Thoger

I said ships and not players for a reason, since the strain on the server depends on the number of moving ships engaged in battle. Of course an MMO can have battles of thousands to break silly records - but only by sacrificing decent game mechanics.

Acoording to the picture, the curve becomes steep with higher "skills". I'd be dead long before from catastrophic boredom.

I did play EVE and couldn't believe the skill tree tediousness. The popularity of that game became a mystery to me like the popularity of reality TV or techno.

A battle of 100 vs 100 ships (in the same place) is more than enough even for a one shard MMO, and Star Citizen is instanced. MMO means a large amount of players in the same game, not thousands battling in the same spot. An instanced game may be an MMO, but it can't be one world. It is a bizarre, illogical, split up mess of parallel worlds tossing immersion out of the window.

"Weapons menu" - nothing like that during the actual battle please. In Jumpgate, you had a nifty GUI (not just menus) to configure your ship using eqipment in your possession before launch (weapons, reactors, radars, engines, ECM, capacitors, lots of very specialized equipment, like a "Whistle", which is a device for hunters that attracts AI space monsters, etc.). Once in space, you can group weapons, like 1) only long range weapons, 2) only energy weapons, 3) alpha strike (all weapons), similar to mech games. If the enemy is still far away, this allows to only use the long range weapons to save energy or ammunition, etc.

Planetary systems are very diverse. Many of the exoplanets which have been found so far are composed unlike any planet in the Solar System. So there may also be systems where amounts of certain elements that are sufficient for mining can only be found in the Oort Cloud.

You think learning to build better and better space ships by experimenting with cool, functional components as described by the thread starter, and performing test flights with the finished prototypes, is "grind"? Really? I mean: Really?

I gave up on getting what people chose and don't chose long ago. When no space sim MMO was out yet, people yearned for one years and years, like, "Imagine Elite, but every other ship is controlled by a player - wow!". Than Jumpgate came out delivering exactly that - even improving on other space sims in many aspects even if it had been just a singleplayer game. And nobody cared. It stayed a niche game for more than a decade despite it's briliance - for me it is still the best space MMO that ever existed, and I think most of those who played it would agree. But most fans of Elite never played it or even heard of it. (It would have been easy to find at the time by just googling "space MMO".) A small (but still profitable) niche can actually be a good thing though. Like, if thousands of ships in one battle (which I think is a silly and overrated goal anyway) won't happen simply because there are not enough players to make this a likely event in DU, there is no longer an excuse for dull tab targeting instead of satisfying combat mechanics.

I think part of the idea was to get rid of skill trees for something more interesting, like aquiring real skills from actually doing something and having to think about it, and getting better from practice instead of the progress of a timer bar.

Absolutely. There is something highly enjoyable and aesthetic about true Newtonian physics that is hard to explan - I guess nature came up with something our brain instantly recognizes as "the way it shouold be". Fire the main trrusters, turn them off, drift alongside the space station due to inertia, spin the ship while drifting to have a better view on the station - just beautiful, as it could be experienced in great space simulation games like Jumpgate. Ridiculously powerful maneuvering thrusters as in some games do indeed destroy the beauty of it. For quick breaking I want to see maneuvers like turning 180 degrees and firing the main thrusters, as it was common in Jumpgate or as it was depicted in the Battlestar Galactica remake series. I'm not sure if something like a restricting "vertigo simulator" is necessary to avoid stupid movement patterns. Overpowered maneuvering thrusters play a part here, and also another factor: Smooth movements were happily in place in games for a while already, but then people became to stingy to purchase a joystick and started playing even flight or space sims using only keyboard and mouse. Steering a space craft with a mouse is immersion breaking for me. And it results in unpleassant, sharp zig zag movements in all sorts of games, which also makes most game videos on Youtube ugly. First person view where the camera moves like a mouse cursor is outright disgusting. So the flight mechanics should be optimized for joystick use, then mouse steering should be tweaked to achieve similarly smooth movements as with the joystick.

No offense to you, but you still don't seem to get that I advocate satisfying gameplay over hyper-realism. And no, a destroyer class ship can never be as maneuverable as a fighter class ship with considerably less mass. And there will be small ships in the game, as in the released footage, and surely not just for fighting but also for exploration, racing, or whatever.

