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Hi all, I am a returning player since the game is officially out and wanted to know if there are outside tools out there to help me/others in designing/building a ship. I am not talking about the aesthetic design but the ratio of parts to other parts. For example: how many M Wings or L Wings should I use per 1 M Engine, etc. I have been looking and only found a few tools that mostly deal with crafting/industry. Here is an example of what I am wanting to do. Due to starting out and not having much of industry set up I am looking to build a ship that will allow me to carry a filled L Container. This ship has to be able to leave all planets and re-enter them filled with cargo. Basically I am looking for a tool that will allow me to ratio the proper amount of part on the ship to make sure the ship capable of the described above tasks. I cannot afford L Engines yet and will be using M Engines. If there is anyone out there that has anything similar to what I am asking for please let me know.
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I created this thread so players can submit their ideas for the future AvA mechanics here. This will make it easier for NQ to collect our ideas. My suggestions: I think NQ need to give the players the ability to plant C4 bombs with a remote detonation or a timer on other players ships, so that later they can detonate them in the pvp zone, we also need tracking beacons that will transmit the coordinates of the ship every few minutes that the ships owner can detect and remove from the ship before departure. This will be a good start for the AvA ? These 2 mechanics will be the easiest to do. Another AvA mechanic is the boarding mechanic. How it can work: when 1 ship approaches another at a close distance, for example 20 km, a button appears in the pilot of the ship to send a request for boarding to the pilot of another ship. A boarding request cannot be rejected if your ship has fewer players than the other ship that sent you the request. When boarding starts, the ships stop 100m apart and remain motionless, the boarding timer starts working. While the boarding timer is running, players cannot pilot and fire the ships' guns, these 2 ships cannot be destroyed by other ships, a no-fly impassable zone appears around these ships until the boarding timer stops. If none of the ships was captured during this time, then after the end of the boarding timer, the speed of the ships is restored. Boarding mechanic: https://youtu.be/OFhtWj729Y4
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angry Jeronimo's Angry review + angry feedback
Jeronimo posted a topic in The Gameplay Mechanics Assembly
Three years and half after pre alpha launch, the best period ever for DU, everything got overcomplicated, heavy and excruciatingly laggy, especially at the introduction of industry 2.O which has changed till now fps, lag and loading times for everyone, but since the developers aren't testing nor playing their own game, very little have been done concerning the content and game mechanics. Since the beginning JC pretends that he wants to control the visual aspect of the game, but look at the thousands of player made atrocities and piles of elements scattered everywhere For those who never heard about, but there is a french simplistic and satiric cartoon called "Shadoks", where a group of engineers and workers, work hard together to make simple things more complicated, from where we are getting the expression: "why do simple when you can do complicated?" And this is exactly what is happening here But in real life, and i quote, professionals, engineers, designers, and architects will all agree: "Less is more" So here are my thoughts, after 3 years of hope and life time, on the bad and good decisions taken, and what could be improved at the moment: Building mechanics: Vertices editor should have been a priority long ago, long before that not so useful update on the line tool The actual given building tools are half of the reason why we see so much trash everywhere, and why most players are giving up, because voxelmancy is a considerable waste of time since ship selling will never be a major part of the market (everyone want to build his own), PVP will destroy it in a matter of seconds, and detailed or undetailed static or dynamic constructs' spaces are dead as hell. Vertices Editor: self explanatory Line tool: add triangular and circular shapes, and make one of the corners of the selection the center of rotation (not the center of selection, this doesn't make any sense) Paint tool: (omg seriously this one is the biggest joke and laziest decision taken) need to absolutely remove from the game this ridiculous number of different honeycombs, performance wise, and gameplay wise. Every material should have one and only one raw honeycomb, on which we could, using build mode, apply a color we want, a shininess type and or a pattern That would optimize the game code, our inventories/containers, and our factories (and will fix that uggly .24 update changes) Remove the deploy and selection sizes limitations Be more consistent in the deploy shapes size increment (1 by 1, not 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 12 16 24 32) * by the way change "galvanized" honeycomb name and check the definition of galvanized on wiki: which is a zinc coating process to protect different metals from rusting Elements: Here is the second half of the reason why we are surrounded by trashes First, element design is very badly fusing with the voxel building system, specially all the dynamic constructs elements, elements are detailed meshes that don't match with a voxel hull and the voxel default sizes Even after the best achievable voxelmancy, engines, brakes, hovers, wings, look like stains on our creations, element colors dont match available honeycomb colors, some elements are offsets, some are badly symmetrical I m not saying that its bad to have detailed mesh elements, but half of them, must be redesigned to be used and integrated "into" a basic voxel shapes, not to be put like a flower pot "on" the voxels, and this concerning all the elements used for designing ships Dynamic elements (engines, brakes, airfoils): those elements can be a single detailed face element, the face that will pop out from our voxels, and other faces must be designed with an easier global shape to work with the voxel grid (tubular, square, rectangle, just as Empyrion or Space engineers do...) Decorative elements: make sure they are scaled for the voxel grid and size (the reinforced sliding door is the perfect example of bad design and bad consideration) Ability to change elements main color Engines: no no no and no to all this different types of engines (safe/maneuver/military/etc...) with different recipes. again its a mess in inventories and markets, same problem as honeycombs, why doing simple when can do complicated?. while the quality (normal/advanced/rare etc...) should remain, all engines should be crafted as a standard factory type, and have an option by right clicking on them to change their mode type, and why not beeing able to change it using lua Flight mechanics: Overall the flight mechanics are very good, stable and well developed But, the main issue is bringing back to the dynamic elements issue and the overall aesthetic of the game and players creations Elements power/thrust should be multiplied by a minimum of 5!!!! this would greatly reduce the number of elements needed on each ship, reducing the lag and loading time, but most importantly we would not