Yargnit

As someone who has sat at the VT terminal for periods of 8 hours straight before (In the last 3 months), I actually have never seen anything that made me think it was being 100% macroed. Keep in mind when you dock, your character doesn't always land in the same spot. This alone means its would take a significantly more sophisticated macro to be able to AFK the terminals. Now could someone be macroing certain parts of job runs, yes. But the whole thing, unlikely. What's far more likely is that they are simply multitasking while jobbing. Either surfing the web, or running multiple accounts. If you get good at jobs, it can look an awful lot like macroing to others because they are so repetitive. If you *really* think someone has the VT terminal 100% macroed, what I would suggest doing is sitting in the docking bay and watching them cone into the station. Any 100% macros would have to be making use of the /starbase reset command to warp their character to a pre-defined location for the macro to work from. No (obvious upon watching someone for any length of time, no afk macroing. It's that simple really) Now the warping in space, or the clicking of the jobs, those parts are much easier. But w/o having the entire run macroed, they really can't leave the computer and still be efficient because the runs are so quick. (You'd only get about 2 minutes of afk time in a row) And as macros if you're sitting at the PC aren't even against the rules, I don't see an issue besides the general need to re-work terminals so people aren't directly competing with each other.

Well since UI changes are completely optional wouldn't it be easy enough to upload any UI updates as a separate stand alone executable to a variety of unaffiliated file sharing websites and simply provide information on now to download it for people that want to?

Could shields be changes to rwgen while taking damaged/cloaked... Yes. But that would be a massive game mechanics change that would involve much more than the already enormous task of re-doing practically every item in the game you suggest. You'd have to rebalance not only every shield, but every device/skill affecting shields, every mob in the game, probably every weapon/environental affect that does damage... The list goes on. Now would giving Jenquai shields the unique ability to regenerate during combat be a cool concept, yes. It's just really not feasable at this point. The same I true for many of your overhauls, the work involved would set the entire project back months if not more, for a very debatable benefit in moat areas. Every game has 90%+ items that are useless endgame and only serve the purpose of vein easier to aquire until you can get the better stuff. That's just the way it has always been.

The problem is that your idea don't address the fact that only certain qualities of each item generally have a high value, and therefore doesn't really solve the problem you are finding. For example, recharge on a shield is basically useless in combat because shields don't recharge while taking damage or cloaked. That's why cap wins out. Also resists cap at 50, so a high resist low cap shield isn't actually an advantage because in groups fighting hard content your resists are already maxed out w/o needing resists from a shield. (TE w/max Rally and equipment boosting rally skill alone caps all resists) I've been in groups where every resist was near 100 or higher. Now if this resist shield increased the resist cap, it would become very viable to trade out for a max capacity shield in groups where you are sitting well over cap in everything. With reactors, recharge on the other hand is way higher of a priority overall because in long fights where you'll burn through 10x your reactors cap in energy over the course of the fight either way, it's sustainability that is king. Engines, low signature and buffs are top priority, but its mostly signature that renders 95% of engines useless. Flying around with a 7k+ Sig just is completely impractical based off mob aggro ranges as they are currently Everyone who's not n exploration class or has the scan skill would be aggroing mobs they couldn't even see yet. And unless you're in a full group keeping an entire nav clear, you have to be able to see mobs before they engage you as a practical matter of planning combat. The damage types, the issue is Plasma gets bonus damage vs shields, (including bio mobs which are 100% shields) That means whenever you have a plasma debugger available, Plasma is always the best choice because even mobs w/hulls are usually more shield than hull, and game mechanics don't really make it feasable to change ammo mob to mob. (You'd need a way to hotkey it so one button swapped all your guns at the same time, and even then that doesn't help beam users, who are the ones carrying the best Plasma debuffers anyways) Chem is supposed to be the hull equivalent of Plasma, but there are so few mobs with greater hull than shields that it's basically relegated to use by classes doling w/o access to a Plasma debuff. In reality, using Plasma ammo is basically like getting an extra 20-25% debuff free on most mobs. Nice theories you have, unfortunately they'd just require more than item tweaks (a complete re-design of combat mechanics in several cases) to ever become practical

Not sure exactly where bugs from this update are supposed to go, but I guess this topic works. Whatever got tweaked with the "error another skill is active" code is causing issues in multiple areas. I've seen reports so far of the TS's null field not casting while afterburn is on, TS hull patch not wqorking with afterburn on, grav link not working with shield inversion on, recharge shields not working with shield inversion on, and I'm sure the list goes on. basically the whole "another skill active" thing just needs to be rolled back.

Are they the sama nano-bots sold at Fenris Prime Observatory in Fenris?

