a design point of view.
Conclusion
Confident orbital mechanics still apply with engines on. Don’t really need to test for myself, the evidence is here. No fuel depletion means there must be constant acceleration in a straight line unless an external force of gravity is acting on it. It is possible an outer atmospheric layer exists rather high above the planet. I believe the velocity will be capped to stop people from performing the following: If you’re being chased you could accelerate to an incredibly high velocity then brake. Your assailant would be miles ahead of you before he could react and you would have escaped. What is likely is a combination of more brake force and capped velocity in space vessels. A sweet spot between the two, so to speak, to make stopping easier but not exploitable. Also too high velocities would be impossible to compute. Inconclusive as to if fuel has mass or not since it is not present but cheated in.

Let's start this one by reiterating the first part of the title. This is all wild speculation on my part. Though some of it is, I feel, extrapolation and inference. A combination of what's been said about the combat in DU, (very little.) with my sense of game design and the probable best ways to make this work.
 
Let's start with what we know and why. It's been well established that DU will have "Lock on combat." So what does this mean? There's no saying with any precision. But what it most certainly isn't is combat with active player involvement in aiming, physically modeled projectiles, or any of the other trappings of most high-end combat centric games. The why should be obvious: The difficulty of tracking all of these disparate elements is likely to overwhelm client and server both. While it might work with very large player counts, it isn't as scalable as the alternative.
 
That alternative of course, is to remove the player's aimpoint and projectile modeling from the equation entirely. Instead we simply determine have the player choose something tos hoot, initiate the attack, and after some fairly simple math, the outcome takes effect.  In most other games, the input scheme for this is rather banal.
 
The player clicks on, or selects from a list, their intended target. The player selects the attack to initiate, usually by clicking it from a hotbar. The attack is calculated.  
This is a tried and true interface method. But it lacks engagement with the player, isn't terribly immersive, and would be awkward in DU's seemingly always-first-person gameplay. So. Provided we have to remain within this framework of "The player selects a target and attack, and everlasting else the system handles," what are some possibilities? Let's start with a potential case of on-foot combat between player avatars. (At this point, as an aside, I ask you to excuse my crude example visuals.)
 

(Screen gratuitously ripped from one of the tutorial vids.)
 
So in this example, we have a single potential target, and we have a black circle that represents the player's 'targeting area.' (It was translucent blue, but I am a smart man who collapsed the layers wrong.) Since the player has, we assume, his combat mode/weapon tool selected, the target zone appears. There's a potential target in that zone, so it's bracketed in red. We can assume, in the image above, that if the player clicks his LMB and fires the weapon, that this is the target he's going to be attacking.
 
So what if there are more than a single target? Here another key. (Tab perhaps?) Could be used to cycle the brackets to another. Or the RMB used to 'aim' at the target closest to the center of the cursor. It's possible we can also determine if there are voxels or terrain in the way, to what extent, and flub the hit percentage (or disengage the lock entirely) if line of sight is lost, without any extreme levels of computational overhead.
 
So, in this way, it's possible to essentially 'sneak' the lock on system the scope of the game requires it to use into something that has the surface appearance, and many of the gameplay loops and conventions, of a more typical shooter. The attacks hit chances could be modified by aiming down sights. Targets could take cover and benefit from it. Pretty much the whole nine yards. Since precision aiming isn't required as well, this also has the added effect of giving us the tactical elements of more conventional games. (Placement, cover, movement.) without requiring any snap reflexes from the participants.
 
Let's move to a space combat example using some similar assumptions!

(Also ripped shamelessly from the youtube channel)
 
So here we have a very similar setup. There's a target out there. He's got brackets. And we have an aimpoint of some sort. But in space, we don't need that guy to be *in* our targeting zone. We've got sensors! So we resort to a target selection system more like a traditional space sim. T for nearest target. hold it to select the guy nearest the center of your aim point. All that good stuff. Once the target is within your aimpoint, and you pull the trigger, your attack is calculated just like above. This gets us, once again, all that positioning, flying skill, and maneuvering. Just sans the need for aiming skill, or the need to calculate all the business involved with manually aimed weapons.
 
So ultimately I think the main point here is that I feel like, when NQ says that DU has a 'lock on combat system," there's still a wide amount of room to work within that frame. They could quite possibly make the system feel more action-oriented regardless with the right approach.
 
A couple closing thoughts:
A weapons stats coupled with a players stats could govern the size of their aim zone in AvA combat. There's a bit of an edge case when the target is obstructed by another valid target, or a friendly actor. We could possibly just assume that line of sight is broken in this case, or just choose to hit the obstruction. Gunners in larger ships would probably use basically the same system to operate their turrets as the pilot uses in the above example.  
Last thing, I'd like to keep this discussion as largely as possible about the possible implementations of combat, and their repercussions for the game and gamestate. So I'm politely asking we try to avoid the topics of the nature of weapons systems, (Although mechanics is of course fine.) appeals to realism, potential stats outside of mechanical necessity, and all those sundry topics. Unless you've got a Really Good Reason, of course.
 
 
 
 

Nice info but wow that's a mouthful. I must confess I'm not a physicist; I'm an engineer. Albeit a self proclaimed engineer. Looked up the "Gaussian well" and got a bunch of quantum mechanics (which I am terrible at and avoid at all costs). But for me it's not the intrinsics that count- it's the observed effects. This basically means the orange curve describes a field with a point in it that will repel objects entering the zone. Anything caught in the 'distortion well' that has no forces acting on it other that gravitational pull will oscillate around X=34 until it becomes stationary relative to the generator. This will be enough to add to my post on how gravity might work but I have one concern: I  believe JC used Desmos to make his graph and there is a certain mathematical operator I don't understand here. That little dot between the expressions.

Yes I did but it means pretty much nothing to me. Way too many variables; no explanation. Although if I stare at it for a while I might be able to figure something out. One thing you can tell right off the bat is the green line represents a conventional curve of gravitational force against distance. So f(X) is probably force and x is probably distance. Maybe something to do with the size of the block in there but I honestly have no idea. Once I can play around with them it will make sense eventually.

No. Terrain Voxels cannot move. However, the rest, (Orbits, station keeping, transfer orbits) is in there.
Yes. However, I had to spell it out as, for example, Space Engineers does an Inverse Seventh rule.

Sorry should have elaborated on the terminology I was using. In the game the acceleration due to certain forces on your vessel are given in terms of g. Hence the numbers they give you are a "coefficient of g for acceleration". I just made it up to describe what they were doing.
Here:   the value of n is 7.3 for example

Thank you. I hope that Novaquark agrees with you and the language is good enough for them. Writing fanfic in English for three years has helped with that, but I still need practice.