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The sore need for a planet revamp and new ore distribution.


Mjrlun

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I talked specifically about planet atmospheres (and skybox) in this post, as well as a similar post that my friend made focusing on the nebula found here. These detail issues that link into this particular issue, and are very important, however, I am not mentioning them in this post.

 

Now why do I bring up these 3 posts? Well, they link very heavily into the topic at hand. Planet tech, and planet revamp.

 

Starting with the game's progression and longevity itself, the current planets do not link very well (if at all) with the progression within the game. To put it succinctly, this section of text describes it perfectly:
 

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Currently, limestone and malachite are only present on the same body on Alioth, where they are used to craft tier 2 components. This issue with this is the following: You cannot craft tier 2 components without a static core, and therefore by extension a territory unit, which that territory unit requires tier 2 components. Due to this, it is physically IMPOSSIBLE to start from scratch on any celestial body in the star system in almost any manner, therefore breaking a core gameplay pillar (in my opinion) of any progression-based game, something Empyrion (for example) does incredibly well. In that game, you can get to the end game in almost any situation from scratch (no matter if it's extremely difficult), due to the nature of the progression. 

 

To fix this major issue, excluding of course the need for Malachite and Limestone to exist on all celestial bodies (in my opinion), allowing territory units to be crafted using tier 1 components, AND in a nanocrafter I see as a necessity for this game. Of course, it would have to be highly expensive in that regard, and additionally take a long time to craft (example being 6-12 hours).

 

 

Switching to a similar topic, brought up in the previous feature mention, a change of ore distribution and planet revamp is sorely in need. While of course a planet revamp is not a quality of life feature that is simple to answer (and solve), the ore distribution, which of course requires a planet revamp, is highly important to the current progression of the game. Without good level design, a game will most likely suffer for that issue. I do plan on making a post about the planet revamp though, so ill link it here when it happens. Anyways.

Take this situation: Currently, you can get stranded on a moon. These moons do not exhibit atmosphere, and a lot of them do not contain tier 2 ore either. Due to this issue, it is physically impossible to progress without a market, and to even move a ship starting with no fuel. Because of this chicken and egg issue, the player physically cannot get off of a celestial body without any tier 2's, due to space engines (and technically rocket engines) being impossible to fuel without them, and being required to move in space properly.

 

Funnily enough, the player can craft space engines (and tanks) in their nanocrafter, but of course cannot fuel them, making that feature quite questionable.

 

In this issue, the game's progression directly clashes with the way these planets were designed. Not to mention the longevity of the planets.

 

On the regard of longevity, the simplest way to explain it would be the post about planet tech, their appearance, and their atmospheres, but also including their size. If you were to compare the Alioth system to the rest of the planets, you'd notice something highly disturbing. Alioth is double the radius of all other planets (and a lot of them are over double smaller), Sanctuary moon is also bigger than every planet excluding Alioth,  and even Alioth's moons are the same size as Madis! 30km radius, 60km diameter. For an MMO of the scale that Dual Universe wants to have, planets this small is comparable to Space Engineers, a game designed for either small scale multiplayer, and singleplayer messing around. Many of the moons of the planets have been completely mined out of anything but tier 1's (pre-demeter), and planets such as Madis are extremely full of players, and we were only about a year into the public beta.

 

To solve this major issue, I suggest the planets' sizes to be increased significantly. The moons themselves should be around as big as Sanctuary is currently (80km diameter), and all the planets should be of course much bigger, a maximum size in my opinion would be upwards of 600KM, but most likely closer to 400KM diameters. This is of course to increase the longevity of the planets and their habitation, and to make the sense of scale within the game much more apparent.

 

Onto the tech itself, while I'm sure that the developers working on planet tech already have made major improvements to the planets, a sneak peak found in this video (over a year ago, now), it is highly apparent if you look closely at many of the planets that they were not made with intent of being permanent, let alone even looking pretty on the surface. Just look at Alioth, for example, it is quite clear that it is literally just an upscaled version of whatever it was when it was smaller like the rest of the planets, not even scaling the terrain's biomes and noise along with it to counteract this issue, which is an amateur mistake, especially for something as permanent as it seems to be currently. Not to mention, this post (can you tell the difference), which clearly shows that both Thades, and Sinnen uses the exact same planet generator, and if you look at Madis, also appears to use a very similar generator (but with different colors), of which shows just how lazy they were thrown together. Very little variety in terrain shapes.

