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DEVBLOG: PVP IN ATHENA - discussion thread


NQ-Wanderer

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First off, I am consistently dumbfounded as to WHY NQ keeps introducing mechanics that are found in “EVE Online” and with almost every patch all I can see is a “BAD Eve Online clone”. Why does NQ think that using similar mechanics from EVE is supposed to make Dual Universe better? Please NQ this is NOT an Eve Online game, unless everyone had it wrong and your TRUE “vison” of the game was always to create a poor-man’s clone of EVE Online? Please NQ, can you please post better worded and more detail post telling everyone what your “intentions” are for “meta”, ships, what your “vision” is for the game since clearly that has drastically changed so that people can quit the game that much faster and move on to more solid games that are “fun”, have engaging mechanics, far less bugs, features that are “actually” interesting and seems worth doing – for example constant calibrations are killing my vision. One simply example “Can you please make it so that the daily 150K reward is AUTO applied if you are currently logged into the game during the 23hr reset and NOT have to keep track of EXACTLY when you last logged in 23hrs ago and have to always LOG OFF and back in JUST so that your character could collect the 150K”. I get that 150K is nothing, but it is such a basic, stupid simple quality of life, a basic principle feature that EVERY single MMO has long thought of and implemented.

 

With all renting aside, updates are good, it shows the game is being actively developed, but the Dev Blog is certainly lacking a ton of details for sure, I am sure more will come.

 

1. Will the “standing base” be a normal static core, dynamic core, or space core?

 

2. If this captured Alien Core will provide it’s own unique platform outside of the normal building mode that uses “core units”, can you build factories on it? Or only elements and voxels like on Dynamic Core Units?

 

3. Once the “Space Unit Shield Generator” goes into a countdown timer, does that mean all mining and weapons stop working and go into hibernation mode?? THEN how can the owner of said construct “restart” them so they go into working mode??

 

4. Will the weapons on these Alien Core Platforms be automated OR have to be manually manned and operated?

 

5. As NQ stated “…as many players enjoyed and embraced the ‘realism’ that the game provided…” WHAT realism are you taking about? There are dozens of NON-realistic features that are far from realism, I gest most are implemented due to server load and limitations as well as cost, but so far not enough realism I have seen, just too many “artificially” created limitations and barriers for the sake of “fun” I am yet to see. Who has time to fly a ship for 8 to 10hrs from one planet to the furthest one??? like other posted it is the MOST SINGLE useless boring feature I have yet to see enjoyment in and I LOVE space trucking, it is a feature for people with multiple accounts

 

6. NQ has still yet to talk about if the mechanic of needing "power generators" to power factories on static cores, maybe even power systems on Dynamic and Space Cores are still going to be a feature in the future OR it is not longer going to be? 

 

An MMO game like this has to be tailored to all player groups and play styles, from PvP to PvE (granted very few of that in DU), but it seems PvP have the largest voice and perhaps NQ has always wanted this to be nothing but a PvP game. One PvE content I thought NQ's original vision included was to build large player-made cities and structures?? Another idea, How about implementing "community goals" where all players can accept a "mission" to buy or craft Voxels and elements and deliver it to a permanent structure in game like a monument, a space gate, a public market, to whatever cool project and it be like once a month or ever few months long term projects. THIS would provide a huge Quanta Sink as well as give factories a purpose to mine and produce "stuff" and give players things to do. 

 

There are just SOO many more questions and hopefully NQ will be kind enough to talk more about in future Dev Blogs.

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I am... surprised by the decision to refuse to disclose the technical aspect of how something will work in a devblog about that release. For example with the speed changes, even if we are supposed to find out the exact math for ourselves, could you ballpark what effects this will have? Will a 1kt ship have a lower top speed after the changes? What tonnage range do you consider a small ship? Will a 10kt ship move along briskly enough, or is the intention that a ship that large should not be playable?

 

Because the information is so limited I cannot give any kind of feedback as to whether I even like these changes. I have no idea. I could sit here and panic about how miserable hauling will be, only to find that the new top speed for the heaviest ships is still 26k. I could salivate about tiny 50 ton fighters in dogfights, only to find that top speed doesn't experience a reduction to any ship smaller than 2kt. I could get really excited about the stasis weapon, or panic that the pvpers are coming to kill me, and find out that it only gives a 5% speed reduction with a 10km range.

