Dreamstar

As it happens we were here all along, somehow everyone just passed us by.

Yes we updated the signatures, were still working with various art styles. Also discussing the actual size of the signatures. I would also like to reinforce a few aspects of our organisation for people reading into us. 1.) Emberstone, a player run city on Alioth where we will help beginers and noobies become acustomed to the game. We may after establishing ourselves be able to provide starter packs to players willing to join the Syndicate. Emberstone will feature a recruitment sector to the city, we intend its use for member guilds and organisation of the Syndicate, however we may also look to forming partnerships with other entities if it's beneficial to do so for the Syndicate and its members. 2.) We are a form of an alliance, but we also take in individual players. It's our hope that solo players will spend time with the Syndicate at large before settling into a organisation, or creating one of their own. With our many Nexus organisations, players will be able to gain notoriety for their actions, the benefit is that if you need help or would rather team up you can find trust worthy players. 3.) Even though were an alliance we try not to hinder or obstruct the powers of your organisation. We also don't attempt to dictate how you should build or structure your organisation. If you wan't to declare war on a non Syndicate member, do it. If you wan't to form an alliance with other organisations Syndicate or not, do that. The main block is only the reason you joined the Syndicate to begin with, you can;t be attacked by or attack other Syndicate members without mediation from a Cinderfall Syndicate representative. We'll be launching our TS3 server soon, and a website will come as needed were still over a year away from even thinking about this game being released. We intend to launch a by invite only Space Engineers server, and possibly teaming up with members and allies in other games while we wait. Other than all of that, we're inviting anyone interested in Combat, Exploration, Building, and discovering every aspect the game has to offer. If you are a roleplayer or not we believe in immersing ourselves in the game. We would love to discuss enrolling individual players, corporations, nation states, pirate / mercenary groups, and anyone that feels stiffed by the Imperials, and ignored in a Democracy.

The Rights and Duty Management System in this game, along with the power of tags. Allows players to delegate their powers downward. Combining this effect with a thing called Legates allows players to forge just about any political system they can imagine. The element of needing to be careful while designing a organisation already exists. To say, if you make an organisation (corp / guild) and its democratic by nature. You may in fact be the legate who owns the whole thing. However you have it set to automatically delegate your power's to make changes to the organisation to whomever is elected Prime Minister. The players of your' organisation decide that another player would make a better Prime Minister than you, and you lose effective control over the organisation. You might set it up so that control over your Legate shares is transferred to the new Prime Minister, or that you retain them but are unable to use any powers or stop the new Prime Minister from transferring their control. The aspects of politics and economics is something that will for sure be very intertwined. For only a organisation with a strong economy and income will be able to afford to reimburse players for lost ships. Any organisation that wants to become a major player will need to think about forging the economy within their territory so that it provides their players with opportunities to buy and sell their goods for profit. Unless of course by some chance players make a functional communist state. Even if there are not hard coded mechanics, with tags and scripting I am hoping to experiment with the creation of various financial tools for players to toy with, in Cinderfall. Commodities, Stocks, Daily Options, or anything similar we can make work, however its hard to tell what will and won't be possible at this point. The whole community is surviving on a few drops of information. Welcome to the forums MasteredRed and Linxie

1.) I believe they edited two clips together before rendering the video. You can see an avatar placing blocks and the cockpit. but then in the video there are no black blocks below the cockpit of the flying ship. Don't try and read to far into the mechanics of the flight right now. This video was likely just a fast presentation they threw together, by the time any of us are able to touch a single block in game everything about that ship in this video could be different. 2.) Probably not far enough along in development to have all of the various engine's, rockets, and propulsion systems. We saw the all familiar space station but it was all gray still, they chose not to show it long to make it look like a under construction facility. It's possible those were the gravity engines, and that you can negate the gravity of the planet and sit in 0 Gravity inside the atmosphere. 3.) they fast forwarded, two > > show up on screen, they are opaque though maybe you couldn't see them. No I didn't see any representation of atmosphere being an issue of re-entry, but then again were in the alpha of the alpha still. Everything is in the works, or subject to change. 4.) its my guess they haven't set acceleration points, its just 0- GO right now. 5.) Developer / Creative mode, pre alpha builder tools. no gui. blocks probably dont have 0-25%-50%-75% indicators yet

Yes, please let me live in the darkness. no more hiding on the dark side of the moon. Free to live on either side of the darkness.

