Anaximander

I guess yesterday evening was the worse time possible to spend 50mil in legit schematics :v
 
This game never fails to amaze me.

The schematics system in itself is fine, it works perfectly in EVE and that is what NQ is shooting for here. But they forgot that in EVE there is a bit more to this than just popping a schematic into an industry unit and neglected to consider/implement the game loops that actually feed into this one to make it work.
 
NQ is just in way over their heads with DU and they seem unable to properly manage the progress of development, rushing from one band aid to the next while the bleeding underneath just continues untreated.
 
DU still has massive potential and promise, the question is whether NQ in it's current state with its current company culture is able to be the company to bring that out to the surface.
 

Way back when I pitched in as a patron, I did so because the game had such potential.  The voxel editing capability in designing ships and bases is what had me hooked, but back then there were a lot of mechanic issues with the game, so I gave it a break for a year.
 
Now that I'm back, I've given it a month and if this is the direction DU is heading, meh - no thanks. 
 
First off, making a game that is fundamentally one of the most versatile BUILDING games out there, and forcing pvp content makes about as much sense as braille buttons on a drive thru ATM.  Sure, I've heard the rumor that everything you need is in the safe zone, but with the addition of these ridiculous schematic roadblocks in EVERY step, half those being sold only in pvp space for amounts I frankly have no way of earning once I restarted is about as exciting a prospect as gouging my eye out with a spoon.
 
Only add to that the fact that in order to buy the few things I can afford after waiting for 3 or 4 days (with the daily allowance we're given), making those trips take at least an hour (after you factor in the crappy engines I can only afford now and the inevitable crash and ship repair which happens EVERY time I get booted offline during landing), well that's just like putting a bit of lemon juice on the spoon before the eye gouging begins.
 
Maybe as someone who would love a game I can dive into and start building is too much to ask for, but under the current construct this clearly isn't worth my time.  I suppose I'll keep my eye open and see if anyone wakes up and focuses on some of these fundamentals, but I'm not holding my breathe...

First let me say I support PVP completely. But its gotta change and asap in DU. Right now PVP in DU is nothing more than griefing other players, for the sake of griefing. I've watched a few streams of people get destroyed today in PVP. In all 12 encounters I saw, they were all dead before they knew what was happening. This is not fun. Fun PVP is a fight, where ships and skills are tested against one another. Someone wins and someone loses. The PVP moments I've seen and experienced in the game are not that at all. In all cases I've seen, PVP has been utterly one-sided and over in moments. There was so little opportunity for response, that I wouldn't even classify it as PVP at all.
 
There's no way in DU to understand or become experienced in ship-to-ship combat other than PVP. The people who got into PVP before you are so much better, with ships so much more focused on your death, that there's no real ramp up. You just die, and then get set back days or weeks. And the only way to improve is to do it again. That's if it's consensual. You might just want to progress in your projects, and need copper. Too bad. You're now engaged in PVP. Oh - you didn't dedicate yourself to learning PVP? Reset 2 weeks. Reset 10 days.
Nothing is engaging about this. It's so one-sided and bereft of interaction, it might as well be a bug or a glitch destroying your ship.
This has to change. If it stays like this, DU will be catering to an extreme niche of people who aren't nominally there to make use of all the creative tools - but instead will min/max ships designed for the sole purpose of murdering other people as efficiently as possible. That's fun only for those people. There aren't enough of those people to support the success of an MMO. No one watches two weeks of work put into a ship build disappear in an instant and thinks, "this is so much fun!"
 
Things that absolutely must be changed for the game to be successful.
Weapon ranges needs to be reduced to no more than 2.5k. This forces all parties involved to have to actually fight each other in a proper battle. Weapon damage needs to be reduced by 75%. Right now it frankly doesn't matter what material you build your ship out of, because weapon damage is too high, and chews through everything. It makes building anything other than a layered box ship pointless. Space safe zone should be permanent and never removed for any reason. This will allow trade and civilization to grow. Players should not be forced into PVP if that's not what they are interested in. Planets in space safe zone should never have PVP either. For the same reasons as above. Players should not be forced into PVP if that's not what they are interested in. Having a single safe moon, is frankly a stupid idea. Lets put everyone to a moon, force them to deal with lag, over population, etc. Nope...people will legit just leave the game. Ship and Base shields need to be a thing. So players have proper defense. Ships moving over 10,000 should not be able to fire weapons.
Unless some serious changes are made to PVP in DU. The game will not be successful. As the CEO of NQ has stated on many streams this is a civilization game, not a PVP game. The Devs need to start making players fully aware of this. Unregulated PVP will completely ruin the game we all want.
 
