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consequences of non-regenerating planets and ressources


Molgor

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I don't think we need regenerating ground. If the community as a whole decides that the Arkship area's starting to look like a mined out crater, the community needs to get together to create a city (just like CSYN's plans for Emberstone). Keep it player generated. I don't want it to be 2019 and then NQ decides we're not keeping Alioth pretty enough so they regenerate the whole planet or create their own artificial city - not that they seem like they would. If we want the environment for new players a few years after game launch to be a welcoming and interesting city, we need to build it ourselves.

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There is also the sparsity of resources.It is not as there will be a constant layer of resources just under the surface that would cause players to strip mine I would assume Iron or metals for basic construction to be plentiful but not constant and precious and exotic metals to be far and few between,on a planet anyways.So the landscape at large should remain relatively unmarred.

 

As for new players Im sure there should be enough kept around through refreshing nodes or some sort of npc mission to build a basic ship ,perhaps have exotic and rare resources be finite.Stuff that gets used for endgame.

 

Im sure they will have the game continue to be accessible to new players years down the road.

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Very true, but even with abundant resources they will eventually be depleted. That's fine for most planets, but it would cause problems on the starting planet as new players would be unable to get started in the game. If you have ever played on a large minecraft server, you will likely have seen that the resources surrounding the starting point quickly get depleted and new players must venture ever farther away to find what they need to get started. The main difference being that in minecraft people can just walk to a new area, whereas in DU if they can't build a ship to go somewhere else, they're stuck. That's why I propose either finding a way to add in a trickle (very small) of new resources or to give new players (after the game has been established for a while) some basic tools/materials with which to get started.

NQ said that resources will come in different rarities and that there'll be so much of the common ones (like copper, iron, ...) that they'll likely not deplete at all. An 8 km long vein of copper, I can assure you is a lot of material, and since we don't know how much copper will we need nor we can imagine the size of the planet compared to the amount of common material there'll be there, we can't say for sure that resources will deplete. It's a matter of balance (it's different from minecraft or any other game, it is balanced for a multiplayer not for a singleplayer experience), and if NQ says that common resources are unlikely to deplete, I think you should keep that in consideration. 

There'll be a good amount of rare materials, and then there'll be tons of common material. When players will deplete the rare ones, they'll move to find more, and they'll leave like 80% of the common behind. While searching for more rare materials on other planets they'll find common materials too, so they don't need to go back to Alioth, and they can sell it on the market so that less people will need to mine on Alioth. That 80% of common material, after that most of the player base moved, will need a lot of time to deplete. That's just an assumption, it depends on how much resources people will need to build and how much there'll be on a planet. Wath will stop a player to just mine it all and store it? Time , Energy and Risk of being attacked. 

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I don't think the dev should have regeneration.  It would detract from the story and the developers goals.  This is suppose to be an exploration game.  Much like humanity in real life, we are strip mining the hell out of our planet and trashing it right now.  In a 1000 years, we might move on to another world as technologies advance (Mars and the Moon are likely candidates with Venus being a likely candidate for robotic mining).  

I have one exception to address OP's concerns.  The starting planet should regen periodically just as Space Engineers, Ark, WoW, and other MMORPG's do.  I think this should be the single exception.  All other asteroids/planets should be allowed to be stripped of all of it's resources (and take a considerable amount of time to accomplish even for organizations) and beauty just like in real life.  I can see a potential issue with this as none of us would want to leave for critical minerals like uranium (fuel) so I think once a player leaves the starter, they no longer can come back.  This is a common element in RPG's and it makes sense.  Animals do this in RL by discharging their young and humans use to do this when a child turned to an adult.  Starter planet should be like a mom...once you leave you don't come back.  There should also be limits to how much you can take off of this planet.  By no means should I be allowed to leave with a 100 year supply of fuel.   

As time progresses in real life and updates are released, the dev's should increase the number of spawn points for NEW players.  They should move these out to the edges of the currently discovered Universe so that new players don't have to travel light years just to find the next habitable planets.  The rest of us should be still allowed to go from one trashed planet to the next where we have factories, buildings, creations, etc.  Nothing would prevent us from pushing further into the unknown and we would likely have stuff on the planets the newbies go to as well.  


TLDR: I think regen planets/softscapes/minerals is a mistake and will detract from the story line and feel of the game.  It doesn't follow reality even in the slightest.  

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If, like irl resources wont regenerate, we should be able to build recycling plants or something like that, and scrap metals (i think this has been handled in the Q&A already) ....

 

Eventually people (and in DU) wil make war about resources i ques. Thats when the big guns come out, and market prices wil hit sky high, money will be worthless, stock market will plunder, and total anarchy will arise..........

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think it would be Hard on the Dev's to make planets regenerate esp with Players actively gathering resources... 

 

 

BUTTTTTTTTTT   a much better solution to keep local supplies going and going.     it would make much more sense and most likely easier on dev's to have asteroids randomly spawn in specific area's ..   IE   metal rich , icy based. what what ever other chemical or minerals we may com across.

