Pleione

Hardly "always". Note I'm an Alpha Tester. Prior to 0.23, industry was fun. You would make progress based on effort expended and could feel good doing so. Optimizing a layout, using Transfer Units to keep things running - this was fun. Now it feels like the head banging in the title of this thread. Oh, not to mention you could take a two week vacation and come back and pick up where you left off. With luck, might have even raised some quanta via your dispensers. Now everything is based around paying the tax man. I've invested 4 years of my life in this game, and subscribed myself and 2 alts for a year in hopes it wasn't as bad as I heard. It is. I really feel bad for anyone coming into this game 6 months down the road, presuming its still running. Surface ores are going to be the stuff of legends. The balance is simply broke. We tried for years to discuss this with NQ... but they knew better. Not. Most everything I've seen since 0.23 has been implemented to reduce the cost of running the servers - and sold as "performance enhancements", at the expense of players. Its depressing. I'm too old with too much medical history to every hope to get in the ground floor of another game with this potential. Sad, just sad.

The game starts out pretty well if you keen on becoming an industrialist. Biggest early problem is not running out of Tier 1 Pure schematics, but eventually you get over that. Soon you discover you need more Tier 2 ore and spend days scanning territories - took me about 50 scans to find a tile with T2 and I'm told I was lucky. An additional 50 scans and no more T2, but I did find a sliver of T3. Hurray! Doesn't take long to discover you need an Advanced Mining Unit (T3) to mine T3 ore - ok, that makes sense. Let see what that takes to build... An Uncommon Assembler. Easy enough, my everyday Assembler's can do that... bit of a sigh that it will take 6hours and 24 minutes to build one, but ok. Oh, but lets not forget - you need a Tier 2 L element schematic as well, kiss goodbye another 4 hours and 10 minutes. So call it a day and come back tomorrow. Tomorrow comes, you have the schematic, the Uncommon Assembler is cooking. Damm that 6 hours and 24 minute cook time, but we were expecting that. Do some maintenance, run around and calibrate, and hope its a weekend and you started early so that you don't have to wait another day. Uncommon Assembler ready! yeah! Plop it down and configure for an Advanced Mining Unit L. Processing time - 24 hours?!?! Oh, that is after you fork out the better part of 2 days allowance (187,500 quanta) to make a schematic that will produce all of two of the units. 10 hours, 25 minutes of wait time for those schematics. Well, at least we have time to go build all the advanced industry we need to feed this production run. Finding it hard to consider this fun. A game should be engaging, not hurry up and wait. Plenty of Chinese porn games that have mastered that for cash. I'm frightened to think of what Tier 5 ore is going to take to find and process into something... And for those that will say it, no, I'm not playing solo, although I log more hours than most in my org and am their master builder. At least for now.

Goal is simply to give you a feeling for the game in a somewhat simplified environment.

Just a minor update: I checked the markets this morning and apparently all the bots are gone from Alioth markets. They exist everywhere else. For now.

And I noticed today that mining bots are not being refreshed. My normal 2M load of ore sold for 20K. My fault, just assumed the bots were there. But at least at Alioth M14, that is no longer the case. Of course, taxes remain the same. My 6 hexes on Alioth's south pole are no longer economically viable without now spending time on ships - which I have no talents for given my goal to be an industrialist. I spent enough of my game time paying the taxman before this change, am not happy with the concept of spending an even greater percentage of my time doing so. Rage pausing for a bit while my head clears. If it clears. Good news: Tickets filed on opening day are finally being responded too. Not with any useful information, but at least they are being responded to.

Oh, just the game play aspects - like the XL Scanner I've been working on. Takes 625 Uncommon Power supplies, at 4 minutes each - so 40 hours just for those parts. That's fine, except I can't tell you how many times I've found it halted in the morning because some sub-component (Al-Fe was the latest) ran out of schematics. Seems like I spend one hell of a lot of time just feeding Tier 1 product schematics into my factory. I'm doing 250 at a time now, and still running out. This is suppose to be fun, right?

STUs are not all one would hope for. I was lucky, my two showed up within an hour or so of launch (but, no, they were not there when I first logged in). Good news: all Tier 1 and Tier 2 ores are available on Sanctuary. Bad News: Only Tier 1 ores are mineable. Territory adjacent bonuses don't work. Territory adjacent bonuses are only for territories owned by the same person or organization (not just a Sanctuary thing) Basically I left 1 alt behind on Sanctuary to mine my two tiles for profit - selling most everything it makes. Kills me to sell ore when I'm short on my main factory currently on Alioth, but no easy way to shuttle stuff there until I manage to make a lot larger ship - and by then I'll probably be on Madis.

You me both... twas the 0.23 exodus of players. I was 2 days away from my warp beacon to start cooking and came back to discover a 800,000,000 (yeah, if memory serves, it was 800M, later reduced to 200M) schematic fee to start up the warp beacon factory. Left the game until a few weeks ago after that point. Only good news: once you start racking in quanta, just start making 12 hours of schematics before you call it a night. Those T1 Product smelters will run for awhile is you load them with 500 schematics each. Still feels its a crappy solution that just adds distraction and worse, frustration, to the game. e.g. it makes the game less fun to play, not more.

Me too... but I'm going through almost daily love/hate/get pissed off cycles.