compromise anymore on the design in order to have "acceptable" flight performances (which will increase the visual quality of players creations) Vertical and horizontal cross sections must produce anti drift and high altitude lift, which will reduce the number of wings and stabilizers elements needed, and again will increase everyone performances due to less elements, and allow better ship design Fuel consumption to divide by 2 or more, we are tired to mine 2 hours, refine for an other hour, for 20min of flight (nowadays long distances planes can fly at cruise speed 900kmph for about 12 to 14 hours) LUA Lua is one of the greatest part of the game, allows the best customization possible, but is still way too limited, for no reasons Unlock to unlimited number of links/slots to a pb/remote/ECU/command chair etc... will reduce the number of scripts running at same time, so will increase performances (what is better? to have 10 scripts, on 10 PB, each one linked to 10 elements? or 1 script on 1 PB linked to 100 elements? do the math!) Increase again the recently nerfed CPU usage for custom scripts (they were not producing any client side performances issues, so why decreasing it again?) Increase the conf file allowed size, 150k isnt enough Make possible to install conf files on programming boards Increase Databank sizes Fix the rocket engine please for custom scripts, they are broken and deadly, they activate themselves when construct controls are taken Add function for camera relative rotation and position Ability to save scripts in our nanopack and exchange/sell scripts with DRM protection or not PVP I think pvp is a very delicate topic, but globally so few people have any interest in pvp at all due it its extrem unbalance In my opinion there is no goal and no reward in pvp, which makes it boring So much time and effort put in mining/producing/building a pvp-able ship that it pushes everyone away there should be no safe zone, nowhere! - heard and read too many stories of players ravaging orgs from the inside, secretly stealing work of dozens, and then venting themselves on streams. there should be no safe place in the universe for those people to hide their shameful loot - cargo ships should be accompanied and escorted by armed fleets, even while mining quantas could be physical/stockable/stealable claimed territories shouldnt be visible on the map, unless personally discovered surface ore stones, should be mine-able by anyone anytime anywhere (claimed or not. we should be able to get some fast scrap and fuel if we emergency land in middle of a huge claimed territory) static and dynamic construct need energy shields element containers content should not be destroyed unless the container lost all its lives (otherwise there will be no loot in pvp), they should just be inaccessible there should be a way to restore all lives on salvaged elements (repair unit maybe?) There is so much more to add, but please NQ consider and fix a big part of this first before adding new buggy "content" At some point there should be a planetary wipe, to leave space for the new planets design (allowing what ever is standing in space to be excluded from the wipe, for players beeing able to save enough to restart quickly) -
We can debate all day about if pirates flying XS cube ships with L Railguns have any class or not (spoiler: they don't, cubes are lame), but I think we can all agree that the current iteration of PvP has plenty of problems. Current Problems: Lock-on range is only determined by core size Some weapons have ranges that are greater than the minimum Lock-on range Weapons have no/minimal accuracy falloff with increasing range Weapons have no/minimal accuracy loss for high transversal velocities and accelerations My Proposed Solutions: 1: Lock on range needs to be based on different parameters. The current meta of L guns on XS ships is problematic, since S and M ships (even if they also have L guns) are outranged and don't even get an opportunity to fight back. I propose splitting lock-on into 4 separate "Radar" units: Radar - lock-on range based on sum of ship's 3 cross-sections (already calculated, and doing it as a sum encourages non-cube ships) Gravimetric - lock-on range based on ship's mass (already calculated, makes heavy ships easier to detect whether its cargo or armor) Thermal - lock-on range based on magnitude of the ship's maximum thrust in newtons (already calculated, makes ships with lots of engines easier to detect) Electromagnetic - lock-on range based on power capacity and shields (obviously only useful when/if those systems are added) Balancing the ranges from the 4 methods will take some trial and error, but overall it would make detection more "fair" by adding more control handles for NQ to balance. 2+3: Weapons being able to shoot far is very reasonable, and is really a necessity for the BVR combat caused by the velocities of ships in space. With the lock-on changes above, #2 becomes less of a problem. However, just because your weapon CAN reach that far, doesn't mean it should have great accuracy at doing so. Weapons should be able to fire when they are locked on, regardless of range (maybe missiles would be an exception to this), but should have accuracy falloff due to that range. Additionally, lasers should have damage falloff with range. I'd like to see the weapons rebalanced accordingly: Railguns - high accuracy, low rof, moderate damage Cannons - moderate accuracy, moderate rof, moderate damage Lasers - high accuracy, high rof, damage falloff at range (low damage at long range, moderate damage at short range) Missiles - moderate accuracy, low rof, hard cap range limited (high damage at short range) 4: Unless you are exactly in the target's flight path, you shouldn't be able to hit someone blazing past at 30k kph, aka "0.99c". Accounting for transversal velocity forces pursuers to match velocities in order to have high hit chances, not just reduce the distance. This means that weapons need a "tracking speed" property, so that some are better than others. While tracking speed should vary by weapon type, it should primarily vary by weapon size so that Large weapons have low accuracy at high transversal velocities. This solves the "the ultimate ship is the biggest ship covered in the most armor and cannons" problem, by making it hard for large weapons to target faster moving ships. While that can be overcome by adding a ton of engines to make "the ultimate ship" accelerate like a fighter, it will also drastically increase their Thermal signature thus allowing smaller ships to plink them to death from out of range. Additionally, if transversal acceleration and facing cross section were taken into account, small and quick ships like fighters would be harder to hit. Now some of you are going to say "but SGCam, that sounds a lot like the combat mechanics in EVE." And you are right, it does. But as with many things in DU that take inspiration from EVE, Lock+Fire combat is one of them. That system overall works pretty well for EVE, and the more granular and customizable nature of DU means that it can be even more effective here. I'm also looking forward to warp interdiction and tackling, but that would be a whole other post. Overall, the more complex the mechanics, the less all-around advantage "meta" builds have. They may be powerful in certain situations, and that's ok - as long as they are weaker elsewhere due to their optimization. Adding tradeoffs opens up the design space for more varied and interesting PvP, and will hopefully prevent us from playing "Cube Gank Squad 2020" going forward.
