Context

I don't have a strict opinion on the details. All I want is a well populated game. My general inclination is for stuff to be realistic, take lots of time, lots of effort. Maybe only ~20 times faster than RL so you can spend an hour a day getting done what would realistically take a couple days IRL to do. However, most solo players probably need more instant gratification. While I don't like it a bunch, it doesn't hurt too much to cater to a big chunk of the player base. In turn, solo players will simply have to live with big corps being overwhelmingly more powerful than them. It would be true either way but whatever the end result is. For the game to be fun for me, and we all know this is all about me, we need the game to be reasonably playable for solo people so we have a decent population of players to help pay for the servers and populate the planets so I can have an immersive game. Many of the facts I've read here don't look great. I like the general direction of auto-mining of hexes, but it kinda feels like we got out the pool, hopped the fence and jumped into the deep end of the pool next door. Personally I don't think we can truly balance things until more base features are added or we will need to fully rebalance over and over. Want to avoid getting off topic, but until we have power systems in play...well the whole game is going to need a rebalance at that point.

@RugesV Really, your going to create or compete in race which allows you to put that many engines on your vehicle? Racing is not purely about maxing out speed. There's an economy to races, both monetary and for the enjoyment of the racing teams. If a drag race competition allowed a multi-billionaire to put 50 shuttle booster rockets on their dragster...yeah no, no one would pay to see that and all the other teams would opt out for other competitions. This is full sandbox, We are the NPC's we create the environment. Any competent race manager will create rules and continue to update them so their race is both fair competition and so endeavor to make it interesting to spectators. In our case the fun aspect will be more than the profit, but ticket sales will certainly help put on more races for more fun. We as a community would enjoy a niche item, given constraints so it does not upset the balance outside most racing contexts. Saying that you can put 1000 L engines on an L core and strap a seat to it and have thus more thrust, does not meet the logical criteria for this discussion. I myself am interested in putting on a 1 XS engine only race, with further limitations on hovers and wings. The aim is for it to primarily be a ground based race, but being able to glide further would allow one to cut over sections of canyon. A Racing engine would allow pilots with more actual skill to make more daring moves and win more.

Quick review of my suggested limitations: Guzzles fuel ~10x or more Low HP T5 Item, very costly to build and long time, highly refined Severely diminished power past 75% atmosphere thickness (once the atmo stuff is revisited a drop off above 115% as well) Only sizes Xs, S and M Only for Atmo engines Much larger clearance for thrust border (I don't know whats that is called?) Feeds on souls daily

For racing you don't need an hour or even thirty minutes of fuel. Balance it so that even at max talent one will guzzle through a comparable fuel tank in 5 minutes. Problem solved. On no, have to refuel because this is a long distance race, use regular engines or have the race have an official refuel area where teamwork on refueling comes into play.

Eventually we will also have power generation which I think will also add a money sink

They wouldn't become defacto if the fuel cost was 4-5x, only had an atmo version, had much lower efficiency at lower atmo %, thus making them less reliable at higher altitudes, and require higher tier components and took longer to manufacture. Like RL racing engines, they have a much more narrow range of when they are effective. Whatever tech they use to be more effective at ground level makes them less effective high up. I'm sure some creative people can add more draw backs so they are mostly just useful for racing and people fancy personal "sports" speeders they use for short distance travel as a wealth statement guzzling a lot more fuel. However if all the drawbacks I mentions and a few more other people come up with aren't used, then no, bad idea. Needs a lot of situational draw backs. Another drawback I don't think will happen because it would require more game coding is that they overheat at 90% and above thrust, requiring heat management of some sort, thus also making racing more interesting as the pilot has to understand the track and judge when to go full burn and when to drop to 80% or when to switch to regular engines if they designed a hybrid type with non-racing engines. Or maybe even just make it so there is no L version?

I made the same suggestion some time ago, not the first though. The key thing I would like though is for it to take a couple months to get a regular size tree and a full year to "max" out it's height, if not longer. Also I want a requirement of it requiring a planet with atmo.

