Knight-Sevy

Dual universe uses AVX instructions available on all major CPUs since 2011. We don't require AVX2 nor AVX512 because they are not as common.
This is particularly relevant for procedural generation and even on modern machines, it is a valuable optimization which saves the CPU for other things.
We don't do this procedural generation on GPU mostly for numerical determinism. We need the client and the server to generate exactly the same thing. This is typically not possible with GPU computations.
 
Intel 12th gen CPUs come with two kind of cores:
    High performance cores are fast and can handle complex instruction sets like AVX
    Low performance cores are slower and only support a limited instruction set
 
The downside for high performance cores is that they take more space on the chip and they consume more power.
For situations when computing power is not relevant (like IO operations), it makes sense to execute tasks on low performance cores. It also makes sense to have heterogeneous capabilities on your CPU as in the end it translates to a more capable chip using less power (your slow IO operations don’t take precious time from your high performance cores).
 
Note that this kind of architecture is not exactly new and smartphones have been using this approach for years.Now the problem is, that this is kind of new technology for regular personal computers and the support is not completely there yet. Ideally your OS would automatically detect that a specific program needs high performance cores (it does it to a certain extent). In practice, this is not fail-proof yet. From what I could find on the subject and based on feedback I have from Intel, there should be ways for an application to request to run on high performance cores. I’ll try this approach in future months. In the meantime, as suggested by others, there are workarounds to disable the low performance cores

For now, we are in the dark. Some people seem to run the game just fine on 12th gen Intel. Others encounter problems.
 
In this specific thread, we are only talking about issues with 12th gen Intel CPUs. As of now I am not aware of other new CPUs that might have similar issues.

Industrial gameplay does not exist.
The industrialist who spends time in his industry once it is finished is a bad industrialist.
- Take ore from mining units
- sell half to the bot
- lay the other half in the industry
- take craft items from industry
end of gameplay loop

Any events must:
Be accessible to full participation by anyone in any time zone (the PvP event was useless to me, happening in the middle of the night); As a result, be available over a reasonable span of time (week+), not 2 hours, non-repeatable (PvP event); Will offer rewards to all players with no monopoly by those who complete it first (see thoramine "event" which was terrible). That is, rewards are by completion, not by speed.

We could organize a day every year where all the safe zones disappear.
We will call this day "the purge".
The event will be named "Dual Universe Nightmare".
 
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Event 1:
- Spawn asteroids (like those of Thades without resources on them) a few kilometers from each other, in an area of several dozen SU. At least a good million asteroids.
Organize a treasure hunt in this area, loot box cores will be visible on the radar, but be careful, flying in a straight line directly on them could cause you to explode on an asteroid. This will be an event that highlights piloting skills.
You can also open part of the area to PvP, with better quality rewards.
 
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Event 2:
Same as event 1, but this time it will be in a totally pulverized planet. There will be plenty of debris to avoid and also an atmosphere. The playing area will be smaller, but with the speed limit in the atmosphere it should keep the game very interesting. Always a piloting event to avoid collisions with debris.
 
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Event 3:
Themed combat, with ship limiting and balancing.
NQ spawns in an area of space several thousand SUs a facility where players have access to inexpensive small size XS or S combat ships.
It will be balanced ships to fight against each other in terms of amount of engines, weapons, voxel.
We can also imagine an NQ objective to destroy with these small ships: a station or a large L core (or even an NQ XL ship?)
 
_____________________

Being able to temporarily stop the subscription is contrary to the marketing strategy.
 
If the team closes the monthly payment to switch to a system with a reduction for a large commitment period, it is precisely to keep your funding during an update that you will have temporarily left the game.
 
But it is not for me a bad calculation for the consumer from the moment when the DAC system will be integrated which will allow you again to benefit from a subscription to the month according to your desire.
 
We are between those 2 periods so you want to be able to suspend your subscription. But these are not some things that NQ should allow you to do in my opinion.

