Fitorion

Creates trade routes and trade hubs by virtue of a gate existing there. Encourages Carrier type ships. One large ship can let the medium class fleet in and out. Creates choke points where the vast majority of ships must go through to access hyperspace. Fleets can stand by in hyperspace ready to jump out with no warning from many directions. Scout ships or spies could be employed to transmit the optimum spots for the fleets to jump into system. That is if you have enough resources to afford many ships with jump drives. Because a ship can go to any gate once it's in hyperspace It basically means it has escaped. You'd have to have agents waiting at all the other gates in its range watching for it... You can see the 2 other threads about this subject to see my more complete description of how it all works. https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/745-ftl-jump-drives/ https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/717-the-hyperspace-mechanics-of-stargate-travel/

I like Babylon 5 style gates... Gates allow entrance and exit to Hyperspace. Large enough ships which can generate the large amounts of power need can have Jump engines to do the same thing. Travel through Hyperspace with regular engines to any other gate. But since you are using your engines to travel... that limits how far you can get before you have to jump back out to real space and resupply.

In that Other thread... I described the Babylon 5 system which I think is great. I'll advocate for it again here. In the B5 system. Jump gates allow access to Hyperspace. Jump engines do the same thing but are so large and require so much power that only large ships can have them. The Jump gates transmit lock on signals in Hyperspace... and thus provide landmarks in the otherwise featureless un-navagatable hyperspace. Once you're in Hyperspace you use your regular engines to move around. There's chaotic currents in hyperspace so you can get swept away if you lose engine power... and if you stray too far from the lock on signals you can lose them and thus be lost. (means combat in hyperspace is doomed to be a disaster for both sides) If you don't have a jump engine and you're in Hyperspace then you need to go to a jump gate to get out... or be near a ship with jump engines and exit when it does. So how are new jump gates built? How do you navigate to a system with out a jump gate? Well the jump gates that already exist provide landmarks so if there is a star system you want to go to without a gate... and that system is about half way between 2 systems that have gates... you can go to the mid point between the 2 gates in hyperspace and then exit there. There would be specialized Jump Gate construction ships with the best sensors designed to precisely extrapolate from the lock on signals where a system should be and then jump out to real space there and build a gate. Edit to add... just a simplified example... I know you'd more reference points in 3D space... A note on range. Since you use your regular engines to move through Hyperspace... and even just to hold position... This puts a limit on how far you can go before you need to jump back out to real space and resupply. Which means Every Jump gate by virtue of existing becomes a valuable trade hub. Also limits how long a fleet can loiter in Hyperspace waiting to jump out and attack.

What I'd like is to have is the ability to have my game pad and or joystick plugged in and active with mouse and keyboard active as well... So I can have the joystick/ game pad sitting on the desk next to the mouse and keyboard and only pick it up when I get in the pilot seat. Seamlessly... not needing to open any menu to switch control modes. So if for some reason I actually like the mouse and keyboard method for flight controls or just feel like using that this time... I can.

I've yet to see a first person mouse and keyboard flight system I like. Joystick only for first person... though I guess game pad might be tolerable. Third person view though... mouse and keyboard can be alright. Also click to move there 2D plane space is well suited to the mouse and keyboard... but Not the type of movement I expect to see in this game.

Some videos Featuring the jump points and hyperspace. https://youtu.be/2k8SRxOYC_U?list=PLo0Ow__m-XJLwII47LMrpswOkaAaQ3qse https://youtu.be/wl6E0Y_jYHk?list=PLo0Ow__m-XJLwII47LMrpswOkaAaQ3qse https://youtu.be/eH8WKvyOT38 That last one the Narn aliens were fighting a ancient alien force with very advanced tech and they used something to disrupt the jump point as the Narn were trying to escape back to hyperspace and the collapsing jump point destroyed the Narn ships. I fail at embedding these youtube videos... another battle montage so a few glimpses of jump points and some views of the ships in hyperspace. https://youtu.be/jSa6Zl8fcyo?list=PLzUwdMSZr2iaHdMHnN_pC76O7QrAedr-I

And you can have fleets standing by in hyperspace waiting for signals from your scout ships to jump into the system and begin the battle. They can relay the spots most advantages for a jump point to open and disgorge the fleet from several different spots. In the show they even have a ground team send coordinates to the ships in Hyperspace so they could open a jump point inside the atmosphere of the planet... and thus insert a ship behind enemy lines to take out the ground based defenses. I'm still debating on the one ship to jump point idea... It'd be great if the large ships could let the medium class cruisers and the like in and out of hyperspace... But they can use the local gate if you're attacking a system with a gate. Cause you couldn't prevent anyone from using the gate other than to shut it down so no one could use it. Most ships that can generate a jump point with their jump engines are vulnerable when entering and exiting hyperspace as they had to divert power to generate the jump point. If they can allow other ships through at the same time or ahead of them... then those ships could have their weapons fully powered up and be firing as the come through.

