Pilot Archive

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1st_Viduus wrote:

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NightGun wrote:

I beleive on the loot drops the cert levels and such may have been a weak/failed attempt at helping to difernciate the different ship classes (Heavy, Medium, Light). I don't think their should be a direct mass to performance ratio on anything but they should try to blanace it out (a lot more than currently is) to force each type of player to look for certain types of componets that are better for them.

Light fighters - all components need to be small with low energy requirments (looking for the most Damage(or whatever for the least amount of mass)

Medium - A little more wiggle room so probably using slightly heavier weapons but still running into lots of problems equiping the absolute best of everything.

Heavy fighters - Mass is of little concern just get the most effect out of each item possible.

The differnt loot levels should each have components geared towards each differnt class of player rather than like it is now if you are a light fighter you look for good cert 4 or less loot since their isn't much high end loot you can even think about using. They need to also make sure that the loot drop tables are adjusted some (I think they did int this patch) to drop level appropriate (not fighter type appropriate that is all luck) types of loot.

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I agree with this, and yet I don't.

Let me elaborate:
I feel ships should be divided into sub-classes more effectively, as per your statements (light, medium, heavy, aka Fighter, Bomber, MP).
HOWEVER by the same token I'm all for certification levels -- i.e. Better Stuff at Higher Certifications.
So then that would mean 3 classes of item per cert level:
Light Cert5 Reactor would produce less (but close within reason) Energy than a Medium Cert5 reactor, however would have more mass (proportionately) would also have more HP/AP. (bigger so it can take more damage).
Cert levels would therefore mean better performace, not increase all stats.
Cert 5 should be guaranteed to outperform Cert 1, regardless of size.

I also feel that you can't "Fit Up" (or at least, not more than 1 component per ship) f.ex. a Medium reactor on a fighter, but no other "Medium" grade components can be "stuffed" into the space the ship has. (Volume)

However you can "fit down" (MP ship using Medium Grade) -- at a significant loss of performance.
E.g. - Medium Grade engine on MP Ship = max speed 72 - modified to hull = max speed 65 - modified to grade mismatch = max speed 50.

Am I making any sense, or just rambling....?

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• V (view) Updates!
  As it stands, "status" (online/offline/lowered efficiency) shows and updates correctly, as does damage.
  However, droid program enhancements do not list here; actual numbers for overloads or efficiencies would be appreciated.
  Perhaps shown as Default on one line, and in red the actual statistics one line below.


• MatchSpeed! Great feature!
  However, it would be fantastic if it were Dynamic.


• MP Ships - an option for 3rd person view to be in the ship rather than exterior.
  As it says, an option, so you can either/or it.


• Resizeable / Toggleable HUD components!
  This would be awesome, thanks :}


• Player Squadrons (Separate from Ground PA) for Aces
  Having completed Ace, your squadron has nothing left for you, excepting Duty Missions (and that's fine); given that we have virtually no squadron identity even so, having mastered Ace should allow us to create or join a Player Squadron, with similar principles to PA's, yet not force us to leave our ground PA.
  There's no reason they should need to be one and the same; a pilot in the American Air Force member of the 101st (pick a squadron ) can still be a member of the Knights of Columbus at home.....


• The ability to rename Flight Computers in the Datapad!
  I'd love to set up 1 FC for each of my 3 active ships, plus another for the Decimator, depending on what we're going out for... but as they cannot be renamed this makes for some interesting browsing through the listed commands stored and trying to remember which is which. We have a plethora of programs, but very limited storage. Droids can be named... why not Flight Computers?


• The ability to take a single observer up in 1-man ships
  As JtL is a skill based-game, whereas the ground game is... not as dependant on player skills, the ability to take a single person into a one-man ship and giving them "pilot's view" (e.g. they can see everything I do, and ship status, but not touch anything) would allow better pilots to train those for whom JtL is challenging.
  It is in the best interest of pilots to help those who are in the same faction, or even PA, to train those who they fly with.
  There are currently no real tools for this in game; this ability combined with a matching title of "Pilot Training Helper" (similar to the existing "Helper" tag) would go a long way to improving the skill mean in JtL, and reduce many of the complaints on these forums from those who simply don't understand why it's difficult.
  I for one would embrace the role of Teacher if this were implemented.


• Squadron-Specific Colorings for the Ace Jacket!
  Or the ability to color the thing... many crafted clothing or armor peices can be colored by players... why not the Jackets?
  I'm sorry; though I'm wearing mine (for the Imperial Lapels) I find the color to be... dismal... at best.
  Besides, since when is grey (is it grey? or beige?) a color of the empire? Black, Red, or White are the only colors I've ever seen Imperials wearing....


• Reverse Names Display for Player Ships Selected!
  Please, reverse the display! We're not targetting the player, we're targetting the ship -- it makes more sense to see the ship name then the pilot's name, not vice versa. This is a small small thing but would certainly enhance the game IMO, and people would find naming their ships much more fun...

That about covers it for now... :}
There's many many more ideas out there, and in my head hehe, but we don't want the list to get too long now do we...?

