Cornflakes

"When you’ll buy a good on a market 1.000km away from where you stand, it will show up in a local inventory physically attached to that particular market container. So, you have to factor in the cost (in time) to get there and collect your good." https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2014/12/04/from-barter-to-market-economy/

Well, i hope to be able to build ground based gates as well. For lulz and easier ware transport between cities

Im actually only parroting myself and just agreeing with the other guy. SE has some equipment engineering possibilities, yes, but for the most part it simply /is/ "slap on more of it". SE has no variation of FTD's motors/generators which you can taylor for your specific needs within the bounds of the game, practicality and player skill. In space engineers its always 950kwh/kg uranium regardless of how you build your ship or reactor (as far as i can tell). No choice to build a less efficient setup or more efficient setup to statisfy your power needs, no thinking beyond "slap on more of them" In FTD you can have a large efficient, small powerful, large powerful, or anything inbetween in terms of generators. And the extrema of either need some skills on the side of the builder to be pulled off. There simply is less thinking involved in space engineers to do anything. Yes there are cases wheres a lot of thinking involved, like with some of the missle scripts, im not denying that. But for it to be any good for the community at large and general gameplay it has to be simple to do at least something somewhat useful out of a bit of effort. Programming in general is nothing simple or low effort for most of the populace. Placing blocks and designing machines in doing so is easy and available to everyone. core mechanics only being interesting for people who invest a ton of time is a bad idea for a game that wants to have a large player base

Very aptly put reply to what i wrote. Wow, very eloquence, much arguments, wow. Just refusing to acknowledge anything the other writes with "you havent read what i wrote" is surely convenient.

Well, how do i increase any weapon stat in space engineers? I add another gun. Want more damage? Extra gun Want more fire rate? Extra gun Etc With ftd i can have one core gun and tinker around with the subcomponents to archieve what i want. If i want a bigger boom per shot i put a gauge increase component on it. If i want higher fire rate i put another loader on there. if i want it to have higher precision i elongate the barrel. Etc. With the volume and cost being partially dependent on the skill of the builder, on him being able to cram the most parts into the least volume with the least wastage. i havent played it in a while, so im not sure if thats still valid, but also adjaciency of different components mattered. So if you knew what you did you could "reuse" some components multiple times to increase the use you get out of every single component. Theres quite a bit of skill, knowledge and design in a gun in ftd. Whereas in SE every gatling cannon is exactly the same, and increasing cannon firepower is to add more. Scrap and warhead launchers are no single component weapons because they consist out of multiple components which are arranged in very specific ways. So they are a very strong arguments for multi component weapons. And when multi component weapons are in i'd rather have them be first-class game objects that they can have better performance, better AI support and better interfaces to design and build them.

I have a question: why would a game that runs the actual transactions only between trusted server instances inside their own infrastructure need a hard crypto currency system thats designed for exchanges between non-trusted parties? If the game would run at least partially peer to peer, with transactions being able to be executed on non-secure clients then i could understand it. But as far as i have seen runs everything on the servers and the game clients are only GUI terminals which only request transactions and not execute them.

"because space" (or the real argument here "Because realism") is usually a very bad argument for game design, reality rarely makes interesting or fun games and DU is a game, not a simulation, its supposed to be fun. so why include this big time sink where you can do nothing to further your progress but wait? why not fill this long "wait" with gameplay? building/programming the gate getting telemetry and [quantum physics technobabble] from afar for the jump target coordinates. there are a billion possibilities how to make it take up the same amount of time that are not a straight up "you have to wait this long for this to work". heck this would be the perfect opportunity for a star-wars style "calculating jump parameters" mechanic with player written programs. where the players have to measure and calculate a large set of parameters for a given source and target coordinate to make a successful jump. (this would also generate a great place for smart people to affect the universe with programming better jump computers which decrease jump time) the first prototype software would likely need ages to calculate the route from the first stargate to the next system, probably with weeks of in-system testing of the calculation software to optimise it. so theres still a month or two between the first interstellar device being built and the first actual travel over interstellar distances. same effect of it taking months to do the stuff, but with actual gameplay attached instead of a timer.

except the whole thing builds on that theres independent hyperspace movement where you dont necessarily need something at the exit point to jump there... where would that need another FTL drive form? why would the game need another drive that does the same thing? you also dont have to talk down to me, politeness is nothing confined to real life i totally dont get what you people have with this stupid "it may takes months for the probe to arrive" thing. why should the game consist out of waiting, literally? why not make aquiring and preparing the equipment take months instead of building a small probe and then wait for ages... why that literal time sink which gives nothing interesting for that time. getting the equipment, preparing the expedition, building the stargate should take ages to do. y'know, the things that provide actual gameplay. on the whole "get people together" topic. its the reason why i'd prefer the gates to be the focus point of (at least the initial) exploration. with a gate opening up nearby systems to all players at once, who can build the whole thing as a communal effort and then use it all together would be much more interesting than a group building a ship which can only hold a few people who have the privilegue of seeing the new systems until both sides of the gate are built. even with people spreading over a few systems in the initial boom, they'd have to form new communities there to survive, reconnect home and expand further. with the "new colonies" diverging technologically a bit before they can reconnect to the main land. providing variation and competition. the exact system doesnt matter, i'd be fine if we can make a variation of the B5 hyperspace work (heck, i even suggested something working similar for another game with similar requirements). but i think something purpose built for the game/universe at hand, Dual universe, would be better for everyone than a transplanted and adapted solution which came from a different problem set.

