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CalenLoki

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Everything posted by CalenLoki

  1. Or debt collectors would just stop doing their job, because they get no reward (all the monies somewhere else). Imprisoning isn't even an option. Only destruction of assets is what could hurt hunted. And if we have some kind of built-in deal/mission/agreement system, it can easily keep the money for payment secured from the moment of signing. So no debt collection needed, as it can never be created.
  2. That's more an "debt collecting" than "bounty hunting". And can be avoided simply by keeping all the money (only thing that such system can automatically collect) at alt/friend account. So as always - easy to avoid, hitting the legit players the hardest.
  3. I bet they'll just set some "geostationary distance" and down pulling force will get gradually reduced from planet surface to that artificial orbit. So FtD style. And similar "atmosphere range", affecting air drag and atmo-engines efficiency. Simplest, cheapest, easiest for players to understand. Maybe not the most realistic, maybe not the most rewarding for hardcore engineer nerds, but it's a game.
  4. The first one is way better. Perhaps L could be also 2 long? Looks more natural.
  5. It depends on how they plan to make max speed limit. It could be tied to square root of (thrusts divided by mass), so kind of pseudo-space-drag system. Then reaching top speed will depend on how much you want to spend on propulsion and fuel (sacrificing cargo capacity and range). Thus dedicated pirate ship would be super-fast, quite armed, but not really armoured. And mass cargo transport would be slow and bulky. And courier ship for most valuable cargo fast and armoured, but without any weapons. I though about inverting cost based on distance, but it would make whole universe feel small. I'd rather see players do several jumps to go across galaxy. Maybe something like this: 1. IMO distance should't affect building price. Regarding ship size - what fits can fly. You pay for perimeter length (each module increasing it by 5m, modlue price is constant). So the bigger the more expensive, but also more economical. 2. There should be some "most economical distance" (as seen in the graph). To avoid both short range jumps and travelling whole galaxy in one jump. That together with inability to make gates too close to planets keep piracy viable. Thus they wouldn't need to be so prohibitively expensive. And again it's cost per module, thus you get best results by sending huge, cigar-like ships that fit just right into the gate. PS. I've been using lone tree as my avatar for years, and that's just one nice version of Yggdrasil I found.
  6. It's a bit different with weapons - you need to point them in quite specific direction. If your ship is made to always mine in front, then someone can just map mining to spacebar, and put coffee cup on it. So you program only ship movement, and character just constantly press mine button. But. If veins between stone are shaped like thick spaghetti floating in the water, then it could work. As you would not strip mine, but actually have to follow the vein (even if a bit bigger and more loose than veins for hand mining). Which require actual player attention and control - problem with bots solved.
  7. I'd rather keep it simple: -master blueprint with all the permissions, including access to Lua -slave blueprint which can be used only once, and you can't create blueprints nor save things into tool library out of created construct. Also accessing any Lua console wipes the code (with warning/confirmation window). Can be edited, can have mod-prints. -same two level system for mod-prints. IMO BP protection is to protect from re-selling, not to limit creative modifications.
  8. @ShioriStein You didn't get his idea. It's like dress-up paper doll (google it): Original BP is the doll itself. Mod schematics is the dress. Dress without doll is useless. If you decide to sell both your dress (that you can copy as much as you like) together with doll (which you need to buy each time) cheaper than doll, you'll loose money.
  9. The problem with ship mining is not only how fast it works. If that would be the case, your suggestion would be flawless. The problem is also with automation. If vein are large enough for strip mining to be effective, what prevents me from programming my ship to mine 24/7? There is no way to balance that with hand-mining, which require actual player input. So IMO keeping veins small, concentrated, odd shaped and in-between a lot of rock is the best way to prevent mine-bots. But vehicle mining could be for something else than gathering resources. It could be tool primarily used for large terraforming projects - building tunnels, bridges, ect.
