Gar

You're just kidding yourself if you think you've ever 'pushed a button' of the almighty Gar

You can't really expect people not to act in their own self interest.

a good message in the picture would be Arnk Dylie> yeah i put things in without any testing so what? edit: true story

i voted 'screw gar'

Yes, TOO simple as that, and a horrible philosophy for designing a game...

They're still competing, it just isn't the same kind of compe!@#$%^&*ion, something that maplestory's demographic likes better. Hyperspace, on the other hand, is completely in the 'gamers that play old!@#$%^&* games' demographic. Pretty sure most of us want skill compe!@#$%^&*ion and not Barbie Shopping Mall.

lol wtf... it is the basic premise of literally all games ever created that skill compe!@#$%^&*ion is fun.

Notice he didn't deny the story happened

I don't whine.

Oh, sorry. I should have made it clear that I didn't intend this to work for a Lancaster for exactly the reason you pointed out. In addition, the Quantum Tunneler replaces your FTL, so you can't get to base 8 between ?tunnels without having a Lanc sitting there letting you attach, and in that case people can quick field or brick anyway.

How is that an iLaff? Pity isn't particularly good. I'm not saying he's bad, I'm just saying every time that I have fought him he immediately fell back on cheese rather than trying anything skill-related. Typically when I bounty in center he just rushes at me with an ad shark bursting.

Yes, you said that already. That doesn't make it right nor you not lame. Before I was mostly kidding when I ragged on you, but after the past couple weeks where you've no longer been a mod you've really begun to sicken me. Literally everyone else in the zone plays like a normal person, and everyone enjoys it. The moment you enter the game - be it basing, turf, whatever - you immediately switch to griefing and cheese in a manner that just plain disrupts and ruins the game for everyone else, even your own freq. My freq, even if you're on it, becomes filled with 'ugh it's unix', 'SOMEONE GET X', 'gay', and 'watch out, )$*# unix TWing here to field or kill lanc'. You play to get high on feeling better than others, and you can do it here because the item set and your squad/insane cash gives you power you don't have in skill. While you had mod powers you weren't so bad because you had automatic pleasure just from literally being 'above' everyone else - but once you lost those powers, oh, man, did you suddenly get on and start griefing every single night. I know your type, and I've opposed people like you in every game that I've played. Unfortunately, I also know that you will win in the end. People like you have nothing else, and so will never quit. You will one day be Lord of HyperSpace, reigning over your empty zone and gloating to nobody. DOOOOOOOOM!!!

They're not talking about vets who restart because they want to, and already know all the tricks and have friends supporting them. In another thread I said something about this - newbie items really need to be buffed enough for newbies to not feel worthless. Think about the experience of most new people in a way that you probably haven't before: Joe plays a different Continuum zone. He's gotten alright there, or even pretty good, and is getting tired of that zone. So he logs into HyperSpace one day. Joe has no experience whatsoever with this RPG type of zone, so his first hour or two of experiences will pretty much set in stone how he feels about the gametype. The thing is, his first hour or two are probably the worst experience HyperSpace has to offer. Joe, an average-to-good player from another zone, finds himself not 'owning' like he thought he would, but in fact he is forced to fly around a low-energy, slow, pea-shooting, garbage ship while comparative godships fly around at unbelievable speeds instakilling him at every turn. He gets killed by cloakers, which he cannot detect; he gets thor'd, which kills him in one hit every time at his low energy. He gets bursted, which kills him in one hit. Prox bombs fly around at random, killing him in one hit every time. His guns do almost no damage to anyone, and he can't catch up to them most of the time anyway. Players advise him to 'join a basing game', so he does, and in that basing game, he quickly realizes he still can't do anything at all - so he hangs back, and leeches, trying not to die to stray thors and fields (fields are inexplicable and insane to him, by the way). How long do you think Joe is going to sit there leeching before it occurs to him, if it hasn't already, that hey, this game blows? He'll never know otherwise, because he probably won't stick around the month it takes players to get out of the newbie sinkhole.

The minibase is pretty much centering for heavy ships. Here's my point from the Pity story: I'm better than Pity, so with most ships I kill him easily and thus continue bountying. Everyone else attacking me has to do it in the same one or two ships, thus I keep killing and keep gaining bounty. Pity, on the other hand, since he's a priv, just shipchanges until he finds one I can't fight back against. In this case, a Javelin is the best way to kill a Spider - the Javelin stays at a distance and is quick. No other ship really has that combo. Thus, Pity has a big advantage because of his cash. He can switch to a ship that does most of the work for him. By priv I meant privileged player or private freq player, not the actual team. Aside from that, the 3 person limit does NOTHING to priv freqs, don't kid yourself. I explained the multiple tries thing in the quote before this one. Yes, it is obvious. It is also a very poor design that causes many new players to quit. Continuum doesn't get many totally new people. Most new people are from other zones, and have some degree of skill. Imagine their frustration when they go from a balanced zone where their skill allows them to have fun, to this zone, where their ships are basically nothing more than free kills for terrible players who happen to have spent alot of time grinding items and cash. It's not a big deal if high levels slaughter low levels as long as low levels can actually grow higher before they get annoyed and quit.

