Jump to content

What would you change?


Raker1

Recommended Posts

Get rid of schematics for the current schematic implementation.

 

Warp Drives, L cores, AGG etc can be considered to be sufficiently advanced to need schematics. 

 

 

Add true Tier 2 elements. These do require schematics. They are flat out better than T1 things like the current silly 'military engine'  - not a tradeoff in some way. Just - better but more complicated to make. Tier 2 can be bought for elements that do not have a T1 counterpart - like say AGG - or must be researched for things that do.

 

Add Tier 3 elements - you cannot buy schematics for these. These are not elements we currently know how to make. These need to be researched from found artifacts. They are beyond current human technological level.

 

Tier 4 element can be added later as schematics can only be acquired as finite drops in the game from events, rare wrecks etc. Call it alien tech or whatever...

 

Researching a schematic requires you to feed an element into an analyzer which consumes the element but makes some progress towards producing a BP for the higher tier. For example:

 

You progress your analysis for the BP based on integrity (number of repairs left before it's irreparable) times the simplicity (with some rng thrown in for lulz) of developing the BP. For example say you feed in an engine that has 1 repair left, the simplicity is rated say 5 so you roll the following:

 

<integrity> * (RND(1,<simplicity>) - so you progress between 1-5 points out of 100 to get a BP for smashing up a busted engine. Feeding in a fresh engine could generate 3-15 points. Skills could be used to increase this.

 

 

Tier 3 BPs can be analyzed from artifacts found mining asteroids or in wrecks. They should be made rare enough that it is impractical for an individual to try to find enough of a specific artifact to make progress towards a BP.

 

 

Schematic are not limited to ship elements. You could research a tier 2 assembler that is faster than a tier 1 etc.

 

 

The above I just pulled out of my ass......so feel free to critique, I won't cry.

 

----------------

 

 

Fix mining. 

 

Add construct mining elements that can be mounted on a XS or S core. They consume raw oxygen and hydrogen to run. (No I'm not going to make them run on ship fuel because that requires ore).  The construct is capable of mining in much larger spheres than the hand tool and mined ore is stored inside an ore container. The ore container cannot be looted by hand - can only be jettisoned in which case the ore is lost. You must fly your ship to a static construct or an L core construct that has an ore unloader which empties the container into a linked hub. 

 

There are several goals here.

 

1 - Get rid of handmining beyond early game. It's not fun. You now have to pilot a ship to mine so piloting skills - both character and player skills matter.

 

2 - Add complexity to mining - your design actually matters as your construct has to be able to carry the ore out since you can't just empty it via link.  You can't just fly your ship off somewhere and mine away by hand - you need to bring your mining ship along and you can't just have a bunch of ore crates as you will want to unload it regularly to keep your mass down or you'll burn too much fuel for it to be viable - or get too heavy and stuck underground and have to jettison ore to get out.

 

3 - Improves group mining ops by creating a scenario for a dedicated mining L core carrier loaded with XS mining ships and has an ore unloader that is able to empty them into it's containers. As an L core is the minimum size for a dynamic core mounted ore unloader it would be cost prohibitive to have individual players flying around in L cores just to mine (at least for now). Yes they could claim a tile, plop down a static core and an unloader but it would still expand the complexity as currently you do the same thing with dynamic s cores with a bunch of containers.

 

Also just pulled the above out of my ass....but that's the direction I'd want mining in DU to go. 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Raker1 said:

Many are unhappy with the changes, given where we are now and some of the playerbase reaction 

 

If you were NQ , what would you do to rectify this situation?

 

 

I would wipe the game , remove bots, let people keep their skill points and empty blue prints (no magic spawn for free nonsense). Then the new model would work fine for what they described it's intent.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with a lot of what you say 
 

As much as NQ have said no wipe and I do understand the pushback they would get

 

A full wipe would enable a level playing field, I agree this should be sweetened with allowing people to keep skill points and the schematics should be at a lower price to enable smaller Corps to be able to produce 

 

personally I would also remove bots buying ore to encourage a player driven market

 

I would also allow core units to repaired with scrap for a limited number of times

