Anyone thinking of taking the plunge and buying a 3 month sub to Dual Universe my advice to you is to wait at least 6 months maybe a year. This game has been very quiet due to the alpha testers signing NDAs and the company not being too public. I think the reason behind this is their server tech and wanting to create a single instance universe no load screens.
Dual Universe is essentially a voxel building space game MMO where players build cities and ships... think Space Engineers/Empyrion but on a larger scale. If you want to carry large amounts of heavy goods you're going to need lots of engines and other ship parts to stablize your flight and stop your ship becoming unstable. I do think the ship building is fun and impressive but no more so than Space Engineers or many other voxel games, nothing new in terms of customisation here. There are some very impressive player ships and space stations which you can see in the alpha museum but don't think you can make those in a couple of weeks nor could you achieve this solo the game rewards working together BUT one of the issues is the MMO stuff doesn't really work or allow you to play with others you literally need real life friends. The big organisation/clans are not going to care about newbie you with his small planetry base. I guess a solo guy could eventually tool up enough connected machines to make big projects but I don't know if I would have the patience to build this overtime.
The overall aim of the game according to the developer is to create an open world building game with fully working player economy that has lots large player guilds with both PvP and PvE planets and space elements. The devs envisage a universe of planets populated by player built cities and a market run solely by player listings and p2p interactions. The game recently hit open paid beta but I'd have to say the quality is more alpha. My first week was riddled with desktop crashes, missing items and severe frame drops in market areas. Fair play to the dev team a lot of this was patched very quickly there discord is very friendly, helpful and open.
In Dual Universe players have territory units to claim hexagons where you build your base and industry. On PvE planets everything is managed through permissions so if you want a friend to mine your land or build they have to have rights to do so, on PvP planets and PvP space areas every man for himself etc. I've yet to even get to the PvP part of the game after 3 weeks! You can visit other peoples land but not actually do anything. Certain planets therefore have certain resources which is why you need to construct space ships to travel around. My advice if you do play is to leave the starter planet asap. There is fast travel between certain planets but some areas are only able to be visited once you have enough tech to visit space.
I've recently pumped almost 3 weeks into the game playing 3-4 times a week with friends and at the moment I would not recommend it. I have had some fun but I'm now at the stage where I just log in can't really find much to do and log out. In order to build the current end game parts and tech I need to tool up my industry which will involve a lot of mining grind and waiting for things to produce. Luckily training skills and building stuff happens passively offline when you log out. My friends are currently working on a large spaceship build but this could take a few weeks before we have a craft capable of going into space and carrying everything we need. After that though other than mining planets and selling ores I don't think there is much else to keep us engaged. I may help out on this project if I can find a way to keep playing but my friends are ahead of me in industry terms that I can only make basic to intermediate stuff which I've been trying to sell for profit. My initial goal was to make money to buy high tier parts rather than produce them to see if this was viable and quicker and then to donate to the project. I feel if this game does what it says players should be able to be either a self sufficient producer or a rich dude who just buys what they need. The issue is there's no NPC's or much to keep you going whilst you're waiting for things to build, and the planet we are on is pretty basic that the only things you can do are visit markets, build more machines or mine. It's quite grindy! I don't mind the grind if there's other elements like survival or pew pew neither of these exist. You never need to get food or drink and there's no monsters or aliens to shoot. My character doesn't even own a weapon yet.
The MMO elements in this game are pretty dead or not working currently I've not actually spoken to any strangers the whole time I have played. I have messed around with the idea of producing goods to sell and though I've made some money I'm going to take weeks before I could outright buy lots of good stuff, which I fine I guess can't expect to be late game in a few weeks. The market is currently held together by Bots to kick start the economy until player numbers reach a good level. This is one of the main issues with the game because 95% of the goods you try to insta sell make no profit at all that you're better off just constantly selling raw ores or basic parts. I've found a small enterprise to make money but that's now being undercut and I only make a few credits above what I'd get selling the ores. If the bots were removed then certain items that take hours or days to make would sky rocket in value.
The game at the moment is very focused on setting up automated machines to basically build more machines which in turn eventually build ship or base parts. It's just an endless loop of production with containers linked to machines to other containers and bigger machines! There is limited space combat looking at Youtube but if I'm completely honest you're looking at least 250+ hours game play before you could take part and not risk losing a lot of your hard earned resources. If you crash a ship or it gets blown up you're looking at a lot of time to recover and repair it.
The game at the moment follows this pattern you get started by completing a tutorial which takes you to a starter planet. You pick an area not claim then you mine resources underground and refine these into things like steel that then build machines like assemblers, smelters and metal works to craft other parts. A lot of this is automated and a big part of the game is linking these machines and continually feeding resources. As you can imagine the alpha players in the big clans/guilds have tooled up big time and have mass industry producing everything they'll ever need. Once you've build you concrete cube base
you can then start building ship parts to change your speeder into an actual ship and so forth. Skills to improve things like mining, production and invent are trained over time tiers 1 to 5. Low tiers take a matter of hours where as tier 4 to 5 take days to weeks so you'll have to specialise. A seasoned vet who puts a lot of time into this game will eventually train every skill. When working with friends one of you would need to be a miner and someone else production focused.
To summarise:
Building elements - Just play Space Engineers with mods and friends for a much more enjoyable experience
MMO elements - Just play another MMO with more players and working economy
Automation - Factorio or other Steam games.
I will say one thing the devs on discord are very helpful and the bugs/problems with the game are patched VERY VERY quickly. Planet tech is quite basic there is gravity but no weather and a basic day and night cycle. Flying around the planet to get to and from the market is fun to start with. I think the big issue is there's so much potential but at the moment all you can do is mine, build and buy/sell in what feels like a very solo experience.
