Whitelighter

Go Here and download the starship creator. After you install it, rgiht click the icon to launch the Creator and go to properties. where it says target add in this at the very end: -noclassrestrictions do not erase any of the target line, just add that part at the end. then launch the creator and when you get to the classes screen, use the ARROW KEYS at the bottom of the creator to scroll through classes, the new ones will not have a name at the top like the old 6 classes do. but using those arrows at the bottom you can scroll around to them.

I think the biggest complaints you touched on: Sometimes people start it and dont finish it, sometimes that bugs it and takes longer to get another try at it. 4 hours between is a little much, it wouldnt be bad if it was a personal timer. but the current version gives a 4hr cooldown for everyone. I enjoy competing for bosses and kills, anyone that has come across me knows I like the challenge of it lol. But every boss/raid shouldn't be that way. Right now its usually the same people in Fishbowl over and over. They know the exact timer and either they are ready to go then, or they tell friends so they can be there to do it again. If you want the loot right now, you have to more or less know the timer AND bring enough people to ensure you get the kill-credit (which can bug itself and you wont even get that). Most of the people that played E&B during LIVE have wives/kids/responsibity they didn't have back then. They should not have to log in and pray that during their 2-3 hours of playtime they might have a chance to do some end-game content. And even if they do get lucky enough for it to be available, they will have to fight tooth&nail for every mob. Like I said for most bosses the current setup is fine, timed spawns (though I prefer a little more random timers)and you fight for it, but every mob cant be that way. You alienate the people with commitments outside the game and the smaller guilds who simply dont have the gear or manpower to battle the big guilds.

server down again. but anyways. we all let feeling get in the way sometimes. God knows Ive posted some stuff in anger/aggrovation a time or two lol. I would love to help code, but I figure it requires more knowledge than I have about it.

I wouldn't mind having raid keys, but it shouldnt be that easy to get lol. a nice quest that takes 6+ hours of gametime, or something that players have to figure out themselves (this is what made E&B, well E&B to me. like Vrix messages, OCD Raid, and such).

Yea I dont care much for this new setup. Someone can go in and pop booney then leave and it messes it up for anyone else that wants to go.

Same here. Theres rumors of a patch going live tonight. Could be an issue there if so. I did see it online with 10 people on but it went down again quickly. Lots of important people on the site (GMs, DEVs, BETAs), if it was having issues I would think someone would say something lol

I noticed something today. I was logged in on 2 accounts, playing normal without any issues. Had no noticable lag, no unusual moving issues or anything. Upon log out I saw the Net7 Proxy window was spammed with something, by the time I read it I didn't have time to SS it. It said (paraphrased) - "Your packet loss it too great to play this game. If you see the message please report it on the forums." The message was on both Net7 Proxy windows. Not sure why it was there, but thought I'd give you guys a heads up since it said to.

I don't understand why people are giving the OP neg ratings... Orion wasn't too bad in LIVE, but AnDRAMAda was full of guilds fighting for boss kills. I can still remember waking up at odd ball hours to simply log-on and kill RD Base, Controller, Warder and such. Yeah thinking back now, being that hardcore in games makes me laugh, but being around people that dedicated was fun too. There's not much need for competition right now, everyone has atleast a dualbox setup and can 'solo' stuff themselves. But as things get converted over to true raids they won't be able to and hopefully the competition returns. Nothing wrong with competing for mobs, and while everyone more or less gets along; once it becomes me and my guild/friends group against yours, I'm not your friend for the next few minutes.

After some good discussion here, and a few logical alternate sugguestions, will you guys be going forward with the changes you had in mind? Will you use one of our sugguestions or perhaps a mixture of the two?

