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NEW SCHEMATICS - Discussion Thread


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34 minutes ago, Msoul said:

Schematics are now player created. When in game press Ctrl+K to bring up the new schematic interface where you can queue up any schematics you wish, provided of course you have the necessary quanta to produce them (note limit is 5 production slots right now). After a preset delay the schematics will become redeemable and you can add them to your active inventory. Thus there is no requirement where you need to visit the market to acquire schematics but these player produced schematics can still be bought and sold there similarly to regular items. All of the new schematics are now single run copies and the infinite run schematics from before have been completely removed with quanta refunded to their respective owners. Lore wise I believe the story is players are essentially copying the master schematics that Aphelia has stored in her databank and she is effectively charging a small fee for this service. It is unlikely that we will ever have access to the master schematics again but these new copies may eventually be added as rewards for various Aphelia missions or special events. Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for the clarification.   I was on vacation for the last week so i must have missed something.

 

I thought the last thing i read from NQ said that there would be some kind of "Master Schematic" that you would need to acquire before you could make a copy.

 

Without that, aren't we right back where we started before schematics were introduced?

 

Why would i go all the way to the Market, and pay someone else to craft something for me, when i can just set up a little factory and do it myself?

 

Even if the copies are incredibly expensive for higher tier items, a factory owner is paying the same copy fee for every item they craft, so they'll have to pass that cost on to me anyway.  Talents could still give them an advantage.  But that wasn't enough to push people to buy stuff from other players before schematics were introduced.

 

It's like they completely threw out the idea of schematics and just replaced them with an over complicated and laborious Quanta sink.

 

The process of managing schematics and putting them in the machines was not fun, but they were accomplishing what they were intended to accomplish.  People were actually buying stuff from other people.

 

Unless there's something else i'm missing.  I can't see any reason why i wouldn't just build a little factory and craft everything myself from now on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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6 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

Unless there's something else i'm missing.  I can't see any reason why i wouldn't just build a little factory and craft everything myself from now on.

 

 

That is totally viable. They seemed to have reversed course on the reasoning for the 0.23 patch. This is more about the overall number of elements that can be built in the game over time. No longer can every player mass produce all elements (which keeps the game flooded with more of each element that is needed). Now the number of elements that can be produced is tied directly to the number of active accounts.

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5 minutes ago, Deathknight said:

 

That is totally viable. They seemed to have reversed course on the reasoning for the 0.23 patch. This is more about the overall number of elements that can be built in the game over time. No longer can every player mass produce all elements (which keeps the game flooded with more of each element that is needed). Now the number of elements that can be produced is tied directly to the number of active accounts.

 

It is still possible to flood markets. While production is artificially limited, it is still possible to produce and create sell orders more than demand is. Schematics do not control demand. Supply vs. Demand is controlled by players only and it determines price levels.

 

Only thing for controlling markets in a healthy way is supply and demand. Artificial limits disrupts that balance.

 

Margins for elements will always be minimal, because all elements are 100% identical, no matter who is manufacturing them.

 

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14 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

Why would i go all the way to the Market, and pay someone else to craft something for me, when i can just set up a little factory and do it myself?

 

This is pretty much the scenario which is emerging. This change to schematics basically undoes their introduction in 0.23 and creates a mechanic which is gear towards exactly what it is supposed to prevent. And it contradicts what NQ announced and explained their intention for the mechanic is completely.

 

Your average player will mostly be able to "research" the needed schematics for anything they need or want to build. There is no need for big industry, not is there a point in doing what I think the intent for NQ was, break up industry in smaller pieces and make it work more like it does in EVE where players specialize in specific components/parts and trade those through te market/economy.

 

I've said this before, but this is NQ trying to do the proverbial "hammer a cube through a triangle hole". They really should have seen this result coming had they done their homework, but as it stands it seems they did their usual "let's just see what happens", without putting much thought into it OR it's just another change to just reduce server cost, which in light of some of the comments made by especially Deckard is certainly possible.

