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Lars

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Posts posted by Lars

  1. 1. & 2. respawn timer is adjustable via sector editor

    3. No. You have to clear the whole field before the first roid respawns.

    4. No - Because people want to be able to continually mine. The hybrid system we have now means (or should mean!) that everyone is happy. If you like the field clear XP bonus, you clear the field quickly or with help. If you want to sit in the same field mining, you can do that too. If the sizes were reduced you'd hurt the second group of players, who like to mine the same field, as they'd have to wait a long time before the roids started spawning again.

    (Merlin only (and other devs)) You can use /stats on the field centre to bring up the respawn timings and other info.

    The exact way it works is:

    Bonus becomes valid as soon as all roids are spawned (or re-spawned).

    Bonus becomes invalid as soon as an asteroid respawns, and will not become valid again until all asteroids are respawned.

    HTH,

    TB

    Hello,

    Ok, I will not lower the roid count, but even fields with 75 Asteroids in them should be able to be cleared in 30 minutes. If it is taking you longer then that then you are mining above your lvl anyway.

    Tienbau, on a different note, I think i found a bug with the Dev Gwormhole command. by mistake I wormholed someone and by mistake sent them to sector 3525 which doesn't exist. Normally you would get sector 0, but in this case it sent them there and took a GM to get the player to be able to log back into the game. This is the first time I have seen a problem with the gwormhole command. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  2. Hello,

    Ok once again here is what is & is not going to happen to the ore fields:

    Is "Not" going to happen:

    1. Nerf solo mining

    2. Be exactlly like it was in live

    3. Be a jumbled mess where every ore for each lvl will be in a field

    What "Is" going to be done to the fields:

    1. Only use "Live" as a guide line

    2. Make about 60% of the fields for solo miners and 40% of the fields for groups.

    3. Make atleast 2x the amount of fields that were in live

    4. Make mining fun!!!

    Everyone has to remember that we are still a long way from going "Live" and there is alot of things that has to be done yet. It would be nice iwe could wave our magic wand and make everything happen over night, but in the real world it is going to take a lot of trial & error to gets things running smoothly. I like the idea of each roid having it's own timer and you can rest asure that I wll make what ever changes that needs to be made to make the solo miners happy as I am also basiclly a solo miner my self. I do group once in awhile, but for the most part I and problie most miners do solo miner 85% of the time.

    As a closeing thought, "Everyone" has the right to his or her ideas and I do not want anyone coming down on anyone for expressing their ideas. So from now on when it comes to mining posts, flaming will now be allowed as I want to keep my little peice of the pie a friendly place. Sure some ideas my not fly with others and believe me this is an area I know well! lol So everyone be happy and I do promise to do my best to make both solo & group miners happy. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

    • Upvote 3
  3. Hello,

    Guys-guys-guys! Before everyone gets all freaked out and think solo mining is being nerfed, think again! I have made it so that atleast 75% of the ore fields I have done can be solo'ed and if Tienbau has changed it which he has and after he answers my questions I will make sure that players can still solo the fields. It is true that about 80% of the fields do have guardians in them, but I made sure that the guardians could be dealt with by a solo miner that would be mining the ore at that field. Also, almost all the gaurdians have a 30 min respawn timer on them so you go in, kill the guard, then you have 30 minutes to clear the field.

    Starfox my old friend, there are fields out there in the sectors I have done that are very nice and have no guardians! They are out of the way and if you do alittle exploring you will find them. I think almost all the sectors I have done do have these kinds of fields. Fox, next time you log on and see me in the game, put down the chicken you are eating and give me a pm and I willl show you 1 or 2 of them.

    Now everyone has to remember that there is still parts of the ore fields that are not in yet like the pop rocks. I am waiting for this to be fixed and have some nice plans for them. If you have followed my posts on them then you already know some of my ideas on the pop rocks. You also have to remeber that there are still "ALOT" of sectors I have not gotten to yet and will hopefully soon. Right now I am working on the Sol system and the sectors Earth, ABB, ABG & Akerons gate are done and on the play server. The sectors Jupiter, Mars & IO are also done, but will be in the next push. For those of you that might have missed my other posts, here is a recap of my guidelines on the ore fields I have done:

    1. There are 5 types of ores in the game, Asteroids, Glowing Asteroids, Crystals, Hydrocarbons & Gas Clouds. All the ores in the groups Asteroids, Crystals & Hydrocarbons have been split into 2 sub groups. You will find that each sector only has 1 group type in it so that miners can mine longer without have to run to a station every 20 min's to unload.