While I certainly wouldn't be opposed to Scout's getting a little loving in the DPS department, they hold up just fine in combat with ore field guardians and so forth. (At least at max level, leveling up my CL was so far behind my EL/TL I never tried) They may not have a JE's cloak, or a PS's shield/firepower, but they do have a few thingsa going for them. Missiles; Over 7.5k range at the end easy, if u you just kite, nothing will hit you. Salamander debuff; i know plasma is all the rage, but using a Salamander for explosive debuff will net you much better damage, even vs mobs that are normally plasma weak. [b]Hull Patch![/b]; We're actually the most survivable explorer (outside of raid situations that deal huge bursts of damage extremely quickly) despite people tending to rate us Even/Lower than JE's. None of the mobs we should reasonably expect to kill deal damage fast enough that they should give a TS trouble keeping themselves alive with Hull Patch if necessary. Our ability to self mend gives us a much greater ability to stay out in the depths of space for an extended period of time. What other explorer can fight off a mob after blowing themselves up to about 20% hull left on a couple of back to back pop rocks, and then be back to mining with full HP seconds later? As for ammo use; early on it's a problem for hold space. Once you get to endgame though it's a complete non-issue. Running Smiter's Wrath & Ten-gu Bile launchers, which both use missiles that stack to 800, there's no need to carry more ammo than what you can fit in your launchers for any normal activities. You can get well over an hour of 100% constant firing per stack, which in practical use is a couple hours of heavy hunting, or all day and longer of mining defense. The only time I ever even carry extra ammo is if I'm going to a raid, or if I'm going hunting with a group that I know will just be chain killing, (like the drone controller nav in Paramis or something like that) and even then I rarely get into my backup stacks unless my launchers were fairly low to start with, it's more a precaution because i don't like running out of ammo. In reality, in a group with decent dps, I can do about 2 fishbowl raids on a full stack in each gun. So yeah, ammo is a low level issue only. What I'd do for a TS for combat is simple actually, swap Improved Hacking for an Improved Critical Targeting bonus. I notice a huge jump in my damage output grouped with a TE that has Rally on me. Just some critical targeting on an item a TS would generally equip would really be all the DPS boost we need. (JE has it on DG &/or GoD already) Really that's a missile issue in general, there are PL's and Beam's with Improved Crit Targeting (or Progen all get it on CFB) but it's lacking for Terrans/ML's. (I also remember my JE having something with Hull Damage Control on it which I'd like for TS, but that's another issue) We don't need anything big though, just a couple small tweaks.

[quote name='Mimir' timestamp='1314934194' post='45560'] I think that for a greater reward there should be a greater risk. What I hear is "All I do is mine pop rocks" "that is all I pull from a field" "this is the only way I can get x or y ore in huge qty" I think the key is the huge qty. If there is 25 Grail Water in one rock shouldn’t there be a chance that you may not live going for it? When the pop rocks go into "live" cool we can have a diversity but until then for the love of everything EMU, make pulling them a gamble not just a quick way to fill your ship with high level ores. If they stay as they are I would rather see Merlin's planet roids back. At least it took some time to mine them. [/quote] Yes, like 10% of miners are slightly crazy (like me) and love pop rocks, most hate them already, and would despise them if they were lethal. Just fix it so we can find lvl9 ores more commonly outside of pop rocks and it will solve everything. I like pop rocks because they are the ONLY way to get certain lvl9 ores. Solve that and they just become a more efficient way for people who like to live on the edge. (Rememeber, if you don't clear the ore guards, they can kill you if you blow chunks out of yourself mining pop rocks, even if the rocks themselves don't) Now mayabe they stacks of 20+ lvl9's in 1 rock could use a tweak, but you can do that without making them lethal, just lower the stacks to no larger than 10-12, while simultaneously fixing lvl9 ore in normal rocks. That makes it a viable option to do either depending on your class/preference.

[quote name='Tienbau' timestamp='1314927287' post='45557'] yeah the pop rocks do need changing. As with a lot of stuff, they STILL have the values I pulled out of my butt when I got them working, just so we could have something happening. So let's have some ideas ... How about pop rocks up to level 4 will only cause shield damage, and their intensity is capped according to level. From 5-7, they can actually cause hull damage. From 8-9, they can be lethal. Any advances on the above. Really the values I did were only there to get people to post how it actually should work, they've just been like that for a long time! [/quote] Bad^bad idea!!! Everything I read in chat is people saying they cause too much damage, and now you want to give them the chance to be lethal! People are already saying pop rocks leave them so vulnerable to MoB's that they just ignore them, noone will risk being incapped (which then, unlike now, would carry the chance of item quality damage, to mine them. (At Which point you might a well remove them from the game and just reduce the number of 'roids in the field by a corospnding amount) If you want to make it more dangerous, put more guardian MoB's around them so you have to kill them before piping the 'roids or risk being engaged with no shields left. That is a fun risk, because you can make a choice, a random "if I harvest this I may insta-die is NOT a fun risk!

Well you must have a bad-ass shield to only take 25% from them. I've always taken at least 75%, and occasionally more than 100% shield damage from pop rocks regardless of my shield capacity. As it is though, pop rocks are the only viable source for lvl9 ores in any reasonable quantity. Without them certain ores (I'm looking at you Aesirium) would be virtually impossible to find. So yeah, I do like pop rocks, they make mining a little more interactive, how much can you pull before it goes boom? Also they provide a TS with it's niche. With Hull patch, TS's are the best miner for clearing pop-rock fields. It's the trade for how quick PS's can clear out our guards & JE's cloak/WH ability to get to the fields the fastest/easiest.

