Ceiu

Autobots are countered by using Decepticons.

Basing as a whole is already broken here. It's the same repe!@#$%^&*ive garbage won by the same !@#$%^&*es using the same tactics (if you can call it that) every day. I've participated in a singular basing game this entire reset simply because it's just boring. I'd like to do something about it, but my hands are tied.

Actually, as far as typical roles go... the levi SHOULD be a slow bomber ship that pretty much holds down bomb lines. It's counter-part (the terrier) should be the rusher. We have 8 ships to work with. Each should serve as a yin and yang for the roles in this zone.

Probably not. They'll probably do exactly what MS is doing: working on the games with the most popularity and issues. If you're the only one having trouble playing "Big Mother Trucker", they probably won't give a !@#$%^&* if it works well or not.

When Sony released the PS3 in the UK they stopped producing units with the Emotion Engine chip (the thing that runs PS2 games). They've moved on to software emulation, ala 360. Naturally there are issues with it at first, but they're (slowly) working on correcting them. If I remember correctly, once they reach their goal on the software emulation compatibility, the EE chip will be disabled via software update and everyone's PS3s will be running in emulation mode.

My only ban came about when I caught two sysops cybering in a private arena.

12-06-2007 ID now retains velocity when warping players out of the ID tunnel You can no longer launch fields while dead You can no longer summon players while dead (more gooder code!) Patched an issue with ?buy/?sell that allowed players to "make" illegal weapons. PD now dies when it's host dies. PD can be temporarily disabled by ejecting it (via attach button).

That's pretty much the idea in a nuts!@#$%^&*.

Half of those don't exist, but I'll let you figure out which half that is.

I'm not going to bother programming it if it's not going to get used. That's the point of this type of post, to check public interest and further hash out ideas before a final draft is laid out.

@D1: If TW players can understand Distension enough to play that, I think HS players can handle this (ok, maybe not RC and his buddy up there; but they can't handle HS as it is anyway). @Brain: If you think about it, my proposal IS a superset of the current pub. The only difference is labeling and availability, really. If we went ahead and programmed all the changes necessary for this system but didn't actually change how pub worked, you'd have: - Enhancements disabled or ridiculously expensive - Minor changes to experience requirements on items or experience required for each tier and number of tiers - Most item tiers being identical or very similar Really, all this does is adds 8 new values for players (ship exp) and puts new labels on existing values (level = exp /1000). I imagine we could hack it together in short order; but to really do this idea nicely and support future additions or changes with little headache, it would be a bit more work. The tiering system already exists to an extent (exp + ship requirements), it's just not as structured as what I'm proposing. The only change I can think of that breaks things is the idea of ship-specific experience. However, according to the mmorpg formula for calculating fun: more grinding = more gooder.

The way the CKP counter works is something like this: Initially, each player's CKP is set to 0 and their list of players killed is empty. Lets say they kill: Cerium, CKP = 0 Sention, CKP = 0 Cerium, CKP = 1 (Cerium was within last 3 kills) Sention, CKP = 2 (Sention was within last 3 kills) Dr Brain, CKP = 0 (Dr Brain is NOT within last 3, CKP resets) Originally I was planning on checking only "last killed", but it's fairly easy to double client or get two friends to trade kill with you. With checking the last three, even in the event it does happen the penalty will be nil (-1 when CKP = 1). Plus, Brain already has the arena setup to negate bonuses when there is less than 5 people active so I chose to follow suit. When you're just starting out, it's probably a good thing to have a role clearly defined for your ship. Vets may not like it, but once they get to the higher levels (tier 7-10) they'll have access to virtually every item for that ship anyway. Considering that requires 3k experience, it's more or less the same system we have now, just that you have to do it for each ship. Plus, this would give the opportunity to have a unique items for each ship. As far as having to buy/sell repeatedly... Unless earnings or item prices changed, I don't see that as being a problem until you've got several ships and an abundance of cash. At that point, I'd much rather see people forced into such a situation as it means goldmine != superiority. The enhancements wouldn't be drastic. At the highest levels they'd be noticeable, but nothing game breaking. For instance, I was considering 10 possible upgrades for thrust. If you had all 10, it would basically be like having a permanent +1 or +1.5 to thrust. My goals would be to try to focus on other fun stuff that doesn't already exist: reduced drain on utilities, slightly increased firing speed or reduced firing cost, antiwarp jamming, and so on. I was thinking of +10 to 15 percent increases at the highest levels -- again, enough to make a difference but not enough to break the game.

