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Quality System


Ferran

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I'm not entirely sure this hasn't been covered yet, but I did a search and nothing came up so I wanted to put this in here, a Material Quality system.

 

 

I really enjoyed using this system in past games like Earth & Beyond where all items that can be made by players or dropped from NPCs had a quality value. I believe this would be more appropriate for the Elements side of building but the voxel side could also apply this system.

 

Essentially, a player making an item for the first time will not make it 100% mastercrafted but instead be a rough item with reduced stats or capabilities because of the poor manufacture from a low skilled craftsman/woman. Where a player with exceptional crafting skills manufacturing that particular component would make something with much better stats/abilities and/or have a chance to build something unique with above average stats for it's type. Here is an example of how I see this working in DU:

 

Player develops his/her skills building components for something like a "smelter" for lack of a better word at the moment. This smelter will make metal ingots or rolls with a stat and structural quality slightly better than that of the smelter itself, providing the ability for player to one day use that smelter with the player now improved skills to make the parts for a better smelter that turns out better quality items. Thus encouraging players to better their skills to build better tools or machines to craft better components for better ship or building elements. Components built by a low skilled crafter but using high quality materials might have a slight edge over a component made by a high level crafter using poor quality materials

 

Players would be limited by both the skills they posses at the time and the quality of the tools used at that time, making a market just for professional tool crafters or manufactories crafters. This eventually flows down the line of even the big capital ships; if you have two identically designed ships, but both of different quality levels in the elements or the materials used in the construction process, the superior quality ship wins out with better stats, like power, armor HP, guns not jamming as often, etc. This would also really solidify the builders place in the game world as the time and effort to build these skills to qualities that people would buy, would make those players very attractive assets in player organizations. Player corporations would build a reputation on the quality of their products and not just the designs. And corporations would invest handsomely into having the highest quality forges, smelters, assemblers, and whatnot. Adding to the value of whichever city, station, or planet they set up shop on and attracting more businesses and settlers. Maybe even setting up training programs to help new players who wish to be builders find employment and a way to build up their own skills before striking it out to build they're own reputation.

 

Even if there was a PvP group who bought all of their ships and equipment on the market, having a few highly skilled builders or crafters to handle repairs or make only small replacement parts would be economically sound, instead of replacing whole ships with minor damage.

 

Ultimately, very skilled high level crafters would be prized in any organization and the keystones to building any company or empire. And when builders reach the highest limit of crafting skills, along with using the finest materials in the highest quality equipment would grant a fairly high RNG roll rate for exceptionally rare mastercrafted items that become parts of Legendary ships or stations.

 

Just my two cents.

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I understand this concept and it might be possible, but there is also a problem with this. An instance would be how the game lore works into this. The player uses a nonoassembler on that is implanted into their arm. This nonoassembler wouldn't really make many differences since it's the same for each person and using it wouldn't really need some special knowledge. So, let's do it for the individual voxel elements. Let's say that instead of quality, you use a quantity system to determine how many times you have made structure type a. If you produce it enough times, the materials needed might not be as much due to a knowledge of how this is produced.

 

But that's just an idea as well. So, really, while I do like the idea of a quality system, it's kind of already implemented. An example is here

 

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2016/02/20/builder-gameplay-voxel-tools-elements/

 

So, what this says is that there may be more efficient ways to build ships, structures and as such to make them more powerful, efficient and productive. This means that the better you designs your ships systems, the better it will work.

 

That's what I have for you. Hope this helps.

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if u're interested, i suggested a crafting system quite a while ago which requires personal experience and knowledge if you want to craft good materials.

 

here's the link

 

no unreasonable upscaling or randomness involved, just pure player knowledge :P And fully nanoformer-compatible because you would be required to set those numbers before creating stuff.

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Keep in mind one of my favorite adages,

 

"To an Engineer, Good Enough is Perfect.  To an Artist, nothing is Perfect."

 

Where the nanoformer will be able to recreate anything from a blueprint--there should be some kind of functionality that recognizes that rare spark of genius that turns something ordinary into something more.

 

I think that if we want builders to be of value, there has be to something that differentiates those who focus all their talent into a particular area to come up with something perhaps outside the normal bounds of what is created by a blueprint.   On the other side of that coin however, there will need to be some kind of balance or people will be upset that the gods of RNG do not favor them, or that they have to spend a gazillion hours to get what they want, but they want it NOW   :)

 

Perhaps, that is outside the bounds of what the developers are looking for from DU, but it would be cool to have a person or persons that are know for making particular things really well.

