Luciferish

  I'm certain it isn't the fault of the EMU devs, this stuff was around long before.  Now it is just a remnant that seems odd and confusing.  But throwing ideas of how they could be tweaked to be useful is not a bad thing, I hope.  With some luck and effort these items can be tweaked to find a useful place or removed somehow so they don't just take up space in recipe lists and cargo holds. If a device/item can't be used why even have it around? 

There are a number of similar anomalous devices such as these.. Most are leftovers from pre-release from Westwood.  It would only make sense that they be changed, revised or removed (there is nothing wrong with a line of devices ending at L8... L9 is usually a new build so the L9 only serves as vendor fodder or to be ripped for comps, which is a waste of space.  Although at this juncture I am not sure how easy it would be to remove an item from the system...   But any that can be tweaked to allow them some use would be better than having these loose ends laying around, just seems sloppy to me.

If you make the 9 Explorer only, then L1 to 8 should be too...

Back in the days of the Westwood beta all toons had L9 everything, Weapons, Reactors, Devices, etc... It wasn't until it moved to ST1-4 that limitations were created for certain classes and races in various areas. A decisions was made that the classes were too generic and didn't allow people very much variety except for the different skills exclusive to the race/class.  Many of the originally designed weapons and equipment were designed for a full range of levels, L1 to L9 for that reason, after ST and into release the items remained in game and has been the subject of many a jab at the original developers.     It seems that for marketing reasons there was a strict rule about never remove ANY content for ANY reason.  Though in EMU I have no idea why many items are still in the system, such as L9 devices that are TT only and so on.

That is what I was afraid of... I know that there are very big limitations in much of the code, but I had a little hope it was possible. Thank you for taking the time to explain the limitation to me, I do appreciate that very much.  It is too bad the original creators didn't see fit to make things more flexible, but I can understand the simplicity logic they implemented.

Instead of the generic "Sorry, I don't have work for you, check back later" message we see can we get more information from these NPCs?   Something along the lines of:   "You are not ready for the work I have for you, you are not popular enough/too popular with XXXX (faction)" "Your abilities are not great enough to accept the work I have for you (level)" "I have no more work for you" (All missions completed that this NPC offers or there are no missions available due to class/race or similar.   This could be in response to a chat tree option of "So, do you have work for me or not?"   This would help greatly in the finding of content and what is available, what needs to be done in order to access the content, etc.  I know there are many missions out there and since there is no really good repository of those missions and what the requirements are it is often that players overlook missions from NPCs for easier to follow job terminals.   I know the idea sounds small, but with the number of NPCs offering missions this would take some time to implement but it would be a huge improvement over the guesswork currently required to find missions.  

Ahh, yes, that does sound like a better calibration... And as far as I can figure about where they currently sit... of course you can't measure the talent of the pilots of the toons either, which is a major factor... A good set of people on vanilla vendor/pm eq can do a lot more than someone who is inexperienced.. but that is an intangible in all of this..

I agree with all of this.. I also think there is a problem with the way people approach the "end game" concept.. It does not end.. It continues..   Firstly the equipment from Raids ... I find that most of it is rather nice.. but it does have a down side... Some of it is loot-only non-trade and cannot be rebuilt if it takes a quality hit, I have had a few raid items I've had to dispose of because they had taken enough quality damage to be useless... PM equipment can be easily replaced.. Traded equipment even can be replaced with effort..   Secondly you must bracket the class of the toon... I have a JD for example, I have built her up to do the impossible, no challenge too great... She's got a number of raid items and makes her very formidable, but not everyone thinks of taking on CL66 PAX mobs in Tarsis... Solo... If you are raiding and doing all of that regularly the raid equipment isn't a bad idea.. If you are not, then it is not really necessary in order to have a successful setup... It may help, but it certainly is not required.. It comes down to the age-old must have the best equipment no matter what... If you are not USING it, then why have it?  Skull shield?  Yeah it's great... for the turbo buff, that's it.. it looks cool, but you don't dare risk it taking a quality hit when fighting, so swap it out for the good ole Domaru when you get in a scrap!  So the most desired item in the Controller raid gathers dust except when I buff up my JD to do something insane... Do you really need it?  I mean REALLY NEED it?  Probably not..   Lastly I'd like to say, Raids are a community effort.. we're often quick to help with a question or jump in and help a toon in trouble, but when someone wants to do something "Crazy" it is often hard to get people to jump in... They'd rather do another trade run on their alt or work on their Agrippa missions or something else, not load up their TT and go fight Mordana for 2 hours on the off chance something interesting will drop and maybe they will win it in a lotto and them MAYBE they can print it... We have to get these cob-webbed 150s out of the closet, get them polished up and ready to do raids.. I think if every player has a 150 of any class they should shine up the toys and have it ready, then when Skunky or Magoo or someone says, "Open Mordana Raid" or "Open Gate Raid" you are ready to go... spending 30 minutes while people try to figure out what they did with their ammo comps gets old..

