le_souriceau: Hello, Daphne! Thank you for accepting our invitation!
Daphne Jones: Hi. Thanks for asking me.
le_souriceau: Dual Universe is a game of many playstyles and you are a fine example as you stick quite persistently to the idea of the independent trader: A concept which extends both to economical mechanics and to immersive roleplaying. So, is this idea unique for DU or are you drawing from your gaming history? Are you, for example, an EVE Online or Elite Dangerous veteran?
Daphne Jones: I created the Daphne Jones character for Sci-fi RP in Second Life. Being a space trader/hauler allowed me to move from region to region (essentially different role playing [RP] games set up by different region owners) in a natural way. It also allowed me to build a cool spaceship to support the RP, which I did.
A lot has happened since then. I’ve written a novel (published) and numerous short stories and parts of additional novels; I’ve played as Daphne in several games, including Entropia Universe and Star Citizen, and even adapted the character to Gor in Second Life. (Gor is based on books by John Norman. It’s kind of a rip off of John Carter of Mars set on a hidden planet in the solar system. Women are treated very badly in the books, but I played the evolved version where women have more freedom.)
Playing into the trader theme, I’m actually certified as a merchant in the “by the book” version of Gor gaming, i.e., I have specific training in role-playing a merchant especially in the Gor world, but it applies to merchant RP anywhere.
I have not played EVE, primarily because so many enthusiastic EVE players that I encounter come across as very toxic people. I’m concerned that the game trains players to be toxic and the players don’t do anything to counter that impression. It also seems to be a stated goal of the company.
By the time I found out about Elite Dangerous, I was already playing Star Citizen. Frankly ED looks horrible compared to SC, so I just didn’t go there.
le_souriceau: In one of his interviews JC compared Second Life and DU. He said (sorry for the long quote):
“The particular angle Second Life took was interesting -- you can't deny it was a success -- but the problem is it's not a game. So it's not really fun. It's more like a web browser in 3D, which was a big thing at the time... We start with the idea that we want to make it fun and make it a game... So we focus on entertainment. That's the main goal of how to make the metaverse start.”
Do you agree with him? : )
Daphne Jones: He’s exactly right about Second Life. It’s divided into regions or sims. A sim is owned by someone who constructs his world there. It’s a lot like a 3D webpage. I know one sim that’s a full size replica of Serenity from Firefly - that’s all that’s that there. The ship doesn’t work but you can walk around in it and everything is there. That’s a pretty nice webpage, but not a game.
On the other hand, some sims are pretty complete games. It depends on the owner/designer. The sci-fi sims I played in were mostly a 3D game level plus some RP rules, but some also had combat systems - usually first person shooter PVP combat.
I mentioned Gor, which is probably the largest combat/RP game in Second Life. It collectively qualifies as an MMORPG in my opinion. There are hundreds of sims involved in the two flavors of Gor - by the book (BTB) and Gor evolved (GE). Some sims participate in both flavors. Each sim is the home base for one or more factions. Factions can raid each other (PVP) and take prisoners. And then there are rescues to recover the imprisoned players. GE is mostly just these raids. BTB is more RPing the Gorean story with raids occurring when they make sense in the story.
So, yes, Second Life is just a 3D web browser and a set of 3D web pages, but some of those web pages are sophisticated games.
le_souriceau: Does your signature playstyle have inspirational roots in some books or movies? Like the crew from the “Firefly” show, for example? : )
Daphne Jones: Well everything written by Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein to start with. And 100 other sci fi authors. The root of the tramp spacer play would certainly be Han Solo. I came to Firefly fairly late - I actually saw the movie first and that was confusing without the backstory of the series - but that has certainly been an influence. All of the female characters on Serenity as well as the ones on the Raza in Dark Matter (including the robot) contribute a bit to Daphne.
le_souriceau: Some of my favorites too! : ) If I remember correctly, this is not just solo play, but do you believe it's more about gathering a small role-playing crew for your trading ship? Essentially, creating a micro organization?
Daphne Jones: The part that’s really not solo is interacting with customers, of course. Especially in DU, my customers are other players. This is different from Star Citizen where I can do both hauling and trading and only interact with NPCs.
I do not yet have a crew in DU, although that is the plan as I find the right people. This is complicated by the fact that I may need to be able to fight off attackers so I may need gunners… but who wants to be a gunner on a ship that avoids combat? Depending on how the economy develops, my crew may just be miners… or engineers… backup pilots.. Etc. I don’t know what the business will look like when the economy is running so I don’t know what it will need yet.
le_souriceau: What do actual work conditions and benefits look for potential crew-members? : ) Is it okay for people to fly with you while remaining offline, or as surrogates, and then jump into the action on demand?
Daphne Jones: I don’t know yet. I hope there will be a small crew that’s involved in ship operations and wants to be there. But yes, I expect combatants will probably jump in as needed.
le_souriceau: And despite all the challenges, hopefully you actually succeed in doing some genuine freight business and make a tidy profit. So far, how does the experience feel to you? Have you done contracts with individuals or whole organizations?
