SonEasterZombie

Now I know that we know VERY little about how weapons and pvp mechanics will work in the finished game, but that doesn't mean we can't make educated guesses about how battles will play out in the abstract. Here's my current idea about how things may work.
 
My main idea revolves around the concept that there will likely be many "stages", or areas where a specific type of combat or ship is needed, in any battle. In a planetary battle, there would be 3 categories and 6 stages, outlined below: 
 
Category One: Space
 
Stage One: Open/Deep space - Open space is (arbitrarily, at the moment) defined as being at least 5 times further away from a target planet as that planets diameter. On Earth for example, "Open Space" would be defined as being 40,000 miles (65,000 km) away from the planets surface or further. Open space would likely serve as a staging point for large invasions, as well as the location of the largest space-only battles. The key feature of Open Space is the difficulty or impossibility of ground or orbital defenses to assist in any conflict.
 
Stage Two: High, Mid, and Low orbit - While the specifics about orbital mechanics in the game are still unknown (to me at least), they still have a large influence on how orbital fights would play out. If the system works similar to space engineers, where at a certain distance gravity no longer matters, then Orbit may be where the vast majority of large fights take place, as it would be easy to target an enemy, and fuel wouldn't be as much of a concern. If the system works more like Kerbal Space Program, with simulated orbital mechanics at any distance until you reach the influence of another body, then the largest ships would likely stray away from orbit, or at least they would not play a primary combat role. Due to the existence of antigrav generators, Orbit will likely play a smaller role than expected because you can bring very large ships much closer to the planets surface with antigrav.
 
Category Two: Atmosphere
 
Stage Three: High Atmosphere/ Antigrav generator area - This is the area where Antigrav generators play the largest role, and where ground-based defenses would likely become a serious threat. In addition, this is where fully-atmospheric fighters can be deployed by both sides, for cheap firepower. On the offensive side, High Atmosphere would likely contain large dropships and motherships, which release either smaller dropships, Atmospheric fighters, or Drop-pods. On the defensive side, High Atmosphere would be the most crucial point of defense. If an enemy can make it into High Atmosphere, they can reach the ground, where they can start doing serious damage to cities and infrastructure.
 
Stage Four: Low Atmosphere - This is the area where Antigrav generators are either highly impractical or impossible. Ships in low atmosphere will be mostly smaller-atmosphere only fighters and corvettes that can only get high enough in the air to be picked up by an Antigrav mothership. In addition to those ships, dropships will land soldiers and ground-based vehicles like Hovertanks in areas where they are needed. In an offensive situation, it will be the fighters job to ensure a safe landing spot for the dropships, and on the defensive side it will be to prevent it.
 
Category Three: Ground
 
Stage Five: Open Ground - This is where the larger land-based vehicles will dominate, and air support from High-atmosphere is still feasible. Open Ground will likely serve mostly as a movement stage, where ground-based vehicles are moving from one important place to another.
 
Stage Six: Relative Close Quarters - This is where the larger land-based vehicles will become impractical, like in urban areas and forests. From the perspective of a soldier this is still open-ground combat, but relative to the massive size of spaceships and the larger land vehicles, it is close quarters combat. RCQC (relative close quarters combat) will be the most important part of the occupation of a city. Securing this stage for a long period of time usually means victory, as long as the other stages are incapable of resupplying their fuel or numbers. 
 
 
Let me know if you have any ideas for how large-scale battles will play out on dual universe, or if you have anything to add or criticize about my "stages of battle" concept

I believe the devs have made comments about possibly adding more arkships to the game for players to be found in the future. These arkships would serve as spawnpoints for new players which would allow for a new player to forge their own way forward, rather than spawning in the middle of an already heavily developed planet/city. In between the 10,000 years from Sol being destroyed to the Novark landing on Alioth, there is quite a lot that could have occurred in the galaxy. One of these could have been a similar situation to earth, except with another alien civilization. These wouldn't have to be specifically arkships, just something that served a similar purpose of spawning new players into the game, and any new players who spawned from these would not be human. This could be anything from just cosmetic differences to even things like certain skills being quicker or slower to gain compared to the human skill-tree. A simple cosmetic difference could allow for emergent gameplay surrounding xenophobic governments, and having a difference in certain things like element appearance ( or maybe even function, though that might prove an issue for balance and also for people who are one race or another but want to use the elements of the other race ) which could make having a diverse org something to pursue.
 
