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DevBlog: Element Destruction - DUscussion thread


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5 minutes ago, blazemonger said:

The pattern NQ follows:

 

Start bringing up a new "thing" in interviews

Work out what they think will be the right way to go and start implementing it

Towards the time the patch is going to be released, post a devblog on it

Invite discussion which is pointless as the change is already set and beyond the point of making changes.

NQ also doe snot engage in the discussion nor actively work with the feedback they get.

 

6 months go by after patch

 

"We heard your feedback and are reworking the way this works"

Kind of work some of the feedback into the mechanic but as there is no actual structural record of the feedback it is mostly half done.

and that is the exact reason for me to post hehehe

I want to see if NQ is changing their MO or not... I fear the answer is not ?

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1 hour ago, blazemonger said:
  • Not using the ATV resource to preview, no requirements for engagement from ATV members and not actively managing ATV (I doubt many of the ATV members are even still playing)

Currently whole ATV institution feels absolutly useless. 

 

1) bad/ad hoc disign still goes into releases regulary;

2) most of critical feedback/need of change afterwards still "forced" into NQ mostly by efforts of common players;

3) also, while its probably not safest thing to say, I'm not agree with pattern that was used to choose/keep participants (some people on right spot, tho);

 

So, generaly whole this half-dead thing maybe better disbanded and changed with more flexible and active (and activly used) focus groups for different aspects of game.

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So I believe the elements should be destroyed at some point.  This could be a number of hours used like in real life, the number of times its damaged, or both.  To be honest it doesn't matter to me as long as its my fault they are damaged.   

 

I was using a maneuver tool to move my ship and it flew across the screen blowing up half the elements on the ship..  I contacted support and got fed the we don't do this anymore script. even after submitting a ticket and log files to show i was on my base using the tool " there are a number of orgs out there to help you repair we only help with serious bugs"      Or after I boosted a friends ship he was hovering 30m off the ground and the whole front of his ship blew up for no reason.     Solve these first before the elements can get destroyed in PVE. 

 

good points  balancing PVP  100% behind this

higher tier engines  YES 

Higher tier  industry  YES   maybe ad a distribution node to T2 ;)  can pull from one container and maintain numbers in up to 7 others. 

 

A little off topic sorry ,   Why in the world do we even have 1940s technology in the game ?   This is a civilization that uses quantum level stuff to revive you, FTL travel, and antigravity. why would they EVER use rockets ?  The reason I bring this up is I feel we are going to be forced to use it at some point.   I say NO.

 

Another thing,  why do we have to have elements plastered all over the outside ships  can there not be a Lift or braking module that can be added inside the ship somewhere ?  

 

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2 hours ago, Darkracer125 said:

sounds like you have no voxels.  

 

do you even have any clue of whats comming or not?????   

why do i ask.  you obviously have no clue what so ffing ever.   

 

 

 

 

Lol im not against it I have played dozens of games similar to this outside the voxel aspects that carebears dont like these types of systems and once they start bailing in droves (and they were already before this) that its a downward spiral. I dont know how many games I have whitnessed that this has happened in just pointing it out.

 

I think they should take it further to have planets that just cause constant hp loss or that just flying or running your industry should slowly destroy your items over time through wear and tear. There is no reason miners or pvp people should have all the fun. Why let the crafters hide in a hole completely protected without security or defensive weapons? Take their PvP protection away too. That will really stimulate the market!

 

 

 

 

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8 hours ago, le_souriceau said:

Currently whole ATV institution feels absolutly useless. 

 

1) bad/ad hoc disign still goes into releases regulary;

2) most of critical feedback/need of change afterwards still "forced" into NQ mostly by efforts of common players;

3) also, while its probably not safest thing to say, I'm not agree with pattern that was used to choose/keep participants (some people on right spot, tho);

 

So, generaly whole this half-dead thing maybe better disbanded and changed with more flexible and active (and activly used) focus groups for different aspects of game.

Atv is dead, they never actually used atv properly.