 

/shrug/

 

I would like to hear someone spend a little time re-iterating what the vision for DU is. At this point, without JC, I am very confused about who this game is for and what it desires to be.

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7 hours ago, MukkBarovian said:

I am... surprised by the decision to refuse to disclose the technical aspect of how something will work in a devblog about that release. 

It's been the way NQ has operated since pre-alpha.. It's terribly bad communication and they refuse to understand it. It's really impossible to make sense of this obvious deliberate choice of being vague and creeating both speculation and confusion in the playerbase.

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I have lost count how many times I have posted this quote from the Kickstarter, but as long as NQ keeps making new reasons for me to repost it..

 

Quote

In any case, here is what we can promise you:

- Absolute transparency about the development progress

- 100% of the funding will go to the development of Dual Universe, more specifically to pay the developers & artists. The whole point of Novaquark is Dual Universe, and we are not doing anything else.

- Engage with the community and listen to your feedback, with new and innovative ways to get you directly involved in the roadmap decisions.

 

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On 3/31/2022 at 12:24 AM, m0rrtson said:

Can you increate the max speed from thirty thousands to say 60k or 100k km/h?

 

I am really bored to settle a ship to 30k, and go clean my house, wash car, have a dinner and shower, and 5 hours later arrive to a planet to earn 8.5 mln quanta, for BEING AFK!!!

 

That is one of the boring parts of the game.

 

I wish to say, thank you for picking up the MAX speed in general 👍

But...... Ships at 1500 tons + are capped at 20'000, really? - 👎 So now I will spend not 5 hours, I will spend 6 hours, and ... I won't be able to step away from PC, as every min expect a Pirate .....

This is really terrible change....

 

 

 

 

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My thoughts on some graphics:

 

Too many space speed particles, it feels claustrophobic with such density.  

 

The warp effect is backwards.

 

Space engine trails are underwhelming.

 

Not happy with retro rockets.

 

Space combat projectiles trails and visuals are still lackluster. 

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I do not see why the speed needs to be reduced for larger ships at all, it seems more like a PVP insanity chose.

 

IMO The ship speed should be entirely based on realistic physics: The factors from the mass, engines, fuel and gravity combining to be the only features that affect how quickly a ship accelerates, with no limit on the max speed just an equation based on these four factors that determine how quickly the ship accelerates in a given direction.

 

It just makes no sense to limit the max speed based on how heavy a ship is, its simply a change that seems to be taking some of the challenges away from space flight and like all things that are arbitrarily decided its going to be controversial, where no controversy was needed.

 

As for the suggestion slower ships will benefit PVP, they are surely going to just have carrier ships with warp drives making this change redundant anyway. So I really see no point to this change from a PVP standpoint and with the mention of stasis weapons there would be no need for this change to even be considered in addition anyway.

 

Note: I have not actually tried PVP yet so just commenting on what the changes suggest based on the details provided.

 

Anyway from the blog update the reducing ship speed based on mass is the only item that seems like a bad idea and I am certainly not a fan of this just from reading what they said about it.

 

Addendum: Also, if the speed changes are purely due to the mission's system and alts (I assume the alts and main avatar are all traveling in the same ship), then I would suggest as an alternative to breaking space flight in an attempt to try and fix something else that is broken (and not going to work) that instead the mission packages are 'made' into stasis weapons in their own right with a max speed / reduction on the ship they are on. When more than one player character is on a ship this stacks exponentially. I think this would be a far better solution and would only affect the broken aspects of the game without affecting working aspects.

Edited by ADCOne
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Item Container [Anti-grav] EXL with 0.66 weight inside:
the calculation tells us that these containers are way to heavy:

 

If I will carry a the same amount of Gold Nuggets in these heavy containers I get total weight of cargo+containers 105 kTon, when simple containers give 146 kTons.

The difference is 27.9%

if cargo catalyst (the heaviest), the difference will be 33%. The lighter cargo the less profit.

 

For example, I warp the cargo from home to somewhere ( I got my 27.9% discount ), then what? --- warp the empty containers back and get even more expenses?

It does not look usable. At all.

 

I advice you to decrease the weight of these anti-grav heavy containers, at least from 447 tons decrease to 250 tons.

As per calculations, I won't even think to use 447 tons per container.