 

as the game is presently

 

if you are new to the game and have limited resources and you crash your ship, it’s likely you will not be able to afford to replace the core, so potentially you are stranded with a broken ship, which you will not even be able to fly to a market or a base to get the core to repair 

 

Thats going to make people hit the unsub button quickly 

 

yes this is beta and we will have to wait for further content, but this patch gives no incentive for new players to stick around and it’s handed the market to a few elite Corps who can afford to ride this out and get there factories back online

 


Mining alone will not keep players happy until more content trickles out especially as some planets resemble Swiss cheese

 

NQ have now released this patch , I do not feel they can roll this back

 

They have hard choices to make and I feel a full wipe will happen at some point before release, in my opinion it’s better to bite that bullet now 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Raker1 said:

Mining alone will not keep players happy until more content trickles out especially as some planets resemble Swiss cheese

 

Yeah but that's largely because mining in DU is terrible. It's a space ship game where you mine by hand. Make ships mine and it's a better game right away.

 

It's absolute lunacy that we are hand mining in a space ship game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, Mordgier said:

Yeah but that's largely because mining in DU is terrible. It's a space ship game where you mine by hand. Make ships mine and it's a better game right away.

 

It's absolute lunacy that we are hand mining in a space ship game.

I know that on their road map to completion they have slated "mining units for automation" but no clue when that will be or what that means. Ship mounted? Different sizes? Will they need schematics as well for each ore type to mine? Based on what I have seen in my short time, the vagueness of the statement is very scary.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, Deintus said:

I know that on their road map to completion they have slated "mining units for automation" but no clue when that will be or what that means. 

Don't worry. They have no clue either.

 

They just said it'll be tied to a zone and will come after territory warfare which is slated to arrive...........¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A somewhat quick fix that can be done to help now and not in 5 month would be to introduce limited run schematics.

 

Unlimited schematics are still the way to go for big industry guys and a treasure to value.

Small groups or solo players can have fun with industry again, but with less efficiency.

Pumping out big numbers of something in a short time is possible without big investment.

Dynamic factories make some sense again.

A dispenser at the starter area should give you the basics (and maybe some random schematics that you would not know otherwise)

 

t5 schematics are single use, t4 twice, t3 x4, t2 x8, t1 x16. This also means that at least for low tier people produce a few extra items they dont need to "use up" the untradeable started schematic and put all sorts of stuff on the markets. It also means existing schematics arent useless.

Other than that, patchnotes for test servers must be public and no NDA in place, so even if not all players can join it, all players know the same things.
Things like the current market bots buying t1 and t2 ore should be introduced slowly, over the course of a day. So nobody just doubles his money because he sees the patchnotes early. Imagine the announcement had been "we increase the price the bots pay for ore slowly until we think the economy recovers to our satisfaction" and then just increase it by 0.2q per hour. Sure it would have meant people dont wants to sell ore while it is climbing, but it also would have meant nobody just bought for 200M and sell it for 400M after the server down.
Too many things in this game are too random, not just the things out of direct control of the devs like bugs, but also the dev decisions themselves which may mean you double or half your money if you log in at the right time and read the announcements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Mordgier said:

Get rid of schematics for the current schematic implementation.

 

Warp Drives, L cores, AGG etc can be considered to be sufficiently advanced to need schematics. 

...

 

Also just pulled the above out of my ass....but that's the direction I'd want mining in DU to go. 

 

 

 

 

These are ALL excellent ideas!  This is what we want; actual challenges, not just mind-numbing excessive time-sinks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, Dhara said:

 

These are ALL excellent ideas!  This is what we want; actual challenges, not just mind-numbing excessive time-sinks.

The sad thing is none of these suggestions are revolutionary - all of these are rehashes from existing mechanics in other games.


Countless games had item fragments you had to collect and trade to get a complete item - path of exile cards are a prefect example of that mechanic. You will almost never complete a set of the rarer cards yourself but you would  trade for them with other players to get a complete set.

 

The scarcity can be tuned easily on the server side to inject blueprints early on or slow down the progression to create scarcity as needed. It's pretty easy for the game to have mechanics in place to keep seeding BPs until there is a set number of completed BPs and they are controlled by at least several different orgs to prevent monopolization of any one BP to maintain a healthy economy.

