CalenLoki

Back to the economic reasons to build cities. Someone mentioned large factories/power plants as being more effective. That won't change much - people will just build as big as they need/can afford. It would work much better if factories for anything higher tier than "very basic" were only available in XXXXL size, producing only one type of component, and requiring each other in close proximity. Their production output should easily fulfil needs of hundreds of players. But their upkeep cost (whenever they are being used or not) makes them economical if you use them constantly. There is also all the simple artificial stuff - kind of "aura" that work only in certain proximity, and has constant high upkeep cost, no matter how many people use it. They work great in games that try to encourage city building (i.e. Anno series). Stuff like "laboratory" that you need x amount nearby to unlock certain tech level. Another incentive for independent players to gather and build stuff in one place could be de-centralised trading system: Instead of single "trading hub" that handles whole stock market, I'd rather see a lot of smaller, private shops co-existing next to each other. How to? Make the trading system super simple: Owner of the shop is owner of all the goods in there. He's also the only one who can create passive offers ("want to buy", "want to sell"), and everyone else can only accept those offers (which is always less profitable). That create need to build a lot of shops of various sizes, with individual landing pads, storage buildings, item dispensers, ect. Of course Trade Information Unit gathers the info from all shops all and display them as "stock market", so finding the best offer is not a chore. But you need to physically go to specific shop and buy the stuff in person. It also clears the problems with "What happen when my resources are in shop that get looted? Do I get refund from shop owner?" or "Someone flooded my storage with tons of dirt".

1. So people use weapons when attacking enemy base, rather than just digging tunnel straight into storage room. 2. So nobody can erect dirt penises around your base while you're offline. But FFU could do that work too. Although one of the best FPS I've played (original Ace of Spades) had digging and building in combat allowed, and it was great. But only on maps where you couldn't dig tunnel that bypass all the defences, straight into objective. So very slow digging, after FFU timer is over, easily detectable by defenders (no sneak digging) could work.

It's term that apply to any item/strategy/tactics in any game that is way more effective than any other (Most Effective Tactics Available). So it does apply to DU. Unless you stay inside safe-zone without participating in PvP. But then it's more of a "sandbox" than "game".

I kind of like how topic evolved. If due to some manipulations value of money drops (=everything cost more quanta), it would only hurt those who hoard money, rather than investing in physical resources. IMO it could enhance emergent gameplay, as hoarding everything wouldn't be totally safe. Also in DU markets will be localised. So it may be much harder to crash them than globalised markets.

Those are two completely different things. TCU prevents enemy from using nanoformer to attack your base, thus forcing them to use weapons/explosives to break stuff. FFU (force field unit) makes sure that you have 24-48h warning period to gather friends for proper PvP fight. And hopefully gives you the right to set time of the battle so it's not in the middle of the night/work/school. As @Takao said. Both are artificial. Both are needed. The thing I'm against is combining protection from digging (TCU) combined with protection from war-fleet (underground) and ability to totally dictate which way enemy needs to come (kill-box) I'm mostly concern about ability for small org with limited time to attack another small org in a fair fight. But it applys to large orgs too. Of course defending side should have some advantage, but not that huge. How did you get to that conclusion? I'm really curious. Or is it another onion joke with many layers? That's indeed a way. But it would have to be tied to warning period, so defenders (also those of conventional surface base) can react. So not "at war with you" but "in battle with you". And it would need to be slow. Like 8s/cubic meter. With standard 50+ m3/s any earth/rock defences would just evaporate within first minutes of the battle. So it's something you can't do while under fire. The thing is: if something is "the only way" that is quite obviously not a creative game mechanics. That's why I'm for soft-limits: the deeper your TCU is, the more energy you need to use to power it. 5m of rock above will increase energy cost just slightly, and it's enough to hide your base. Let's say +25% (depth^2). 500m underground would make it real problem to feed TCU. I.e. +250 000% power consumption.

