Debating the merits of faction...

[seekeronos]

In live, I played a JE, and while the wormhole skill (WH) definitely came in handy for reducing the number of hops between Somerlag and Fenris Observatory... BUT!

I had a keen interest in developing positive Red Dragon (RD) or pirate faction to more than +1000, so I could do these two things:

(1) Snoop around the pirate locations like the RD Base in Aragoth/Kuei Station in the short windows of time they were up

(2) Fly through Cooper and Slayton and mine some nice roids whilst waveing to my green-iconed, positively factioned RD NPC buddies pouncing upon the other JE's and PS's mining the roid fields.

(3) Use the pirate gates to BBW to cut out a few hops via Blackbeard's Wake (BBW) (Somerled -> Inverness -> BBW -> Muspelheim -> Aragoth Prime -> VT -> Fenris... and back, rinse & repeat to TL 50)

With a warp cap of 5000 (iirc) this was almost a must to reduce the grind time for trade levels.

There was of course, the cost and time to farm all that faction was considerable - a fact made easier by grouping with a PW with high level shield nova (seeing the Chavez mobs spanked en masse at Freya Nav 2 and 5 was always fun), though more often than not, my JE self was parked off of one of the Jenquai monuments picking off Shinwa pilgrims, and then running Shinwa faction trade jobs to even out the faction hurt.

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That was live, and this is EnB Emulator...

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I'm thankful, at least on my PW, for learning that "poor man's WH", which is to use that one skill point learned at Level 40 for "Self Destruct", and setting my port of registry to Queen Anne's Revenge in BBW, and to say nothing of access to Pirate Space via Paramis gate in Odin (I don't recall the Paramis sector from Live, as I had stopped playing a few months before sunset). This has made leveling trade via trade runs a little easier (given the slooooooooowness of my PW, though lately he has upgrade to L4 engines/devices that now have him nearly on equal speed with my TS, about 4500mps).

I can clock about 8 min. each way between Somer and Fenris, probably faster if I don't dawdle at gates and am ready with the keys that trigger the warp buffs and free warp in sectors with bizarre nav point pathing.

My TS will have a rougher time of it, though he can still reduce the return leg back to Somer by flying in through Odin Rex > Paramis > BBW > Inverness > Somer, and generally having better engines/reactor speed buffs (he's due for level 5 device upgrades as well).

So the question I am going to ask is...

...should I spend the time/money to farm faction, or is it more economical to simply run the long(er) haul in the end?

Ignore for the moment, that as a TS I can probably make quite a few trade levels just from mining (currently prospecting L7 roids, refine L5) and refining the non-critical ores and vendoring them.

Ignore also, the recent (and for many, still ongoing faction bug) which has reset my RD faction from -6864 to -9000 ( !! )

Also ignore that I've skimped a bit on combat capability (still banging on a pair of L3 Oguns, though I might add a third Ogun with my next HU)

Here's the math:

Farming the Chavez Lv. 5 "Mechanics" and Lv. 6 "Scouts" takes me about 2 shots on the average with L3 Plasma Oguns. Faction seems to move positively for RDs on a 1 to 1 kill basis, so from -9000, it will take me 10,000 kills to get positive RD faction, and about 9,006 kills to get it into the barest yellow.

If I kill 10k Chavez, it will take me 20k missiles (this might improve were I to upgrade to L4 Oguns and ammo, which I assume could one-shot the Lv. 6 Chavez, but for simplicity's sake, I'll stick with my current loadout).

20k missiles = 200 stacks, at 3k per stack (according to EnBdatabase.net-7.org / includes button-push, not taking into account Negotiate levels) = 600,000 give-or-take a few thousand.

Expect to recoup a few ten-thousands with the boo-pops, various L1-L2 components, hydroponics, and the occasional Angry Blue Gazes that can be ripped for Athanor L2 mounts.

This is not a staggering figure by any means - this can be farmed with a few hours spent at the right places, but there is also the time spent making the ammo, moving it from your weapons-maker toon to your weapons user toon if needed, and the actual slaughtering of all them Chavez (or your own faction NPC lowbies) does take some time.

The way I am starting to figure it is...

(1) You will still need to run those Somer-Fenris trade runs to some extent, even after massacring all them NPCs for RD faction

(2) With a warp cap of 6000, and the fastest motor/device/reactor combos giving speeds nearly touching that cap, the long haul is not as time-consuming as it was in the past

(3) JEs can WH (with attendant loss in trade good quality, though I am not sure if this affects XP the same way as it affects the price you'll get from the NPC vendor) and PWs can move around via self-destruct centered on BBW

My conclusion is leaning toward ignoring RD faction, especially as the faction bug is still a bit of an issue - and until or unless BBW/Paramis are closed except for Pirate-factioned players, it really doesn't merit the trouble of farming faction.

What do y'all think?

[Floss]

(deleted to avoid confusion)

[seekeronos]

Heh. If the RD gates are altogether non-functional... then I reckon that moots my whole purpose in trying to farm RD faction.

I wasn't aware that the RD gates were broken.

[Floss]

(deleted to avoid confusion)

[Guest Antara]

Seems to work great in IE6.

I want it in the game. Along with ENBDatabase.

As a HUD just like the equip screen.

[Guest Antara]

[...]