 

would make much more sense and alot less stress on servers to just pop up asteroids randomly then regen planets i would think.   even in Real life in our own cosmic backyard there is countless asteroids  rockly/ metal/icy in SOL alone. 

 

so yeah  will have to tear up a relitivly small % of a huge planet  but out in space.  and relative to time the resources are virtually unlimited

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I wouldn't be worried with the "ugly" wastelands. You must realize that the world will be huge and there will be many areas. One of those will be industrial and same as in real world, you will see huge craters from stuff that was mined/harvested out. It's ok. Many areas will transform into wasteland, but many things will be built on top of it and there will also be areas terraformed into something beautiful. People will create those landmarks, cities, whatever.

 

And it will also help the economy. Once the materials are harvested, companies will have to relocate to build another bases and continue the harvesting. And they can sell the old bases cheaply or keep them for any other purpose:-)

 

I want this world without regeneration, where every change is permanent.

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if you take a look at the new dev blog, you can see that resources are collectable down to atleast 500 meters, and with a planet with the size of 100km across, i dont think it is going to be a problem for a very long time.

and as someone already stated, big groups of people will most likely leave the starting planet the first chance they get, and will therefor leave a lot of resources behind.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Has there been any mentioning of randomly re-population of asteroid belts that need to be scanned down?  IE Eve-esk?    This would be a decent way to repopulate the game with rare materials without having to add oodles of planets to be mined but not settled.   

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On top of that, at some point people will just get too far apart and no longer interact with each other. You see that a ton as well. Even down to small ecosystems like a minecraft server. People move out really far from the center in order to find some security and a nice looking place to build. Soon everyone is so far apart it's too much trouble getting to each other anymore. In a game like DU, people are going to naturally stay closer to each other due to markets and trading. So more likely than moving really far out to live, they will colonize near the markets and then move out to mine, bringing the resources back to their more centrally located bases. This will create a large dead zone around the markets of fairly trashed planets. You'll then have to move even farther out to find resources and it just increases the time sink. I'm sure this is where warp gates will come into play, but really, depending on how that whole system works all you're doing is buying a temporary reprieve each time to make a gate. People will colonize near the gate for ease of travel and then lay waste to a ring around it.

 

What do you base this on? Organizations will value resources more than proximity to trade. There is really no telling if there'll even be "market-hubs" naturally erupting instead of just big organizations trading with eachother and inter-neighbour trade. I personally highly doubt the former in favor of the latter ones.

 

 

To balance that (keeping in mind that it is off course really hard to predict anything at this point), I can see established players or organisations ferrying new players out off the starting area/planet for a couple of reasons:

 

-New players, would be one of the most valuable resources for competitive organisations, and these would surely invest into a couple of recruiters and "space-buses" at spawn areas to snatch up new recruits. Depending on the population of the game, and the level off competition between factions, new players could be faced with a very large choice of organisations and frequent departures of ships to these destinations.

 

-For the same reason, as the game matures, and given the right game mechanics the starting planet's economy might develop to be centered on new players, with accomodation, jobs, storage, as well as organisations dedicated to the interstellar/interplanetary transport of new players once they've earned enough money to pay for the ticket, but not enough to pay for their own space/jump worthy space-craft.

 

-Some charitable people/organisations might help out new players by handing out starter ships, or organizing free transportation though I wouldn't count too much on it.

 

 

   This is not necessarily the case, in the real world for example ground resources in Europe are pretty much depleted, but it is still a main hub of activity as it has stable governments, high population, a lot of infrastructure, and can easily import what it needs raw material wise from abroad.

   If the right mechanics are in place, the same thing could arise in this game as well. As long as there is enough value in land and the infrastructure already built, and the cost of buying raw materials is not too high (depending on the ease of ferying materials from the ressource rich places to the resource depleted ones), people are not going to abandon depleted places.

   If all the mechanics are well designed, having depletable resources could create different places specialized in producing different things, which besides making the game world more interesting would be a great thing for trade gameplay, as it will be profitable for merchants to ferry ressources from the fringes to the core, and on the return trip to bring back manufactured stuff like ships, weapons, components, food or whatever is in need on the fringes due to the lack of efficient manufacturing/farming there.

   And more trade would mean more piracy, which in turn will provide a need of policing/protection of trade routes by government or mercenary forces, and the list goes on. 

 

   All this to say that places can still be important hubs of activity even after the depletion of their resources, if the gameplay mechanics are done right. And to be done right, the mechanics need to ensure that the cost of importing raw materials is not too high and that there are big incentives for people living in depleted areas to not move out.

 

I normally find comparing a game with simple mechanics to the global economy of the real world with all of its complexities yields nothing.

 

 

or some sort of npc mission to build a basic ship

 

Bam! Jackpot! You hit the nail on the head sir. This won't just only bypass the need for the starter area having to sustain new players but it also, with the simplest of mechanics, gives the new players a mean to travel from the starter zone and actually start playing the game. Make it slow, dumb and useless but make it fly.

 

Suddenly there is no need to regenerate any minerals at all.

