MatzaJew

I found part 1 and 3 of the Aether backstory, did part 2 not get published?

Glad to have your support! Defiantly will be fun to have you compete with the Couch Testing division of Ninja Clan Fu.

I think he meant a tab of a skill tree, kinda like WoW

That's true, there are currently released details of the game that parallels to the Eve pilot learning, however there are going to be many parallels to Space Engineers as well which leans towards the 'player' skill being a factor in how any vehicle operates. To elaborate, just like in FPS games using w.a.s.d to move and mouse to aim will be a factor for many functions of the game. Your skill as a player will be a determining factor in this regard. The skill learning system (as i know it based on my research through the dev blogs so far) is going to be aimed at being the limiting factor on your availability to tools, parts, and tech level. The skill learning system being elaborate enough for the player to just click on the finish line and have the ship to fly there seems a bit outside the intended function of the skill leaning system game-play. Taking that into account, assuming your 100% correct, that could also add another entire tier to the race brackets. Completely automated drone races! We also know that LUA has a large part of how automation 'could' be used in the game so a LUA savvy programmer could make a drone and have it compete in the race. Coding would / could be based to have the drone adapt to a track it could have never seen before and deal with other drones it is competing with. Or perhaps have a fully revealed track or even drag races. Pulling back a little bit, skills learned put towards auto pilot could leave the player to setup turrets for attacking competitors. The rules applied to the race could be a way to determine how a player would setup his skills. Have brackets where 100% player piloting is required, LUA programming blocks could be banned, or limits placed on complexity / capabilities for the craft, or none at all even. That all being said, I would prefer the learning system to be tailored towards making the most modular to all situations system as possible. T1 thrusters T2 Thrusters etc etc.. with some custom to the character improvements based on the blueprint research. I would like to know what information you read to lead you to your conclusion. I have tried to verse myself on as much of the dev blogs as possible and I didn't come to the conclusion that the skill tree was going down that direction.

This kinda adds to the idea we could make Mech's of some sort. But where i mentioned legs being a form of locomotion, or rather a bracket for a type of vehicle to be raced, the anime IGPX (Youtube) would be awesome to recreate as well.

I know that NQ doesn't have any kind of road map for wheels at this time. And while I'm sure that's based on their projections to having a stable single shard Universe. There have been other threads started about wanting wheels for the sake of having them but not too much linear thought down that line of what we would do with them beyond the obvious. So I propose (Assuming we get wheels and any other form of locomotion) we work towards having a Planetary scale race track! For those who have seen the Anime 'Redline' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH7eBCTu_eM There is a Race that is held in 3 teirs. Blue, Yellow, then Red 'Line'. At the highest class about a dozen racers have a ground race where the vehicles go sometimes several hundred miles per hour with the race lasting somewhere in the 1+ hours range. The main Idea for this race is primarily based on this anime. -A track would need to be built with crazy speed in mind, varying types of vehicle types and weight to power ratio classes. -So wheeled (if implemented), hover, *anti grav*?, skid, legs, possibly a flight type as well. -Could do a Newton output maximum with a weight minimum perhaps. Would like to know some feed back on if this would be something everyone would be interested in doing. Have all corporations and organizations large and small compete in this race that could impact the winner in a huge way. Vehicle designers could be awarded contracts for having their blueprints churned out by large military factions wanting the winning design. Drivers could be hired out based on skill shown in the lower brackets and be sought after by the highest bidder. There are tons of opportunities here! There are some key issues I'm sure I'm unaware of that could make or break this idea but wondered what everyone here thinks. (Please remember to be constructive with your criticism, if you think this is a terrible idea please detail it)

I can plug my controller into my pc. Also, by the time DU is into a full release of the game (After alpha, closed beta, open beta) Xboxone will be fairly retired. However if you have kept up with microsoft's recent updates, they are starting to make "Xbox" games playable on the PC and forwards / backwards compatable with the console.