    2. Each field has only "1" ore type in it. Example, you come accross a field that has Asteriods, Crystals & Hydrocarbons in the field. You will know that instead of one field it is really 3 fields over lapping each other. I did this so to make it easier for miners to clear a field and get the bonus.

    3. I think the phrase "Making it just like Live" needs to be replaced with "Useing Live as a guide line"! Everyone here knows that it would be next to impossible to try to make the Emu exactlly like live so I say, Way even try! When it comes to the ore fields my main goal is to make sure that players can find all the ores in the game, but not find them all in one or 2 sectors. Who really cares if in Live you had gold in Freya, Cooper & Mars? As long as the ore is out there and you can find it, it dosn't really matter if all the fields are just the way they were in live or not. With that said I am making sure the main fields players remember are there like the gas fields in Glenn. Everyone who ever pulled a rock in Live knows about the gas fields in Glenn right? I fixed them as close as I could to the way they were in Live so now instead of clearing the whole Gas field in 15 mins (which I could do with my scout), to now it takes a bit of work and a group effort to clear all those Gas Clouds.

    4. When I am done you will only be able to find lvl 1 type ores in the starter sectors and there parent sectors. Example: in IO you will find Sub group 1 and in Jupiter you will find sub group 2. I am useing the way it is with the lvl 1 comps in that you can only find them at Earth, Mars & Jupiter. So lets say you need Copper, Iron, Lead or Zinc ores which are lvl 1 Asteroids, sub group 1, you know that you will find them in the start sectors of the miner. If you need Crude Nickel, Magnetite Ore or Mordanite which are in sub group 2 you will find them in your parent sectors. I will post a new Orelist.txt later as I did make a change with one of the ores in that I move lvl 1 Iron from sub group 2 to 1.

    5. Problie my main goal and the reason I even wanted to do the ore fields was to make it so if you hated to prospect, you would kind of like it. If you kind of like it you would like it, if you liked it you would really like it & if you really liked it you would love it! I have some ideas for the ore fields that will turn mining from being something you have to do, to something that you look forward to do! I want it so that the way all the combat players out there look at combat, that all the miners out there can look at mining the same way. Here are some of my ideas whcih may or may not be done:

    a) Ore fields will be effected by grav shifts and will move around the sector from time to time.

    :P Pop rocks will not always spawn mobs that attack you, but some of them will spawn mobs that want to be your friend and guard you while you are mining! (more on this later)

    c) Making most all of the ore useful instead of just mostly vender trash as it is now.

    d) Making it rewarding to explore a sector to find nice ore fields!

    e) Getting Hulks into the fields and making hulk grave yards so to speak.

    Well I susposed I have borred you guys enough for now! lol But before freaking out about something remember that I have always tryed to be a player first and a Dev 2nd (which gets me in trouble some times) and I will always try to make Prospecting as ballanced as possible, but guys, I have just really just started and it will take time to get all the fields done, but as you have noticed with the sectors I have already done mining as gotten not only more fun, but something that is not a grind. I am always open to ideas the players have and if any of you get stuck in the game in finding an ore field and you see me in the game just give me a yell and I will be more them happy to point you in the right direction and speaking of pointing someone in the right direction, my wife is pointing to the car as we need to go buy fish food so my Pharnia don't eat each other! lol TTYl :-)

    Merlin

    • Upvote 1
  4. thanks Mr Turnip, it's a good tip for people who don't like to watch the intro every time. The only drawback is that you'll have to repeat the process each time there's a client patch, and you'll have to sit through an extensive patching process for both those videos. I'm not sure if we can exclude those movies from the patch process, it'd certainly help.