I'm more into agriculture as a way to make players shape the land a bit more. I'm not much into tedious clicking on can icon every half hour to avoid starvation/buff some stats. Thus I'd rather have plants as part of necessary industry: either as basic source of bio-fuel, or as base ingredient for "spawn tokens". Both would completely change the game is played from planet to planet. On green ones flying and respawning would be cheap, as you can easily cover large areas with fields. On barren planets, asteroids or space stations it would be really expensive, as you need to either import it or grow in expensive hydroponic basins.

Amount of money on the market will be controlled by market bots (who will buy/sell player goods to add/remove quanta from the market).

Something like "Dual Access Coupon". May be wrong. It's an in-game item (physical or not, TBD) that you can use to pay your game subscription. Or to give/sell someone so he can buy subscription. AFAIK there was some secondary way to use it. Something like paying for resources? DK

Artificial game mechanics like.... TU for example? I have nothing against underground base being really well defended. But if it's protected by magic (that can't be counter-spelled) then something is wrong.

If DACs are lootable, I'll simply keep one of my three available chars near Ark, and trade/use/store them just there. After all i doesn't matter which of my chars use it to extend my subscription. Probably the prices will be best there too, due to competition. And because it's so simple, thus a lot of people will do that, it'll mean DAC trading outside safe zones will be just nonexistent. Emergent gameplay gain = 0 Additional nuance for players = 1 Exactly. I think both master BP (unsafe) and slave BP (unsafe) will be both created out of snapshot (safe) BP. So you don't need to create master blueprint at all, unless you want to give/sell someone rights to copy it. Otherwise I'll just create master blueprint, then create copies, then destroy master blueprint. Thus again leading to: Emergent gameplay gain = 0 Additional nuance for players = 1

But you get all those necessary tools. They are combined into nanoformer and your advanced suit. It feeds you, it let's you run for hours, jump high, sleep anywhere, possibly damage stuff, probably heal/regenerate HP, construct advanced tools. You can probably use most tools without levelling. You don't need to punch trees for logs when you start or loose everything. IMO giving anything that can be given, looted or sold to new players will just encourage creating and deleting characters.

You keep quanta, DAC (?), your blueprint library. You drop all the physical items, including all blueprint items (those that can be sold and used in factories) IMO that's the most logical system. Want to use best weapon? Be ready to loose it.

Sundies can't spawn vehicles, only infantry. And for that we have spawn room. I'd rather have all short-distance travel conventional. Wan't reinforcements? Bring carriers full of fighters (so your downed pilots can fly something again). Retreat and repair larger units. Protect those carriers by either placing them in safe distance (at cost of slower reinforcement) or escorting them. In general pay adequate price to tactical advantage.

Thou hast seen nothing yet

If Alpha is so close, it'll probably come live around beginning of May. How do I know? Because that's when I'm moving out and won't have time to play for few months...

No. You can have 3 characters per account.