Because, like I said, you are a time-intensive player. I'm sorry, but that is a f-ing stupid at!@#$%^&*ude. We should make the zone boring simply because it is in some ways similar to a RPG? That's the point. HS is too focused on items in this set, and skill becomes more or less meaningless. That's not fun, nor how it should be.

I love how you make it seem so simple... all safe ship has to do is portal away

Was it fun? VERY FUN! Was it more fun than main arena flagging? By far, yes. Were the rewards good/fair? Definitely kept me playing and ignoring my girlfriend at the cost of a 2 hour fight later and no chipotle that night How was the map? Liked the map quite a bit, I like the distribution of flags - some open, some in a one-entrance base, some in a two-entrance base. Really gives the weaker team a chance to disrupt the stronger team's lockdown. Would you like to see it become the public arena? Yes, I hope in the future turf will take over. Eliminate runwinning forever! I believe Turf is superior because it 1: Dampens the effect of a stacked team. What happens at equilibrium is that one super team has a lanc in each base and the entire super team switches to the base/lanc that is getting attacked. This both allows the super team to lock down the arena if they're good enough AND gives the weaker team a chance to 'spike' one area by concentrating an attack there in the 'lag time' before the entire super team can summon or attach to defend. Also, brickwarping and lanc clearing are finally valid tactics (i.e. you can no longer grief with them because you're supposed to do them.) 2: Adds strategy to inter-team conflict. Current basing's only strategy is the 'Lemming flood', i.e. everybody attach then fly at the enemy spamming until they die, repeat. Turf is far superior for obvious reasons. 3: Clears away all the illogical aspects of Hyperspace's setup. Currently, 'winning' a flag game is a BAD idea because it kills the pop AND makes you less money. Being too succesful actually hurts you - clearing the enemy team ruins your cash flow. Brickwarping the enemy lanc hurts you. This is... silly for a game, really. 4: Creates teamwork and community where none existed before. Also, under this idea, privs take the place they should: a priv freq can hold one base with its extreme power advantage, but it just doesn't have the man power to do more. This allows a priv freq to carve out a place for itself and gain money over long periods of time (which they tend to play for), and also prevent a 20 flag lockdown by pubs, but at the same time the priv freq CANNOT ruin the game for everyone else or dominate the entire zone. Perfect. I believe Turf has some problems: 1: ID and TW need to be removed entirely or modified to take you only to the empty sectors and base 8. They are simply too powerful at ANY cost. Worse than that, they are aggravating. Little cloaking sharks that TW into your base and steal flags while you basically chase them for an hour are terribly aggravating. Aggravation is the last thing you want from a game. 2: The 'leaky bucket' effect in combination with cloak. The 'leaky bucket' feeling happens in the two-entrance bases and the open sector: you end up just chasing sharks and warbirds around while they steal flags without trying to hold them and irritate the crap out of you. This is fine. Can't be changed. The problem occurs in combination with cloak: the combination of X-radar and a fast ship is extremely rare AND! it's very difficult to catch cloakers that are just running and stealing flags instead of trying to fight. Cloak needs to come with some SERIOUS movement nerfs, as bad as -6 speed/-6 maxspeed. When you can't rely on your base to keep cloakers close enough to kill, you pretty much can't stop them. 3: Fields. The bases are smaller - fields are thus extremely powerful. One field can win you a base if simply place it where it overlaps the majority of the base. This is fine in small instances because there ARE multiple bases, but it WILL just become the way combat is done if it isn't dealt with now. So basically deal with the remnants of how flagging is now, and try to remove as much aggravation as possible. Hate to mention privs again, but last night's Turf was extremely fun and everyone was having a great time until a certain Priv joined and immediately proceeded to TW his cloaking ad shark to each base, cloaking around stealing flags without trying to fight and fielding every base. It took all of five minutes for him to TW to each base and LF from outside or coffin maker inside and ruin the flag game. It got so bad that he actually had to be spec'd by Boldot (at least that's what I understand happened). So there is direct evidence of the problems I've spoken of. Other than that, Turf was extremely fun.