    I still like it even though I've seen it god knows how many times, but to be honest I mostly skip it while I'm debugging things.

    Hello,

    I also like the opening video and find myself watching it about twice aweek, but an idea came to me (oh God, Merlin has another stupid idea). Have you seen the funny video of Hitler talking about EnB & Sunset? Wouldn't it be a blast to throw that in just once on a patch? Problie a bad idea (I have lots of them), but if you haven't seen it yet you should watch it! TTYL :-)

    Merlin

    • Upvote 3
  5. Hello,

    1. Ok, so is the timer still 30 min?

    2. Can the timer be changed it the sector editor now?

    3. If a player or group is unable to clear a field before roid #1 respawns do they still get the clear bonus?

    4. If #3 is no, should I go in and make the fields smaller?

    inquiring minds want to know! lol TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  6. Hello,

    I could not resist jumping in on this subject! First off yes I run 2 computers and almost always play 2 toons and that is my choice. If someone wants to play just 1 toon that is there choice and if someone wants to play 50 toons, well once again that is their choice. I have never understood why it is the players that only play one toon almost alway look down on the players that like to play 2 or more toons! People, it is all about freedom of choice here and we should never take away a players choice in how many toons they play. Also, if for some unknown reason players are forsed to play one toon or you make the mobs treat multi-toon players different in any way you will see EnB become a ghost town real quick. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

    • Upvote 1
  7. Hello,

    Ok, from someone who has many accounts I would not like to see this happen. If we start letting players move toons around it will become a real mess! It is fairly easy to just start new toons and can use your older toons to help get them lvl'd up. Anyway, just my 2 cents and oppion. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

    • Upvote 1
  8. Since explore xp is still the hardest of the 3 to level up, I was just trying to think of some random things to help boost it. What about leaving some randomly dropped easter eggs along the nav paths. As you are flying by, if you are paying attention, it will look like something that was looted from a corpse and left in space. Once you pick it up, you get a one step mission to take the item to some random NPC somewhere in the galaxy and depending on how far away it is from where you found the item, you get a scaled amount of explore xp (maybe some credits along with it, or some type of equipment similar to the level of the item you found in space).

    Hello,

    Well personlly for me Explore is the easyest one to get with Trade (depending on your race) being the hardest, or taking the most time to get. TTYL

    Merlin

  9. Hello,

    I may have been a bit on the harsh side and I was not pointing to anyone and in fact I have found myself being a bit too hard on some of my fellow Dev's. I also forget what a great job that alot of people are doing so alot of my comments were directed towards me. I will not try to make excuses except that I am human and we must all remember that the Programmers, Dev's & Gm's are also humans and will make human mistakes from time to time. I guess what I am trying to say in a nut shell is that I and everyone else should be glad EnB is back and yes I know as well as 99% of the team knows this, that most of you are also thankful EnB is back, but sometimes we forget the big job it is to put this game back and forget that nothing in life is perfit. Keep that in mind the next time a 53 Ten-gu eats your ship for dinner or your items take alittle beating! If it wasn't for people like Tienbau, David, Riia, Blacklung, Kyp, Kenu, Freak, Webby, Cdel, Suricata, Slayerman, Satan, Byakhee, Evermore, Michael, ArmyMage, Woodstock, Golf, Searing, Mienja, Zeppelin and all the rest that I am forgetting names (sorry), we would all be doing something else and in my case I would have a "Honey-do list" a mile long! lol

    So sit back, go out and do Combat, Prospect, Trade runs or what ever makes you happy with a smile on your face and remember that non of this would be possible without the Emu team and the great players like yourself! TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  10. Hello,

    Ok, go into the EA\Earth& beyond dir on your computer and you will find a program called something like: EnBconfig.exe Run it. If after doing that it still doesn't work make sure you have updated your netframe on windows thru the Windows updater. Try those and see if that helps you

    Merlin

  11. Hello everyone,

    Well it has been awhile since anyone wrote about Team Speak so here I am. It would be nice if some of you would pop in and say hi! After all we are in the 21st centry and there is now something called "Voice Chat" lol. Also, alot of the Programmers/Dev's/GM's are on TS and if you have questions we would love to hear them. You will find me there most of time in the room called "The Shadows". Drop in and we can chat. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  12. Hello,

    Well I read your post and I guess it is a matter of opion on some of the stuff you listed. If it wasn't so late I would give you a different shopping list, but here are a couple of things that are noticable:

    Engines: Lvl 8 you as a progen you should go with the one that the Bunyon in Glenn drops. It has an explosive buff on it.