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An other company, called Cofee Stain, is making a game called Satisfactory.That game has INCREDIBLE industry and factory mechanics.So, I would appreciate it if you contacted Cofee Stain and asked them to help you with the factory mechanics of the game.If these 2 games get cobined, a super good game will be created that will make fortnite look like sh*t.Also, don't add in-game purchases for stuff, because then it will be like Clash Of Clans, where you pay a ton of money ($23K)to max level up and get all items free.Add in-game purchases only for buying skins and accessories like Fortnite.That's it.Oh, and add a tutorial that explains everything about the game like how to link objects, how to make a spaceship, etc.
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Could you guys implement randomly generated rogue planets and stars, just to make it like real space? And also could you make it so black holes are also generated? It would make space seem more realistic and would give people more things to avoid, along with an element if danger. Could you also make the planets more spaced out in systems, like in our own solar system, to make it so that the planets don't look like they are crossing orbital paths with each other? This would also give more room for people to build space stations and other things like that, and would also create the need for better warp drive systems to help people get to other planets, not just star systems, which could explode into a really big game market. Also (last one), can you make it so that we can fly to the star of the system that we are in? All of these changes and additions will make it a lot more realistic, if you want hints of realism in the game, and present players with features that cannot be found in many other games similar to this. (The idea for planet spacing came from a screenshot Saturday picture and the hope that this game would not become a No Man's Sky) Thanks for reading, -Rhino
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From what I understand of the current system, there's a sort of tab targeting they're planning. I completely understand the reasons for this, with all the processing power needed. However, there is one major concern I want to see addresses in some form, if possible. Let's say you build a fighter craft, with a lot of thrusters along the sides. You script a way to fire them all at once, then balance yourself out, as a sort of side step will flying. In very traditional tab targeting, this will have no impact on the hit. If, however, in this game it has no influence, then that takes away a whole aspect of design intelligence. Now as I said, I'm aware of the technical restraints they have to deal with. However, I'm wondering if they have thought of this particular issue, and if they have any potential solutions to it. For one possible solution, say missiles are coming toward the craft. Perhaps some system could keep track of eta to target, and the closer they are to the target, the more sudden velocity changes of the target will reduce the chance of the missiles hitting. So a sudden side-step, while guaranteeing nothing, could still actual do something. Mainly, I'm just curious if the importance of maneuvering is even being considered XD
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Hello, rotation points would be nice, like those in scrap mechanics, they would make the possibilities really infinite. There could be different sizes and powers in newtons. Bye
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Hello, simply, I think a piston system would be useful, there could be different sizes and different forces, and they could push in front (and behind) to double their size when is activated.
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Okay, so this idea hit me the other day and it is not fully fleshed out, but I think it is a good start of something. First, here are a few assumptions: There is a finite amount of each material to be mined in a given system. Systems will be depleted over time. When a ship is destroyed or a person is killed some material is "lost" forever, while some can be salvaged/reclaimed. The economy needs some sinks and faucets in order to prevent excessive inflation or deflation over time. Now, my idea to address some of this. Basically, when ships are destroyed or people are killed and some of the material is "lost" the amount can get added to a system-wide tally. Material sold to the Market Bots that JC mentioned would also get added to this tally. The game could then pull from this tally to generate material asteroids in deserted parts of the system which could be scanned down and mined, thus restoring the resources to circulation and conserving the mass. These materials could then be used or sold to market bots again, bringing currency into the game. In addition to preserving mass and providing a currency faucet, this would provide some basic "PvE" content and help prevent systems from becoming depleted. To provide a currency sink to counter the currency faucet: the market bots could also sell the materials directly from the tally but for a fairly high price relative to what they buy it for.