lol, patently ridiculous. It takes enormous amounts of money and xp to truly max multiple ships, not to mention privs also have the advantage in their team skills and abuse skills. Here's an example. Last night, I minibased by myself in my Spider. Given my reputation in the zone, dozens of people pretty much suicide themselves to me trying to kill me in revenge, and things were going great (bounty > 200 at this point in the story). Then one of the gods, ever-watching from Mount Olympus, decided to leave spec and destroy me for my impudence in trying to gain cash. Pity came at me with a warbird, trying that 'circling' cheese that warbirds do to slow rotating spiders. Whoops, turns out I'm a good Spider pilot, and Pity fails, dies. At this point, Pity shipchanges and comes back with a Spider. Mine is superior, he dies. He shipchanges again, comes with a Weasel. EMP cheese doesn't work out, he dies. He shipchanges, comes at me with a cloaking ad burst shark. My X-radar and piloting nullifies his cheese attempt, he dies. Finally, he comes at me in a Javelin, staying at a distance while bouncing bombs down the minibase. I can't really deal with this as a Spider, and it's only a matter of time before he finally gets me when I'm low energy. Pity returns to spec with a 'rofl ez'. The point of this story? YOU could not do that. YOU, as a midlevel player, have a disadvantage against privs. If a priv wants you to die, you will die eventually, because they always have a maxed ship that can exploit your ships' weaknesses. It's the long run that matters when it comes to bountying.

You misunderstand if you think that I'm saying all the items should be 'better suited to new players'. All I'm saying is that new players need to be able to compete at all. The real mental test for you should be this: if a person of great skill joined the zone and fought with a low level ship, would that person's skill allow them to successfully compete with a no-skill person that has a supermaxed ship? Right now, that answer is no. A braindead stoner could beat the Tiger Woods of Hyperspace if the stoner had Unix's ships and the Tiger Woods had ships typical to people with under 10k xp. No amount of skill can help you catch up to a TWer, no amount of skill can help you survive instakill bursts, no amount of skill can help you survive thor storms, no amount of skill can help your slow, weak, terrible ship consistently catch and kill those with superior engines, reactors, and weapons. The only reason you don't see ultraskilled people languishing at newbie status is that they are also usually time-intensive players that just grind it out until they can finally get out of the newbie sinkhole. I know it took me forever to get to 10k xp and a few finished ships, but once I did it was almost insane how much easier it was to make cash. Of course, all bountying only lasts until some supermaxed priv (ever-watching from spec akin to the gods on top of Mount Olympus watching impudent mortals) decides to leave spec and hunt me with bursts, cloak, and/or their choice of most appropriate maxed ship. There's no real skill counter to that. Poof, dead. Er, anyways, my point is that I am advocating either the buff of newbie level items or the nerf of the ultra high end items/setups like TW key, triple thoring, shark ad burst rushing, and the like. I wouldn't even say anything, either, if I was the only one that hated these things. I actually think that buffing newbie items is the better solution, at this point. Why make newbies fly around with 800 energy and pea shooter in slow, weak, garbage ships for their first experience in the zone?

Wow, those items are ridiculous. My guess is that the alien items are only reactor sublight and armor because those item types are more or less ineffectual at ruining combat for everyone around you, unlike old alien tech like the Supercomputer and Ultra Rocket. A 32 shrapnel level 4 bomb would definitely ruin combat. I'd like to see something like this, though: Quantum Tunneler Cost: 2 mil, 25k exp Type: FTL, Alien Tech Effect: PM any friendly player with ?tunnel to attach to their ship, whether or not they are a lancaster. If they are not a lancaster, you are immediately unattached. Basically giving you the ability to give up antideath in order to attach to any teammate anywhere.

Newbies in HyperSpace v. Arnk - ah, what a grand problem. They have it too hard, but nobody can figure out exactly what the problem is. Now that my Warbird has Flash drive and full items (no capac), I know that it is impossible for a newbie to kill me. They might get lucky sometimes, but in general, it just won't happen enough for them to be a serious threat. The funny thing is, I'm sure players like Unix feel the same way about midlevel players like me - against supermaxed ships, alien tech, all the abuses that they employ, their unmatched teamwork, and their choice of using any ship they like, midlevel players just don't stand a chance. Aside from any critique of this system, there's one glaringly obvious problem here: newbies can only kill other newbies. Worse, midlevels can kill newbies and midlevels, and privs can kill all three levels of player. This means that for any population online, because they have more people to kill and bounty off of, privs will advance exponentially faster in cash than midlevels, who advance exponentially faster than newbies. That's how privs have millions, while I have 500k, and newbies have trouble getting 5k or 10k. This description is generalized enough that you can already point out a solution: enable newbies to fight other newbies more often, while trying to reduce how much privs kill them. This would flatten the money curve in a beneficial manner. This is very difficult to do, however, given that privs are the kind of people that tend to abuse, so a newbie-only arena would surely have veteran alts in it raping newbs to rack up cash to ?give to the vet. So what do we do? Honestly, I'd just slap a band-aid solution on it for now until something elegant comes up. Raise the ?give minimum to $50,000 instead of $10,000, and start every new account off with $45,000. Skip them straight past the initial phase where the least skilled players are forced to use garbage items to try to compete with veteran-piloted teaming godships.