    Weapons: I would start useing Longbows at lvl 6 instead of Rifles. Not only is the ammo 1 lvl higher, but the stacks are bigger and last longer.

    Shields: at lvl 8 I normally use the barrier of slime.

    Now on my PW who is lvl 150 my weapons are a Reaver, fury of the master, BB, Archo's, fury of the ten-gu and a bile cannon I think. I also use the Heart of the Dark one for my reactors. I have mostly the same setup on my 150 PP minus the Arho I think. Man it is too late, can't think. Will post more later! TTYL :-)

    Merlin

    • Upvote 1
  13. Hello,

    Now as to the ore fields if you want to make the "Exactlly" like they were in Live then each roid/gas has to have it's own timer. This is why it was imposible to clear the gas field in Glenn in Live. Tienbau, before making any changes to the ore fields I would like to have a sit down with you about them. I would really like it to be in voice chat if possible as believe it or not typing is not my favorite thing to do. Also and I am not trying to step on any toes here, but if I am incharge of the ore fields then I do need to be incharge of them and it should be Me, Tienbau & or David that figure them out. I have already seen someone do some changes to the ore fields and they did not talk to me first. All I ask is that I get the same respect when it comes to the ore fields as I have been asked to give the other dev's. I am now writting a report of when I do the ore fields in a sector and even though it now takes me 4 times longer to do a sector I understand the reason for doing so. So all I ask is that before any changes are made that we can talk about them first. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  14. Hello,

    I will do my best to cover the points you have made and I do like to get feed back like this as it will only make my job easier if I know what the players are thinking.

    Mainly to Merlin, but here are some general thoughts/observations I have on the tremendous work you've been doing on the fields! Hopefully none of it comes off as criticism as it's not intended to be in any way, shape or form. I wanted to wait until I had a chance to really mine a lot and get a feel for what I remember on Live and what's been changed before posting anything. I love bulleted lists, so that's what you get!

    • I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the Bonus XP for clearing a field. In one hand, I like it because it gives you a reason to mine the entire field rather than just cherry picking. On the other hand, I kind of dislike it because it really makes it difficult to continually mine. You clear a field and then you have to move on to another one. In some places this is a bit of a hindrance as you have to wait for the fields to respawn and you're either sitting around waiting or you need to move to a different system. I think I would be more into it if...
      • The respawn time was faster

      Merlin: I will talk to the other devs/programmers about this as this as of the moment is hard coated into the server at 30 min

      • There were more like-level fields (e.g. rather than having 2 fields in one system that are lvl8/9 - have 3-4), this way at least by the time you're done mining all of them, the first will have respawned.
      Merlin: Ok, at the moment when I set a field to say lvl 7 I have to put 2 lvl's below & 2 lvl's above in the field or you will get that fun lvl 2 helium! This will problie change in the weeks to come.
      • The fields were far larger - however, if the fields are really large, I'd rather see a more diverse set of prospect stuff (e.g. mix in hydro, glowing, rocks and gas like it was in Live). More on this below.

      Merlin: I did have some fields that were around 250, but, it would mess up the clear bouns in that players were getting neg points, so to be safe the highest roid count can not be over 100

      • In other words, I would gladly trade that Bonus XP for very large fields or continually respawning fields like those that we in live.

    Merlin: I see no problem in haveing both and will see about makeing it happen, but can not promise anything until after I talk to the others first.