Marriage is just a contract... and you've already got a contract system... pretty simply to just label it marriage.

This is a space game... I'd be disappointed if there weren't mass drivers. Pluck an asteroid out of near space... and accelerate it at the ground. Boom.

In B5 the big ships could make a point for the smaller ships to use or anyone really... you could go into hyperspace using the jump point made by your enemies ship if you wanted to and timed it right... If you didn't time it right you could collide or be destroyed when the jump point closes moments after the big ship went through. But still... carrier ships where quite common. And I think for the game a limit of "only the ship making the jump point can go through it" would make sense and further encourage carrier ships. So I like that limitation. Further on Jumpgate function and destroying them. They store a lot of energy... They take a long time to power them up initially but after that's done can be used open jump points into hyperspace quite frequently. They do have some armor... and usually there's a well armed space station near by to operate and defend them. If one is attacked the operators of it could discharge them to prevent them from blowing... and thus preventing their own destruction and everyone else nearby and ecological disaster on any nearby planet... But if they do then it take a long time to power it back up and any ships in Hyperspace coming to their rescue wouldn't be able to use it. They'd have to turn around or divert to another gate... or wait for a jump engine capable ship to arrive to make a jump point for them... so they can leave hyperspace with it. The quickest and stupidest way to destroy a jumpgate... before any operators could discharge it... is to use it to open a jump point... and then using your jump engine capable ship to open another jump point inside the Jump gate. Boom! No more gate. No more station. No more you and your extremely valuable jump engine capable ship.

I like the Babylon 5 Hyperspace Mechanics. You have Hyperspace... and Jump Engines... and Jump gates. Small ships don't have the power to use Jump Engines to access Hyperspace and must use the Jump gates. Big ships can produce enough energy to form a Jump point (punch a hole in space) to access Hyperspace... But depending on their tech level may have to power down weapons to do it. So they too often use jump gates. It takes time to travel in Hyperspace... but it's as if everything is much closer so it takes much less time. In Hyperspace there's all sorts of energy flowing all around and no reference points... so a craft could easily get lost... or get pulled along with the flow if it lost power to engines. The Jump gates transmit a lock on signal so ships can navigate through hyperspace to their destinations. Even if your destination is a system that doesn't have a gate yet... But if you go too far from where the Jump gates are you could lose their signal and not be able to find your way back... The Jump gates are what provides reference points in Hyperspace. So if you want to make a place a destination that people will use... building a Jump gate there is a sure way to do it... and puts you on the galactic hyperspace map so to speak. And if you want to hide... be in a system without a gate and have a ship big enough to make its own. In B5 the gates are hard to make... They're government projects... or found as remnants of long gone civilizations. But Easyish to destroy. And when they go... boy do they go. They aren't destroyed very often though... Because it would be suicide for the one doing it. And if you could somehow manage to survive it... you'd be trapped there as odds are your ship can't form a Jump point. Most ships can't. It's only the really big ones... owned by governments...

Like the ship from Farscape. Star Trek TNG also had one episode with a living ship. "Space whales" are a staple of Scifi. With many many instances of encountering rare space fairing large creatures. Sometimes the lore is that the technology for FTL travel is actually reverse engineered from studying them... Sometimes it's that they are captured and converted to space craft... and sometimes like Babylon 5 it's the culmination of technological development. So there's lots of ways you could fit it into the game.

Yeah I want to make ships that rotate to have gravity... Think Babylon 5. But I don't think there's going to be the physics simulation level to allow for such things. If we get gravity plating for which I can set which surface of the ship in small sections is "down" and I can have rotating ship sections... I'll be able to make due. Also if we get that... M.C. Escher ships are on my list of wants too...

from a coding perspective... if the view from inside is that the ship doesn't move... it's the universe around that's moving... Should be possible to have internal movement while external movement is happening. I don't think artificial gravity will be able to be turned off... probably something inherent to the deck plates or something. So even a ship that's been cut in half ... the 2 halves would have gravity. There definitely should be the ability to run around repairing things... I think they compared it to the game Faster Than Light in the DevBlog. In that game you're running all over a ship repairing things that go wrong... so... And if other players invade and a battle ensues... and the bridge still has maneuvering capability then they're going to want to move away from whatever troop carrier... or out of the line of fire to free up more crew to fight off the invaders... But this is mostly speculation on my part. I have no more info than you.

