Shynras

Resources don't regenerate.
 
Let's define:
-LLR (low level resources): common in large quantities
-HLR (High level resources): rare in small quantities
-P1 starting planet, Px other planets
 
1)HLR on P1 run out before LLR (consequence of game balance)
2)Players move to Px for more HLR, and they'll mine LLR there too (for convenience)
3)This means less people mining on P1 for LLR, so they'll take more time to run out
4)The more time passes, the more the mining rate of LLR on P1 will go down (same for other planets)
 
Now let's add a new variable: rarity R. With time, LLR on P1 are running out, so their R (rarity) will go from "common" to "rare". This means that it's not going to be convenient for a miner to look for rare LLR on P1 and no HLR, instead they'll go on a fresh planet where they can mine common LLR and rare HLR. 
 
In conclusion:
-Since all this scales with time, a planet will never run out of LLR unless a group of players tries to make that happen on purpose ( it would take a lot of time, considering planet surface and planet depth, and wouldn't even be profitable)
-A planet can run out of HLR to a certain degree (maybe there's still a few pieces of materials somewhere hidden underground, but extremely rare)
-New players will be able to mine LLR for a certain period of time from release, after that technology will be so advanced that they'll easily buy a basic ship from the market to fly on a different planet (or a different solution that devs will provide with expansions and patches after release). 
-Chances are that after a certain period of time, the landscape will be partially destroyed like minecraft (or the real world). It may be uglier, but the game is player driven, so if you don't like it, just create an organization with the purpose of filling the holes (or conquer your private land). 
 
Edit. I've seen on minecraft clans of players or servers with strict rules about digging holes without filling them, partially cutting trees, building 1x1 voxels towers, .... so an organization can easily do the same thing, and keep its territories pristine at least in appearence (the bigger the org the bigger the territory)

I personally don't care/want "skins". I'd like the armour to reflect the gear you're wearing, so that you know who you're facing when fighting, instead of praying RNG.
But anyway, keep in mind that 3d models and textures take away a lot of time from the artists, so I'd like better more elements, fauna, flora ,... than cosmetic stuff that add nothing to the gameplay.

Since it was a discussed feature on youtube (April devdiary), I thought we could give some ideas for it:
 
Last official statements about the subject:
 
-We are currently considering different possibilities for collision physics. The defining factor in the choice will be how much stressful server-side it will be in a large scale situation with hundreds of constructs. For now, it's just a bumping effect.
-We are keeping in mind the "ramming-centric griefing" as an issue we want to avoid. We can understand that it could be something fun in a RTS game like planetary Annihilation. However, in a MMORPG, such gameplay could be really problematic because it's unbalanced. If we implement at some point (and that's a big "if") the collision damage, we will consider an idea that should prevent the abuse of such issue.
 
The objective of this topic is to discuss ways to have collisions without stressing too much the servers. A few basic ideas:
 
1)Collision damage requires works only after a certain speed threshold (like, only collision happening with a relative speed higher than X (fixed amount) generates damage). This would reduce by a lot the amount of collisions happening (lag, and so on), since X needs to be high enough so that only construct that are built by design for that purpose (high speed, so mostly small ships) can cause damage. This also prevents you from causing damage to the ground or other nearby construct when you land or when you move close to other entities (since most of those activities happens at slow speed)
 
2)A special voxel is able to cause damage, while other don't. This voxel has some drawback (like high weight or cost) so that it's not on every construct and doesn't start a demolition derby. Those specialized ships will just have some of those voxels on the front. When this block deal damage takes back a portion of it, so that you can crash a couple of time on your opponent before it becomes uneffective. 
 
3)A cooldown on each construct that prevent multiple collisions in a small amount of time to happen (when you crash into a ship, usually you hit that many times). But this requires collision to have a bigger effect, otherwise would get unconsistent. This would reduce the amount of collisions, so the load of the servers (not sure if it's enough), would work on any ship but it is kinda wierd: players would need an unimmersive cooldown counter, and what happens when your ship is on cooldown and your opponent's is not?
 
PS. sorry for the white quote, but it happens everytime i copypaste something

@Lethys there's not 1 layer, the game works with physics already, you can orbit at the altitude you want. They may choose to create an element to set you on predefined orbits, for people that don't know how to do that, but that doesn't mean that will be the only way. To orbit you just need planet gravity and a construct moving, they don't need to do anything, it comes with physics
 
The question is, what if we go offline, does the construct keep moving even if the map is not loaded? There'll be attriction in space? May lag, synch or whatever related to the server kick out a construct from an orbit in the long term?

Because 50k simulated entities is a lot and it's very expensive since they'd have to rent them. Btw huge battles doesn't mean high density, people will be spread all over a very big zone so you'll likely not even see and load people very far away. 