    I would say at this point making them harder will not help matters... Yes there are a few, maybe a dozen, players that have a nice 6-box setup that can do a Gate or mordana raids with some level of success.. However, I would not punish the remainder of the player base, including those in small guilds and non-guilded, honestly trying to overcome the obstacles presented by raids and the complexity of them.  What I am finding is that most of the Small Guild/Non Guild players don't do raids because they don't know how to organize... They don't have the people skills or the understanding of the raids needed to put groups together and make it work.  Large guilds have MANY people in them that can do this because they have all done the raids several times, know the basic strategy associated with large endeavors and they have a readily accessible player pool to bring in.  I know Builders Inc has been doing more public raids, not because they need to, but because folks like myself have talked to the leaders and organizers within that guild and made them realize it would be a public service to do so.    People are attending them, learning from the experience and moving outward.. It will take time... When you start seeing items from the big raids Controller, GoBB, RD base falling into the hands of those who are multi-box only players, THEN I would consider increasing the difficulty.  For now you would just stop cold the process the player base has going to include more people in the endgame content..

It just seems to me that newbie sectors should be build with "Newbies" in mind.. not "Player with several toons that is starting a new alt"... I approached my time in the PS newbie area as if I knew nothing of the game.. I found these two issues that seem to be out of step with the idea that someone may actually start a PS and not know anything about the game..

Wireclub, you obviously didn't READ the post.. He was saying this was what they were thinking would be good they didn't fully implement it because of problems.. And a valid argument for difficulty levels on these raids... Your unending and complete inability to see past your own tired argument of "the game is dying and no one cares" and the supplementary argument of "The big guilds control everything" has exceeded its shelf life... Constantly re-hashing these statements in any post that is even remotely applicable has only made your argument LESS valid... I suggest you propose SOLUTIONS, not just repeat like a broken record.    No, your ideas may not be implemented, does this mean there is a conspiracy against you and small guild/non-guild players?  NO.. It means that given the circumstances not every idea is possible to implement.  What it means is if you Enjoy the game.. Play it.. if you want to help improve it, make suggestions and join the discussions with constructive critical analysis and accept that no magic wand is going to happen to fix all the problems. If you can't get on with that in mind, you may need to seek another form of entertainment, because this one is probably going to cause you a great deal of grief given the mindset you constantly present.   Frankly, Wireclub, I could give a damn....   Also learn how to use paragraphs, spell checkers, capitalization, punctuation and try not to murder the English language so horribly in your posts, it makes you read like a 10 year old kid... Many people won't get past your first sentence before moving on to the next post or comment.

Mission Prospecting II...   1. Proceed to Debris Field Gamma 2. Prospect at least 10 copper ore from any of the Debris Fields...   No copper bearing resource nodes near Debris Field Gamma... Copper nodes @ Debris Field Alpha....   Why send a newbie who may not have any experience with the game to a nav that does NOT contain the mission required items and force them to warp their incredibly slow ship around looking for them?

Second mission for a Progen Sentinal from the class leader is to kill manes until you recover a gene map...   And the starter weapon is?  An energy beam...     Suggestion:  Make the manes in the newbie sector vulnerable to Energy weapons OR Give the newbie PS another damage type.   I mean, really?  Who thought this was going to make sense in a newbie sector?  

Nearly every forum system I've ever used gets hit by this kind of thing from time to time.  There are spider bots that search out forums and use various exploits to post spam to them... Often turning off guest access to posting and requiring logging in by users helps but if the exploits used get around that somehow there will be a rash of spam posts.  Once the software for the forums is patched to clear up the exploit the posts will stop. 

Good to know! I had not activated one myself and was going by a vague description of how it worked... Thanks for the clarification!

It would be wonderful if some sort of functionality there was possible.  However if I recall from back in the beginning at westwood, the Browser in game was very limited and cannot support a lot of the scripting and such that the database we have on the website would require.  Though I am not certain what the EMU crew may have done to improve that over their time playing with it.   However I do think a basic item lookup and perhaps the components for the build would be huge.. I always thought the terminals in stations should do more.

Some may want to check to see if they know the person and give them a hard time... perhaps even give them a hard time even if they don't know them.  Best as a deterrent I think.

I believe you are right.. if something has been removed from the roid it should tell you who it was... at least that is what I understand.. but I've tested it a couple of times and it tells you nothing... or tells you " You must select a valid resource" in the case of a hulk..   Just tested it again, if resource is other than a hulk it does identify the last person who mined the resource node.

I'm just sayin they put in a command and its borked... I've only tried to use it twice, not saying anything other than it's borked.. so CHILL!