 

We move onto the other planets, Teoma seems to be one of the higher effort ones, having both grass, and trees, but once again is betrayed by the laziness of not even doing a height filter properly, and in that, Teoma literally had UNDERWATER TREES (pre-Demeter), which is honestly confusing and I don't know why they did not pick up on this. Additionally, although it looks very pretty, Teoma also has what seems to be a translation slider for its terrain compared to Alioth, and in that, they just translated all terrain filters for voxel types down by like 500 meters to a KM, and terrain up by about 100-250 meters, achieving a planet covered by mountains, and with no proper bodies of water (which to my current knowledge is by no means realistic).

 

I could keep bashing each one of the planets and their features, but I think at this point you get the idea. These planets don't seem to be permanent, and seem to be amateur-ish at best.

 

With how the process of a planet revamp would work, I must clear up a few major misnomers. Firstly, assuming it's not an actual wipe, all of your constructs will be turned into magic BP's (compactified constructs) and put into players' inventories. Of course, the items within the player's inventories will also remain, and thus no actual information except for the planets themselves will be altered, or lost. This of course does mean, however, that multi-core builds will be a pain to set up once again, however, I'm sure NQ is smart enough to find solutions to that issue as before. 

 

I hope that you enjoyed this post to some degree, and also are willing to undergo a planet revamp. I doubt it will be the easiest change, however, it is vital to the game's success, not only for the player base, but for the company, and continuation of the game's development as a whole.

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Hey ! 

I agree with :

1) Bigger planets and moons

2) Distribution of ores so that you can craft t2 parts everywhere , although you can use the market easy but that is your point (no need to travel for that)

3) Graphic  improvements 

 

Addition :

- Harvest Trees and rocks and make wood and stone for building purposes... extra materials and extra voxels makes industrialists happier :D 

 

Habitant

Habitants Organization

 

 

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1 minute ago, Habitant said:

Hey ! 

I agree with :

1) Bigger planets and moons

2) Distribution of ores so that you can craft t2 parts everywhere , although you can use the market easy but that is your point (no need to travel for that)

3) Graphic  improvements 

 

Addition :

- Harvest Trees and rocks and make wood and stone for building purposes... extra materials and extra voxels makes industrialists happier :D 

 

Habitant

Habitants Organization

 

 

I disagree with the t2 as nobody ever leaves Alioth There is so much to the system yet most people spend 90% of their time on Alioth

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15 minutes ago, Snipey said:

I disagree with the t2 as nobody ever leaves Alioth There is so much to the system yet most people spend 90% of their time on Alioth

Like I said, the issue with this is the game's progression. You physically cannot get off of celestial bodies without tier 2's, and not all of them have them.

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29 minutes ago, Mjrlun said:

Like I said, the issue with this is the game's progression. You physically cannot get off of celestial bodies without tier 2's, and not all of them have them.

This is the most ridiculous thing ever. What were people doing before advanced and rare engines? I got to madis from alioth with 2kt 4 basics 2 space large and a dream.

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13 minutes ago, Snipey said:

This is the most ridiculous thing ever. What were people doing before advanced and rare engines? I got to madis from alioth with 2kt 4 basics 2 space large and a dream.

kergon fuel is uncraftable without tier 2's? how would you move your ship without kergon through space xD

Rocket engines require tier 3's as well xD

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It might be quite a struggle trying to make planets larger, though. even if everyone's constructs were compacted, megacities and large constructs would all have to endure the extremely annoying process of placing down all of your constructs again, BP by BP. Not to mention the chaos that would ensue with everyone trying to reclaim everything as quickly as possible, and griefing bases by claiming them first. I think it would be a better idea for NQ to manually move the territories themselves, or to use a script to do so.

 

  

1 hour ago, Mjrlun said:

We move onto the other planets, Teoma seems to be one of the higher effort ones, having both grass, and trees, but once again is betrayed by the laziness of not even doing a height filter properly, and in that, Teoma literally has UNDERWATER TREES, which is honestly confusing and I don't know why they did not pick up on this.

 

also, can you send me some pics of those underwater trees XD. perhaps they are just veeeeerrry thirsty.