@Suicide_Run: The enhancements idea is somewhat inspired by Distension (hence the shout to Qan up above), but most of this comes from my recent read of the FFT battle mechanics guide. It's surprising how much of it could be applied to HS. !@#$%^&*, the exp formula itself is straight from the BMG save for the squaring of CKP. As an aside, I don't play TW or any of it's subarenas. My knowledge of Distension comes solely from discussions with Qan and the 30 minute beta I participated in. He's done an amazing job on the bot that runs it and if you can tolerate one-hit-kill gameplay, I highly recommend people to should check it out sometime. Regarding what Brain said: That argument could be used to shoot down any idea. Technically speaking, most everything on your todo list can't support the current system -- that's why we're making and upgrading modules, right? Sure, we could do minor additions (ie: new items), but to me that's both boring and doesn't really "fix" any of the problems these "major" changes of mine address -- stagnation of the zone once players reach the higher levels. Further, this change isn't really that drastic. We'd need to modify the buy module a bit to change it's output based on the ship of choice and change what it looks at for experience requirements. Really, we just change the exp requirement to be (exp / 1000 > req exp / 1000) and modify the output a bit. There would be a bit more work in the kills module and then the addition of enhancements and such, but in comparison to my last item revamping it's considerably minor. And, should the idea bomb horribly, we've always got the old code to fall back to. And finally, to anyone who cares (warning: rant ahead): Development to me gets boring real quick when all I'm doing is patching up a few things here and there or making tiny additions to what is largely someone else's work. Not only do I have very little say when it comes to the creativity of a (sub-)project, but most people won't even see the change. Every time I submit one of these ideas, it most likely means I'm willing to put forth the effort to put it into place. But it really burns me out quickly to be rejected and demoted back to tinkering with tiny fix-me style projects. It's not like I plan on running off every time I get told "no", but it certainly makes the other stuff seem a tad less inviting.

It means you couldn't have every enhancement at the same time. It's simply not possible (number of enhancements > levels). However, I know a group of smart!@#$%^&*es who would create two accounts so they could say "omg I have every enhancement lulz!!", so I threw that clause in there.

It's a step toward such a thing. Right now there's nothing in place to even support it. If this gets put into place, it's trivial to add items and such only available for each ship.

Unlike last time, this change isn't so drastic. However, I think it could make the zone a lot more diverse and overall, more gooder. This system will replacing the existing experience system as well as changing how items are purchased. Items themselves will largely remain unchanged. Those of you who've played Final Fantasy Tactics will see where a majority of this is coming from. Qan's work in Trench Wars also has some influence on the latter part of this. If anyone else has any suggestions or other systems they've seen that have worked well, I'm willing to accept input to see if I can make improvements anywhere. That said, here we go... 1: Leveling-- Players will have two different levels: Pilot level and ship level. These levels will determine what items, ships and enhancements are available to them. Pilot levels will range from 1 to 50, each level requiring 1000 experience. Players will be able to purchase pilot enhancements for each level earned (Enhancements will be covered later). Ship levels will range from 1 to 10, each level requring 500 experience points. Players will be able to purchase more items as their ship level increases (Item trees will be covered later). Experience will be earned in the same way, but the formulas will differ from their current formulas. For standard kills, it will be earned as follows: Exp = Max((5 + (TLv - CLv) - CKP^2), 1) * EpM CLv = Player's current level TLv = Target's current level CKP = Consecutive Kill Penalty EpM = Experience Modifier This allows players to quickly earn experience points for killing players at much higher levels, but earn next to nothing for players below them. For instance, if a level 1 player were to kill a level 20 player... Exp = Max((5 + (20 - 1) - 0), 1) -> Exp = 24 They would earn 24 experience, !@#$%^&*uming they had no experience modifiers. However, if that level 20 player killed the level 1 player... Exp = Max((5 + (1 - 20) - 0), 1) -> Exp = 1 They would earn 1 experience point. Since this system lends itself to helping newbies catch up quickly, there is also a mechanism built in to prevent trade killing. The Consecutive Kill Penalty (CKP) works as follows: if(Killed player is within last three players killed) CKP = CKP + 1 Else CKP = 0 That means: for consecutive kill on the same player, you'll earn less experience. As the number of consecutive kills increases, the penalty gets considerably steeper. For instance, if a level 1 player is getting free kills from a level 20 player... First kill: Exp = Max((5 + (20 - 1) - 0), 1) -> Exp = 24 Second Kill: Exp = Max((5 + (20 - 1) - 1), 1) -> Exp = 23 Third Kill: Exp = Max((5 + (20 - 1) - 4), 1) -> Exp = 20 Fourth Kill: Exp = Max((5 + (20 - 1) - 9), 1) -> Exp = 15 Fifth Kill: Exp = Max((5 + (20 - 1) - 16), 1) -> Exp = 8 Sixth Kill: Exp = Max((5 + (20 - 1) - 25), 1) -> Exp = 1 After five kills, the player is no longer receiving experience for killing them. Naturally, there are ways around this; however, moderators will continue to play a role in monitoring trade killing. 2: Item Availablity-- Items will be purchased much in the same way as they are now. However, their availability will be drasticly different. Rather than looking at the number of experience points you've earned, items will become available as your ship level increases. Further, each ship will have different item list, meaning some items will become available at different tiers or not at all. In addition to all of this, unavailable items will not be listed. For example, the item list for a Warbird may look like this: Tier 1: Ion Drive Fusion Reactor Flechette Gun Pulse Laser Tier 2: Plasma Gun Maneuvering Fins Slipstream Tier 3: Falcon Missile Shrap Booster Overthruster ...where a Javelin's list may look like: Tier 1: Ion Drive Fusion Reactor Harpy Missile Falcon Missile Tier 2: HE Missile Manuvering Fins Shock Matrix Tier 3: Pulse Laser Shrap Booster Retro Rockets This will naturally force ships into various roles until they reach the 10th tier (where virtually every item is unlocked). 3: Pilot Enhancements-- In addition to purchasing items to create ships, players will be able to purchase pilot enhancements at each pilot level-up. These enhancements are permanent (cannot be sold) and will work in every ship the player uses. A few of the enhancements catagories will be: improved item capacity, improved mobility, weapon proficiencies and so on. Although higher levels naturally means more enhancements, no player will be able to obtain them all. There will be atleast 75 enhancements total, depending on the number of catagories vs one-time improvements. Post your opinions here, and try to be civil about it.