 

And hey, just because the resources are finite doesn't mean they will ever run out.

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Just going to throw out a terrain regeneration tool that can replace terrain that was destroyed (not create new terrain) as long as the terrain has been missing for X or (if in an owned area) you are part of the owner's faction (maybe tagged as builder?) and there are no intruders in the zone. Both helps with underground bases (not automatic) and making sure the planet does not turn into swiss cheese. Also helps with filling in attack tunnels and craters from bombardment.

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Just going to throw out a terrain regeneration tool that can replace terrain that was destroyed (not create new terrain) as long as the terrain has been missing for X or (if in an owned area) you are part of the owner's faction (maybe tagged as builder?) and there are no intruders in the zone. Both helps with underground bases (not automatic) and making sure the planet does not turn into swiss cheese. Also helps with filling in attack tunnels and craters from bombardment.

 

How would this work without creating terrain? I like the idea but I'm curious how you envision it working.

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How would this work without creating terrain? I like the idea but I'm curious how you envision it working.

think of it like the rejuvination missile from the ICBM mod for minecraft. It would only return terrain that was there at world generation (so not place terrain that was not there before) and it would be cheap (with restrictions on when it could be used). It would be a function of the nanoformer and it could consume the material it is replacing, like dirt or stone (or maybe a byproduct material of ore refining), substituting any valuable material for stone. By doing this, it also reduces the amount of cargo space you are using for dirt and stone.

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I don't think that restoring resources will work in this game.  If that was the case, when we build rare mines, we will have an inexhaustible source of that rare material.  We just wait for it to regrow.  As they have said with a single shard universe is that actions have consequences.  That said, you are right about the need for at least basic reforming of the terrain after mining on a planet.  I am betting though that once we get into space, a lot more mining will be done on moons, asteroids and other airless places that we will not want to be vacationing.  I wonder if we can mine gas giants.  There are some amazing options that will not polute our planet.  I also like the idea of grass and vegitation regrowth after mining operations.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I don't think that restoring resources will work in this game.  If that was the case, when we build rare mines, we will have an inexhaustible source of that rare material.  We just wait for it to regrow.  As they have said with a single shard universe is that actions have consequences.  That said, you are right about the need for at least basic reforming of the terrain after mining on a planet.  I am betting though that once we get into space, a lot more mining will be done on moons, asteroids and other airless places that we will not want to be vacationing.  I wonder if we can mine gas giants.  There are some amazing options that will not polute our planet.  I also like the idea of grass and vegitation regrowth after mining operations.

I agree about the resources, and I also think that World regeneration in general should not be in the game. Whatever players create or ruin should remain in the landscape even out in the wilds beyond claimed land. For player activity to just fade away would rob the game of it's sense of mystery and history - and that for me would be a great shame.

 

I don't want the social game to exist in fake bubbles of player claims dotted about, like in Landmark- it's just boring. And I don't think it really fits with DU

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  • 3 months later...

I'm guessing that they regenerate overtime otherwise there would be a problem with the server slowing down because the empty tunnels and caves would have to be loaded whenever you get near to them.

 

The same with buildings if a payer who built say a house only to think he or she doesn't like the game and was then to leave the game and never to return then house should breakdown  overtime.

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The same with buildings if a payer who built say a house only to think he or she doesn't like the game and was then to leave the game and never to return then house should breakdown  overtime.

About the buildings, unless they are in a territory unit's AoE or in the safe zone, then they can just be salvaged by other players straight away (no need for decay). If they are in a safe zone or TU, the owner of said TU (if not them) can just take down the building (if they are the owner of the TU and leave, someone will just take it from them via war declaration). Whether this can be done in a safe zone or not is unknown (can owners of a TU in a safe zone take down other player's buildings inside it).

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I'm guessing that they regenerate overtime otherwise there would be a problem with the server slowing down because the empty tunnels and caves would have to be loaded whenever you get near to them.

 

The same with buildings if a payer who built say a house only to think he or she doesn't like the game and was then to leave the game and never to return then house should breakdown  overtime.

 

This wouldn't affect the sever at all. Loading empty tunnels is essentially the same as loading the regular ground. 

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Ever see a minecraft server after everything has been mined? Its what my biggest concern about this game.

 

2b2t9446756.jpg

 

Then there will be some player run org which will repair the ground and dump dirt everywhere....

 

Such things will happen (I will definitely try to create some floating mountains) - but maybe NQ comes up with an elegant solution

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Or just put a fence around the area and call it mining site, if it's logically connected and locally limited. Alternatively, players can fix it.

 

Besides, I doubt many player organizations will have their (owned) landscapes or trade hubs look like crap. They still have to mine? See above, put a fence around it and make it obvious with signs.

 

For "wild mining", come up with faction volunteers or some other initiative to fix it properly. Already did it in Minecraft where the surrounding area of the city (new player spawns and safe trade hub) was bombed. It was a bit of work but it all looked nice and green afterwards again. If you don't want to fill once elevated spaces (would take more resources and time to even it out) you can also just cover the very first layer of blocks to be faster.

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