Because 50k simulated entities is a lot and it's very expensive since they'd have to rent them. Btw huge battles doesn't mean high density, people will be spread all over a very big zone so you'll likely not even see and load people very far away. 

They'll get to that, for now they're adding the most basic and easy to add elements. A sensor that tells you that your base it's being attacked it's not a big deal, while camera blocks may be harder to add, especially if you want to display them on a screen (means that you have to load a portion of map for each camera block even if there are no players there). It may be feasible to have a low update rate for those camera views, but it would still consume ram on the servers. Or maybe you could access those only by replacing completely your view, so you'd load only one portion of map at any given time. 

Magic.

What is confirmed :The alpha is meant to fix bugs and test things, it's not early access and some features necessary to make the sandbox work will be missing. There'll be a wipe at the end of alpha and at the end of beta.
My guess: they'll make us play the base game with all the features they have ready, like building and mining, since they decided to delay it to september specifically to give us a better experience, so they'll likely use it not only to test but to promote the game (so probably no NDA, i mean JC has never been scared of showing the state of the game). As far as we know (from the first devidiary i think) they already have a testing server with bots running fulltime (not sure if it's still the case), so since alpha players are not that many, I wouldn't be surprised if they'll keep the servers running most of the time. Another reason for that to happen is to test stuff you'd need more time to develop (big ships, rare bugs, ...) and to understand better how the player behaviour will shape the sandbox in the long term

What is confirmed :The alpha is meant to fix bugs and test things, it's not early access and some features necessary to make the sandbox work will be missing. There'll be a wipe at the end of alpha and at the end of beta.
My guess: they'll make us play the base game with all the features they have ready, like building and mining, since they decided to delay it to september specifically to give us a better experience, so they'll likely use it not only to test but to promote the game (so probably no NDA, i mean JC has never been scared of showing the state of the game). As far as we know (from the first devidiary i think) they already have a testing server with bots running fulltime (not sure if it's still the case), so since alpha players are not that many, I wouldn't be surprised if they'll keep the servers running most of the time. Another reason for that to happen is to test stuff you'd need more time to develop (big ships, rare bugs, ...) and to understand better how the player behaviour will shape the sandbox in the long term

People play wow because they like it and because they're familiar with it. Someone doesn't necessarely need to have some kind of sickness if has a different opinion than yours.
 
Freemium, skill points cap is a big deal. 
 
 
The base game is free, there'll probably a free trial period so you can try the game before paying your first subscription. So they'll make money only if the game will be good enough, for people to play and pay for it for a long period of time. Doesn't get more honest than that. 
 
F2P model that earns more than P2P? No way. Why Wildstar tried so hard to be P2P? Why TESO? Why Blizzard doesn't make WOW F2P if it gets more money? F2P earns more than P2P only when the game is so dead that noone is playing it, at that point F2P can get you some players at least. That said, people pay for P2W stuff mostly, there's no game out there that survives only with cosmetic stuff.
F2P is about acquiring more players thanks to the "free" bait, they're not loyal and they'll leave soon. P2P is the opposite, it discourage people (like you) but has more loyal players (that is what the game needs, since the character progression is very long). If they think is too much they can buy the sub in game when they can't afford it with real money or play something else (they wouldn't have spent much anyway). 
P2P doesn't force devs actually. They're free to choose the expansion theme and the stuff they put in it. They can do an expansion about graphical improvements or character customization, or something else that it's hard to sell as an expansion (you can't really add new dungeons, classes and skills in a game like DU, right?) They don't have to sell the boxes, they don't have a timeline, they're just supposed to the best they can. So, I don't really get it, to me P2P seems a lot more comfortable for them.

No, having multiple players who have characters with the same in-game name doesn't bring only benefits, far from it.
While it can viewed as coold feature from a player point of view, it's not for a MMORPG, especially when trading/economy and/or politics are a big part of the gameplay.
What about the problems generated by:
- A player takes the same character name than the character of another player he hates to scam people in-game => Destroy the reputation of the targeted player.
- A player takes the same character name than the character of another player he hates to insult people in-game => Destroy the reputation of the targeted player.
- A player takes the same character name than the character of another player he hates to kill people in-game => Destroy the reputation of the targeted player.
 
Attempts of impersonating another player through a similar character is forbidden, so the first step to prevent that is to prevent two players to have the same in-game name. Allowing this in a MMORPG, especially in a sandbox one, would be completely irresponsible. This is one of the main reasons why no reknown MMORPG allows such thing.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

DU is not similar to SE, I don't understand why people keep comparing it. The best way to describe it is "Eve Online with Minecraft features", and it's way different than "Minecraft with Eve Online features". I'm saying that even because I'm afraid someone could get the wrong idea about this game.
 