Honestly, TW shouldn't even exist in the first place. Not only is Voyager asinine for making up yet another Deus Ex Machina mode of travel back to Earth, if the Borg really had Transwarp, let alone six massive Transwarp hubs that go throughout the Milky Way, they would have annihilated the whole galaxy long ago! WTF? Anyway, it's pretty much a ridiculous mechanic that just exacerbates the LAWLZ RICH > SAD POOR problem. It's not good for the zone for there to be an 'ace up your sleeve' mechanic that lets a rich person automatically win a situation if they want - they just choose not to use the 'ace up the sleeve' to give other people the illusion they can succeed so they don't quit. You have no idea how frustrating it is when there's 7 people on at 4 am, a jackpot of 28k, and one solitary priv just keeps TWing the flags all over the place while 6 normies fruitlessly chase him all over the map with no chance of success.

Hah, Unix is correct, moving Thors to base 8 would accomplish nothing but to increase the wealth gap. Sadly, he has to try to nullify it by saying it's 'complaining'. And again, he tries to blame the players for an imbalanced mechanic... One can warpcycle Thors and easily outmatch any team's repels simply in quan!@#$%^&*y alone. That means if they repped every Thor perfectly, they would still lose. Privs should just admit that they purposely hold back from using Thor spam because it'd instantly win a basing game and they want basing games to continue for cash. It's not some big secret that the only reason rich people argue that it's fine is that they like having an ace up their sleeve to guarantee a basing victory whenever they need it.

Just can't quite cut it centering in your warbird or shark? Too far away from walls for bursts and reps to get you free kills? Do you wish you could have millions like the 'pros'? Well, my friend, you need GAR'S MEGA BOUNTYING GUIDE FOR HYPERSPACE V. ARNK! GAR'S MEGA BOUNTYING GUIDE FOR HYPERSPACE V. ARNK The first thing you should do is think about how you kill and survive. Killing's not so important. That happens over time, even if you're not trying. People will fly into mines or bullets, you'll get a lucky shot, whatever. Survival is the most important thing for bountying. Unfortunately, survival often depends on skill, which we all know is prone to randomly getting you killed if Arnk rolls the dice the wrong way on you. So what do we do? The answer is simple: remove as much skill as possible from the equation! Strategy 1: The Wonder Twins Tired of getting killed? Well, why not just make yourself invincible? For this skill-removing strategy, you'll need two friends. Setup (3 person priv): 1 Spider with Pulse or Gauss, and Solid Nutronium or Shock Matrix. 2 Lancasters both with Summon. Here's what you do: have the spider set a hotkey for ?summon to each of the Lancasters. Have the Spider attach to one, and have the two of them fly around shooting at people. It doesn't really matter if you aim, as people will chase you all over. Being on a turret, the Spider will take almost no damage from guns. Whenever the Lanc dies (and it will always die first) or whenever the Spider is in trouble, just have it ?summon to the other Lanc, which is hiding safely somewhere. In 3 seconds, the other Lanc will be revived, allowing the Spider to jump back and forth to instantaneous and unstoppable safety. Ignore the people that scream at you, as they're just jealous With this method, you can pretty much get infinite bounty with no skill whatsoever. It works really well in the minibase, too. More to come in the morning! Inspired by Unix & Pity.

The real reason thors are overpowered now is alot simpler than splash radius or damage numbers: their natural counter, repels, are less prevalent. This is due both to the fact that repels cost money and to the fact that repels have been repurposed as purely something you try to spam off before you get killed. It's very rare that you're just sitting around in your team without having used a repel. Funnily enough, this itself is a result of repel being the natural counter to burst, which is now FAR too prevalent and FAR too powerful, and to shark rushes, against which repels are your only hope of stopping the overpowered ship 8 from passing you (or bursting you). So if you want to nerf thors without touching them at all, nerf bursts and possibly sharks. These changes should already be on the docket for the zone devs anyway, so just say it's being done to nerf thors too! edit: and is it my imagination or are repels of less duration in this reset? I notice their effect on guns is minimal to useless...