And honestly it's also not that good to have a group which has access to patches before anyone else does in a mmo (abuse, prepare, stockpile,...). But I never got any feedback on those thoughts either while still in atv, so whatever I guess. They'll change it on the fly and for the worse, like most stuff 

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On 11/20/2020 at 5:20 PM, klobber said:

go for good ship with AGG , this will make your life much easier in Dual...
since that, live with the costs.

I was building an agg - they changed mat requirements before I could start the final build. Go figure...

 

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Well, permanent destruction of Elements? Okay, why not but only if NQ will stop these voxel lines, glastowers, one voxel thick platforms all around the world or in space. Repairing a 100% damaged Ship, becaus of one stupid ganker boy puts a voxel line elsewhere in the world to let someone crash, is annoying, on the other hand, has anyone seen a floating platform solid like the mount everest in real world? Physically Impossible. If a ship crashes in a static structure, it shouldn´t be damaged as long as those griefing structures are possible or allowed.

 

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On 11/24/2020 at 1:22 PM, Warlander said:

carebears dont like these types of systems

Lol. I don't know if I'm a 'carebear', but DU's damage model and implementation is absurdly dumbed down. I have ~1200 hours in Space Engineers (where a crash will wreck and break apart a ship and most of the time very little can be salvaged) and ~500 hours in Kerbal Space Program (where a crash over ~50m/s literally means complete craft destruction).

 

I'd prefer a Space Engineers damage system, with needing to ensure ships have structure or else they break apart. None of this floating element nonsense. If you crash, well, better luck next time.

 

Of course, Space Engineers doesn't require dozens if not hundreds of hours for cumulative crafting times for even a moderate sized ship...

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9 hours ago, Emptiness said:

Lol. I don't know if I'm a 'carebear', but DU's damage model and implementation is absurdly dumbed down. I have ~1200 hours in Space Engineers (where a crash will wreck and break apart a ship and most of the time very little can be salvaged) and ~500 hours in Kerbal Space Program (where a crash over ~50m/s literally means complete craft destruction).

 

I'd prefer a Space Engineers damage system, with needing to ensure ships have structure or else they break apart. None of this floating element nonsense. If you crash, well, better luck next time.

 

Of course, Space Engineers doesn't require dozens if not hundreds of hours for cumulative crafting times for even a moderate sized ship...

Yeah I liked Space Engineers while I played it. The medieval one was interesting but not as good as the space version. Fun while it lasted though.

 

I think if they would allow for core links to either customize your ship shapes in lines or any other shape you could chain on could work for section breaks if the  core links were severed or the voxels as well acting like structure failure could work well. Not sure if it would ever make it in the game but it would be nice.

 

Regardless I think they need to approach this from a different direction altogether.

 

Where as there should be some way to actually customize all the parts and items through alloys, different mats making up the item (think carbon fiber vs aluminum vs steel vs titanium for instance or even the bamboo composit materials that are harder than steel), mod-able parts in general (high performance, think of what you can do with say a stock mustang), hardness values, the HP tree, and allow us to customize our ship to what we thing we need. But instead up punishing people from the bottom up it needs to be from the top down.

 

Such as T1 crafted parts or items should have 25 crashes base before you add Talents or mods. The newbies still need a chance to learn to fly.

 

Where as if you are using T5 parts you should know what you are doing where as 3-5 crashes base before mods or talents should be much higher stakes for stronger items or higher performance parts really matter in flight, frieght, transport, or battle truely matter. Most large org could swing that where as if you are just some solo random guy you dont need a car with 500 horse power you just need a car that will get you from point a to b reliably that does not require as much maintenence as a F1 race car does and will last you 10-20+ plus if you take care of it or baby it.

 

Edit:

 

Been kicking the idea around in my head all day and if I were to make a constructive suggestion on how to make a fair top down approach to Destructive Elements that fair to both vets and newbies it would be this:

 

Scrap could use an additional Talent Tree branch called Equipment Manager Technician / Mechanic which allows for more repairs to to extend the life cycle of crashes for both putdowns & better functionality of the Repair tool.

