Jump to content

Player systematics


Slaxx

Recommended Posts

How do you intend to go about the colonization process in DU? how can there be enaugh players to increase your empire in size and have all the worlds inhabitated by players?

 

if an empire has 100 players, it can merely fill out the capitol of the empire on the homeworld. all other "cities" would be ghost towns. are you planning to include NPCs?

 

also how will the server structure work?

will all servers be located in europe? if so that would be a lag issue for american players.

 

and also: unrelated but still important;

if you can program machines via LUA, can you create self-replicating machines and build-bots?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How do you intend to go about the colonization process in DU?

Based on my knowledge of what is planned, I think the only specific game mechanic they will have related to colonisation will be claiming territory tiles with territorial units (TU's).

 

Other than that colonisation is simply a group of people injected into an area/territory to live there permanently. There's nothing to stop you doing that (apart from your fellow players, of course).

 

how can there be enaugh players to increase your empire in size and have all the worlds inhabitated by players?

I imagine the size of your empire will be limited mainly by how much it is able to defend, and how much it is able to exploit. If you're strong enough to defend 100km2 area but can only populate/utilise half of that area, you might not bother trying to encompass the less useful parts within your borders.

 

if an empire has 100 players, it can merely fill out the capitol of the empire on the homeworld. all other "cities" would be ghost towns. are you planning to include NPCs?

Cities will be built by real players brick by brick. It's unlikely that there will be large quantities of uninhabited buildings and structures.

 

I'm pretty sure there will not be any NPC's that can be used as substitutes for real players. The closest thing will be player built programmable bots which will be able to perform simple tasks. Not sure how cheap these will be or even if they are definitely going to end up in the game.

 

It's also unlikely that we'll see a single empire control an entire planet for a long time, if ever. That example planet looks huge... I think it would take lots of medium sized entities banding together. But we players won't really know how many of us it will take to control a sector until we're actually playing and get a real sense of scale and what is possible.

 

also how will the server structure work?

will all servers be located in europe? if so that would be a lag issue for american players.

 

Yeah, you need Nyzaltar to answer this... I have a vague recollection of him answering a similar question but can't find it... I might have imagined it.

 

and also: unrelated but still important;

if you can program machines via LUA, can you create self-replicating machines and build-bots?

Interesting. The spirit of the game is player led, so anything self-replicating needs to have strict limitations. But it's an interesting idea, you should post it in the idea box.

 

I think the thing to remember is that players take control of a single character in this game, not an empire. You can (try to) form an empire but it wouldn't be easy as you'll need a lot of real players behind you. Plus an empire is not the only kind of entity you can form by a longshot. In the end there will be very few "emperors" in this game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How do you intend to go about the colonization process in DU? 

 

How do you intend to go about the colonization process in DU?

 

As Klatu already said above: the process will be managed through Territory Units.

 

How can there be enough players to increase your empire in size and have all the worlds inhabitated by players?

 

The goal is not to have all the worlds inhabitated by players.
Players will gather naturally only on the most interesting planets. Other planets will have a low population, just for resource extraction purposes.

 

If an empire has 100 players, it can merely fill out the capitol of the empire on the homeworld. all other "cities" would be ghost towns. are you planning to include NPCs?

 

At the moment, there's no NPCs planned anywhere else than the Arkship starting zone (to guide players in their first steps). 

Don't expect to see NPCs popping from nowhere in cities built by players. I had already answered partly this question in this thread:

 

"Social interaction will be at the center of the game. It will be the players who will decide what is considered as an Empire and what is not. If your organization gathers hundreds or even thousands of players and achieve important things in the game, then the organization will likely be labelled as an Empire. If you will be less then ten players in your organization, then you will have a hard time to be considered as an Empire. Not impossible, but very very difficult. Also, even if you will be able to have NPCs (probably droids) helping in automatized tasks, don't expect to have thousands of NPCs under your command."

 

And as said Klatu above: Players won't build cities to leave them as ghost towns afterwards. Players will most likely build only the cities they need.

But we'll see for sure only when the game will launch. Should ghost towns appear, the team will think of ways to adapt to the situation.

 

How will the server structure work? Will all servers be located in europe? if so that would be a lag issue for american players.

 

If there is something we are well aware, it's the impact of server location and lag issues. It's always a sensitive topic for single-shard MMO games. We're currently evaluating several possibilities right now. But it's too soon to say "we will go for this solution". However rest assured: we won't forget american players ;)

 

If you can program machines via LUA, can you create self-replicating machines and build-bots?

 

For the time being, nothing prevents it, if you have smart enough machines (with a "home made" LUA script) able to use a Factory Unit (as described recently on Facebook and Twitter). However, we might limitate the possibilities on this field, for game balance purposes. But this is still an ongoing internal topic in the team.

 

Best Regards,

Nyzaltar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

On the potential lag issue; I think we will need to see how important the ground fighting will be and how 'twitch' based it is. As you may have geussed already, in space interceptors and multi role fighters might need faster connections, but larger ships should be a bit more forgiving of lag since they move slower.

 

And also what kind of targeting systems will be in the final builds. If i remember correctly they turned down but didnt completely rule out aiming yourself - but it does have problems in a mmo spanning the entire globe from a centralized network on servers, because you will have to think about the latency of the enemy when calculating your shots, in a fighter your weapons recharge or reload in 1 seconds or whatever, but in a battleship it might be 20-30 seconds or something, so each calculation is practically a geuss.

 

auto lock / tab target / lock on / ect is probably the approved and appropriate method. It makes sense because complicated weaponry requires actual lock's and calculations anyways, and any navy or crew in their right mind would just let Jimmy and the gang start shooting bullets all nilly willy.

If they do a good job with it, it will have a natural feel and with the exception of who is faster getting their targeting system to lock on first nobody will have a latency advantage - it might be worth experimenting with some kind of normalization based on peoples latency to the server cluster to increase or decrease their lock on times by a very small ammount.

but either way, if there was some small advantage to locking onto targets first, it can more than likely be completely mitigated by preventing any ground classes or spaceships from 100%-0% hp on anyone or anything. If fights last long enough for actual skill to mean anything i dont think minor lag will be an issue.

 

--

 

For the housing, I think with the way territory works, and depending on how valuable it will be to go around and destroy enemy mining operations it might take care of itself. I dont think any corporations / guilds/ empires are going to let anyone get away with free resources.

 

However, they might be able to tweak the structures, or T.U. to have a special decay for 'abandoned' posts.

--

Droid armies fighting droid armies.../evil laugh/

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...