Vitaes

Having an issue with my PS. He is at +3122 Bogeril faction, did the Idee March mission, yet Lyle won't give him the mission. Any ideas? I did exactly what my JE did, except he only needed +2594...don't know if that is for everyone as long as they do one of the side missions first. I don;t know why my PS can't get the mission.

I just started this mission on my JE, he gave it to me with +2594 faction.   I'd like to add to Reno and Daath's posts about getting parts. If you are in a starter sector (IO, for example), you don't need to rip carbon dioxide or dry ice from components. While mining for the lv 1 and 2 gasses, you will come across plenty of carbon dioxide. And, of course, carbon dioxide refines to dry ice. Just grab what you need. Sand and silicon have the same relationship, sand will refine to silicon. You will easily find what you need. Asteroid Belt Way 2 in Mars has TONS of obsidian....refines to obsidian dust. Since Daath wrote his post, the quartz crystals seemed to have run away from ABA. While hunting in lv 1 hydros you might find enough tar for your needs. Quartz crystals, tungsten and tar were found in Swoop mixed in with lv 1-4 roads. I just followed the straight line from Lonyatl Resource Point to Putotl Resource Point.

Nice summation.

It's not odd at all when you see almost 200 people on line yet the most hunted thing is an evil snowman. Put 2+2 and you realize that most people are either getting their skill points or doing the SolSec Bob mission fore the Polar Express. Is it also odd that for hours I had Antares to myself for hours at a time? The broken debuts are making a few people somewhat reluctant to hunt bigger game. There is no reason to take a dig at the public.

This entire discussion is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. Before I continue, I will restate that I am on board with the "leave as it is" crowd for my aforementioned reasons. Of course, if someone comes up with a better plan, then I'm for it.   However, the people who now and in the past demand that people "prove" that they are good enough to take down a raid disgust me. Their attitude is one that smacks of a policy of exclusion. Since when does one have to prove they are good enough to partake in what a game has to offer? Since when does a group or groups decide who is good enough to play a part of the game? This is a free game...a GAME!   Let me put this in another perspective. I was a very good high school baseball player, and earned myself a baseball scholarship to play for Rutgers University, a Division I school. I played for four years (relief pitcher). One can assume that anyone playing a sport at the Division I level for four years is fairly advanced skill-wise in that particular sport. Now suppose that the EnB community had a server party at a nice outdoor facility. We decide to have a softball game. I watch people throwing balls, hitting balls, and finally walk out to the field to play. Before the game starts, I turn to the person playing second base and say "You can't play second base, you're not good enough." Now, unless anyone else posting here has played Division I baseball, I will assume that I am the best ballplayer here, and I will also assume that I know more about the game than anyone else posting here. Does that give me the right to tell someone that they can't play a position in a pick-up game?   GAME is the key word. I was very upset when Epic had to "prove" that they could take down a raid. Why did Epic have to prove anything? Why should the public prove that they can do the same? If a guild or the public fail ten times in a row on a raid, so what? How does it affect anyone else?   Let me guess: Because you can do the raid and get the uber loot. Wow, that's so damn important. After three years of play, I finally got Doberman a FoTM. Three years. Yes, a few people in chat snickered at that, but not having a FoTM never diminished my enjoyment of the game.Why? Because I don't consider the uber loot to be the most important part of my playing; rather, the interaction with my guild mates and others I interact with is the best part of playing.   I am lucky enough to now teach at the institution I once played for. I teach courses in history and criminal justice. I think about the discussions I've had in class on topics such as terrorism, banking and the economy, religion, the death penalty, guns, crime, drugs, world politics...you get the idea. Issues within those topics affect real life. The world will not end if someone doesn't have the most uber item in a free online game played by about 100 people. I sometimes wonder if there are a few people playing this game that don't realize this. If a raid trigger is still up for the third day, I promise you that the sun will still rise, that you will still complain about the price of some commodity, and we will still be stuck with crappy reality television shows. Yes, life will continue.   Peace to all, and don't drink too much of that pirate rum on New Year's Eve.

