CalenLoki

Thanks @Lethys, for saving me all the typing. 
 
I agree that stealth should be function of all ship elements, not just "who has bigger stealth generator".
 
My only concern with so many detection, is that large ship/base/fleet can easily mount all the detectors. It'll be pretty small cost compared to other parts. That would break the stealth completely, as you couldn't be stealthy in all the fields, but you could detect everything.
 
Making detection equipment expensive (big/heavy/power hungry) just makes small fleets/ships blind, and large would see everything. Quite against intuitive "scouts are better small" rule.
 
Making one detector hinder function of another can be worked around by spreading them between fleet members.
 
So I'd rather have general "stealth" (blocks, elements, layout, ect.) compete with firepower, speed, agility, cargo capacity, range and durability. Not against other stealth mechanics.
 
 
 
Regarding visual invisibility - I'm against. It's OP in most games that have it.

I love those assumptions taken out of thin assir.
1. Cloaking means you can't be detected. It doesn't have to mean "visually invisible". It may mean "designed in a way that greatly reduce radar/heat/magnetic/mass signature". It's probably much easier to detect objects that way in space. And visual invisibility is bad for most pvp games that implemented it.
2. IMO being undetectable would be better as mostly passive action - not moving (too fast), not firing, not actively detecting, ect. Rather than active "turn cloak device on".
3. Ship designed to be stealthy would use much smaller part of it's mass/volume on firepower/armour/speed. And could be (as any other ship) built in a way where you have more elements that use energy than those that produce it - thus being forced to choose which system to power up.

i can just repeat myself again and again, no magic tricks in a hard sci fi game !
CLoaking means technology (shape, surface, fields etc.) that reduces the signal close to backgroundnoise level, they don't get automatically disabled when someone attacks. What could happen is that a scanner on the other ship picks up the direction of the attack and thus look for minimal signals and lock on in this way, that would require another module again tho.
Also cloaking doesnt magically disable upon being attacked, only when the module/structure was destroyed.
 
i hope we see heat sinks, anti radar plating, mass cloaking fields etc. but please, don't suggest those fantasy mmorpg mechanics that are highly illogical. (and especially nothing like a 50/50 chance, any random chance mechanic just destroys good pvp)

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.

I'd go for mixed system.
When you log out in the wild, your body turn to cocoon (as mentioned - simplified ragdoll, as system-heavy as stray container).
After certain time cocoon get moved to closest of your beds, cockpits or arkship (inventory intact). Time based on distance: 
time[s] = 60+10*sqrt(distance[m]) So i.e. 1km->376s(6m16s) 10km->1060s 20km->1474s. (numbers jare subject to discussion)
If you logged-out more than 20km from any mentioned spots, your cocoon is permanent.
When body is in bed, can be killed/looted same as cocoon.
Cocoon can be moved manually (i.e. to free cockpit or control seat).
 
1. Prevents enemy from suddenly spawning behind your back (cocoon is visible and destructible until it travels to bed).
2. Prevents using mechanics for instant teleport home (takes time before it moves).
3. Make sure that well-populated areas are not clogged with bodies (all cocoons will vanish within a day)
4. Prevents combat-logout (cocoon stays for some time to be destroyed and looted)
5. Prevents using logged-out players as safe containers for most valuable items (especially on cargo ships).
6. Doesn't penalise too much for emergency logout (because of kids/work/carpet bombing/connection problems).
 
Any alternative ideas that cover all those points?
 
PS. Would be great if beds worked as single-use respawn after death too, so there is something to fill interior of large constructs with. Even better if you can fill them with items (i.e. rifle+ammo+grenades) so players can spawn into battle with pre-set loadout. Such beds (or cryo chambers, or whatever) could be re-filled only using organic mater that is cheap to produce (farming), but close to impossible to transport due to volume. But that's something for separate topic.

2500
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxawXXUqZkw 0:20

What a wonderful place, that Antarctica. Do you accept immigrants there?

You can discuss everything in the internet as long as you stay with facts and don't get offended if someone has a different opinion. Having to moderate discussions about any topic, as controversial as it might be, shows only that either the community members are unable to control their emotions and have a proper argument or that the moderators suffer from the "I'm offended because others might regard the topic as offensive"-syndrome. No topic by itself is offensive!
 