Just look at what's happening now, players building walls at warp points to grief players using warp. This also needs to be fixed, and the players suspended for 30 days for doing it. NQ you need to draw a line in the sand when it comes to these issues now and set the place. 

You stop (explode?) if you run into a construct while warping. And the warp mechanic doesn't care if there is anything in the way - it just hurtles you to the beacon.

@DystopianSnowman
CIG does a _much_ better job at communication and frankly, while there is a lot of noise round the development of SC, most of what they do in the timeframe it happens makes sense if you understand the process they are in. CIG has a pretty solid quarterly patch schedule, provides weekly updates on their progress and on how the existing roadmap changes. They have several shows where lead devs and managers discuss features that are coming and how they affect the game. There are frequent Q&A sessions where CIG does not cherry pick the questions they feel comfortable answering but they pick the ones that get the most upvotes.
 
NQ is not even close to the level CIG is at with regards to being open, transparent and clear about where they are and what they need to do to get where they intend to go. SC is only a year ahead in development compared to DU and is much, much further ahead in their development. And that is not just because they have more staff as the actual coder group within CIG is actually not that big. During kickstarter, NQ made a big deal about how _they_ were going to be different and fully open and transparent on/during the development process.. Well, that ended when pre-alpha went live to be honest and has not been met since.
 
CIG has near 3 million registered accounts for SC, I doubt DU accounts have gone 6 digits yet. NQ does not even share any information on consecutive player counts and the number of DU accounts anymore.
 
Mind you, CIG/SC/S42 has their share of "issues" but none of the level NQ is causing for themselves.

So they've adopted the SC model then.  Joy.

any idea when is 0.24 coming out ?

Thats why I don't play anymore - theres nothing to do which is interesting enough. All implemented mechanics are boring and give me cancer. Maybe it gets better with pvp....but for that it has to work properly, which it doesn't, and have a way better UI and experience, which it doesn't have either. 
So yeah, only here for the drama 

I like it.

Yeah, it is a good system that brings the joy of Bureaucracy to the teens of the world
 
"Oh, so you wnna go through a Stargate little Timmy? Guess, what, you need to fill Form 11-B/513RG. Come back when you find the manager for that form. He logs in every 11 hours for 1 minute." 
 
 
Standard Bureaucratic hell.

See, in WoW, you could Log off wherever you pleased, BUT, if you did log out in a certain area with beds (an inn for example) you could get rest bonuses, which amped your XP gain. Now, the rest bonus could possibly be a speed boost when running on the ground, ora drop chance increase, something to give an insentive to log out on a place with beds.

And logging out would require a ten second period of out of combat activity. No Alt+Q+Q when losing a battle.

Well, given some people in here are not familiar with the Local Chat in EVE, I will explain real quick so you can understand.

Local Chat, is the chat in which you join upon entering a star system in EVE after a jump. That may seem non-important, when you realise the chat covers the entire star system. That means people can simply check Local and have advanced intel of your presence on the system before they can actually have a scan of your ship (which in Wormholes it's needed, since in Wormholes there's no Local Chat). Even in an invisible ship, you will still show up in the Local Chat.

Now, the arguement can be made that in EVE's universe humanity has colonised the star systems nad put up comm-arrays and all that. But in DU, it's not the case. So, here's my proposition.

Comm-Arrays, set up by a faction, enable a Local Chat within a cerrtain radius of them, with the Comm-Arrays acting as radars as well, meaning, that if you set up a Comm-Array, you got both comms for the masses that are not in your org's chat (like traders for example), with the org owning the Comm-Array acting as the adminstrator of said chat. I mean, if I want to be the Emperor, I must have a way to censor people within my Empire. I R ebil.

Said comm-arrays, of course, can only detect ships not cloaked, and cloaked ships, above a certain mass, will show up in the Local Chat, but not on the radar of the faction owning said comm-array, so no cloaked battleships sneaking up to comm-arrays.