I say leave it as it is for a simple reason: it keeps order.   I've had two long time jobs in my lifetime, that of engineer (RCA/GE Aerospace/Martin Marietta/Lockheed Martin) and currently, high school, then college professor. I have seen, from the research lab to the classroom, what happens when schedules, timetables, projects, and basic rules are tossed aside. People, and I mean humans in general, work better within a structured framework. That is why bureaucracies, like them or not, are in place. They work. Maybe not as fast or efficiently as some would like, but in the absence of a better system, they are the best way of getting things done that groups of people have. Sociologists and psychologists know what happens when the "system" breaks down. If something is in place and it works, it should take an abnormal event or circumstances to impose changes. Is an open trigger such an event?   I understand where Gunney is coming from. It is not always easy to get into a raid, and yes, on occasion a trigger is left floating around, waiting to die. It can be frustrating to those who want a chance at certain loot items. Yet, the system has worked to keep the peace. No one kills triggers, jumps spots, we are generally nice to one another, and have learned to co-exist in relative peace. Sure, I'd like to suck up an open trigger....lord knows that my luck with rolls is a running joke on TS...I'll probably get a spitter, CLP or flinger when I turn 80...but in the end, if I don't get those things, so be it. Is it worth me moving a trigger spawn time for a little better chance at loot? No. Maybe for others it is, though I don't believe for a second that anyone playing actually thinks like that. People aren't that selfish on the EMU (exceptions noted elsewhere in the thread, outside of raids).   If anything, one's ire should be directed at those players who think they "own" certain aforementioned spawns. Do I think that could happen with some of the raids? Absolutely...and the proof is that is already happens. I'm sure people know what spawns I'm talking about.

Haha, Santa smacked VGE with the giving stick. Thanks guys, very nice. Hopefully I can get in with a few of the Corps for a little cross-guild love.

Thanks mates!

Before I try, will the game run on an iMac?

I'm fine with the new skill. My explorers don't need to build weapons. It's not like we don't have enough weapon builders in game already.

I await more of this...

If a miner wants to level up explore without combat because they feel that they can handle the mobs without fighting, let them. As a JE who mined high level fields with low combat skill, I always had fold space and cloak to keep me safe. A TS can simply run away. A PS is tough enough to survive encounters and even fight the mobs in many circumstances. A skilled miner doesn't have to fight to mine high level ores in the vast majority of circumstances. Explorers have those unique skills for a reason. Survival is one of those reasons. Well-played miners rarely die. Leave combat to the warriors, IMO.

Andrew Robinson, voice of Theodoric Cassel, was Garak on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He was also the main criminal (Scorpio) in the Clint Eastwood movie Dirty Harry.

Her husband contacted me in game after she passed. I was the first to know what happened. He said that she loved this game and the gaming community, especially her fellow guild members in Epic. He said she would have wanted the friends she made here to know what happened. She was a very pleasent and fun person to interact with, but we knew something must have been wrong when we didn't see her log in lately. She will be missed.

The other credit sinks I know about, but I didn't realize that having high RD faction would cost me as well. It adds to the storyline though, so I pay, I pay.

I ma slowly navigating the waters of Agrippa. WHile finishing Stage II reactors I was fined 9 million credits for my association with the Red Dragons. My RD faction is 22,525. Is this an actual part of the Agrippa storyline, or does everyone get hit with some sort of fine/credit sink in Agrippa?

