Suricata79

Hi guys, As most are aware, we are currently working on the mobs, however, there are a few settings that need tweaking regarding mob damage and I need some help if any budding players are willing. What I need are screenshots from LIVE mobs doing damage to players, this is quite a time consuming job to track screenshots down, and is basically a good task for those that want to help out! So if people could post screenshots in this thread of mobs doing damage to players it would be very useful, remember, they should be from LIVE, not from the emulator. It's the numbers from the mob damage I'm interested in more than anything.

50% of the XP is split betwen what remaining skills you have not capped, which is how it was in live.

Good news, I think I've tracked down the mob damage and scan range issues (as in them doing more damage than they should and seeing further than they should), I'm looking into it right now. I'm also revamping the fishbowl so that the bosses are on 2 spawn tables, meaning you won't have more than 2 bosses at once in the fishbowl. They will have a delay on the next boss spawning (which players can use for farming the trash mobs for ammo comps). The value of the trash loot on drones is been worked on as well, so ammo costs will not be more than the money you make from farming a mob. :-)

All Tengu will be back in eventually, but right now we have to do the code for progressive spawns. I'm currently working on the FB spawns to make them more managable so ammo comp farming is easier.

The ammo is dropping of trash in the fishbowl, that is to say 'fishbowl trash', not 'gate raid' trash, I'm going to talk to the other devs about the way the spawns are in the Fishbowl so that farming the trash for ammo comps is a little easier.

Yup, we look at these polls :-) Just remember that alot of systems in this game have yet to be coded, so yes, things can change drastically sometimes, but please also remember, that sometimes the reason things don't work properly is because the code is simply not written yet or still needs refining, which is why we have the test server in the first place, so we can test out the changes and balance as needed. Just remember if you have issues, please give us 'constructive' feedback. Simply saying the changes suck, or the devs suck isn't really that useful to us :-) As for raids, the regular gate raid mobs are balanced for around 1-2 groups, the fishbowl mobs and controller spawns (yet to be adjusted properly) are been balanced for 2-3 groups appprox. This is susceptable to change of course, since balancing these mobs actually requires raid groups to test them out., also the progressive spawn system has not been coded yet, so using the raids in thier current state as an example of how they will be will not give an accurate immpression. Player feedback is always a fun beast, players are very quick to cry foul when something becomes harder, but are very tight lipped when they find favorable bugs, such as ways to trade non-trade items, and the fact that max HDC was giving players invulnerable hulls (which oddly enough no players reported.....) :-)

The Terror Maw drop regular loot, they were just trash mobs during gate raids. They arn't meant to be wandering around Cooper at all infact. Right now, only the FB bosses and FB trash drop the weapons componants. The main issue is that there are so many mobs in the Fishbowl right now, that you can't just single a mob out without aggroing all the others. I have an idea for fixing this, basicaly it would involve putting the bosses on 2 spawn tables, 1 for regular gate mobs and 1 for fishbowl mobs, then you'd only have 1 spawned at a time with a random one spawning on a delay after the live on is killed, this would make it a little more balanced than it is now. I'll have a talk to the other devs later today about the FB and how to make it a bit more managable for the time being whilst we work on doing progressive spawns properly. I'm currently going though the mob damage calculations now to try and figure out if all the code is working correctly. The stats in the mob database are all in line, however, it only takes a calculation to be slightly off in the damage calculations to make a pretty big difference. Either way, please continue with the feedback, it is appriciated whilst these mobs are fine tuned to the new system.

Most regular mobs have a 5k scan range at higher levels, including Tengu, with big raid mobs having scan ranges upto 10k.altruism on mobs (how likely a mob assists its friend) could possably be responsable, afterall, not all mob behavior is fully coded yet. I'll look into it when I get home from work today.

Just a heads up, I'm investigating the damage multipliers on mobs today just to make sure they are working correctly.

I don't know how it was on other servers, but on Pegasus most raids were public, not guild run, so if you needed more people you just asked in a public channel, I saw 2 raid groups in the fishbowl last night that were from several guilds, so public raid groups are happening. Right now, raids are not planned to have 6+ groups to complete, more like 3-4 on the big ones, however, people have to remember this is a test server! There is still work to be done on mob AI, some skills still need tweaking, progressive spawns still need to be coded too so you arn't fighting all the bosses and trash at once. Eventually you will find combat working much more like live, but it is going to take time to put these changes in, so some patience (and feedback) will be required. :-)

The Controller is not in right now, didn't realise he was not spawning properly, he is no longer soloable by TW's though, or shouldn't be atleast. Right now there is an issue with the way the raid mobs are placed, because they are not progressivly spawning you are getting multiple bosses and trash attacking you at once, this wasn't as big an issue before as mobs were not set to aggro, now that they are though the way the spawns are handled will need tweaking. Although i did just watch a raid group take down the Master in the Fishbowl, so it is still possable, just not solo anymore!

