Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Interesting news about creatures and CH.
Spazzers wrote:Most BE's don't master CH. The just take enough to teach the basic commands. Some go as far as being able to train mount as well. A BE that is a master CH is typically making animals for themself so they probably do have combat skills to go with.
Regardless, your pet gains xp through combat. You can sit on your hands and watch from a safe distance if you choose to do so. I wouldn't recommend this for missions but 1 on 1 it works very well. You can also get a non-cert weapon if you feel the need to help your pet. There are some decent rifles that require no cert.
Anyone that has the drive and desire will find a way. Once you've learned a few decent pet commands you can relax and use any combat points for something else. Nothing says you have to learn all 27 commands and nothing says you have to learn them in 3 days.
"I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try."
I USED to swear by mBioE/mCH/ranger tracking 3... not any more.
ranger tracking 3, in addition to having the dubiously useful '/areatrack' skill, used to show special attacks on /examine, as well as the CL of the mob (from master scout).
now, /examine doesn't work... or rather, doesn't show any information. the CL of any mob is clearly displayed when targetted, and can be guessed 'at a glance' from the /con color. since /areatrack has always depended on CURRENTLY spawned mobs in the area, and since mob spawning hasn't gotten any better overall, and since every mob is now a simple 'angry bag' in whatever skin it wears, tracking single targets doesn't matter. since organic harvesting from mission terminal lairs and spawns is much more efficient than wandering and tracking, the /areatrack command loses a little more ground.
I'm beginning to suspect that mBioE/mCH/BH 0004 is a better template... since combat efficacy is looking to be more and more critical for CH.
I've master CH with combat, and I've mastered CH with TTR (Tame, Train, Release). CH/combat is much faster... MUCH faster. since a mCH (or ANY CH) needs substantial xp to 'break in' or 'level up' a pet, and since this xp is ONLY found in combat, noncombat CH's (like the above-mentioned BioE/CH/ranger combo) are out of luck... unless they really like advancing 1xp at a time towards 400k xp for a CL70 pet.
You know what is weird? When I was testing the CU on TC5, I would do examine without ranger skills and I wouldseethe 'to hit' value of the animal. I should have done more with this - would have been interesting to know if they'd thought to make the 'to hit' value different between the wild animals of the same leveland then laterdecided toplain vanilla it in them and thus carried it over to us as well ...
dor.
The curb pretty much turned ranger into a waste of skill points. There are a few things a ranger can do that are useful but I would argue the use versus the skill point expense makes it not worth the effort.
I used the have MBE/novice rifles and a lot of CH. I gave up master CH so I could get a bulky vendor. Eventually I got an alt that was a merchant and took up master CH again. This combo was great, and even worked well after the Curb.
Pretty typical of us players is we got blinded by the light again, me included. We were given a new "pet special" system and everyone went woohooo! (well almost everyone). The light was so bright we forgot all about the pet AI being broken. Pets are still single minded aggro creators. They still hit one target and one target only. If you call them off the target they are hitting before the target is dead, the pet breaks, even with its new specials. They told us the pet AI is a complicated fix and they don't know how long it will take, pretty much the same thing they're telling the tailors. Until the AI works pet specials are sorta pointless.
We have been given a new shiny car with some new options but the car still only goes in reverse with no rear view mirror.
Oh, and no Dor you do not have to keep the pet once you have learned the special. The system is tame, grind, learn, release. BE pets also must be ground pet xp in order for a slot to open before they can be taught an ability. The number of slots available depends on the level of the pet.
Spazzers wrote:The system is tame, grind, learn, release. BE pets also must be ground pet xp in order for a slot to open before they can be taught an ability. The number of slots available depends on the level of the pet.
which is exactly what concerns me... the rate of 'grind and learn' is all combat based... and in the old days, CH could be mastered with TTR (Tame, Train, Release). it was slow, to be sure, but once you mastered CH, you didn't have to grind any more.
now? not only do you need xp to master the profession, you also need xp with each and every pet you want to use effectively... it's like requiring a master rifleman (a profession I mean no slight to, having rifles in many templates since I started playing the game) to spend 400k rifle xp to use a T21... and then buying a new T21, and needing another 400k xp (based on CL70 pet experience numbers on TC... 399k for a CL69).
without significant combat abilities, CH's will find the 'tame, grind, learn, release' system to be prohibitively slow.
There have been some early findings that show non-ch animals do not gain pet xp therefore they would never open a slot. I may be that a non-ch pet would have to be ground by a CH first in order for it to gain pet xp.
Yes, the amount of time needed to invest in pet grinding could be a deterant to pet users. The fact that a pet the creature handler could care less about must be ground in order to learn a special does not sound like a "fun" game experience.
To be completely honest, however, it isn't the grinding of pets that will be (and already is) the deciding factor to take up the CH profession or not. The simple fact that the pet AI is still broken makes CH and pet use an excersize in frustration. I can't help but laugh at the thought of grinding out multiple pets over an extended period of time using a broken pet AI. I think I'd rather have my gums scraped.
I won't be coming back to this game until the pet AI is fixed, along with BE tailor tissues. Until the game is playable and fun for everyone, and not just a select group, it isn't worth my time or money.
I just totally don't get why it is preferable to have a baby stay as a semi-useless baby in your datapad for a week (or longer!) instead of starting out as a strong 'weapon' that may not be 'finished'during that time (ie. have all it's ability slots) but is at leastFUNCTIONAL and useable. If you fight with your pet during all the time that you would not have been able to before b/c it was a baby, that's like 'free xp' because you'd not have been able to do that before.I mean if you think of it as being rewarded for using the pet rather than being required to 'grind' pets ... then it looks a whole lot better.
