[Suggestion Please do not use a EVE lock on weapon system]

We'll have to see how many people fit on a cruiser. 

100 players may only be 5-10 cruisers.

It lacked precision when I said 100 "players"; I meant 100 "ships (moving objects that are involved in combat) controlled by players". (Edit: In my second post, I even said "ships", not "players".) Avatars who are inside ships just follow the movement of the ship (plus some movement relative to it if they move inside the ship), which shouldn't increase the server load in a battle significantly (should be close to zero if an avatar is required to be seated at his station to operate the controls in battle).

 

When it takes hours or days or months to build a cruiser, FPS paced combat which can destroy a cruiser isn't balanced gameplay.

Small, manually controlled fighter crafts should of course not be able to take out a cruiser one on one (but should have a chance of survival if flown by a skilled pilot because of superior speed and agility). The most effective strike forces should be cruisers accompanied by fighters, not just cruisers or just fighters. Cruisers should not be effective for quick, precise destruction of specific parts of a ship or installaton, but should be the highly armored backbone (perhaps refuel / rearm / repair platform) of a squadron which can't be destroyed quickly.

 

We'll have to play the game to see how easy it is to maintain a target lock on solo ships as they maneuver around through space.

That could indeed make piloting skills relevant for combat even with a target lock system, good idea. A pilot who just hits a button and leans back shouldn't have a chance to win, and an attacked pilot who doesn't fly evasive maneuvers should be dead quick. If DU implements such a system instead of EVE- style "press a button and watch the dice rolling", I will give it a try. But it may be a small step from such a system to full-blown manual combat which I would still prefer.

 

What we do know is that combat needs to be slow enough for various tactical teams on cruisers to be able to respond with countermeasures.

Cruisers just need to be sufficiantly armored to survive long battles instead of having boringly sluggish battles.

 

And, again, we have to keep in mind who the primary target audience is - players who wish to be able to destroy objects at an action pace or players who will be taking days and weeks to build complex objects.

But it makes no sense to sacrifice one of these target audiences - and the third target audience who would like to do both - without necessity. A game can be balanced to cater for all of these playstyles and some more.

 

FPS pace is great when players and objects can just respawn and jump back into the fray in a matter of seconds. It's not optimal for RPG tactics or games where it takes several hours or days or weeks to build objects.

I dont see a problem here at all. Of course smaller crafts should be easier and quicker to build and replace, but also easier to destroy to balance things out - easy. And keep in mind it wil be hard and take time to design / build / script a ship from scratch, but once you have the blueprint and the necessary ressources, replacing it wil be considerably easier and quicker.

 

All kinds of ways to make exploration interesting without combat being the primary focus.

Of course, I completely agree with that. I am by no means a player who is just focussed on fighting, I hate simple shooter games. But as soon as fighting is an element of a game, it should be made interesting, and then it can also be an interesting ingredient to spice up exploration. Only spicing it up occasionaly, not the main focus, I totally agree.

 

All-human avatars in space is not at all realistic.

I don't get what you mean here (perhaps due to my limited English). You mean there should not be just human avatars, but also alien avatars? And by avatars you mean players, not NPCs? - In that case I don't agree. All aliens (and their ships) should be AI and all humans (and their ships) should be players to avoid confusion. I hate it if AI as stupid as a brick pretends to be human in an MMO, that's highly immersion-breaking for me, and I want to know quickly if I am facing a player or an NPC.AI as aliens (or machines) is way more plausible than as pseudo-humans because their lack of communication and non-human behaviour can be explaind by their otherness.

[Suggestion Please do not use a EVE lock on weapon system]

you may not, a battle over the domination for a major moon or similar most likely will

it's a question of game balancing. A game can be balanced to take out a moon with 1 player or with 1000 players. My prefered magnitude would be 100 because it allows battles big enough to get lost in and a satisfying experience of flying and fighting.

 

I think even the Vipers used a form of gun lock.

I don't know, it looked rather tense and action-packed for me. 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.

 

I'm hoping to use a solo ship primarily for exploration rather than battle

Exploration should also be a demanding task - even in deep space one should have to face occasional encounters with AI enemies (space monsters, alien ships or automated defense systems) to make it more interesting. (I don't like pseudo-human NPCs in an MMO though - all human avatars / ships should be players.)

[Suggestion Please do not use a EVE lock on weapon system]

1 shard + massive = high ping. HIgh ping = terrible fps experience, so the game has to be targetlocked.

Jumpgate was 1 shard and delivered great fps experience for about 30 pilots in the same sector with the technology of 15 years ago. Today battles between 100 ships shouldn't be a problem. I don't need bigger battles.

[Suggestion Please do not use a EVE lock on weapon system]

Sorry for my imperfect English, I'm not a native speaker.

This is so strange to me. While there have been one-shard space sim MMOs with skill based targeting even 15 years ago despite the old hardware and dial up connections, nowadays it should be impossible? I don't buy that for a second.

A game as old as Jumpgate is still the benchmark then which all of the new space games miss. Surely it was not as massive as WoW or EVE, and the devs did probably not become millionaires, but it worked very well and was profitable for more than a decade. It is such a fine niche game that I am yearning for today.

Nowadays there are only instancing hells like Elite or Star Citizen, games that claim to be multiplayer but put ridiculous distances between players to avoid interaction like No Man's Sky, or games that sacrifice something as crucial for immersion in a space game as manual piloting and fighting for the rather silly goal of having "hundreds or thousands of players in one battle", as EVE or DU.

I tried EVE, and coming from the highly immersive Jumpgate, couldn't believe the success of this boring eye candy interface to a spread sheet program.

It would be so easy with the giant procedurally generated game worlds that are possible nowadays to hit the sweet spot of distributing players in a way that avoids loneliness as well as overcrowding.

Instead of cramming hundreds or even thousands of players in the same place, why does no game come up with intelligent game mechanics to spread people before overcrowding up to the server limits takes place?

You can make use of the vast game worlds to spawn new players not too close and not too far away from each other, have a nav computer offering alternative similar destinations if the first destination is becoming crowded, a dynamic mission system to lure players away from places that are in danger to get filled up, have a readout of ship density in the map, you can have random hits in battles at distances at which even skilled pilots can't hit other than randomly instead of precise tracking and calculating, and avoid unique attractions in the game that everyone wants to visit, like planet Earth.

Just a few ideas to avoid instancing even without mind-blowing new server technology or sacrificing highly immersive game mechanics. I am sure if dedicated game devs would just decide to think in this direction, a real one-shard space sim MMO can be achieved easily with the technology of today.

It is especially strange to me that a game as ambitious as DU in many fields throws in the towel so quickly when it comes to the basic quality of a space sim - piloting your own ship and fighting in a way that is fun.

I don't want to be a tiny cog in a monstrous machine like a "battle of thousands", I don't want to build a gigantomaniac bloody death star - my prime objective is to simply FLY my ship in a an open world without dreadful instancing again before I die. :-(