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So, I was thinking, what if, you can make more or less of your body cybernatics? So, replacing your other arm with robotic arms for example. Some key modules: -Advanced Brain: makes skill training quicker -Caloric converter: turns food into energy useable by implants -Energy converter: turns energy into calories -Backup Life Support: backup systems to replace failing organs from combat(or something) to prevent dying long enough to get to safety Biology route -Needs organic food -not as much endurance -more fragile Cybernetics route -Needs expansive repair materials and energy cells -Drugs Performance-enhancers doesn't work as well -Needs skills to implant/use Please be respectful and post your suggestions here!
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So, I was thinking, what if, you can make more or less of your body cybernatics? So, replacing your other arm with robotic arms for example. Some key modules: -Advanced Brain: makes skill training quicker -Caloric converter: turns food into energy useable by implants -Energy converter: turns energy into calories -Backup Life Support: backup systems to replace failing organs from combat(or something) to prevent dying long enough to get to safety Biology route -Needs organic food -not as much endurance -more fragile Cybernetics route -Needs expansive repair materials and energy cells -Drugs Performance-enhancers doesn't work as well -Needs skills to implant/use Please be respectful and post your suggestions here!
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Introduction This is more so a topic for the developers, but I hope people will add their ideas for additonal feedback. Dual Universe is looking to be an enormous, awesome game. It's trying to do what no game has done before, but at the same time it's going to share some gameplay aspects with other games. In order to make this deep, rich, and occasionally complex game a reality, lots of mechanics and ideas will need balancing and fine-tuning. A very popular game around these forums is EVE, for obvious reasons. EVE has lots of the features and mechanics that Dual Universe is looking to accomplish. As such, I would consider it foolish to not look to EVE for ideas on how to make Dual Universe better. EVE is very successful, with a huge lifespan for a game, and many of the concepts the game is based on are shared by Dual Universe. As such, it is of course a great example to look to. What Survivor Bias is However, I think it's extremely important to specifically mention survivorship bias (SB), and how to avoid it. If you know what SB is, you can skip this paragraph. SB is when you look at only the survivors of a situation, and make a judgment call based on only what made the survivors successful. You can google it yourself, but a popular example is from WWII. Lots of British and American bombers were getting shot down, and so the allies looked at where most of the bullet holes were in the returning bombers. They added extra armor to those areas, and sent them off again. But, the number of bombers lost didn't really change. Then one man realized the fallacy in the reasoning... They were only looking at the bombers that had survived. This man determined where the bombers that were getting shot down were getting shot; he didn't look at why the survivors survived, but why the failures failed. He determined where the lost bombers were being shot and subsequently destroyed, and those spots were then armored instead. The number of bombers getting shot down decreased after this, because his reasoning was correct. How I've used it in games Seems dramatic to bring such a serious matter into a game, but the reasoning is the same. I'm currently working on a zombies map for Black Ops 3, and wanting to make a great map, I looked at the generally considered "best zombies maps" (take a guess how many youtube videos there are with a title like that) and what makes people like them so much. But, I also looked at the maps people seem to like the least, and tried to figure out why people don't like them, so I can avoid the features and aspects that those maps have that the others don't. (TL;DR: You'll still get the gist of the topic if you read from here) Why the failures fail Dual Universe can do the same. Looking at EVE as an example, that's great, an extremely good idea to do so. Look at what makes that game great, and try and carry those features over. But, it is also extremely important to look at what made the failures fail. Drama aside, look at No Man's Sky. It has tons of planets and creatures to discover. People say all the planets are the same aside from colors, and they're partially right. A planet may have different animals, but they lack uniqueness. Each animal hardly acts any differently than any other, and no animal offers something that another one doesn't. All of the materials and resources are found in the same form on every planet. No Man's Sky offers lots and lots of the same thing; there are tons of planets, buildings, animals, NPCs, and space stations, but none of them really offer anything that another one doesn't. The problem with failures is that typically, they aren't popular so not many people know about them. I hope other people will bring in more failures of games (preferably ones comparable in some way to Dual Universe), and maybe highlight some reasons why those games failed. Maybe mention some features you don't want to see in the game. Please try and avoid drama and extreme negativity; highlight flaws, but don't verbally destroy the games, and please specifically don't turn this into a No Man's Sky hate thread.
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Hello, In DU there is a lot of potential. Despite being a sci-fi game, DU can have a lot of scientific material in it, and this is what it is about: add science based mechanics, that could potentially be used to do IRL research. The mechanic is simple in concept, but adds a ton of complexity to the game. All material crafting should be done with material combinations or chemical reactions (material combinations being alloys, assembly etc...) chemical reactions would be made in a chemical reactor, where you input molecules in certain proportions, and it outputs the realistic output. during that process, it either absorbs or emits heat according to this concept that can either be used to produce or needs energy to work. different energy levels can mean different outputs. the crafting system would be quite like in reality: you get the ore, crush it to improve reaction speed and efficiency, put it in a chemical reactor to extract your wanted material into a solution, extract that material from the solution in another reactor, let it dry to get a powder of it, and melt it in case it is a metal (last step not required, but needed to use it as block). Additionally, that would allow for scientific like discovery of compounds in the game (it is to decide if it remains fictional or is realistic to cooperate with material research labs irl). if we go with the scientific discovery one, a physical simulation of the reaction will be made on 3 of the client's computers, so it can be validated. all three of them will get a reward for it: the compounds but also the rights of exploitation in case of discovery. these mechanics should be worked on a bit more tho. I hope this makes it into the game as it would make it quite educational if not a benefit for science, and would add the required complexity to the game to make it worth specializing in such fields. EDIT: how would these new compounds interact with the mechanics: 1: they can be used for further reactions 2: have their IRL properties 3: if 2 is non existent, as if not discovered, it will deduct its properties from composition of the groupings it is composed of (like all alcohol molecules will burn, or will have the color, or be explosive etc...) globally each molecule has different stats. In crafting, you do not need a specific molecule, you need a molecule grouping, for instance for fuel you can use any carbon chained atom, and the more the molecule has carbon atoms in it the more power it will produce when used as fuel. Procedural texturing could be used to generate the alloy textures depending on the impurities and compositions of alloys, and on the colored molecule groupings.