Everything spazzers says about the pet AI not working - THAT's bad. Everything Cin says about the size - THAT's bad too.
Message Edited by Dorelli on 08-02-2005 04:44 AM
Spazzers complaint, well one of them, seems to be that we have to tame a baby we don't want, use it for awhile to learn its special, then just dispose of it. From a mechanical perspective, it is like making a Master Pistoleer use a CDEF to learn Stopping Shot. From a more sentimental and emotional perspective, it turns these temporary tames into disposable weapons, which a lot of Handlers find abhorrant. Both concepts seem wrong when thought of in that light.
I like collecting things, so the new system probably won't bother me too much. However, when I think about this with what I wrote above, it feels like it is one more thing to lessen my emotional attachment to my pets. One point of solace is that once I have all the specials learned, I will be past that period.
If the AI is fixed, I am sure the system will be an improvement over the system. Maybe not a huge one, but being able to tame any pet you want and customize its specials will be good. To that end I am happy about it.
Dorelli wrote:
PS. In every attempt I have ever made to disagree with Lammergeier (or for that matter Spazzers) they have pulled out a complete, logical well thought out and expressed REASON why i am wrong and I have been converted ... so i'm waiting ....
I hope this counts:
nonCH mounts, in particular, will be prohibitively expensive, or cast-off tames. babies may come with 'full stats' now, but they still 'size' as babies until they're grown (with). BioE clones (which are, with the exception of falumpasets and CL10 dewbacks) will require considerable xp investment to 'grow' to a size where they can be mounted. wild tamed mounts will take the same xp investment.
currently, a BioE or CH can 'sell' a nonCH mount to another player, and that player can sit on it for a week to grow it, then have it trained as a mount. with xp-based growth, I suspect players will NOT want 'baby' mount-style pets to DIY grow. the only mounts I can see working? the 'cast-off tames' from above. as CH's will be scrambling for all manner of new specials to learn from their pets, they'll undoubtedly tame a nonCH mount with a random special, and 'grow' it enough to learn from it.
so... the mounts that ARE available will be the ones that a CH has grown (expensive) or that a CH has grown and wants to get rid of (which brings specials into the nonCH market... another problem).
on a completely different tack:
non-combat CH's still gain little from this system. the analogy of 'pistoleers using a CDEF to learn Stopping Shot' is a fair one... a master CH has already invested plenty of time and xp into the profession, and to remain competitive must now sink a LOT more xp into a variety of throwaway pets. each pet is individual and unique... making an 'xp-sink' for each fairly expensive... imagine if the pistoleer who used a CDEF to learn Stopping Shot (and a different pistol for each additional 'special attack') then had to spend 400k xp for each level of usefulness for each 'master level' pistol they want to use? now imagine that pistoleer is CL58 (mBioE/mCH base CL). it's a staggering amount of xp required, and it gets steeper with lower CL's.
lammergeier wrote:
but they still 'size' as babies until they're grown
If they would simply fix the pet AI to actually work, this new system would freakin' ROCK! But no. They spent the time on creating new content without fixing the mechanics of the system first. Very typical SOE. "We'll blind them with the glitz and glamour of new content. They'll forget that the game still doesn't work."
And that's exactly what we do. We get starry eyed over the new content and forget that pets are still broken. Mind you the new content is great and I wouldn't ask for it to go away but new content is just as broken if the mechanics don't work properly. This goes for every other profession as well. I just wish they would fix the broken mechanics so the base game actually works and stop d!cking around with content.
I agree with Lamm regarding throw away pets. One well thought out post in the CH forum likened the CH grind to the Jedi, with the exception our profession is still broken. In order to gain abilities, pets have to be tamed, ground,learned from, and disposed of....over and over and over again. The higher level animals have to be ground for extended periods because of the amount of pet xp.
There is a potential good side to this system of throw away pets though. A non-ch may be able to purchase an animal with innate abilities because a CH has used the pet to learn from. Combine this with a mount and you have a non-CH pet that is actually functional instead of just a used slot in the datapad.
Downside? There is always a downside. Mounts still slow during combat even though you can't shoot from them and they still draw aggro. I always come back to that dang pet AI don't I? I wish a developer would do the same. 
Kaomond wrote:
lammergeier wrote:
but they still 'size' as babies until they're grown
I'm sure i read somewhere on one of the dozens of posts about this on the CH forum that as of now on TC they tame at baby size, but the plan is that level 1 to 10 pets (once the patch has had its rough edges shaved off) will tame at a minimum base size for each skin which is smaller than a full grown but large enough for mounting etc. I may be totally wrong and misreading what i read, i may have even dreamed it, i've tried to find where i read it but can't hehe.
plan or not, it's a problem as it stands.
remember, DNA has a full ten values... and cloning uses only two working values (health, damage) and one derivative value (CL). I'm still concerned about THAT, myself.
LloydPickering wrote:
Why am I cynical in thinking that there is as much chance as a snowball in hell that the devs will get it right...In fact...as every new publish completely trashes another part of the game, I predict that BE will no longer be able to craft any pets with over 1k health...oh and med crafting will suddenly dissapear from BE...(For which a bewildered dev team will respond "You never were particularly stuck on meds anyway, were u?"...either that or "It's a new...erm...feature")