Regarding Op question, mining elements that you can mount on construct have not been confirmed. I think I heard them saying something like "maybe, as long there's a player manually mining", that considering their vision about the game, it's a realistic assumption even if I remember wrong. As long as it doesn't break the game, they'd like to add everything (following a list of priorities though)
 
Mining with a ship would consume more energy (if you'd mine more than by hand), the equipment is expensive, it's more risky since your ship is valuable and mining is mostly a pvp activity, so there's no need for further balance to reward the "by hand" mining players

DU is not similar to SE, I don't understand why people keep comparing it. The best way to describe it is "Eve Online with Minecraft features", and it's way different than "Minecraft with Eve Online features". I'm saying that even because I'm afraid someone could get the wrong idea about this game.
 
Regarding Op question, mining elements that you can mount on construct have not been confirmed. I think I heard them saying something like "maybe, as long there's a player manually mining", that considering their vision about the game, it's a realistic assumption even if I remember wrong. As long as it doesn't break the game, they'd like to add everything (following a list of priorities though)
 
Mining with a ship would consume more energy (if you'd mine more than by hand), the equipment is expensive, it's more risky since your ship is valuable and mining is mostly a pvp activity, so there's no need for further balance to reward the "by hand" mining players

Why do you feel the need for that? Free means cheaters and gold farmer. Free means higher prices on DACs and devaluation on resources for paying players because f2p players will spend their days mining, trying to get a DAC, and having a bad experience while doing so.
And you'd need to lock access to each element, because each on its own can provide some form of gameplay (to manage elements on a multicrew ship, or just to shoot with a rifle, you'd not need to pay), since his game doesn't work like eve in this regard. Then the community would become toxic and a lot of people would abuse free accounts to check markets far awsy, "teleport", spy, and do some other tasks that requires a simple puppet standing somewhere. I only see a lot of bad things, just to please a couple of kids that can't afford to pay 10$/month and that wouldn't contribute much to the game, since their gameplay would be extremely limited and they'll spend their time mining for weeks just to be able to come out from the freemium hell. The business model is decided already, give up with this kind of threads.

I'll literally melt his heart with this, my most fierce assassin:
 

We talked about that already a little bit (i didn't find the thread so i'm opening a new one), NQ said, it would be a problem to check every single image to be sure they're appropriate and fit the game in its style and lore. That's fine, I knew that already that too much freedom in this regard to players could cause issues. But i'm wondering, instead of having no option to create a custom image (yea maybe there's an editor in game, but even with that we will never be able to really create a logo exactly how we want), what if you make it extremely expensive?
 
How would it work:
-If we want user made images that we upload from our pc to the game, there's need for a check from the devs to avoid unappropriate images.
-This would take an enourmus amount of time if people starts uploading a huge amount of images, and this would happen if this feature comes for free. So this feature need to have a price and be expensive to reduce the amount of images they'd have to check.
-We can't create gold sinks since the economy will be player driven, so we can't use the ingame currency to use this feature. The price needs to be in ingame resources or DAC/real money. 
-Both resources or DAC are the same, since you can trade resources for DACs and viceversa, so it doesn't bother to me either, but i guess a lot of people wouldn't understand this, so maybe it could be better to stick to resources (I'm not sure if NQ thinks it's a viable way, but if it is really expensive, people would buy DACs anyway to trade for gold and then for resources, to use the feature). At the end of the day, if they're getting paid 5$ translated into resources for each image uploaded that they have to check, I think it's a nice way for them to make some more cash and give the people who wants a little bit more customization, add their own designed logo (imagine all the organizations already on the community portal, you'd have to change your logo if there's only an editor ingame). Ofc an ingame editor that is cheap/free for everyone to use would still be an option.
 
EDIT: I'm referring mostly to images for organizations logos, not stickers you'd just paint an entire city with. 

Yes, and it's not free, not even that cheap if i remember correctly. 

Why 156/year? They said the monthly subscription will probably be around 10/13 (euros or dollars i don't remember) depending on how many months you buy in the same package. So you're likely going to pay something around 120$, that is like 2 "AAA" games (and you get for free 1-2 expansion/year, that you'd pay anyway otherwise). If you prefer you can buy 2 "AAA" games that will provide 20 hours of gameplay each if you're lucky, to me 120$ for a year of gameplay seems better
 
If the game is really going to be as good as they said, the price is not a problem.

I personally don't care/want "skins". I'd like the armour to reflect the gear you're wearing, so that you know who you're facing when fighting, instead of praying RNG.
But anyway, keep in mind that 3d models and textures take away a lot of time from the artists, so I'd like better more elements, fauna, flora ,... than cosmetic stuff that add nothing to the gameplay.