  • Repair Tool Efficiency for additional hp per second when repairing
  • Repair Tool Optimization for additional rate at which you can heal
  • Durability Optimization for extending the amount of crashes any part can have on put down
  • Auto Repair Tool Optimization for how fast your auto repair device can heal via scrap / parts to bring an item from destroyed to damaged

 

In addition to this I propose for the amount of crashes that are base before any talents are added to be:

  • XS items: 50 base crashes before being completely destroyed for stock items
  • S Items: 40 base crashes before being completely destroyed for stock items
  • M Items: 30 base crashes before being completely destroyed for stock items
  • L items: 20 base crashes before being completely destroyed for stock items
  • XL items: 10 base crashes before being completely destroyed for stock items
  • XXL items: 5 base crashes before being completely destroyed for stock items (future additions for frigate/corvette/ cap ships)

 

Or alternatively you could give a buffer for crashes to newbies measured in total exp accumulation by the million to give some kind of grace period of still allowing newbies to learn to fly before it eases in. You could assume that by 10mil exp they would lose that buffer as the 10mil could equal 100% grace perhaps. You cant just throw them to the wolves and expect someone just starting the game to be able to constantly replace their ship after 3-5 crashes. I think by the time I both learned how to fly and also how to balance a ship in terms of progression of each of the core sizes and balancing and adding parts to make it actually flyable 50 base crashes for an XS is not out of the question or 30 crashes for an M is not that much out of the real of a learning/testing/optimization cycle.

 

Beyond the base crash buffer I would like to see a new Talent Tree added called Engineer in which adds additional destructions for all the element types to add durability to them on putdown or additional efficiency to repair each type of element or optimization. It is still independent of the effects in the piloting tree as well as the HP Tree. You could sepperate the two branches for Space Engineering and Ground Enginering which should be able to cover all the parts for ships and industry. I would also like to see another branch for Static Core Engineering and Dynamic Engineering which should add more links to both types of cores along with additional crashes or destructions to both cores.

 

Beyond that I would like to see grades added to different items:

  • Stock: Balanced for speed, durability, weight, and hardness)
  • Performance: Optimized for speed over all other aspects
  • Armored: Optimized for hardness and protection over all other aspects
  • Composit: Optimized for specific functions or using sliders to some how choose what you exactly want
  • High performance: Extreme power at a cost

 

Beyond grades I would like to see all materials have additional traits added beyond just weight for:

  • Heat: Atmo Burn to allow people to travel faster in/out of the atmosphere with ores like silver, gold, copper, etc with each having a range of heat dissapation
  • Hardness: How much damage absobsion a material has in terms of like titanium vs steel or bronze.
  • Conductivity: Where specific weapons work differently vs different metals

 

After that I would like to see another Talent Tree called Scientist in which you can alter the properties of metals / voxels or in a sense re-engineer the molecular properties of each of the ores. I think the Scientist could also have its own kind of industry in which you can mash different types of metals together to make alloys or composit materials which are completely custom or that can be used after that in industry crafting to make the Grades or Custom after market parts.

 

Or alternatively allow players to simply choose what kind of materials they want to add bsed on the values listed above which could make them completely different then they are now and help crafters to make various options for protection, speed, weight, durability, etc listed above into any item and where as the stock recipe would be balanced you could make the same item uniuqe which could break much faster or last a whole lot longer at the cost of something else.

 

A modular system would be a whole lot better then just pre-baked Tier versions of industrial machines which should focus more on the properties or mods you already get into the tree like byproducts, stats, bonus parts, numbers of mats, etc.

 

I also think that there should be wear and tear based on how long you fly or that other planets might be highly acidic and wear down your ship if you are on the surface. Industrial crafting should also have wear and tear associated with running the machines and require maintenence to keep them going too or even if you dont get PvP'd flying you will still incur damage over a long time requiring scrap repair. This should not be quick without allowing some kind of talent or using the material properties listed above.