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Regarging to the Basic Shield Generator XL

  •  If the Attacker is firing at the Defenders station, the Defender will not get an notification
  • If the Attacker have reached the 60% shield hp value, the defenders Superlegate and only the Superlegate is receiving an notification "[...] has gone into lockdown and will extend this state at 2022-xx-xx "

 

The amount of information that the defenders group receiving are really low and the superlegate will be forced to check daily the status of the Basic Shield Generator XL for incoming notifications.  More people of the defenders should receiving a notification and even the first hit on the shield should trigger a notification

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4 hours ago, Koffye said:

Regarging to the Basic Shield Generator XL

  •  If the Attacker is firing at the Defenders station, the Defender will not get an notification
  • If the Attacker have reached the 60% shield hp value, the defenders Superlegate and only the Superlegate is receiving an notification "[...] has gone into lockdown and will extend this state at 2022-xx-xx "

 

The amount of information that the defenders group receiving are really low and the superlegate will be forced to check daily the status of the Basic Shield Generator XL for incoming notifications.  More people of the defenders should receiving a notification and even the first hit on the shield should trigger a notification


Easy: This is where RDMS should be looked at. Org Notification RDMS could fix this, as a super-legate I hate that my fellow legates can't get notifications relating to org matters. Plus it'd allow the org to add non legates to that, brownie points if NQ can add different notification types as separate RDMS categories.

Easy: Likewise, warp beacons need RDMS, give us RDMS to give an actor list access to a beacon... likewise create RDMS to RECIEVE access, so you can control who's beacons you see and not get overloaded with too many beacons just because people gave you access. As warp beacons will probably become more of a... thing, we need more ways to manage them. as it is nothing has changed since their initial implementation when JC wasn't expecting them to be common place for a while. 

Not so easy?: Or how about letting me create an RDMS roll for others to manage a "sub group" of tagged RDMS items. Allowing me to give NON LEGATES specific access to manage constructs with specific tags, aka allow them to add people to policies relating to those tagged constructs. Effectively allowing you to create sub-managers that could be used to help manage military fleets, haulers, scan ships... gas stations... whatever needs a "Management" roll and the ability to give out RDMS rights within a limited scope surrounding specific tags.

Pie in the sky: Would also like them to finally add a "Duties" part of the rDms.  and timed policies. For example pairing that with the warp beacon RDMS suggestion you could temporarily give access to an org to be able to warp out to a beacon on an alien core, but only for a limited time (for example, during an "invasion" giving allies the ability to use your beacon) or potentially charge for access. 

*Edit to add* You could also add RDMS for showing a players/construct on the map. For example, like the "two way" proposed RDMS policies for giving and receiving warp beacon access you could also do the same for showing a ships location in world/on the map. For example, this would fix the issues of the friends list in game being used to track people.... as you'd have to give them explicit rights to do this. But mostly, this would make fleet battles easier as you could potentially give allies the ability to see constructs in world past their radar range if they were "Friendly" and shared the RDMS rights. (past that, we need a way to "share" radar information for fleet battles, but I digress) *End of edit*

It's funny to think how these "boring" RDMS changes would drastically impact the game, you'd more effectively be able to lead "War" efforts... setup special warp beacon networks, have "generals" with proper access to manage their war machines.... could create proper managment rolls for orgs to... organize. And overall make warp-beacons work as they should.

As it is now, we don't have the tools to easily/effectively manage orgs of hundreds of people;  the current tools start to break down past small groups of 10 or so. RDMS almost never gets the proper love it deserves, it's arguably one of the most powerfully unique and under-developed features in DU.

 

Edited by BlindingBright
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55 minutes ago, MukkBarovian said:

After playing the test server, these changes are excellent and NQ put a lot of effort into getting the test server ready to go.

How many extra hours of flight time did you have to do at slower speeds, when you were moving cargo - or was that ignored and not tested?

 

(I do mean cargo not missions)

Edited by ADCOne
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3 hours ago, ADCOne said:

How many extra hours of flight time did you have to do at slower speeds, when you were moving cargo - or was that ignored and not tested?

 

(I do mean cargo not missions)

Do shorter routes/missions. Annoyed that means less money? It’s called game balance, missions have been too lucrative and too easy.

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Please, make Mining Units NOT to be CORE dependent, -- add a button into MU UI "Select tile, where it operates" that search for the tile in 50-100 meters radius around the core, and mine from it (of course if RDMS allows it )

 

Why? ---- I am tired of having 1 core per 1 tile ( 3 cores in 1 rig on 3 tiles conjunction ).

I wish 1 static core per 1 mining rig.

