le_souriceau: Hello, facemywrath! I hope we face not your wrath but your interesting answers today! :)
Maeve: Hello and welcome! Let’s roll!
facemywrath: Ha-ha, nice introduction.
le_souriceau: So, let’s assume you walk into a spacebar after hard day, order your usual... and hear how some green novean asks the barman: “Who are those Acquisitors? Are they cool?” Deadly silence drops. Everyone looks at you…
Maeve: *Plays some spaghetti western music on nano-recorder*
facemywrath: We're an industrial group with our ultimate aim at mass production and... ahem acquisition... of goods and services.
Well, I've noticed that things in DU aren't very expensive to make, resource-wise. So if you set up a mass-production line for anything you can dream of, you can have it all for especially cheap! I've done a bunch of math on how to generate items at 6x efficiency.
Our goal is to set up a 6x efficiency automation line (I call them generators) for every final element in the game, even warp beacons!
Though I don't think it's feasible anytime soon, that alone would take over hundreds of industries, and then there's other limits too.
We're not cool per-se, we're friendly. We help each other out while simultaneously doing our own things. We have group projects and solo ones.
le_souriceau: Some heavy industry ideas here! Many people dream of being the Henry Fords’ of DU and competition is growing… Do you have ideas for distribution and supply chain innovations? :)
facemywrath: Not much yet. We're considering creating our own trucking business but it might just be easier to pay someone else. We plan to be a bulk seller though, for sure.
Maeve: And name itself “The Acquisitors”? Whose idea was it? Is there any deeper meaning?
facemywrath: It was originally a reference to the Ferengi in Star Trek, who follow the “Rules of Acquisition”, as our goal was to be a trading org from the get-go.
But we try to shy away from that in practice as the Ferengi business model is less than ideal.
le_souriceau: Cool, now I remember, Rules of Acquisition…!
Maeve: Are you Star Trek fun? Or was it an isolated incident of inspiration?
facemywrath: I've watched it all, except for the original series. Deep Space 9 is my favorite.
le_souricaeu: Now, let’s return…
Maeve: ...to your roots!
le_souriceau: How would you describe your main driving, motivating force for you as a gamer? : ) How is it sparking with DU?
Maeve: To expand a little bit: what really makes you log in again and again?
facemywrath: Well I started gaming with old RTS Warcraft 3 when I was really young, switched to second life, then Garrysmod, then Minecraft, and ultimately realized later that DU had what none of those could give me, and combined in my love of space. Second life had a big open world with programming in it which I thought was pretty cool. Garrysmod had super in-depth sandboxing with coding and cool creativity aspects. Minecraft had the creativity, the building, and helped me learn to code Java, along with a persistent world to see the after-effects of what I've done (which Garrysmod lacked.) When I got DU my friend asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I said "Hmmm, let me find a game. What do I usually like? MMO? Sandbox? Sci-Fi? Early Access?" And... well... That's this.
Gonna be honest with ya guys, lately? Not much. Currently we have a goal to make a big-ass ship but with Beta right around the corner, and the impending wipe, there isn't much left to motivate me right now.
Maeve: Minecraft! My younger days… I hope Beta rekindles your inspiration! :)
le_souriceau: Speaking of sandboxes... DUs civilization building is the core principal of the game. And one of the most ambitious promises ever made on Kickstarter. What is your personal take on this? Do you think we really see something SOCIALLY special or this is more of marketing talk?
Maeve: Maybe you already see some trend while playing the game? Can you share your observations?
facemywrath: I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to divulge of the game, due to the currently standing NDA, but I wouldn't be surprised if people huddled underground outside of the range of weapons once that becomes a more imposing threat. But being all one server, and being subscription based where you can't just make a new account whenever you want, I predict it'll be interesting who becomes famous or infamous and for what reasons. I mean that's the thing, isn't it? With one server, if you do evil shit, you will become known.
le_souriceau: What do you personally consider “evil” in video games?
facemywrath: I just meant that in one server, your actions have consequences. Whether it's "evil" or not.
le_souriceau: Returning to the Acquisitors, if I understand correctly, you have some sort of democratic decision-making process with leadership working as a council. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Is this the final set-in-stone form of government or are you going to make reforms?
facemywrath: We've set it up as is, for now, where there are roles you choose (or earn) and each one gives you specific permissions. For example, miners don't need access to ship building things. If they want a ship they can request a ship from an engineer. If they want to be flown somewhere they can fly it, or have a pilot take them. But when it comes to org-based decisions, we have a council that comes up with what exactly should be left to a vote. I mean some things just don't need to be. Like which island we claim or what to name our capital ship or where we should create our next mining outpost. Things like that don't need to be left up to the average citizen and can be decided internally. I find multiple minds tend to be better than one, so we have a council.
Maeve: How large is your organization currently in terms of active members? How large do you plan to be? Do you look for something special during recruitment, like a specific quality?
facemywrath: Well we have about a dozen or two active members, with varying activity as businesses reopen or holidays happen, but effectively about that many. Our end-goal isn't really massive. I don't think a massive org can have players who are dedicated to it, especially since you can be in multiple at a time. Our goal, as noted above, is to be friendly. We want our members to be our friends so that playing together is enjoyable. I mean hell most of us are on a first-name basis now.
That's why I don't really have any public advert anywhere. I'd rather come to others and talk to them and get to know them a little bit first. Sometimes I ignore that though, but it's still Alpha so *shrug*.
Maeve: Sounds nice!
le_souriceau: Yep, a small but friendly organization is definitely a very viable option in our stressful world. What can you tell us about your current crew? What kind of skill sets, ideas and flamboyant personalities are you ready to unleash into Dual Universe?
facemywrath: Well we have a legitimate business man in our council, a few programmers, a few architects and engineers and even a physicist. We also have people like Bill, who just... only mines.