There's legal issues. Music companies and video services are cracking down hard on copy right... and they are overstepping their bounds and becoming thieves themselves in places like Youtube... It would be wonderful if a place in game could be treated the same way a bar or even department store is treated in real life... but the law hasn't caught up to technology. I mean stores play the radio to give ambient music... people play music of others when they come over to your house... take a ride in your car... no one goes after them... but if the game were to allow the same activities it would be sued ... a lot... The best I can hope for would be something like one of the GTA games did. Let you put your own music files in a particular file and them be able to access that as your own personal radio station in game. Which only you can hear. That's the part that prevents them from getting sued. The legal issues are too varied and muddy. If the Dual Universe team were to attempt this... they'd be spending most of their money on lawyers and legal proceedings rather than actually making the game. No if there are to be social spots for people to gather... there will have to be other mechanics to accomplish it. Sitting in one location isn't the most exiting game play... even though thematically it fits... there have to be tangible benefits to gathering in a particular spot and interesting things to do there or people won't do it. A market kiosk selling consumables which provide some sort of benefit. A zone where you can put a variety of looking for group flags above your head... limited to areas such as it so people wanting to find others to group up with go there to find other such people. Mini games... possibly created by players... Gambling... (another legal headache but less so) To combine some things... if race courses could be set up... with real players participating in the races... and the views of this race are streamed to a bar... where people could bet on the winners... Another idea... if people could make in game broadcasts... tutorials... news... sports... and these things could be available for bar patrons to view...

Well... lets see... The outward design anyone can see... but depending on how robust the voxel editing tools are... not everyone is going to be able to reproduce it. I've seen and played with voxel editors before and seen people do amazing things that I will never be able to do. But that's just how something looks... What really will give your design the edge is the code you've written to get all the parts to work well together. And that's all wrapped up inside the control boxes placed throughout the ship. If you simply make those unreadable to anyone but the creator... then no one is going to be easily copying them.

A Halo ring seems overly large... something that could literally take real life decades to make in game... I'm interested in something more like a Babylon 5 style and size of station. Basically a cylinder with a light source running through the center and plants growing on the inner surface with several decks radiating out full of market shops and cargo storage and refueling stations and ship maintenance. And it spins to provide gravity. I wonder how gravity will work in terms of ship design. I think it's basically known that "magic" artificial gravity will be employed meaning rotating ships would be obsolete... Which probably means my thoughts of recreating B5 ships is not going to happen or if possible the rotation is just cosmetic and not actually useful... But I hope some option for the more "primitive" method is available. Also an M.C. Escher ship would be fun... if you can freely adjust the orientation of gravity over short distances inside a ship...

I wonder if there will be big stripmines where we're excavating massive amounts of material... Or tunnels to seek out pockets of valuable materials... Or if we'll just plop a "mining device" down on the surface and it'll suck out the tasty resources rather than deforming the ground... Also asteroid mining and orbital processing facilities... 1 good size asteroid in real life could contain as much as or in some cases many times more material than the entire woulds mining efforts produce in a year... especially in regards to rare earth elements. Aluminum for instance... in the past was difficult to process and so was as valuable as Platinum is today... The Washington Monument in DC was capped with Aluminum as it was a precious metal at the time... now it's used in everything everywhere. If and when we start asteroid mining IRL... when 1 asteroid contains 10... 15... times the worlds production of Gold and Platinum... it could really change the whole dynamic and end a lot of planet side mining. I wonder if a similar transition will occur in game.

There was some info in the right's and duties management system (RDMS) too. Some games have tired and failed at this but... I'd like an ingame/outofgame message... voice... forum... webpage... for organizations. So say it's gated to a certain size... organization or however they want to manage it... but basically. Teamspeak functionality... groups and sub groups... The ability have a forum to post on that only organization members can see and do so from within the game and through the web... send messages from out of game to those in game and from in game to those not in game... maybe even linked to a phone app... And some sort of publicly visible website front page and maybe publicly accessible portion of the forum. Also I play a lot of alternate characters in MMOs... even when it isn't really necessary... I just do... It's really annoying in games when trying to join a group... guild type thing and I have to get online with each of my alts at the same time as a member to get an invite. I'd love it if I can put in a request to join or receive a request while the respective characters are not online. So when the guild member checks their guild messages while out of game on the website I described... they could approve there... out do it when they get in game... Or when I get in game on my alt I can check my messages and accept or decline any invites.