    • In line with that, I also worry about what mining will be like if the player base gets much larger. If you've got a lot of people mining and the current respawn time, mining it going to become less interesting and more of a battle. This may be your intention though, I don't know. But I myself like to mine because it's something I find it oddly relaxing.
    Merlin: I also find mining relaxing and that is why I have lobbied to keep the mobs in ore fields down to a min or none at all.
    • It also makes it a little difficult to mine with other people. Especially on the smaller fields. You have a lot of huge gas areas that are great for mining parties, but I've at least not seen anything comparable with non-gas items. When I see someone in a field or come into a field I'm already mining, I instantly feel a sense of dread that I've now got to compete for the stuff that I want to mine.

    Merlin: There are many large ore fields that you problie have not found yet. All I will say is that if you see big open areas it might be worth while to free warp

    and take a look around.

    • I'd like to see lvl8/9 fields have a little less lvl7s (or any lvl combination for that matter). In fact, it'd be nice if you got rid of them completely from those fields. Mainly because it just adds more stuff you need to store in your cargo.. especially when you get like 1 lvl7 rock the entire time. Sure, include some lvl7 stuff in the lvl8s but when the lvl7s are there, you're also getting lvl6 stuff, so that's 4 lvls of rocks you have to carry around, sort and deal with if you just want to go out and mine to your hearts content.
    Merlin: Can't be done at the moment.
    • I also feel like I would prefer seeing mixed field types over the 1 in a specific field - like it was in live. There are a few places that you do this nicely - like in Arg Prime near the planet (I forget it's exact nav point off hand) - but it's got pretty much everything there.

    Merlin: Ok, the way I am doing it right now is that I am only placing 1 ore type per field. If you see a mix that meens there is more then one field there.

    • I love that you're splitting things of the same level across systems. It makes it much easier to mine as you don't have to worry as much about your cargo filling up with stacks of 2 or 3 mined things and stacks of 100+
    Merlin: Don't you just hated it when you had to run to the damm station every 20 min's to unlaod?
    • Hulks would be awesome and it does add a bit of diversity/realism to mining. From what I remember on Live, 99% of the time it was worthless junk loot. When you get around to implementing them... if you could make it more interesting, that'd be awesome.

    Merlin: They are coming

    • I'm seeing a lot of stuff that is say lvl8 only have lvl7 things in it. This makes me a bit sad :)
    Merlin: David & Tienbau have tryed to get this problem fixed. In live if you saw a lvl 7 rock 100% of the time it had a lvl 7 ore in it and about 25% of the time it had 1
    lvl above and 50% of the time it had 1 lvl below.
    • I haven't been back to Primus in awhile and it's not listed in your recent ore location list, however, I did notice that you posted something some time ago about that area being updated. The last time I was there, the fields were mostly Hydrogen.

    Merlin: Will be getting there but not yet. I want to finish Sol system first then will move onto the other systems.

    • There is a field in Freya between the hidden asteroids that used to be mining spot (towards the Rag gate) and Nif nav 2... it's been awhile since I've been there - I think it's mostly lvl6/7 Crystal and Glowing with a few lvl8s mixed in. The glowing had a lot of hydrogen in them. The crystals were all ok.
    Merlin: If it is the one I am thinking about it is lvl 7-9 now
    • Speaking of Freya... I feel like the crystal field near along the Nif navs should be upgraded to 8/9 mostly if you're going to have lvl46 Sults coming after you from obscene distances. I'm not sure what it is about Naggys, but they all seem to have a ridiculously high scan range. This may have been updated with the June Content Update though, I have not been back to look. Or leave it the same and keep the Naggys at a safer distance and throw in some level appropriate mobs that come after you (like the bio hunters, in other fields)

    Merlin: I know that spot well and is a favorite hunting spot for me. I will check out Freya next time I am in the sector editer and might move the fields a bit.

    So that's it, I think. Again, hopefully none of this comes off as criticism. I love what you're doing and I love that I am able to mine again!