The windows key works easier than alt tabbing if u play in windowed mode, but I agree 100%, being able to unlock the mouse from being stick I'm the EnB window would e a huge help. Funny enough, using 2 separate PC's with a program to control both with the same mouse/keyboard treats the second as just another monitor) has no such issue and can go off the edge just fine.

[quote name='Redd' timestamp='1314436540' post='45287'] Spill over? heh... There are several ways to "grind" as you put it like any MMO current/past/present or future. The leveling is meant to be a grind. In the EMU it can take you 2-5days to reach 150 if you know what your doing... But whats the rush. Go explore, dont job, kill mobs all over the galaxy, find loot, discover new drops etc, mine hulks, look for raids... Get the direction this is going? Plenty to do especially when leveling imo. Yes missions may not be around every corner but its pre Alpha and your comparing to Live published games. Give it time I guess I dunno... Play a progen do the Agrippa stuff that will take a good portion of your time Do all 3 classes at the same time of it you wont need any intervention from other players just an intervention for sanity But hey its missions and rather interesting approach at that. [/quote] What are these tricks to hit 150 in 2-5 days? (Without already having access to a 150 toon) I know it's early, that's why I don't mind not having enough missions, I just think the XP curve should be shortened. If you can tell me the way to hit 150 in that timespan though, then I'd be perfectly content. As long as there is a way to level fast for those that want to (I'm firmly in the "the game begins at level cap" group), I have no issue with it being slower for those who don't feel that way. All I want is options.

I played EnB from live to Sunset, and have been following (and tried on several occasions) the emulator for many years now. I finally decided to get fully back into the game a couple weeks ago, but I just can't stick to it. I want so bad to love this game, the game I remember sneaking onto the computer during the middle of the night to play during high school, but I just can't keep myself into it. Why? Compared to other MMO's out leveling is an insane grind. I realize this is how it was in live, and that the goal of the emulator thus far has been to mimic live, but there's been nearly 10 years of MMO development since then that's basically being ignored. Current MMO's launch with a level cap of 50, yet their levels aren't much harder to gain that levels here are. I played Rift at launch, and I was able to hit level cap with 5 days of solid 16-20 hours a day grinding. And grinding that didn't have me doing the exact same thing for the entire 5 days at that. In EnB, not only is the grind much longer, but it's all the same thing. Either you grind mobs, or you grind jobs, or you grind trade routes, or mining fields... Other games It's a continuous quest line from level 1 to level cap, it's always a new quest. I realize because this is an emulator, expecting enough quests to be developed to fill the leveling curve is unreasonable. But why not reduce the leveling curve? There's no reason to keep the leveling curve so harsh. You're not trying to keep people subscribed month to month, so give them the option to get what they want. Put in ways for people who want nothing more than to be 150 so they can get back to doing what they were in endgame live to be able to do so. It shouldn't take weeks and weeks of me grinding out spillover XP on the Glenn gas fields (because I can't do combat jobs due to their XP scaling being broken), and literally sitting at the keyboard crying because of how bored I am, and how bad I just want to get back to hunting endgame mobs, to get there. Condense the XP curve, or at least give the option of starting a character with a condensed curve to people who just want to be max level again. I've never played an MMO since EnB that makes it this hard to reach level cap... that concept is outdated, and the emulator needs to recognize that. A curve that puts the current cap at the equivalent XP it takes to reach 30/30/30 would be about right. Not only would it reduce the grind, but it would fix several other problems. (Jenquai practically having to grind out EL25 for Combat Cloak before combat is any fun what-so-ever being a HUGE one) I don't want to stop playing, and i don't want to sit here at the keyboard crying while endlessly mining rollover XP either, please help!

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I basically wrote the book on JE combat tactics during live (Literally, I had multi-page documents detailing the strategies for fighting various MoBs as a JE), and In my opinion it would be physically possible, but extremely hard to pull off both in terms of skill required and time taken. (Assuming we're also fighting a competent PW of course) In my prime, with a hefty amount of time put in pre-engagement, to planning my exact tactics I could have probably pulled it off baring unlucky rolls on the RNG when it comes to de-buffs and so forth landing. But as others have stated, one wrong move, and it's over virtually instantly. In live Coma use allowed me to solo mobs PW's even were generally incapable of killing, however doing so was really only practical from a standpoint of saying i did it, due to the massive time required. Now if you gave me only 1 chance, or made it a best of series, I'd bet on the PW any day. But give me 10 shots, and I'd most likely have been able to pull it off at least once. It's just a matter of living long enough to get into a rhythm, and then maintaining said rhythm long enough to kill them. I've got a few ideas for tactics that may work, but it's been SO long since I used said tactics that it's hard to say for certain. Going in with a 100% developed strategy is an absolute must though any time lost trying to decide what to do next and it's over.