  10. Seeing how we can build modular constructs, gates could be made in the same way. To create warp gate, you need an ring of connected warp modules. They connect only within 180 degree on x axis and 10 degree on y axis, with 5m range. Thus price would be dynamic: It may be as low as 3 modules, if you want to fly small fighter. Or as big as 20 modules for sending battleship. But whatever system is in use, it shouldn't ever be cheaper to use than flying manually. Even excluding initial building cost. Especially at short range. Otherwise at some point piracy would be impossible, because freighters would just jump between safe points. And by cheaper I mean time (it's the only currency): mining for fuel+time to fly should be less than mining for fuel to power the jump. So it's more for ferrying passengers, super-valuable cargo or surprise battle fleet, not for everyday use. Or maybe make minimal distance you can set up two gates? Not closer than interplanetary. And no closer than X from the planet.
  11. True - for night raids there is FFU. It's typical for me to use such shorthands.
  12. TCU is not a safe zone. It's mainly to protect from night raids and to force attackers to use actual weapons, rather than nanoformer. And in this thread only one way to use TCU is called exploit - placing it deep underground.
  13. I hope that when you mine, you can't just destroy dirt/rock. Either store it in compressed form in boxes, or dump it back into world. And I hope that storage has nowhere close to Minecraft capacity, where you could store mountain worth of stone in single chest - so most people will just give the mined stones back to the world. Thus I hope for the same for guns. Shouldn't be that complicated - remove voxels, create few physical objects that don't affect anything other than themselves. Once they stop moving remove them and create voxels. Done. I admit that I went a bit too far with invulnerable terrain. But at least damn hard to blow up.
  14. Yeah. I don't really spend too much time in community section, so inside jokes just fly by. I just thought acronym for Terran Union is "Onion"... @LittleJoeExactly.
  15. I stated that such "tunnel digging weapons" would make any surface base require under-side protection. Doesn't matter if it deal damage to constructs or not, all earth parts of fortifications became decorations: block line of sight for stationary guns, and you can just dig tunnel around defences. Thus removing it's only combat advantage advantage over hovering or space bases. It also means that you can quickly destroy matter, which is really bad idea for persistent world. Bunker busters doesn't dig - they send shock-wave that make tunnels ceiling break. And even when they are powerful enough to throw rocks out of the hole, they still make it conical shaped crater - thus you need depth^3 of explosives to reach something underground. Making holes with weapons is something I'm ok with. Even big holes - looks super cool to see your BB cannon blow off peak of a mountain. But matter should stay in the world - be spread around by explosion. It's easy if you're blowing something that stuck out of terrain. It's hard when something is dug in. And if there is no way to implement such matter-preservation system, I'd rather have terrain that is invulnerable to explosions. IMO changing terrain protection system would be easier fix. My main concerns regarding you idea are: 1. It makes any underground base exposed to off-line attacks, as TCU never reach there. 2. It feels arbitrary, when protection cuts off at certain depth. Thus I'd rather have something that protects from digging within small radius (so you need to reach vein before setting up protection) And make TCU just prevent others from building bases on your land.
  16. What? Have you even read first post, or just the title? How is military able to protect base without TU from night-TU-placement?
  17. That's not mech. Not even close. That's an hovercraft with really weird turret. But the top picture looks like proper one. Unfortunately NQ said "no custom turrets" so it'll be impossible to have mg turrets placed on top of cannon turret.
  18. Could you elaborate more on "more/less protected area"? AFAIK now TCU prevent unauthorised players from: -digging -creating new constructs -claiming the tile How would you increase or decrease those? Reduce digging speed in external tiles rather than completely blocking it? Inability to trigger inner FFU before conquering external tiles? Increasing amount of damage you need to deal to trigger FFU? To be honest, I don't like either of those option. Main function of both TU and FFU is protect against random griefers and cowardly night attacks, and preventing attackers from bypassing all surface defences by digging tunnel. Also "town" as opposed to "base" is something created by more or less independent people and organisations. So for your system to work they'd need to give control over TCU to single organisation, rather than just coexisting as neighbours with their own personal claims. People will gather anyway. You need people to trade, you need storage to keep resources for trade, you need people to defend storage. Safe zone is limited to only single planet and its moons - everywhere else towns are the way to go.