which is not true in the system Fitorion is suggesting and he and i are discussing i've also never talked to a gamer who enjoys exploring who doesnt dislike having to deal with players for his primary occupation, exploring. thats why i was suggesting that gates are essentially FTL ship cannons that can get you there but not back. so every gate construction would cause a new boom of very small scale exploration to occur in its range. people would have to organise to get back to civilisation, but they can follow their favourite pastime without having to deal with flying with other people. and what has the fact that you cant scan everything from orbit to do with that systems with gates will be prospected before theres a gate built? a system has to be worth the effort to build a gate there, and i doubt that anyone with any kind of economic sense builds a gate after only a cursory glance at the system. so any system with a gate will be boring as hell for any explorer. and why should i use the jump engines of my combat craft to get in/out of HS? take a mothership along that acts as a mobile gate and jump the actual combat ships through with help of the mothership. you know, like they did with the fighters in B5. and with all kinds of ships being buildable, i doubt that that tactic wont be used. with all that it takes is coordination. and i didnt assume that important locations would be completely undefended, but the attacker has a huuuuuge advantage because he can pop out anywhere without the defender being able to notice him beforehand and attack with concentrated forces. whereas the defender has to spread himself over all his assets. the attacker will always have a concentrated force with jump-out-anywhere drives. no choke points there.

Erm... how would non-power-players get to explore new areas? They can only access systems with gates, and nobody in his right mind would go through the effort and expense to build a gate in a system he doesnt know its worth building a gate. So any gated system would be thoroughly mapped and prospected before the gate was built. So cutting off non power players from exploration and seeing new worlds is what you want? That does sound frustrating for exactly the kind of player who usually does most of the flying around and exploring in games, the lone wolf without huge resources. And how does your system create choke points or encourage trade posts? People mostly fly around between gates as they want or even just directly to where they want to be with a hyperdrive. With range restrictions, yes, but still pretty much "fly around as you want". And for organised military actions are very few things that would force people to coalesce. Fleets would pop up whereever they want with their hyperdrives. Because they have no reason to go through anywhere where they could be intercepted. They start in some nearby system, fly through hyperspace directly to their target pop out their portal destroy what ever they were there for and jump out again before any reaction force could arrive. Not much of a defendable choke point there. With my system there are always choke points, either the gates or the limited fixed arrival points from the next unbound gate You also may look up the meanings of the words you use, to prevent contradicting yourself http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nominal

I'd make the jumps themself instant, or not very long at least. Just flying around empty (hyper)space isnt much fun or interesting usually. My variation of gates would strongly encourage trade hubs. As the gate stations from which hyperdrive using ships would depart and arrive would be comparatively rare and would have to be visited often. Competition itself isnt bad, i'd just prefer basic exploration to be easily accessible for many players. Not having them bound to the home system while the rich powerplayers are already out and exploring with their hyperdrive ship. i suspect quite a large portion of the playerbase will be out and exploring and prospecting. Games with Procedural universes tend to attract explorers to my knowledge. I think my system can provide the things you list there. Stargates would always be choke points, as ships with or without jumpdrives have to use them. The connections between gates would constitute the regularily traveled routes, as all ships have to hop between them. you can hide yourself in any system in range of an unbound-jump-capable gate, but you'd have to stay hidden in that system unless another gate is in jumpdrive range for you to escape to. And you can hide well without necessarily requiring a jump drive capable ship as well. I also wasnt thinking of using a line of ships to the next beacon, but a self-stabilising net of ships which use the relative position data of all the other ships to calculate and counteract the hyperspace flux. Such a formation could start on a known course from a gate beacon and fly somewhat reliably in the right direction of a target. The distance left to the destination may not be reliably calculable, but that can be supplemented with occasional probing jumps of single ships out of hyperspace. It wouldnt give you pinpoint accuracy over long distances but for reaching star systems it should work.

