Smuggler Archive
Thread: Recursive Macros are being taken out, and how this affects smugglers.
Nicolas_Frost
Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:48 pm
#53
Exactly why I said let AFK people be able to heal, but incapable of buffing.
Doesn't take but a moment to see if you're afk at the time, so it shouldn't be that big a deal for Entertainers to stay active to buff. I mean, if you got a macro going, simply set up a little /tell to yourself, and open up your options window, and select to *not* see afk text. If you send a /tell to yourself every say, two minutes, and eventually, don't see itwhen you should, then you know you've gone afk.
Simple, really. That's all the devs need to change.
Doesn't take but a moment to see if you're afk at the time, so it shouldn't be that big a deal for Entertainers to stay active to buff. I mean, if you got a macro going, simply set up a little /tell to yourself, and open up your options window, and select to *not* see afk text. If you send a /tell to yourself every say, two minutes, and eventually, don't see itwhen you should, then you know you've gone afk.
Simple, really. That's all the devs need to change.
Geevo
Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:04 pm
#54
I have never used a macro for faction or crafting. Macros are not needed.
(yes I know a lot disagree)
WesBelden
Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:06 pm
#55
Same Geevo. Only macro I've ever used was /deathblow ... which isn't really a macro, just assigning an action to my toolbar.
ikolian
Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:23 pm
#56
1700+ posts in less than 22 hours- wow, I think the devs hit a nerve with this. Way I see it, this is another go at punishing everyone/taking the easy way out for fixing SWG. I mean, come on, would people spend so much time on macros if it wasn't all tedious? A game should not be a time sink to have fun, honestly, remember back in the day when games were enjoyable the entire time you played? Did anyone ever 'grind' Mario? or have to camp in checkers? There's a more deep-seated problem here than AFK play.
JTGAlpha
Mon Aug 02, 2004 2:51 pm
#57
Why I'm not concerned....
1) Faction Selling: Admittedly I have little experience with this, but from what I understand this doesn't mean we can't use macros for buying/selling. We just have to write long macro programs and keep an eye on them. But even if this is an inconvenience, perhaps this will give us the reason to get the devs to do something about the Underworld tree before the revamp.
2) Spice and other crafting: Not concerned AT ALL. First of all, I did all my crafting by hand. It's not that hard, and not that tedious. It's really no big deal (and I'm a master smuggler/merchant so I did it for business line as well). Hell it took me longer to get PISTOL xp then it did to do all my crafting.
Worst case scenario...you have macro programs that run for a long time. But not indefinitely. That's the basics here. We'll just have to come back and check on our macros instead of forgetting about them. Not the end of the world.
jbezorg
Mon Aug 02, 2004 3:02 pm
#58
In the imortal words of Admiral Ackbar
"It's a trap!"
It's just a ruse to stop us asking about the smuggler revamp!
Ipseck
Mon Aug 02, 2004 3:59 pm
#59
JTGAlpha wrote:Why I'm not concerned....1) Faction Selling: Admittedly I have little experience with this, but from what I understand this doesn't mean we can't use macros for buying/selling. We just have to write long macro programs and keep an eye on them. But even if this is an inconvenience, perhaps this will give us the reason to get the devs to do something about the Underworld tree before the revamp.2) Spice and other crafting: Not concerned AT ALL. First of all, I did all my crafting by hand. It's not that hard, and not that tedious. It's really no big deal (and I'm a master smuggler/merchant so I did it for business line as well). Hell it took me longer to get PISTOL xp then it did to do all my crafting.Worst case scenario...you have macro programs that run for a long time. But not indefinitely. That's the basics here. We'll just have to come back and check on our macros instead of forgetting about them. Not the end of the world.
ya know what? you're absolutely right.. Instead of being concerned about the no-loop thing, We could just write a macro to transfer 1k faction, and just keep using it over and over again. Its alot easier to keep track of the 1000s than it is the 100s
zChuckRoastz
Mon Aug 02, 2004 4:31 pm
#60
IndySWG wrote:
My proposed solution:
- Create a small Faction Purchase pop-up box.
- At the top of the box is a drop down list where the smuggler can choose his name or the name of anyone grouped with him.
- The Smuggler can then enter the number of Faction points to delegate via a slider bar
- If the drop-down-target is himself the ratio is 1 to 1
- If the drop-down-target is a group member the ratio is calculated based on the smugglers rank (as it is today)
- The total points required to purchase and the cost for the selected delegate amountwould be displayed as the Smuggler adjusts the bar (with a much higher max limit if a group member is the delegate target).
- Clicking ok then purchases the points and deletgates them to the target.
Optional (and awesome) additions to the above:
- If the Faction Purchase pop-up box has selected a recipient other than the smuggler then the smuggler can enter a credit amount to charge the customer per faction point.
- The cost plus this fee is calculated into a final price to the customer.
- Once the smuggler clicks "ok", the customer gets an accept dialog box stating the total price and the number of faction points he will recieve.
- If the customer clicks "Accept" the price is transfered from the customer to the smuggler - and the faction purchase/delegate happens immediately afterward (these additons would allow for a secure transaction between a customer who can afford the points and a smuggler who cant)
- If the customer clicks "Deny" nothing happens.
