Noxmire

The three states are easy to see if you've ever mined ore. If you pull more than half of the total ore out of an asteroid, without emptying it, you'll notice a change in it; the glowing crystals on a radioactive 'roid will shrink, hydrocarbons lose some of their color, gas clouds get thinner, crystalline asteroids become thinner, less spiky, and shrink a bit, and rock asteroids have fewer colored cracks and shrink some. I can get screenshots of some examples, if necessary. If the devs can alter the threshold at which these graphical changes take place, and set it up so that removing ANY ore from a 'roid without fully emptying it will change it from the "full" to the "partially depleted" state, then we have a kind of physical, obvious indicator of cherrypicking, for those who want to avoid cherrypicked fields until they respawn.

Bah. If I'm online, you can always drop me a line if you want someone to fly with. Mining gets boring alone, and I'm always happy to lend a hand in combat, if I can. I'd even be willing to fly trade runs with a TT or something.

I support the idea of Mahjongg tiles being used for RD faction. As for mob drops, perhaps Chavez-themed stuff? (Chavez Herbal Remedy, Chavez PictoZine, etc.)? People kill Chavez for RD faction anyway, might as well let 'em benefit two ways at once - or maybe trade Chavez loot to other people as a commodity for those who want RD faction but don't want to kill Chavez. Make an economy out of it!

OL, CL, EL, TL? Confused by these abbreviations? I'll explain - OL is your Overall Level, which is the sum total of all your individual experience levels. OL determines your maximum rank in Shield, Engine, Reactor, and Device Tech skills, as well as certain others depending on class. CL is your Combat Level; it determines your maximum level in Weapon Tech skills, as well as certain others depending on class. Combat experience is earned entirely from killing things, or doing jobs that involve killing things. EL is your Exploration Level; it determines your maximum level in certain skills, but since you are a Trade-based class, it doesn't matter to you all that much. Exploration experience is earned from doing delivery or courier jobs, analyzing equipment for later manufacture, and going to new and exciting places (visiting question-mark and hidden navs). You can also get exploration experience from prospecting asteroids, gas clouds, and hulks; however as a Tradesman, you're incapable of prospecting. Keep it in mind though - you might want to group with someone who's mining if you ever find yourself in need of exploration experience. TL is your Trade Level, and of all experience levels, it's the most important for you. It's earned any time you refine raw materials, manufacture goods from refined materials or components, dismantle an already-researched object into its component parts, complete delivery or transport jobs, trade objects with other players, or sell ANYTHING for a profit. As a Tradesman, it's your most important level and determines the maximum level for many of your skills. Any time one of your levels goes up, you gain skill points. Skill points are skill points, no matter what level gives them. You can, for example, spend skill points from Combat Levels on Navigate or Build Engines if you want, or spend points from Trade levels on your Missile Tech skill. Don't be shy about doing so, either; there's absolutely no downside to it. Always, always, ALWAYS look for devices that increase reactor recharge, missile range, and movement speed, particularly warp speed. Speed is of the utmost importance to you as a Tradesman - time is money and the faster you move, the less time you take schlepping goods from place to place and the more time you spend buying or selling them for BIG PROFIT. Only a Jenquai Explorer can get between two places faster than a Tradesman, and even then that's only true if there's a wormhole route between the two sectors (and you can't do trade runs with wormhole anyway, don't even try.) Overall, not a bad guide for starting out, Blattu. Could benefit from some spellchecking and organization, but the info itself is pretty solid. Well done.