I'm just bouncing ideas and thinking about where Alioth will be in four years past launch

I briefly commented on this notion in, the gold in them hills thread, but this is a good opportunity to address an issue in further detail. With limited resources, even if the planets have huge stockpiles of resources, they will become depleted. not just taken, but entire planets will be gobbled up by mining, to create cruisers and all assortment of death machines. Then those machines go forth and explode in a matter of minutes in combat. Ooops, did it take a small moon to build that Battleship? well thats sad. even if 90% of a ship's material worth is recoverable by salvaging, there are resources leaving the game, and only 1 way of new resources coming in, from regions further away. If we consider the area around Alioth the "Core" regions of this galaxy, the empires after some time will begin a slow migration away from each other, conflict will become less common, eventually the empires will just see it as better to leave the core region where there is nothing to be gained. At that point what empire will stick around. It will be up to goodwill players, and the recruitment schemes of empires, if said empires even care, to pickup new players and haul them out to where civilization is currently ravaging resources. Lets say, I decide to become a chaotic evil leader instead of .. well whatever I am, and I intentionally send hordes of players to mine ALL of the resources around Alioth, and to patrol and destroy ALL the stargates except our own in the Alioth system. Simultaneously I send agents to go and destroy or gather all the fuel in my enemies territories until they can no longer expand. New players, either join me in the scheme of oppression, or they get mad and leave the game. The other empire's may try to fight back, but lets say by some means, I achieve this goal and shut down the games growth? The post Nyza made said they wouldn't consider regenerating resources unless something unforeseeable happened, don't test a madman. If you make the conditions for "The Joker" to arise in the game, someone will fill the shoes. "It's not about money... it’s about sending a message. Everything burns!" Heath-Joker.

In ED the having peoples names displayed that they first discovered it was always a huge turnoff to me. Many people have reasonable names, but theres always Captain Dickbutt that went out and discovered a huge swath of space that is now repulsive. For dual universe, as an intended leader player, Even if someone discovered a cluster of planets that were 11/10 desireable, if they have a atrocious gott-awful name, I would have to reject it. Im not a total roleplayer, but I do fancy respecting the game environment. I don't wan't to fight about what an explorer is I think its a pretty broad term, especially when we start talking about it as a role in the game. I don't see a scientist player activity in the list, so maybe this class doubles for blueprint copies of data as well. As I understand from lore part 5, monoliths will be related to exploring, either on purpose or by accident in the case of Sohan Decker. I expect them to be a form of Indiana Jones like exploring. Go out and Scan, land on planet, launch a drone or something. Fight / make way to the monolith, and solve a random puzzle to get the reward. Go back to civilization and be a professor make copies of data, sell the rare artificats, and so forth. Hopefully the monoliths will randomly generate and despawn and aren't fixed to only generating on new unexplored worlds. Its not that I dont want people to forever have to go outwards, but rather I want to prevent them from jumping through 100 stargates for an hour and a half. discovering 6-12 monoliths, maybe getting 1 good rare reward actually worth money. And then having to jump all the way back. In that regard, I was hoping to at some point recommend they create space anomalies, specifically derelict space stations, that spawn at random even in explored space and you have to find them, dock with them, and then explore a randomly generated space station. The dangers could be anything, not exactly booby traps, but say you walk through a falling apart station and a wall panel suddenly blows off the station, sucking the atmosphere out. Perhaps there are some sort of hostile mobs, or hostile pirate / raider npc's. Not to mention other players that might be after the very same rewards. Some side notes: I think you guys are looking at what value a planet has the wrong way. Atmospheric, earth like, planets that can support humans arent necessarily more valuable than any other place. For a while, and they haven't necessarily hinted otherwise, everyone will be in environmental space suits, I may as well go live on a barren rock with no atmosphere and farm oxygen in a bio-dome. Personally I think living in a luxurious space station will be cooler than inhabiting a rock. Militaries and various organisations may hire you to explore void regions, for rogue planets or asteroid clusters to put their secretive bases. Also I believe we should be pushing them for resources that are capable of regenerating by some means. E.VE has what 30-50,000 active players at any given time, and they clean mine out massive swaths of asteroid belts. Unless when a ship is destroyed a large % of it becomes salvage and can be recovered, we will see empires drifting apart over time. And the "Core" region around Alioth will become more and more abandoned, and less and less livable to newbies, even with factions such as the one im apart of trying to ensure they can access the game. I know that detracts from the notion of exploration and colonization for new places, New players will always want new lands for their new empires, who is to say a large number of players wont migrate to a different region of space and start a cluster of empires far away from the core sector, but they'll never have the opportunity if the existing large guilds are in a constant state of slow nomadic migration across the stars, for resources, to make new ships to blow up.

