Jump to content

Staggering Upkeep - Discussion thread


NQ-Pann

Recommended Posts

Following last Tuesday's maintenance, we monitored the effect of territory upkeep as it was applied for the first time to the live server. Our findings were that the culmination of all the upkeep caused an issue in a specific subsystem. To prevent this from happening again, we have staggered territory upkeep. This means that the upkeep period this week for all territories will be extended by up to three days.

For example, if your territory tax was originally scheduled to be due on Tuesday, it could now be due on Friday.

 

Following up on the release note regarding that territories without assigned headquarters, we want to clarify it in response to players’ questions. Auto-assignment is done as follows for each player who had 0 headquarters assigned. For each territory they own, starting with the highest number of static constructs owned by that player on that territory, we set the territory to be flagged as headquarters, with up to a maximum of five territories per player. This only applies to player-owned territories; organization-owned territories cannot become headquarters and do not receive that benefit.

 

Please note that our data indicates that even with auto-assigned HQs, there will still be plenty of abandoned territories opening up for claiming and requisitioning. While a player-owned territory flagged as HQ still owes taxes and will go into an offline state if taxes are not paid, meaning that mining units and factories will not be operational, it will not go into an abandoned state that would make it vulnerable to claiming and requisitioning by another player.

 

For more information about Territory Upkeep, see this devblog.

This is the place for questions and comments!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guys, the problem is a technical one and quite simple :

- Demeter patch hit everybody at the same time.

- So tax bill must be issued for the whole player base at the very same time.

- This means a permanent stressful server overload every week at the very same time.

 

It is very much preferable from a server perspective, if he can deal with taxes one after the other

with some pause inbetween.

 

No big deal.

 

What is really surprising is the fact, that the developer who designed that , did not think about it. Its a classic problem ...

Edited by Ninator
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the staggering is a good fix, both for technical server load issues and also to the side of people who were looking at tiles to claim, down to the exact minute.

 

Now to the elephant in the room, what about the HQ changes? Pretty much every player who is currently active and invested in the game got excited for the territory abandonment, with most of complaints coming from inactive players (such that Reddit post yesterday), and yet, NQ backed off and sided with the inactives. Why that change in stance? Honestly it feels like being an active PAYING player in this game is bad, as the developers keep punishing you for that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think staggering is a great idea. The below is not. 

• For players who haven’t set any headquarters, five headquarters have been automatically assigned based on the highest number of static constructs on the territory.

 

There are inactive players owning key tiles preventing the expansion of huge community projects. These types of projects are what we were told is part of why we are here in DU.  Not following why protecting inactive player hexes anywhere outside Sanctuary Moon is a good idea. We have always been told the only fully safe location is Sanctuary Moon.

Please NQ - give us a means to remove or claim inactive player hexes. There are key locations preventing 100's of current players from expanding the building projects they are doing together due to players who left the game weeks into Beta. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed it was a predictable issue, then again who are you giving more time then the others without accusations of favoritism.

 

I waited past first taxation cycle before paying. A for the staggering issue. B for observation reasons. C out of fear for double billing (played enough early access titles to be got again by that kind of bug)

 

 

edit:I am very worried though about all five being assigned... A lot of ugly stuff will remain frozen this way. Any sensible players didn't spread out over kilometers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Ninator said:

Guys, the problem is a technical one and quite simple :


Worded very well and pretty much in line with whay i'd expect to be the case, including this really not being much of an issue

 

 

14 minutes ago, Ninator said:

What is really surprising is the fact, that the developer who designed that , did not think about it. Its a classic problem ...

 

Again true, it's somewhat interesting that this was not considered ahead of time, especially since NQ ran into bumps like this several times in the past year allready.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That is all fine and good. Please remove tiles from inactive players who have not paid tax on them. The old tiles need removed to make way for the active players. The server is full of old useless trash. You had a way for the players to clean it up for you and now you are killing the best thing about this patch. Please do not auto assign HQs.  I assume it is too late but that is a bad decision. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the subject of the HQ tiles being auto assigned. After listening to others I am on the fence on this change also.
 

On the one hand this was a good move by NQ in securing players assets who are on a break and have no knowledge that their work and time is at risk of being raided and taken away so this supports that group of people. 

 

On the other hand I would 100% agree that tiles with no cores should not be subject to auto assign. At the same time I am unsure that all 5 are really needed to be assigned. Maybe a compromise of Max 1 or 2 tiles only get the auto assign feature.
 