I have been coding on a hobbyist level in BASIC, C, JavaScript, and PHP, so I don't have a problem with code. I still think a thought-out UI might be fun and not much of a problem if you are aware of the limitations, and some people will just never touch code.

We discussed this already concerning tab targeting: Realistically, far future tech will always be superior to humans, but having everything automated will not make a satisfying game. I want to be Luke Skywalker, not his great-grandchild who is only a passenger in the X-Wing flown by the follow-up model of R2D2. You have a point: A planet big enough to provide a lonly spot for every member of the game population, and that is also as diverse as Earth to provide different climatic zones, landsacpes and all reassources, would be too much realism. I agree there must be an incentive to explore other planets and systems. But it should be big enough to at least appear realistic and not like a toy.

To me, the Lego example looks more complicated than code. ;-) The Scratch example looks quite interesting, only the garish colors hurt my eyes. Perhaps a system like this could even speed up things for experienced coders; they might use it to get the backbone of a script done and then switch to the code editor for details.

Every few months I look for a single shard space sim MMO that is a player-driven sandbox without predefined factions. For a while I thought DU could be this dream coming true, but I had to learn it falls short on the sim part with EVE-style tab targeting and timer-bar-"skills". If they don't reconsider these decisions, I guess I will have to go on googling every few months.

Good graphics, promising video. I am slightly worried though: Building and stuff is great, but you also need interesting and challenging gameplay, otherwise you end up with something like Second Life. Like, why must docking be automated? It should require some actual piloting skills, where you have to consider the weight of your ship depending on cargo (inertia, breaking distance) - interesting gameplay right there. Also transit into orbit was way too fast. In the finished game, one should have to have an eye on the temperature from friction with the atmosphere, in space one should have the option to switch off computer aided flight to experience real Newtonian physics (which is beautiful), etc. If flying is too easy and too unrealistic, this integral part of a space game becomes dull, you don't develop a "connection" with your ship, etc. Please Novaquark, make this also a decent simulation and don't just focus on the building. Thank you. Concerning size of planets: I want them in realistic size! There will be fast vehicles and ships, and radar, so you will find things also on a realistically big planet. At least way bigger then just 30 km! Concerning performance: Only details of the planet that are seen by players must be rendered.

Grinding is dull gameplay, I am advocating interesting gameplay. The dullest "gameplay", which even doesn't deserve that name, is clicking and watching timer bars to alter some stratistics. For me, a system as you discribe would be the horror, and it would be out of the question to waste time with such a game. I seriously hope it won't go that direction, not only becasue it would ruin this game, but because one more terrible but cleverly marketed space game would be sucking even more blood out of the genre, making it even harder for a proper space sim MMO (no instancing, real persistence, real player-driven sandbox, real gameplay instead of fostering statistics) to get known and rise to a successful niche.

A variety of things which are all boring still results in overall boredom. Everything that is just about waiting for / unklocking / altering statistics for the sake of statistics is boring as hell. Make a game that has a variety of interesting game mechanics - things that are interesting to do for the players (and even gathering ressources can be made interesting rather than a boring grind) - to chose from, and people will pick what they like most. Or a little bit of everything. A big goal should be reached by DOING the things that are logical necessities for these achievments. Like: You would like to have a battle mech. So you can either build it on your own, which requires certain components which require certain production facilities which require ressources from different planets which requires (at least a basic) a space ship. Or if this logical path is not to your taste, you can specialise on something you like which earns you enough money to one day afford a battle mech built by someone else. This is all possible without spending time watching timer bars or manipulating spread sheets.

Instead of clicking a timer bar which after a few weeks tells me "now you have a steady aim", I would prefer to grab a weapon, look for bad guys, shoot at them for a few weeks until I actually HAVE a steady aim from practising. And I mean real skill from real practise and experience from DOING IT resulting in improved eye hand coordination, improved knowledge about pros and cons concerning differnt weapons and ammo types, cooperation in a team, movement patterns during battles, etc. Compared to that, just sitting in front of spreadsheats chosing timer bars to "unlock" things is just pitiful, and not a game I would ever spend a penny on.