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Hello, I cant help notice that models have a fixed scale and cannot be voxel modified. It could be an interesting mechanic to have a scale modifier that increases size of then model and the stats, so you can make tiny bots to run around conduits and repair your ship. The models are 3D and the scalar is 1D thus would have to scale to the cube to be realistic, with a linear loss function according to abs(original scale - scale) * balancingTweakingConstantScalar. this would allow for quite interresting things like gigantic reactors, massive guns and tiny bots. I hope you like that idea
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Hello Dualiers, The plan right now is (according to what i have seen and heard) to have a stats based locking targeting system. it is extremely cheap. too cheap. the problem with it is that the battle becomes more of a dice roll, as can be seen in eve online. You target point blank on a battleship (miss) wtf... these kinds of things are frustrating. there are tons of ways to contour the problem with kinetic weapons and their delay, the easiest way to reduce performance drain is to handle them like a shell + their movement, it calculates then an intersection on that 4D-ish object (it is in practice flattened into 3D) every frame, not more expensive than having a player. then you can put a limit in the form of reloading time, real battleship shells take 10-20 seconds to reload in best of cases. besides that, lasers are practically free, but do less damage, and have tendency to overheat so you have to stop them quite often if not reducing their lifespan considerably, and use a lot of energy. you get the idea of the gameplay implications. this system would allow to handle all weaponry shots in one container, thus reducing development costs and code base pollution risks. this is mostly important if we want to make weapons interact between planets and space, as punching a hole in a vessel in space would be ludicrous from the planets surface. and what about 1000mm planet-space cannons, do these not ark? in addition to that this system would allow for massive increase in need of good targeting scripts or canoneers (there would be visual aid for players (can be cheaply calculated with raymarching, but it is relative t the memory architecture you chose for the physics mesh, if there is a phase where it is static in the loop, it may be worth it to do it asynchronously in a separate thread if it is the case) eve online opted for that system because it uses 1 second ticks, i don't think you work like that, and if it is the case there is no advantage to it except a relatively small amount of computations, as you would have to determine the voxel to break anyway... and what about people who want a fast fighter with Gatlings? locking would be so unsatisfying, especially if you target a starbase... but anyway, this is my opinion and my vision of locking may be wrong. hope you find this idea interresting . just remember, my point is control vs simplicity (pro control).
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I m opening this topic to share a global game structure point of view that i think will make the difference with other similar games, going point by point through the different game mechanics. First of all this game appear to be the greatest of all, maybe because its unfinished yet and not full of promisses, that allow us to still make dreams about it, far from founded and unfounded critics. (I think we all waited No Mans Sky and been extremly disapointed) - First point will be the "sandbox" term i would like to review: As few of us might probably know and played, but one, and probably the first sandbox game (if we can call it a game), that still exist, is "Second Life". A infinite flat world in a free to play game, divided into square regions that are subdivided and sold by parcels for real money. It has its own ingame building and scripting system (with a language simplified from c++), and possibilities are absolutly endless. The only problem is that graphics are not good looking, its not really a game, it is ful of greifers and everything ingame cost real money, but in the creation part, there isnt any game, sandbox like game that can do better in terms of freedom. - I ll continue then on the "ingame building" and "objects creations" mechanics: To talk again about Second Life, because i think its viewer should be considered as an inspiration source, i m not sure how Voxel works properly yet. But as simple as is it, having a third person view, as a 3d modeling software, and few editable prims, such as cube, sphere, cone, tube, pyramids etc... as base objects, allow an infinite possibility of creations and isnt ressource demanding for the future servers. Objects would have a tree structure, with a main prim and sub prims. Server side, and gameplay side, the freedom of Second Life, makes it not be a game with any goal, I ll refere to Antoine de Lavoisier who said: "Nothing can be lost, nothing is created, but everything can be transformed" In that way the ressource gathering and creation part can take its sens, and significantly limit the memory usage of servers: to be more concrete, the volume of what ever you would wanna build/shape, you will have to gather it. you wanna make a spaceship, you ll have to gather meter cubes of iron to build it (and not stacks of 64 irons as in Minecraft...). Each planet will have a certain volume of each ressources that can be gathered, and players will team up to gather faster and more. Beside that is also the texturing of those creations, and the uploading of any images onto the server could be a payable service, so one of the source of