Hey guys,

Just wanted to update you on what we have finished so far, and whats left to do, from our TODO before reset list.

DONE:
Rebalance shields
Finish the rest of the drone controllers
Add the missions for the drone controllers
Rebalance capacitors
Convert heat weapons to DoT (and make damage augs increase parasite damage)
New items for bases
1. Base OL's
2. Base Diffusers
Increase the range on cap ship field gens to nearly unlimited.
Add the rest of the terraforming projects
Check the size of all base gear

In Progress:
New Uni shape
Rebalance cap ship travelling field
Add cap ship slave travelling fields
Add new sets of fighters

Not Done:
? Allow drones to inherit half the owners skills and possibly reduce DM drone stat bonuses
Torpedoes
Modify stats on the existing drones (way more resists, make sure there's no bonus energy, possibly more weap. selection)
New long range knock-back weapons for snipers
Ensure skills match descriptions, both in game and on the site.


If we don't finish some of the items this week before the reset, they will hopefully be done before the real reset. As you see though, everything that needs to be done to get a good uni rush is done.

Thanks,
- Pip

May I suggest that u also need to rebalance some augs (or revise some content) in relation to getting:

Radar 20
Engine 20

Both the above rely on augs to make the the missions doable.

Radar 20 is going to be significantly easier with the hit all hostiles code, isnt it? Unless those AI in there are not hostile until you hit them.

Engine 20 will probably have to be changed, since very fast ships will be hard to come by. This is probably not highest priority quite yet, but definitely something to do within the next couple weeks.

I doubt radar 20 will actually be easier to get for the reason u mentioned and others but u will need to test it

Engine 20 needs speed and with the aug nerf non SD wont have a dogs show of completing the the course. But again that will need testing.

Agreed on both counts. I probably shouldn't comment on the radar one anyways since i just have radar 16

Up, pip, I have never gotten R20 either, but I have heard others talk about it. Apparently the AI there have rather unholy regen, but fairly low bank, they are designed to be 1-shotted. Therefor, spraying excomms (or any wep that can cover a large area) will hit them, but will not be able to break their regen. I have heard of Seers not being able to break them with an MD, so I really doubt that random shots which occasionally hit will do much better.

I already brought the issue of radar 20 up with a few admins when I saw them in-game, they said something would be done about it. Hopefully they have not forgotten, since it will be nearly impossible without being nerfed.


Before (and this is JUST an example, chose easy numbers), if you got a shrimp with 4 augs, each giving +1000% radar, you would get a huge number, 1,000,000,000,000% increase if I am figuring it right. The real aug of choice, adv. exc patrol, gives somewhere around +700% radar. Add in the Seer bonus and an uber radar, such as an Eyerite, and it was still damned irritating to do. The AI are so stealthy that even the seers in radar shrimps have to simply sit there and wait for an AI to float over them. They then shoot it with a flare (the parasite that gives +vis), and someone else kills it, typically a DM with BFDs.

Now, if you used 4 augs, each giving +1000% radar, you will get +4000%. Obviously, that is not going to work very well unless the AI are made to be far more visable, lol. Also, since skills do not stack with other stuff (according to Stooch anyway, he said his cap ship lost shields because the +shield from fleet focus didn't stack with whatever he had to increase shields) the seer bonus will do almost nothing.

As for engines 20, just up the time limits for all the missions, easy fix. My main has a locution scoutship with 3 hermes, 1 gonzales aug, and it lost over 200 speed iirc (it was 590ish, well under 400 on test last I checked).



BTW, any particular reason for the VJack getting nerfed so badly? It lost about half of it's damage, but kept the same recoil, rendering it useless. It didn't seem broken to me, many other T20 weps do comparable DPS but at decent range, such as the Dark/stygian fists and venu pulse gun (have not checked the stats on this one yet, it may be nerfed as well).

Radar 20 will be somewhat tricky as those ships have immense regen, such that you pretty much have to one-shot them (certainly if most of your shots miss).

I don't see why Engine 20 would be hard - I did those missions in a Wing IV+ with only moderate speed augs; the aug stacking change shouldn't matter too much for that setup. If you spend some real speed augs (adv. racer or whatever) you should have no problem.

Looks like you just shot yourself in the foot there, buddy.


About the vjack, it does have much better DPE now, so my slaves can fire it multiple times before running out of bank, but yeh, i think it should have higher DPS and lower DPE like before so they pack a punch.

And if your doing the course right, 400 speed is plenty fast to do most of the missions.. the last 2 might be a bit close, i ended up using a speed tweak to finish it on my zerker, and atm his wing4 goes 390.

The dark definatly needs a rework. I can see from Pip and assume that most of the admins don't have Radar 20. Yea, it's just a "nice" skill, not really "required" but why the hell the skill is harder than all the others in game, really beyond me.

And can we look at beefing the drop rate in there too? I've killed nearly 100 of the darker holes and I still only have 4 commods.. it's really annoying how long it takes to get this stupid skill xD

I believe Voom is the admin that takes care of fixing Radar things. At least, he's the one that always mentions things about Radar skills/missions. Hopefully he'll be able to fix this issue too.

I think engines 20 will have to be a wait and see. If it turns out to be too difficult we'll have to change it.

Yeah, kinda learned the appropriate strategy AFTER posting that, was curious about how it was done so I asked around. Still, there may be some obscure way to make it work, I dunno the exact numbers on their shields. Maybe have one person lay a crappy drone, like a pest, and have a zerker then fire a volley of dark fists at it? There is a small chance this may work, but I doubt it.

I heard that there is a ton of stuff in The Dark, like planets and moons, that would absorb the shots. Besides that, hitting an AI the size of a . would be tough if you just shot randomly, would take a while for one to fly in the way of the fists at the exact time they were passing over that spot. Even then, I don't know any hard numbers. If the AI have a large enough shield bank to withstand one volley, then it would not work, even assuming everything else I named above didn't prevent it from happening.

Engines 20 is already balanced pretty well, so the nerf will make it hard. With my 590ish speed locu, I still failed the speed tests 2 or 3 times, even AFTER I practiced a bit to learn the proper way to do it. Usually I would either notice a gremlin too late to move out of the way, although once DIE was there and sat on top of the key, spamming scoop so I couldn't get it. Think you fixed this somehow, I was among the first to get E20 so it was possible then.

Anyway, just give the missions a longer time limit, if I had to choose a number I would say +50% to the max time of all of them, seems fair enough.

Also, could you maybe make the mobile wormhole a little more visable? Not in the level with the moons over the two wormholes, it is a later one. In my locu, I had a rather good passive radar, but it was still sheer chance whenever I found it, I would just fly west and go in circles while spamming the ping, had to get within a rather close range to see it. That was without any augs giving -radar, but I am pretty sure many people use a hera aug in their scout locu, which gives -25% radar. The idea of the course was supposed to be a speedy ship and fast reflexes, not a big radar and luck in quickly stumbling upon the gate.

You're not suppose to see that warp, no matter what. There is a trick to knowing where it's at. Also, i did E20 with a ship that went 370ish.

Nonsense - those missions are easy as anything (on test). If you can't handle it, you don't deserve the skill. I had no problem doing the course in <100 secs on a non-SD with only one speed-boosting aug (Hermes)...

I did it on my DM with a ship that did just a touch over 300. You have to time things right, be a bit lucky, on the last run or two. Or, you can have a friend help you, and you don't need to time it or be lucky. There are other ways you can do it too.

As to Radar 20... Why is it that only 1 class can do the mission? No other core skill requires that? It'd be like having to have an SD do the actual races to get someone Engine 20. Just curious.