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16 minutes ago, Shaman said:

It might be quite a struggle trying to make planets larger, though. even if everyone's constructs were compacted, megacities and large constructs would all have to endure the extremely annoying process of placing down all of your constructs again, BP by BP. Not to mention the chaos that would ensue with everyone trying to reclaim everything as quickly as possible, and griefing bases by claiming them first. I think it would be a better idea for NQ to manually move the territories themselves, or to use a script to do so.

 

  

 

also, can you send me some pics of those underwater trees XD. perhaps they are just veeeeerrry thirsty.

I've seen it before on surrogate (you can see it quite easily if you do too), but i dont have pictures xP

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14 hours ago, Mjrlun said:

kergon fuel is uncraftable without tier 2's? how would you move your ship without kergon through space xD

Every planet has a t2 ore that can be used to craft kergon. If you are on Alioth, you can take a shuttle to Sanctuary and surface harvest all four t2s from the  territory you have/can claim (if you were/are lucky your territory might have one or more t2s you can mine too).

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5 hours ago, JayleBreak said:

Every planet has a t2 ore that can be used to craft kergon. If you are on Alioth, you can take a shuttle to Sanctuary and surface harvest all four t2s from the  territory you have/can claim (if you were/are lucky your territory might have one or more t2s you can mine too).

not to mention the surface ores. don't forget the surface ores

 

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6 hours ago, JayleBreak said:

Every planet has a t2 ore that can be used to craft kergon. If you are on Alioth, you can take a shuttle to Sanctuary and surface harvest all four t2s from the  territory you have/can claim (if you were/are lucky your territory might have one or more t2s you can mine too).

You're forgetting: not all moons have capabilities to craft kergon. And certainly not all planets have the ability to make kergon, because you need a territory unit to make anything tier 2's, which in itself requires t2's to craft. This game's progression makes little sense, from the perspective of actual progression and crafting

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3 hours ago, Mjrlun said:

You're forgetting: not all moons have capabilities to craft kergon. And certainly not all planets have the ability to make kergon, because you need a territory unit to make anything tier 2's, which in itself requires t2's to craft. This game's progression makes little sense, from the perspective of actual progression and crafting

Only Sanctuary restricts mining to the territory you have claimed, everywhere else your free to mine everything you find on an unclaimed hex. If you are on a moon or anywhere else you don't have access to the manufacturing unit and need kergon you go to a market and buy it like veryone else 

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I like some of your ideas and see what you are saying. What about a compromise and just add all tier two ores to all planets. Not only that but add some code to the game so that more nodes spawn randomly on all planets?

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18 hours ago, Perry666 said:

I like some of your ideas and see what you are saying. What about a compromise and just add all tier two ores to all planets. Not only that but add some code to the game so that more nodes spawn randomly on all planets?

IMO this wouldn't really fix everything, because the planets are way too small for an MMO sized world, and aesthetically are bad at best. A major change, while frightening, would be much better for everyone in the long run. Especially because, we're currently in a beta, expect change, people!

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20 hours ago, JayleBreak said:

Only Sanctuary restricts mining to the territory you have claimed, everywhere else your free to mine everything you find on an unclaimed hex. If you are on a moon or anywhere else you don't have access to the manufacturing unit and need kergon you go to a market and buy it like veryone else 

The point of a progression system is to not rely on the markets. This game has a horrible pattern of solely relying on others to get stuff done, rather than letting players create the solutions themselves. This is especially noticeable in the world of Schematics. You cannot craft them, however, you can get them only by trading in ore to some bots (if you're thinking about a tech tree, where you are the only person, which is the whole point of a tech tree). What I'm saying with territories (and I explicitly mentioned this in the original post,) is that you cannot craft them without a territory unit in the first place, therefore making the progression system incomplete, and seemingly forgotten about.

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14 hours ago, Mjrlun said:

This game has a horrible pattern of solely relying on others to get stuff done, rather than letting players create the solutions themselves. This is especially noticeable in the world of Schematics. You cannot craft them, however, you can get them only by trading in ore to some bots

Shhh!!! Don't expose that that the entire galaxy system is just a racketeering scheme to make Aphelia filthy rich. Keep quiet or maybe next time you fly there will be some strange problems with your construct..

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