Why 156/year? They said the monthly subscription will probably be around 10/13 (euros or dollars i don't remember) depending on how many months you buy in the same package. So you're likely going to pay something around 120$, that is like 2 "AAA" games (and you get for free 1-2 expansion/year, that you'd pay anyway otherwise). If you prefer you can buy 2 "AAA" games that will provide 20 hours of gameplay each if you're lucky, to me 120$ for a year of gameplay seems better
 
If the game is really going to be as good as they said, the price is not a problem.

Why 156/year? They said the monthly subscription will probably be around 10/13 (euros or dollars i don't remember) depending on how many months you buy in the same package. So you're likely going to pay something around 120$, that is like 2 "AAA" games (and you get for free 1-2 expansion/year, that you'd pay anyway otherwise). If you prefer you can buy 2 "AAA" games that will provide 20 hours of gameplay each if you're lucky, to me 120$ for a year of gameplay seems better
 
If the game is really going to be as good as they said, the price is not a problem.

Why 156/year? They said the monthly subscription will probably be around 10/13 (euros or dollars i don't remember) depending on how many months you buy in the same package. So you're likely going to pay something around 120$, that is like 2 "AAA" games (and you get for free 1-2 expansion/year, that you'd pay anyway otherwise). If you prefer you can buy 2 "AAA" games that will provide 20 hours of gameplay each if you're lucky, to me 120$ for a year of gameplay seems better
 
If the game is really going to be as good as they said, the price is not a problem.

1.There should be 2 version of the core unit (the first element you place to build a construct), one is static and let you build on the same grid of a planet/asteroid so it cannot move, one is dynamic and create a new grid for a mobile construct. To switch your house (static) to a mobile construct it's probably not enough to just switch the core units, you'll need some kind of merge element i guess (like in space engineers), and this will happen but after release. For now you can stick you house to the ground with landing gear, so it's still a mobile construct but it doesn't move (but probably dynamic core units are more limited than the statics (size and costs), and there's a risk that someone could steal your house too). 
 
2.There is no technical limit but they stated that there'll be different levels of core units (tier1, tier2, ...) and each of them will have a maximum size, so that there is a certain level of progression and people don't just build a deathstar day one. You can technically build a limitless construct without using a core unit, but it wouldn't have a owner, and I don't even know if it would work. I expect this limits to be quite large anyway, and after release, when they'll add the merge block, you'll be able to stack multiple core units to build a limitless construct.
 
3.No, first of all because noone will ever be able to build a construct so big that has his own gravity. Secondly because if it works for bigger construct, even small construct would have to generate a small amount of gravity. Having hundreds sources of gravity in a large battle it's bad for the client and servers, nor it provide any gameplay. There'll maybe be a gravity generator though, so that you don't float all the time while in a station. 
 
4.Constructs never disappear, since they're made out of voxels. Even if you want to sell your ship, you'll place it in a zone marked by the market unit, and someone that wants to buy one will come in this parking area and choose the one he wants, it never becomes an item. 

We know that orbiting is going to be possible, but there'll be no automated way of doing it, so it's going to be quite hard for most people to understand how to do it. Here you go, an org specialized on sending constructs in orbit, or to build them directly there.
 
-Why would you want something to orbit a planet? 
Ofc it's more accessible for ships, since we know there will be different thrusters for different types of atmospheres, a ship that doesn't have the right thrusters can't land on a planet for fuel or anything else. An orbital station is also useful to park your ship and land on the planet with a rover or specific construct made for that. 
Orbiting is also useful since it's mobile and harder to attack (harder target to hit and the attackers would need to move constantly towards the station, consuming a large amount of fuel  and becoming an easier target if the orbiting speed is high enough. Depending on the orbit you choose, you could actually restrict certain types of ships (that are not fast enough to reach orbital speed) to reach your station. 
Maybe even an orbital defense system, radar system, or more, depending on the elements we will have at our disposal.
 
-Well, I could just build a station in space that doesn't move, right?
You can, but keep in mind: being close to a planet is a good way to advertise your station (everyone that has the planet as a destination will see your station), and you can't be close to a planet with a station that doesn't move or orbit, you'd be attracted and smashed on the ground. And if you're too far away from the planet you ofc become a second choice (and in deep space you'll see black markets).
 
-What an org like this one would really do?
You'd need to calculate gravity by testing (if devs will not provide the data with some element) for each single planet/asteroid you need. 
Calculate both the vertical and horizontal speed you need to reach orbit.
Learn how to send constructs on different orbits, with different heights and speeds, for different purposes.
Find cheap ways to send an already built construct in orbit.
Find ways to build a construct while already in orbit.
Find a way to mantain a construct in orbit (since a station weight changes depending on construct, resources and people that land on it, speed could also change, and over time you station could fall on the ground). 
Find ways to send a construct from an orbit to another
And so on