dualism

For me, cloaking is about either mimicking your background so as not to show up on passive measurement devices, or trying to minimise any reflections from active scanning systems such as radar. I realise we've been talking about 'ship radar', but that is more a convenient term rather than physically accurate, surely? At space distances, isn't the fastest thing we know about light? That means that at even something as close as a Sun/Earth distance, a 'radar' is only going to tell you that something was 93 million miles away 16 minutes ago. I expect that most space travel will be at faster than light speeds, so virtually all radar type information is going to be useless, partly because ships won't even be getting their own return signals for a start. Thus, if ships generally only need to mimic backgrounds by passing on whatever they measure in all directions to the other side of the ship, I guess that technology would not that difficult to accomplish, especially with space - just go mainly with cold=black :). Sure it might be nice for protection to be pre-warned of incoming ships, but for the most part won't physics (and time) be doing the cloaking anyway unless DU wishes to introduce especially unrealistic super-duper sensor systems?

Thanks, good references (your t=x don't match by the way, but ppl can edit to 600s easily ). He says to begin, element damage first, voxel damage will come after the alpha. I wonder if that means missing misses altogether and doesn't hit something else... behind or to the side. Repairs look interesting too - I wonder if you will always need direct proximity or if you can repair from the pilot's seat, for example (see 3:06 of damage model vid). On big ships, can crews repair during ongoing battles? I wonder too about being stuck in space with no working engines, or the ability to salvage/tow someone's ship. Might pirates grow varying degrees of honour about forcing you down to a planet or onto their ship for repairs, but not kill you or take all you have? If NQ put so much effort into levels of damage, then there could be a lot of complexity in the gameplay too if done right...

(on targeted damage). Oh, ty. What I'd read was about spaceship battles and calculating a hit chance rather than tracking the shot or whatever. I thought I'd also read about destruction of ships as a whole, but could be mistaken. If you can specifically aim at each voxel (when close up?), then depending on how much of a shockwave your weap produces, you could be quite specific about trying to damage the core or an entrance to get inside maybe.

Ok, yes, so on the honourable partnership side of things a ship owner can transfer your goods at a destination if you die - and it doen't block his/her storage bay. There won't be targeted damage though iirc, so it will be a case of destroy, salvage, rebuild (to a different bp)? On NPCs/bots: I consider NPCs to always be platform side avatars, while bots on the plaftorm side can just be operations of some kind such as markets, and bots on the player side usually against the rules. It will be interesting to see what scripting freedoms are, as scripts certainly automate functions and a player on acceptable autopilot is thus also a bot at that time.

Thanks Meldrik. vylqun: I see your point and I agree with your opinion, but even asking people to give positives is still talking about real world stuff, and if the answers are public it would probably draw lots of argument. As we move further into the virtual then knowledge about the virtual will grow and replace lost common knowledge from fictional works. Instead of George Orwell, will discussions about politics in Eve be ok?

Yes, thanks. In part it is indeed about what happy and healthy is for a community as a whole, but also its individuals. I also specifically wonder why the words 'real life' are included before the word "politics, ideology and religion". Does that mean we can take Star Trek ideology and talk about that or DS9 religion even, if we choose to? Or even more freely about how we would like our communities to function 'politically'? I appreciate that when topics become risky, one person might be able to carefully keep within the lines, but others are tempted outside. This makes life difficult for mods and those tempted, other readers and the original person - that's everybody! Some people might be able to have a calm discussion about a group's ideology, but not about whether a sporting official's decision was right or wrong. But how do we find out about each other well enough to make better decisions about our group members who we share actions with, if we cannot assess what some of their ideologies are, for example. It is, of course, possible that a forum decides it cannot afford that, but this is a forum for a very complicated universe of future cooperation and many many interactions, not all of which will end well...

Hi, I can understand that many big topics in society should be kept out of forums and thus certain categories may not be discussed. Is there any space for reflection on virtual realities and communities which grow online? These are places where many people nowadays experience things and people outside their normal everyday lives. I have been put into a thoughtful mood today by 'events'.... thoughtful.... does anyone know of bodies which are looking into rules and behaviours in online spaces? Please keep answers GENERAL in keeping with the general question!

