Warden

Hi, I'd actually suggest to take part in the forums as it is THE place to establish (lasting) business relations, contacts and to find potential friends. While everyone might have specific reasons, I think generally staying away might be a potential disadvantage. In other words you might be "out of the loop". Sometimes the best future opportunities pop up here, especially before a playable or finished game. But they don't stay forever.

Oh, how I wish I would get things (resources, money) out of thin air in life... But sadly, it won't happen Everything has to come from somewhere and sticking to that as far as possible is one of the reasons people will be attracted to Dual Universe ? Whatever you will receive, money or material, will have some history. It was obtained from someone. Maybe mined or stolen. You get the picture. Let's not water this down with rewards out of thin air, I'd say. Besides as prior posters said, who defines good and bad, something highly subjective to begin with?

Hi there. I mostly wonder how new folks feel. Can you describe it? Is it like an excitement in the air you can touch? Like ... (no) pun intended ... fireworks going off?

Those who deem it necessary. If you did something that banned you from entry or services at a certain place or faction that you could need because many others go there for business or whatever, you might think twice about redeeming yourself. Likewise, if you really annoyed a faction and they keep sending people after you, you might also consider going through certain punishments to make them stop, as listed earlier in my examples.

This could be possible, but can not always be guaranteed, especially if you break laws in a larger player nation, empire, state, whatever. Not everyone can snip their fingers and then or later bring a force of comparable size, and even then out of those players who could do so in theory, not all of those responding factions will risk a war if it can't be outright won - over a trivial matter such as, say, insults, speeding, whatever. And if it can't be forced through game mechanics, it can still be severely suggested or suggestive through voluntary sentences or sentences that are tied to certain conditions, such as "If you want us to step sending people after you you have to ..."

Only you can answer "How would I deserve it" as this depends on your actions and the subjective wrongdoing you inflict upon others from their or a general POV. The "house owner" defines the laws and regulations on any owned turf or even not-owned turf. Or regardless of formally owned turf or not if they can project a certain influence, force and enforcement in that area. You will most likely see this happen or be a relevant aspect on claimed territory however, as it's usually the easiest or most obvious way where other entities (the owners) can define rules. My initial point, with that in mind, is: Sometimes it might be better to go through a certain type of (still bearable) punishment for some law or rule infraction than try to start a long conflict you could lose or not benefit from in the long run ---- More simplified, mind what turf you are on as certain regulations can apply there and not following / breaking them could "justify" punishment X.

What if you technically deserve(d) it or if this attempt might be counter-productive?

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of "voluntary prison sentences" that can work regardless of coded-in (or otherwise practical executions of this through work-arounds) jailing mechanics. While this usually only works if the "prisoner" has some incentive to go through with it on your terms, it would prevent their friends from trying to bust them out. As that would result in nothing or a reset of the prior actions such as being hunted or banned from entry or services. Less abstract: you did something bad and a faction does any of the following or a combination of these: Ban you from services, add hefty custom fees to services, badmouth you, prevent or restrict entry, actively hunt you within their jurisdiction/borders or beyond, etc. If this becomes a nuisance to you, you could redeem yourself through "prison sentences" and unique demands to get a (mostly) clean slate or new chance, reduced threat category, etc. Some could demand you stare at a wall for X time, others send you in a work camp, others might simply not chose those 'classic' punishments and demand that you bring them a certain sum of money or amount of resources. Just as idea for all you groups out there, prison mechanics or not. Ideally we also get to see limited "forced" prison mechanics under the right conditions on faction turf in my book.

I think there are sufficient ways to add a balanced limited jail system to empower factions. Before we kill potentially too much time on thoughts and debate, I wonder if NQ is intending something remotely comparable at all or not at all, or if it would now depend on the arguments. A few hours tops at a certain materialistic price for the "jailer" sounds reasonable to me if there might also be a weekly limit of jail time per user for that faction to prevent indefinite or very pronged holding. Give fixed rates and capped timers for compromise while potentially allowing suicide at the loss of all items. I'm theory no one forces you to interact with factions who have the ability to jail on their turf,or no one forces repeat interactions or stay there anyway after it goes South. Still, I think we won't see hard coded jail systems, soft or not. Just saying, I guess it could work. You know what still works? "Voluntary prisons". A what, you ask? Simple. What remains with no formal or implemented jail system, more or less? You have to ban people from services, entry and/or shoot them. If they want to redeem themselves and regain your favor you can offer jail times on your own terms, forced labor under supervision, etc. But this can't be forced or not much. I'd prefer soft built-in jail mechanics though. Just saying, though: prisons can or will still be useful depending on your faction or influence. On another note, prison mechanics or not, no one forces you to just build tiny boring cells. You can create a whole hazard course, maze, riddle challenge, testing course or more to make it interesting or to shorten the time. PS: I hate typing on mobile.