What do you think about NQ adding playable aliens at some point in the (far) future? I myself am not even sure if it would be a good or bad idea, but I do think that if they were to do it then this would be a good way.

a good question, if only that blasted NDA didn't exist

My first thought when I heard about the way they intend the single shard system to work with ship building and player density was "Well what happens if one person builds like 500 tiny ships and puts them in the same valley, free to tumble around and take up valuable server resources?" Another thing I realized once I had heard more about the way they intended the PvP system to work was that people could probably dock other "ships" to them that would function as extra fuel tanks, more armor, or even a shield if done correctly with dozens of tiny "ships" being flung towards an enemy to block line of sight. For these reasons, and more, I believe that there should be a limit to how many dynamic constructs a person can have operational at any time, based on a skill system. Not doing this would allow people to easily lag the server with hundreds of small ships bumping into things, and could also create some interesting but likely laggy pvp strategies. Perhaps a person could simply "deactivate" a ship they weren't using by turning it into a static construct, which is not subject to physics on the same level. But this also brings up something else, which is how far NQ will go with implementing carriers. Obviously if that is something feasible (it could already be in the game, I have no idea) they would want to do it, but what exactly would be able to be shared across 2 connected ships? I think that should be limited to fuel, storage, and whatever power system is added/is in the game. Allowing for a script on the mothership to control features on a docked ship would definitely be too far imo, but what do you guys think?

If we're talking about keeping trolls to a minimum, perhaps activating a new account would require an upfront payment of more than a months subscription? For the first time you decide to get a full access account you would simply pay for 3-5 months of access, and then any time after that you would just pay for 1 like normal. This would make the upfront cost higher, which would discourage trolls. The obvious downside is that fewer people would activate their accounts, as the upfront cost would be much higher

If i'm looking to purchase a gun design, player-made element, static/dynamic construct, etc, what is stopping the person selling it to me from installing a backdoor or override switch in the construct that will allow them to screw with me? If there is nothing, then that could make collaboration between organizations and individuals a lot more risky. I'd love for the economy to develop to the point where you can go to a market and purchase a construct that you can attach to your ship, or even an entire ship, but if each time you purchase a ship you risk having the thing tracked, self destructed, or hacked then no one would ever buy ships from other people.
 
One way I could see this being prevented is if blueprints have a unique name. Lets say someone makes a very good ship, and you want to buy one. When you went to a market you could compare the ships actual layout to the layout of the Uniquely named blueprint. This could even be an automatic feature. There could be a database where you upload blueprints with a unique name, and if a construct that is for sale matches a blueprint in that database, then in an info tab or something it could mention that it matches that blueprint. This would mean that any knockoff that is made with a tracker in it or whatever wouldn't have the certification of being the same as the uniquely named blueprint. Obviously you would not be able to download peoples blueprints off that database, the server would handle the comparisons between constructs and the blueprints.
 
That's pretty much the only way I could think of to ensure that a construct you buy is actually what you paid for. Are there any other ways this could be done?

Pretty sure the only thing stopping companies from tracking your every move and/or installing viruses into your stuff is their reputation and potential legal trouble. For me i'm more concerned with making sure something I buy is from a reputable source, ie. a way to trace it back to a real person or manufacturer, and this would be true in game as well. 
 
 
This makes it sound like you think I am worried about NQ hacking my stuff. That's not what i'm talking about, I'm talking about buying a ship blueprint from someone and they claim it's the blueprint for this awesome warship that all the cool kids are using, but in reality it's a modified version of that with a prebuilt backdoor and tracker. This sort of stuff should be possible to do, but it should also be possible to tell if something is really what it seems before you buy it.

I was thinking about how a lock-on mechanic would work, and I realized that if it worked anything like it does in games such as Eve, it would get really boring for gunners. If you are just a gunner in a ship and all you have to do is click on a ship and wait then that isn't very fun, so I thought up something a little more involved.
 
The weapon GUI will have a crosshair, and constructs within the FOV of the weapon camera have circles around them. The size of the circle is based on the relative speed, distance, and size of the construct. In order to lock onto a target, the gunner must have their crosshairs inside the circle for a certain amount of time. This time is based on the weapons stats.
 
That's all great, but what happens when the gunner has locked on? well there are a few options, some more computationally intensive than others.
 
1) Ships have an additional stat, "lock-on time". This stat dictates how long you will stay locked on before you need to lock onto the enemy construct again.
 
2) You just stay locked on until one ship dies. This would be the least server intensive, but also less fun in my opinion.
 
3) the position of your crosshair inside the circle is saved, and as the ship changes speed and distance the circle continues to shrink and expand. If your crosshairs end up on the outside of the circle then you lose your lock. This would be more server intensive, but In my opinion would be the most entertaining.
 
Let me know what you think of this concept, and if there are any glaring flaws or improvements that could be made to it.

I had two ideas about this, both of which I think could making purchasing/stealing ships relatively safe while keeping Lua codes secure to their creator:
 
1. Definable "permissions".  Basically an option on a control unit where you tick which permissions you with to allow the unit to have and blocking others.  Think of the Google Play store where when you d/l an app, it tells you which permissions it wants to use.  With the control unit permissions, you'd get a checklist of things you want the core to be able to do, and if that function is blocked, then the Lua code can't perform the action.  Sure, this might render a construct unusable, so you have option 2...
 