I don't disagree with you that it should take a healthy amount of time for people to get around. If stargates are intended to move players through a fold in timespace and have a relatively speaking limited range of around 10 solar systems. perhaps a future technology in the game could be "Darkgates" that move you between two points outside of timespace and reality. the drawback of them would be, besides being very double expensive to make, that when you use them a player recieves a phase distortion debuff that slows down their regular warp / ftl, and they recieve and do less damage. Even if that idea is rejected, my main point isnt how far stargates or whatever can let you go. I want to prevent massive amounts of re-loading the game. It used to be one of the worst disconnects of EVE. Jump to gate, warp, loading screen. loading screen loading screen. and so forth. They covered it up with the new system. but now you just stare at the walls of warped space instead of the load bars. I would like to believe its possible to find a workaround that doesn't involve spending half of all playtime moving from point A to point B. ---- This may not seem related to that, but I know they speak of using fuel sources for things. I unaware if they've specified anything beyond saying they don't plan for resources to re-spawn, however will you be able to scoop energy like you do in Elite Dangerous, is it infinite or does it actually deplete the suns reserve when you scoop it. If we build a "star-forge" like construct, from star wars, and just start siphoning all the suns energy will it change phases and eventually go nova or destabilize. In this age the game takes place in with crazy new almost alien technology compared to the human race... do we still not yet have Bio Engineering down to a point we could have laboratories that refine fuels from plankton and bacteria or stuff. It might be time intensive, but renewable fuel will be good. Naturally occurring fuel swamps are fine, but eventually... Eventually players would have to send team out beyond the reaches of the empires, past the outer rim, past the dark sectors, and out into "the Beyond" just for a swamp harvesting operation, to keep civilization operating.

vast nothingness

In Dual Universe, FTL travel will be the slower method of traveling between stars. It will require time and resources (fuel). It will be primarily used when traveling to unexplored star systems. The faster method of travel between two star systems is the use of Stargates. Stargates will allow near instantaneous travel between two developed star systems. "Going from one solar system to another for the first time will take time and fuel (we don't know yet what will be the time range yet from one system to another). That piece is from the Official wiki under Interstellar Travel. Once players do achieve the first warp or FTL engines I'm sure it will take a while. With the fuel being the range limiter it will take a while to really branch out into the univers. However, One thing that perturbs me here is they say, specifically, "Faster Method of Travel between TWO solar systems. It is my sincere hope they are willing to alter the system to allow for gates that allow you to travel MANY systems in distance. If its a matter of making sure people or empires cant move ships across the game world too quickly. Implement a debuff that prevents you from using another stargate for a brief period of time, anything but jumping through 47 gates system by system. It's such a serious drag, I'd rather be a hermit on a barren world than deal with billions of stargate jumps.

I understand that concern I'm not sure how to go about implementing a solution as of yet though. Possibly the people that want to be secretive can create some kind of anti detection device, or jamming devices.