Daphne Jones: I have done some business with orgs - basically two kinds of contracts:
Moving stuff - industry machines, warp cells - mostly finished products - from one place to another. Usually the client has paid for the goods and needs them moved from the seller’s location to the buyer’s base. Sometimes, if I trust the customer, I will buy the goods for them to be paid back on delivery.
Supplying ore. In [Alpha 2], I tried to buy ore on the market and take it to my customer wherever their base was. Sometimes that worked, but profit margins were slim. In [Alpha 3] that doesn’t seem to work at all. I have found for these kinds of contracts I need to just go out and mine the ore myself. Fortunately I find DU mining to be relaxing so I don’t mind doing that. When I said above that my crew may just be miners, this is what I mean. Mining a bunch of ore and then delivering it may turn out to be most of the business.
Also business with individuals. This is usually personal transport, and again comes in two flavors:
“Take me to planet X and back so I can do something there (usually mining).”
“I crashed my ship on planet Y and respawned back on Alioth. Take me to planet Y so I can get my ship back.”
I worry a bit that the market as it developed in both [Alpha 2] and [Alpha 3] doesn’t seem to recognize the value of moving stuff from one place to another, e.g., the market price for an ore on the planet where it’s mined is often the same as the price of that ore on Alioth.
I also worry that the market may not develop sufficiently strongly for trade to succeed.
But meantime, I’m having a blast flying around doing my contracts and I’m getting rich in game money.
le_souriceau: These are the genuine adventures of a space trader! Speaking of contracts… How do you handle your paperwork? Does an interested person contact you via the forums? When you discuss a deal, do you make some sort of “screenshots of proof”? Do you offer cargo insurance? Do you have any clear “no-go” contacts? Sorry for the little barrage of questions! : )
Daphne Jones: So far, it’s mostly been in-game word-of-mouth. Sometimes it’s someone asking in chat. Someone needs some ore delivered or needs to go somewhere and they just ask in game chat. Sometimes I pick something up from a seller for a client and then that seller contacts me when he needs something moved. It’s mostly like that.
Most deliveries are in person, i.e., I meet the customer at his base and give him the goods directly, so there’s no need for proof. Some trusted regular customers have access to the containers on my ship so they can load/unload the goods themselves. I’ve also done this the other way, where I have access to the client’s containers. This works well when there’s good trust between me and the client and we’re in significantly different time zones.
Actual contracts are discussed in in-game PM or discord PM. We reach an understanding of what I need to do and what the customer will pay and then I do it. Nothing like formal contracts. I hope to avoid that level of paperwork, but we’ll see how it works out.
There hasn’t been a need for cargo insurance yet, so I haven’t really considered it. I suppose with expanding PVP combat this will be an issue in Beta.
le_souriceau: Do you think all this work is strictly around economical sense or do you feel the immersion/RPG element for clients too? : ) Are they happy to see your ship landing on their base with goodies, even if they pay a little extra overall?
Daphne Jones: I think for some clients it’s just an efficient way to get their stuff where they need it without having to do it themselves and for others there’s an RP element to it. For me, there’s always an RP element. I certainly hope the clients are happy to see my ship whatever their motivations are.
le_souriceau: Free-For-All PvP is obviously a serious issue for commercial traffic (generally, a dream target for all pirates!) How do you think the overall logistic meta-game will unfold? Smaller ships cautiously dashing from safe zone to safezone? Or will we see some well armed galleons (so to say) and even whole convoys?
Daphne Jones: I face this same issue in Entropia Universe (EU), where space is lootable PVP and there are pirates. But in EU we’re playing with real money. Shooting back is too expensive, so I’ve gotten pretty good at not being where the pirates are. I expect this will be my main strategy in DU.
I am also thinking about strategies for surviving an attack. My current ship has a resnode and back-up pilot seat in an armored compartment in the middle of the ship so that a first strike is survivable.
I haven’t added guns yet, but the design will draw attackers to line up with the guns because they will cover where the ship is vulnerable. Gunner seats will also be in the armored compartments.
I have read Sun Tzu… don’t be where your enemy expects you and make him come to you in your strong place.
le_souriceau: Are you considering participating in some sort of association for better security and exchange intel about hot spots or dangerous people? Like some space trucker union?
Daphne Jones: I’m a citizen of the Empire and I expect our military will retaliate against serious piracy threats as they can. And possibly practice a priori suppression of pirates.
I like the idea of a trucker union. That’s definitely something to consider, but I haven’t thought much along those lines before. In Entropia, we do that informally - when someone spots a pirate they call it out in the global space chat.
le_souriceau: And there are warp drives… NQ-Entropy labeled them as a feature aimed for trade, but is obviously not the case currently, because of how much of the profit margin is potentially eaten-up by the cost of the jumps. Do you think there is a design where warp drives can be made more viable for trading?