I'm an addicted player, although very grumpy about it. I have 6 tiles on Alioth's south pole, within linking distance of the marketplace there. All 6 are completely mined, and heavily produce Quartz - my main cash ore since my factory uses it the least. Cash for taxes is not a problem. Ore for building is. I'm completely dependent on calibration charges now since I've already raided all the adjoining public tiles and stripped them of ore. Really throttling me now. So the 500K/week/tile isn't a problem for me, but sure would be if I, god forbid, only wanted to play a few hours a day (or *shudder* a few hours a week). In that case, Sanctuary (if I was a backer), and Haven otherwise would be my only option. Whats making me grumpy: Constantly running out of schematics! Not particularly fun to finally get my XL assembler up and running just to discover a single run schematic takes 8 hours to build. Just sucks the fun out of what is suppose to be a creativity game for me. Oh, I've reported it as a bug a week ago, and of course have not heard back, but adjacency bonuses apparently don't apply on Sanctuary.

Understand. Play any way that makes you happy. Personally, I like to deep dive and do solo what would make a team of 6 proud - but these taxes are really bumming me out. Have to learn to play when not tired too - sent 500,000 credits to the wrong org, because, you know, the UI doesn't just let you deposit to an org wallet, you need to search your org name each time, and mine is a superset of another. Also feels like it won't be long before I hit a tax ceiling I won't be able to break through - just in terms of hours per day per character they can spend creating schematics, presuming I can find a way to fund them.

Well, almost a week into this. Was really excited, but now it feels like all I do is pay taxes. Taxes to add territories, Taxes to build anything non-trivial, trivial taxes to sell. I can't tell you how many times I've run out of Tier 1 Product schematics after leaving for a bit of sleep just to discover I'm out of them again in the morning and nothing happened overnight. Taxes every WEEK to keep what I've built. Not feeling very good about this right now. Update: By "a week into this", that's after playing for years, disappearing after 0.23, and coming back about a month before launch to refresh the mechanics in my mind.

Well.... it worked for about 45 minutes <evil smile>

Confirmed. I converted 1 of mine a few minutes ago.

New client is available now. 1.2GB download. Took an unexpected 15 minutes to extract though (longer than I typically see on my SSD). Launch is expected in about 30 minutes. Steam download is NOT free, they want you to buy a 1 month subscription to download via Steam (~$15).

Client update available now. 1.2GB, takes awhile to extract though (over 15 minutes on my SSD). Long enough that I launched diagnostics to make sure my SSD was healthy.

1300 UTC is the official launch time, about an hour and 15 minutes from when I posted this. No client update available yet. Steam is saying 5 more hours.

Not arguing any of your points, but as a Patron at least you can play for free via your DACs for a year. Perhaps not immediately, since the DAC system was still offline the last time I checked, but presumably soon.

Better - they sent the Twitch notification just as it started. Fortunately was available. No real information other than confirming the launch TARGET time. Rest came across mostly as a reunion, complete with snaps from some of the steamers reactions when unexpected things happened in the past (like getting single shotted).

1300 UTC is now official. They announced it via Twitch this morning. New client expected to be downloadable from Steam about an hour before that. For the non-Steam users, it was implied to be something similar, but we did not get an absolute on that.

The Markeedragon link above still has the old prices for the next few hours (changes sometime on the 27th, not sure when)

Personally having to take sleep aids for the past 2 nights. Not sure that will work tonight... because, you know, it might launch as early as 6pm here (0 UTC)... Is it really so hard to commit to a launch time the day before when you nailed the launch date weeks ago? And when will we be able to download the new client (or will "launch" still say 0.31 Beta?).

Back in early 2018, having digested the Roadmap, and played a round or two of 72 and 96 hour monthly test windows, I had a dream: I wanted to build the Stargate Universe ship and, expecting to do so rather slowly, go explore the Galaxy and when I found a suitable star system, spend a month or three and build a Stargate to it. Bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece, that dream has been dismantled. First big hit: Industry would no longer run on Dynamic cores. Second bit hit: Galaxy? What Galaxy? ONE separate star system, some day? Third big hit and I was out: Schematics (left after they were introduced in 0.23). Ok, so they fixed schematics so I don't need to visit a marketplace routinely. Still feels like I'll never be able to run a full factory again - simply not enough hours in the day to make all the schematics required to keep it running. On Demo, I've run out of Tier 1 Product schematics (to make the alloys) multiple times and that's just a few days into a run on a S core factory. What are the chances I could spend a year and build a real factory on a L core (or the once rumored XL core - remember when we were suppose to be able to build the Death Star?) Fine. I need to drag some friends in and form an Org. How many? One thing to have a half-dozen friends playing (good luck finding 6 industrialist that don't want to PVP), but I doubt 6 could make enough schematics. Need 100? Did that in real life (use to have a crew of 50 reporting to me), not really interested in doing that in my virtual fantasy/recreation game. How could you recruit? "Need people to log in daily and feed a few dozen machines schematics. Only people willing to commit to doing do daily for at least 3 months will be considered..." Yeah, right. My HOPE, and pretty much the only reason I'm returned, is that over the next year they see the error of their ways and fix this thing. In the meantime, me and a few friends will do what we can, until it just becomes a grind. Or Starfield comes out...

Suggest the $9.95 today and just buy a months worth. You still can for a few more hours. Its the path I took for my Patron account. Look, this is NQ we are talking about. Its less than 24 hours before the rumored launch time and we still dont have A) a new client to download or B ) an official launch time. These are the same guys that "Announced" the Demo server over a day AFTER it went live on Steam.

Join the crowd. Alas, the PVP community is very loud, and JC endorsed it as a well of consuming resources and keeping the economy alive. Alas, it requires balance, and thats something PVP in DU has been struggling with. I seem to recall a time when you could take an XS ship and simply stop in front of a moving L core ship and destroy it without taking damage. Those type of issues. Or my favorite, which sounds reasonable on the surface: You can lock onto a L core ship from a greater distance than an XS ship. Makes sense right? Its larger, should be easier to lock onto. In practice, it meant an XS ship could mount a L weapon and fire at L ships with the L ship unable to fire back since the XS ship was out of range for locking.