As far as I know collision wont work as we might think it will, probably bumping, or otherwise being pushed apart if you come close to another object. Nyzaltar Keep in mind that as much as the dev team is for realism, a limit will be drawn where realism can unbalance the game and/or to where the current technology can push us. While orbital combat is feasible with our current technology, "collision combat" (to ram a ship/asteroid in another ship or a planet) is like a pandora box: we are totally aware that some other games using voxels have made possible this kind of gameplay. But if you look closely, this has always been with small constructs and never in a massively multiplayer universe. This is not a coincidence. "Collision Combat" is very, VERY expensive in terms of calculation power. It's proportional to the size of involved constructs. It can become a lot worse with a growing number of involved constructs. I believe a system that requires you to retract your hard-points is likely to be doable with the tags. It would be good to know if there is a radius tag, what its range limit is. To set it up, it would have to be able to interact with someone a little bit further in range than the longest range weapon. Everyone here is right on the usages of these systems. You are correct, I just got caught up in talking about stargates, I actually meant to say it in a way as those were Tags that the owner had applied to the gate, so when someone approached it, a prompt would come up asking them what they wanted to do. And I do like that idea about "broadcast units" I wonder if it could already be possible to take a control unit, and set up script or commands in such a way, that it will function like this broadcaster? I look forward to a mass of civilizations fighting out on the surface of Alioth until orbital spaceflight is re-achieved. This game is giving me very strong Alpha Centauri feeling the more i learn about it... well spare the mind worms, and Miriam. I almost feel like I've asked this or said it before... I believe tags should be able to be structured in such a way that people won't even know they have a tag on them. I don't know how else to get the idea across so here my example. Faction has a agency that monitors for players that go below a certain threshold in faction rep. For actions they commit that lower faction rep further, a "bounty" amount is applied per action, and is accumulative. Yet, where is this tag stored, is it applied to the criminal player? Is it stored internally in the faction at large and the first player to meet all the conditions, faction or not, is issued the reward for killing them or doing whatever the tag wanted. Will it bog down the servers to have tags that are game wide, and have listening conditions waiting for players to complete an action? Maybe a way to get around it will be the creation of a unique object when you kill a player. Like Ears in Diablo II, or I believe you get corpses in E.VE. And those could be used to satisfy Bounty / Kill Claim rewards. ----- I enjoy the short stories you make Devis, but I just can't know what the actual implementation of FTL will be. Its possible they could release the game with no FTL drives at all. I fully believe players will use FTL to get around having to use stargates, and that pirates and invaders will send a Ship in to drop a FTL beacon for the rest of their fleet to jump to. ----- They may make us play for a few months on Alioth and its Solar System, with anything beyond the edges simply being too far to get to. It would be hilarious fun though if players spent weeks and make a Colony ship, no FTL and set sail for a nearby solar system. I would find it even better if the Resurrection nodes are also a rare technology and no players can make them at the start. So they would all have to load up and set sail together on this ship, and spend a week of game time making it to this other solar system. If someone died... they would have to spawn at the ark ship, that would be hardcore.

Long have we waited, and longer still shall we continue to wait. My friends, in this chaotic world we find ourselves in on Alioth there are no empires or factions left standing. Due to certain events it seems that no force is capable of establishing itself as the leading directive over us humans. And as such, there will be no NPC factions for us to join as you would in E.VE. So all these independent guilds of any style, little corporations to giant factions, are going to be using market nodes. It hasn't been well defined how a market node will work exactly, if they are going to be regional, who decides the regions, if they just have a sphere of influence that makes some some sense but not entirely, for instance can multiple Market Units be placed inside of each others sphere of influence. Will the market units communicate with each other prices, is that something players could link together if the Market Unit owners are friendly. And on the Note of the market units, how could players from a different guild peacefully go and buy something from some other guild without just being blown up on sight for being an unknown. I'd like to merge the ideas of E.VE and SW.G, with a reputation similar to the first, and a status declaration system similar to the second. Leaving it to guilds to decide what a good reputation is, or even adjusting it by regions or specific Territory Units. Naturally pirates wouldn't care to obey the laws, but they'll also have to establish their own networks and way to get to any said system, Rogue Gates essentially. Anyhow, allowing guilds to establish these settings, they can have tags automatically apply to players to come through their stargates. Just for instance, you are this trader and you fly up to this other guilds Stargate and it asks you: 1.) Do you want to purchase faction reputation 2.) Turn in faction tokens for reputation 3.) Use gate (requires X reputation level) So you go through the gate and are automatically declared a non-hostile player by whomever administrated that gate, because they have it setup to do so. Now that you have this non-hostile tag (akin to being a On-Leave player in SW.G) you can't be attacked by players unless you commit some sort of crime. Now you are free to join up and do missions from their terminals. Use their market units without fear of being murdered. etc. By allowing players guild to use this variable that could be adjusted by region, or TU, and thus creating the allusion of Security Ratings throughout player empires. (Stargate) <Any Player> <action (use)> <requirement> <reputation> <greater than or equal to (+-0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)> A major benefit would be that Factions can organize the construction of the expensive stargates, and it grants access to a shared network. The bonus of a Faction, or a Nation / Empire running the networks over just independent guilds, is the comfort of knowing there is a standard and uniform central authority running the gate networks. Not just some pirate group running a gate that's free on one side, and then charges a toll to go back. ------ An idea for distributing guild tokens -Guilds be able to create a blanket tag for <Any Player> <Kill> <Target> <With> <Reputation> <Below> <Amount (+-1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)> <Receives> <Item (Guild Token)> <By Mail> ------- It would be really nice to have some real information on just how guilds are going to be able to function. Do you intend to create a graphical user interface to easily manage the relations, hierarchy, legates, tags, and options of guilds. Will we really be able to use the tags and RDMS to create a guild that work akin to a Nation. Is it too early for NovaQuark to provide an Alpha example of the options in the RDMS, and if tags will be player made or chosen from a list of premade ones? Some of the things that are important to making these systems work, as I believe it, is to allow players to assemble all the building blocks themselves. Having no limit on the number of guilds and players in an organisation. And creating a mix of the RDMS and Tags that allows players to assemble virtually any link they can come up with. Before we players are able to finalize our ideas on what, might or might not be possible though. We need to know about those Tags. If you are going to create the list of tags then can a NQ post be made on the options players would like to see in the RDMS and Tags.

