Cornflakes

Social interaction should improve the game, and not be a hard limiter

Why not both? A NSWR is essentially a nuclear explosion in your exhaust stream.
 
Nuke them while you are flying away :V

I think nobody is suggesting forcing the players onto fixed paths only.
But interstellar/strategic movement needs limitations for good gameplay.
 
Choke points make stories and cause people to think outside the box.
When they have to find alternative routes, make treaties, sabotage blockades etc

But you can't be everything at once. Because while you're busy trying to be an empire of one, an organisation of thousands is stripping asteroid belts wholesale and turning them into warships and battle tanks to come and mess up your pitiful little tent city on the frontier. 
 
The point of an MMO is to play with a crap ton of other people. Progress in something like EVE is not measured in skill points but in how many people know your name.
 
leveling is superfluous if the systems built into the gameplay are sufficiently complex.

So I have been wondering about wreckage. It seems clear that battles are going to take place, so it's very probable that wreckage will be left behind. Wreckage that perhaps the previous owner will come to reclaim, but perhaps not.
How will salvaging wreckage work? It should be balanced enough that either the salvage shop or the previous owner will have a fair chance to claim it.

So here is my suggestion. Whoever wishes to salvage the wreckage will have to "claim" it. The wreckage will remain in a "claiming" state for X amount of time. After that, all rights within the wreckage will transfer to the claiming player. Should another player interrupt the claim with a competing claim, the countdown will restart with a new claim in the name of the interrupting player. The amount of time X would depend on the amount of voxels in the construct: bigger constructs take longer to claim.

This shouldn't be limited to wreckage. An abandoned, but functional construct should be a valid target for a claiming system. It's a naval tradition. You found it first, crew's gone or dead, so it's yours.

This would allow for interesting interactions. Either the two opposing players could sit next to the wreckage, claiming it back and forth until one player loses patience and abandons the wreck. One player could initiate combat to either scare away or kill the other player.

But what about abusing this claiming system on an occupied or fully functional construct? The owners/right-holders could put an anti-claim on the construct for Y time that prevents claims from finishing, starting, or continuing.

"But what about griefers abusing this system too?" Well first, it should only work outside the Arkship safety area. Second, claiming should have to be done in very close proximity to the construct. Third, the entire construct should glow or do something to let anyone in the surroundings know that it's being claimed. Fourth, if you don't want to be bothered, weapons are ideal. Constructs that aren't protected are easy targets.

While on the topic of wreckage, wrecks tend to be adrift. So what about some sort of tractor beam device and/or a magnetic harpoon which would allow wreckage to be towed out of dangerous areas. Other things could be towed too, like mostly intact ships with missing thrusters, or a modular piece of construction for a space station. A towing mechanism would go hand in hand with the role of a salvage yard.

There's also the issue of servers and load. A huge wreck after a big battle might leave wrecks and pieces floating everywhere, so after a certain time, the server should delete them. It should be a fairly long timer to allow players to recover/salvage what's left.

But this presents the problem of what is a wreckage and what isn't? It might be easy to say as a human, but not so much for a server. An abandoned or unpowered ship might simply be awaiting repairs in the shipyard. Or a strangely shaped construct might be doing what it was intended to do. Or a base might just be so simple that it has no elements to speak of. A completely functional ship could be treated as garbage if the owner decided to quit playing the game and leave it floating in space.

So what do you guys think?

I have an easy to use secret compartment.
A kadpack filled with the equivalent of four sequoia trees, a few tons of metallic ore and a gun.
Good luck finding the gun with a manual search :V
Or by profiling me through my clothes

im with the OP on the "wait months to arrive" thing.
 
yes, getting to other star systems shouldnt be an easy thing, but it shouldnt simply be limited by the amount of time someone is willing to wait while watching a distance meter to tick down.
 
building a stargate, calibrating it that it works at all, determining the billion and one parameters for it to work, determining the billion and one other parameters it needs to connect to the system in question should be the things you have to do to get to a system where you have no arrival gate, not waiting for a timer to tick down...
 
have the player work during that months it takes to "arrive" at another star system.
 
especially in the beginning times where nobody has experience in building stargates, how to efficiently calibrate and run them, how to get the data needed to get a ship to where you want it to be.
 
waiting for a timer to tick down is boring and lazy game design.
implement the same time delay with actual gameplay, with the player able to influence it.

im with the OP on the "wait months to arrive" thing.
 