:}

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rols_cerentz wrote:

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1st_Viduus wrote:

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NightGun wrote:

I beleive on the loot drops the cert levels and such may have been a weak/failed attempt at helping to difernciate the different ship classes (Heavy, Medium, Light). I don't think their should be a direct mass to performance ratio on anything but they should try to blanace it out (a lot more than currently is) to force each type of player to look for certain types of componets that are better for them.

Light fighters - all components need to be small with low energy requirments (looking for the most Damage(or whatever for the least amount of mass)

Medium - A little more wiggle room so probably using slightly heavier weapons but still running into lots of problems equiping the absolute best of everything.

Heavy fighters - Mass is of little concern just get the most effect out of each item possible.

The differnt loot levels should each have components geared towards each differnt class of player rather than like it is now if you are a light fighter you look for good cert 4 or less loot since their isn't much high end loot you can even think about using. They need to also make sure that the loot drop tables are adjusted some (I think they did int this patch) to drop level appropriate (not fighter type appropriate that is all luck) types of loot.

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I agree with this, and yet I don't.

Let me elaborate:
I feel ships should be divided into sub-classes more effectively, as per your statements (light, medium, heavy, aka Fighter, Bomber, MP).
HOWEVER by the same token I'm all for certification levels -- i.e. Better Stuff at Higher Certifications.
So then that would mean 3 classes of item per cert level:
Light Cert5 Reactor would produce less (but close within reason) Energy than a Medium Cert5 reactor, however would have more mass (proportionately) would also have more HP/AP. (bigger so it can take more damage).
Cert levels would therefore mean better performace, not increase all stats.
Cert 5 should be guaranteed to outperform Cert 1, regardless of size.

I also feel that you can't "Fit Up" (or at least, not more than 1 component per ship) f.ex. a Medium reactor on a fighter, but no other "Medium" grade components can be "stuffed" into the space the ship has. (Volume)

However you can "fit down" (MP ship using Medium Grade) -- at a significant loss of performance.
E.g. - Medium Grade engine on MP Ship = max speed 72 - modified to hull = max speed 65 - modified to grade mismatch = max speed 50.

Am I making any sense, or just rambling....?

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It sounds like you are suggesting that things become overly complicated. With what you propose, it could take two to three times as long for a SW to gather enough Level 8 Certed Components to be able to creat a single, much better, Level 8 Component. It simply wouldn't make sense to be capable of mixing 'light', 'medium' and 'heavy' level 8 components to creat the final component. How would you determine the 'scale' of the final component?

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However, either of 2 things would need to happen:
Either 1. Not Mixable

or 2. Say we have one of each for a RE3 job.
One Light, one Med., one Heavy.
Mass then must be adjusted not just by "the best stat", nor performance.
The RE then would need to choose the class, since there is one of each, and modifyers would be placed on the statistics accordingly:

He chooses medium so (a la which item goes in first as is already in-game for choice of coloring/name/view style)-> rationic increases for allstatistics -- meaning the best stat is taken but instead of being Directly (1:1) taken it's taken as SS/SSM performance increase ratio -- not really complicated as it sounds.(ss = small stat, ssm = small stat max)

So, let's say the best recharge you can get on a cert3 capacitor is 28, and the peice you brought in has 27.5 on the small;
the large has a max of 35, the peice you brought in has 32, and your medium max for cert3 is 32, yours is 26.

so the final product gets (27.5/28) performance rating on (x/32) because that's the greater of the two stats, and then the increase for the RE3 skill bonus (1%? 2?)

Again it sounds complicated, but it's rather simple. I do understand that it appears more complex than it really is... but basically to still be able to mix and match s, m, & l, you take ratio of performance or value and place it in the final product.
This would of course require that all statistics have a minimum and maximum for each type and certification, but IMO that should already exist, yet does not appear to.
Which is why I looted a Cert 10 Reactor with 9,750 or so energy, and I have a Cert4 with 13,100+.
Makes absolutely no sense.

They've tried, with the system currently in place, to mix 2 systems into one, and it just doesn't work.
They need to separate them IMO.
What good does Cert 10 give you for your Tier4 fighter? None whatsoever. There is absolutely no way you'll ever get past Cert7 or maybe Cert8 into it, and most components down at 4 to 6.Do you see what I'm saying? I used Cert4 items (and still have some cert4 that outperform anything higher) for almost everything in my fighters... and still many components are.

Separating these values would vastly improve your abilities to fit your ships, and make Ace (and the all-Certs-Attained) mean something for fitting ships other than the MP ship.

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1st_Viduus wrote:

Yes, from an RE point of view this complicates things.

However, either of 2 things would need to happen:
Either 1. Not Mixable

or 2. Say we have one of each for a RE3 job.
One Light, one Med., one Heavy.
Mass then must be adjusted not just by "the best stat", nor performance.
The RE then would need to choose the class, since there is one of each, and modifyers would be placed on the statistics accordingly:

He chooses medium so (a la which item goes in first as is already in-game for choice of coloring/name/view style)-> rationic increases for all statistics -- meaning the best stat is taken but instead of being Directly (1:1) taken it's taken as SS/SSM performance increase ratio -- not really complicated as it sounds.(ss = small stat, ssm = small stat max)

So, let's say the best recharge you can get on a cert3 capacitor is 28, and the peice you brought in has 27.5 on the small;
the large has a max of 35, the peice you brought in has 32, and your medium max for cert3 is 32, yours is 26.

so the final product gets (27.5/28) performance rating on (x/32) because that's the greater of the two stats, and then the increase for the RE3 skill bonus (1%? 2?)