Some advice: keep your starmap open whenever you're exploring an unfamiliar sector, and remember where the safest navs are. As soon as you arrive at an unfamiliar nav, look around the edges of your windows for red markers - these are enemies (or potential enemies; not everything that's red will come to kick your tailpipe the minute you arrive, but a lot will). If you see red markers, don't stay and fight; immediately click a nav you've already explored and know to be safe and warp away immediately. Most mobs, even aggressive ones, will not attack you while you're warping. Minimize the amount of time you spend stopped at navs with hostiles. Keep in mind that your warp engines take a few seconds to warm up before you start moving, so you want to have a new warp target and click the warp button BEFORE enemies go looking to cause you some grief. Remember back in the previous post, where I pointed out that you want to upgrade ALL of your equipment tech skills whenever the opportunity presents itself? This is why. If you don't upgrade your shields, enemies are going to pop you like a balloon. If you don't upgrade your reactor, you'll run out of energy trying to fight and get slaughtered. And if you don't upgrade your engine, you won't be able to outrun mobs that out-GUN you! If you do NOTHING else, make sure the Shield Tech, Engine Tech, and Reactor Tech skills are as high as you can get them, at all times. Can't stress it enough. Actually, you can make your newbie beams fire constantly just like any other weapon. Just right-click it either in your shortcut bar or on the equip screen, and mark the "auto-fire" box. Once that's done, you can just press F and the beam will fire as fast as it can, so long as you maintain your lock on the target. You do need to remember to face your target; this is a limitation that beams have that missiles don't. Also keep in mind that every shot with any weapon drains a bit of reactor power; you want to budget your reactor energy carefully so that you don't run out. Reactor energy regenerates constantly under normal conditions, but if you run out of energy you'll find that your weapons will fire more slowly (since they have to wait for the reactor to recover enough power) and you won't be able to use your skills, like Shield Recharge. NOTE: Gonna have to split this off into another post...

Hope you don't mind, but I'd like to make some additions and correct some inaccuracies in your guide, in the interest of improving it. Personally I'd like to go into more detail here. You have six tech skills available to you, and each determines how high level of gear you can use. Upgrading the tech skills of your choice should always be your first priority, because you do not want to be stuck with puny level 1 or 2 shields at high level. Shield Tech, Reactor Tech, Engine Tech and Device Tech should always be upgraded whenever the opportunity presents itself; being able to use the best equipment available to your level does wonders for your speed and survivability, which directly affects your profit margin on trade runs. You also need to make a choice between Beam Weapon Tech and Missile Weapon Tech; Beam weapons require no ammo, saving you money in the long run since you don't have to buy or lug it around, but you are limited to a maximum of Level 8 beams and you must fight from a much shorter range, making combat more difficult for you. Missile Weapons require you to buy, make, or carry ammo, but provide you with a much longer range, and you can get up to level 9 missiles, which are far stronger than their level 8 counterparts. Having a longer range and the ability to fire your weapon without facing your target is a huge advantage, and considering that you're a relatively frail class, I highly recommend getting Missile Tech and sticking with it as your primary weapon skill; don't increase Beam Tech at all. Confused about this "coords" business? Open your starmap and click the button marked "xyz" - this will bring up the coordinates of your current location. You can click this button a couple more times to cycle through coordinate modes; one mode will display the map coordinates under your mouse cursor; I highly recommend turning this mode on, as it can help you locate where things are without actually moving, if you know the coords. Directions are clumsy and inefficient; learn your coordinate locations (and teach your buddies), and getting anywhere in the galaxy is as easy as point, right-click, warp! Just a little note here: Dragging a new piece of equipment into its slot doesn't equip it right away. Your ship needs time to install the new component properly and set it up. You can install fresh equipment in space as well as in a station, but if you install gear in space, allow some time for it to fully install before you start doing anything - you'll see a message appear in your message log when the installation is done. You don't want to switch engines or launchers when an angry Voltoi is breathing down your exhaust ports! NOTE: There's a limit on the number of quote blocks I can include in a post, so I'm going to have to split this between two posts. Apologies for the double-post, but it's necessary.