------------------------------
 
And to come back to me.
I come back to the game because I have my alpha tester account.
I will also stay on it the months after the release thanks to my DAC reserve.
Once this reserve is exhausted then I think we would be at a good stage to assess if NQ has done what is necessary for the game to live.
(The only way to salvation is in my opinion the territory warfare  and the PvP that goes with it, it's the only game mechanic that could give a boost to this one in the media twitch/youtube)

 
If NQ gives me a reason to come and play regularly with ships that I build voxel by voxel then I will maintain my support for years to come.
If they settle for a universe with no player interaction then it will be without me.
And let's not be fooled if only the solo and selfish PVE builders are left, then the game will end before the end of 2023.

Whether we are PvE or PvP we are bored anyway.
The chests are very quickly all overflowing with resources and there is no activity.
As soon as my interest returns for DU I build a new ship (it's very pleasant) and then well I return to play on another game. Because there is literally nothing to do on DU with my new ship.
Not even a fast place to go to shoot stuff with the last gunship you made.
Not even a transport mission where you will pilot your ship to slalom between nebulae and asteroids.
Everything is bland and boring. There is no interaction between players. There is no end game apart from collecting resources to have more resources...
Where is the territory control? Where are the markets and installation managed by the players?

Whether we are PvE or PvP we are bored anyway.
The chests are very quickly all overflowing with resources and there is no activity.
As soon as my interest returns for DU I build a new ship (it's very pleasant) and then well I return to play on another game. Because there is literally nothing to do on DU with my new ship.
Not even a fast place to go to shoot stuff with the last gunship you made.
Not even a transport mission where you will pilot your ship to slalom between nebulae and asteroids.
Everything is bland and boring. There is no interaction between players. There is no end game apart from collecting resources to have more resources...
Where is the territory control? Where are the markets and installation managed by the players?

Hello,
Please continue this video format.
=> A quick return to the Stasis part:
Ok for the game vision to go grab a few ships with your stasis and let the bigger ships come and catch them after.
However ! Please give us the tools to use these weapons!
We need more radar range! Let the players anticipate the fights, know that we are being followed or be able to follow a ship...
We badly need interaction.

First of all I don't play anymore. So my knowledge from the current state of the game is only based on the forums and dev-blogs.
However there is a thing which is called "emergent gameplay". Which for me means that player interaction "emerges" from the game mechanics.
I think the alien core stuff is an example of that. There is an actual reason to do something in the game which does result in PvP.
 
I really have a hard time understanding the "anti-PvP" crowd. But doing PvP for the sake of doing PvP at least for me feels kind of pointless. It is like getting into a staged fight like in Counter-Strike where you simply try to kill the opponent. And to be honest. That CAN be nice. But I think it is not the PvP people who want PvP in DU are looking for.
In a sandbox the devs should create "content drivers". That is something to actually fight for and not having to do a staged "lets fight for the sake of fighting" thing.
Alien cores look like a content driver to me. But there are not many of them in DU which is probably why people are actually asking for changes.
 
People are probably not asking "give us ways to fight", but "give us actual ingame reasons to fight".
Yes someone could do some ingame roleplay stuff. But to be honest, having to do roleplay stuff because the game does not create enough "content drivers" is not really "emergent gameplay" for me.

You are not afraid that the concept is not real future proof in terms of workload for NQ?
From what I see it is not automated, and requires direct intervention from NQ.
Given the size of the current community, 16 elected seems ok. But I'm afraid that also corresponds to the current number of potential buyers.
But let's project ourselves into the future and the release with many more players and potential buyers. This will give really important exposure to those lucky enough to be selected.
This will also require a lot of work for NQ to regularly select new sellers...
16 booth, 32? 64? How are you going to manage these if the number of requests explodes? Why isn't there an automated perk system to relieve NQ.

You are not afraid that the concept is not real future proof in terms of workload for NQ?
From what I see it is not automated, and requires direct intervention from NQ.
Given the size of the current community, 16 elected seems ok. But I'm afraid that also corresponds to the current number of potential buyers.
But let's project ourselves into the future and the release with many more players and potential buyers. This will give really important exposure to those lucky enough to be selected.
This will also require a lot of work for NQ to regularly select new sellers...
16 booth, 32? 64? How are you going to manage these if the number of requests explodes? Why isn't there an automated perk system to relieve NQ.

