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Context

Alpha Tester
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Everything posted by Context

  1. So I had an idea concerning safe zones. Instead of hardcoding with no explanation why certain zones are safe why not have an in game explanation and mechanics enforcing a safe zone. While there are many possibilities one could be as follows: "Admin" controlled facilities would generate a shield around planets at a certain limit, thus mitigating damage beyond a certain point. Ships can still be targeted and shot at, but the shields would absorb all damage. Similarly there would be a sci-dampening field within the same area in which weapons can not be activated. Scanners can still target, but no weapon activation. (thus some limited testing can be performed in safe zones as well). I just don't like the loss of immersion where for no explicable reason people can't attack other people in non-combat zones called safe zones (even though combat is the only PvP disabled and you are not remotely safe)
  2. It is inevitable for clean cut PvP focused groups to team up with economy focused groups. I could even see some people really good at playing markets and earning tons of money solo hiring a small merc group just to protect their PvP area assets. Successful long term pirates will either, mine all their own resources, or become privateers, paid to ignore a government groups stuff, and their affiliates, and pay bonus loot for targeting enemy groups. Just take what happens in other older games somewhat similar to DU and split the difference with RL history. The more free form our options the more like reality it will be. The more restricted by game rules the more like old boring arcade games it will be like. For example, since the safe zones are hard coded, interaction and tactics will be very arcade like.
  3. I was just thinking that if there are so many pirate groups out there, they will probably be fighting each other a lot. If one pirate group does not assert its dominance in an area, they have to share loot. If they share loot, they have a smaller profit margin and can't buy enough reserve ammo and fuel. While this has probably not settled into separate territories yet, it will, it is inevitable. Bigger corporations will also secure their major traveling lanes. So just use those same paths which they already protect. Use some diplomacy and contact that Government for a travel Visa. If they don't have a transponder system set up yet, they are behind the times. What, you thought you wouldn't have to pay a toll for a bigger group protecting a travel lane?
  4. I see you are somewhat new, and please don't take this as condescending, but you need to know the greater picture of everything at play. Territories become exponentially (or geometrically?) more expensive to claim. I'm sure someone has done the math, but after about 1000 territories each one will cost hundreds of billions Big Corporations aren't out to kill "Everyone Else". Do you know how expensive it would be just to generate the ammo to be that kill hungry. People will be friendly to plenty of other people if just to conserve ammo to shoot other people. Diplomacy is real and so is back stabbing. Don't expect any group to remotely be able to dominate much at all in the larger scheme of things. If a big corporation is charging a lot of money to rent a sub-section of their hex, either A, they will provide protection for that higher price, or B you look around for a different group with a better price, that better price may mean they get wiped out by another faction charging more, or the bigger faction charged too much and not enough people rented off their land so they don't have enough money to stockpile ammo, and they die, your land owners then take more land. It's a part of the economy.
  5. Co-op with other people? Other orgs? You make this for me, I'll make that for you. Something like a real functioning economy. Your are pointing out the very reasons why the change was made, and why the change was always coming. If a small handful of people or fewer can make an everything factory, there is no economy.
  6. If you ever thought solo play in a sandbox game was going to be fun, you may want re-evaluate your self logic.
  7. I believe the most recent patch with changes to Industry is a move in the right direction. Some of the details may need to be softened, and some may not be hard enough. However, if everyone can easily make everything there is not much economy. It basically stops at the two ends of the market, ores and final ships. This will hurt in the short term, and yes it will be frustrating to some players, especially those who are used to being able to get to the end game solo or with a very small team. This update forces us to integrate into a larger, more complex social dynamic. Contrary to some comments I have heard, this does not help larger groups. Though this depends on what you define as larger. It does help medium sized groups which are well organized and can min-max their logistics well. God forbid we have to put a little extra thought into group interactions. If a small handful of people or fewer can make an everything factory, there is no economy. PS. When I say end game here I don't mean the real end game, rather the being able to produce everything and do everything as if one is on a multiplayer Minecraft server. The real end game is developing a society large enough you need to craft a hundred page law codex and some players spend half their time playing as lawyers, where governments have a whole office dedicated to keeping up with and updating master service agreements with the corporations under their umbrella, and the military logistics officer figuring out how to increase the efficiency of getting supplies where they need to be by 0.6%. This is more than just Minecraft in space.
  8. I'm seriously asking, I need to know if this will be allowed or not.
  9. Hypothetical here, does this mean if I build a robot hands to use my mouse and keyboard and robot eye to watch my screen, I'd be allowed to automate stuff that way?
  10. Lol, BOO and NG sure don't use user-count as a metric of success. According to them the Empire is a trash heap.
  11. Winning is however you define success without someone else telling you what it is. Amusingly, for some in alpha, it is getting as a large a stack of money they will lose once the real game comes around. For me it will be designing 'Systems' which are successful and do not fail under the strain of human internet interactions. This could be an IT intranet system, or a personnel organizational and administrative system. My second form of success is to use these systems for full scale warfare with my group against an enemy group worthy to also be praised for their prowess and beat them. If its a full scale slaughter there is nothing to gloat about.
  12. I think the OP wants to limit people's ability to choose whether to honor and agreement or not. Which would be against the concept of the game.
  13. As far as I know there is nothing specifically written about whether STU's are currently or will be craftable. Due to NDA there is much I can not say, however, I will say that I believe NQ will not set up a system which would obviously be very short sighted. IMHO, there will likely be an easy way for each individual to be given a single unit. I also do not believe a single person will be allowed more than one.
  14. Most of these have been answered very well by those before me, I would add to two topics though. Social norms vs Self Regulation: While many details are locked under NDA I can still tell you that as an Officer of the largest faction currently in game we will be enforcing decently strict and robust laws. We're still in alpha so most everything is still fairly simple but we already have quite a few pages of base civil laws and a couple more simply for urban development zoning laws. To that end, there are plenty of corporations who seem happy enough to follow our rules, though I have heard some companies scoff at the idea of having a government protect them from 24/7 pirates and thieves. Most more details would definitely be NDA but I can tell you recently we have had to consider additional rules on zoning for air traffic safety...since even we probably won't be able to force everyone to get a pilots a licence and not everyone is an amazing pilot. I'll let your imagination fill in the rest. Combat (not PVP, almost everything in DU is PvP): Since we are custom building our own ships and vehicles, and they can come in many many varieties, I expect, but cannot be sure, that the meta will be infinitely diverse and therefore not naturally settle for well over a decade. There is no pre-built paper-rock-scissors methodology and we truly do not know how meta will develop. We do know that bigger ships will definitely require a bigger crew to be effective. There are no NPC's, and once we do get auto-turrets, they will probably have the same accuracy as an eight year old.
  15. We have some lengthy discussion on this topic in the NDA section of the forums. There are indeed "ground vehicles", they are what you have when the vehicle is loaded with kilotons of stuff and can't lift off but can still move forward. Given limitations on how many people you might consider paying to transport a lot of stuff from point A to point B, it may very well be more economically feasible to just pay one person, one time, to move all the stuff, than a few people a few times, and also the added fuel costs. There have a been a number of suggested solutions, none of which I can share here, but just using the terrain tool, means any old joe can walk up and mess it up.
  16. Since DU is a lot about freedom, if an organization really wants you to fly the "company" ship and you decided not to, or many times not to, they should have the freedom to demote or fire you.
  17. Darn, just had to remove a bunch because I realized this was not an NDA area. I guess I can only say, the fundamentals of DU are different than other games and if the research is in a horizontal pattern rather than vertical, where everything is already max tech, or near to it...or rather then research the weapon tech, throw in a few hurdles to produce weapons or something.
  18. Context