    Ok I hope that helps clear up somethings. Redoing the ore fields has been slow going and now I have to report just what I am doing to the leads of the sectors. This is ok, but it does slow things down a bit. Where I could do 3 to 5 sectors in a day now I am lucky to get 1 done. I am hopeing by the end of summer to be finished with all the sectors and then another month or 2 to fine tune them. Now to your point as to players fighting over the fields, well lets just say there are alot more fields then you think and the miners that take the time to really look will be in for some nice surprises! TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  15. Hello,

    Ok, here is my take on leveling and as you can see I know a thing or 2 about it. If someone wants to spend there game time doing non-stop trade runs way not let them. I for one never used this way of leveling as to me it is a waste of time as you are not only losing points in the long run, but for me I get borred to death doing TR's. Now every player is different and some like to do Combat and others like to mine while still others like to do Trade runs. The thing that make EnB so special is that players can choose what they want to do and how they level their toons. We as Dev's can not take that away from them and should allow them to level how ever they want to. Now if someone wants to level up to 150 in a week who cares? It will not effect how I play so why should I spend my time as a Dev trying to figure out how to make it harder on the players to level their toons. Some players can spend 12 hours a day playing (me) and some can barely do 12 hours a month. Just because some players can spend more time online shouldn't meen we punish the players that have little time to spend playing the game.

    Now to the point, I purpose either setting the spill over to 100% or 0%. Either way would solve the problem in that either players that wanted to level their toon by doing TR's could, or would teach them that they would need to level each area with things that effect that area which in my view has always been the way to go anyway. As you see by my sig I have 8 level 150 toons and none of them got there by doing nothing but TR's. I have thought about trying that, but since I really hate TR's I decided not to and I really don't think you will find many players that do it either and if there are, who cares anyway. If that is how they choose to spend their time playing let them!

    TTYL :-)

    Merlin

    • Upvote 3
  16. Hello,

    Ok, now that the push has happened I will now post the walkthrough for the new PS Call Forward mission that I and others tested for the Progan team. I personally did the missoin 3 times and it works perfectlly! They did a good job on it and since alot of the mission requires players getting ores and that is my area I thought it only fair that I write a walkthrough for it. If you have the other text for this mission from back in live it will not help you very much with this mission and you should really D/L this updated walkthrough. Good luck! TTYL :-)

    CF Walkthrough v1.2.rtf

    Merlin

    CF Walkthrough v1.2.rtf

    • Upvote 1
  17. Hello,

    I would just like to wish everyone a very happy 4th of July! Now to our England friends over the pond I would just like to say better luck next time! lol Just a little american hummor! I hope you all have a happy & "Safe" weekend and please do not drink & drive! Due to a drunk driver it is costing me 10 to $15,000, a Jeep & 500 more grey hairs! Believe me it is not worth it everyone! Take a cab! The $10 you spend now will save you thousands later! TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  18. this seems a bit off topic, but the manufacturing % rates do seem a bit off. I remember in live where things the same level as your build level ranged from about 175-200%. at least half the time the item you built was 200%. Items like the ID matrix and duct tape helped raise this chance to around 75%.

    Right now it seems like none of my items are coming out at 200% if they are at my build level.

    Hello,

    Besides missing devices that helped builders you also have to remember that in Live Faction also played a part. If you had good faction at the station you were building at you would also get a high %. Other factors were also being grouped, but different players remember this differently. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

  19. Wait a minute, a documented walkthrough for a progen mission available to players? Somebody get over to the UK and check on Byakhee, probably just had a heart attack.

    Hello,

    Ya we did that and it was too late! We found him hanging from the celine fan! lol All kidding aside, I was checking in game last night and clicked on the help command and then went to "Get Help" and this nice help menu came up. No matter which link you click on it takes you to the ticket system which tells me they have a way to redirect you to where ever they want you to go, sooooooooooooo, my little mind has been working over time and I am thinking (will talk to David of course) of asking if I can put together a small team of people and have that team right walkthroughs for all the areas of the game. Then have a place on the forms that when a player clicked on the Get Help it would direct them to those help files so that instead of players haveing to ask the GM's and other players basic question they would be able to get the help they needed themselves.

    Now before I get 50 players sending me messages saying you want to help I am just telling you guys what is on my mind and I will need to talk to the other Dev's about this first. When or if I am going to do this I will then post a message about helpers. This help system would be more then just missions and could be anything from how to lvl a toon to combat tactics and even how to not be a rude player! Of course I know know one here is ever rude, but you know what I meen. TTYL :-)

    Merlin

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