I've read and watched some NQ statements about CvC combat. And it seems that there will be localised damage (both voxels and elements). Maybe I watched something outdated? What's the most recent article? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efu_129hI9o around 9:45 to 13:00 https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/841-ask-us-anything-event/&tab=comments#comment-8072 NQ also stated that you can aim at specific point at the ship (which is selected randomly, if the target is too far for you to select anything specific). Then damage is deal within certain sphere from that point. I bet damage will be applied from outside-in, thus it need ray-casting to check what is outside. And that system need to check if locked target is "valid" which probably means there is clear line of sight, is within weapon reach, ect. So it needs to use ray-casting too. Also don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating for FPS style aiming - it's still done via lock&fire (so AI assisted aiming). Thus it's not affected by lag or interpolation, and not reflex based. I'm only suggesting (or wildly speculating) how hit chances could be calculated via ray-casting, rather than some arbitrary % numbers. Only twitch skill I mentioned was evasive manoeuvring in CvC, not aiming. And it only prevents usage of oversized guns against small targets. And it's more of tactical skill to know when and which direction to turn. Unlike FTD and other games, DU have one huge advantage: voxels are small. 64 times smaller compared to FTD. Thus we don't need any elaborate penetration calculations, going through voxels without destroying them, partially damaging voxels, ect. We can have just 0/1 system where voxels are either alive or dead. If projectile (ray) damage potential is higher than voxel resistance, remove it. Then damage potential is reduced accordingly, and proceed to the next voxel. Repeat until damage potential is lower than voxel resistance. Weapons with high AP would be simply those with high damage potential per shoot, while low AP would just spray small bullets. My main concern regarding shields is that they protect weak-spots in armour. Things like engines, radiators, gates, weapons. With shields, all those parts are virtually as durable as anything else. Complete mitigation of damage for the winning side is also important though. I went for "simply no shields" as that's the good point to start balancing from. Your idea may work, but IMO protection should just reduce % of damage potential, preferably for both incoming and outgoing shoots. Thus armour design and proper positioning is still important, and shield is something you use when you really need extra protection, not all the time. Of course large vs smaller is always going to larger. The question is: what if one large ship worth 100kk with 20 crew members fight twenty small, single crewed ships worth 5kk each? Not so obvious any more. Small ones have advantage in positioning, agility and acceleration. Large one has much thicker armour, and higher repair ability. Small ships have too small caliber to kill large ship, but they can disable some external equipment. While large ship have it's main armament too clumsy to hit small targets, and secondary armament is out-shoot by small crafts, due to being more stationary. Or situation where two large ships meet fleet with one large and 20 small ships. IMO mixed fleet should win, by first disabling enemy with small ships, then entering with large ship for some deep-penetration. Just like tanks IRL - they are much more powerful than infantry. But for a reason they never fight alone, without infantry support. And battle-cruisers required cover of destroyers for protection from torpedo-boats.

Also: That "If" is quite important little thing. I explained why that is IMO most probable, according to available data and experience from other games. I may be wrong. But I'm pretty sure about NQ intentions regarding invulnerability.

I'm going passive aggressive way when someone repeat the same thing over and over, without any new argument. It's wiki, not anything official. And even if it describes current state of the game, it works against the principle of "things outside safe-zone shouldn't be totally safe". As Lethys said, outdated article. Arkification is no longer a thing. And even there they stated that other options "are not totally safe". How is "remove that discussion because I think it's intended feature" open-minded? Way closer to censorship. You stated your opinion once, on the first page. And got simple answer that I disagree with it, and why I disagree. Then you brought inaccurate data - everyone makes mistakes. Repeating it doesn't bring anything to the discussion.

Personally I have nothing against teleportation, as long as you do it only without any items and resources. Kind of transporting your consciousness from one body to another. More repawns (but still limited by some resources - i.e. spare bodies) means battles will last as long as your in-game resources allow, not as long as many alt accounts you can afford (P2W). And would cut meaningless travel time, without hindering pirate gameplay at all.