While I mostly agree with this, in some cases it does make sense to increase the timer as you level the skill. That is commonly used in MMOs to balance powerful abilities. Big, powerful nukes have either a long cast time or a long cooldown. When they don't you have players using them all the time and it leads to awful balance issues. I'm typically against DRs on skills, they are usually poorly thought out and you run the risk stupid players messing up the DR count for the rest (we all know those players are around, and becoming more common lol). I just can't see DRs being useful on many skills/in many situations with the design of E&B. Even in a raid setting, you rarely face more then 4-5 mobs. Once you knock out 2 it gets easy to finish them off then. Using DRs on a mob simply means I'll use the single target version of skills to get through those first 2 mobs then the healer can kick-back and keep me topped off. The other problem with using a DR system, or as Tien sugguested a immunity after 1 time for x time, is it leads to potential griefing issues. If Group A is fighting boss wave-2 and group B shows up, Group B can AOE Sap the mobs and make the skill not usable to Group-A. If the timer is simply increased as I sugguested then Group-B cant mess up Group-A, Group-B just simply wasted their cooldown. Lately I have noticed more and more people checking out the EMU. Sure there isn't 50 new players a day, but you see 1-2 actual new players a day (judging by their questions anyway). So you need to consider long-term in any decisions made, once the EMU goes full blown (aka LIVE status and not testing stages) the competition WILL increase, and with it comes greifing. The desire to have the best stuff will mean more, cause we won't lose our characters anymore. I know most players think E&B has a great community, and while it is better than most other MMOs/EMUs not everyone will be best friends with each other when it comes to timed boss spawns or non-instanced raids. The ugly will start to show itself then, and after it happens that first time it will slowly increase. I done a few quick tests on Shield Sap today after posting my last reply: Against a CL58 mob, without an energy debuff on it I was Sapping 40k from the mob AND gaining 58k-61k shield for myself, Every 13 Seconds! I'm a huge PW fan, was my main in live and is my main now, but there is no way anyone can argue that the skill is balanced.

In Live, only the TT had shield recharge and had to manage with a lv8 reactor. Usually what players did was have the JE be a battery for the TT via the Pheonix devices. I think Shield Recharge may have had a small cooldown on it in live, combined with the cast-time. But thats just from memory which might be completely wrong. Only problem I can see with this is depending on how its implemented it could lead to PWs just downranking the level of Sap they use. Maybe maxing the skill out, but only to buff the transfer factor and not with the intention of using the higher levels of the skill. Currently with max shield sap, even Shield Transfer (rank 3 of the skill IIRC) will restore around 30% of a lv9 shield. If thats castable every 20seconds you havent solved much of the problem. And thats at the current values on Shield Sap, if you buff the skill to what this article says it should be at that number could easily approach 45% or more. *EDIT* Another potential issue is you could group 2 PWs, the main tank using Shield Transfer (single target) and the 2nd one using Area Sap as an emergency heal since the other mobs will not have the sap immunity. Of course this could be done as well giving the skill a straight 1 minute cooldown and may even be more likely to happen since the first PW isn't healing every 20 seconds or so. In a raid setting if a PW can still heal himself for 45% every 20 seconds, with the option to heal himself for more if he needs to, then that takes the pressure off of the TT/JT/PT by a great deal. Raid Mobs will need to deal 90k or more damage per shot, or about 12k to 15k dps assuming most mobs have a reload time of 7-8 seconds(after resists are factored in) to make it a challenge. Just in my opinion there are two viable solutions: 1.) give the skill a 1 minute cooldown at the current 'power' and see how it works, you may need to change it to 1 minute and 20seconds or maybe reduce the cooldown 50 seconds. Just have to see how much it effects the gameplay OR 2.) Buff it like you intend, and make each rank give an additional 15 second cooldown (1 minute and 45 seconds at max rank) that effects every rank of the skill. IE Have Sap level-3 gives it a 45sec cooldown, going to rank 4 gives it a 1 minute cooldown reguardless if you use rank 1 (Shield Drain) or rank 3 (shield transfer). This way as the skill gets stronger, the cooldown gets longer, but it also keeps the skill somewhat usable for a leveling PW. But I'm not sure if this solution is even possible to program in.

As I've said before, currently a PW's shield sap is slightly OP. Setup right very few mobs can kill a PW in a 1v1 situation. That said, I'd rather see a middle road taken instead of the 2 options we seem to have available. Put Shield Sap back to its pre-nerf level or very close to it (atleast 80% pre-nerf value) but give it a 45 second or 1 minute cooldown. This version you mentioned seems to go from very OP to pretty bleh, even with the buff to how much you get back the timer really limits the PW. This will keep the skill usable, but still require smart decisions by the PW to get the max out of it at raids and higher end mobs. And the discussion seems to revolve around Shield Sap/Leech, what about the JD's Energy Leech, will it be fixed and given the same treatment as these two?

With the recent changes to the game, especially involving raids and bosses a change is sorely needed. Currently a group can earn kill credit towards a mob/boss, and loot rights will be activated on that mob. The problem arises after that. Once that person closes the corpse, to allow the person that won/needs the loot, the looting restrictions are removed and ANYONE can loot the corpse. This has opened the door for griefing others and it is already happening. Healthy competition for kills is welcome and expected, but if you earn the kill you should get to keep the loot from it. It should either be like back in LIVE where looting restrictions remained for X amount of time, even if you opened and closed the corpse 500 times. OR A /command or such to allow the group leader to loot the item, and GIVE it to the player that SHOULD receive it. This command is already in-game and available for GM use (swapping mis-looted no-trade items) but it could lead to abuse outside of a raid setting so it may not be worth it in the end. Either way some type of change needs to be worked on and implemented sooner rather than later. If not it will just lead to drama and what should be unacceptable behavior.

