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[Gobalopper]

Here are the some of the latest posts form the Dune Generations forum from both Frederic Manisse (Lead Designer) and Christophe Lorek (Lead Programmer). First up is Frederic:

You cannot custom appearance of your characters, neither your planet. What you can custom is the skills of your characters and your herald shield. - LINK

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Weather isn't handled by the game. Just for info, a day in Dune univese is 2,5 minutes long, 50 years one month. Implementing weather wouldn't have worked with the time speed. - LINK

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The lower level house of your example cannot attack a too much high level house. The rule is if I can attack it, then he can attack me. If I cannot, he cannot. - LINK

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When you click on any units, you will see to which house it belong. a /who housename will give you his level, his house class and his clan. - LINK

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All character have four feats and four skills.

Feats are improved or decreased through mariage and children. They are your genetic heritage. The howthatwork has to be discovered by you.

Skills are improved with house levels. The higher your house is, the more skill points you have on each character. You inherit half of your competence from your father and mother. The other half is selected by you with the remaining points.

Here is a quick translation of the french doc, because the official translation isn't made yet.

Feat Treacherous/Loyal: A treacherous leader can forge documents and cover his illegal actions while a loyal leader will attract higher companions and get more easily friendship of important NPCs.

Luck: You get good luck, you get good things. You get bad luck, you attract problems.

Charisma: A Charismatic leader will impress his troops or the traders and get bonus.

Fecondity: Frequence of children birth in your family. Must be mated with the score of your husband/wife.

Skills:

Trade: Your ability to get good or bad price when trading.

Tactic: Your ability to lead troops on the battlefield.

Fight: Your ability to fight in a one vs one fight.

Administration: Your ability to handle your planet and to produce.

There will be missions in the game but they aren't mission to improve your characters. You win prestige points to rise in level your house. Characters are linked to your house level. They don't have a personnal experience score.

Companion are secondary characters you can recruit in the game. They improve through training and are maxed in crowd and level by your house level. - LINK

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If you have a let's say from-US box, you could be at least able to play on the US server. It isn't yet decided if a DG account allow you to play everywhere in the world or only in the country you bought it.

Anyway, if you are able to get an imported DG box from land XX , you'll be able to play on XX's servers for sure like in any other net game like DAOC, AO, etc.

The game time is long before Dune books, in a blurred time we can use to create our own plot to involve major NPCs (like the emperor) - stuff we can't do if we are using a special time range like the dune books. Remember the game is made so you can wrote your own history.

The Kanly is the rule that force you to declare war before attacking another house. This rule will not be implemented in the game for several gameplay problems. One of them is 'and what if my ennemy don't log and/or don't click 'ok' on the kanly declaraction'. another is there is no average amount of time to decide than a kanly action is done and you can attack because everybody take holydays one day.

We aren't locked on a no-kanly decision but at this time, we didn't worked out with an acceptable system to use it. - LINK

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There will be dedicated server-wide channels to trading so people who want to buy or sell could meet there.

Traderoute isn't only a verbal agreement. There is a moderation tool to settle what ressources you exchange on both side.

For the amount of ressources per planet, I just say : explore the universe and guess it.

You will not be able to trade/give military units, but you can rent mercenaries.

Yes, sabotage is possible. You can also counter sabotage by using agents that take care of security on a planet. About sabotage on arrakis: Try it and see. - LINK

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Suk docs are in the game. They exist as a family companion you recruit to take care of your house member health as well as preventing to see your leader poisonned by your ennemies and some other features.

Sword masters are in the game. They can do a duel instead of your leader and act as a bodyguard against potential assassins. - LINK

Here are a couple from Christophe:

To access a solar system, you must use a Space Guild HighLiner and choose a destination.

You won't be able to choose Arrakis as a destination, only the owner of Arrakis will have the right, that's all. - LINK

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Because there are others "things" to deal with, and if others players could attack you, you wouldn't be able to have fun...

And in the book, nobody would dare to attack Arrakis (because of the Guild, because of the Emperor, because of Dune itself...)

In some other online games, people are queueing to kill the big boss monster in the secret cave, we don't want it to happen here, because we have to stick with the story of the books (this is all about role play)

We would like to avoid having Cinderella, ruler of Arrakis, being attack by Darth Maul, Winnie the pooh and Bruce Willis... - LINK

As you can see they have been fairly busy the last week or so. Still nothing I've seen on the beta but it should be fairly soon now. I think I heard June but that was a rumor as far as I know.