Is it being the game being currently developed with Dual graphics cards in mind? I understand alpha and beta releases being just single card compliant with drivers being about the only way the performance is being boosted, but the full release perhaps? Or at say the one year mark? I personally run a 2x GTX 960 4Gb confiquration and get modest performance gains vs the aftermarket 970's and 980's but still well under the 980Ti. (I saw a great deal and was better than a single Gtx650 1gb card) With the recent release of the 1080 and 1070 being hard focused by NVidia for single use and dual card performance left available for developers to consider, I was wondering NQ's stance on this. That and AMD just released an awesome budget card the RX480 for $199 and two cards in Crossfire brings it just shy of FE 1080's in real game performance. Not to mention that NQ blogged about wanting VR support at some point and all above options would really give a greater experience towards that goal. Will say though the 1080 and 1070 cards have what seems some killer hard wired tech built on them now for VR support. I haven't seen what the RX480 has brought to the table on that point yet other than being as capable GTX 980's /970's single card performance wise. I'm a computer hardware enthusiast and have been building my own rig, all my friends rigs / upgrades, and small business making gaming computers for about a decade. Past 3 years I have also been getting to know server grade hardware and was curious about what DU is being run on. What would be the server specs that DU runs on today, alpha, Full release, and possibly 5 years from now?. Kinda have my fingers crossed for the following system (Or at least close) -ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS SSI EEB Dual 2011-3 -Dual Xeon E5-2620 v3 (or better) -(1x-4x) 10Gb Nic's -Raid 5 / 10 Enterprise level SSD's (M.2 or Intel PCI-E For cacheing) Maybe DU just needs a simple home server style solution with a large NIC array for everyone being connected to it, along with the many servers running in parallel for parsing out players onto different nodes as needed. This all would just be interesting to know, and don't expect any super sensitive information on any of it. Just want to know for my geeky heart of ponder on. =D

Another note, this would be something I wouldn't want to see day one of the game release. Maybe the 1 year anniversary for instance. As Kiklix posted above, Dual needs to keep this simple. Edit: Were playing devil's advocate for this thread and are inviting others to do the same. If your unsure about it even being possible don't worry about it. We're just openly discussing what were verbally going back forth about for over an hour. Adding to any possible way the F2P Could be viable. Different viewpoints from everyone here is what were seeking, 2 head's better than 1 etc. We've exhausted what we could come up with and are asking what everyone else can come up with to answer the "Potential ways F2P COULD be possible" After sleeping on it had this idea: Consider this a permanent tutorial island. The game is going to free, then a free tutorial period, then the payment will be required. Barring that, this is where the F2P could live, just a permanent variant of after reaching the tutorial conclusion. Or even instead of going through that last door, just go backwards and live in that tutorial room making some quick creations and play around for a bit. Maybe people want to pay for the game but are waiting for that pay check to come in. Playing around in the F2P tutorial room could be at least decent creative fun.

To add, this is topic is for conjecture. I'm personally an advocate for paying for the game, and immediately needing to pay for a sub before I can even get past the trial limitations. The cost should be steep for miscreants and snobs alike. Anyone bothering a normal player after that is at least helping keep the server paid for the rest of us.

To add some traction to the idea Trixheen posted, we would consider this F2P version an extended demo. Take into account that on your trial period your only going to have so much progression. Ship will only be so big, home made from basic materials, and just a few 'elements' at your tech in that time. What F2P does is just extend your time but lock you in right there. The F2P aspect will always bring freetohack players but if this f2p extended demo server is completely seperate from p2p, and the server not even have the full game assets loaded onto it, with a super shrunk universe, about the only harm your going to receive is people hacking just so they can build walls around every ones house. Aka It would basically be left to just pure trolling. Though I guess it could be a testing ground for full version hacking... But IP bans and hardware bans are a decent place to start with but coming from my CCNA background I know thats just a temporary measure for the extremely dedicated hackmonsters out there.

I'm only going to add this, to this what... 30th thread for pleading to not have P2P.... (This is on top of needing money to afford to pay for the servers / development without making it P2W) If this is like Eve-Online... -you pay for a sub and that pays for your ability to play the game -you can optionally buy a "token" for more game time you can sell on the IN GAME MARKET... -where someone who mined minerals for weeks and sold all of it for in game money bought it and now they can play for free. -and now with the money acquired from selling the "Token" you can purchase all the minerals you needed to build that carrier, from that blueprint you have been researching on for months. (With this model people who have more IRL money will be able to acquire in game items and materials faster yes, however this HAD to come from somewhere and WAS NOT JUST SPAWNED IN. Someone else had to do the dirty work or it just doesn't exist. On top of that you may be able to buy that carrier or Dreadnought with all the IRL money you spent.. but if you don't have the training to actually fly the darn thing, you Cant use it. So only if they spent the time on a character to acquire proper training .. aka all that time spent In the game doing stuff to fairly obtain the ability to fly that ship.. will benefit from the extra player tokens. This is nerf to full P2W ... and NQ is made it clear there will be a character learning type system involved to invest your time in before you can use everything.