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Keep in mind one of my favorite adages,

 

"To an Engineer, Good Enough is Perfect. To an Artist, nothing is Perfect."

 

Where the nanoformer will be able to recreate anything from a blueprint--there should be some kind of functionality that recognizes that rare spark of genius that turns something ordinary into something more.

 

I think that if we want builders to be of value, there has be to something that differentiates those who focus all their talent into a particular area to come up with something perhaps outside the normal bounds of what is created by a blueprint. On the other side of that coin however, there will need to be some kind of balance or people will be upset that the gods of RNG do not favor them, or that they have to spend a gazillion hours to get what they want, but they want it NOW :)

 

Perhaps, that is outside the bounds of what the developers are looking for from DU, but it would be cool to have a person or persons that are know for making particular things really well.

Agreed. If we don't have some player made items that are rare as well, we might be lacking something. I know there are scripts, ships, designs and as such. However, items that don't serve that use will be refreshing.

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Ferran mentioned being able to sell ships to others. I think this is where "quality" could come to effect. For example, say you can only sell something of a certain "quality" or "rarity", as well as its blueprint. Some PVP clans may just buy the ship as a "gotta have it now" thing. While other clans have builders, that have been working on becoming proficient at refining and building. The clans with the builders could buy the blueprint, then use the skills of their builders to make it stronger, or with better materials. This could give them an adge of the "gotta have it now" type of clans out there.

 

I know I would rather buy blueprints, and have builders make adjustments and improvements to it that would give me the edge, even though it might look I have the same ship. I would also only sell BPs of my things at an earlier stage of developement, so that others won't know exactly what I will be bringing to fights.

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I think that if we want builders to be of value, there has be to something that differentiates those who focus all their talent into a particular area to come up with something perhaps outside the normal bounds of what is created by a blueprint.   On the other side of that coin however, there will need to be some kind of balance or people will be upset that the gods of RNG do not favor them, or that they have to spend a gazillion hours to get what they want, but they want it NOW   :)

 

 

 

This brings another idea I've been batting around for a bit, Locking blueprints to the original creators, her me out on this please:

 

A builder creates a blueprint for a particular fighter or small craft, it is really well designed and is bought by a lot of various groups for whatever reasons and becomes the mainstay of most faction's fleets. Now sure any builder in any other group can buy one of these fighters on the market, and do a detailed tear down of the craft so they can rebuild it piece by piece identical to the original so they can generate a blueprint themselves, this happens all the time in RL today, so stopping this kind of behaviour isn't practical or realistic, but there is a way to give the original designer a market advantage even when someone reverse engineers his/her design and makes copies. 

 

The original designer would be able to make that craft with boosted stats consistently, nothing major, maybe like +2% HP or +5% more power from the reactors or something small, but a constant bonus on every ship he or she builds of that type. Sure anyone can recreate the same craft part for part, and make an identical copy in every way, but they will never be able to make it with the bonuses, it would still be 100% effective as the defaults for the parts should be, but it won't be 110% effective like what the original creator can manufacture. 

 

Basically saying that any design can be reconstructed and imitated, but never as good as the original from the original manufacturer. This removes the RNG aspect of making exceptional ship parts or ships, so people with a good design can keep a market edge over any copy-cats. It won't stop people from copying good designs, but it will prevent them from ever make an exact one for one copy better than the original designer. 

 

I would like to her your thoughts on this, cheers! 

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Keep in mind, that if somebody takes apart Spaceship X and then makes a manual copy, there is no way for the game to know that it is a copy of Spaceship X, so there would be no way for it to know that blueprint A is 10% better than blueprint B.  Voxels are voxels, so I am not sure there would be for the system to tell that two builds are exactly the same.

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Just want to point out that if you read the Dual Universe short story by A. Damasio it sounds like something like a material quality system is already planned. Specifically mentioned are special properties of the material that the original spaceship we all land in is made from, as well as a discovery later on in the story.

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Keep in mind, that if somebody takes apart Spaceship X and then makes a manual copy, there is no way for the game to know that it is a copy of Spaceship X, so there would be no way for it to know that blueprint A is 10% better than blueprint B.  Voxels are voxels, so I am not sure there would be for the system to tell that two builds are exactly the same.

