Pleione

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.

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.

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.

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

There are some advantages of being older than dirt.  I was out of college by then and into my 2nd real job - but that timing sounds about right.  Another classic was "Today is the first day of the rest of your life".  I remember first hearing that from like 8th grade, call it the late 60s, maybe early 70s.

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.

So... its getting close.  Markee Dragon has stated that launch is at 13:00 UTC (9am Eastern), but that has not been collaborated by NQ.  Demo server has been active and used by folks like me to plan our launch sequence.
 
I have (5) sticky notes developed via the Demo for my future life as an Industrialist.
    1)  Hour 0 - where to go, what to build, what levels of Maintain to put on my starter industries , etc.
    2)  Organizational notes and a fuller outline of what is required for my starter factory, laid out by row.
    3)  Which schematics to work on to avoid lost time in that process
    4)  Early notes (like colors of surface rocks I've now memorized), links to key websites, etc.
    5)  Initial talents to be trained (first 2M points)  (1M by default, 1M for having 2FA setup - just DU it folks!)
 
Curious what other people have done to prepare and/or starting strategies?
 
I'll start with my plans to use the Outpost Station since it has the largest built-in storage (14000 L).  I'll be building a S static core as my first step (takes about 30 minutes after Talents are trained) and building my first factory off of that.  Having a larger linked container just means I'll spend less time dealing with inventory space issues.  Of course those will remain an issue until I make my first M container - after that space becomes a much smaller problem.  My first factory's goal are to kick out M containers for Org use and resale, L miners for initial internal use then resale, and factory industries to help propagate factories in my Org.
 
What are others planning on doing?  Any suggestion on other things to do in Demo to help kill time?

Oh, just a reminder:  You have until launch (well, at least through the 26th) to add subscriptions at the Beta rate.  You can do so via:
 
https://store.markeedragon.com/index.php?cat=360
 
If for some reason your reading this, but have not created your account, or any alt accounts you want to fund before the 27th, you can do so here:
 
https://www.dualuniverse.game/signup?recruiter=23449
 
Cheers!
 

I don't think so, but am not 100% sure - will try in a bit.  But a newbie to the game is not going to know that.
 
Update:  Carter on the forum proved it.  You can only compact items with an XS dynamic core.

NQ not communicating?  Hello.  This is their status quo.  The Trial server was up for over a day before they announced it...

Given a weekly wipe, I suspect they will tweak the tables routinely.  At least I hope to god these are table driven factors and not hard coded.  Its one thing to customize a table, its another to maintain 2 divergent source trees.

Two questions:
 
Are you going to test this out a month or three on the PTS first?  I sure hope so.  Bluntly, releases have historically had a lot of bugs - it would be nice for your to clean new ones (ok, and all known old ones) up before launch.  But to make such a change without public testing seems very risky.
 
I presume DACs remain based on backer level.  They were not mentioned.

I would expect the answer to be "no".  It appears they are rewarding people who have, via kickstarter/backer/subscription, contributed money to their effort.

Ok - just have to get this off my chest:   I liked the game a LOT more at 0.22.  I thought replacing the mining approach was ok - until I saw someone with 80+ mining units in a single segment.  That does NOT look exciting.  Shields are cool, will give them that.  Emphasis on PVP when the rest of the game is in such bad shape was annoying.
 
Don't know how, but honestly feel they need to stop (perhaps in 3-6 months when players drop?), go back to the original premise of a player driven sandbox, and abolish the trend of "Its a sandbox, you can play it anyway you want... so long as we agree with your approach.  If you don't, we will force you to agree to our approach."

Astute observation.

Ok - just have to get this off my chest:   I liked the game a LOT more at 0.22.  I thought replacing the mining approach was ok - until I saw someone with 80+ mining units in a single segment.  That does NOT look exciting.  Shields are cool, will give them that.  Emphasis on PVP when the rest of the game is in such bad shape was annoying.
 
Don't know how, but honestly feel they need to stop (perhaps in 3-6 months when players drop?), go back to the original premise of a player driven sandbox, and abolish the trend of "Its a sandbox, you can play it anyway you want... so long as we agree with your approach.  If you don't, we will force you to agree to our approach."