I'm kinda partial to the security status of the player and of the system that 'Eve-Online' has. The entire solar system, planet by planet or all planets around a star for instance, can be declared a certain type of security zone. Depending on the development an area can have, could determine the status of it. Say you start a house in the deep forest, your alone on the entire planet, of the only planet in the system. In this case your full PVP. But say you took yourself 5 friends, started a small colony and built a functional Stargate on your world. This is owned by a Corporation created by you and friends. Then over time get people to come to your world, pay a small trade tax on transactions through an area wide territorial module that covers the planet or at least the town near the gate which in turn makes this a PVE zone. To break that PVE zone should take time and effort. I really don't know what could stipulate a territorial change other than to declare war. Payment could stipulate being able to declare war and it could be very steep without having any other structures on the planet for the opposing force. But having a large enough, or meters cubed value of structures and "elements" within those structures could drop the cost to declare war for control of the planet. For example a NPC faction control's the Ark Ship and the first planet and player created factions could potentially control others. In stages of course depending on quantity of elements placed. This could also extend to gravitational orbit for stations near the planet. Stations not created in range of planetary bodies would probably need to be handled differently. This system of security status mechanics would really need to be flushed out further and would defiantly take longer than I could possibly post in a single go.

K, first let me clear something up I think that this suggestion of yours comes from the right place. Giving us a preview sandbox would be great to play in. And Trihxeen mentioned the legal ramifications of using an exterior editor to import to the game. Now while this is 100% part of my explanation I'd also like to add some more between the lines action. 1. The realist answer. While not extreme in development requirement, working on a complete editor to give us in the mean time while they develop the game, is time not spent developing the game. We're talking about, albeit large for indie, AN INDIE game company. If this were blizzard for instance making the early stages of Hearthstone, I would totally believe it would be possible to see an early development stage prototype for us to test. In which case that's just a Alpha / Beta stage build that is released for public testing. 2. Practicality. There are a few people out there who would value an early game editor but honestly, If I told my friends "hey you can Kinda play the game right now","Your stuck in a room and all you can do is create voxel objects", "oh and anything you do in there is 100% just going to be a waste of time beyond just getting used to building with voxels". But hey it's early access. Almost all of em would just say its' 'OK' and they will wait till they can play open beta. Better to play a game they can experience the other 90% of what they intend the game to be than just a voxel editor. That and if they do play with it .. it would just be for maybe an hour at most. 3. Now on to the sociology effect. Like in the practicality answer, we human beings can be odd creatures. Give us a small taste of a good thing and we may want more. Some of us would get excited and wait for more, and others would feel sated in what they got and not even bother with the full product. The dev's wouldn't want to risk giving us a basic demo for fear of that issue. Yeah "You" may still buy the game but maybe I wouldn't (I still would =P) or maybe all my friends would get a bad impression and not get the game. Leaving me to play alone. Events like this can happen to over a potential million gamers, each with all their own unique situations. 4. Legally speaking it is true that taking any assets from your own computer and transferring it to their servers, which in the eye's of the world is a business / consumer product, can have intellectual property rights issues. [space Engineers] workshop mods have this disclaimer, through Steam, to them to prevent the developer 'KSH' from being affected since mods are not something that is shipping with the release version of the game. VQ has stated that the game environment the player will be connected to is that of host client system. Meaning that your client is more or less just a portal to your character in-game that is creating the assets. That and the literal voxels are being created in the game, hosted on their server, owned by them, in their office building. To add conjecture to saying that perhaps make it to where the "demo" you receive never will be able to import the file to their server does solve the issue of them being legally liable for IP rights solves 1/2 the problem. Adobe makes photo shop for instance, and they have a TON of legal coverage to prevent things created in the "Tool" they provided to you, prevents them from being legally liable for IP rights violations. It's kinda dumb actually to be able to be sued for that but it was a thing for a time years ago and a legal precedent to protect Adobe just didn't exist until then. Final Verdict and Short version to all the Above: For the Dev's to bother spending the development time making a demo product to reach such a smaller audience, inside of what currently exists as interest for the game, that could be very detrimental to the entirety of the full game, and could completely cripple them legally if they didn't invest in the time/money/coverage to protect themselves, is a VERY BAD IDEA. On top of that I believe having a earliest outside of game ability to create whatever you wanted would give you an unfair advantage of me.... so ... xP I promise I'm not posting here to step on toes, I'm enjoying the topic actually, it's making me use my brain for once beyond my normal cave man work peon / wage slave speak. =D