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I want to redistribute my talent points after this change because I don't need anymore them to produce anything since I'm not going to do so. This modification killed the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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18 hours ago, Deathknight said:

Well sorry, I can't help you there. You are rambling about a lot of unrelated topics. Paying for schematics is a logical step. It costs money and time to copy them, as you just said. Whoever else is going to do this is going to want money in exchange. If you don't want to pay that is fine, but you will then have to wait.

has nothing to do with being able to pay .......there arent any that i need on the market....obviously comprehension is an issue for ju

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1 hour ago, Maliciouss1 said:

has nothing to do with being able to pay .......there arent any that i need on the market....obviously comprehension is an issue for ju

 

I comprehend just fine. You didn't say anything about even trying to buy the schematics. Since it takes time to copy them, there will obviously be a shortage on the market when the patch first lands.

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4 hours ago, Jake Arver said:

There is no need for big industry, not is there a point in doing what I think the intent for NQ was, break up industry in smaller pieces and make it work more like it does in EVE where players specialize in specific components/parts and trade those through te market/economy.

 

If NQ has the intent for people to specialize, industry as a whole should have been designed differently. I like the current design (sans the tedious schematics stuff). But if they really want people to specialize, the talents should not work as they do and the recipes should work differently as well.

 

As it stands now, if you make the massive talent investment to work through the tiers, you are going to want a benefit from that investment. This means making a broader range of elements, all of which use your talents. Since there is overlap in so many of the parts that get made in the middle, it only makes sense to leverage that any make more things.

 

To really get people to specialize, talents should be more geared toward electronics, propulsion, etc. It would be a massive undertaking to rework and test that all though.

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1 hour ago, Deathknight said:

If NQ has the intent for people to specialize, industry as a whole should have been designed differently.

Absolutely, which is why what NQ seems to be trying does/will not work to the extent they think/want.

It's why I say NQ sems to be trying to hammer a cube through a triangle hole..

 

 

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17 hours ago, Deathknight said:

If NQ has the intent for people to specialize, industry as a whole should have been designed differently.

 

I'm not sure NQ really has "intent" in their designs, but if they did....I think their intent with this last change was to reduce server loads, which was successful.

 

In a way, this makes sense. 

 

We all see that release isn't going to go great...we knew this months ago when it was first announced. NQ knows this, too. 

 

They will market the hell out of this game to people that have never heard of it, make trailers look just as promising and misleading as beta, and collect as much as they can from this one wave of new players post release.  

 

They know they'll only have those few months before the player population crashes, just as it did with beta. If this is their one chance to monetize and they know they can't make the game sustainable, why not reduce costs across the board...? Every cost that's cut means more profit during the one opportunity they have to make it. 

 

It isn't like spending the last few months trying to make this game sustainable and scalable would have worked anyway...there's just way too much technical and design debt. Changes like this are sadly logical. 

 

NQ's leadership has made clear that they're working on other projects...IMO, they're preparing DU for release knowing it won't scale or stabilize because they believe they can still make them some money before it goes offline, hopefully enough to fund one of these "other projects" (read: scammy NFT BS) to completion. 

 

They're probably right, too...with some good marketing, plenty of gamers would plop down $10 to give this concept a try. 

 

I wonder if they'll change back to a minimum of 3 months for a sub...that would really make this "strategy" work. 

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The time scale per batch for products, pures, honeycombs and scraps is the same with a factor of 2.5 from one tier to the next. E.g. 1 batch of Tier 3 Pure schematics takes 2.5 times longer for 1 batch of Tier 2 Pure schematics etc. (yes, I'm ignoring the difference in batch sizes).
Here I'd really would favor a lower factor like x1.5 or max. x2 between the tiers. These Pures+Products are still so massively used across production, that they seem overburdensome (time/quanta/management) in the now lifetime contribution to industry.


However, for Products there actually is a Tier 1 and thus creates a really high T5 copying time (T 4+5 Pures copying times are attrocious, too).
In addition, for Pures+Products, but not Honeycomb+Scrap (x2.5), the price scale is not linear and goes from e.g. 3.13, 3.33, 3.75 to as high as 5 (from T4 to T5) for products.


In my opinion Pures+Products schematics should also only have a factor of x2.5 as Honeycomb+Scraps. An exponential/growing price scale I'd only expect for Elements.