Some thoughts: Firstly, since I generally mine for the explore experience and not so much for the ores, I don't see an issue with cherrypicking. If someone cherrypicks the best stuff out of an orefield I'm working on, I might grumble a bit at the lost experience, but the bonus for emptying the 'roid and that juicy field clear bonus makes up for it, especially since I don't have to work as hard to get it. Most of the time, I simply refine the ores I get and vendor them; it's easy money and trade experience. Heck, I typically get far more trade experience for refining and vendoring than I do explore experience. I never see people asking for raw ore or refined material on Market, so I never bother to keep anything; there's simply no demand. The only time cherrypicking is an issue is when people are mining in order to produce a specific item, and I'm not going to comment on that further because I have no experience and thus no grounds from which to speak from. If a cherrypicked 'roid respawns at the same rate or faster than one that is fully emptied, then cherrypicking is absolutely no problem. A cherrypicker can do no more damage to an orefield than someone fully cleaning it out; it will take the same time for the 'roids to respawn in either case. The only difference being that the cherrypicker leaves garbage behind, so you can't quite tell that the field has been worked over at first glance. The devs can fix this, however. All asteroids have 3 states: full (looks normal), partially emptied (ore will look weakened in some way; crystals get thinner and smaller, gas gets thinner, hydrocarbons have less color, etc.), and depleted ('roid explodes and despawns). If 'roids are set so that it goes from the "full" to the "partially emptied" state as soon as ANY of its contents are removed, no matter which or how few are taken, then this would provide following miners with a first-glance indicator that a cherrypicker's already been through, and he could either move on or wait for respawns.

That was a typo and a good reason never to try and use roman numerals to distinguish equipment levels, even though the game does most of the time. It's fixed, happy? *mutters about nitpickers* The thing is, most of these secondary weapon skills aren't any good to use, with maybe the sole exception of missiles. Terrell hit upon the big 3 reasons why, but there's also another reason - the rest of your skills typically don't work (or don't work well) with these alternate weapons. Let's use the Jenquai Defender as an example. Let's, for argument's sake, say he's using missiles instead of beams. Now, not only doe he not get access to the level 9 missiles (*glares at Jarod*), but most of the strategies he would normally use no longer work. Summoning is pointless; the ML's strength is its huge range, so why would you want to shorten it? Foldspace could be useful, provided you either use the level that teleports enemies away from you, or the level that lets you control the direction you teleport in, but if you opt to cast on enemies, it might not take and a "missed" foldspace would leave you vulnerable. Cloaking would still be as useful as ever from a tactical viewpoint, but you would not get the bonus damage from dropping out of combat cloak; that only works with beams. A JD is generally slower than a Terran of any kind, so kiting is a slower process, if you can do it at all. The JD lacks Rally and Hacking to self-buff and debuff the target, respectively. So yeah, even though you can technically use missiles, you're missing out on some of the perks of your best skills (Cloak's ability to double beam damage when dropped), and some of your most iconic skills have no use at all (Summon). A JD in this situation would have to fight like a miniature-TE with Foldspace; anything he could do with a missile launcher, a Terran could probably do just as easily and probably do it better. In live. The ability to use weapons other than your "main" was probably intended as something of a novelty, kinda like how mage-classes in most other MMOs technically CAN hit an enemy in melee and stat themselves appropriately towards it, but will never be as effective as an actual melee class and are better served by focusing on their strengths. Here, we've got sparse mob spawns and limited mob AI; missile kiting becomes much easier and far more viable for more than just Terrans, to the point where I've had PWs and JDs outright recommend to me to go missile instead of guns or beams respectively, should I take those classes. And honestly, that disturbs me.

Like I said earlier... Right now, kiting is a walk in the park for those with missiles, but a pain in the neck for those who don't. My problem isn't with the latter; it's with the former. I see Terrans get off completely unscathed against mobs that, even with cloak-and-dagger attacks, would drain half or more of my shield bar. Maybe missile kiting wasn't easy on Live, but on here, Terrans get away with it scot-free - so much so that even Progen and Jenquai sometimes consider missile-kiting over their racial tactics, just to remain competitive, despite the fact that they can't have Level IX missiles. IMO two things need to happen to bring Terrans in line with other races in terms of effectiveness: mobs need to use skills and longer-ranged weaponry, and there needs to be enough mobs to make running away over long distances dangerous - fleeing one enemy will likely run you into another that will aggro and slaughter you. Terrans will have to carefully choose their angle of attack to ensure a clear lane of retreat, and make sure not to pick mobs that can use skills that can lock down or hinder their ability to run, like Gravity Link, Summon, Enrage, Hacking, Menace and Fold Space. I do agree that more terrans need to get into this topic, if for no other reason than to tell us exactly what slaughtered them most in the live game, so that the devs can duplicate it here.