  19. Agree. I'd love if they used system where you could physically lift whole containers with special ship element. Kind of huge mechanical arm that detach 1x1x2m container and attach it in designated spot. Dispenser (linked with trade unit) would have such designated spots on both sides: One for automated robots to bring goods from storage, one for customer. Some conveyor belt system (for whole containers, not single items) could nicely improve that even more. Kind of like in Astroneers - you can carry stuff in your backpack, but in the long run it's better to stick it into containers for faster management. Large ships would have to be designed with corridors for smaller units to load and unload them. Which also means attackers could use small attack crafts for boarding. While may sound like over-complicated, it would add tons of life to ship interiors, and tons of new engineering Did I just de-railed my own thread?
  20. Guys, that's physical device. You can just blow it up. It's not TCU, you can still dig there, blow the door, kill the core and claim the base. So if anyone decide to spam them all over the place, they need to build durable structures around them, equipped with AI-guns, ammo, energy reserves, ect.. Or they became free resources for anyone willing to pick them up. At least outside safe-zones. So while yes, griefing is possible. But it's also much easier to deal with than TCU griefing that it prevents. It only protects from someone claiming the tile with your base and using TCU magic to block your ability to dig out of your grave. It apply to safe-zone too, and that's area designed for newbies, even solo ones. Without that anyone who can afford TCU can box-troll every single base in safe-zone with dirt box around it. If you had to choose to either have stuff dug around you base, or the same +blocking you from fixing it or even entering a base: which one would you choose? It apply to hidden org bases too, not only to solo bases. It also cost monies to place and operate. Just less than TU, as it's much weaker claim. Claiming terrain that nobody can build or construct anything there and preventing someone from claiming the tile = preventing someone from claiming the tile? Interesting. Pardon my, but what is "feed of a base"? Proximity? Boundary box? Whole hex? Under&over? That would mean each construct works like smaller TU. May be even easier to abuse, as you can build constructs much cheaper than suggested Anti-TCU Second part seems like an good idea. Existing constructs belong to their creators until someone blows the core. But You can't expand them, as you can't dig on claimed hex. They still cost to build and maintain. And they don't prevent digging, and are detectable by scanner. So unless you build structure (with ai guns and stuff) to protect them, someone can just go around and pick them like mushrooms (free resources :D). Fight. Anti-TU doesn't prevent other players from placing Anti-TU too, so either owner of underground base destroy overground Anti-TU, or the other way around. It's not griefer, if you can fight him. Griefer is someone who do nasty things to other players, while being protected by game system. If griefing is possible, then it means game has design flaws. So such thing would be a problem only within safe zone. In UA war is the ultimate tool against griefers.