yes, getting to other star systems shouldnt be an easy thing, but it shouldnt simply be limited by the amount of time someone is willing to wait while watching a distance meter to tick down.
 
building a stargate, calibrating it that it works at all, determining the billion and one parameters for it to work, determining the billion and one other parameters it needs to connect to the system in question should be the things you have to do to get to a system where you have no arrival gate, not waiting for a timer to tick down...
 
have the player work during that months it takes to "arrive" at another star system.
 
especially in the beginning times where nobody has experience in building stargates, how to efficiently calibrate and run them, how to get the data needed to get a ship to where you want it to be.
 
waiting for a timer to tick down is boring and lazy game design.
implement the same time delay with actual gameplay, with the player able to influence it.

I think the reason behind this is to make a big task like going into space an advancement that takes time, right? I agree with others that a "skill level" system or "research trees" to delay these advancements are the wrong way because they are zero fun. Instead, give the players something to do over a period of time to achieve these goals. Like:

All technology should in principle be available from the start. But in order to, let's say, build a space ship, you will have to achieve a lot of things before. You start on day one with barely any technology or ressources. So the first thing you have to do is to explore the environment where you have been placed on the planet by foot to look for water, food, raw materials, etc. You have to build a base starting with basic elements like housing, power generation, greenhouse, mines, refineries.
 
Then a point should be reached where the local ressources become insufficient to build more / bigger structures, so the last thing you can build is a vehicle (fun!) that allows to explore a larger area of the planet to find more and rare ressources. Not before these are found and harvested, you can build production facilities for components that can be used on a spaceship, like engines, computers, pipes, weapons, etc.
 
Once you have built a space ship, you can put some technology and ressources in the cargo bay, so that you don't have to start over from scratch on a new planet.
 
Some things, like highly advanced weapons or shield generators, should require ressources from different planets / moons / asteroids / gas clouds.

That way it also takes time to achieve something, but you actively work in a logical way to get there, which is way more satisfying than chosing a tech or "skill" level and watch the timer bar. If some elements of real research can be included to spice things up, perhaps including try and error allowing results that are unpredictable, all the better.

If we had muti-block-systems would that not encourage team efforts in building a ship. People could specialize in a specific engineering role like weapons , shields , power systems. I could see groups of players forming clans or something of the sorts just based on this. would make the industry side of the game more involved and cooler if there was a team and social element in it.

Source?
Because im pretty sure that they are pretty much banned and that they count as war crimes to be used.

I would use a hybrid system for ship weapons.  Basically each weapon may or may not have a magazine depending on the nature of the weapon; a giant cannon might only load a single round at a time but a point defense gun might load a drum holding 1,000 rounds.  On top of that you can build a conveyor system which will automatically pull ammo from a storage unit and load it into the gun as needed or you can omit the conveyor system and have players load it manually.  In the case of the big gun this would mean either the conveyor or the players have to be active full time while the gun is firing and the limiting factor on rate of fire is how long it takes to load each round.  In the case of the point defense gun the entire magazine is swapped out to reload in blocks of 1,000, though whether this is done by a player or a machine this takes time and forces a pause to reload.  The choice between a conveyor and player is the classic auto-loader dilemma.  If you spend the mass to have a conveyor system then you can generally reload more quickly but that mass is good for reloading and nothing else.  If you spend the mass on another player (including the character's mass plus whatever additional life support or interior space might be required) then your load times might be slower and less consistent but that player can also fend off boarders, repair battle damage and serve as an extra set of eyes when they're not loading the gun.  If you use neither then you can use that gun on a smaller ship but your gunner will have to leave the gun controls to reload the weapon.  It should make an interesting design tradeoff.

You argue with realistic physics, i argue with realistic physics, dont move the goal posts

And its still not gyroscopic but interferometric.

I'd personally scrap all the special case cloaking and stealthing and simplify it to three general characteristics of blocks:

Emissivity:
Every device and block that does /something/ emits radiation over a large spectrum from kilometer wave radio to nanometer gamma-/ x-rays.
including everything inbetween
of course not every device radiates with the same intensity at the same frequencies, but the possible radiation space encompasses pretty much the whole of EM radiation.
with the exact resolution of that emissions being whatever is affordable computing wise.
 
then theres absorption/transmission.
this is again a spectrum graph that defines how much a block absorbs radiation of a given frequency.
some blocks absorb radio waves, some absorb visible light, others absorb IR.
with every block passed the emitted radiation gets dampened more and more.
 