This seems to be the "hot iron" many games (or their devs, respectively) won't touch because it could annoy or "piss off players" whereas it is more normal in other games or game modes. If you also want to cover police aspects or elements of slavery this is must-have in my eyes however. The key is balanced mechanics. A potentially too hard system could be seen in the Minecraft civcraft server where players could be captured in a twilight dimension while their "soul" was bound to the overworld pearl. Problem: holding a player does not burn much "fuel" and to release a player you had to have the pearl. So what do people do? They capture someone and put the pearl in secure storage where others can hardly reach it. In short you could be held weeks, maybe a month or longer before you could consider appeals through a higher instance such as server admins as it was simply part of the server and game play. A more controlled system you see in Arma 3 or Space Station 13 where player police or security can put you into prison temporarily. These sentences were often limited, on a minute basis. At best you'd sit in it for 10 to 30 minutes depending on offense. What would I propose, how could it work in DU? 1) I would not mind an A3/SS13 like system with limited sentences that everyone should be able to live with as they are time capped, often through built-in timers. 2) How this could be implemented or rather work in DU is a tougher question. If you have a general capture mechanic for players I sense abuse or indefinite holding if you can just put someone in a room or cell with no (easy) way out. And if the player has no way out on his or her own, either through tools or commands. At best i can currently see domestic prisons work that only work on player run tiles or faction owned tiles where you can place actual cell units (complete item given by devs) where you can place (misbehaving) players for a limited time. In the context of DU 10 minutes are a joke so it could be a bit more on average, but not exceeding 1 day or so. Or half a day. Or a quarter. A third. Fifth? You get the idea. As it is faction run you also do not have to go there if you don't like how they handle things on their turf like taxes or punishments. Binding this mechanic to faction controlled tiles (Alioth could also be excluded from this) prevents "griefing" all over while making things interesting on faction turf with some sort of local punishment system. At least, that is my ideal "solution" or compromise but you can bet we won't see prison mechanics. Because "hot iron".

Just for science or as "nice to know": are you willing to share how many orgs ads or invitations you received so far? Hi BTW!

You know or see dedication when folks make a Radio station. Let's just underline that for a moment. A radio station. You just don't see this for any type of game and this has a lot of potential, but surely requires a "long breath" as we surely look for years of usage here. Regardless I hope that NQ realizes these community efforts and benefit through mentioning it at one point. Cross promotion, kinda? At least I see "people creating radio stations" as good selling point for this sandbox game. Win/win.

Ye darn rebel.

Simple: If we can add it, we should. I'm actually not fond of the MMORPG mechanics where you have a general level system and "stronger and weaker" mobs - I always found it unrealistic having to "shoot down energy bars", sometimes for minutes or a longer time when facing "boss mobs". But then again, I prefer more realistic gameplay or combat mechanics, tab-targeting or not. If we do get to have creatures and other hazards such as "bandit NPCs", combat should feel "natural" in my opinion, however possible. I simply think having fauna obstacles adds more complexity and threats to some landscapes where cooperation or creative extermination or containment methods can bring you forward - or keep you occupied. If there is no time to think about it now, the topic can surely be put on the table again once a large portion of the game is working as intended.

I missed this, thanks for the reference, that is good to know. Now, assuming this will either stay that way, increase or at least roughly stay the same, it means that basically every organization* has the chance to claim a piece out in space (if not on the starter planet, then elsewhere). Seems like good news to me all in all meaning you can likely have an organizational presence on the starting planet, even if some might still rush for subjectively good spots. *I draw this conclusion because another certain space game has around 50,000 player organizations (a bit less, maybe then 50k or more by release) - so for starters in DU we'd have to have 50,000 player organizations before we'd have to worry about claiming one tile on the starting planet. Additional assessment: not all of the 50,000 orgs might be eligible for / able to claim a tile or keep it over a longer time, so organizations owning several tiles would possibly keep the average even or not be a problem in the calculation