Something I'd like to see is a database that only listed what is/should be currently available in-game. Would save the aggrovation of farming for an item that isn't there. And if something is listed and you kill 10000 of those mobs and it doesn't drop, would be easier to report that the drop is bugged.

Something to consider Tien, if you guys have a big update on PTR - why not post on the forums/in-game that "hey on X day at X time we'd like to stress test the new content on the server so please jump over and help out"? I'd bet the turn-out for that would be a lot better. Just a thought that might help get people over there when you need the extra bodies.

HERE is a nice step-by-step guide on how to use the key and get into the beta. After you do all of that, you'll get an e-mail with links to the beta client download.

Let me start out by saying this isn't posted to cause any drama or hard feelings. E&B will always be a great game, but sometimes you jest need a break from it to play something else. Black Prophecy is something between E&B and EVE and Star Wars: Empire Divided-Jump to Lightspeed. Hit the forums, and if it interests you they just gave away 5,000 beta keys (more or less making it open beta now). Go to GameItem.com for a free beta key. There are almost 2000 keys left when I posted this.

In E&B's version of PvP, the PW would have a huge advantage over any Jenquai. The whole Jenquai race is based on the standard MMO archtype Rogue/Assassin. The whole advantage of that type of class is removed in any duel type setting, which is all the arena really is/was. It was nothing more than a fancy duel. Now throw this fight out in a real PvP setting and the JD would have a huge boost in his chances to win. Most PWs wouldn't fly around with a see cloaked item equiped. Scan boost is likely, but not see cloaked. If the JD was set up to PvP they'd most likely carry a mix bag of items to swap out as needed. So the Jd could fly in, CombatCloak then pop out and most likely take out the PWs shields in 2-3 volleys. While also throwing out debuffs during the initial barrage. Now the PW has no shields, is scan blind and if the JD has any sense - he also threw out a Energy Leech. All the JD has to do is Swap out 3-4 beams for EMP damage beams and get into Combat Cloak. By now, assuming no lag is present, this has taken 5-6 seconds. You can figure 2-3 of those seconds the PW would be in reaction mode, locating his attacker and turning to face them. That leaves the PW 2-4 seconds to prevent the JD from entering Cloak again, and the JD simply has to fly through the PW to avoid that nasty damage. The JD simply pops out of cloak, having swapped some weapon types around before entering cloak. open up with 1-2 plasma weapons and 3-4 EMP weapons with another Energy Leech, and the PW is probably damn near out of reactor. From then on its simply a matter of keeping enough EMP beams to keep the reactor dry, and enough plasma/energy/whatever beams to get through the PW hull. It would be a slow kill for sure, and require some luck on the JDs part. But it *IS* possible. For a JE, I don't think its very possible. The purest Explorer vs the purest Warrior is too lop-sided. But Warrior vs Warrior, in a real PvP setting, the JD has a good chance to beat anyone. Of course there are a lot of other factors for the JD vs PW, but I'm not getting into all of it lol.

As someone who has worked in the oilfield/gas pipeline industry for a little over 10 years, it is not as simple to blow one up as you see in the movies. There are safety measures in place to contain it in the event of an eruption/leak. So blowing a power plant up that way is possible, its also unlikely to be capable of doing it from a remote area. You could of course shut one down, most of the turbines and internal valves are electronicly controlled. But there would be more effective and time effecient ways to do that.

Read this I found it interesting. But I had to laugh so hard when I got to the end of it. I knew APB would fail.

Would you be willing to discuss near/further future encounter design in more depth?

Here is a good thread, towards the end of page 1 and start of page 2 it explains how to fix the issue you are having.

No Arc you don't need to do that. I cant remember the exact way to get that to go away but I want to say closing the box/clicking OK will fool it.

BEST option would be do away with those Archos Those things are ammo hogs as you've seen. Try to swap some out for 2-3 (Atleast 2-3) Bile PLs. A good starter setup for now would be a Reaver, 2 Biles, 2 Archos, and a Ballista. That would lessen the mining you have to do greatly.

Some old friends have also came back during that time!