 

The last thing I want to add would be to add random defects while producing items which could generate less crashes or durability, etc every so often.

 

The main thing here is to allow for stock items, grades, custom parts, after market parts and items that suit people for what they want to do. If you want the best of the best then it is highly desireable and gets destroyed faster making more money for those items along with grades. That way if you want to go cheap but last longer you can. If you want to risk more for more rewards or power you can at the cost of the life span of that item. If they add the Talent Trees mentioned above you could extend that lifespan a little more. Or customize any part to fit your style, color, etc.

 

You want to punish people from the top down who want to risk more not the bottom up people trying to claw their way up. People need time to learn the basics of how it works with some margin for error for each of the cores since you add over time for what you need before you test it or find out in that action that it aint going to work. Lots of test pilots have died doing experimental things. It takes a lot of trial and error in this game to get any ship off the ground as you go, but also that its the same story for each core progression as you see what you can actually handle. Its not our fault its just the nature of the beast until you finally fill it all out or you can get to the point a ship is fully optimized which again is a time based thing as you gain talents for putdown and other factors. You should not be punished for that.

 

The people who need to be punished the most is the Large orgs who are nabbing everything under the sun and set up to pvp. You need to give them more risk for more power within the confines of the system as it is now. Not the newbies or the smaller Orgs as they need to be allowed to grow in this system too as you can afford higher performance items or armor. It makes it more of a gap between the haves and have nots but it also comes with more risk, wear and tear, and other factors.

 

This way you get a lot more mileage out of your ship while still removing items from the game. Some people are way better then others at active flying if you arent using a flight script. The stock flight controls are not the best and honestly whoever re-wrote the whole flight system, NQ should buy it from them and add it to the game or hold public competitions for solo or group scripters to improve the game for custom exotic parts / recipies that use alien mats, or something. And just say hey we want to see what you can come up with for X and add the best ones in as stock standard scripts you can run since not everyone is good at coding. Its the same thing with art based assets or skins as people could make them for NQ through community events and add the best ones in. They should also consider adding a marketplace outside the game where people can sell them for cash and NQ takes their cut doing none of the work for stuff a fraction of the public would normally like or want since colors and skins are highly subjective anyways and you can do pretty much the same thing already with screens. Win/win.

 

I think this sums up everything this Destructive System needs to make it viable and semi realistic and less punishing for this trying to climb up the ladder while still giving leeway and options for those who want to push the limits and properly punishing those people while still taking items out of the game at an acceptable rate which wont cause everyone to kill the market because they are hoarding items in case their whole fleet breaks at once unexpectedly or that because you can blow up containers will cause scarcity along with mass inflation in the proposed system which will pretty much kill off any newbies joining with such stringent limitations.

 

.02

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On 11/24/2020 at 10:39 AM, Fembot68 said:

So I believe the elements should be destroyed at some point.  This could be a number of hours used like in real life, the number of times its damaged, or both.  To be honest it doesn't matter to me as long as its my fault they are damaged.   

We just travelled for close to 10,000 years and we don't have the technology to make things last a single year?  I'm OK with limited patch cycles (many games have the concept of durability, which gets reduced each time an item is repaired), but just using something shouldn't damage it - its against the game lore.

 

There needs to be another basic change, which I think would resolve a lot of the tower issues, mushroom stations, etc:  Have collision damage allocated as it is in real life - to both objects based on their mass.  If I run a massive L borg cube into a single wide voxel tower, the tower losses with minimum damage to the borg cube.  That is just physics.

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I feel we don't need new features that make this hardcore game more hardcore at this time.

 

We need to have more ores available to the game or it will have a short life span, even more now if we will be having to replace elements constantly through PvP.

I get the wanting to have different levels of assemblers for different tiers of items, but I feel that is not what we need right now. We need bug fixes before new content.