A string of Comm-Arrays, that are interconnected, could even enable an entire star system to have a common chat room - which I guess most EVE veterans will find as a proper excuse for nuking at least ONE of those arrays to stop the scam-spam on said Local Chat in a trade-hub.

Beyond that, said arrays can act as an alarm, for when an enemy fleet arrives at your system, so your fleet can mobilise in time. Likewise, said enemy fleet may want to send forward a scout in a stealth-ship, to take down one Comm-Array by hacking it, in order for the fleet to arrive without being immediately detected. Every second counts on a blitzkrieg after all.

Furthermore, said arrays will need repair, which is an excellent reason to have jobs and duties like maintenance, with a monetary incentive for people to do said jobs, while factions would have a pretty good reason to pay high for such jobs.

One extra feature, could be for the Devs to have asteroids refresh high value minerals if no Comm-Arrays are present, with less and less quality asteroids refreshing on the system the more Comm-Arrays are present, thus creating the Risk / Reward nature of EVE's high-sec (ultra-safe systems), low-sec (relative safety system) and finally Null-Sec, which is pretty much the Australian outback.

Down the line, if NQ decides to add Sovereignity Towers for a faction to lay claim on a star system, said Comm-Arrays can be used for that, via an "upgrade" system, but that's just an afterthought.



Sorry for the long post, here's an astronaut potato :

That's the plan though.

Deal with it.


Also, since you have zero clue of this - and its obvious - AI needs its own server (since NPCs are client instances operated by the server). Tell me, how much will the AWS hosting costs skyrocket for NQ, if they were to add PVE, with scripts and how much would it ruin their developement crunch if they were to add pointless PVE, cause YOU are lazy and don't want to mine?

DU is not a theme park, they never advertised as a Theme Park. It's a Sandbox. They never said the will add - or want - PVE with dungeons and loot bags.

Plus, DU if it had PVE, it would be like EVE - people showing up when "epic snowflakes" do a high end boss, murder the snowflakes, kill the boss, get the loot and post the kill mail humiliating the Carebears for being dumb.

The only PVE they should add ,is for hunting and skinning for making cool clothes and stuff. Link PVE with the actual economy, and making PVE a profession, not "kill 100000000000 wolves so the Space Princess can give you the Sword of Carebearius".

You want PVE to get materials for your ship? Might as well tell them "make wolves drop money". That's the level of disconnect you have with economics.

Even if there are drones, they should be remotely controlled Elements, meant for (possibly in the future) mining in areas thar radiation would kill a player, like a Gas Giant, sending the drone in, scooping up minerals and returning them to the ship, while the player controls the drone itself. 
 
And yeah, we need Jackhammers damn it, or FutureSpace Inc. 's laser drills I can't stand the idea of mining by hand, either nanoformer or not.
 

Stadia for now is mostly vaporware to be honest. They threw around a lot of fancy words and specs but nothing substantial, no commitments time wise and more importantly, not a single clue on cost.
 
Probably more suitable and cheaper option with a far greater chance of being usable in a wide range of situations is getting a Shadow PC. And the specs for a shadow PC more than cover what you need for DU.

Dear community members,
 
It has come to our attention that abusive recruitment practices, as well as practices to artificially inflate organization sizes, have been recently used more and more in some organizations.

After having conducted an investigation regarding New Genesis, and discovered the following infractions:
- Recruitment attempts that are harassment by private message through automated bots on Discord.
- Ghost Accounts to inflate the size of the organization artificially.
 
It has been decided to reset the member list of the organization to its sole leader, TheMasterArchitect.
Furthermore, as New Genesis has been already twice at the center of troubles regarding recruitment ethics in the past, involving at least once (if not more) its leader, a temporary ban has been applied to him.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Dear community members,
 
A few weeks ago, we took a stance regarding “out of the game”/IRL-related practices to discredit, threaten or shame publicly another Community Member (even if the involved person is guilty of several infractions) that could be an opponent in-game.
 
As the DSI (Dark Star Imperium) / TSU (Trinary Star Union)  / UEE (United Earth Empire) case blew out of proportion during January, we investigated.
 