The theme in this post is to promote building just for the pleasure of building? I don't know if I missed something, but right now that's probably the most powered mechanic in the game, and I don't see the game as overflowing with builders, you don't need any kind of exotic material to build creatively, and there are in the game immense safe areas where to build for the pleasure of building.
 
The issue is that building for the pleasure of building has two problems, the first is that the builders need to show others their works, and the majority of large works built, never they will not be appreciated by anyone, that is why many builders left their ships parked in the markets so that the rest of the players could see them, or put VR stations in the hope that someone would visit their works, the second problem is that when there are no a practical reason to build something, and improve designs, the game ends when the artist's aesthetic inspiration runs out.
 
Honestly, I think it's having a very narrow vision, not realizing that what you're claiming for the game is precisely the only thing that it offers right now, with solvency, and that precisely what the game needs to offer is what attracts another type of players, with an interest in acquiring and admiring the designs of the builders for practical reasons, such as logistics and combat.
 
One of the few things that worked in Starbase were the ship shops designed by other players, and despite the fact that people bought aesthetically beautiful ships, they also chose them for their technical capabilities, I would even dare to say that the technical part weighed more in the decision If the game requires no technical ability of the ships, why is it a sand box, what is the point of building a ship? or buy a ship? enjoy the views? take a screenshot?
 
We are not talking about a minecraft server, where you build on a plot of a city and the rest of the players are dedicated to walking admiring your creation, the game is on a scale too large, so that it can be a creative sand box.

Some take the opportunity to build in voxel, others to try things and burn the inumbral resources lying around in the containers.
Maybe some will organize big fights once the final announcement of the wipe.

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

It's a shame not to have a core XL.
For a space game, not being able to build a few at least as big as what you can see in real life is a shame.
But hey, that's not the only thing where NQ failed to bring dreams.

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

This is the kind of communication I was looking for. It was painful not knowing if the vision of the original game was kept and what change was in store.
Now we have a list of major short, medium and long term goals for the studio.
It's still much more fun for the whole community to be able to project themselves a little further into the future.
There's a little light at the end of the tunnel

Transporting missions is gameplay nonsense right now.
 
It's literally a fedex quest that encourages you to pick up a package and travel AFK for several hours.
 
Encouraging players to leave their games running during an AFK activity should be prohibited. Especially given the resource consumption of Dual Universe.
 
All this because NQ does not want to implement a warp interception system. In just 3 points we can fix everything:
- Let people warp with their missions. (there is already a maximum limit of 3 missions / days)
- Force a ship to reach its Vmax to be able to warp (in order to keep a minimum of piloting gameplay and fuel consumption)
- Implement interception warp mechanics to balance the whole.
 
More fast gameplay, no afk time waste, more fun.

Spaceman hit most of it.  He did not talk about how allot of engines came onto the market when ships became abandoned during the no long term parking at markets thing. And more recently inactive accounts had all there things become abandoned. 
 
Everybody started out with those engines. As newer engines came into the game and as people could afford better engines they took those engines off and put better engines on. The old engines got placed on the market. Except no one wants those engines at that price. because they too are getting better engines at that price. So the price drops to a point that people will actually but them. which is a loss for that item. 
 
Also if its costing you 107k to make. you dont have max skills. so your trying to compete in an over saturated market producing at inferior rates. Which is not going to be profitable. would not think you need to be an economist to figure that one out. 
 
 
 
 

Hi, Entropy

First of all, thank you again for answering in such a complete way on these precise subjects.
Even if we did not necessarily have the same desires, knowing the motivation and orientation of the modifications and additions you make to the game will allow us to be more relevant in our remarks.
I will therefore try to dig into the subject now that I have taken a few days back, and that we have seen the fleets forming and more in-game testing as well.

The objective of this post is not to contradict your vision of the game, but to help you make the necessary changes to make it happen.
Here is the feedback I can give you on the subjects for which you have requested comments.

I would have liked to detail 3 subjects but I did not have time so I will focus on 2 points only.

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Here is a chart for the speed we need to achieve when spinning around an in-game target to avoid targeting.



It is the calculation of the rope resulting from the angle (tracking of the weapon) and the distance where the target is. I arbitrarily retained 4 values:
- 50km
- 100km
- 200 km (1su)
- 400 km (2su)
The tracking being in deg/s I transformed the distance obtained in m into km/h to make it more meaningful.
 