 

Thanks for the LUA for MUs!

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19 hours ago, Shredder said:

Do shorter routes/missions. Annoyed that means less money? It’s called game balance, missions have been too lucrative and too easy.

You have misunderstood - I do not do missions and space flight as it is currently is not broken, so breaking is not a good idea.

 

 

But I take it this means there was no testing done for flying hours compared to normal, I know you can use a calculator but I do not remember the last time I did a perfect flight and would surmise that no has actually done a textbook flight in this game at all. Which means a calculator job is not really an accurate measure.

 

Also it occurred to me today that if they do a wipe and slow down of ships is going to hurt PVP'ers mainly since no one is going to willingly fly the extra time (at least for a long time). So it will all turn into pure warp flights (assuming we can buy the ships and fuel for it). Though I suppose some new players might do it.

 

To be perfectly clear I do not like the slow down of ships currently because I like the challenges involved in over coming atmosphere to space and back again within 1G planets and low gravity no atmosphere moons, with high cargo volumes and across large distances. I have been making my own ships and (two finished and a third on the way) and slowing down the max speed of the ships will drastically reduce the difficulties when slowing down a massive ship in order to enter an atmosphere and then land at a market to sell the goods. Simply put I like space flight to be as realistic as possible since it makes the achievements more satisfying and I am little surprised more PVP'ers are not of a similar mind set.

Edited by ADCOne
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On 4/4/2022 at 8:42 AM, ADCOne said:

...But I take it this means there was no testing done for flying hours compared to normal, I know you can use a calculator but I do not remember the last time I did a perfect flight and would surmise that no has actually done a textbook flight in this game at all. Which means a calculator job is not really an accurate measure...

People with auto-pilot scripts disagree... and the rest of us generally really don't care about whether or not our aim is perfect enough to shave 5 minutes off a 6hr flight. 

 

I appreciate that steering clear of the pipes and course-corrections can take a bit of time (as can acceleration/deceleration if you have bad twr), but odds are any argument that can so easily be construed to mean "the math for an average person's flight time is useless in finding an average person's flight time because it doesn't take in to consideration how I personally fly" will not be seen as a great argument. They Increased everyone's flight time by 50% (assuming they used to fly at top speed), so everyone running big missions will average roughly 2/3 the quanta per hour they used to manage. Most of those big missions were 90% coasting, so nobody is going to see you as excessively disproportionately hard hit if the missions were 95% coasting for you.

 

The issue for missions that NQ was trying to resolve was the amount of money the big ones generated. I would have personally preferred if they had just stated that they needed to nerf missions and then cut the payout down, but they needed to do something about the nano-ships and thought they were taking two birds with one stone (they didn't, I can still take a mission, get moving, go to work, and then turn the mission in when I get home for the same pay). 

 

As for the rest of Athena, who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and finally stop seeing disjointed element-only L-core needles, but I don't think I'll hold my breath on that one.

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24 minutes ago, Taelessael said:

People with auto-pilot scripts disagree... and the rest of us generally really don't care about whether or not our aim is perfect enough to shave 5 minutes off a 6hr flight. 

 

I appreciate that steering clear of the pipes and course-corrections can take a bit of time (as can acceleration/deceleration if you have bad twr), but odds are any argument that can so easily be construed to mean "the math for an average person's flight time is useless in finding an average person's flight time because it doesn't take in to consideration how I personally fly" will not be seen as a great argument. They Increased everyone's flight time by 50% (assuming they used to fly at top speed), so everyone running big missions will average roughly 2/3 the quanta per hour they used to manage. Most of those big missions were 90% coasting, so nobody is going to see you as excessively disproportionately hard hit if the missions were 95% coasting for you.

 

The issue for missions that NQ was trying to resolve was the amount of money the big ones generated. I would have personally preferred if they had just stated that they needed to nerf missions and then cut the payout down, but they needed to do something about the nano-ships and thought they were taking two birds with one stone (they didn't, I can still take a mission, get moving, go to work, and then turn the mission in when I get home for the same pay). 

 

As for the rest of Athena, who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and finally stop seeing disjointed element-only L-core needles, but I don't think I'll hold my breath on that one.

 

30,000 divided by 2 is 15,000. So speed did not get reduced by 50%.  Also,this is a sandbox game, why do you care If someone Flys a needle shaped L core? It's none of your business. NQs only job is to make sure that needle shape L core isn't the best design for every situation.  That's it. 

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