Peh. I've been playing HS since 1947 -- before anyone even HEARD of bots. Yeah, we had to move around by programming our keyboard input on punch cards and we never once complained about lag. !@#$%^&*, having a 14 day ping was considered "high-speed" back then. You newbs just don't know.

It is on my immediate to-do list once I get around to installing the tools I need to actually do it.

Well, technically when the excess of money floods over to other players, that makes everyone else max out sooner which also brings about resets sooner (or simply over-powers an entire team). I wouldn't mind seeing the ?give command locked for anyone who has gotten such a reward. Supercomputer on a shark... hrmm...

Yes. Ball n Chain for everyone! On a more serious note, aqua pretty much nailed it. Every minute we're dedicating to making the zone work "more gooder" is a minute we're not blowing up your spaceships. Further, as developers, we have to listen to people piss and moan about everything. EVERYTHING. "Feature x sucks" "y is broken" "why isn't z fixed yet?" Peh. HS is one of the few zones that can provide some kind of compensation for doing any kind of development work. I find it appalling that the people who want to take it away are the ones that have yet to do anything for the zone themselves.

Let me see if I can provide a neutral response to maybe enlighten some clueless people here. Once upon a time I worked as a best buy service technician (prior to their purchase of Geek Squad). Every day we'd get some device that looked like the owner kept it in an old vacuum cleaner bag -- and they sucked balls to work on. Given that they accounted for such a low percentage of the total units taken in, the company wouldn't pay for dust masks or anything like that. Instead, it was like playing "unlucky lottery" when one of these things came in. And, again, it sucked to get stuck with one. Eventually, our boss got sick of dealing with them, so we started turning them away. If a machine was excessively dusty, we told the customer to either (a) take it home and clean it or ( pay a fee for us to clean it. Most people opted to take it home and blow it out with an air compressor. Problem solved. While I agree that it shouldn't void the warranty, I can certainly see where the service !@#$%^&* is coming from. I would have handled the situation differently, myself; but I do understand.

It's different when you have to stay alive to use it though -- you're probably not going to time it exactly as you're taking your last hit, which means you'll either have to drop it earlier in your suicide run or get real good at dodging burst spam at high speeds. In either event, the end result is that the field occurs further back.

well they are already testing vaccines, some are in level 1 and some are in level 2, so i agree with you, i think in 3-5 years we will get a vaccine. I think in 10 years they will fully know and understand human genome, making it easier to create vaccines and treatments at a molecular level, but who knows! Wow... I was right. No one else DID get that reference. D1's reference to Chris Rock is about a bit he did regarding the curability of aids and how it will never be done. Why? Money. Companies can and will make far more money by finding a way to make you live with it by giving you a ton of medication. That, or the vaccine will be so expensive most people won't be able to afford it anyway. That said, most of these diseases will probably be around for a very long time; just in the form of the common cold. For those of you who haven't heard it:

So?

You wouldn't even need to go that far. Just hook into the existing print screen functionality. After it's pressed and does it's normal operations, just have your app take over for the region stuff. The only problem you'd have is figuring out where the screenshot in the clipboard came from on the screen (if it's not a fullscreen ss). Aside from that though, it wouldn't be a whole lot of work.