Dual Universe is essentially a voxel building space game MMO where players build cities and ships... think Space Engineers/Empyrion but on a larger scale. If you want to carry large amounts of heavy goods you're going to need lots of engines and other ship parts to stablize your flight and stop your ship becoming unstable. I do think the ship building is fun and impressive but no more so than Space Engineers or many other voxel games, nothing new in terms of customisation here. There are some very impressive player ships and space stations which you can see in the alpha museum but don't think you can make those in a couple of weeks nor could you achieve this solo the game rewards working together BUT one of the issues is the MMO stuff doesn't really work or allow you to play with others you literally need real life friends. The big organisation/clans are not going to care about newbie you with his small planetry base. I guess a solo guy could eventually tool up enough connected machines to make big projects but I don't know if I would have the patience to build this overtime.
The overall aim of the game according to the developer is to create an open world building game with fully working player economy that has lots large player guilds with both PvP and PvE planets and space elements. The devs envisage a universe of planets populated by player built cities and a market run solely by player listings and p2p interactions. The game recently hit open paid beta but I'd have to say the quality is more alpha. My first week was riddled with desktop crashes, missing items and severe frame drops in market areas. Fair play to the dev team a lot of this was patched very quickly there discord is very friendly, helpful and open.
In Dual Universe players have territory units to claim hexagons where you build your base and industry. On PvE planets everything is managed through permissions so if you want a friend to mine your land or build they have to have rights to do so, on PvP planets and PvP space areas every man for himself etc. I've yet to even get to the PvP part of the game after 3 weeks! You can visit other peoples land but not actually do anything. Certain planets therefore have certain resources which is why you need to construct space ships to travel around. My advice if you do play is to leave the starter planet asap. There is fast travel between certain planets but some areas are only able to be visited once you have enough tech to visit space.
I've recently pumped almost 3 weeks into the game playing 3-4 times a week with friends and at the moment I would not recommend it. I have had some fun but I'm now at the stage where I just log in can't really find much to do and log out. In order to build the current end game parts and tech I need to tool up my industry which will involve a lot of mining grind and waiting for things to produce. Luckily training skills and building stuff happens passively offline when you log out. My friends are currently working on a large spaceship build but this could take a few weeks before we have a craft capable of going into space and carrying everything we need. After that though other than mining planets and selling ores I don't think there is much else to keep us engaged. I may help out on this project if I can find a way to keep playing but my friends are ahead of me in industry terms that I can only make basic to intermediate stuff which I've been trying to sell for profit. My initial goal was to make money to buy high tier parts rather than produce them to see if this was viable and quicker and then to donate to the project. I feel if this game does what it says players should be able to be either a self sufficient producer or a rich dude who just buys what they need. The issue is there's no NPC's or much to keep you going whilst you're waiting for things to build, and the planet we are on is pretty basic that the only things you can do are visit markets, build more machines or mine. It's quite grindy! I don't mind the grind if there's other elements like survival or pew pew neither of these exist. You never need to get food or drink and there's no monsters or aliens to shoot. My character doesn't even own a weapon yet.
The MMO elements in this game are pretty dead or not working currently I've not actually spoken to any strangers the whole time I have played. I have messed around with the idea of producing goods to sell and though I've made some money I'm going to take weeks before I could outright buy lots of good stuff, which I fine I guess can't expect to be late game in a few weeks. The market is currently held together by Bots to kick start the economy until player numbers reach a good level. This is one of the main issues with the game because 95% of the goods you try to insta sell make no profit at all that you're better off just constantly selling raw ores or basic parts. I've found a small enterprise to make money but that's now being undercut and I only make a few credits above what I'd get selling the ores. If the bots were removed then certain items that take hours or days to make would sky rocket in value.
The game at the moment is very focused on setting up automated machines to basically build more machines which in turn eventually build ship or base parts. It's just an endless loop of production with containers linked to machines to other containers and bigger machines! There is limited space combat looking at Youtube but if I'm completely honest you're looking at least 250+ hours game play before you could take part and not risk losing a lot of your hard earned resources. If you crash a ship or it gets blown up you're looking at a lot of time to recover and repair it.
The game at the moment follows this pattern you get started by completing a tutorial which takes you to a starter planet. You pick an area not claim then you mine resources underground and refine these into things like steel that then build machines like assemblers, smelters and metal works to craft other parts. A lot of this is automated and a big part of the game is linking these machines and continually feeding resources. As you can imagine the alpha players in the big clans/guilds have tooled up big time and have mass industry producing everything they'll ever need. Once you've build you concrete cube base
you can then start building ship parts to change your speeder into an actual ship and so forth. Skills to improve things like mining, production and invent are trained over time tiers 1 to 5. Low tiers take a matter of hours where as tier 4 to 5 take days to weeks so you'll have to specialise. A seasoned vet who puts a lot of time into this game will eventually train every skill. When working with friends one of you would need to be a miner and someone else production focused.To summarise:
Building elements - Just play Space Engineers with mods and friends for a much more enjoyable experience
MMO elements - Just play another MMO with more players and working economy
Automation - Factorio or other Steam games.
I will say one thing the devs on discord are very helpful and the bugs/problems with the game are patched VERY VERY quickly. Planet tech is quite basic there is gravity but no weather and a basic day and night cycle. Flying around the planet to get to and from the market is fun to start with. I think the big issue is there's so much potential but at the moment all you can do is mine, build and buy/sell in what feels like a very solo experience.