Again it sounds complicated, but it's rather simple. I do understand that it appears more complex than it really is... but basically to still be able to mix and match s, m, & l, you take ratio of performance or value and place it in the final product.
This would of course require that all statistics have a minimum and maximum for each type and certification, but IMO that should already exist, yet does not appear to.
Which is why I looted a Cert 10 Reactor with 9,750 or so energy, and I have a Cert4 with 13,100+.
Makes absolutely no sense.

They've tried, with the system currently in place, to mix 2 systems into one, and it just doesn't work.
They need to separate them IMO.
What good does Cert 10 give you for your Tier4 fighter? None whatsoever. There is absolutely no way you'll ever get past Cert7 or maybe Cert8 into it, and most components down at 4 to 6. Do you see what I'm saying? I used Cert4 items (and still have some cert4 that outperform anything higher) for almost everything in my fighters... and still many components are.

Separating these values would vastly improve your abilities to fit your ships, and make Ace (and the all-Certs-Attained) mean something for fitting ships other than the MP ship.

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This is a game. Currently, it is a fairly complicated game with all sorts of modifiers, options and quite a few very comprehensive systems in place.

With that in mind, I see no reason to further complicate things other then to drive people out of the game. There are reasons, for instance, that not everyone is a Mathematician, as you progress in Math the problems become more complicated and for many people more frustrating.

You take something simple and increase it's complexity you increase the potential for frustration. When you do that in a MMORPG, then you end up driving up the frustration of players to the point that many may greatly consider leaving the game.

What you are proposing sounds similar to the terrible 'crafting' system from Anarchy Online. I played that game in Beta and for about a year after Beta. The one thing that regularly frustrated me was the overly complicated crafting system, coupled with the bizare random loot system. It could take weeks upon weeks for a casual gamer to gather up enough components within a set range of levels to be able to finish a crafted item. Even with purchasing extra items from the randomly generated at time of access vending machines, it could still take far to long.

There was so much complexity to the crafting that it became one of the primary reasons for me to leave the game. The combat was fun, the scenery was breathtaking, there 'appeared' to be more content then in SWG, but in the end I just couldn't get past the overly complicated crafting system.

Right now, the SWG/JTL Crafting system has a percieved complexity that works extremely well. Once you get into the crafting system you discover that it's not really all that complex and what you are really looking at is a time investment. You can work up fairly complex spreadsheets and mathematical formulae around the crafting system and it may help you be a better crafter, but overall you don't need to do anything but put in some time.

That's the way I like it and that's the way I would like to see it stay, permanently.

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Check out my NGE Interface Guide here and learn some ins and outs of the NGE Interface.

(1nnrr[[[nnnWX9ggggggggggggggggggggg)

Rols Cerentz

New Republic Order - Lowca

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1st_Viduus wrote:

You're right, this is a game.

And while I feel that the current component setup is umm... less than adequate, you feel differently. And that's fine.

All of this could be made much easier with a little transparency.

I've wasted several great components in RE's because of 2 stats being greater, only to find later that there was even better (cap with recharge of 40.2 at Cert/RE 4 for example) that I could have saved that 1k Capacity for instead of the 36.5 that seemed awesome at the time....

Now I'm almost scared to get anything RE'd, because there's such a huge variance on statistics for any given Cert level.

It's extremely frustrating.

Add to that the rarity of finding a great spec. value... *sigh*.

knowing that Cert 5 had to be better than Cert 4 is what all of the above boils down to; and as I said, some transparency would go a long, long way to making any system changes un-necessary, and alleviate some a lot of the pressure from pilots and MSW's who are trying to wade through guesswork and semi-informed statements made as fact.

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1st_Viduus wrote:

I believe you misunderstand the original intent.

It's not a matter of wanting more complexity; as far as I can tell, what the devs did is take two very simple systems and combine them into one, which made things very complex, compared to having 2 systems - one for size, and within it, one for performance, with the understanding that as you gain higher certifications, you gain access to "better" stuff - so cert 4 of any size would need to be better than cert 3, et cetera.

They probably combined them for the very reasons you stated: too much stuff!

They then compounded the problem by not granting us any clarity on the system whatsoever, so that now I'm an Ace Pilot, and can access Cert 10 stuff, which should be vastly superior to cert 4... and yet the fastest cap recharge I've looted is on a cert6 with 46.3! The Cert 10's I loot are for the most part in the 20's!!! All of the parts exhibit this very behavior to some degree.

It's insane.

But yes, some clear-cut guidelines as to min/max statistics would be great.
The only thing I can see that isn't 100% random is mass... which it would seem MUST be at least 5k more for each cert for most items... *sigh*.

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Message Edited by DosWindo on 12-30-2004 11:29 AM