If you want to test if a community is able to have proper arguments just ask them to list some positive points about something they most likely hate, be it a different religion, the third reich, genocide, communism or whatever. If they can give several positive arguments despite being absolutely against it then you can proper discussions about most topics. If you get answers like "nothing is good about that" or "you can't talk about that" then you're in presence of people who are unable to be reasonable and you should probably try not to be to engaged in that community.

And that wholly depends on how they balance it - you could implement all kinds of drawbacks:
- interference of overlapping spheres of detection (reduce effectivity). So you can cover an area with all sensors, but every single one takes a hit on resolution. Or you place them further apart to avoid that, but someone might slip through
- minimum distance to different sensors (and at the same time make it impossible to send data from other orgs - prevents them from making alt-orgs. yes they can still place it, but they would need to man it 24/7 because they can't send the data via lua)
- reduce effectivity of automated turrets
- the more sensors there are -> the more power they need. Thus they'd need more power plants, which might need to be outside the shield
 
if they put enough manpower in detection 24/7 then it should be harder (but not impossible) to sneak past them.
 
Those are only examples and should only give you an idea. And yes, there are ofc counter arguments against those. And I will find counter arguments against the counter arguments....
It's a never ending discussion - and only guessing because we just don't know what NQ has in mind.
All I'm saying is that a simple "FUFUFUFU I win" button as in eve is just not fun and boring. There could be way more - though we don't know the exact mechanic yet

You got ideas for ships? Links ? Photos? Videos? Plans?
LINK THEM HERE
 
I've been following this blog for years.... http://conceptships.blogspot.com/ amazing ships there
 
Hope to see some amazing stuff

I don't see any way of balancing this, and I think it would be more compelling to keep atmo and space battles mostly separate. So if you want to attack planet side, you need planetary ships, just adds more to logistics/gameplay.

I'm all in for stealth.....but not in the way eve does it (cause that's just bad)
 
DU could do WAY better in this regard by simply adding a little more stuff (will rewrite the stuff I talked with beloved twerkmotor about)
- do different type of radar/sensor: gravimetric (mass), lidar (light), magnetometric (magnetic fields), radar (cross section), thermal (heat, obviously)
 
each sensor goes for a different attribute of the ship. We've already seen in videos that DU uses a crosssection in the build widget.
 
Smaller crosssection -> radar can't detect you that easily.
Small and light ship -> gravimetric sensors don't catch you well
Dark/light absorbing voxels -> lidar can't detect you well
few elements used (turrets, engines, certain voxels...) -> magnetometric doesn't pick you up
Coat ship in thermal-resistant voxels -> thermal sensors won't be good
 
all of that can be balanced by simply putting different attributes on voxels and elements: you can build an extremely dark ship to evade lidar, but that increases your mass. Use anti-magnetometric voxels ....but increase the heat.
Balance it so, that you can't build a ship which is undetectable - but may be very, very hard to detect. That has to be an extremely small and expensive ship for maybe 1-5 ppl - to allow black ops kind of tactics.
imho this can be added easily as it only adds some more numbers which then can be calculated just like the rest of the pvp system (chances).
 
Such a system would be way more engaging and emergent as the builder would have to pay attention to what he wants to build - and ppl have to think about different ways of defending their base.
You may be able to build a battleship which can't be detected by lidar - but it's cross section is a moon. Works pretty well against an outpost which only has a thermal sensor.....
But radar would be the most basic sensor - because it detects a simple crosssection - and therefor be the cheapest....
 
You see, this system would be easily balanceable and it would add way more emergent gameplay for everyone (shipbuilders, basebuilders, pilots, tacticians, miners, producers,...) than just having a full invisibility cloak element like in eve - which is basically an I win button. Plus it can be implemented very well with the existing idea of pvp-mechanics
 
 
 
 

Do some reading about how these "base shields" work in EVE, DU's implementation will probably be similar.
 
In EVE, a "scout" with a popgun cannot put a base shield into reinforced mode. It requires a battle fleet to do that. If that wasn't the case, all the base shields in EVE would probably be in reinforced mode permanently, lol
 
So you won't be getting spammed with warning emails, because the effort required to drop that base shield is so great that nobody is going to do it by themselves for the "lulz".

What?