I thought about possible combat quite a lot too. I think your system may work for avatar vs avatar combat, as they'll have unified hitbox and HP-pool. But for construct vs construct there no way to make it that simple. Unlike games like EVE, there is no HP-pool, but localised damage. So "where" is as important as "if" you hit. Also constructs can be 95% hidden underground or behind some asteroids, while still having guns sticking out with clear line of sight. There gonna be huge ships, with a lot of small sub-systems, each with different field of fire. So IMO while targeting will be just as you described, the firing itself will be done with ray-casting (hit-scan projectiles). You need it anyway, to determine if specific part is behind cover, so can be used to determine hit chances as well. And hit-scan aren't even close to be as expensive as physical bullets. Also calculating % chance to hit completely remove ability to manually dodge. Sure it can count target speed or angular velocity, but not how unpredictable given manoeuvre is. And I don't want my battle outcome to be determined by RNG. It may work for games with HP, as multiple hits get averages. Here loosing specific part may render your craft useless, while taking multiple hits somewhere else may mean nothing. For AvA auto-targeting + hit-scan would be probably better option than % chance too. Another aspect CvC I thought about is how to encourage diversity on the battlefield. Just to ensure that each highly successful fleet consist of both small and large crafts. And that smart engineering is properly rewarded. IMO ships should be in general more effective at fighting ships of similar size. First step towards that is how projectiles work against armour (voxels). IMO it would be better if they were AP (2-5) or APHE (6-9) rather than pure HE (1). Most block-building combat games go for HE, and it dumb down the combat and engineering to "who has more DPS*armour". With AP mechanics you get rewarded for using the right tools for the job. Using too small guns (2, 6) leads to under-penetration, so destruction of less valuable armour (grey), rather than important internal components (blue). Using the correct gun size (3, 7) deal the most damage. Especially with APHE. Using too big gun makes you waste some potential on destruction of armour on the other side (4, 8) or even more if it flies right through (5, 9). Low AP guns should have much better DPS/price, to make them the better choice against lightly armoured vehicles. (by price I mean weight, size, energy/ammo usage and actual crafting cost) It also prevents building bad-looking external grate armour, dedicated to triggering explosion far away from actual armour. For elements similar system could be used, just with HP-pool and armour value. So for shooting off small guns it's better to use other small guns. But not too small. Second step are chances to hit. Obvious solution would be random spread, but as I said I'd rather have more skill than luck involved. Turret tracking speed doesn't work against targets far away. So IMO firing delay could nicely ensure that large guns are meant to shoot large targets. How would it work? Simply each gun has firing delay - time between AI decide to fire and actual shoot being fired. Big guns (with high AP) have more, small - less. During that time, AI can't change the point in space at which it aims. The point is determined by movement prediction, so it's not as simple to avoid it as going fast enough. But changing the movement vector allows you to make them miss. If you're agile and small enough. Picture to easier visualise: -Green is predicted movement vector. Orange is predicted intercept point for (too) heavy gun, red is for (proper) small gun. -Yellow line is actual flight path. It's not curved enough to avoid small guns, but it's enough against big ones. Third thing is ensuring that it's much much harder to destroy vehicle (completely blow it up) than disable it (destroy just vital components) or even temporary disable (damage components in a way that can be repaired in combat). IMO you should never be able to do the first, unless you waste way too much firepower than the target is worth. Second only if your ship is way bigger (except small gun-boats that have no repair capabilities due to size). And third should be the most common way to prepare for boarding. So more of a WWI or WWII armour to firepower balance than modern combat. It's maybe less realistic for far future, but way more entertaining for a game IMO. And last point is NO SHIELDS. They just dumb down localised damage into stupid HP-pool. It's like throwing away half of the whole engineering part of the game for absolutely no gain. Just because of retarded "Shields are so sci-fi! They must be there because reason!".

https://trello.com/b/Y6WNMd2S/dual-universe-community-suggestions Section "Done" Invisible screens are already in game. About 3d holograms - In on of video they said they want to implement something like that.

Such system is really easy to work around. Put the gate in a cave, with underground tunnel leading to the base (structure). Full safety. I have nothing against small gates, but they should have the same placement limitations as large ones: Far away from celestial bodies and soft limit on minimal and maximal range.

You liked Falstaf post that explain what "exploit" means, without reading it? Using game mechanics (and other things) in a way not intended by game creators. If underground TU creates basically invulnerable base, it'll be against NQ intention (they don't want anything outside safe-zones to be completely safe). So it's an exploit. If there is no game mechanic that prevent that, then indeed something is broken in game. If you have something useful to add to discussion, please share. Repeating "it's not exploit because it can be done" is like closing eyes and pretending to be invisible. What other exploits?

Research/leveling is only initial cost, which once achieved can be used forever. So it's not balancing anything. And it's unnecessary hindrance. If someone plays smart enough to get all the rare resources to craft something, he should be able to do it.