Carbineer Archive

• This is the most simple and the most obvious, get doctor buffs. With these buffs, the HAM costs on your specials will be either zero or so small that your buffed regen rate will fill you back up immediately. I see reports of these costing from 6-10k depending on the server. You should be able to find them at the crowded starports such as Coronet and Theed. While you may scoff at the cost, 1 mission will earn the cost back. If you are planning to spend 1-2 hours hunting, the cost is very worth it.

• Chef foods. There are several chef foods that increase the secondary stats including Breath of Heaven and Ryshcate. The trick is to find 1 food and 1 drink so that you take 1 of each. The way HAM costs work, once you hit 1500 in your Strength or Quickness, your cost is zero. If you can use some foods to get up into the 1000-1200 range your HAM costs will be very low. So low you can use specials and only after very long periods of fighting need a stim or some rest to regen.

• Understand the specials. If you look at the specials here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=carabineer&message.id=15609you will find there are 3 classes of specials with respect to HAM usage.

1. First, there are the insane specials and those include the fullautosingles and areas. Never ever ever use these specials unless you are heavily buffed. The cost is an insane ~150 per special.Use these with armor on and you can hit 200 HAM per special. Just plain suicide!


2. Next are the action heavy specials. These include crippleshot and legshot. When you fire these specials, note how the HAM cost is green. That means the cost is coming mostly from action. Use these specials a lot and your Action will drain quick and leave the other 2 bars largely full.


3. The last class is what I call the balanced class and includes burstshot1. Fire this special and you will notice the HAM cost is similar to others BUT is yellow (red + green = yellow). It is yellow because the cost is coming from both health and action. You might say so what, the cost is the same who cares where it comes from. This is true but the subtile advantage to this is that since it is coming from 2 pools the HAM cost will regenerate back much faster since each pool is regenerating. This doesn't solve the HAM cost issue, but if you are forced to fight without buffs, you will be able to fire specials for a longer period of time by using this class of specials. This is why many players recommend taking the box that gives busrtshot1 as the first box.

• Gun choice can affect HAM costs. If you do not have easy access to buffs or foods, then this becomes important. Stay away from carbines with scopes and stocks. You also will want to get yourself a DH17 snubnose. Good damage and speed with very low HAM costs. Just be aware that this carbine has no armor piercing and so it will do great damage on the beginner planets but on the advanced planets its damage will be reduced dramatically. On those planets you want to move to the higher HAM cost carbines. Do not be fooled by thinking you can still use the DH17 and just use a few more specials. The damage on this carbine can easily be cut in half or more and the HAM cost on the other carbines is less than twice the cost on the DH17. Basically, the other carbines will use your HAM cost more efficiently.

• Slicing indirectly effects your HAM costs. A damage-sliced carbine will do more damage per shot which means you get more bang for your buck. If you can kill a target with 10 shots, a damage-sliced carbine might let you kill in 7 or 8 shots. This will mean you spend less HAM per target. Following the same logic, powerups that increase your damage will also help with HAM costs since they will helpkill they target with less shots. Please note than in general, speed-slices result in faster killing so if you are buffed, stick with those.

Message Edited by novamarine on 03-12-2004 11:35 AM

Nova....my hero

A side note: Doc buff randomness isgoing awaynow that they will be able to re-buff bad ones. Even though it seems like a waste to re-buff when they are not random, I believe it is a good change. I hated wearing my Comp and getting a 900 Quickness buff....no spam for me and I LIKE SPAM

Message Edited by TAfirehawk on 03-12-2004 10:42 AM

/agree 100%

Trying to think of sompthing to add hehe....

Alright. If you do get your ham cost under controle with buffs and or food. Make use of your area attacks like full auto single 2. They are bad on hams but like i said this is for buffed people. Hitting 3+ targets per shot is a lot more efficient than taking em out one at a time. It takes some work to get em all lined up but its worth it.

In my guild we usualy have a group around our city that people join wen they solo hunt. Everyone goes their own way or a couple people team up. I was running faction missions today in a group like this. We had about 9 players with good combat skills. I was taking faction missions for points. With the large group i was getting 5-7 stormtroopers per mission hehe. Most of the time i could target the flag its self at about 40m and fire full auto area 2 a lot..with the action 2 a couple times just for good mesure hehe. I could take out all of them in the time it would take me to kill 2 of them...and the base is well damaged. I managed to get about 5k faction points in a couple hours.

Good stuff as always Nova!

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TAfirehawk wrote:

Nova....my hero

A side note: Doc buff randomness isgoing awaynow that they will be able to re-buff bad ones. Even though it seems like a waste to re-buff when they are not random, I believe it is a good change. I hated wearing my Comp and getting a 900 Quickness buff....no spam for me and I LIKE SPAM

Message Edited by TAfirehawk on 03-12-2004 10:42 AM

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BMGundam wrote:

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TAfirehawk wrote:

Nova....my hero

A side note: Doc buff randomness isgoing awaynow that they will be able to re-buff bad ones. Even though it seems like a waste to re-buff when they are not random, I believe it is a good change. I hated wearing my Comp and getting a 900 Quickness buff....no spam for me and I LIKE SPAM

Message Edited by TAfirehawk on 03-12-2004 10:42 AM

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I'm pretty sure you will not get to rebuff. The buffs will be static, meaning if the average is 2.1k you will always get 2.1k. No more 1k buffs but there will be no more 3k buffs either.

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Go read the Doc forum please....

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novamarine wrote:

Glad this is well recieved. I have had it around for some time but didn't post it because of the upcoming changes. Since they are still a Publish away I decided to go live with it.

Please note I added a small section on how slicing effects HAM costs. My boss walked in when I was cut and pasting the message in and so I hit Submitted and alt-f4'ed the window.

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Too bad you are wrong on this one Nova......and I thought you were a god!!!!!

Speed slice does more DPS unless you hit the Speed Cap. I can hunt down the thread where all the math is if you want.

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BMGundam wrote:

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TAfirehawk wrote:

Nova....my hero

A side note: Doc buff randomness isgoing awaynow that they will be able to re-buff bad ones. Even though it seems like a waste to re-buff when they are not random, I believe it is a good change. I hated wearing my Comp and getting a 900 Quickness buff....no spam for me and I LIKE SPAM

Message Edited by TAfirehawk on 03-12-2004 10:42 AM

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I'm pretty sure you will not get to rebuff. The buffs will be static, meaning if the average is 2.1k you will always get 2.1k. No more 1k buffs but there will be no more 3k buffs either.

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This is more or less correct. Buffs will no longer be random. The buff will be based on all the same stuff now (buff kit power + wound treatment skill) but every buff will be the same.

Also, better buffs will superceed bad buffs, so no need to kill yourself to get rebuffed.

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TAfirehawk wrote:

Too bad you are wrong on this one Nova......and I thought you were a god!!!!!

Speed slice does more DPS unless you hit the Speed Cap. I can hunt down the thread where all the math is if you want.

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