Sadly, extensively modifying the client, is pretty much off-limits. The devs want to do as little to the client as possible to avoid potential legal/software ramifications, from what I've heard. Until that sort of restriction is lifted, there's no way it can be done. Although, I'd imagine once that restriction is off, and tools are made available, there'd be plenty chomping at the bit to do so.

Sadly, the graphics are what they were back in the day, and aside from jacking up the various polycount budgets in the otpions there's not much that can be done; personally, I thought the game was beautiful, and still do, but to each their own. Still, the devs have done a lot - there are things now present and fully functioning in the emu that were either discarded or never fully implemented in live (though there are still a lot of inaccuracies and missing features that were in live too - this is still a pre-alpha work in progress). If you can bear with the dated graphics, then I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the quality of this game.

EDIT: I had a huge post here about the merits of group combat and how each character type could contribute to a group, but then I realized that it was totally off-topic and pared it down to the essential stuff; kiting. Thinking about it a bit more, perhaps kiting could stand to be nerfed a bit, to bring it in line with the "intended" strategies for the other warrior classes: Tanking for the PW, and Hit-n-Vanish for the JD. Terrans should be able to kite, but they shouldn't be able to get away totally unscathed - perhaps when enemies have/more actively use skills like, say, Gravity Link, Terrans will be forced to carefully select their opponents to avoid getting snared, locked in place and torn to pieces, just like JDs have to carefully separate one enemy from the pack to avoid being overwhelmed and Progen have to make sure they don't engage enemies too high level for them to tank effectively.

All the speed and foldspace in the world doesn't mean anything if the enemy outranges you. Using a Coma is a good idea to blind the enemy's scanner and reduce their effective range, but that also means they have a harder time following you when you foldspace away; I don't think enemies can chase someone outside their scan range. But still, that just only just emphasizes my point; your average Terran doesn't need any of these skills or equipment to kite effectively - just an ML (or two, or three) and ammo, and a not-entirely-crappy engine. Thus they can put the same skill/device/equip slots that a Jenquai or Progen use on reducing enemy range and increasing their own to use in dealing more damage. GoD and DG are both high-level beams, and so aren't all that good of a choice early on. In fact, most low-level beams don't have enhanced range, leaving you stuck with the various proto beams, which have few to no secondary properties beyond above-average damage and range, and more importantly, aren't manufacturable, meaning you'll never find one over 180%. Really, the best trick for Jenquai is to not kite at all: Get combat cloak, and get the most damaging per hit beams you can get. Cloak, move in, spike a mob with everything you've got, and recloak. Let your shield recover (the DoT from your plasma beams will keep your enemy from recovering his), or recast psionic shield once the enemy is out of range, then let them have it again. Your beams' recharge rate doesn't matter because they can cool down while you're cloaking; fast beams don't do you any good because they'll be restricted to the slower beams' cooldown. This way your beams' range honestly doesn't matter, because you'll be spiking them from point blank anyway for maximum damage (remember that beams lose damage from longer ranges, or are supposed to, anyway.) You'll take a hit or two in return, but hey, that's why shields regenerate and JDs get psionic shield on top of it all. They'll be taking a lot more pain than you do.