Thanks Magoo! I'm sure people will have questions and things.. I'm doing my best to offer some foundation but I don't have the time to organize and run these.. The big experienced guilds can be a huge resource for these new raiders trying to do this...

Also if you were not in TeamSpeak they may have been talking about it and you didn't hear it... BI and major guilds default to teamspeak to discuss things because it is faster... Another good reason to at least monitor what is being said by raid organizers on that system.

  I stated ONE non-trade and on trade item.. perhaps one COMP/Sample item as well...   The X and O bit is about practice.. once you have looted a few of these you will know when to confirm... often you put up "I see 4" and then another x will pop up.. people need to be familiar with the items up for lotto so a bit of time for them to look them up is warranted... after people get familiar they will move faster...   For the days... If we pick ONE day... then people will be logged on and ready for that announcment "PUBLIC GATE RAID ----- XUP" in the General channel.. Xs pop up... people fly ... it is a matter of helping the general public have a process to get involved...

/lastminer still does not work on Hulks... which IMHO need it most.

I agree, only having one day is exclusive to some people, however we need to START this somewhere... get the players on board in general and once it is moving add more days.. The nice thing about triggered and Mordana raids is they can be done any time... So yes.. more days as soon as we have a group of peeps that are up to speed.  Anyone can lead these as long as there are some basic ground rules and guidelines it isn't that hard.. They nearly organize themselves.

Suggested Lotto Protocol for Public raids:   Lotto is the term for auctioning off the loot for a raid.  This allows everyone to have a chance to get the items they want from the raid in a fair way and gives people a reason for doing it... It is suggested that every player that participates gets the option to bid on ONE trade capable item and ONE NON trade item.  This allows people to get a good chance to come away with something for their effort.   NON TRADE ITEMS get bid on first... During the raid and the last boss. TRADE CAPABLE ITEMS after that... This allows everyone to get the main goodies out of the way and go about their business if they are not interested in the little bits... COMPS/SAMPLES: I would consider this as a third category, allowing people who need them to bid exclusive of the other high value items.  Many guilds just distribute them among the raiders that needs them but in a public raid this may be more complex.    A very trusted and designated person should be doing this... It is a big place for problems.   The looter should announce what items are on the corpse first.. Something like "Smiter's Fury, 110%" etc.. so everyone knows what the item is and what it's % is.    If the item is reserved they should then /loot add <player> for the player that has reserved the item and have it removed immediately.    Next it is offered for public lotto, this means DURING the raid, often these corpses have a 20-30 minute life span.. they need to be dealt with quickly...   Looter: "Smiter's Fury 120%" Looter: ------------------- X UP   X up is  used to quickly set an order for the /random command... simply put an X into the channel and press enter.  If you are bidding for an ALT you should specify your alt like this:   Player 1: x Player 2: x for my TT <name>  (this is so the looter knows what name to loot-add) Player 3: x Player 4: x for my TE <name>   Once the Xs stop coming.. then the looter confirms the count...   Looter: I see 4 Player ?: 4 confirmed   Looter: /random 1 4 1 Looter has generated a number between 1 and 4: 4 (The last number is the winner) For public raids I would suggest using the x x 1 version so everyone can see it...   The looter should verify that the people bidding on the random were actual participants...   If no one bids on the item then it should be openly offered to ALTs first.. then in Broadcast and "Spaced"  You pull the item out of the hulk, clear target and warp leaving the item in space. Then the looter may target the item and offer it on General or Market channel for first-come first serve.   Trade capable items can be done after the raid... These are all of the items that were not reserved and can be traded... Always start with the most desired item first, this requires that the Looter is very familiar with the items and how high the demand is... For Example if there is a looted DG up for bids, that will be a hot item.. So you should consider lotto that first then move down to carapaces and then ammo comps and samples... Experience will dictate the order or suggestions from the raid leaders.    The ideal looter will not be bidding in a raid.. nor will they possess any non-trade items from that raid, because they will need to space them...   In the event the looter is bidding it is best that someone that is NOT bidding run the /random command in order to remove any question as to validity.. There is a special character on a random that is not supported by the client, you should look for that character to ensure the random is valid.   Bids where there are only two bidders should use the "High/Low" method... One of the bidders picks high or low then a /random 1 100 is run.. if above 50 it is higher.  A simple /random 1 2 can often result in disputes.   Another note on Looters.....  Cloaking classes are very useful for this to avoid damage.. However any class can do it if they have the support of a JE with group cloak.  Also on Gate raids there is A LOT of ammo comps.. they are huge XP.. so a lower level TT/PP/JS can benefit greatly from looting one of these raids.  PRO TIP:  trade 1/2 stacks of bile comps at a time to maximize the XP.  If the lower level looter has a group cloak they can warp to corpses and stay out of agro... Having the JE attached also provides someone for the looter to trade off the comps and trash.