I think I might be. I suppose we'll see how it will be later then. So far the models shown seem subjectively somewhat limited in size, as everything is limited. The "zoom-ins" on the planets in the trailers and whatnot give a rough indication on size and you then just have to think that ten thousand players are on there. But then again it's surely all just placeholders and it will grow in size. Or maybe I mistake the dimensions that are already there, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't big enough yet. To compare, the generated Minecraft world was often said to be roughly 8 times of Earth - but no one would ever really utilize it for obvious reasons, given the dedicated servers, limited numbers and more unstable situation should players run in all directions and keep generating map pieces. With tens of thousands of players each world has to be huge to allow for resources to be obtained from it even after years, I suppose. In addition they're ideally also deep so you don't have to expand much or not as fast horizontally. From what I heard or read, it appears to be deeper than MC. But it's all just guesswork for me at this point and I do not want to really worry about it. We'll see the dimensions again or better (or with changes) as things progress and as we get closer to a working Beta or full release. A lot can happen until then.

The comparison isn't completely bad but still lacking in my view because the ultimate player count is limited due to dedicated servers. While I did play on a civcraft server that has been going for years with many player slots in the usual area of 15k x 15k and I can't remember how bad or good it was (I think you still found them despite large areas of the underground being hollow like giant caverns or on that server they did slowly regen), we have to keep the dimensions of DU in mind. Single shard. All in the same world. A starting planet and systems. We look at potentially tens of thousands of players active at a time and most want resources at one point. If the universe will be big enough this won't matter much in the grand scale but on a local level, you might just see a lot of resource depletion after a while or even fast. Just look at our planet ? Space and resources are not endless. But demand pretty much is. With no mild regeneration and or ways of recycling, you might face problems at one point. Like we do in reality, eventually.

I'm all for (working, non-explitable) security cameras with additional functions (beyond a "live feed only" such as recording, perhaps depending on how much energy or 'recording space' you can provide in-game and so on), but the bot thing sounds a bit odd to me so far.

Will that come with bags if you have to puke?

The collaborative effort is basically always superior, I think. If you try hard you might come up with examples, but in terms of building or sharing tasks and the workload, you are at a disadvantage as loner or small group compared to the people with more manpower ... and planning.

In competitive somewhat more detailed or 'advanced' settings, you usually always have some sort of logistical component added or at least might have it easier if you keep that component in mind, no matter how soft or hard it might be implemented into gameplay. Again, reality can give plenty of examples on how useful or vital this is. In other words, no aspiring expanding faction can afford to ignore logistics. Being "heavy" on the logistics side at least implies they have that aspect covered, assuming they scale it to their needs and capabilities. But that's mostly unique in the end. In general or as "rule of thumb", you can't really ignore logistics, whether in business or war and if you do, you'll likely lose against opponents who do mind it and utilize it well. Driving the fuel truck or operating the tanker in space might not be as glorious to many like flying the fighter and being directly involved in combat, but without logistics there usually is no combat - or it does not last long.

I suppose this wouldn't be terribly hard to implement in a fair or cool fashion, with gameplay in mind. Technology-wise cameras or some similar automated detection system are things we can expect in that day and age. 1) As first step, I'd be happy to have cameras you can set up and link to monitors with a live feed depending on how you set it up This does not include further automated features and the like, but simply giving one (or more) people the option to enhance awareness and having different perspectives as long as the monitor or station is manned - better than nothing, kinda 2) Additionally with or without human input or presence, automated cameras that can turn or remain on a fixed angle that can generate system logs or trigger such logs upon certain basic conditions, like a construct or player going into the covered area 3) More detailed features such as conditions of whether the construct or player is registered, unknown, hostile (at war status or simply manually marked as such or as POI) and then maybe conditions such as whether the construct has a certain size, cargo, if construct or player is visibly armed, etc Additionally, trigger other connected functions via scripting or so such as opening doors for authorized personnel or blocking normally open doors for blacklisted or hostile folks. ------------------ Okay, that might be better suited for the relevant suggestion thread regarding cameras, but it's just an example on how you could "keep track". Additionally, the log doesn't necessarily have to show the player name but only a snapshot of the individual without the name or the name has random letters removed and replaced with * or so to not make it immediately apparent. Or you get rid of the whole camera mechanic (that you could further try to sabotage) and just generate a system log at some console once someone attacks or damages. The aforementioned compromises such as making it harder with identifying the culprits outright is simply keeping gameplay and the attacking perspective in mind to make it more interesting.