Well after going through the Distributed Processing Units Post I can see making a simpler Mech construct being very easy to get to. Take the game "ChromeHounds" for instance. There were bi-pedal, quadra-ped, wheeled, and hover style Mechs with multiple types of modular cockpits and weapons that were attachable. For DU purposes you could manufacture a DPU that could handle the simple actions of articulation. A leg just needs to be programmed with the movement patterns and situational actions. Then just invert some of that coding and you would have a bi-pedal leg system. Most functions can also have analogue components. Your everyday car computer doesn't do anything to control the shocks or steering of a car. That is all just handled with simple hydraulics. Mech's in DU could be completely modular and not require much more coding than just the individual pieces coming with the coding for itself, then just porting that over to the Cockpit DPU for control interface. Pressing W on your keyboard could just initiate a very long string of macros connected together to produce movement. Guns could focus on where the mouse is located on screen so the arms would just articulate based on that XY on screen coordinate. Hands could just be bound to clinch and unclinch a full or semi open fist to grab objects with handles (Moving cargo around)or (Grabbing a rifle). Here is some Chromehounds concept art to get a visual of what I mean.

There is a dev blog that explains their intentions for this. Here is a link it. Scroll down till you see the part referring to protection planned for builders: Virtual Simulator: enabling player to enter a virtual world (call it “inception syndrome”!). While in that virtual space, the player would be able to design any construct, in a completely peaceful setting. This would help builders to design their construct and create their blueprints safely, without being interrupted by any PvP action. For ships, it will also be possible to test their flight mode, without risking a crash or wasting resources! I understand the desire for an out of game voxel creation tool that can import the blueprint into the game. However, it is equivalently asking for the devs to create a tool to keep you from ever entering the game. Keeping players on their servers while they create their content is also conductive to fair game-play for other players and the moderators alike. Think of it like everything created in the light of day is clean, fair, and equal.

Alright guys, lets get back to the point of this thread. We're here in this thread to specifically talk about some potential RP elements and input on what (we all) would potentially like to role play in the game. With the current game backstory as reference what happens to you, or your character, after you leave the drop ship? Example (and my response) to original thread post: My characters' life experience, to lead her to being put in the ship in the first place, was that of a convict. But for some reason the historical data was lost in transit (maybe intentionally by the AI) and now the choice kill or rebuild you life anew to build up those around her is a possibility and she chooses to create a religion to teach to others. So that she can instill the problem she herself had which was a missing; morality. Me I'd like to keep my RP to a smaller scale to just my character. It's fine that I make the decisions in the game based on that "script" but maybe it shouldn't affect my fellow players as much. And to be honest I'd probably have to disclaimer that to my peers that I may make bad decisions because my character has a bad habit of blowing stuff up just for simple tasks. That and I probably wouldn't role-play the entire time. Sure I'd keep my overall goal and stay in character for a lot of it. But ships don't blow them selves up ya' know =D. If my peers had characters of their own I wouldn't mind going with the flow and interjecting persona into interactions (Dealing with over hormone blockheads that hit on her and them dealing with being force fed soap box style preaching) while just having fun pursing the overall goal that brings our characters together. Like building up just enough supplies to leave the planet and find another, there may be just a handful of humanity but its still just too crowded. Well there's my 2c. Kinda eager to read what others have in mind and keep a fire going here while we wait, so we're not just aimlessly drooling over the pre-alpha screen shots waiting for the game to come out xD.