revenue for the developers, for the case of a buy to play service and spend a bit more to customize it a lot better. I think aswell the crafting system must be forgotten (unless its for a device that will let you fusion 2 materials together, but this can be integrated into the UI), and let any created objects, fully designed and built by players themselves, and have a kind of dematerialisation device, that will let you pick up your creation, store it in your inventory, and drop it somewhere else (like Bulma and her capsules in DBZ) Material creation volume limitation might aswell propbably limit greifing, since as any sandbox open world games, griefe is a serious issue - Next i ll talk about "scripting" and animating created objects and give interaction with players: A script doesnt take much space on a server, since it is only a text file, but beeing able to script our own creations, adding movement, functions, interaction, particules etc... would trully give life to your creation and not having them just standing motionless in the air. Second Life as this system too, and that give a greater value to your creations, aswell will start to engage relationship between players and for some will push them to regroup for beeing stronger. The roleplay will be at the rendez-vous, some will be helping for building, some for coding, some for gathering, some for exploring, some for fighting etc... and the community will become more dependant and stronger. Some people dont like to travel but will be impatiently waiting for the scout teams bringing back goods for the community. Here are some example functions that could be available for script creation: /say /tell /wisper /shout /moveto /follow /rotate /lookat /particules /light /sensor /detector /rez /unrez /timer /onpress /onchatcommand etc... not limited to only those, but will need a little work on a simple and proper coding language to make this all work Would open possibility to build and script defens turrets, following bots, UI huds and mods, automation houses, cars, other kind of vehicules etc... And wikis will appear on the web to share all this knowledge about scripting in Dual Univers - Now some other ideas about "trading" and "interaction betwen players": Gathered ressources, created objects all could be a money change through a trading menu, and gold maybe or any other valuable extraterian material could be used as a global univers market money, since gold doesnt have much use in construction, and would be great for making coins right? But i m not sure if a local money proper to the game is a good idea. Once more, let the players decide the way they wanna trade. This super Stark signed lazer gun or this premade space house for 100kg of gold and 10kg of titaprominium etc... Or maybe why not an online market displaying ingame players creation that could be purchassed with real money Aswell i think PVP combat, hunting, flight chassing... should be always enable outside safe areas. A previoulsy saved location would teleport the died player and his spawned objects such as spacecraft, dematerialized and returned back to inventory, maybe with dammages that will need material to be fixed and reused. Traveling in the unknow will become exiting and scary, as it should be! Maybe a player age system (ingame days/years age without dieing) could be integrated for some popularity and community recognition. And the counter would reset on death, unless a freindly player revive before respawn. - Ideas about how could be the environment and terra forming: Inspiration isnt far, but "Minecraft" did it well. days and nights times, each planets with its own type of weather, planets with none, few or only hostile mobs... we want all. It should be for example impossible to build anything night time without a proper lighting. Exploration could still be continued, with stress, with a portable torch light. Terraforming and mining, should be smooth, and not make huge perfectly spheric holes in the ground and not as simple as just pointing a gun here and there and making everything flat. For preservation of randomly generated beauties and strong limitation of griefs. Can check on the "Minecraft" like "7 Days to Die", that have done it well but still very buggy. - To finish, the subscription fee! Developpers might only like this part but we also need to like it to start and continue playing I personnally dont mind paying for it, as long as it stays at a reasonnable price and not become a fiasco full of promisses. Better do it well and take time than beeing in a hurry to make money. As any multiplayers open world games, developpers are looking for long term revenues to reward their years of labor and incoming years of updates. There is no center in this dual univers, but the developpers. They wont sell us one of their planet but here are few points i would personnally agree to buy after purchassing the game: 1- An additionnal configurable device that once put on a land will secure it, from grieifing, from pvp, entering. With different prices, and different size of secured volume, from 100m radius to the planet size (communities might collect donation for buying bigger devices), and would look like a giant spheric force field. 2- Additionnal engines, turbos, guns part, equipments pieces, unscriptable by players essential parts for builds 3- Online offgame univers market objects selling commisions 4- Materials/ressources packs (for the lazier) 5- Textures uploading fee 6- Premade by developpers, objects, buildings, scripts... Didnt talk about travelling, flying system, it might be too early, but of what i have seen, there is nothing to add, looks great! Now i just hope some of those would be criticized and taken in consideration! Cheers!
