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DEVBLOG: CONSTRUCTION SLOTS AND STACKED ELEMENTS


NQ-Wanderer

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It’s the tale of two stackings that were never meant to be, nested organizations and overlapping elements on ships. Both have been problematic, and we’d like to give you an update on the steps we’re taking to correct them.

 

 

ORGANIZATION CONSTRUCT SLOTS

 

Several months ago, we suggested a way to address the issue of cascading organizations being created as a way to circumvent the soft limitations of construct and territory numbers. Players raised some valid concerns about the proposal, citing that it would adversely affect how they managed their organizations’ holdings. In consideration of that feedback, we temporarily tabled the proposed changes and went back to the drawing board.

 

The problem remains and needs to be resolved sooner rather than later to avoid a myriad of issues in the future. DU simply can’t support an infinite number of constructs per player. It’s why we have construct allowances in the first place. We needed a solution that would support community projects for organizations of any size without penalizing those that are prolific. After all, one of the core features of DU is to build lots of cool stuff.

 

 

THE NEW WAY

 

The solution we’ve designed will detach construct capacity rights from organizations and put them directly into players’ hands. 

 

  • Organizations will now have a base construct capacity of zero.

The reasoning behind this is to no longer make it a viable option to create countless organizations simply to increase the capacity of constructs available. This will now depend on the next item on the list…

  • Each Novean will have 15 assignable organization construct slots, with an additional 10 available from talents.

This change allows us to scale the maximum number of constructs to the number of players. This can be beneficial to smaller organizations because… 

  • Players can assign these slots to any organization of their choosing, whether or not they are a member of the organization.

We hope to see players use their available organization construct slots to support their organizations and to help support community projects they like. For those who want to support a different organization…

  • Noveans can reassign their slots from one organization to another, though this will cause the former organization to lose construct capacity.

This means that...

  • An organization that loses capacity will either need to acquire new slots from players in order to support its infrastructure or reduce its number of constructs.

  • If the organization has more constructs than its allotted slots for two weeks, the organization will receive a warning. 

  • If the organization does not either reduce its construct count to below its new allocated slots or increase its slot count two weeks after the warning, random constructs from that organization will become abandoned and lose ownership. At that point, any player or organization who has the necessary allotment of construct slots may claim it. 

This system allows us to maintain a balance in terms of expected constructs present.

 

Further, to prevent players from trying to circumnavigate the system by reassigning construct slots back and forth every two weeks, there will be a minimum of 30 days before you can reassign the slots away from an organization.

 

 

USING YOUR TALENTS

 

Many of you likely used talents to increase an organization's construct capacity. Talents will still play a role as they provide an upper ceiling for a single organization’s capacity; however, these talents have been increased in their capacity, which now allows a single organization to have a far higher construct slot maximum.

 

Where the old maximum was 275 constructs, the new upper limit will be 1625.

 

As these changes significantly increase the scale of which these talents previously applied, these talents will be reset at the 0.28 Panacea release.

  • Organization Construct Management

  • Organization Construct Management Specialization

  • Advanced Organization Construct Management Specialization

We try to limit the resetting of talents as much as we can; however, due to the considerable changes in the way these talents now behave and scale, we feel that refunding these talents is required.

 

 

FRESH, NEW UI

 

All the changes revealed above will come with some UI improvements such as:

  • A new interface on the organization home page, allowing each Novean to assign construct slots to organizations of their choosing and to see how many slots they have assigned to which organizations.

image1.png

  • A new interface called ‘Constructs’ on each organization page, allowing each organization to have insight on how many slots they have available, who they received them from, when the next construct check is due, a log of slot gains and losses, and what their slot maximum capacity and talent maximum capacity are.

 

image2.png

 

Another minor feature we will begin to introduce into some select UI elements is the ability to export lists in JSON format, the first of which can be found in the new organization ‘Constructs’ UI above. It will include a small copy-to-clipboard button, which will copy a JSON formatted string containing a list of all the data available in the column. In the above example, these can be found for:

  • Construct Slots: This will return a JSON string of player names, how many slots they have shared, and if they are a member of your organization.

  • Construct Check: This will return a JSON string of constructs that have been abandoned due to lack of construct slots, their coordinates at the time of abandonment, and a total count of constructs that have been abandoned.

  • Log: This will return a JSON string containing the date it was copied as a unit timestamp, the number of allocation changes, followed by a list of players, how many they have lent to the organization and how many the organization has as that point, along with a Unix timestamp of the transaction.

 

Following feedback on these export functions, we will consider implementing them for other UI elements such as, for example, the Talents UI.

 

When the Panacea update launches, it will kick off a 30-day grace period at the end of which the abandonment of constructs will go into effect. Please note that if your organization exceeds its slot capacity, a warning message will be received; however, no abandoning will happen for the first 30 days after Panacea’s release.

 

 

DISABLING OVERLAPPING ELEMENTS

 

The stacking of elements on ships is unintended gameplay - aka an exploit - that we have been aware of for a regrettably long time. Though we’ve explored a few different options, including the detection solution we released previously, community feedback prompted us to postpone the disabling of elements until after Panacea’s initial release. 

 

The revised approach will likely include trials on the Live server without disabling elements in order to measure the impact of the algorithms. We would like to thank everyone who reached out to us with constructive feedback and bug reports of elements that caused problems in specific placements.

 

 

FEEDBACK WANTED

 

The forums are the absolute best place to share your feedback with us. Although members of the DU dev team may pop into Discord from time to time, the loose and fluid nature of those chat channels can make it difficult to have an earnest discussion. The forums, on the other hand, are static and much more conversation-friendly. 

 

All of that said, we hope you’ll join the conversation about this devblog here

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