I don't know what to say about this. I believe most gamers like game play easy or "dumbed down" if you will to go along with content. But at what point does content not get repetative, or the easier gameplay interfere with the role playing part?   I'll use Asheron's Call as an example. When it was released, it had a spell system for players that required actual research on the player's part. There was an algorithm for each spell, and one had to literally experiment with spell components to learn spells. It was quite a challenge. I clearly remember players watching other players cast spells so they could see the movemments and mannerisms of the caster. If you found a scroll with a popular spell, it was worth some serious cash, as many players would pay big $$$ to not sit around and try to learn spells all night.   Well, a small group of intrepid players, after much sweat and experimentation, finally cracked the algorithm that was behind the spell system. Thus, a program called Split Pea (IIRC) was born. This took, IMO, a big part of the role playing out of AC for players (all could cast spells to some degree if they wanted to).   As more content was added, and players didn't want to focus on mundane tasks such as making arrows, potions, food, etc., as leveling became a goal unto itself, and hard to find needed items for game play became expensive, people began to experiment with macros. Out of this came one program above all others, called AC Tool. The first macros were simple combat macros designed to sit ina spawn area, kill the mobs, and loot the goodies from the corpse. From these humble beginnings came bots that roamed mob infested areas for combat and loot (and XP), bots that could buff a player for in game cash or free, Bots that could imbube weapons, bots that could cook...eventually someone wrote a market bot script, and thus, a market place was born, where live players could access bots and buy items from player bots. it was a great way to make cash and dump excess loot.   But the money became easy to get, and money became virtually useless (hmm......). The only thing left for the game was to add more higher level content, although some lower game added content was so good many players made new low level toons to run the dungeons. The max level went from 126 to 175, to 275. For all I know, it might be 350 now. When all was said and done, even with in game housing added, and all the scripts making leveling easier, the only thing left was more and more content to drive the game.   The one exception to this was on the dedicated PvP server, which to this day has the most active community in AC. PvP'ers made their own fun (I did for 9 years on that server) and content became an afterthough for a sizable number of those players, other than to see who can gank the next quest party at said quest. For all the servers, you have the very detailed and rich stoy line, tons of things to do in game, loads of weapons/armor/items/other goodies to acquire. The PvP server had the added feel of making sure you were armed/buffed to the max before stepping out of the mansion area of your monarchy, else face near certain death, as well as the prospect of having to fight nasty mobs and enemy players at the same time on occasion (very fun BTW). But from a one-time base of about 125,000, perhaps 5,000 are left playing. Not bad I suppose from a game that started in 1999.   I suppose content can take you only so far. How high can a level cap be raised? How many variations of a theme can one run before utter boredom sets in? Maybe a purely content driven MMO can't survive in the end, because, as Pakk stated, the "R" is missing, or because without new faces in the game the social aspect simply isn't enough anymore. I don't know the answer, but no game lasts forever. I had a blast playing AC, AO, CoH/CoV, and of course EnB. But I wonder myself about the state of this game and all MMO's in the future.

I just finished Stage II and got the map for the Ambush Alpha. I was hoping my JE could build the lv 8 and 9 reactors...guess not :(

You can get some nice xp from this. I got 31,548 clear field bonus yesterday from a rarely mined field. It was a well-guarded field, and I could see why not many peeps want to mine it.

-30 on plasma and EMP, no sig...not exactly a combat engine, especially for tanks who need to hold aggro.

I've been saving a lot of those lv 9 half eaten alien space suits...V'rix faction!!! (I hope)

Looks like the login server is taking some well earned time off.  :)

I don't know many Progen who use the Skirmish Omega over the CFB. CFB has 9K more cap, +44% shield recharge when equipped, and almost +20% to critical hits. It also inproves class specific skills like powerdown and recharge shields. FB raids have people debuffing with plasma, and for the RD base chemical is the first damage of choice. The impact debuff is nice from the Omega, but as far as overall usefulness, the CFB, for me anyway, is the shield of choice between those two. The Skirmish debuff is worthless if few use it in actual combat, and the buffs to enrage and menace just aren't that useful against high level mobs. If there was PvP, then the ability to see cloaked would make the Skirmish quite useful and a viable choice.

There are always JE's and JD's on the raids I am on. They debuff, control the crowd, summon, restart the dead, sometimes heal (JS), and make sure my reactor is always good. The low sig of the JE (I can get mine to -0.6) means that the jumpstarter won't die unless they do something stupid. It's no fun when your PS jumpstarter gets smoked himself. I'm happy with a JE. They also leech after the summmon...which also allows the Progens to sap as well. That's a lot of instant damage. And having those Jennies means that when I'm on my PW, I feel no worry and just keep blasting away. I know that I won't have to chase after mobs, I know I won't run out of power, I know I have good scan range, and I know that if I get ganged up someone will toss a few of the baddies away for me....that is a practical point of view validated by practice and results.