Generally yes, but I would rather this not be an all in one system, rather the necessary parts so we can put them together in different ways which meet our needs.

@Shaman hmmm, I guess they need to review almost any sci-fi franchise ever, where small fighters are almost immune the bigger warships and only have to worry about other fighters, small warships and sometimes medium sized capital ships?

Well the hardware technology exists but it will be expensive and I think NQ will be caught between the trap of keeping players and how much they will charge us, how much the better servers will cost and how much the people banking this game are going to want in profits to refill their wallets. If AvA is in fact more difficult as some are saying, I wouldn't know, then it will definitely be one of the later things introduced because the devs also have to make the big pocket boys happy.

Just make the tracking ability of larger weapons have increasingly diminishing returns based on core size. This is separate from the accuracy once the core has been seen, and separate from accuracy once a ship shoots. This allows micro-L cores to lose some advantage, but not all advantages, as it should be a legit tactic to make smaller L-core ships, but not in most cases. If L size weapons have virtually no ability to track XS cores (again, no regard to seeing them on radar, nor accuracy stats once a core has been tracked/locked onto, basically the time it takes to actually lock on leaves plenty of time for a fast XS ship to be gone), it creates a balance which requires fleets to be built with multiple ship sizes to cope of different possibilities. I also agree with @Shaman, different weapon types need different shaped damage and additional features, like lasers being more efficient against shields. Also see my addition to the recent thread on the most recent update concerning how I think power systems are needed before any semblance of a balanced combat system can be created.

Current shield as its coded in the game is just not going to work. First, the hard coded timers just don't work. I have to assume these are just temporary measures until power systems are placed in the game to create more natural soft barriers creating diminishing returns but still allowing a decrease in recharge time. As well as the many many other aspects to shield that make them actually interesting and worth for organizations to actually pay/employee shield system designers for more than just waiting some time for some talents and then plopping down the items. Suggested additions as NQ designs power systems (if you are not already planning these specifics which part of me thinks you are): Shields do not just turn on and off instantly with full power, they take time to generate a strong field. Once a shield is up, well no system can fight entropy it's not a zero loss system. Set the naturally energy loss just from being on to a small amount of say 0.01% per minute, however after a certain point of "over-charging the shields the base energy cost lost from entropy goes up on an exponential level, lets say a full 1% a minute at +50% total charge. Reactors and storage are both important. For storage have both batteries and capacitors. Capacitors would have a lower energy storage per cubic meter and but can release it faster, thus a ship would need both, capacitors to quick charge the shields when first turning them on, allowing them to be off or simply at 50% max capacity to limit energy drain (which honestly ignore the previous hypotheticals, the correct balanced amount will need to be tested by players until we fix all the loopholes which would make combat boring). Batteries would allow for higher energy storage density but the rate of output would be much slower. Some focus on reactors now. Taking from current technology trends, there are two types of promising fusion technology being researched, tokamaks (specifically the stellarator design) and inertial confinement fusion. For the sake of sci-fi story telling lets say both types of fusion are successful with both having pro's and con's. Inertial confinement could be more efficient producing more energy per input of hydrogen, as well as an additional step in logistics of having to manufacture the hydrogen pellet's (like lots of them, and to make it interesting make the process of producing them simple but lots of time, so to supply a single confinement reactor someone has to run lots and lots of industry units just to maintain, similar to warp cells except more time and more industry to keep the supply up. Also, don't make this type of reactor a simple single entity, make it modular and code it so the larger you make it the more efficient it becomes but the more energy it produces. Also make it only viable on statics and space cores. This way there is a place for stellarators on both the ground and in space. On a smaller scale a stellerator is both simpler and much much smaller (assuming the confinement methods smallest size is always bigger than even the largest stellarators). Just add raw hydrogen and it's a single (or very small number of interacting) part(s). Either way both systems will be very heavy. If power reactors and the large amount of batteries/capacitors required to make shields tanky are heavy enough, it will make those ships much harder to be fast and nimble. Thus a more natural balance between fast and protected will be met. Until power systems are introduced no amount of balancing will matter because we will always need a significant rebalance once power systems are introduced. Those are like half my thoughts on it, but the rest are reserved for response and for when what style of power systems are envisioned by NQ.