Daphne Jones: Warp drives are such a complicated issue. I do have one on my main ship now and I’ve been experimenting with it. There are two things that make it viable:
Industrial players selling warp cells at a reasonable price. I can always get them at a fairly good price now and, sometimes, at a very good price. I have one supplier that consistently puts them on a particular market at good prices and I include that market in my trip planning. I also try to supply the buy orders he puts up there. (I don’t know who “he” is; I assume one or more of the members of one of the orgs set up nearby.) And, no, I won’t tell you which market lol.
The ability to supplement income by selling high tier ore to the bots.
le_souriceau: NQ also plans to make high-tier ore significantly harder to get. Do you think it will bring some serious shift into the hauling landscape? Like rare super-expensive cargo (that organizations probably try to handle themselves) and cheap bulk?
Daphne Jones: First, I think NQ underestimates us. [Tier 5 ore] is pretty rare, but we find it anyway, because the players who are serious about mining and really learn how to do it are really good at it. In DU what you need to have actual skill at - not just pretend talents - is the prospecting part, i.e., using the scanner. They can make [Tier 5 ore] 10 times rarer and limit my scanner to 100m and I’ll still find it. It’ll just take a little longer. If they don’t also nerf [Tier 4 ore], I’ll find that instead - that’s still good money.
Of course, they could just stop the bots buying it. But the bots have to buy something. When we mine and sell into the player economy, we add value, but not money, to the economy. If there’s not a mechanism for adding money to the economy, the economy will collapse. If the bot buy prices are too high, not enough value will be added to the economy because people will sell to the bots instead and we get inflation.
As it stands, it’s impeding trade because it makes more sense to sell high tier ore to the bots than to bring it back to the market to sell to players. When I take a contract to supply ore in [Alpha 3], payment for the contract is just a formality. I recently had a contract to supply quite a bit of a certain ore. Rather than mine it on Alioth, I warped to Jago, and mined it there along with a few nodes of higher tier ore in just a few hours of play. I sold most of the high tier ore to bots on Jago and easily covered the cost of warping to the Jago and back. And some of the high tier ore went to player buy orders that I was aware of - icing on the cake. In this instance there was a balance between selling to bots and selling to players and that’s what we need, but at the current bot prices it’s rare that any of what I mine gets to the player markets.
I think when NQ clamps down on bot sales, I will have to tighten up my criteria for when I use warp vs. slow boating, but I don’t think it will cripple trade/hauling… and it might improve trade. I’m always making a decision whether to sell high tier to bots or try to find a player to buy it. If it’s harder or less lucrative to sell to bots, more will go to players.
le_souriceau: Thank you for the great economic insight! Speaking of the wider operations in the universe, the community has produced quite a collection of views on “civilization building” future: From ultra optimistic with shining cities full of wonders to ultra-pessimistic pictures of swiss-cheese wasteland complete with bloodthirsty nomads roving around. What is your personal take on this?
Daphne Jones: Well, the Empire of which I’m a citizen is definitely in the shining cities camp and that’s my hope. I think enough people are in this camp that blood thirsty nomads will get pounded until they decide it would be more fun to do something else.
But the wasteland scenario is enough of a concern that I will put all of my bases in safe zones.
le_souriceau: No matter how civilization fortunes roll, we have a lot of smart people in the community with an IT background (or just passion for Lua). As a trader and immersion-oriented player, what kind of player-made tech and features would you like to see? Maybe automated landing clearances, cargo terminal management, or friend-foe systems? What are your “wildest dreams” on this front? : )
Daphne Jones: Well, with a computer science degree and forty years of programming experience, I’m one of those Lua modders… but I’m in this game to build and fly space ships. I do some lua coding to facilitate that. I have a custom instrument panel on all of my ships. I have airlock scripts so my airlocks work like they’re supposed to and a custom flight script that lets me switch the ship’s orientation for take off/landing on the tail.
But beyond fairly simple things like that, I just want to fly my ship hands on. If a customer implements auto-landing clearances at his base, I’ll use it.. And if I really need any of those things myself, I’ll program them, but until then, I’m happy just flying.
I have made custom scripts for other players and sometimes publish scripts on the forums, but I don’t generally charge for that - it would be too much like RL work.
le_souriceau: Now on to the developer side of the field! Let's assume you are able to get JC’s ear for one feature proposition, what do you see as the most critical during the Beta period yet to be realised (beyond those already promised)?
Daphne Jones: Well, I want three, but they’re kind of related:
Extendable cargo ramps - a physical ramp, not the noisy expensive force field.
In the same mechanic - tailsitter landing gear (like on the Falcon 9 boosters)
Maybe the same mechanic - propeller engines. This isn’t so important but would be fun for my biplane.
le_souriceau: Thank you for your answers, Daphne! I wish you to fly safe and with good profit!
Daphne Jones: You’re quite welcome and thank you.
Special thanks to Kurock for proofreading!