There are probably just going to have to be constructs of some sort that can be modular to whatever design you can come up to use them. The end result food can just be "sucked" into your suit storage like mentioned in the (Part 1-5) of the Backstory. Before that is food grown from pre-determined in game objects Aka Seeds. Seeds would need to be planted in sufficient soil by liters cubed and watered sufficiently during the life cycle. So all we would need to do as the player is create a complex voxel object that satisfies that process.

Thinking that one way this could be implemented as a hull reinforcement. Say you build just the frame work for a ship. Then plant seeds or place organic material in various places and it grows around the frame work. Kinda reminds me of the "Wraith" ships in Stargate: Atlantis. Ship regrows as damaged and generates new matter as needed so long as the power supply is able to sustain it. Benefits: -Ship hull regeneration -Ease of ship manufacture (Just frame it then let it grow) -Very hard to destroy Disadvantages: -Can only grow as big as say 70% of max power output -Requires more power to just run basic systems vs just sustaining hull integrity -More susceptible to bio engineered attacks for lower tech level organic development (Max level not 100% perfect but could be adaptable if attack is survived)

That article is quite intriguing. I love the complete universal way it can be setup to be in any form possible to suit multiple needs. But yeah the UI would be nice to know. Eve handled this by docking in a station and then just having a list menu to look for corporations. -> The corporations made these with just a simple menu UI while docked as well and just managed it that way. Specifically was wondering how the "game" will handle "Factions" more than how factions will structured. ... Dock in a large enough structure? Just hit ESC and click the factions button with the master UI for that there. Will I need to visit a special websites that handle huge amounts of information for factions that also handles the money transactions my (legates/members) faction? -Kinda of a side thought.. would handling that out of game be able to utilize an in-game money to IRL money transaction? More just in the terms that i gathered money in game and that paid for my subscription to the server. The outside of game faction option would also serve as a way to help specialized members manage a corporation within the game without even needing to be logged in. Manage the books, pay the workers, setup trades etc etc. (Hope I'm not aimlessly rambling, Kinda late in the morning for me atm xD)

In the Q/A section of the website it was asked about Rift compatibility. And while they said this is on the distant roadmap, it probably wont be in the Earliest of Alpha's for sure. But as for which platform I would prefer to have the VR on, that would be the Vive. (By the way I don't own a VR headset yet, waiting for GTX 1080 Ti for that) -You get way better tracking through the laser cameras around the room watching you. -Your able to walk around the room very easily -2 Hand remotes vs a XBone controller. Imagine being able to use arm movements to create voxel elements (/Drooling) -Vision pass through of the headset is nice to keep you from constantly taking off the headset to see things. -Software support is WAYYYYY further along than the Rift. The Rift effectively has all 3rd party programs trying to duplicate what the Vive does out of the box. But now for more reasons I'd love VR in this game. Being able to virtually grab the throttle control and joystick in-game instead of using a proxy joystick IRL, pull your ejection handle in emergencies, hold your welder / grinder physically in front of you while looking in different direction (weld and recon). Being that its a voxel based game, being able to create objects 3 dimensionally in the air infront of you is akin to the Iron Man films where Tony Stark creates his suits via hologram before making one for real. To me its like using a paint brush on canvas. Using your whole body instead of limiting yourself to just the accuracy of a mouse click. This Could be Awesome!

Hi, I'm MatzaJew, And I'm Super stoked about this game! I'm a member of the NinjaClanFu that Trihxeen mentioned in his intro. Read about him here This game has just about pinned down every major aspect I have wanted. Progressive game-play, voxel based, large scale multiplayer, MMO game. Take the shard style mechanics of Eve online, the voxel creation of EverQuest Landmark, and the mechanics of SpaceEngineers to make a single game where creativity meets action. Looking forward to this game hitting Alpha / Beta Builds to try my hand at it! -My gamer skill set is very broad and am generally very good and building / strategy / or FPS My Gaming History: Diablo 2 FreeLancer MechWarrior (Most of Them) EVE Online 2004-2010 (Main: Ro' LoPok) World Of Warcraft 2007-2013 Starcraft I & II Halo (All of Them) EverQuest Landmark SpaceEngineers Overwatch Minecraft etc etc Personal Background: I have an Associates of Applied Science in Multimedia and Design, and progress on two bachelors in Game Design.