 

With all the Products+Pures a price finding (or just break even) for any element is not possible for any normal player since the game does not provide any tools or information. Sure, there may be specialists to code a tool or spreasheet outside the game, but I see those as exceptions and should not be required of a player.

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Oh good lord, is this change for real?
Schematics are data, why would they be consumed? Limited use Copyright enforced by the AI overlord? That's just plain silly.
This is what we (in the business of actually developing schematics for a living) would usually call an "over-engineered solution"... and no, that's not a compliment.

You want to limit the amount of stuff a player can make in a set period of time? Add power requirements to the damned machinery!

you want to make 100 screws? that will cost you 1kWh (random figure)

you want to assemble an engine? that will cost you 10kWh (another random figure)

you want to smelt several tons of ore? that will cost you 100kWh (random again, but higher than assembly since it is a energy intensive process in real life)

Get a generator in game that produces a set amount of energy, gate how many you can have/deploy with skills.
There you go, job done. A simple idea inspired by real life that opens up no end of possibilities for further expansion: energy trade; energy storage; energy harvesting... and so on.
 

Edited by StaticAstraeus
typo
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1 hour ago, StaticAstraeus said:

You want to limit the amount of stuff a player can make in a set period of time? Add power requirements to the damned machinery!

 

This is something people have been bringing up for like 2 years now, haha. 

 

I thought that this was something NQ had planned initially as well, but obviously never implemented. 

 

It's sad to see how NQ failed to design for scale with every core pillar of the game from mining to PvP to industry. 

 

They insist that it's impossible to let players run 1000s of factory units, but...really, like all things, it depends on the implementation.

 

They didn't want to fix the implementation (just like with mining), so they decided to fix bad technical choices with worse mechanics. 

 

I could write a long, detailed rant about specific ways they could have designed this for scale (e.g. the simplest is much longer production loops), but NQ wouldn't read it and even if they did, this ship has sailed years ago. 

 

The issue isn't that there's no better ideas than what NQ has implemented, it's that they made their technical choices 6+ years ago -- and failed to design for scale through the history of this whole project, so now the design itself has to be altered to fit into a bad technical foundation. 

 

So much for "cutting edge" tech that can support "millions" of players. 

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10 hours ago, blundertwink said:

 

I'm not sure NQ really has "intent" in their designs, but if they did....I think their intent with this last change was to reduce server loads, which was successful.

 

In a way, this makes sense. 

 

We all see that release isn't going to go great...we knew this months ago when it was first announced. NQ knows this, too. 

 

They will market the hell out of this game to people that have never heard of it, make trailers look just as promising and misleading as beta, and collect as much as they can from this one wave of new players post release.  

 

They know they'll only have those few months before the player population crashes, just as it did with beta. If this is their one chance to monetize and they know they can't make the game sustainable, why not reduce costs across the board...? Every cost that's cut means more profit during the one opportunity they have to make it. 

 

It isn't like spending the last few months trying to make this game sustainable and scalable would have worked anyway...there's just way too much technical and design debt. Changes like this are sadly logical. 

 

NQ's leadership has made clear that they're working on other projects...IMO, they're preparing DU for release knowing it won't scale or stabilize because they believe they can still make them some money before it goes offline, hopefully enough to fund one of these "other projects" (read: scammy NFT BS) to completion. 

 

They're probably right, too...with some good marketing, plenty of gamers would plop down $10 to give this concept a try. 

 

I wonder if they'll change back to a minimum of 3 months for a sub...that would really make this "strategy" work. 

 

They are going for that 1 wave but I think even that will be small. Pretty much everyone I use to play with is completely over DU and said they won't be playing release. Maybe if the game doesn't die they will check back in 5 years. But as it stands I get the feeling that most who would be the type to be interested in DU have already heard of it.  It always has and will always be niche.

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6 hours ago, StaticAstraeus said:

Oh good lord, is this change for real?
Schematics are data, why would they be consumed? Limited use Copyright enforced by the AI overlord? That's just plain silly.
This is what we (in the business of actually developing schematics for a living) would usually call an "over-engineered solution"... and no, that's not a compliment.