2. Ability to clear all Lua from a control unit.  Basically resets everything to default, and allows for editing.  You'd have to 'own' the construct to do this, not simply have permissions to it.  If you buy or steal a construct to gain ownership to it, but don't trust it to have malicious Lua code, then you can just wipe it, making it safe to use, but also protecting the original code.
 
If you want to buy a tricked-out ship with lots of Lua code, you'd better trust the seller...

Well, that would be bad for their business, which, if they want to stay in business would be worse for them - so thats what would stop them doing it
 
 
 
You may get hacked by an outside source, it may not intrinsically be the products fault. (Well except for the fact that it has a hacking vulnerability).

 
 
 
Pretty sure that the maker of the blueprint is shown on the blueprint. So, for example, if you know that CoreVamore makes the "Flabbergaster" battleship then all you have to do is make sure that the "Flabbergaster" blueprint on the market, that you are looking to purchase, is made by CoreVamore, then you know its genuine. Simple, effective, done deal
 
However I do like the idea of having a 3D spinable/walk-through representation of any blueprint just for the sake of giving a client an idea of what that blueprint actually produces. That saves having to actually make a construct to show off the ship (Though thats always fun as a practical demonstration as well)
 
 
 

In real life, universal standards exist to make it easier for designers to create a product that is compatible with other products. We have USB because if every single computer company had a different connector, the consumer would have to consider a LOT more when deciding which computer to buy into because they would be buying into an entire ecosystem, unless they wanted to screw around with dongles. We have standardized aspect ratios for computer screens, so that the media we create fits properly (or vice-versa, not sure which came first on that).

In order for multiple organizations to work together seamlessly, or for ships to be compatible with a nations regulations (example: requiring all ships to be outfitted with trackers that give a police force information about if they are being attacked or hostile) there need to be some Universal standards in place.

A few things that I think should be standardized once possible:

1) Ship sizes. A ship that displaces a certain volume corresponds with a size class. Having standardized size classes would make comparing ships between manufacturers an easier task.
 
2) "Module" sizes. Ships could be outfitted with module bays. These could be weapon slots, cargo holds, thruster packs, etc. Standardizing these would make it easier for designers to create "aftermarket" parts

3) docking ports/connectors: Just like a USB port or a gas cap, these things have standard sizes and shapes to make it easier for things to link up. Now while any connector will almost certainly be a mesh-construct made by the devs, there should probably be a clearance standard so that ships can safely dock together and perhaps even gas stations could come about.

Let me know what you guys think, and if Universal Standards will ever happen in DU or not.

Situation: Lets assume you have an element that is hidden away behind a carbon fibre wall, but you want to move that element up a little.
 
If the game, while in build mode, could allow you to hide/not view items made of a particular material, would allow the element to be moved, then simply viewing that material again would cover the element as before.
 
This would save either deleting wall sections, or moving them around.
 
Food for thought
 
CoreVamore
CEO
Core Design

Rather than cutting weapons up into several different ranges, classes, speeds, etc, I think it would be smarter (and allow for much more customization) if guns were put into a couple simple groups (Size of the base: anywhere from .25 meters to 100+ meters) as well as classifying the type of weapon they are (Spinal, Turret) plus maybe some damage types like kinetic, energy, or whatever. Everything else like range, speed, accuracy, tracking, and all the other stats that a gun should have can be controlled by modules, similar to the weapon system in From the Depths. Want a more accurate gun? Add a longer barrel. better tracking? Increase the power to the turret rotor system. This would even allow for an actual "Death Star" type ship in the game if a ton of people were crazy enough to assemble a massive ship with the majority of the interior dedicated to powerups for the one gun. On a smaller scale, it could also allow for ships to wildly customize their arsenal, like having a main gun designed specifically to take out fighters, or a high range and high damage but incredibly inaccurate gun designed for orbital bombardment onto a city. With a weapons system like this, the possibilities in PvP will be endless, just like they are in the rest of the game.

Rather than cutting weapons up into several different ranges, classes, speeds, etc, I think it would be smarter (and allow for much more customization) if guns were put into a couple simple groups (Size of the base: anywhere from .25 meters to 100+ meters) as well as classifying the type of weapon they are (Spinal, Turret) plus maybe some damage types like kinetic, energy, or whatever. Everything else like range, speed, accuracy, tracking, and all the other stats that a gun should have can be controlled by modules, similar to the weapon system in From the Depths. Want a more accurate gun? Add a longer barrel. better tracking? Increase the power to the turret rotor system. This would even allow for an actual "Death Star" type ship in the game if a ton of people were crazy enough to assemble a massive ship with the majority of the interior dedicated to powerups for the one gun. On a smaller scale, it could also allow for ships to wildly customize their arsenal, like having a main gun designed specifically to take out fighters, or a high range and high damage but incredibly inaccurate gun designed for orbital bombardment onto a city. With a weapons system like this, the possibilities in PvP will be endless, just like they are in the rest of the game.