I think one should not overly exaggerate and have a bleak outlook, which is implied by messages like them between the lines on a soft level at least. Just by looking at the make up you provided, it seems rather unlikely to me to happen, as I doubt a "small group" can terrorize "everyone", thus a larger majority, and if they try or do, it would be a question of time until severe repercussions begin. While some like to think of themselves as superior wolves ready to slaughter all lambs, don't underestimate pissed off people who may eventually "have had enough of their shit" - unless you actually consider yourself a defenseless lamb. If you already give up before the (real) fighting started... If you perceive a threat and suffer due to it, do something about it. Fight back. Rally others around you, find a common cause, at the same time (or alternatively), lower the damage you get and try to evade, yadda yadda. I will never forget (and often, continue to tell others) my experience on a Minecraft server with certain plugins to simulate an economy, factions, emergent gameplay. Countless random people came by trying to attack us, I guess you could potentially label them "homicidal" or "griefers". Sure, it ma not be nice, you can not always immediately fight back or win. But you can either be sullen about it or fight. Maybe you can't take them down but I think having the right mentality from the start is vital to preserve your "fun". In a defeatist mood it surely won't be fun. If you consider it as interesting challenge where you view setbacks you may endure as part of the game, then you will likely get by better. Mentally and otherwise. Spreading possible optimism aka storytime - in spoilers so I keep this post shorter. Wall of text n' all. In short, morale, point of view, expectation and mood. Try to think less of problems but challenges.

As a thought: Why not join a group that covers whatever goals and dreams you have in mind? I may have missed or forgotten previous posts where you lift the secret whether you want to do your own thing or join up with a group right now or later, but "maintain my protection systems" implies you running them (alone?). You'll probably have a better time with others together where you can benefit from easier maintenance of such systems, shared cost and so on. And if you're more into creative designs and whatnot, not so much combat, there's still plenty of groups to cover your needs by that preference. We also recruit (those interested in leading). #shamelessad #micdrop But in all seriousness, loners often had the disadvantage by default in such environments unless they act a bit like freelancers or offer their services to the right folks for the right conditions at the right times while staying independent, I suppose. The disadvantage is still apparent: Manpower. A task that might take you a week, a larger group might be able to pull off in 2 days, 1 day or just a few hours.

That is simply the risk that you have in many other sandbox games with the slightest aspect of PvP and territorial behavior - at least most I can immediately think of. If you alone cannot maintain 24/7 coverage, other people might be able to. You can (try to) hire them if you can't do it yourself. If you don't want to hire others and can't do it yourself, join up with a bigger entity (in an alliance) that can guarantee a good coverage. And perhaps, if you do so or decide not to, a bit of a risk remains depending on where and when you settle down. I do believe keeping your stuff in safe zones or controlled areas will offer you a good amount of foreseeable safety depending on how the mechanics will later look like. Why do you worry about the intent about some people that much? At least in my book if someone attacks and destroys your property, at that moment their intend seems totally secondary to me. They could have what most could subjectively deem "valid" reason or they may simply have no specific reason. Does it change the result at that moment? I don't think so. Afterwards and so on? Sure. In Minecraft (more serious with certain plugins on the server I played, including an economy, factions and one safe city all new players would spawn in or could go to trade, like the Arkship will be) we had our base near the harbor city and thus saw a lot of people coming by since it was on the coast. And in the end, many of them also seemingly attacked us for no reason, even if it was futile. Because we didn't back down, we took the fight to them and kicked their asses while making sure ours weren't kicked, while making sure that property damage would remain low. My mindset is to overcome temporary setbacks and become better or, if not possible, try to avoid them. ---- In short, I would not try to worry about others who could harm you or their intent so much. Sometimes you can't change it. What you can try is try to prevent it in the first place by picking the right location, friends, allies, not making the wrong enemies, etc. Once it happened, you can try to punish them for it so they might stop or repay you for the future. And if nothing else helps, not trying to be a huge target can also help. And if it still happens and you fall, stand back up and move on. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If someone is out after you or your faction more permanently due to grudges, you can also try to call for help at other groups. I know it might be stressful and it will likely be at times, but with a bit of a thick skin and somewhat smart manoeuvring, I view it as manageable risk or part of the game. On another note, if you get targeted by said supposed minority or plague of players just out to cause grief emotionally, the saying "don't feed the trolls" doesn't come out of nowhere. If you give them what they want, it'll likely last longer. If you man up and gulp it down and move on without giving them the satisfaction they look for or by even punishing them later, you'll likely do better. But that's just me in the end. I still think you'll have a good time with safe zones and TCUs.