Ok - just have to get this off my chest:   I liked the game a LOT more at 0.22.  I thought replacing the mining approach was ok - until I saw someone with 80+ mining units in a single segment.  That does NOT look exciting.  Shields are cool, will give them that.  Emphasis on PVP when the rest of the game is in such bad shape was annoying.
 
Don't know how, but honestly feel they need to stop (perhaps in 3-6 months when players drop?), go back to the original premise of a player driven sandbox, and abolish the trend of "Its a sandbox, you can play it anyway you want... so long as we agree with your approach.  If you don't, we will force you to agree to our approach."

Per the last official Roadmap, almost 2.5 years ago, its also missing:
 
(7) of the (12) planets - although those are expected eventually.  Although that doesn't sound ALL bad, if the ore's are distributed the same way, I think we will be missing availability of some of them.  Hopefully they will tweak availability, because I think without Ion or Sinnen Moon 1 we won't be able to mine Rhodonite?  Without Symeon we won't have Vanadnite???  Suspect there are others.  Those planets best come soon or people are going to be blocked in manufacturing higher tier items.
 
Building of "gigantic" (their term) space stations.  Suspect that references the "death star/small moon" early indicators
 
Power-Ups (energy management)
 
Player-made Markets - OMG, it would be such a game changer if they actually do this and remove bot based markets
 
Pets?  Does anybody really care???
 
And the biggie that they have been steadily chipping away at:  "Craft your components - Produce the interactive components YOU need for YOUR bases and ships".  Nothing in that says "become the galaxies best advanced LED manufacturer (specialization being the only practical thing a solo person can do)".  It strongly implies that I can build everything I need for my bases and ships.  I think there is an implied "within some reasonable timeframe  e.g.  Less than 10 years (5 years?  2 years?  1 year?)".  Closely tied to this is "Become an industrialist - Set up industries to mass-produce building elements for you and your friends, or even sell them on the market".  Again, no mention of needing to "Join a massive organization and collectively..."

Per the last official Roadmap, almost 2.5 years ago, its also missing:
 
(7) of the (12) planets - although those are expected eventually.  Although that doesn't sound ALL bad, if the ore's are distributed the same way, I think we will be missing availability of some of them.  Hopefully they will tweak availability, because I think without Ion or Sinnen Moon 1 we won't be able to mine Rhodonite?  Without Symeon we won't have Vanadnite???  Suspect there are others.  Those planets best come soon or people are going to be blocked in manufacturing higher tier items.
 
Building of "gigantic" (their term) space stations.  Suspect that references the "death star/small moon" early indicators
 
Power-Ups (energy management)
 
Player-made Markets - OMG, it would be such a game changer if they actually do this and remove bot based markets
 
Pets?  Does anybody really care???
 
And the biggie that they have been steadily chipping away at:  "Craft your components - Produce the interactive components YOU need for YOUR bases and ships".  Nothing in that says "become the galaxies best advanced LED manufacturer (specialization being the only practical thing a solo person can do)".  It strongly implies that I can build everything I need for my bases and ships.  I think there is an implied "within some reasonable timeframe  e.g.  Less than 10 years (5 years?  2 years?  1 year?)".  Closely tied to this is "Become an industrialist - Set up industries to mass-produce building elements for you and your friends, or even sell them on the market".  Again, no mention of needing to "Join a massive organization and collectively..."

Knee jerk every time I read this.  Backers didn't "play for free", they played based on a one-time fee.  Think I was in it for $175 (ish) - the most I've ever invested in a game that wasn't playable at the time.  Now, I admit, I'll get DACs for that - maybe.  Perhaps will find out tomorrow - but they were silent around DACs.  And I did get to play alpha and beta for a lot longer than anyone (except perhaps Blazemonger) predicted.  But it sure didn't feel like "free".

Yeah the Backers who paid more than the subscribers are now being screwed for gambling on a product that may never have existed if it was not for the backers.
 
Makes you so proud to be a backer, knowing NQ think you are worthless compared to a subscriber.