  21. Yes, indeed it's mostly based on my assumptions. But there is very limited amount of possible combinations of "construct combat with localised damage" and "aim&fire". If you have some other assumptions about how it'll work, please share. Here, around minute 4. "dispenser will get item from the container" I can't find again the video where they showed decoration pipes and said "they are not needed for anything to function". My assumption about unlimited range is based on that. With a bit of simple geometry in designing such base, you'd still be at severe disadvantage. I modified my previous picture a little bit to illustrate it. Red line shows line of fire of each of levels of guns. By sticking your gun turret around that corner, you can indeed limit of guns you're fighting against: at least 12:1, or if we take into account that you turret most likely will shoot from the middle part and have some width: 24:1. If there is area damage, defenders can use it to their advantage as well - shooting at the walls right next to the ship. We're talking about actively protected base, not off-line AI. Unless we prevent placing TCU or FUU deep underground - which would allow either digging around or attacking offline. Same for weapons that can go around corners (i.e. guided missiles). Unless they can follow very complicated pattern and have excellent turn radius - then they could be shoot by the fleet waiting outside. Of course if they are immune to any CIWS. But I wouldn't call battle where you don't even see your opponents very interesting. Do you have link to that vid interview? Only thing I've heard about CvC is that it's gonna be lock&fire (so pretty much AI-aimed). @HadesThe tile AFAIK goes from the top of build-able area to the bottom. So kind of column. Making TCU not protect things deep underground is and interesting idea - a step further from preventing placement of TCU to be placed there. That would lead to any deep mining operation or base being much harder to protect from side-intercepting. Should the protection depth stay relative to constant level, or average surface level? First leads to making mountains very defensible (more rock over your head), second may be quite complicated, when large org decide to dig out one hex completely. (~1000m*1000m/50m3/s=200.000s/m so 55 work hours per m of depth). Or maybe simple bubble TU? I'll add it to first post, despite it being far from what devs showed us about area protection. I think I've seen somewhere that hexes are ~1km2, so around 500m radius. If we assume that base is built within 100-200m from optimal TU location, then you still have 400-300m to dig horizontally. That is assuming they don't have buffer zone, forcing you to repeat the process several times. If there are anti-matter bombs, then it may work. It also means that you can ignore any defences of surface base, and simply dig tunnel from below. So only viable base defence would be ball floating inside underground cavern, with guns pointing in all directions. Without anti-matter bombs digging with explosives require blowing up huge cone, thus resource usage grows to the power of cube of dug distance.
  22. Simple suggestion: stationary device that prevent other players from placing TU within the same hex. Doesn't affect existing TU. Cen be localised by special scanner (you need to be close). Why you ask? It should be much cheaper than TU to both build and maintain. Thus it's a form of protection anyone can use, even new players. Secret bases could use it to prevent someone claiming them by accident (or on purpose). As the device is much harder to be detected accidentally (attempting to dig is much more common activity than attempting to place TU) During battle, it prevents opposite side from placing their own TU seconds after original one get destroyed. If both sides have such devices, the battle will go on until one of them get destroyed.
  23. We haven't started building peaceful cities yet, and we already think of ways how to destroy it... xD
  24. Yep. If digging by anti-mater weapons is possible and not overly expensive, then yes, it's an viable counter to underground bases. Any base in fact. It means that you can come at night, make sure that there is nobody at the base. Then use "dig with weapons" to make tunnel leading past all the defences, straight into wall that protects some important part of the base (TU, FFU, Spawn-room). Then trigger FFU timer, and when it's done simply blow one wall and get in. Only base immune from that would be one that doesn't use any terrain for protection, so all the space stations. There was a really nice game, the original Ace of Spades (before Jagex bought the rights). It was shooter with voxel terrain. Main mode was capture the flag. The game flow was really immersive, despite shitty graphics, due to true WWI trench war feel. But if map was deep enough to dig tunnels deeper than ~2 blocks below the surface, the whole game became hide and seek tunnel-rats. You could dig straight under enemy flag, without defenders having chance to detect you. All the trenches and bunkers were worthless. That wasn't problem on maps that heavily restricted digging tunnels (by being too shallow, either partially (moats, rivers) or completely) Thus I'm against easy tunnel digging within enemy base. It fixes some problems, but create way too many new ones. Sneaky underground base is IMO completely valid and fair strategy, because once it's detected it can be taken by mining tunnels around defences (no TU). Thanks for the quotes Setzar - it shows that NQ are aware of potential OPness of underground facilities. I'm not convinced by the proposed ways to make it more difficult. Neither really hinder deep underground storage in any way. Unless the "requiring costly cartridges to operate" apply to TU.
  25. Well, I'd welcome that as interesting event and social experiment. So for me (and probably quite some other peoples too) that would be more refreshing than killing the game. To be clear - I'm not talking about any kind regeneration, only about removing at some point safe-zone around the first Ark.
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