I've never played EVE but it seems like you never actually see your character... just your ship... there's almost no out of ship movement... and if you see yourself or another's character at all it's as a video communications transmission... Dual Universe could go that route... But I don't think it will. With the emphasis on the seamless transition from ground to ship... and the possibility of personal combat when your capitol ship gets boarded and your fellow crew mates have to fight off the boarders... There will have to be lots of equipment and dyeing to give yourself different looks... As for the model itself... I only really want extensive face customization. Some basic body types... like 10 or so... no sliders is all I care to have for the rest... but the Face... hair... face hair... scars... tattoos... face paint... make up... That I want lots and lots of customization. 1 thing I've always wanted. To be able to freely position and rotate tattoos and other markings. It's so frustrating when game offer such markings but I can't change where on the face and what orientation they are... Bonus points if you can upload your own markings and use those. Or if you don't want to do that... Out source the markings creation to the community during development. I'm sure you could get hundreds of different textures to use in short order.

I picture a shield generator... or actually several... with vulnerable parts that stick out past the field... which can be attacked. From inside the defenders can keep funneling funds into its upkeep and repairs... and or directly repairing them. Or rebuilding one that was destroyed. On the outside the defenders can use the automated defensive ground stations to attack whatever gets close and their own ships to actively go out and do battle. And the attackers have to get through all that to do damage to the vulnerable spots and a lot of it... lest it be repaired back to full seconds later... and keep that up for a long long time. These things should take a long time to set up... from dedicated players with large organizations who will be around for a long time to keep it running... And likewise it should take a long time to take them down... requiring an equally large organization to achieve it when it's defended... or possibly more quickly through politics. If for example the alliance crumbles and a civil war breaks out possibly with ownership of the arkified safe zone switching hands several times in quick succession... Whole groups of players up and leaving for a more stable area with the more vengeful groups left to duke it out... that could quickly erode the stability of the area and result in the safe zone going away. If a safe zone gets abandoned it should cease functioning in fairly short order. But a safe zone should be so hard to set up in the first place that there would have to be a monumental disaster either political or military to get people to abandon it.

There should be safe zones... but not necessarily permanent safe zones. A "safe" zone could be player made if enough security devices are built which activate and engage anyone doing some disallowed action. More rigid indestructible safe areas where characters are rendered incapable of such actions are also desirable. But Decay should be built in. If we can freely move about this universe... If we can colonize and build large civilizations... then Populations centers will shift. Old starting locations will be disused or far from the frontier and population concentrations... And so as new things are built and populations remain then those places should be maintained but if populations move and abandon an area... it should decay over time to lower and lower levels... losing safe zone status and start point status and even eventually becoming ruins of the past civilization. With this idea... if a war were to break out... The actual safe zone could be small... and the attackers could whittle away... drive out the defenders... and when enough people have left... or certain destructible defense structures fail to be maintained... it could lose its indestructible status.

indeed I don't think there should be 1 starting "city" FF11 and 14 both have 3 starting cities which also provides some faction loyalty. In Dual there could be a large number. If you had a way for old starting worlds which have been depopulated as people moved on to new worlds to cease being starter worlds and decay back to wild world... perhaps now with ruins of the past civilization... and player drive creation of new starter worlds... that would ensure new players are always popping into the area where the action they crave is.

What I hate in MMOs is the starting zones that you pass through and never return to... have no later use for. I've tried lots of MMOs that are like this and I don't stay with them very long... I believe this is the WoW style. There are 2 MMOs that have used a different system which I like. Final Fantasy 11 and 14. In these you start in a town. You wander around town for a bit talking to people... learning the lore and game systems... then you head outside to fight. The town is your home base which you always return to... where the shops are... market... where your player house and storage are... where the class trainers are... always useful and used. Then the areas outside have difficulties ever increasing as you get further and further from town... but in low level areas there are entrances to "secret" high level plot related areas as well. So you always have a mix of low and high level players traveling back and forth doing their thing side by side. Now neither system really fits a game such as this... But the second system is more of a fit I think. If you can colonize worlds... the devs could take such worlds which have reached a certain level of development and make them safe zones... where new players could arrive in. Then the rules against pvp and such could get more and more lax as you get further and further away from such a world. Until you're in wild space where anyone could gank you but also the resources haven't been picked clean yet. Oh and I think the transforming of a player colony into a safe zone should be an opt in type thing so it's only done if the player or guild of players in charge of a colony wants it done. Up til then they could be responsible for making and enforcing their own rules.

Or which simulate drive emissions which fool the opponents sensors into thinking there are multiple ships. Only works at long range since they clearly don't look visually like ships.