the last factor is reflection
obviously, it defines how much of a given portion of radiation gets (for simplicity i'd say diffusely) reflected from the block.
 
 
then you have one kind of sensor device
passive sensors.
they have certain spectral sensitivities. some sensors are good in RF, some good in UV, others good in X-ray.
some can differentiate single eV differences between gamma rays but can only see gamma rays, others can monitor the whole spectrum at once but cant tell you anything about the kind of radiation they are detecting.
same deal for all of them, just different numbers in their datasheet.
 
you can create an active sensor by combining a passive sensor with some active sender.
you send out radiation which gets reflected and influenced by objects and then received by passive sensor arrays again.
this behaviour creates a lot of support possibilities out of the box, for example target painting and similar methods.
 
 
now we have a few variable sets which are relatively easy to understand but can be used for intricate sensor gameplay.
 
lets say you have an engine core thats emitting a lot of characteristic x-ray radiation.
you dont want to broadcast your drive type, but due to the characteristic radiation spikes its pretty clear to anyone who has a sensor what kind of drive you are using.
so you can encase your drive in a block type that happens to be good at absorbing x-rays.
you now shielded your engine from prying passive sensors, enhancing your stealth capabilities.
 
the same process can be applied to any kind of radiation and block.
if you dont want your enemies analysing your armor plating, place some dampening material over your hull thats tuned to your enemies active scanners so they cant penetrate down to your actual armor layer to tell what kind of armor your ship is using.
 
 
a very stealthy ship would then be one that has very good absorption ratings matched to the equipment it is using and to the sensors which are likely to be encountered.
 
 
counter stealth would then be to find out against which frequencies a given ship is badly shielded and thus can be found with.
say, ship has VHF dampening materials as hull and you use an x-ray scanner instead.
 
 
lots of intelligence and counter intelligence and sensor gameplay without much being hardcoded in by the devs.
encouraging players to design their ships in a smart way.

@halo381
i spent waaay to much time reading up on such things. lol
 
 
i dont expect too much in the explosives department on foot tbh...
 
but it would be really nice to have "adaptive" charges which you can program with specific explosion cones for different effects.
 
a basic "blast everything" sphere.
 
a more specific "frak this area in particular" claymore-like tunnel/door/hallway denial mine
 
a pretty closely defined cutting charge to cut through structural girders and similar 
(cutting charges)
 
and a very fine line (ideally with 1 block diameter) "i need a hole exactly there" charge.
(like HEAT warheads)
 
 
maybe reprogrammable on the fly (for enter commandos) or defined at design/build time.
 
if we go really fancy LUA programmable with multiple possible cones per explosion
(would be more of a bomb pumped laser warhead, lol)

obnoxious font, wrongly written LASER. im close to start to dislike you :V
 
and any expansion would be thermal, its all thermally limited.
 
and all im saying is that hand held laser weaponry isnt exactly "faster equipment degradation" only.
from the calculations there a "light" pulsed laser weapon would be able to penetrate about 2.5cm of steel or 30 cm of flesh.
thats not exactly harmless.
 
and faaar away from the energy budget one has when he casually carries around antigravity generators and space compression devices as we do according to the Dual Space lore.
in addition to that casual availablility of the required energies due to the casual nature of the power source it seems that the heat problem would also be pretty secondary.

@halo381
 
there are no materials known to me that have thermal expansion coefficients large enough to matter at a few cm sizes and in temperature ranges where the materials dont melt.
glass for example expands by 1.7mm for a 10cm lens when you heat it by 2000 degrees celsius.
which is the melting point for quartz glass.
it'd be soft, malleable and useless long before that.
 
true, it'd be less effective at focusing with a fixed array, but with known thermal expansion coefficients and known temperature you can do a lot with a dynamic focusing array.
which you'd already need for maximum effectivity for a weaponised laser.
as you have to focus it always to the correct distance anyway.
 