I whole heartedly agree with overall focus of this idea. These are also interesting specific ways to implement it. I would only add that NQ would need to make sure the types of orgs would be less specific and more generic to ensure the game and incorporate niche "groups" that don't fit into generic stereotypes. I hope is that this game has enough people in it to allow even further levels and refinement of services offered.

I would also like to know, I don't delve into that part of the game.

Hmm, looks like half the problems derive from the P2W conundrum of multi-accounters. Just maybe I mentioned how this would create long term issues for a game like this about two years ago.

Lots of good stuff I agree with here, a fewer minor changes I might personally make a tad different, not going to mention them because I only want to support and the Devs always end up doing things close to what I want anyways. Some of us want to make nice looking gardens! Possibly not possible, but I'd like to be able to flatten at an angle?

OR maybe just a full on RDMS system? One where we can actually write the code for it ourselves if we want something more advanced? For larger Orgs coding it ourselves would make it a lot easier.

I made a suggestion quite a few months back which involved carbon still making wood, only it would be limited to fake looking wood, or simple designs. However, we would have the ability to plant trees on planets with appropriate soil and atmosphere and slowly grow trees which could be harvested. This slow to grow material would be in small quantities when compared to the easily obtained coal, thus it becomes a luxury good. It would have unique styles or be required to make "higher" tier furniture. At the same time one could simply want to show case how long their base or something has been around and plant some trees for the long term waiting a full 2-3 years for the tree to reach its maximum size (for logging efficiency 3-4 months or something would be most efficient then plant more)

I am of course biased, and probably not the majority of the population but I came here for a space-sim more realistic than others. If I want to play space factory manager I want some form of system where once I have a super factory which can make everything and all of it fast all at the same time, there is still a small challenge or annoyance. The bigger the factory the harder it should be to maintain or keep track of some how, but at the same time at the small scale of a mere 500-1000 factory units shouldn't be much of a bother. I don't think things should "break" but I think there should maybe be something which affect efficiency, thus requiring the occasional attention of players to hit the powercycle button to bring it back to full speed. Different things would have hidden values and lots of random mixed in. Then players who are really dedicated to maximizing logistics can have the fun of analyzing and balancing how often the refresh button needs to be hit, and then players who will actually do it. On the flip side, I consider this a sim not a game. I hate simple, simple would be boring like most games. If its easy and most people can do it given enough time...then is there really any achievement at all? No there isn't. I want the pinnacle of any path in DU to be hard to obtain, even given all the time needed.

I'm sure this update is good for many people, and the game overall. But there's nothing here for me as I don't require a hardcoded system to setup agreements. This hard coded system is really mostly only good for freelance work.

Or just lower the HP points of voxels since they are light honeycomb anyways and throughout history weapons have almost always been stronger then defense technology.

@Taelessael I like your additions, if not simply because they make sense, but also makes it harder for people to reverse engineer and take advantage of a less random event in a meta way. I should note, I'm not advocating for say if a single XL Space Engine drops to 0 and it explodes it causes a massive chain reaction and the 19 other XL engines also explode, but rather they will damage nearby components thus meaning 3-4 less hits will also take out those parts. So now, instead of placing all the Engines in single spot, sides touching, ship engineers might but small barriers, or maybe nacelles, or many variations I'm sure people have seen on scifi ships. Or....just accept the risk because you want every square millimeter of the back side plastered with engines.

Well you're not wrong...and I brought this up like a couple weeks into alpha 1...

Most of the time it is, but when you remove and place something down again the voxel dominance calculation goes into affect and stuff might warp

Nifty idea but that's really the antithesis of anti-gravity