Hello Shadow, nora, over time we may evolve the logo and we thank you for your input. Yes it is a difficult project, in the past various guilds would just form alliances here and there. and then backstab each other as soon as whatever goal was achieved that brought them together. Maybe a good way to say this is we want to function in a similar way to the united nations, or perhaps the league of nations. We may in fact end up with players that are only in Cinderfall, but cinderfall is supposed to function as a permanent alliance structure between member guilds that join it. A guild may be strong on its own, but it wont be able to defend itself at all hours of the day. If you would like further details, we would be happy to address any specific concerns you have, about the Syndicate or your guilds Legitimacy, here or in private messages.

Just an old thread, we moved to an updated one, with a different moderator.

The feeling I have of the developers is such that, many mechanics will be behind the scenes. Heat dispersion will probably just be a soft stat. If a laser weapon worked in such a way that it was hot. I assume they will just make its re-fire time longer. and not make you think about the actual heat it produces. If you have a way to over-ride and fire faster then instead of a heat stat, you probably will just take component damage would be my guess. If such a module like a heat sink existed, I assume it would not collect heat per say, but that you need a Heat Sink module to counter act the side effects of rapid fire, or whatever. I don't believe they are trying to implement specific mini games out of us routing power, heat, and other systems ourselves. Only balancing the Pro's and Con's of modules. ---- The dev team hasn't yet talked about it, but consider that we have the technology behind the KadPak or whatever they're calling it now days. You know, you can store much larger things into a smaller space. So in terms of storage, ammo, energy, or otherwise. I believe we can expect the modules to be significantly smaller than we would expect them to be. So long as, technically speaking, the interface where ammo, energy, or fuel would exit is the proper size in our dimension. I don't think it will be an all inclusive technology, but for storage I assume its the direction they will take. Everything involved with the ship will probably have a mass statistic. I dont know how they will determine the center of mass on the ships, or if they care to do so. I assume everything will contribute to the tonnage of the ship. and From there, a rough calculation on what kind or class of ship it is will be made. --- When I think of fuel in the game, i think of it more for rockets, and for planet based vehichles. As far as spaceships are concerned. I Believe that various reactor types, maybe they need fuel, or maybe the "fuel" is just apart of the building process and they never run out after that. Not sure how in depth they will make it. I assume that those reactors will be able to power everything. However I believe its intended for individual modules to be able to be targeted and destroyed. So there may be redundant and backup generators or battery systems. So In regards to object health, I assume that the voxels you build ships out of will have defensive properties. Like Kinetic resistance, and a set amount of HP. Someone said at one point that they wanted to implement realistic pressure, but its Far to complex for an mmo environment. For them to do that, the game would have to revolve around that mechanic essentially. However I believe they said that making a difference between an area with atmosphere and an area without in inside a ship was something they would consider.

I will be pushing them to give me missiles, rockets, torpedoes, and anything else that goes boom.

I won't mind if they choose more ark ships and safety zones. I do enjoy the challenge of the developers, leaving it up to us players to create an environment that is either welcoming or hostile.

