bowlingballhead

Actually, I'm thinking about live, too. Just about everyone I knew that wasn't a progen had a rada, used plasma preferentially, and had a mono (but that's separate). Unless you were a fanatical kiter, it was hard to be sure you were staying out of attack range anyway. In the higher levels, once you got past level 5 equipment, things started getting murky. You have less equipment options in higher levels, but mainly it was psi resistance. In live, lower level devices stopped being reliable against higher level enemies. It's a mechanic the current version doesn't have. So that rada wasn't going to work anyway, and plasma became much less devastating. The thing is, people talk about higher level balance more, but up to level 5 equipment is at least half the game, maybe more. It's very important to balance it. And debuff devices aren't balanced. They're just designed kind of randomly, and some of these limitations do stretch into higher levels. You can debate how important it is, but I hope it's pretty clear how haphazard the current system is, and how biased towards the plasma damage people leaned to anyway.

Alright, but this has very little to do with balancing debuff devices. Your phenomenon is almost exclusively high level, as well.

It's an idea, but I think it might be a cure worse than the disease. I strongly dislike the existence of any mobs that are completely immune to any damage type, because it's not exactly easy to carry around and switch out weapons. But if plasma was the most common damage type for mobs to have moderate resistance to, that would skew things back to make people want to look into other damage types instead. So you're right about that. But you know, even a 25% plasma resistance would be a big alteration in basic difficulty of the mob, and still wouldn't overcome the advantage of plasma that the Rada brings. You've got a side effect there that you're making mobs tougher with no compensation for players, especially since they'd have to have a pretty heavy duty plasma resist to not make the answer 'You need a Rada EVEN MORE.' EDIT: An interesting alternative. Adjust the ranges in Salamanders and Gorgons to make them useful (2.5k would be plenty. I think it's perfectly fair to make kite-heavy Terrans flirt with the edge of common enemy attack range to get a debuff.) Then add some extra ammo types to a bunch of missile launchers - impact versions. Impact does make sense in missiles, it's just a missile that relies on ramming force instead of a warhead. Right now, impact is pretty much restricted entirely to projectile launchers. Very minor change to overall game balance, adds some variety, requires fairly minimal database alterations, and suddenly the Rada is great, but plasma is no longer King Damage Type.

First, I don't think this is going to be changed soon. I like to bring it up occasionally so that it won't be forgotten, however. Debuff devices are currently very poorly balanced, and it's almost entirely because of the existence of the Rada. Plasma is already a desireable damage type, because mobs have more shields than hull and bio mobs currently count as all shields instead of all hull. It's also a very common damage type available to both Terrans and Jenquai in a variety of weapons. With the Rada, plasma becomes king. It's easy to get, hardly worse than a Chimera in debuff, has a longer range and is much more energy efficient. This really does have a distorting effect on the game. Oguns are not the fabulous dps machines people think, but they are once you get a Rada. The 'plasma is uber' impression is so great that Progen tend to ignore their Basilisk because they know plasma is better for everyone else. I'm not saying to get rid of Radas. I'm saying the system is cockeyed in favor of plasma damage. Without the Rada, in the low to mid (say, up to 5 or 6 level equipment) range Terrans can easily debuff impact, Progen can easily debuff chemical, and Jenquai can easily debuff Plasma. Plasma is less available for Jennies than energy, but it's readily available. Progen get a moderate amount of chemical damage. Terrans don't get impact damage at all that I'm aware of. JSs get energy debuff, which is nice, and TSs get explosive debuff, which is really nice, except the range is almost 0 on a salamander and that's kind of a dealbreaker for a missile user. And then you have the Rada - decent range, cheap to use, debuffs one of the most common damage types in the game. And once you get past L5 the secondary effects are a little screwy, too. My point is, this just isn't well designed. It leans heavily in favor of plasma damage. The idea that nobody can easily debuff their own favorite damage type I can get, but plasma was barely less effective to Terrans and Jenquai already. So you've kind of thrown the concept out the window there. Then you go into higher levels, and Chimeras and Basilisks are still awesome, and the Terrans better just hope they can get a Taniwha. I'm not sure how to fix it. It needs to be redesigned from the ground up, almost, or the Rada flat out removed (which STILL penalizes Terrans and will make me cry). A major game balance adjustment like this is highly unlikely in the near future, and I know it. But I'd like people to be aware that there really is an issue here.

Only one debuff can be operative at a time, even if they're different debuffs? That's news to me. So does a coma cancel out a rada? It's not a deflect debuff, but it's still a debuff.

Oh web development lead: Are Slayerman and Arsenal still updating from the database regularly?

Now I will give the more complicated version of the same answer! Two buffs of the same type do not stack. The trick is knowing whether two buffs are 'the same type'. Just because they seem to do the same thing doesn't mean they're the same type. Equipped and activated versions are not the same type. So the RR and RR+ stack, but the RR and Kraken do not. Riia, the only buff that looked like the normal equipped buff but counted as a different one that I knew of in live was the Bogeril Divinin' Rods. They stacked on top of a miner or a sculptor. I'm going to take it from your comment that you knew this, and it won't be practical to impliment such a minor detail for a long time.