We are really serious about differentiating real life from the game itself. Unfortunately some didn’t take our stance seriously. We gave them a chance to come clean in a private discussion and restart on an healthier basis. They didn’t take the opportunity for what it was: a last chance.
As they preferred “playing dumb” with Novaquark staff, we can’t have any trust that they won’t continue. Therefore we have decided to ban permanently those Community Members for various reasons (all not being banned for the same reason(s)):
Not being honest towards Novaquark staff. Making and encouraging ghost accounts. Abusive recruitment practices. Practising real life harassment and/or threatening another player. Making false report to Novaquark’s Customer Support in an attempt to make ban someone they dislike. Spreading real life information without the involved person’s consent, aka Doxxing.  
(strong reminder: even if a person gives you real life information about him/her, it’s not okay to share these information with ANYONE else without his/her consent. You can’t predict how the other person(s) will use this information and if he/she/they won’t share it again. If some trouble occurs following this sharing, you can be held legally responsible).
 
This might seem an extreme sanction but this shows how serious we are when we say we are not going to let toxic attitude and practices spread in the Community. Our goal to build a healthy and friendly community isn’t just a figure of speech. Anyone caught to spread or encourage any toxic behavior will be removed from the Community as it will be considered as damaging the Community and negating Novaquark staff efforts (without saying that it’s time consuming and a waste of our resources).
 
Saying it’s a long time grudge coming from before the arrival in the Dual Universe community is absolutely not a valid excuse. If someone has a personal grudge with another community member, he/she should either:
Leave it at the doorstep and/or settle it in private and peacefully with no one else involved. Contact directly (and only) Novaquark staff if the issue persists.
The moment someone uses the Dual Universe community as a tool for IRL revenge, he/she is not welcome anymore. We’re all here to have fun. It should always stay that way.
 
Therefore, the following Community Members have been permanently banned from the Community:
Lime / Fullsend / mmtheboss / Sakej99 [DSI] Primarch Zelevas / TharisUEE Melkor_Morgoth
  In addition the DSI Organization member list has been reset, and the Novaquark Team has appointed CN_Firestorm as the new owner of the Organization, should he accept to take a fresh start on a healthy basis.
 
We also give a warning to all those who were indirectly involved (with the evidence we found) but not actively participating in the recent community troubles. Next time, there won’t be any new warning. If you become involved against your will in some shady real life activities, you have only two healthy options:
Leaving the group doing such activity immediately. Report it to Novaquark staff.  
If you stay in such group without leaving or reporting it and the group is caught, you take the risk to get the same sanction as those actively involved.
This investigation has taken (or more precisely wasted) a lot of time from Novaquark staff. We really don’t like to intervene in players affairs. However, if there is a chance that such affairs damage the Community by toxic behavior, you can expect Novaquark staff to step in. We hope we won’t have to take the same measures again.
 
Best regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

It's only fair that if ships need fuel, so do the players. I mean, humans are just complex machines of flesh and blood
 
-- and if you ask about me in particular, I'm 99% salt at this point in time.
 
Hmm, though I wonder if food can be in the game, how many people will DO actually go and build a shack in the middle of nowhere and roleplay a crazy hermit. O_o
 
 
I know Yamamushi is gona roleplay a priest of Cthulu or something. I wonder if he goes up to a guy RPing a hermit saying :
 
"Hello there sir, may I interest you in the word of our Lord and Savior, Cthulu of R'Yieh."
 
 
"Get off my lawn!"
 
So immersive

Since the beginning of the year, we have witnessed unhealthy behavior from several members in the Community.
As many are relatively new and some older members seem to lose focus of Novaquark's vision for Dual Universe, here is a strong reminder.
 
Dual Universe is a game where there will be wars, power struggles, conflicts, plots, spying, information warfare and betrayals. It's all fine... as long as it stays within the framework of the game.
 
We are aware that a fair amount of people have a hard time to differentiate in-game behavior and real life behavior. While someone can be infamous, merciless and twisted in-game, that doesn't give him/her the right to forget elementary good manners outside of the game. Following the concept "the end justifies the means" will never be a valid reason here.
 