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"Good day, fellow members of the Dual Universe Forum. Like an astounding fraction of people here, I have found a great interest in the creation process Dual Universe has created. Most wonderful of all, I believe, is the fact that while templates are going to be available, most or all of the code can and will be done by the players. While this may allow for stunning creations like "Pacific Rim meets Gears of War"; inventions to darker "George Orwell's "1984" meets Ex Machina", the real problem lies with the benefit itself: codes. Where the player inventions simply to be tried and tested against NPCs, who am I to complain? (after all, we humans like battering digital units without any conscience coming to sting us later on...like Witcher 3...or Doom...or soon to be harassed Dual Universe NPCs...) My concern is that codes, basically interact with other codes that can be decoded, recoded or bloody well explode in your face. What happens when a designer creates a weapon with a kill range of 70,000 units and a damage variable thrice that amount? Or.... A ship with a hilariously high health value and a repair snippet that adds twice the maximum health every millisecond? Or... Codes that change the values of their coded targets, leaving the attack or defence in a quite proverbial "Waterloo"? I do hope that I'm not sounding like a Prophet of Doom to the poor inhabitants of Pompeii, but I do hope the developers have this volcano in check, or at least a force field to keep the lava from raining down on our heads. Lastly, player created AI is going to be as much a blessing to people here as the electric bulb was to our ancestors in the late nineteenth century. In retrospect, it would be a curse to many as much as a future "SkyNet" may be to our descendants in years to come. To be quite frank, some people here may already be working on a doomsday "SkyNet" for the poor people who are unlucky enough to come across it. The point is, some clear controls need to be put in place. And I hope the Guardians of the Dual Universe are several steps ahead of us. Pax Vobiscum. "
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I was having a gander at some posts to do with organizations and I had realized that there wasn't a discussion anywhere specifically to do with grouping up in a group with other players for a temporary time, i.e, fleets. Now, I'd like to put across the idea that a ranked mechanic would work best, but that's just me as I played way too much EvE and got way to used to it. For those of you who don't know the ranking and leadership mechanics of EvE I'll quickly write and example below. Fleet Ranks: -- Fleet Command Wing Command Squad Leader Squad Member Squad Member Squad Member -- Wing Command Squad Leader Squad Member Squad Member Squad Member -- That format works up to 5 wings in total. Now this game would be quite different with the addition of multi-crew member ships, would the ship itself be included as a member, or, I guess the owner plus their crew? Or would the entire crew take up slots/make numbers in the fleets and groups? Not only this, would the fleet allow/disallow mass movement on fleet commander decision, or would this have to be coordinated via everyone involved, adding a layer of difficulty to leading fleets? As well as the age old question, would fleeting up kill off the ability to friendly fire, or for whatever sake, will FF still be a viable thing within a fleet? Joining them, if they are to be a thing should be based on invites or advertisement to your organization/contacts. This just makes finding a group of people doing a group task within your organization easier in some ways. Now, these are just my ideas (which I've obviously "borrowed"), I'd like to hear all of yours though, as I said I haven't seen much to do with this!
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So I want sure if this was the best place, maybe it should be moved to the General Discussion thread, or possibly game mechanics. I decided to post a short story of a scenario I envision happening in game. I don't fully know all the mechanics that will be available but my story highlights some mechanics that I hope are available. It also sheds some light into how we operate and things we tend to implement when possible in games. Sorry that my writing sucks, I usually just focus on the story. It’s a barren world, covered in vast deserts and lakes. In a large lake on the North continent the water begins to stir. Slowly a rectangular chain wall begins to break the surface. It is a half a kilometer long and 200m wide. As the wall breaks the surface the water inside begins to rapidly drain away. As it does a large metal door is exposed and begins to slide away exposing a massive chamber. Slowly a Daedalus class BC, the Asteria, begins to rise from the chamber. It is over 400m long and covered in turrets, a bit unfinished but it was combat ready. As it emerges it slowly begins to ascend, thrusting lightly as to not damage anything below. As it clears the hangar the doors closing behind it and the walls recede allowing the water to rush back over. Once it is several hundred feet above and the water is covering the doors again I increase the thrusters to full. Angling upwards I quickly gain altitude and enter orbit. Once in orbit I set the nav point and activate FTL. It is just a short jump to a nearby asteroid belt in system. Once in FTL I activate the defensive AI and head to the hangar. The Asteria is a bit more than needed for a mining trip, but I like to take it out for whatever reason I can, besides it makes for a good guard while mining. The right hangar contains a smaller miner. Equipped with multiple laser miners and plenty of storage for the ore I mine. Once the Asteria drops out of FTL I look at the nav feed to see it is all clear, not many people are in the region so I never expect anyone. Occasionally our sensor drones pick up an explorer that comes through, and so far the neighbors that are nearby have not located our base. I send a command to open the bay door and start up Little Bite’s engines. Slowly I emerge from the hangar and begin thrusting to the Trillium asteroid 1km starboard. Slowing down on approach, I line up near a cavity in the surface. I had been here already and cleared away most of the rock around the Trillium core. I activated the miners and watch the surface of the asteroid as the matter dissolves away funneled into nanocells for storage. The power is a bit insufficient so I have to pulse the lasers, allowing the power cells to recharge. One of these days I will quit being lazy and fix that, but for now I watch as the Trillium begins to fill up my storage with a few traces of rare elements. I wonder how many more trips will be needed to finish our capital ship. Suddenly an alert pops up, one of our sensor arrays in orbit around the planet picked up something. A small vessel entering an FTL jump. It must have been a stealth ship observing the planet, shit. I quickly cut the lasers and thrust away from the asteroid. I align and burn towards the Asteria, coming in for a hard landing. As soon as I am in the hangar I send a command to close the hangar doors and begin charging the FTL as I dock Little Bite. Sprinting down the corridor I arrive at the bridge, there’s still a minute left to