Note: theslider bar shouldalways be capped atthe delegate target's faction point cap if that is lower than the total allowed purchase of the smuggler.
.(edited for type-o)
Message Edited by IndySWG on 08-02-2004 01:33 PM
I like this. Selling FP should be able to be conducted using a secure transaction, similar to the way they made secure transactions for ID's. Set up a FP station in faction bases where the smuggler inputs the number of faction (capped on the players rank being delegated to), the total cost per FP including the 80:1 cost from the recruiter. Punch in the amount of FP, the client pays the fee, boom, recruiter gets a fat paycheck and so does the smuggler. Large FP transactions should not take hours, smugglers are about the quick buck. I could grind DE faster than purchasing and selling 60K of FP in the current system with out using a macro.
Fat_Morbo
Mon Aug 02, 2004 4:42 pm
#61
When I was grinding spices I didn't use a continous looping macro. I used the handy 3-craft-tool macro that I found here, wrote it by hand so that it repeated 3 times, thus hitting the F4 button once would run the macro through and create nine practice spices. I had to do all the mouse-work of selecting the materials by handanyway, whats the difference of htting F4 every 3 minutes? Ground out spicing while watching the History chanel late at night and paying minimal attention to the game. The macro system met my needs of getting rid of the tediousness to a degree, but it shouldn't be fully automated.
No one should be able to leave their character working, spamming, gaining xp, while they're off at work/school/sleep/whatever for hours... thats not cool.
Kershakk
Mon Aug 02, 2004 5:40 pm
#62
Daermoth wrote:
Kershakk wrote:
Hrm - they're not eliminating macros outright, just recursive ones. I don't pretend to be an expert on FP selling, but I've read the basics - got to buy to cap, delegate to the purchaser, buy to cap, delegate to purchaser, til order is complete.
How is this going to be that much tougher without recursive calls? Can you not set up a single run macro to purchase to cap and delegate, ending there? I would have thought that's what have been the way to do it. I'd not call having to press a key every now and then too carpal. Is there something I'm missing here? Even on large orders you can make pretty darn long macros - and if they make it just recursively check and not make it so a macro cannot call another macro you can have incredible amounts strung together, tailor made for varying set amounts.
Also uses of aliases can further extend your playroom. You can alias everything to a two letter alias, giving your macro even that much more room.
I just am failing to see the big kerfuffle about recursive macro removal here.
I have a master smuggler alt by the way so I'm not just drive by sticky beaking
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
I frequently do orders of faction points of 20k-120k and often more. With my macro running, tuned to buy faction as fast as anyone can click, it takes over an hour to purchase 60k faction. I've had sessions of faction selling where it has taken over 4 hours to purchase all the needed points.
I will have to buy a new mouse for my computer after every faction sale if macro's are nerfed this way. It's 5 clicks of the mouse for every 125 faction without a macro. that's 2500 mouse clicks an hour. Or, the worlds longest bloody macro, which the system wont accept because you cannot have more than 50 commands in a single macro. an hour long faction macro without it being looped would be 240-300 commands long.
Thanks for the heads up - but - as someone posted later down and I suggested before - can you not simply get around it with short aliases and macros? You needn't cripple yourself with 2,500 mouse clicks on hour.
Make one alias that does the 5-click purchase of 125 FP, then make a macro that calls this alias as many times as needed. Would this not work? In case you are not aware of aliases :
/alias bfp <insert all faction buying actions here, seperated by semi-colons>
Then make the macro nothing but bfp;bfp;bfp;bfp;bfp;bfp;bfp;bfp;bfp etc til the cows comes home.
Either which way I think devs can't ultimately stop people from AFKing - it'll be just another small hurdle. I know someone who runs a buffbot - with a scripting tool than can even recover from crashes and logs the doctor back in as soon as server's finished loading from reboot.
Viper55587879
Mon Aug 02, 2004 6:32 pm
#63
One thing I don't remember being stated in this thread is macroslike the armor macro. I know several smugglers that PvP have a macro to remove their armor before FD to prevent the armor from being destroyed. If the devs take the easy way out and just remove the /macro and /ui commands, that will also remove the ability to activate other things in the toolbar such as armor and clothes. Just another thing to discuss.
JTGAlpha
Mon Aug 02, 2004 6:34 pm
#64
Ui commands are useful. Period. Not going anywhere.
And macros are in because whether or not they allow them, they will exist. So it's better that everyone have them legally than have a small group going to great (and possibly disruptive or destructive) lengths to have them.
Viper55587879
Mon Aug 02, 2004 6:47 pm
#65
JTGAlpha wrote:
Ui commands are useful. Period. Not going anywhere.
And macros are in because whether or not they allow them, they will exist. So it's better that everyone have them legally than have a small group going to great (and possibly disruptive or destructive) lengths to have them.
Yes, /ui commands are useful but if they want to eliminate the loops entirely, they have to take out the /ui action toolbarSlotxx command. A simple way to loop a macro is to end it with this command. To keep it in, they would then need to code a check to make sure it isn't calling a macro if that is even possible.