 
 
and i have no idea how much power you need to power a magic antigravity space compressing rock cutter, but considering that you throw around literal tons of rock... you need waaaaaaaay more power and energy than solar panels which fit casually over your shoulders can supply.
theoretically available solar power on earth is ~1kW/m².
using my ebook reader (tolino shine) as rough measure of how large a solar panel on my shoulder could be (175x116mm) you could get roughly 40 watts total for solar panels on your shoulders.
thats way below anything throwing arounds tons of rock would need.
so solar power is out of the game for the nanoformer under any circumstances.
and that thing can probably be comfortably powered by your suit for a while at least.
 
and dont make me talk about what acceerating and decelerating the tons of rock in the kadpacks would take in terms of power when you casually walk in circles.
 
just from basic kinetic energy thinking laser weaponry is comfortably within the range of the suits power supply.
 
 
space is a horrible cooling medium, in an atmosphere / on a planet you can shed heat by conduction and convection in space you only have the really slow radiative way open, which needs large vulnerable radiator panels
for example the ISS has 156m² of radiator area (which cant be folded up in any way) for 70kw radiation rate 
whereas the cooler pictured on this page (i took the numbers from the smallest 2 fan unit) can shed more than three times of that with a really really inefficient 35°C "hot" water input
http://pdf.directindustry.com/pdf/frigomeccanica-industriale-spa/torri/72786-409229.html#open
 
theres a reason why thermos flasks are "filled" with vacuum between their inner and outer walls
 
tldr: cooling in space is hard.
 
linky to read on that 
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/basicdesign.php#id--Heat_Radiators

i didnt start it, i just rolled with it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You argue with realistic physics, i argue with realistic physics, dont move the goal posts

And its still not gyroscopic but interferometric.

I'd personally scrap all the special case cloaking and stealthing and simplify it to three general characteristics of blocks:

Emissivity:
Every device and block that does /something/ emits radiation over a large spectrum from kilometer wave radio to nanometer gamma-/ x-rays.
including everything inbetween
of course not every device radiates with the same intensity at the same frequencies, but the possible radiation space encompasses pretty much the whole of EM radiation.
with the exact resolution of that emissions being whatever is affordable computing wise.
 
then theres absorption/transmission.
this is again a spectrum graph that defines how much a block absorbs radiation of a given frequency.
some blocks absorb radio waves, some absorb visible light, others absorb IR.
with every block passed the emitted radiation gets dampened more and more.
 
the last factor is reflection
obviously, it defines how much of a given portion of radiation gets (for simplicity i'd say diffusely) reflected from the block.
 
 
then you have one kind of sensor device
passive sensors.
they have certain spectral sensitivities. some sensors are good in RF, some good in UV, others good in X-ray.
some can differentiate single eV differences between gamma rays but can only see gamma rays, others can monitor the whole spectrum at once but cant tell you anything about the kind of radiation they are detecting.
same deal for all of them, just different numbers in their datasheet.
 
you can create an active sensor by combining a passive sensor with some active sender.
you send out radiation which gets reflected and influenced by objects and then received by passive sensor arrays again.
this behaviour creates a lot of support possibilities out of the box, for example target painting and similar methods.
 
 
now we have a few variable sets which are relatively easy to understand but can be used for intricate sensor gameplay.
 
lets say you have an engine core thats emitting a lot of characteristic x-ray radiation.
you dont want to broadcast your drive type, but due to the characteristic radiation spikes its pretty clear to anyone who has a sensor what kind of drive you are using.
so you can encase your drive in a block type that happens to be good at absorbing x-rays.
you now shielded your engine from prying passive sensors, enhancing your stealth capabilities.
 
the same process can be applied to any kind of radiation and block.
if you dont want your enemies analysing your armor plating, place some dampening material over your hull thats tuned to your enemies active scanners so they cant penetrate down to your actual armor layer to tell what kind of armor your ship is using.
 
 
a very stealthy ship would then be one that has very good absorption ratings matched to the equipment it is using and to the sensors which are likely to be encountered.
 
 
counter stealth would then be to find out against which frequencies a given ship is badly shielded and thus can be found with.
say, ship has VHF dampening materials as hull and you use an x-ray scanner instead.
 
 
lots of intelligence and counter intelligence and sensor gameplay without much being hardcoded in by the devs.
encouraging players to design their ships in a smart way.

You argue with realistic physics, i argue with realistic physics, dont move the goal posts

And its still not gyroscopic but interferometric.