No collision damage between dynamic constructs seems good for gameplay. But I'm a bit worried about how it will work together with lack of any structural integrity.
And I don't mean battleship getting stuck on thin antena - that could relatively easy to avoid by shooting it off.
I mean ship getting stuck at single voxel, one of many purposeful left floating around the base. Because AFAIK terrain voxels don't need any connection to the earth core to function.
 
So maybe very limited collision damage? Something like remove few (up to 100) voxels on each side at contact point, and apply large breaking force. Repeat no more often than 2 times per second. So it's not terribly useful as weapon, but at least can get rid of floating debris barrier.
 
Or simply make disconnected terrain dynamic, unless it contains X voxels.
 
BTW: "Voxel damage will come after the alpha" (3:00), right now it's shock-wave mechanics (so distance based) damaging only elements.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vrf50dZrv4&list=PLA_lhIAGheMGtAygniJs25JDsWgxbfk6V&index=3

It's planned to be per-voxel destruction.
 
Well, it's not that obvious. There are some games where you can build fairy dragons and they are still effective, and some where you need to follow quite strictly building rules to be competitive. It all depends on game mechanics.
 
Example of first could be Machinecraft, mostly because it uses HP bars. Robocraft also goes in that direction. On the other end there is Crossout and From the Depths.
 
I hope DU will find some nice balance, maybe a bit more towards function over looks. A lot depends on how armour and damage works and how important internal components are.

Some mechanics can be also used to encourage certain nice looking aspects. I.e. heat propagation could be used to force players to separate ships into barely connected sections.
I.e. engines create a lot of heat but it doesn't harm their performance, thus they are placed in sticking out pods.
While generators require low temperature to operate
And guns require low temp to initiate charging, but jump to very high ones once fired.
 
Some other mechanics generally dumb down builds into bricks, borg cubes and balls. I.e. physical armour. 
 
And some force long cigars. I.e. drag based on frontal surface or star-gates with limited size.
 
Internal layout can be also heavily affected by game mechanics. I.e. if combat-repairs are viable (armour>weapons) and repair tool has short range, then for sure ships will be filled with maintenance corridors. If repair is a long range and can go through walls, you may expect ships filled without any empty space.
Same effect could be created by making loading/unloading based on physically moving entire boxes, rather than having pipe that sucks items in-between constructs.

Main reason why they don't want collision damage, is that they don't want kamikaze-like ship designs.
It also make things easier for servers, but I think that's side effect.
And I think there will be collisions, they just won't cause any damage. Otherwise someone could just fly his ship through the wall of you base/battleship. Would look silly to have entire fleet gathered in one spot, phasing through each other
 
Regarding block destruction - how else could it be done? HP bar for entire base that have just antena sticking out of the ground? Or base that looks small outside, but have stacks of armour underground that multiply it's HP tenfold?
Or maybe only dynamic constructs would have HP bar and can fight, while static ones wouldn't be allowed any weapons?
Or only elements taking damage, while shots go through voxels without noticing them? Then should they also go through the ground (to prevent single-voxel dirt coverage to be ultimate base armour)?
Or maybe indestructible one-voxel armour in general, making all interior devices indestructible?
Or simply no CvC at all., and you can freely use nanoformer to make holes for AvA assault?
 
I just don't see any other way. If you do, please share.

Only people that can be very unhappy about it are cowards who are afraid of attacking manned bases. Those that can only succeed by abusing the fact that it's a game, and other people have real life outside of it.
 
IMO FFU should have proportional cost (both initial and maintenance) to the protected area.
Something like 1s of mining for day worth of 10m2 protection. So for 20m radius shield you need ~2 minutes of mining fuel per day. For 200m -> ~200 minutes.
It would still make bigger shields more economical, because protected volume rise to the power of 3, while cost to the power of 2.
 
There will be enough opportunities for unexpected attack: against ships, miners, explorers, fields (if they'll have realistic sizes shielding them won't be economical), ect.

According to that video, which show construct cores (after 4:00), we'll have at least 128m long ships.
But I think I've read somewhere that they plan to introduce 256 and 512 too. But it may be just for static cores.
 

The problem with digging is its op 
 
I think you are more concerned about it turning into a meta whitch see no problem with as it gives defenders a really big advantage over attackers 

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).

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.

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

What is not cool about a 'realistic' event of leaving behind what you carry in case you get killed?
IMO games where there is no consequence to this are the bad ones. It creates lazyness and carelessness.