You want to limit the amount of stuff a player can make in a set period of time? Add power requirements to the damned machinery!

you want to make 100 screws? that will cost you 1kWh (random figure)

you want to assemble an engine? that will cost you 10kWh (another random figure)

you want to smelt several tons of ore? that will cost you 100kWh (random again, but higher than assembly since it is a energy intensive process in real life)

Get a generator in game that produces a set amount of energy, gate how many you can have/deploy with skills.
There you go, job done. A simple idea inspired by real life that opens up no end of possibilities for further expansion: energy trade; energy storage; energy harvesting... and so on.
 

 

Sad thing is this has been shouted to NQ for at least 5 years. They don't care about making a fun game anymore.

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English (Translator used)

Hello NQ,

The Schematic Copys screen should show the available Quantas. Better still the available accounts you have access to than being actively adjustable as in the market.

 

Quote

 

German (original)

Hallo NQ,

Im Bildschirm für die Schematic-Copys sollten die verfügbare Quantas zu sehen sein. Besser noch die verfügbaren Konten auf die man zugriff hat, als aktiv einstellbar sein wie am Markt.


 

Die Waldfee
 

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English (Translator used)

Hello NQ,

What happens to skill points and skills that are ineffective.

E.g. : Skill points on basic elements and parts that have no schematics? But have entries in the skill tree.

Or skill tree entries for which there are no elements.

 

Quote

 

German (original)

Hallo NQ,

Was passiert mit den Skillpunkten und Skills die wirkungslos sind.

z.B. : Skillpunkte auf Basic Elemente und Parts die keine Schematics haben? Aber Einträge im Skilltree besitzen.

Oder Skilltree Einträge zu denen es keine Elemente gibt.

 

 

Die Waldfee

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47 minutes ago, huschhusch said:

Hello NQ,

What happens to skill points and skills that are ineffective.

E.g. : Skill points on basic elements and parts that have no schematics? But have entries in the skill tree.

Or skill tree entries for which there are no elements.

Any industry device for "parts" still has a internal schematic configured, but not as a physical item that you have to "insert" yourself. The talents will work as before.

German:
Die Talente funktionieren immer noch, da diese Maschinen eine "interne" Schablone konfiguriert haben, die du aber selbst nicht hinterlegen musst.

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14 hours ago, CousinSal said:

But as it stands I get the feeling that most who would be the type to be interested in DU have already heard of it.  It always has and will always be niche.

 

True, but they'll market it as if it isn't niche and few people bother to research before they buy. They'll believe the misleading flashy videos and not hesitate to plop down $10 to give it a try. 

 

It might seem like everyone that's interested in DU has already heard about it...but therein lies the magic of paid advertising.


Just in the USA, about 2/3rds of the population play games (over 200 million people)...between the US and EU, there's certainly millions of gamers that might be interested in the game (as presented in advertisements, not as it exists).

 

The key is that with them reducing costs, it might be possible to turn a profit off a $10, 1-month conversion.

 

Then they can scale their paid adverts almost indefinitely and continually pull in new players. IMO, it's almost impossible to "run out" of customers. It's just a matter of how much you're willing to pay to advertise. Way too many people play games for them to all have heard about DU. 

 

So even though it may never be successful "as a game", there is a path forward for NQ to monetize this beast, at least for a while. Plenty of crappy media has been wildly successful financially due to marketing efforts alone.

 

TLDR: there is an almost limitless well of people to throw advertisements at that haven't heard of DU, it's just a matter of ROI and scale -- for a game like DU, it might work better than we think 

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Dear NQ,
here is my feedback from the overall good chance with the schematics.


-    At the moment there are T2-T5 Pures, T1-T5 Products, and T1-T5 Elements. From an industry guy there are 2 different approaches.
1.    You craft so many schematics for Pures / products that you have enough for a month and the rest of the time you concentrait on the Elements. For that it is recommended that you have „enough“ characters / friends / org member
2.    You calculate what you need for Pures / Products for the element you want to produce, this would be easier for the solo player, but with more effort because you need to calculate everything.
I think most of the groups / orgs will go on Solution 1 and the Soloplayer has to go for Solution 2. I think its a tricky decision that you need schematics for pure / products / Elements. You said also, the „parts“ don't need at the moment schematics, this is really good, that we can see the result if its good playable or not with groups and also as a solo player.