You dont have to explain your whole concept every time you answer me. How would the random twisting and turning affect it if i fly with a couple of ships, giving each other reference points from a large a distance as possible. With any kind of transmitter or locator beacon. The precision would go up the more ships are in the formation, as ever larger scale disturbances getting filtered out. without many ships in the formation actually needing jump drives. And i agree that the first jump drive ship would be very large for its time, with a primitive jumpdrive and assorted parapharnelia filling its hull without many extras. But it would still be limited in size because it will be relatively early in the game and ships will be expensive. Later in the game the payload fraction of ships would increase due to better drives being used and the ships would be larger due to more resources becoming available for building ships. Also, may i suggest an alternative to the B5 style jumpdrives? Maybe gates can transport ships to a target system in their range without a receiving gate. These "unbound" jumps take more complex/expensive/energy hungry gate mechanisms but can get you to a point at the periphery of any system thats in their range and doesnt have a gate. (If theres already an active gate in the system, you appear there instead of somewhere in the syste) But it cant get you back from there, thats what ship bound jumpdrives are for. Ship bound jumpdrives can get your ship to any gate inside its jump range (or maybe to a predefined gate which you have to chose while near the gate in question, maybe just defaulting to the last gate used for an unbound jump) when you are in the target system you can then decide to build another gate for a stable jump connection or to jump back to your point of origin. This way it would do a lot of the things you are trying to do: The gates limit the range of expansion. Ships with on board jumpdrives would be best suited for exploration. It would also enable players with small budgets to "hide" on some planet in jump range with any size of ship, but they couldnt get back without building a jumpdrive/gate or calling for some ship with jump capabilities. Ships without jumpdrives can freely travel between gates, ships with drives can travel "freely" in range of special gates. That way around it would also make the first communally built jumpgate a big boost for exploration as people then can explore all the systems in range fast instead of having to compete for the flight time of the one ship with a jumpdrive.

well, with weapons having limited firing arcs targetting is to turn your ship the right way that your weapons work as good as possible

Why should i be instantly disoriented when i enter hyperspace? Why wouldnt i be able to use other things as reference points than stargates? What prevents ships from carrying a beacon? And why shouldnt i be able to build a ship that consists mostly out of fuel? an early game "huge" ship, the first ships with hyperdrive capabilities will probably be pretty small compared to later game ships, so what prevents me from plopping in and out? And even if its wasteful to jump the mothership in and out, i can just open a gate and plop out a shuttle and what kind of sensors would i need? Mk1 mod0 eyeballs are suffecient for spotting stars over interstellar distances. And the likelyhood to accidentally hit a planetary or solar body over interstellar distances is about as high as me winning lotto a couple of times in a row with the same numbers. Planets and stars are small, space is big.

this ^

i think navigational hazards would be better placed in normal space where they always matter :shrug: you dont see the next system over without there being a beacon, so how would it work as a map? it wouldnt really limit the extent, just the speed at which it happens outside the beacon range. with space being continous i can align to my target star, jump to HS, fly a while straight ahead, jump back out, realign and jump back to HS. getting ever closer to my goal with every jump. its tedious, but possible.

"and we have not yet decided precisely how and if it can be integrated in the game" "One idea we are playing with is that [...] a mysterious item that can be used to enhance a Territory Unit to the “arkified” status." it may or may not be a findable object but i'd personally do arkification another way. instead of it being an object that you place somewhere, arkification is dependent on how well the planet / city is connected to the "mainland" of the ark territory. for example personell sized jumpgates could be used for that purpose an area becomes arkified if it gets connected to the ark by (a series of) ground based jump gates. so the arkified areas are always connected to the "main empire" by safe pathways which can be easily traversed by any player in any stage of the game. removing server load from the ark and still tying the whole playerbase together with the big coherent "city" thats easily traversable. the jump gates would of course need big amounts of fuel/energy so someone could de-arkify an area by cutting off the supplies to the gate mechanisms which would be closely guarded/monitored by the inhabitants of the respective cities. de-arkification would enable large scale disruptions to generate new excitement for players who are in otherwise peaceful and safe areas. it would also enable once safe areas to become less safe and peaceful due to war efforts and sabotage in addition cities that become abandoned would automatically lose their arkified state and behave like ghost towns, instead of being safe heavens forever despite being abandoned for some reason

and again: why does that whole concept need explicitly traversable hyperspace? as in "i have to pilot my ship through there" most ships have to use gates with or without hyperspace ships with a "hole puncher" can jump anywhere into space with or without hyperspace either by flying there in HS and then jumping out, or just *poof*ing there from a starting point if you can do a precise jump to a position you can agree on one beforehand, so meeting up close to the target is no problem. and you have to transmit data either way, for the ships waiting in HS or the ships waiting somewhere else, doesnt matter. i read your suggestion, you dont have to repeat that i can read it

and that doesnt work with instant transfer jump mechanics... why? trade hubs because theres one or more gates there (depending on gates being fixed pairs or any to any) carriers having use by supplying independent interstellar jump capabilities. choke points because most ships have to use gates ships can wait in systems or deep space around the target, waiting for jump-in coordinates i dont see why you would need the parallel dimension for all that.

what would that do in terms of additional gameplay compared to BSG like jump drives? range limitations work with that as well, and doesnt need a whole parallel universe to be implemented in the game

i suspect the amount of materials is dependent on the size of the gate, so "how much" is pretty relative

hm.. really? i remembered something along those lines in one of the explanatory texts... *shrug*

thing is with "tab targeting" being the only way of fighting in DU instead of simulated projectiles thats not exactly possible

what i wonder is if there are "person" sized jumpgates? gates where no ship fits through but only small personal craft and pedestians.

and eve has no concept of limited firing arcs for weapons, you cannot evade fire by moving to some other point in space except for getting out of range or the angular velocity mechanics. if your fighter has only forward firing weapons your enemy can still evade your fire by getting away from your front. regardless of automatic targetting.