charge the FTL drive. I sit down and pull up the sensor logs as I wait, aligning the Asteria towards the planet. No sign of the stealth ship entering orbit, it must have traveled in and been there a while. Just as I am about to jump the sensors pick up 3 FTL signatures dropping in orbit around the planet. All quick moving destroyer class ships. I adjust my coordinates to their location and enter FTL. Just under a minute until I exit warp, all I can do is wait, all guns active. As I drop out of warp I am just 10km from the nearest destroyer. One of them is clearly a planetary bombardment design and is lining up to fire below, centered over our base. The stealth ship must have been there to determine our location. The planetary bombardment destroyer was already unloading its kinetic kill projectiles down onto the planet and the other two were firing missiles down as well. As soon as my targeting sensors had a lock I unleashed everything onto the PB destroyer, catching it by surprise and ripping through its rear shields, and penetrating deep into the hull. A lucky shot destabilized a reactor, causing an explosion that ripped the back end of the ship off crippling it. As the kinetic kill projectiles entered the atmosphere turrets on the surface were already coming to life. Pedestals were rising above the surface of the water with SAM and Flak turrets. The Kinetic kill weapons were hard to track and shoot down, but a few were broken up before impacting. The remainder were stopped mostly by the water, with no energy left by the time they hit the hangar door below. With over 2 dozen flak turrets almost all of the missiles from the first wave were taken out. But it was clear they knew the base location and were here to destroy it. On the Asteria I launched the 2 dozen fighters I had onboard and routed shield power forward. The remaining 2 destroyers quickly began turning their fire onto me. I began launching missile volleys but my laser capacitors were completely drained from the opening attack. Even without it my missiles are overpowering the shields slowly. As the fighters reached the ships they began circling it in tight orbits, not doing much damage with the shields up, but distracting the automated turrets and reducing fire on the Asteria. My shields were at 85% but slowly dropping as their missiles start leaking through my flak cannons. As my laser cannon reaches full charge I fire it just as a volley from my rail gun hits, collapsing the destroyers shields, but it remained largely intact. However the next volley began to destroy chunks out of the hull. It was quickly gutted by missiles and left crippled. About then, large explosions begin erupting on the surface below. Starting from the center and stretching out in a line nearly 3km long they begin spreading outwards to nearly a kilometer wide. The false bottom of the lake is being blown to pieces, allowing all the water above to rush in below as it does. The emergency evacuation protocol has been initiated, meaning help is on its way. As the dust and fog begin to settle there is a massive swarm of small drones released. Just small battle space drones, they allow sensor feeds of the area and also act as an overload for enemy sensors. Shortly after another loud eruption as the Radials booster engines fire, slowly lifting it clear of the opening. Upon discovery of the stealth ship, Drakyn Ral quickly began activating its systems and moving what he could from the base into the Radeal. Its hull not more than half finished, very little systems were in place and functional. It had minimal power, thrusters, shields, and FTL with very few turret placements mounted already. I wasn’t even sure if Kloydeb had gotten around to uploading the AI to them so they would function at all. And none of us were sure that it could even break orbit. It had a booster system attached as an emergency launch system, but it functioning was all theoretical. Before the Radeal could reach orbit 10 smaller 50m long frigates exited FTL in the battle space above it. They quickly targeted the remaining destroyer, and with their DPS added to mine, its shields vanished. It was quickly engulfed in missile explosions, shredding the hull. The drones were part of the emergency protocol, and when active they activated their FTL and jumped in from deep space above the solar system. The hangar below was gutted and scorched as the engines fired, but we never intended to use it again anyway. As it reached orbit the booster system was released and fell back to the ground. The ships frame stretched 2.5km long and 500m wide, at the widest constructed points thus far. With only the basic frame in place for most of it, it looked almost like a rectangular box with some buildings stacked on top towards the rear. The front end was one giant hangar, large enough to swallow the Asteria. The side hangars were only beginning to be built, with small juts sticking out from the main hull. As the Radeal broke orbit it released more battle space drones followed by another 4 dozen fighters that quickly began to disperse in the battle space. Hartomo and Kloydeb each emerge from the Radeals hangar in Raptor class cruisers. But it didn’t stick around, with its FTL charged it initiated a quick jump out of the battle space where it would charge its drives for its travel to the beta base. We stick around and ensure that the Radeal enters FTL before charging our own. The Raptors quickly charge theirs and follow as escorts, but with my capacitor banks tapped from the battle it takes even longer than usual for me to charge my drive. Just as I am about to jump into FTL, my sensors light up red. With all the battle space drones feeding sensor data I quickly get locks and accurate tracking data on over a dozen ships. There are 2 capital class ships, a carrier and dreadnaught, both more than twice my mass. 2 BS, 4 BC and an assortment of cruiser and frigate class ships. The battle space lights up with explosions as their AI begins targeting and taking out the fighters and drones in the battle space. Immediately 3 of the AI frigates vanish in explosions. Not intending to stick around, I rapidly hit the FTL as it charges to completion. Just then a massive shell strikes my nearly depleted shield, punching through and ripping a massive chunk out of my right hangar bay. What is left of Little Bite floats free into space. Thanks to redundant and dispersed systems most of my ship is functional, including the FTL drive. Before any interdiction nets could be activated I slip into FTL, clearing the battle space. Within a few minutes I exit FTL near the Radeal. It got away with minimal damage, mostly from the debris falling from above when the lakebed was blown. One of the shield emitters wasn’t fully functioning and let some debris through, impacting the hull. The Asteria’s damage was a bit more extensive, but no major systems were hit. Most of the hangar will have to be rebuilt, but there weren’t many components and systems that were destroyed. We waited around until everyone recharged their FTL drive for the first of several long jumps to the beta base. For the rest of the crew who weren’t able to respond quickly enough, they will get there a bit quicker, as out in the void here there aren’t many RNs that they can spawn at. With Alpha base destroyed, Beta base will likely be the closest.