Sir_Lionmane

Yep, can't log in right now. It says "Login failed: Server not found." "Server Failed to respond to login attempt." if that helps at all.

Unless you can come up with a way to have a Jenquai Explorer toon get ahold of a Terran Tradesman's ship, I'd have to say it's a moot point. The classes are tied to the ships.

I'll add my two cents in here. I wonder if everyone here making suggestions is thinking about what happens when this game gets out of testing and goes "live" again? I see a lot of suggestions that are based on the belief that the player base will stay roughly the same once we go live again, and I think that's faulty thinking. Chances are, the numbers that we have now will at the very least double, and likely increase by a factor of ten, once this game is re-released back into the public and everyone is playing a finished game. Using that logic, the chances of any given mining field being cleared, regardless of how large it is, are pretty high in the more popular mining spots. Even the less-popular mining spots will see a fairly high number of miners, and all because mining brings in a good profit, is fun, will be frequented by those who don't want the competition of the popular spots, and is vital for every builder in the game. I remember playing a miner during live, and while the lowbie spots were usually fairly clear... the highbie spots were camped like mad, and the fact that cherry-picking was common, it didn't matter because there were always those willing to clean up behind those highbies. Easy money for midbie miners, since mobs got cleared by the dozens of highbie miners scrambling to grab that popular asteroid/crystal/gas/whatever. I know... I did it all the time. One of the reasons I never cared about cherry-pickers, because SOMEONE below them is happy to grab what's left over for easy profit. My point is that the fields will get cleared. The question is how it will be cleared, and by who? Will there be griefers hanging around, letting everyone else clear that field while he holds one asteroid open, then steals the bonus for himself on the last asteroid? Does the field-clearing bonus go to the person who mined the most, in which case clearing an asteroid becomes more important? And how exactly is one person able to clear a field without someone coming along and helping themselves to that field? No matter what happens, someone gets pissed because they "deserve" the bonus and someone else stole it. Multiply that by every mining field, and by one half-hour per respawn. It equals more hassle for mods and devs than they want. You'll have more complaints flooding your mailboxes about that than all of your actual legitimate problems combined. Personally, I like the asteroid-clearing bonus, but not the field-clearing bonus. When there's more than one miner per field, who's going to get that bonus? If they're not grouped, which is very likely since most miners are in competition with each other, it'll be whoever grabs the last one, right? What happens to the other miner/miners who helped clear that field? They're out in the cold, and if they aren't speed-demon miners or willing to grief other miners, they'll always be out in the cold. Bonus to griefers and people who play all day with no lives! Hurray! However, the asteroid-clearing bonus does all that's required to help clear up the cherry-picking problem. Why not just stick to that? You can't grief that. People are more willing to stop cherry-picking (until they hit L50 explore, anyway). It's a good set-up. As for more "hidden" minefields, come on... they'll only be hidden until the first excited player gets on the forum and says "Hey, guess what I found! L9 EVERYTHING located at this precise spot, and no one knows about it! I RULE!" Ten minutes later, that "hidden" spot is no longer hidden, and it becomes yet another campground for people to ninja each other on. Think I'm kidding? This game isn't even live yet, and already there are threads here saying "Hey, this is where some great spots are!" I like the idea of larger minefields and shorter respawn times. World of Warcraft handled their biggest issues of griefing and resource camping by simply making resources much easier to get and much more plentiful. Suddenly, everyone had access to tons of stuff to make their items, improve their item-making businesses, and more gold to buy them than they knew what to do with. They made the game all about the quests and the game-play instead of all about the resource-collection. If I'm reading this forum right, it sounds like that's what most of the players are looking for here, as well. When I was playing live, I remember very clearly what the biggest complaints were about Earth and Beyond... no PVP (and I hope it stays that way, ENB should be non-PVP. Let EVE do that), not enough content and missions, and the gigantic resource-camping problem that prevented the casual gamer from being able to do much in terms of game-business. Since that pretty much took away sideline businesses from the average player, that left only two things to do in the game... grinding, both trading and combat. People got bored. Concerning mobs in the mining fields... I hope Mr. Merlin wins his fight to remove or minimize them. Not just because it will make resources easier to get (see above), but because the majority of the mobs protecting those fields are ridiculously powerful considering the average level of player trying to mine it. Bear in mind, I'm taking this from Live, since I haven't been playing the emulator for very long, so my comments are based on those days. Their scanning range is crazy-huge, and somehow manage to see even the lowest signature from a long distance away; they're powerful enough to seriously threaten even Warrior classes, much less the much-weaker mining classes; and just player-wise, it's frustrating as hell to be happily mining away in a field, and suddenly you're one-or-two-shotted by a re-popped mob that either you or someone else had previously cleared. Bye-bye profits, hello exp-debt. And all you wanted to do was do some mining! Now, if you want to keep the mobs in the fields, how about a random sprinkling? On one day, X number of fields has mob spawn in them; on another day, those mobs disappear and reappear in other fields; the next day, a different set of fields; and so on. It may call for more programming, and I don't know what would be involved in that, but it would still put the mobs in there without taking away from the mining experience. Plus, it will encourage people to move from field to field rather than gravitate to one specific field all the time, since the mobs will naturally discourage miners in that field. If that's not a good idea, or is too much to implement, how about increasing the time between respawns, maybe doubled or tripled? Maybe limit the mobs to the high-level fields, or those fields that have mission-necessary things? Or simply make the mobs in those fields a nuisance rather than a threat, thus making those fields difficult without being lethal. So, to summarize, since this thread is about mining and not about content and missions, I'll just say this: make the mining more proliferate, do away with the field bonus, keep the asteroid bonus, and keep up the fight to minimize or do away with mob-protected fields. Thanks. Hope it was helpful.

One of the aspects of Earth and Beyond I always wanted were the three missing classes... the Terran Explorer, the Jenquai Trader, and the Progen Trader. Personally, I want to play the Terran Explorer... a trader who prospects? My two favorite parts of this game? BLISS! And when this game went emulator, and they said "We're bringing these three classes in," I was overjoyed! But when I loaded the game up, they were nowhere to be found on the selection list. Did I miss something? Do I need to download a patch or something? Is there an icon I didn't see? Please give me any insight on this. I really want to try these classes out. Thanks.