Finally this will also add to the argument later on the HQ tiles may not be permanent safe once a subscription has been inactive for X amount of time. Maybe a 6-month inactive window could be a future option? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So now any hopes have scavenging (more like purchasing and crossing fingers) is pretty much gone? I was hoping to claim my neighbors two tiles so I could expand, as they haven't play since February or so, but now those tiles are most likely going to be HQ'd; so I can no longer claim them.

 

 

Fantastic work again, NQ.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Jake Arver said:


Worded very well and pretty much in line with whay i'd expect to be the case, including this really not being much of an issue

 

 

 

Again true, it's somewhat interesting that this was not considered ahead of time, especially since NQ ran into bumps like this several times in the past year allready.

 

NQ has human’s working for them, therefor they are imperfect and don’t think of everything. It’s simple. 

Edited by Doombad
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Sevian said:

So now any hopes have scavenging (more like purchasing and crossing fingers) is pretty much gone? I was hoping to claim my neighbors two tiles so I could expand, as they haven't play since February or so, but now those tiles are most likely going to be HQ'd; so I can no longer claim them.

 

 

Fantastic work again, NQ.

This is the real disappointment. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I actually have a beta key alt sitting on a tile currently still owned by another alt who's sub ran out and will not be renewed. As a result from this change, he will not be able to take ownership of the tile and will not be able to run the industry on the tile. The scan from the tile is actually interesting but as a result will go unused.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, NQ-Pann said:

Following last Tuesday's maintenance, we monitored the effect of territory upkeep as it was applied for the first time to the live server. Our findings were that the culmination of all the upkeep caused an issue in a specific subsystem. To prevent this from happening again, we will begin staggering territory upkeep. This means that the upkeep period this week for all territories will be extended by up to three days.

This is the place for questions and comments. 

 

Sup taxmam!

 

  • Taxes are to high and unequally applied to those who have the most or use the most
  • Territory mining and taxing TUs as a money laundering mechanic to sell things to convert them to quanta and then pay taxes
  • The mission system bypasses the Auto miners since you dont need tiles if you fly missions and avoid the whole Mining Unit Meta completely with no tax treadmills.
  • Cores need to be taxed and not just TUs as the current tax system hurts new players the most
  • The why the ores are with mining unit tiles pools of ore are intentionally low and inefficient to force tiles on you for 1/5-1/15th of what you were getting and with efficiency drops every 48 hours you get more like 1/15th-1/25th of the ore you got before.
  • Without a proper resource sink it completely diminishes the minimal amount of ore you gain through charges to start the units, keep them running, and to make money in the market without destructible elements or the old script to straight up buy ore out of the market.
  • It lacks freedom or the ability to explore or mine on other planets via mining ships if you are chained down your your mining colony and cant charge or do anything on other planets if you have a 48 hour leash driven by when you can spend all your charges playing a role in nailing people down to tiles or your efficiency drops off the table.
  • We were supposed to build a civilization. Not erase it with taxes but build it up to only tear it down if war was happening. What changed?
  • Wiping players out of the game with taxes when you get bored of the treadmill or how little you actually get from mining units or having little options but playing a mini game looking for a pixel to spawn rocks, mining ground rocks, or 12kl per day if that with efficiency loss, and not much else to do but missions that pay insanely better or asteroid mining once per week on fridays for 48 hour weekend content. It is a punishing boring static experience that never really gets better over time.
  • VR being pretty much removed from the game does not help.
  • There is not enough room for progression or expansion with how the mining and tax system is set up with loss and efficiency drops factored in.
  • Taxes kill new player retention and flushes anyone waiting for a good update to come back if they have nothing to come back to. You could just have an option if you plan to leave to turn all your stuff into a golden blueprints like Landmark did rather than letting people inherit your work without firing a shot.

 

This turns the game into a Digital money laundering IRS slave mining colony hoarding sim that should be wiping people through PvP but since you wont add PvP cores the to game so people can fight anywhere even in the bubbles without affecting other people who dont want to PvP to do their thing beyond deep space is part of the reason we have taxes since you didnt slow down or edit traditional mining to have people have so much cores, TUs, etc and spread out the abysmal ore pools in an attempt to flush quanta out of the system when there were other sinks you could have done to add health to the game and economy. 1 mil tax and chaining people to their slave mining colony like a charge based addition to micromanage 1 L container of ore a month is a bit much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really like this change, from a gameplay perspective it adds another great layer of unpredictability. Right away this removes any time-zone bias for players targeting soon to be abandoned territories. It also adds some spice when territory warfare gets implemented, as corporations with knowledge of the enemy tax cycle could easily schedule their operations on days where opponent funds are naturally lower.