Lets say I am the mayor of a small town on an unprotected planet very rich in certain rare materials. As this planet contains an abundance of valuable resources, plus it just looks cooler to have cities more densely populated, I don't want each group of friends or resident to own or have exclusive building rights to an entire territory unit. Now I could just allow several different groups of friends or people to occupy the same territory unit, but that would make it a lot more difficult to plan buildings, and could result in griefing like people blocking up ground vehicles or just building ugly crap right next to their neighbors construct. I think a subsystem within territory units that would allow the owner of said unit to give control over a specific area to an individual, who could then control who is allowed to build or do other things in that area would be a good solution to this and result in some incredible city planning and building. The sub-territory units could be as small as apartment rooms, where you are not allowed to break the walls but can build and destroy anything within the room itself, to as large as the majority of the territory, which could be useful for different groups controlling separate parts of a particularly valuable territory unit. In my opinion this would not only result in countless emergent gameplay opportunities, but would make the creation of cities and diplomatic agreements between organizations or nations easier.

Lets say I am the mayor of a small town on an unprotected planet very rich in certain rare materials. As this planet contains an abundance of valuable resources, plus it just looks cooler to have cities more densely populated, I don't want each group of friends or resident to own or have exclusive building rights to an entire territory unit. Now I could just allow several different groups of friends or people to occupy the same territory unit, but that would make it a lot more difficult to plan buildings, and could result in griefing like people blocking up ground vehicles or just building ugly crap right next to their neighbors construct. I think a subsystem within territory units that would allow the owner of said unit to give control over a specific area to an individual, who could then control who is allowed to build or do other things in that area would be a good solution to this and result in some incredible city planning and building. The sub-territory units could be as small as apartment rooms, where you are not allowed to break the walls but can build and destroy anything within the room itself, to as large as the majority of the territory, which could be useful for different groups controlling separate parts of a particularly valuable territory unit. In my opinion this would not only result in countless emergent gameplay opportunities, but would make the creation of cities and diplomatic agreements between organizations or nations easier.

It very nice to have. But i think all the building in side territory should build by Org as they can easily city planing. *Borrow a land then build a giant Pen.... there*. But city with same define building then some unique building as HQ of some sort of thing is a good looking one ?
 
P.s: By the way your avatar make me *bone* *cough cough* feel good @SonEasterZombie

Rather than cutting weapons up into several different ranges, classes, speeds, etc, I think it would be smarter (and allow for much more customization) if guns were put into a couple simple groups (Size of the base: anywhere from .25 meters to 100+ meters) as well as classifying the type of weapon they are (Spinal, Turret) plus maybe some damage types like kinetic, energy, or whatever. Everything else like range, speed, accuracy, tracking, and all the other stats that a gun should have can be controlled by modules, similar to the weapon system in From the Depths. Want a more accurate gun? Add a longer barrel. better tracking? Increase the power to the turret rotor system. This would even allow for an actual "Death Star" type ship in the game if a ton of people were crazy enough to assemble a massive ship with the majority of the interior dedicated to powerups for the one gun. On a smaller scale, it could also allow for ships to wildly customize their arsenal, like having a main gun designed specifically to take out fighters, or a high range and high damage but incredibly inaccurate gun designed for orbital bombardment onto a city. With a weapons system like this, the possibilities in PvP will be endless, just like they are in the rest of the game.

Lets say I am the mayor of a small town on an unprotected planet very rich in certain rare materials. As this planet contains an abundance of valuable resources, plus it just looks cooler to have cities more densely populated, I don't want each group of friends or resident to own or have exclusive building rights to an entire territory unit. Now I could just allow several different groups of friends or people to occupy the same territory unit, but that would make it a lot more difficult to plan buildings, and could result in griefing like people blocking up ground vehicles or just building ugly crap right next to their neighbors construct. I think a subsystem within territory units that would allow the owner of said unit to give control over a specific area to an individual, who could then control who is allowed to build or do other things in that area would be a good solution to this and result in some incredible city planning and building. The sub-territory units could be as small as apartment rooms, where you are not allowed to break the walls but can build and destroy anything within the room itself, to as large as the majority of the territory, which could be useful for different groups controlling separate parts of a particularly valuable territory unit. In my opinion this would not only result in countless emergent gameplay opportunities, but would make the creation of cities and diplomatic agreements between organizations or nations easier.

One thing need for most successful ... Patience.