I was thinking about "cloaked" barriers the other day as a result of no actual gravity allowing the smallest possible volume of stuff to be left "hanging in mid air" all over the place if you want. Wouldn't they stop vehicles from flying at much of a speed due to constant stops by collision detection? I wondered if the same applied to space after the info that the whole of big ships will really be moving across the single shard. Could they be stopped by 'mines' simply in the path of a ship? I realise it's not the same way round that is probably meant here - cloaked ships, but maybe as a result something is needed for ships to be able to 'slip' through too...

https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/13407-docking-mechanics/ https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/13325-question-on-losing-inventory-upon-death/ I see a bit of a link between these two topics of docking mechanics and inventory volumes (=potential loss on death). Also related, of course, is the volume and weight of cargo. As already stated, there is the problem of when tasks become tedious and unenjoyable. Thus, a base criterion is how many trips must be made by what means to be able to fill your small, large or huge ship, and where is that ship 'docked'? The goods might include already crafted items (less volume and weight but more value than raw materials). My assumption is that you will be able to transfer from personal inventory to a small, personal vehicle simply by being present on it, but to transfer from construct to construct or to a bigger ship, you will need to 'dock' them. Mixed in with this is the personal property problem. I assume I can transfer from personal inventory to a 'group-owned' (somebody else's) vehicle/ship. If I die, then I lose ownership of all the material stuff that my character has in inventory, right (with exceptions of whatever, DACs, quanta...), but not what is cargo somewhere else? What happens to a vehicle I may have nearby? Can it be easily stolen/destroyed if not 'docked' to a bigger, safer construct? In other words, what are further consequences of death on my stuff? Do I have to hand over control of my things in a cargo bay so they can be removed, or will they block up a ship's capacity if I am somewhere else? Also, on docking mechanics, if there is some kind of automatic transfer system, the speed of transfers may affect what gets transferred to where in base battles. In an RL evacuation you are ordered NOT to take possessions with you, but in DU, might you want to quickly share out stock if you are about to lose control, and have everybody 'run' in different directions? What do people think? Is it an important balancing area for NQ?

Thanks again for that - and the links . Ok, so I guess I did 'know' that about NQ, but maybe I hadn't taken it fully 'on board' that all the complexity of all the ships will be moved iteration by iteration across the galaxies!!! I wonder if there will be any lag if a local farmer looks up and says: "That's a mighty fine datastream coming our way." ...

As has been mentioned before, if each subscriber has 3 characters, then one could always stay in safety with most of the quanta you have (if that bit of storage is unlimited). If bulk items/resources cannot be 'magically' carried around in inventory (apart from some arbitrary amount presumably still higher that real human carrying capacities), then I guess those things will need other ways of finding safety even in safe areas, right up to the scale of massive warehouses within territory units. How much should death be more than just an inconvenience...?

Yes, thanks for the clarification. I actually meant if instanced - but I don't know what NQ is doing for the insides of things. Both approaches provide a frame of reference, so you can move freely, but there is a difference of how much of a vehicle needs to be moved around the voxelsphere database (outside visual shell, or the whole thing). It is, of course, neater if you can look into/out of windows and see what is going on directly because the database says that IS what is there, instead of it being some kind of projection screen to somewhere else in stored memory... If you and the OP don't mind looking in more detail, will spaceship size actually be limited to 128m or whatever precisely because each detectable movement will move the whole bloody thing for all frames of reference? Would NQ even consider 'encapsulating' environments such as big ships, so that they can be moved as "hollow hulls" for the outside frame of reference, but be nicely filled in ones (with the outside world blank or remotely videoscreened) for those inside?

Well, I am used to being in a 'bubble', as they say, where the inside of a ship, including flyable hangar area is basically a server instance whose external 'body' can move around in space. I imagine this makes relative movement within the construct much easier too - when piloting or manning guns you are sort of pasted statically in your seats onto the outside of the ship, as it were, but inside you have freedom of moment just like in any building on land. I see no reason why constructs should not be stored in server memories pretty much as instances, even if they are only 'single instances' each. No idea on what NQ have done, except that you'd probably notice the 'seams' as your avatar crosses them. An entry sequence or airlock would disguise this....

Ok, I certainly feel fairly beaten by the logic of that one - high five to you bro! However, it looks like people are making mistakes with the arrow of their logic as well today, a bit like driving a racing car around the track backwards or something: great vehicle, and going in the right direction... and yet something is still wrong! If a place doesn't like strangers and kills people on sight then it won't be a marketplace - and the people killed will probably land right where what they wanted is available anyway... Making a massive profit from crashing a market also seems to be a strange outcome unless we get really wonderfully bad market instruments like in the real world ... but that has already been mentioned. As the discussion stands I can't really see what is actually prevented by having DACs lootable - and there is a clear case for having some safety associated with them too. Maybe that is what NQ figured too before a fuss was made by the announcement.

Does that make day and night cycles either 'cheating' or impossible? Come to think of it, I think I'd prefer to have fixed planets and light sources that move around them.... so I guess that's the 'cheat' I'd go with for days and nights..... Edit: oops, @AzureSkye has already explained this well earlier in the thread: https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/13258-physics-n-stuff/&do=findComment&comment=84713