I would just like to reaffirm that even though there may be a crew position on the ship, a "gunner" or weapon master. The targeting interface even for ships is supposed to be lock on and fire the weapons. They havent said to my knowledge yet how exactly the weapons will work, or track targets. They hint that it will be like eve, but they havent said if the guns will have cones of fire, if the turret will have to be facing the locked on target, or if they will work like eve and just have tracking stats. It matters less o me since Ill probably use missiles and torpedoes regardless of the other weapons... unless I can make a ship with hundreds of very slow reload cannons, and broadside people. I also believe that even when they say there will be crews, it is a guess that they dont intend for hundreds or even tens of players to operate a single ship. Speculating, I assume that small fighter type ships will be their own skill line. light duty ships will probably be 1 person destroyers 1-2 cruisers 2-3 battlecruisers 3 battleships and carriers 3-5 dreadnaughts 6-8 This is just a basic descriptor, you may instead of a regular cruiser with guns, make a escort carrier out of it for instance and then you would probably need more people to operate it effectively. You really just have to imagine, what all roles can they really invent and will need human attention and interaction. Commanders (squad buffs - faster tracking - emergency maneuver - ship cooldown buffs - improved turn rate) Weapons ( pick targets - reload speeds - weapon tracking speeds - offensive electronic warfare ) Defense ( boost shields - shield regen - shield defence specialty (explosive, laser, plasma etc) - hull patches - nano repair ) Engineer ( Fix damaged fighters - negate electronic warfare - overload engines, weapons, shields, warp drive) Marines (medics, operate internal turrets and ship defences, seal off bulkheads, defend ship from boarders, assault and board enemy ships)

I believe at first they intend for everyone to be in space suits. Post beta though, if we manage to keep the subscriptions coming in I'm sure they'll be more open to expanding the characters appearance options if it's highly requested

I thought raking the planet from time to time with artillery fire was a part of your janitorial duties...

I think I should elaborate on the bit of being able to see other chats. Your' characters consciousness is the main character, and you just inhabit bodies. For the sake of the argument though, you will inhabit Main Character body. and have a Secondary Body, or a "clone" somewhere. You train skills, skills may or may not be specific to each playable body you own. You have Main Character body in your favorite guild, organisation 1. You have Secondary body in organisation 2. Currently you are logged in and playing on Main Character, everyone in that guild see's you as Main Character - online - location -etc etc Even though you are logged into Main Character, you can still see all the chat's and groups, or other information that Secondary Character belongs to. You have trained into some spy skills, that allow you to alter your characters information page to specific groups of people you select, It could use the TAG system as long as you can mark / tag people / groups / guilds without their knowledge. To organisation 2, even though you are playing Main Character at the time. you trick them by selecting a location, online / offline, other information. It would be up to the spy to stay on top of their game and make sure to update their information from lies, to active if they were to play on Secondary body. Leaving the art of deception up to the skill of the player. And the reciprocative witch hunt by the Inquisition to actually go to the places that said people say they are at and root them out, or find other holes in their lies. If you want to take it a bit further, because undoubtedly some guilds and organisations will simply not recruit more people. More advanced spy skills could involve around actually hacking into/ infiltration/ gathering data. Say for instance this spy in organisation 1, was in a guild (organisation 2) but got caught, and they banned that character. Well what do you do? delete Secondary Character? You could, but that also sucks and is a hassle. Here are my work around ideas. 1.) A skill line for fake identities, or appearing to have a different name to certain groups of people. 2.) Ability to hack cargo containers, and see their contents but not be able to steal the goods this way. 3.) Identity theft, some means to steal other characters identities and appear as them in chat rooms. 4.) Advanced Identity theft, get a description of your stolen targets appearance, clothing ect and have a changing room to attempt and make yourself look more like them. Also gain any of their access codes (without actually knowing the codes to boxes containers) and their clearance / security rating to more easily infiltrate bases. These things also open up the possibility of a spy hunter or Spy versus Spy option. So that should solve the main issue with the spy's who would want lots of alt characters. Now for the skills cap and whatnot. Not sure if you intend for everything to be trained and learned at once or not, so heres some alternatives in a skill cap based reality. If a skillcap exists per character) these are possible workarounds that aren't game breaking or lore destroying. 1.) Memory Drives: Allow people to store learned skills onto futuristic version of USB Flash Drives, and overwrite their current skill-set. Either make it so people can trade them, or make it so only the skills you learn can be saved. Have a cooldown of 1 or 2 days in between switching skill sets. 2.) Retraining: This could go two ways. 1.) when you learn something and then forget it in favor of other skills, if you come back and train it again it will be significantly faster to learn. AND/OR You consume / destroy your old experience points in order to make whatever new thing you are learning go faster.

"Sir we've landed on the planet" ...."What?" "Sir we landed" "This is an oceanic planet fool!!" -static- Giant whale not hungry now.

Is helping and giving feedback not enough of a reward in and of itself? Perhaps Novaquark can make some of them the default or basic starter buildings or prefab modules or something, if those are available to all players in the arkship at launch. Likely, the best time to capture any early elements will be during open beta, and then close the feature two weeks before the launch so you can finalize making them sellable items from the arkship vendors.