Yeah, technically any race can kite, but keep in mind; beams and guns both require you to face your target, and additionally, beams tend to have a short range: even the best of beams, range-wise, can barely reach 3.5k range without some form of range-boosting device or equip. Compare that to a minimum of 4.5k range for missile launchers, held by the worst-ranged ML in the game to my knowledge. This means that you have to find a mob that is slower going forward than you are at full reverse (very difficult, especially at lower levels where kiting helps the most - my JE can only properly kite with beams while on-planet. In space, his impulse is just too slow), and if you're a beamer, you also need to either stack range enhancing devices or hunt short-ranged mobs, lest the enemy get a shot in on you every time you move in to land a hit of your own. So yes, while kiting is technically possible with any weapon that has nonzero range, it's likely to be a complete impossibility in practice unless you are highly levelled or armed with missiles.

Never really liked kiting or the idea of kiting, personally. It made guns kinda weak for Progen and devalued lasers for Jenquai. Missiles have that obscene combination of incredible range and no need to face your target, making kiting so much easier for Terrans than anyone else. Everyone else has to contend with subpar missiles and the fact that most of the equipment that would improve missiles for them is race-restricted to Terrans. Sure, Jenquai and Progen can kill stuff without missile kiting, but they need to make heavy use of their active skills (Cloak and Foldspace for Jenquai, Gravity Link and Menace for Progen). Terrans don't need to do much; just throw up Rally, target a victim, set your missiles on autofire, turn tail and run like hell - only thing you need is plenty of ammo and a clear lane of retreat.

Huh, guess you joined and left during the time I was away. At any rate, welcome back, and I hope you enjoy your return.

To join a mono-race guild, there'd have to be some strong incentive to draw me in. As much as Terrans are stinkin' money-grubbing rock-huggers and Progen are belligerant DNA-mutilated hooligans, and both of them are such space-newbs that they don't feel right without a gravity well telling them which way is up, they have their uses and some of 'em have even earned my respect. I even play them every now and again on a lark. The idea of refusing a competent, well-mannered, respectable being on account of race kinda grates on my personal morals. The incentive doesn't have to necessarily be an in-game bonus. I mean, RP-wise if the guild has a good reason for being mono-race (such as a Jenquai secret society, or espionage team, or something of the sort) and can't afford any conflicted loyalties, that would be good enough for me. But without that sort of reasonin behind it, it's just a needless restriction that makes the late stages of the game un-fun.

See the Server Status thread. We've been having issues with the server's current port being blocked for no apparent reason without warning. When this happens, those in-game will eventually be kicked offline (usually when attempting to gate or dock), and those that attempt to log in will be stuck on the loading screen right after selecting their character. If this happens wait for the devs to restart the server, there's nothing else that can be done.

Server has just came back up.

Looks like it's happening again, same problem as the last outage. Server is down until a dev can bring it back up again. You won't be able to get past the character select screen while this is happening.

On the bright side, it looks like the server is more-or-less back up now. You may log back in to find your character dead; I don't think there's much that can be done about it except to get a tow and return to space. If you find any other weird stuff happening, try relogging again to see if it's fixed - chances are things are a little wonky after an abnormal crash like that, but the issues should straighten themselves out in time. Apparently, it seems the previous port that the server was operating on was spontaneously blocked, and the server needed to be moved to a fresh one.

Looks like the login server is up, but the game and sector servers are down, and the login can't hand-off to it. If you attempt to log in right now, you will be stuck on the loading screen. Wait for the devs to restart it.

Yeah, 5:27 PM EST, server @ play.net-7.org is DOWN, and it's kicking everyone offline one by one.

Mattsacre raises good points; stuff earned from any sort of PVP/PVE hybrid events should not be significantly better than stuff earned the normal way, through grinding. Further, neither should it be weighted towards a specific purpose (look at WoW's PVP-arena gear if you want to see why this is horrible; basically if you want to PVP successfully without picking on newbs, you have to get arena gear, since stuff earned from raids/grinding is totally unsuitable.) I like the idea that stuff earned from these hybrid events would be cosmetically different from standard stuff, rather than statistically different. Unique shot graphics, special FX that play when equipped or used, stuff like that is excellent and I'd wholly support rewards of this type.