    Black Holes

    Black holes would infer possible perma-death.
  19. Yes and No. NDA prevents me from specifying what those attach to.
  20. I was brainstorming and had two idea's collide. 1. It would be better for everyone, including those who want large scale warfare, if it is initially hard to make weapons to kill each other. 2. Lore wise, why would we all be on the same Ark ship with the intention to wake up and immediately pull out those gun designs and begin shooting each other. Therefore I would suggest, barring a few simple basic designs which can easily be lore'd away as prepared for protection against predators and hunting for food. The entire tech tree of weapons first has to be researched by players by choice. We have to choose to want to harm our fellow humans (we're going almost without a doubt, but still). Sure we do seem to have a large criminal faction, but this gives them incentive to invite those who want to play the mad scientist designing diabolical, or stealthy weapons for their dark deeds.
  21. Who said anything about honor. Break the zoning rules or building code and get charged with a fine enforced by cold ruthless authoritarianism. Sure you can move to a different metropolis but moving all your stuff is going to be more expensive than following the local rules. Of course, if you are a mage corporation already located in every major player created city then you are just losing out on business. Long term greed and profits will keep peace and least for the smart players.
  22. Long term returns on cheaper transportation.
  23. Roads will definitely be a thing. I am limited by NDA so I will just mention economic theory. Flying is more fuel expensive than roads but faster. IRL plenty of stuff is moved through the air but much more is moved along the ground because it is not time intensive to get it somewhere fast and is cheaper. With few players in alpha, competition is very small and there is more value in getting things done fast. Full release we will have more concern over long term costs, especially concerning massive projects or large economies where dozens of trips are required. This is a game though so I expect air freight to have a more equal share in ratio. In any case, I think different shaped boxes would be the most reasonable without things getting broken, but I may be wrong.
  24. Even without LUA though we can simply manually enforce rules. Theoretically, some groups could already be manually enforcing rules to good effect. Having items and code just makes it easier to manage, though might be a near requirement for many once we begin to heavily industrialize and small metropolis' begin to show up. I don't think we will ever have something which can do this for a whole planet, some of this speculation cannot be shared due to NDA though.
  25. Since we will have the basic frameworks given to use, we just need to add some more user-created definitions and poof, we have 99% of what you suggest. We just have to do some of the leg work ourselves and everyone's parameters will be slightly different.
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