Ignore it, went to the wrong thread.

[Terrell [BT]]

Haven't used them yet in ST4, but they did work in ST3. (If you had bad faction, you could use them to leave BBW, but not to enter. You could only enter through Paramis with bad RD) Personally, I'm going to wait until the Job terminals are working, and see if they still have the same faction benefits from live. If so I'm going to do what I did with my PE, in Live for RD faction. I spent one night having Torrie kill Progen drones in Primus, but kept an eye on her PE/PW/PT factions, and doing some PE/PW jobs to keep them up. I got her into BBW, in Live, without making any of my Progen factions red, though PT was barely green when I was done. IIRC in Live the Progen drones I killed had at least the following modifiers that I remember (there were probably more, as well, but I remember those):

+2 Red Dragon

-2 Collegia

-2 Sabine

-6 Centuriata

Also in Live, I'm not certain, but am pretty sure, that playable factions started at -5000 RD.

[xulei]

The RD gates still work - I don't have RD faction, but have no problem coming out from BBW

[garblesoup]

Ignore also, the recent (and for many, still ongoing faction bug) which has reset my RD faction from -6864 to -9000 ( !! )

If I kill 10k Chavez, it will take me 20k missiles (this might improve were I to upgrade to L4 Oguns and ammo, which I assume could one-shot the Lv. 6 Chavez, but for simplicity's sake, I'll stick with my current loadout).

Much snippage for brevity.

1) The *real* bug in faction for many of us is not that it's being reported incorrectly it's that it isn't being reported at ALL. Like many others my faction bar is 6 unlabeled lines with no color. So raising (or losing) faction isn't even something available to us.

2) L4 Ogun won't change the lethality of a single shot; L4 just has a shorter reload time, firing the same ammo. Though in my experience a single PM Ogun round *should* one-shot a L6 Chavez.

Overall, though - a thoughtful analysis. Good read, thanks.

[Fast88fox]

The gates work both ways if you have faction

[irrelevant]

Yeah, I had just started farming RD faction last night when P0007 popped in taking names for the faction bug.... so debating whether to continue or not myself.

Also, I assume the devs will eventually limit the paramis gate to RD faction as well and its just temporarily open to all because of the various bugs that might otherwise permanently keep it off access for the ST. Otherwise RD faction has little-to-no-value compared to what it was in live.

[Tienbau]

The RD gates still work - I don't have RD faction, but have no problem coming out from BBW

how are you getting to BBW in the first place so that you can leave? Just curious. If it's via a GM group wormhole that's fine, as it's the only way I think you could get in there without RD faction.

ta,

TB

[Terrell [BT]]

how are you getting to BBW in the first place so that you can leave? Just curious. If it's via a GM group wormhole that's fine, as it's the only way I think you could get in there without RD faction.

ta,

TB

Gate to BBW in Paramis sector, south of Destroyed Revenge Station. (On other side of Blackbeard's Memorial.)

[xulei]

how are you getting to BBW in the first place so that you can leave? Just curious. If it's via a GM group wormhole that's fine, as it's the only way I think you could get in there without RD faction.

ta,

TB

Odin Rex -> Paramis -> BBW

[mistergreen]

Hrm something seems fishy if the head bossman doesn't know about things.

[Floss]

Time to work on shield inversion. If faction is bugged, blocking the whole area doesn't really seem appropriate/fair.

[Trapt]

Everytime I've worked on faction I notice if the server goes down or is reset, my faction is all different. I think blocking access to BBW would be wrong at this point not only because of broken faction, but the two sectors there need to be tested before live. There are missions that lead to BBW and start in BBW that should be tested.

[irrelevant]

how are you getting to BBW in the first place so that you can leave? Just curious. If it's via a GM group wormhole that's fine, as it's the only way I think you could get in there without RD faction.

ta,

Also, I assume the devs will eventually limit the paramis gate to RD faction as well and its just temporarily open to all because of the various bugs that might otherwise permanently keep it off access for the ST. Otherwise RD faction has little-to-no-value compared to what it was in live.

Restating to draw attention to this.. if it is unintentional, devs should know that Paramis gate can be accessed without having red-dragon faction.

[seekeronos]

Before we go calling for the Devs to close up BBW/Paramis to negative RD-factioned payers, please consider:

1) Faction remains horribly broken for a sizeable minority of players --- the item for which P0007 spent a good part of Tuesday (16 Feb) evening (late morning for our European players) trying to get people to file bug reports about.

That is, these players (my TS toon was one of the affected toons) can't even see their faction. They get a blank box with six lines and that's it. No blue or red bars.

2) There may be missions and mobs that need testing in BBW and Paramis. Blackbeard's Ghost, the Controller, to name just two.

3) Someone pointed out that server resets/reboots will zero out or reset faction back to racial/class defaults. (which if true, means that upon start-up, I'll be getting potted by Shinwa and Sharim NPCs in their respective zones).

Therefore, in case the Devs are reading this:

Please leave access to BBW via Paramis *until* these other rather important faction bugs are resolved.

[Guest Growlz]

Iz put in sum prgen trade gudz fer travl via Mars or fer uder plyrs via Akern Goit. Dis shud be gud in next patch fer Trade runs fer Prgen, 'n giz uder route than Fenrs - Smlag.

[Work 'puter]