Thank you, Kyp, for answering me about missile spam. Now another thing that I've been wonderin' about. Mobs can do any damage type now, but 90% of them use explosive beams. Projectile using mobs are rare, missiles almost nonexistent. I investigated this ages ago. It turned out to be a very large problem, made more difficult because it required work from multiple dev teams, and they didn't all know they'd have to play a part. Ayu was going to look into it... just before he retired. Basically, mobs can do other damage types and use any weapon that's assigned to them. But player weapon dps isn't on the same scale as the dps mobs should do. So, I was told, if the database is expanded with a large variety of mob-only weapons scaled to every mob level, they can then be given to the mobs and mobs will have different attack types and animations and damage types. So! Um... is this being looked into? Since it didn't seem to be even known about when I investigated last, is this known about? Is it totally known about but such a huge project it won't be soon? What's the score, my dev homies? I desire to have convincing mob ogun replicas fired into my face!

Alrighty! That's the answer I wanted. I do hope you do, but I know it can't be a high priority. I just remember so fondly firing huge clouds of missiles. It might be darn near impossible with projectile launchers, though.

Did Kyp ever find an answer for this? I'd really like to know. Graphically, missile spam made the game much more exciting, and even if it can't be restored soon, it'd be nice to know what kind of circumstances it'd take for it to be turned back on.

Von and his people tested it. I'm in the guild, I listened to their discussions. It ain't too hard, Webby. One group thinking about tactics can get to the big boss? That's not too hard. Three groups needed to take the big boss? Sounds about right, since we've got so many less people than in Live. It's up to you, you know, but this sounds exactly like the right level of difficulty to me. Before the change, I was watching people solo and duo the fishbowl without any difficulty whatsoever. That's absurd to the point of being utterly broken. You go right ahead with what you're doing, Webby. I, safely esconced below level 100, will sneer at my superiors who are used to being unstoppable.

Not necessarily. After removing missile spam they went back in and added a system to reduce visible damage ticks, presumably to reduce processor lag. I mean, it could still be a lag issue, in which case they're not gonna reinstate it. Or it might not be because of the new server. Or it might not be because of code implimented since then. Or... any of a thousand things. That's why I'm asking! I want to know what to expect, with a mild sideline of making sure it's not swept under the rug and forgotten.

Absolutely. I remember when they changed it - but we're on a new server. Things are different. Or they may not be different at all. I want to find out if it's practical to reinstate it, or if it will ever be practical, or what it might take for it to become practical!

Alright. You're being reasonable here. Let me explain ways that not auto-registering alters game balance. The most obvious is, of course, trade runs. I do personally think that a death or wormhole should wipe out xp profit, but in addition to the auto-registering. The core of the problem is that distance is a game mechanic in E&B. Some things are close, and some things are far away. You are expected to take time to get to them. Anything that short-circuits that is altering the balance, and requires adjusting. You've just given people a remarkably easy way to get to pick a space station and be able to return to it almost instantly. If you can go mining and hunting and what have you in Antares knowing that all you have to do is die to return to Somerled, that presents a problem. Debt and equipment degradation are meant to make this unattractive, but they're not making it unattractive enough. You have subverted the entire concept of putting distance and multiple zones between one place and another. You have made wormhole much less important (because you don't need it to get back, do you?) You have made upgraded engines less important. You have required restrictions on deaths and wormholes in trade runs to become draconianly harsh (I think they should be, but you're forcing that) because you've made travel from one trade run end to the other nearly instantaneous, especially if you have any self-damaging power like a Warrior's Heart. Putting in auto-registration greatly erodes the player's ability to control this loophole in getting from one place to another. He can't access his vault, vendors, or terminals without changing where he's registered. Just knowing that he's likely to end up registering somewhere by entering a station erodes this control further. To abuse the power large scale would require planning, and it becomes a subtle encouragement to just give up and accept the fact that he has to actually travel to get from place to place. In a way, all of this is moot. The only documentation the devs have found of live says that auto-registration was the rule. They've been very gung-ho about clinging to precedents like that. You may remember something else, but they won't trust it if they've got screenshots and manual pages that say you register when you dock. I've seen that on other issues. I hope that I have impressed upon you that this is a game balance issue, though, and trade runs are only the overt and obvious example.

Like a lot of complaints when bugs are fixed, this debate baffles me. I don't use Self Destruct, and people are saying it's not working right - okay, fine. You may be right there. That doesn't really affect auto-register. I played E&B off and on from sunrise to sunset, and I don't remember a time when docking at a base didn't autoregister you. I couldn't figure out why it didn't from day one here on the emu, because it allows some pretty egregious exploits. Not only allows them, but people use those exploits, deliberately and regularly. You may be losing something you relied on, but you weren't supposed to have it in the first place. This change A) restores the original game's standard mechanic and the one in the documentation, and improves game balance a little. If Self Destruct is screwed up and this makes it even more punitively screwed up, you have my sympathy, but the solution isn't to mess up another aspect of game balance to compensate.