-    One of the biggest impact is i think the warping situation ingame at the moment. Because of the change, i think it got a lot more expensive. I like the idea that you want to make warping expensive, but i would also say there is maybe a little bit better solution. At the moment a ship with 500t and a distance from 400 su costs x amount of warp cells. A ship with 1kt 400su distance costs 2x amount of warp cells. Why don't you make it more dependent from the weight? Like 500t 400su x amount 1kt 400su 4x amount of warp cells for example? So a small warp shuttle can easy fly from planet to planet with not big costs, but the big freight ships / big PVP ships are expensive to warp? And with this change, you could maybe double the amount of copies from the schematics for warp cells. So Person traveling is easier / and cheaper then now and big ships are expensive as hell?

 

-    Why do Static core (T1-T2) have the same schematic like Space and Dynamic cores (T1-T4)? Dynamic / space core are T4 and for example the L static core schematic is expensiver then a normal T4 L schematic? Do you want to reduce the size of the cores that are placed? Or was it only a mistake?

 

-    The costs from ore and time are the same for a territory unit and an Uncommon M industry, why do you make it as an extra schematic? Do you want to control with this solution a little bit of the amount of territory's or something else?

 

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13 hours ago, copperlein said:

At the moment a ship with 500t and a distance from 400 su costs x amount of warp cells. A ship with 1kt 400su distance costs 2x amount of warp cells. Why don't you make it more dependent from the weight?

 

The warp cell usage has been mass-dependent for a long time already: a 5.69KT ship uses >600 cells to Symeon, whereas a small ship of 267 tons only uses 28 cells.

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Simply said, this need time and cash sink is a monstrosity that rivals the introduction of 0.23.

If this was intended to get people back, you talked to the wrong people. why not just discard them totally, or was the start of beta pre 0.23 where there was an active lively and fun social vast group of people in DU so hard to bear?

 

The new system is still only a time and cash sink, there is no research in it, its copy and pay.

 

This again is a missed oppertunity and so many good ideas have been given that would have worked out and also would have the same outcome as what you are apparently looking for.

 

research based "schematics" where you start with a simple production that unlocks more powerful stuff was and is a general good approach. first you need to build a xs cargo to unlock a s cargo, and so on, that would be a great progression. Also make the "discovery" of the more advanced product sellable by: schematics. Then if people actually want to sell their progress its a possibility and there is a driver to discover more and more advanced stuff, diferent system but more logical then master schematics provided by the Allgod of limitations, the AI that rules humanity

This still pushes players into compartiments with the option to buy schematics from other players. 

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@NQ,

 

I am providing additional feedback, now that the schematics change has been in the game for a while. My primary interest in the game is industry, and I have been both maintaining my existing factory while also adding additional lines.

 

New Lines

Adding new lines, or additional capacity to existing lines, is much simpler now, much like it was in early beta. That is great.

 

Maintenance

Maintaining a factory is worse than I feared it would be. Much worse. In a very short amount of time I have become completely apathetic toward machines not running because I simply have no desire to fiddle so much with schematics. You took an already annoying process and made it a nightmare!

 

I again need to ask: Was this change made to intentionally be tedious as a form of balance? I am having a hard time envisioning a scenario where the tedium was an accident or a byproduct of the route that was chosen. It seems to be designed to frustrating. That I have a major problem with.

 

There are any number of ways (look at all the suggestions) that the limitations you desire could have been implemented with minimal effort, while also not making the game less fun.

 

An Observation

It appears that you have a recent trend of approaching things you perceive to be a problem from a very technical perspective. There is no consideration as to how this fits into the game or the game world. You are not going to introduce any entertaining mechanics if you do not consider how these mechanics fit into Dual Universe. Why are we copying schematics over and over. What in the world is happening to these copies? Why do some copies disappear faster than others? Why is it such a slow process to copy them? If you cannot answer these questions, you have not finished designing the feature.

 

If you instead start from the perspective that this is a game that should provide entertainment, I think you will discover that the options you are considering can bring additional enjoyment while also accomplishing your balancing goals.

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