 

If the goal is to force industry specialization - the only way to do this is via limited BPs.

 

JC's argument of "You won't make your own iphone!" is silly because the reason there aren't 500,000 random factories making iPhones is patents. If they could get away with it,  they'd be selling $400 Huawei 'iphones' at every corner.  Limiting BPs creates the same situation where only certain entities will be able to make certain things.

 

 

Mining ships are nothing new. Empyrion has them Space Engineers has them.. The fact that DU does not have mining ships continues to blow my mind. 

 

 

Like - how is this NOT a thing in DU?!

 

In Empyrion you could only mount drills on a hovercraft which meant that a mining op involved flying your capital ship with some hovercraft to a planet, landing, unloading the HVs and mining with the HVs. While your capital ship was landed on the planet it was vulnerable due to capital ship weapons being less effective in atmosphere. So often you'd actually end up having to have a friend drop off some HVs, hide the capital ship in deep space, come back in a small ship and help mine in a hovercraft before going back to bring the capship to scoop everyone up and return to safety. Or you would leave the capital ship on the planet but also unload some defensive hovercraft which had strong atmospheric weapons to defend the capital ship. Handmining in Empyrion was what newbies did for the first day - and then never again.

 

In Empyrion our 'mining' hovercraft were basically tanks that could also mine to ensure that if we did get caught by some hostile players we wouldn't get slaughtered. My luckiest mining op resulted in finding a landed capital ship while piloting my hovercraft and blowing it up. Less lucky one ended with me running into another hovercraft and taking an artillery shell to the face....but that's what made it fun.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

- emergency brake. Something like agg plus alt f4. Stops ship immediately and keeps it in the air for a few seconds. Burns a lot of fuel.

- parachutes. For drop cargo from orbit. Cool when atmo warfare.

- atmo engine xl

- transparent voxels

- warp beacon xs , s, m, l

- hypersonic forceshield. Negates atmo effect.

- terrain radar. Shows height of the tallest object in the nearest territory.

- docking properly implemented

- water physics

- more planets. Jupiter, Venus etc. Time for something fresh.

- animals

- discovering new flora for xp (for now exploration is pointless)

- "insurance" for new players.

- better linking. Links placeable like electric cables irl.

- batteries for ships. Temporarily increasing  ship parameters. Shift + W thrust x2, Shift + Ctrl brake x2. Need energy ofc.

- rotors

- movable element. Programmable in lua.

- co text menu in lua editor.

- minable gems. With ability to turn them into schematics in research lab.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Get rid of repair limitations to elements on ships build with x-small cores (for newbie learner flyers)
  • Suspend damage to all elements until all the bugs are out - I darent fly at the moment after a game crash wrecked my ship.
  • Only require schematics for larger, more complex, higher-value items.
  • Increase the container range to minimise the drudgery of mining and the often inability to land within container range at a busy market.
  • Increase nano pack containment volume to reduce boring , repetitive mining trips and help newbies get established.
  • Implement a flying tutorial in the piloting hub for newbies and make atmosphere height information available in planetary data.
  • Implement a lua tutorial in the building hub.
  • Reduce overall boring 'waits' for things like non-warp interplanetary travel and travelling to a market in the early stages of the game.
  • Improve introductory tutorials with better explanations and de-bug it!
  • Clean up markets and make the landing platforms larger.
  • Implement an industry 'buy back' scheme for those of us who have invested heavily in this prior to the 2 day patch notice.
  • Improve voxel engine with more scope - we should be able to build with angles and curves.
  • Include a table of which talents unlock what core allowances in the codex.
  • Improve and update the general marketing around the game to make it clear exactly what the state the game is in and what youre signing up for - currently it is misleading in its scope and gives the impression the game is more complete and stable than it is, especially if you dont know what a Beta is (not everyone is a gamer/programmer).
  • Improve the market interface.
  • Add more variation in content - ie. Other ways to generate income, ways to involve collaboratively with other players & orgs, more exploration & story.
  •  

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd get rid of whiny, salty, toxic players and go after more sensible folks who can think outside the box, not focusing purely on parts of the game that are not fleshed out and then demanding their specific playstyle be catered to immediately, at the expense of nearly everything else.

 

But since that won't happen, here we are.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...