- The first line is an example for a tracking of 1deg/s
- The second is the value I have on a siege guner with my character (talent at 4)
- The third line is the value of the biggest weapon in the game that should hypothetically have the most difficulty aiming at a target and it is the talentless value to symbolize the worst case.
- The last line is a spin test with an M railgun battleship. In 10 seconds I have time to do a 360 + stabilize my aim on a target.

Remember that the rate of fire of an M railgun is 13 seconds without talent, which leaves a comfortable margin of maneuver to align its target between 2 shots.

Here is also the visual of the rail gun firing cone.
30° cone radius in optimal + 30° cone in fallof.
The further away your target is, the more area you cover to be able to hit it.



Here is a table to symbolize the distances covered by a railgun without the ship needing to move :



With the talents on a weapon we reach a fairly huge coverage, almost 90° without fall off and almost 180° with him and that on a basic weapon without cone bonus and talents not max at lvl5.

(The choice of railgun as an example is arbitrary, this is valid for all weapons, not take this for a nerf/up request.)

Here are the issues raised (in my sole opinion) :
- The penalty linked to the tracking of weapons is valid at very short range.
- Tracking is possible if your opponent is not moving or at low speed
- If you are attacked by an opponent further away than the one you are moving arround, you will not benefit from your speed bonus to avoid shots
- Desynchronization has a strong impact on your positioning and that of your opponent, it opens or closes shooting windows independently of the players' game.
- We still have M or L size combat ships that can do 360° in less than 10 seconds, which still allows near-hand tracking using the adjusters.
 
If your opponent is far from you, the more easily he can kill you.
That's why we think going for the shield is always better. It protects you against several hazards over which your speed has no control.

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From the first returns, we can see a very large majority of small ships (but based on M or L cores rather than S or XS).
Especially a lot of small ships with an L size shield.
 
Here is a comparison of what we find in game compared to the possibility offered :



 
On the previous meta we were with ships which for the biggest approached 5% of the total construction surface that a builder had the leisure to use.
We went to Athena and now we have M ships that hardly exceed 3% of the cumulative surface of the usable box.
 
There is certainly a lever to exploit on this subject at the level of the nature of the game. The voxel and the voxel construction seems to remain a main pillar of dual universe. We necessarily need small vessels and large vessels. But shouldn't the small ships be on an XS and S core category, and the larger ones on the much more massive M and L cores? (category of vessel damaged from the voxel massive nerve).

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Just quickly on this subject.
 
I started looking to make a ship with spacing between different elements so as not to lose everything on the first try.
 
The areas of effect and the damage are so important compared to the current resistance of the voxels that even using a full block (so no interior in your ship).
The surface needed to just spread the weapons apart does not compensate (or very little) for the increased chance of hitting given by the cross section.
Since the voxel gives you a weight penalty, we always come back in the case where we seek to maximize the cross section.

 
 
I think you can try without too much risk to improve the defensive aspect of the voxels a little.
You still implanted a triple nerve:
- Significant reduction in voxel HP
- Added CSS
- Weapon DPS buff
 
In my opinion the CSS has a good balance, it will be necessary to look more on the side of the damage of weapons and voxels.
For the voxels maybe not the HP pool, but why not look into the resistor values.

-----
 
I will end with a question.
 
Would you like to have the help of the community for all things HP of the elements?
 
There are a number of elements in play currently with quite unbalanced health points.
 
I know that for the Dev team it must be tedious to review everything and that you certainly have better things to do.
 
Can we help on this subject?
 
I already have a few examples in mind. Like decoration plants having more points than weapons.
Or very heavy armored doors but with less hit points than hatches.

Where are your stuffs ?
Certainly in our containers. We didn't need them but we took them anyway.
NQ didn't develop PvP, but allowed the PvE mob to plunder the possessions of a ton of defenseless players. This is literally grieffing.
Your abandoned belongings weren't even destroyed, they were given away massively to other players.

I don't understand how NQ can not want their former player back so much.
But reassure you, all will be reset to 0 for everyone. In any case, you would never have been able to keep your belongings.