Maeve: Sounds like a collection of professions to work in the realities of DU…
le_souriceau: There are projects brewing in community with the aim to develop economic activities beyond just selling and buying like banking, vending machines to “swap” resources for crafted items, custom currencies and other Lua magic… Do the Acquisitors plan something fancy too?
facemywrath: My main personal focus is industrialization, with such we can definitely fulfill the crafted items part of that. However script wise we might end up being the buyers / redistributors of them. But as for Lua coding ourselves, we don't have that much power there. Our programmers are only basic currently.
le_souriceau: What about a shipyard business? Do you plan to use someone elses blueprints, or mass-produce your own models?
Maeve: What is your ship design philosophy? :) What is the plan for your big one?
facemywrath: We don't actually have many ships designed yet. Like I said, we've had other focuses so far. So I'm unsure how well our ship designs will actually turn out insofar. But our ideas include a giant coffee cup (for NQ-Naerais), the UNSC-Paris from Halo, or a giant cruise ship.
le_souriceau: Any production demands raw materials. Finite resources will be a serious factor in future economics and politics of DU. And for industrialists with ever-hungry machines, do you see it as a positive or negative game design feature?
Maeve: And overall, it probably will be a hoarding fest…
facemywrath: My guess is NQ have something planned for the finite resource factor. Adding planets, or regenerating resources, or selling them from the bots, who knows?
le_souriceau: Do you have your own idea how to balance it? What do you see as the most interesting way to do it?
facemywrath: I think exponentially adding planets would be the best way. Ultimately the three forms of travel will end up being regular engines, warp drive, and star gates. Regular engines being a few hours of travel between planets, warp drive being a few hours of travel between solar systems, and star gates being a few seconds anywhere (potentially, obviously unknown insofar.) So adding planets won't instantly generate revenue or instantly target the planets as a resource mine if they add enough of them and give little information about them when doing so. I think they shouldn't allow you to know details about a planet unless you've been there before, and allow a scan of the planet be sold to people similar to territory scans, to determine what resources it has, what depths, etc.
But ultimately the best way to solve the issue of finite limits, is to continuously increase them. That's all infinity is anyway.
I also posted an idea of having recurring layers for veins in hexes. So how the current vein depth for a specific kind might be a few meters, maybe add a second range on a planet at a few kilometers, or even deeper potentially. As well having bigger veins the deeper you go, since it's hard to haul things up.
le_souriceau: Constant expansion also will have the effect that “old and depleted” places will be less populated (maybe even abandoned to an extent), when there are new and fresh places to see and mine...
facemywrath: Of course! It's like that in real life too! Well, that and people just transport things.
le_souriceau: Also you mentioned warp drives. Recently they were quite a hot topic in terms of overall game balance. Do you like them? Has this produced any large “change of plans” for you personally and the Acqusitors as a group?
Maeve: Like planning to become warp-cell tycoons…
facemywrath: Well we're mass-producing warp cells so I'd say, as it stands right now, we quite like warp. Though it does need some sort of balancing. If I had any suggestion on that it would probably be different kinds of warp drives, like they did engines. I think warp drive should have an hour long cooldown at base, with a limited range at base, and an exponential warp cell cost based on distance and volume (instead of mass).
After all, calling it a warp drive implies a warp bubble around the ship, which is generated by the drive to condense the mass around it and allow it to go far faster than the speed of light while not actually moving very fast. So theoretically, the mass should have nothing to do with how much it costs to make a warp bubble, volume would. But as for the different kinds of warp engines, I think they could alter the statistics in similar ways to the alternate types of regular engines. Lower cooldown and higher range, but increased cost. Or maybe higher cooldown and range, but lower cost, etc. As well they could implement talents to increase these things too.
I expect most of those things are already in their grab bag of plans though.
Maeve: I hope so too, I really like to see more variety of warp engines.
le_souriceau: Competition for resources, new territories, and markets bring us inevitably to PvP. How do the Acquisitors plan to navigate these stormy waters? Will you employ an avoidance strategy or are you ready to treat pirates with some kinetically charged lead “cookies”?
facemywrath: I'm not expecting a lot of pirates in the game since weaponry is as expensive as it is. Pirating will mostly only be worth it on bigger ships or haulers. But regardless our goals for our passenger ships will be avoidance while haulers are escorted. I mean, we aren't risking it in the long run. Especially once pirate attacks get posted on a forum somewhere and we know where not to go and who to avoid.
le_souriceau: And since we stepped on the minefield of politics… Many smaller orgs are very busy creating all sorts of diplomatic safety networks in anticipation of persistent “Wild West”. Are you busy with something similar?
facemywrath: Not quite. I think we'll just end up hiding underground when it comes to that. Though we wouldn't be opposed to joining one. We have a few allies, like Singularity, if we need any group help.
le_souriceau: Final question: If you were able to propose one more industrial machine to implement in game, what would it be? And why?
facemywrath: Not sure if it counts as industrial, but I love the idea of a territory terraforming unit.
Maeve: Really last question! If you are able to bring one real world company or brand into the game, one of your favorites or one that inspires you some way, which one would it be?
le_sourcieceu: Luis DUtton bags for avatars? : X
facemywrath: Honestly? Tesla Cyber truck's. That’s all I need.
le_souriceau: Thank you for the interview! We wish you and you organization financial and fun-generating success!
Maeve: Thanks! See you in the game!
Special thanks to Kurock for gentle, but relentless proofreading of our uncommon dialects of english.