I'd personally scrap all the special case cloaking and stealthing and simplify it to three general characteristics of blocks:

Emissivity:
Every device and block that does /something/ emits radiation over a large spectrum from kilometer wave radio to nanometer gamma-/ x-rays.
including everything inbetween
of course not every device radiates with the same intensity at the same frequencies, but the possible radiation space encompasses pretty much the whole of EM radiation.
with the exact resolution of that emissions being whatever is affordable computing wise.
 
then theres absorption/transmission.
this is again a spectrum graph that defines how much a block absorbs radiation of a given frequency.
some blocks absorb radio waves, some absorb visible light, others absorb IR.
with every block passed the emitted radiation gets dampened more and more.
 
the last factor is reflection
obviously, it defines how much of a given portion of radiation gets (for simplicity i'd say diffusely) reflected from the block.
 
 
then you have one kind of sensor device
passive sensors.
they have certain spectral sensitivities. some sensors are good in RF, some good in UV, others good in X-ray.
some can differentiate single eV differences between gamma rays but can only see gamma rays, others can monitor the whole spectrum at once but cant tell you anything about the kind of radiation they are detecting.
same deal for all of them, just different numbers in their datasheet.
 
you can create an active sensor by combining a passive sensor with some active sender.
you send out radiation which gets reflected and influenced by objects and then received by passive sensor arrays again.
this behaviour creates a lot of support possibilities out of the box, for example target painting and similar methods.
 
 
now we have a few variable sets which are relatively easy to understand but can be used for intricate sensor gameplay.
 
lets say you have an engine core thats emitting a lot of characteristic x-ray radiation.
you dont want to broadcast your drive type, but due to the characteristic radiation spikes its pretty clear to anyone who has a sensor what kind of drive you are using.
so you can encase your drive in a block type that happens to be good at absorbing x-rays.
you now shielded your engine from prying passive sensors, enhancing your stealth capabilities.
 
the same process can be applied to any kind of radiation and block.
if you dont want your enemies analysing your armor plating, place some dampening material over your hull thats tuned to your enemies active scanners so they cant penetrate down to your actual armor layer to tell what kind of armor your ship is using.
 
 
a very stealthy ship would then be one that has very good absorption ratings matched to the equipment it is using and to the sensors which are likely to be encountered.
 
 
counter stealth would then be to find out against which frequencies a given ship is badly shielded and thus can be found with.
say, ship has VHF dampening materials as hull and you use an x-ray scanner instead.
 
 
lots of intelligence and counter intelligence and sensor gameplay without much being hardcoded in by the devs.
encouraging players to design their ships in a smart way.

I think it would be a cool feature, so that if someone set up a base on a planet with an acidic atmosphere others wouldn't come there as often. Which would add an element of a hidden or backwater world base which could aid black market dealers and such, or if the acidic atmosphere is to complicated then you could have an oxygen level which dictated how easily survival on a world was. Such as a limit to how long you can have oxygen outside without tech assisting you.

And where does "not make technology a timer or xp bar" exclude technological progress?
 
give the player tools to create thrusters/reactors/whatever from varying materials using varying tools with every factor influencing if and how well the device works.
 
Then technological progress is a direct function of players playing and understanding the processes of building better equipment.
 
With some more intricate components only being buildable by well tuned assembly plants.
 
So the playerbase as a whole has to go through the (resource intensive) process of designing and building infrastructure which enables higher tech devices to be built.
"Teching up" the community as a whole instead of placing every new player back at the start of the whole process.

im not saying anything against storage thats made safe by player construction/action.
 
im just against storage containers which are safe by the word the devs and are able to be placed in arbitary locations / on arbitary constructs

Hopefully, you won't be able to de-orbit planets. Otherwise we all know what the greatest project in the game will be.



Operation : Majora's Mask.

@Cornflakes


I guess you do have a point to that. A coil around the length of a railgun would work more aptly. And what I meant by parcle beams was using te railgun itself as a "hose" for plasma. A coilgun would simply make the stream of plasma denser (in an abstract way), but when it comes to ships, the name of the game is range. We'll have to wait and see how the weapons' attributes go in the game. Perhaps some maniac will make a giant moon with a penis'shaped railgun with a coil around it, pulling the ultimate dick-move when it comes to space combat. Who knows ?

Realistically, probably not.  A volatile fuel and oxidizer is an unstable combination; if you get a situation where one spark could rapidly change everything then chances are that spark will happen at some point in the millions of years the planet existed long before both oxygen and methane built up to the point where they could actually ignite.  One could build up in the absence of the other but I doubt there are any natural processes that could account for the presence of both in significant concentrations.
 
On the other hand this could be an interesting way to optimize propulsion to the environment.  Conventional thinking would have you carry a fuel and use ambient oxidizer for an atmospheric engine.  In an atmosphere with an abundance of hydrogen or methane you'll want to think backwards; carry an oxidizer and use the atmosphere as fuel.  It also means that your O2 tanks are suddenly a little more volatile than they were otherwise.