It seems I always find out about new games too late, to the effect that I must read in the forums "The devs already said [worst possible solution]." Here: Worst possible boredom with tab targeting, worst possible boredom with timer-bar "skill" (applying a perverted twist to the word) and tech trees. Or we consider this is early pre-alpha and they might change their mind for better solutions if their potential customers come up with it in the forums.

That "we will keep our best stuff secret" policy sounds very plausible to me, and I even can back it up with experience: In the first MMO I played, Mankind (RTS in space and on planets), there was no free building and scripting, but a large variety of units to chose from, like several types of space fighters that could be loaded into carriers. When I entered the game, everyone was building the most expensive fighter that had the best stats (strength, armor, speed). But one thing was missing in the stats: weapon range. I built each fighter to find out that a much cheaper model had the maximum range, so I built some more of those, tested them and saw they were as efficient as the expensive top fighters. I told only my guild, and the production lines were converted. We kept it secret and that advantage helped us winning several wars until the other guilds found out about it. It was the same with other tactics we developped, we even had a paragraph in our statute that passing such information to outsiders will be punished. Concerning the impact on the economy in a game like DU: I agree the best stuff won't be on the market. I see rare resources, standard components, finished infrastructure and services (hired fighter escorts, space truckers, mercenaries) driving the economy, not blueprints and scripts. It may even be dangerous to buy ships (scripted blueprints) or rely on them, since guilds may flood the market with subpar variants of their good ships. In said guild, we had a Foreign Trade Decree containing a whitelist (no trade barriers towards guilds and alliances we liked) and a blacklist (trade embargo towards guilds and alliances we didn't like). Not necessarily, scripts could be bundled with a blueprint in a way that the script is not visible to the customer. There are vehicles and other scripted objects in Second Life / OpenSimulator where the script is set to "no modify" in which case it is also invisible. In Second Life / OpenSimulator there are three settings you can apply to an object you built and scripted: copy / no copy, modify / no modify, transfer / no transfer. That pretty much solves all problems. Copy/modify/transfer ("full perm") objects are usually more expensive.

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.

Concerning 2D I was referring to ground combat which you brought up. There is considerably fewer movement in the third dimension on the ground compared to space. But I'm afraid with EVE-style combat, it really would be EVE 2.0, even to the point of making three dimensions in space rather pointless, since there would be no need to be a skilled pilot making effective use of them during battles. Ship size is quite irrelevant for the server load, it is the complexity and speed of movements in combination with the amount of ships taking part in a battle that determines the strain. You did not read this thread, did you? There was quite some detailed discussion about it already. Again, not at all relevant for the server load. I already adressed that: "Neither in a movie or TV series nor in a game the fight mechanics should be realistic, but immersive and fun. I agree having the computer fighting the battle and the pilot leaning back - or rather having unmanned drones - will be the most realistic form of air or space fight in the far future. But it won't make a satisfying game." That's right. I was talking about small and agile fighter crafts. In Jumpgate, big freighters carrying heavy cargo had an enormous inertia (breaking distance), which, because of full-blown manual control, required specific skill and experience to handle - which was great and fun, and allowed pilots to specialize in space trucking since not everyone could handle it. I am 48 and I want to play with my reflexes involved as long as I have them. But full-blown nanual space flight and battles are not so much about reflexes, more about a steady hand, situation awareness, and, would you believe, a lot of tactics: chosing the primary targets wisely, chosing the effective weapon and movement pattern depending on speed, armor and distance of the enemies, estimating the amount of missiles and afterburner fuel they have left, etc; a lot more tactical decisions must be made when not flying solo but in a squad: what combination of different ship types is most effective, be aware who needs urgent support to allow him to back off to regenerate the shields, be aware not to "steal a kill", is there time to dock / repair / refuel or is it better to sacrifice a ship and return to the battle in a new one, etc.

In Jumpgate with close to realistic Newtonian physics, "jousting" (straight on, turn, straight on) only worked against the weakest AI. And I think there is less to worry about battles on the ground, because the movements are basically 2D instead of 3D, which should mean less strain for servers and clients.

So I understand you are not advocating to fake it.