The Sporemother is now doing the damage it used to in live, I'm not sure if it is more or less than before, because all mobs that have yet to be updated used a generic calculation server side, instead of actually using the correct values which are now been added into our new mob database. Please note that with the mobs, it doesn't matter if they are firing beams fast of slow, or if they have 1 weapon or 3, they are all set to do a standard range of DPS per level, This is then calculated between the weapon types. After watching players on the server fighting the updated mobs, I think I should point out that most mobs have 1 short range weapon and 1 long range weapon, with the short range doing the most DPS. So, if you sit still and don't bother to kite, you will take the full brunt of all the mobs weapons. If you try to kite the mobs you will find that the damage you take is noticably lessened (just like in live) The trash loot value does need looking into though, as it is too low, considering the item drops have been put down to thier correct levels now.

All the mobs ingame are currently been brought inline with thier live stats, they were previously calculated via a generic formula. Also loot tables are been brought inline with how they were in live too. I've answered the points in green. Right now the entire mob database is been overhauled, starting with the most popular mobs first. There was 'alot' of mobs dropping loot way over the level of loot they should of been dropping, some loot was also set to insanely high drop rates as well. This is been adjusted to be closer to live, afterall, how can builders compete with each other when every rare item drops after only a few kills? Overall, the mobs that people will feel the changes the most on are the CL50+ mobs, as alot of these were not set correctly, especially alot of the raid mobs, which people have happily been soloing. I'm aware that people have gotten used to soloing the cl60+ mobs might of been a bit shocked when the mobs hit them back! There was also a bug with HDC that allowed some players to run around with infinate hull as well, this has been fixed too, which I'm sure, coupled with the mobs slowly been brought back inline, has thrown a few people off. I will note though, that the 'tethering' issue whilst kiting should be fixed on the newer mobs, so if you kite some of these mobs, its possable to not get hit by thier beams at all, as the beams are fairly close range.

Its not that missions give bad xp as such, but more that trade runs and jobs give an incredible amount more of XP than they did in live, which has a knockon effect on players not doing other forms of leveling, thus people leveling to 150 in a week or so only via jobs and traderuns.

Looking forward to it, lots of exciting changes in this months patch :-)

I don't think the full content push has been made yet Rabidcajun.

His spawn is back to what it has been for along time, for some reason last month his spawn got timer got increased by a factor of 10, making his spawn a little too frequent. Progressive spawns are being worked on as well right now, so alot of named mobs will be spawned via players killing mobs, as opposed to set timers once it is all set up properly.

Just remembered I had a map of the RD base, with the turret, carrier and base co-ordinates on it (think it was from Freedom-fighters)

I've checked it out, it is on the current loot tables, There was an anomoly with it which I've fixed, hoping that will fix it on the next server restart.

Will look into it when I get home.

My personal opinion on donator rewards would simply be unlocking the 'N7' logo for your ship, its not a game breaking change nor something people would feel they 'have' to buy, but displays to other players that they have donated to the project. As for the launcher, it could be nice to implement IRC into it, as well as the ticketing system as well, so if people are having issues they can contact the GM's and Dev's more easily.

I know its off-topic, but the issue with building right now is that using non PM comps are having too much of an impact on the item quality. It did make a difference in live (as it should), but right now the penalty is too big, so yup, it could certsinly do with a bit more tweaking, the overall way things are calculated is about right, just a few numbers need slight adjustments.

Players online (like Eve's launcher) could be a nice addition :-)

Why was this thread even made? Generaly speaking, if a thread is closed, its closed for a reason, starting another thread that just continue the exact same debate is never going to end well. I'm not really that concerned about splinter projects to be honest, as long as they pull thier own weight, what I don't like with some emulator projects (this is in general and not directed at the other EnB ones) is when you get people pulling the source code and updates and then claiming they made it themselves. I think thats what some of the devs are concerned about, having people create thier own servers and then claim they made the code themselves, this is somewhat prevented by keeping the database private, it also prevents players data mining it to find all where all the mobs spawn, when they spawn and what they drop as well as find hidden quests, which would make it very hard for the developers to add easter eggs to the game. To be honest though, alot of this is kind of mute, since all the teams will slowly drift apart as they code things differently, making the code from the different emulators incompatible over time.

Nesshix was missing from the mob database full stop until last week! Currently his loot table is on some of the trash mobs in the fishbowel. Right now I'm focusing on getting the 'popular' mobs sorted out in the database, this means the start area mobs, the popular combat leveling mobs (like the mobs in VT and VG) and the mobs in the endgame sectors, such as in BBW, Cooper and Antares, as well as the mobs in Niff. Once they are done I'll start spreading out from there. The RD base could do with a tweak with its layout, just got to do these things on step at a time :-) The correct phrase is, "A good debate should be a like a miniskirt, long enough to cover the subject, yet short enough to retain attention" :-) And I aggree, making things 'too' hard does not always equate to things been more fun, although it also works the other way around as well, making things easier doesn't always make it more fun either!