Novaquark expects from each community member to:
1) respect the EULA and forum/Official Discord code of conduct
2) be respectful toward any other member or at least neutral toward the members you don't like outside of the game, whether they are newcomers or veterans.
(neutral means: no free provocation, no real life insults or real life threats, as already mentioned in forum and Discord chart)
3) avoid using any real-life conflict, unhealthy real-life behavior or drama (made on purpose or not) as part of the game (because it's not) as this can escalate in very toxic and unnecessary situations.
4) avoid using any underhanded real life "tricks" to gain an advantage in-game. This includes:
- real life threats or real life harassment with anonymous accounts outside of the game (on Discord or any other online means).
- doxxing, doxxing attempts, or any behavior like gathering real-life information that could lead to doxxing.
- leaking publicly private discussions about real-life topics (especially when showing only carefully selected pieces with the deliberate intention of biasing the facts) without the agreement of all people involved. This also includes Novaquark’s investigations that haven’t been publicly announced and about which you may have been informed through a private channel/room or a private discussion.
- making false accusations, creating NDA leaks or false NDA leaks to accuse someone else with the goal of making them punished or banned from the game.
 
As a company, we want to provide a fun and welcoming experience to our fans and can’t tolerate inappropriate real life behaviors that potentially ruin the gaming experience or worse, lead to real life consequences.
 
If the Novaquark staff gets enough evidence on any of those behaviors, the team may give any sanctions deemed appropriate without further notice.
If you see some community members having inappropriate behavior, please point them toward this forum thread.

Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.

I know that creating another Database isn't ever a good thing so i thought we could get our shiny fix by having Gemstones randomly generate  with the deposits of ore and minerals, having different types of gemstones corresponding with certain mineral and ore types, like in nature. Would be useful too if incorporated into the crafting recipes maybe added for high end and rare parts/constructs. Just an idea from someone who misses shiny hunting!!

What we need to understand before processing the AI idea is :
Havin an AI controlling your character means constantly heavier server load,
They are not going to make mining automatable,
Selling stuff offline means botting the market
If they are not able to defend properly and the AI goes statistics for defense solving, it's going to put people in trouble, or force them to leave base to disconnect.

Not saying these issues can't be limited/configured...

Now to get specific on the issue of persistence, you could have like a "pod" to sleep in, where no one can loot or kill you unless they destroy said "pod", the character just sleeps on the ground otherwise, or any place (ships, roofs, whatever). Shouldn't be able to sleep underwater/floating in space tho...
For now i'm about sure it's not priority, gameplay wise i think it's an interesting matter, why making rooms/safeplaces if you can just pop in and out? where the subject is the most sensitive is about higher tier stuff... should you be able to log off and disappear with these, and then having the issue of safe transportation in dangerous conditions unbalancing the game??

Can't see anything about this in the Trello. Ideas?
 

I understand that during the post-Kickstarter phase when Founders packs were available, it was generally discouraged to be gifting backer packages, however now that we have Supporter packs it would be really cool to have a built-in feature to allow us to gift pledges to others.
 
I don't want to go into explaining how I've been able to gift pledges to others, suffice to say that it does not involve sharing passwords. However it's not really a straightforward way, and it's somewhat risky to be doing I'll admit. I did ask NQ whether or not what I was doing was allowed, and they did say that it was. So I know I'm not breaking any rules by doing it.
 
So I suppose I will consider this thread as a request for us to have the native ability to gift pledges directly from the pledge page.
 
 

Who said balanece artificially? Adding stealth suits or infiltration suits is a counter to tougher enemies you want to avoid. It's not a magical protection, it's an option. NQ can't balance the fact people CAN be bought.

Also, you don't seem to remember Goonswarm defeated the Band of Brothers with guile, not brute force. Call Mittani any name you'd fancy, the guy got Goonswarm to a certai nheight cause of guile and fighting dirty. That's what stealth suits are for. If the enemy is not an organised force, they will be steamrolled and theri ships boarded and destroyed by numerically inferior force. That's a fdact of life, it has happend IRL, it will happen in DU, cause that's when warfare is interesting and tactical.

Sun Tzu attacekd an opponent 10 times larger than him, attacked through the night and even used himself as diversion for his main force to attack the capital of hios enemy.

Israel fought the Six Days War by exploiting their oppponents' lax attitude cause they were outnumbered tremendously, so "why have ships on the sea to chec k for the Israel air force?". Well, the Israeli air force obliteraed their enemies' air force and their ground forces had no aerial support.
 
The Japanese destroyed the US Navy by attacking Pearl Harbor.

Out of these 3 examples only one failed to win a war, and that's cause of advances in technolgoy nobody foresaw.

The examples are many, having the ability to be covert makes the game more interesting.  The only "counter" you can have against a bigger enemy, is the abilty to hit them where it hurts by being sneaky.

Plus, that's the stuff that make itnernet headlines.