 

Just to clarify, are tiles claimed in the future going to be included in this 3 day window or will they be distributed throughout the week based on when the territory first goes active?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, NQ-Pann said:

Following last Tuesday's maintenance, we monitored the effect of territory upkeep as it was applied for the first time to the live server. Our findings were that the culmination of all the upkeep caused an issue in a specific subsystem. To prevent this from happening again, we will begin staggering territory upkeep. This means that the upkeep period this week for all territories will be extended by up to three days.

This is the place for questions and comments. 

 

The main problem I have with Taxes in general is it is too much to freequently.

 

Tax cycles on earth are calculated by the solar rotation of a calander year. Sure you constantly pay retail tax but you have a year to save up for property tax or to pay registration on all your vehicles per year to drive. Its not like the government is asking me for proerty tax every week and then tearing down my house or taking my cars if I fail to pay.

 

 

  • What is a solar year in DU by planet or moon closest to the sun vs father away?
  • Why do tax cycles need to be a week vs per month as a solar tax cycle to save up, take quanta out of the system?
  • Why was taxes the only sink on the table when you have built other systems like destructible elements, the market ore manipulation script, repairs not considered with a soft erosion per tax cycle to take an approach to take ore, parts, and quanta out of the system?
  • Why dont you use PvP to do this as well since you have a PvP game and adding PvP dynamic or static cores to drive better gameplay rather than a slave mining colony approach with taxes?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, NQ-Pann said:

Following last Tuesday's maintenance, we monitored the effect of territory upkeep as it was applied for the first time to the live server. Our findings were that the culmination of all the upkeep caused an issue in a specific subsystem. To prevent this from happening again, we have staggered territory upkeep. This means that the upkeep period this week for all territories will be extended by up to three days.

For example, if your territory tax was originally scheduled to be due on Tuesday, it could now be due on Friday.

 

Following up on the release note regarding that territories without assigned headquarters, we want to clarify it in response to players’ questions. Auto-assignment is done as follows for each player who had 0 headquarters assigned. For each territory they own, starting with the highest number of static constructs owned by that player on that territory, we set the territory to be flagged as headquarters, with up to a maximum of five territories per player. This only applies to player-owned territories; organization-owned territories cannot become headquarters and do not receive that benefit.

 

Please note that our data indicates that even with auto-assigned HQs, there will still be plenty of abandoned territories opening up for claiming and requisitioning. While a player-owned territory flagged as HQ still owes taxes and will go into an offline state if taxes are not paid, meaning that mining units and factories will not be operational, it will not go into an abandoned state that would make it vulnerable to claiming and requisitioning by another player.

 

For more information about Territory Upkeep, see this devblog.

This is the place for questions and comments!

You managed to make salvaging as a valid pve experience even more unlikely.   Well done. Again. 

 

Why are Yiu making it impossible to salvage long, and even medium long, abandoned constructs impossible.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Anopheles said:

You managed to make salvaging as a valid pve experience even more unlikely.   Well done. Again. 

Maybe they can reactivate random spanning of abandoned ships, so this mechanic can exist without any dependence from player's assets.

And technically, if some player has to lose his ship for you to get it, its PvP

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, joaocordeiro said:

Maybe they can reactivate random spanning of abandoned ships, so this mechanic can exist without any dependence from player's assets.

And technically, if some player has to lose his ship for you to get it, its PvP

No risk gameplay is not gameplay.  The auto HQ'ng nonsense is taking responsibility away from players to protect their own stuff in a game that was sold as a player run experience.

 

Things like this, and top down imposed tax rates and making salvaging of long abandoned constructs near impossible is antithetical to "player run".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Anopheles said:

No risk gameplay is not gameplay.  The auto HQ'ng nonsense is taking responsibility away from players to protect their own stuff in a game that was sold as a player run experience.

 

Things like this, and top down imposed tax rates and making salvaging of long abandoned constructs near impossible is antithetical to "player run".


I think the 5 tile HQ'ing is a poor implementation of trying to keep the player from returning to nothing. I think they should have dynamic cores (which we can't claim anyway) magic bp'ed back to them... and lose the statics... so atleast they have a ship and a sanct tile to rebuild.

 

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...