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1 hour ago, Eman05 said:

I get the wanting to have different levels of assemblers for different tiers of items, but I feel that is not what we need right now. We need bug fixes before new content.

The entire dev team can't work on the same thing at the same time. Should the artists learn how to program? The modelers learn how to bugfix?

 

It's natural that new content comes out along with fixes.

 

And sometimes, the fixes take longer.

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On 11/22/2020 at 5:20 AM, Majestic said:

There are some people that prefer the solo play style, what do they do? I thought DU was supposed to be played any way you want to play it.

 

Stop thinking like a generic MMO player.

Dang... I actually have to agree with Majestic on this one!   Without solo players new players are forced to join orgs, and given the worst jobs possible.  Not many are going to stick around long.  "Sorry dude, until you donate 100,000 M3 of each T1 ore, we are not going to give you a ship.  If you solo and try to go it alone, we are just going to blast you out of the sky".  Gee, what fun.

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I did not read 9 pages because I want to do two things this hour so has anyone suggested that, in future, that a % of container goods be destroyed dependent on either rng or damage in total (1% of container damage hit points over container total = 1% of goods damaged) or some combination of the two?

 

I'd also prefer if cores had ranges for weapons;

 

Xs can fit xs and small, small fits xs small and medium, medium fits all and large fits all.

 

Otherwise we're going to see hard to hit xs ships and powerful large ships and not much in between.

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I am really torn appart about this one.

One one hand I think it's a good change to add more consequences to bad driving and PvP, but on the other hand I think it will cause the ships to be designed even more toward utility than looks.

This will discourage the use of decorative elements and exposure of parts to the outside.
All the ships going outside of the safe zone will quickly become iron boxes since it's the most effective way of protecting elements.

 

I think only the functional elements should be affected by this change.

Also I hope the really expensive elements (Anti-Grav for exemple) will have a decent number of repairs.

 

EDIT: however the changes about PvP radar and weapons limitation are amazing.

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The other thing to consider about this whole thing based on what the devs have said is:

  • Once an item breaks you cant sell it
  • Once it is destroyed the only thing you can do is delete it
  • finite resources and no recycling
  • A salvage system that only works with generated wrecks but not player wrecks
  • Abandoned core system not yet implemented

The first major hurdle in all this is that the auto repair tool will drop the item in to replace the item on the ship but wont auto use scrap to repair. The other factor is that even if you completely destroy your ship on another planet and are rezzed back at the closest rez point it would likely be easier to just throw down a whole new blueprinted fresh version then to go to the other planet to recover the other ship since it will be the same thing basically from scratch. And honestly unless you have some kind of special scripts running on it there is no reason to go back to get it.

 

Or if you consider the propsed abandonment system or the fact that the salvaging system currently is for massive generated wrecks and not the upcoming player wrecks or that the first life you lose makes it so you cant sell a broken part, or that a fully destroyed part just goes into your inventory and the only thing you can do is delete it with no means of scrap recycling to keep this system going long term will lead to hundreds or thousands of unnecessary wrecks nobody in their right mind would do anything or even if you brought hundreds of spare parts with you and an auto repair tool the cores would still have permissions until you can claim the abandoned ship. The only real thing to go back for is what may or may not be left in containers. Especially since it will be easier just to make a replica via blueprint without having to do any of the work fixing everything to make it flyable.

 

Or the flip side to this is what happens if your ship is considered abandoned even if you are still active and someone steals your ship, clears all your permissions, gets full access to all your scripts, and you see your ship again somewhere, is there some way to reclaim your ship?

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  • 3 weeks later...

The 3 lives mechanic is the worst possible way this could have been implimented. Please NQ - I beg you reconsider and take this to the drawing board as it is hurting gameplay across several key aspects - from pvp to ship building to salvaging to simply flying right now. Re-design how scrap is manufactured (requires assembled elements destruction), increase element hp and give them "one" live, allow scrap to only repair an element to 50% and the rest needing some kind of a workshop - literally ANYTHING but the current iteration of the mechanic. 

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