This could be done by either keeping track of what kind of ships you use and buy and comparing them to ships you build, this would require for you to actually be able to build something you would need to modify the original design by some extent (the game could track model, look, used block count, how blocks are placed and more, if to many things match its considered "copied" and get the maluses applied or the bonuses NOT applied, further more a creation date on blueprints could help with copy cats

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  • 2 months later...

A quality system could be based on efficiency. Depending on the complexity, if a power-plant cannot support ship-wide systems and fire all weapons at the same time, then that ship design would receive a lower rating based on the design itself. Or if there are classifications of ships, a fighter with low speed and maneuverability but many guns might receive a lower quality rating. 

 

Then, there could simply be a system based on dependability in which a higher skill level would produce a more dependable component.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A quality system could be based on efficiency. Depending on the complexity, if a power-plant cannot support ship-wide systems and fire all weapons at the same time, then that ship design would receive a lower rating based on the design itself. Or if there are classifications of ships, a fighter with low speed and maneuverability but many guns might receive a lower quality rating. 

 

Then, there could simply be a system based on dependability in which a higher skill level would produce a more dependable component.

 

I like where you are going with this. There could be certain requirements for different classes of ships like maximum dimensions and/or weight. Then there could be requirements that determine the quality rating for that particular class. A ship has X guns and Y engines and that determines the quality. But it works both ways, too many weapons adds weight and it could be unable fly. Types of materials used could also be a determining factor, but there would need to be a way to limit what low experience players can use, otherwise quality doesn't mean as much if anyone and their mother can build a high quality ship. 

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I like where you are going with this. There could be certain requirements for different classes of ships like maximum dimensions and/or weight. Then there could be requirements that determine the quality rating for that particular class. A ship has X guns and Y engines and that determines the quality. But it works both ways, too many weapons adds weight and it could be unable fly. Types of materials used could also be a determining factor, but there would need to be a way to limit what low experience players can use, otherwise quality doesn't mean as much if anyone and their mother can build a high quality ship. 

 

 

 

 

or, you know, let people put some brain into it before buying a "legondary" ship worth of quality, only to realise the ship is made out of gold and has zero maneuverability whatsover. This "quality" mechanic is screaming "scamm tool" for some smarter people.

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or, you know, let people put some brain into it before buying a "legondary" ship worth of quality, only to realise the ship is made out of gold and has zero maneuverability whatsover. This "quality" mechanic is screaming "scamm tool" for some smarter people.

 

Add maneuverability as a quality factor. There could be a requirement of testing a ship before you receive a quality rating. You would have to fly it to get top speed, turn radii, etc. which would translate to the maneuverability factor. So no, you wouldn't be able to build a gold ship. 

 

The other thing preventing scamming is the RDMS. Having a warranty on products could prevent such a thing. 

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Add maneuverability as a quality factor. There could be a requirement of testing a ship before you receive a quality rating. You would have to fly it to get top speed, turn radii, etc. which would translate to the maneuverability factor. So no, you wouldn't be able to build a gold ship. 

 

The other thing preventing scamming is the RDMS. Having a warranty on products could prevent such a thing. 

The RDMS system works one way, owner to customer. There are no warrantees for being gullible. If I make a knock-off of popular ship, I can sell it as is to a gullible person. The Devs are not responsible for that.

 

 

Warrantees are also exploitable by a lot of factors and angles.

 

 

Maneuverability is a really silly "quality" factor. A ship got scripts, the scripts determine how well it runs in a fight. A ship that uses scripts can pull pitch-perfect maneuvers that a human can't pull easily. So yeah, I can make a gold ship, make it look heavy and sell it for a flak-ton of money because it "looks" good.

 

 

Also, a quality system would create the impression of "worthiness". An "ep1c" quality ship may be actually really crap, but people would buy it because they think it's good, but in fact, the builder simply manipulated the algorithm to make the ship look good while it's a cheap thing he made with low grade materials and a frame made out gold to balance out the weight of the whole thing.

 

 

The onyly real "quality" is the way a ship is advertised by other players. It's emergent and more organic for a ship model made by Lil' Timmy to gain notoriety and a legendary fame around it, rather than the game telling you "congrats, you cheated the algorithm! Here, have a Legendary Quality because we think you are a dum-dum who can't tell good ships from bad ships".

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