Jump to content

TheCosmicMuffet

Members
  • Posts

    33
  • Joined

Reputation

10 Good
  1. Me an my buddy for the last few years played wow. Every time we hung out, inevitably, if only for a few minutes, we'd log on and show each other the character select screen to see what our characters looked like/were up to levelwise. "oh nice robes" "hunters look really boedoess in the pvp stuff" etc. The Tor select screen -doesn't seem to show light side/dark side -doesn't seem to use the cinematic level of texture and lighting fidelity -has the person way up close to the camera so you can see their face, but not the rest of their body/equipment -shows the character just breathing and kind of looking around a little--they never take out their gun or animate or show an expression or anything to bring life to the presentation. It seems like some small tweaks, basically to enable the cinematic stuff, pull the camera out, and queue a random set of animations and emotes to make the screen more fun and more fun to show off to friends.
  2. I love these missions and played them dozens of times. I was usually able to beat the missions 'requiring' some level of upgrades well before those upgrades were affordable for me, and, going back, I've enjoyed using more firepower to try to completely clear the levels. Considering what some people have said here about what bothered them on one mission or another, and that some people are saying 'you must have xyz upgrade to progress', I want to offer up some thoughts. Things to keep in mind at all times 1 - You have a much longer range than you might think, and there are very few cases of something 'appearing' in a mission. Almost everything spawns well before you have an opportunity to shoot it, and if you see a space ship far away in your view, and you don't have anything else bothering you, definitely put your mouse over its vulnerable spots--because half of survival is shooting at something well before it decides to start shooting at you. In many cases, reducing the damage you'll receive in a mission is a matter of shooting things at max range. 2 - Missiles are fire and forget. Don't mix missile fire with blaster fire on the same targets if you can avoid it--unless you're trying to blow up something that takes a lot of shots, like a heavy fighter or some of the pieces of space stations and ships. 3 - You go from just barely having the missiles you need to accomplish your tasks to having more than you could possibly ever want. Get used to using them all the time. Use them on trivial things. 4 - Your weapons take time to travel to your target, and while you're waiting for them to explode, you *really* should be targeting something else. Test out how much time it takes you to shoot down enemy fighters or blow up enemy turrets--get a feel for it and the rhythm of moving on before they explode. If you wait until something is blown up before retargeting, you'll end up wasting half your firepower as shots arrive after a target is already set to spin out and explode, or emit a gout of flame and explode. Or spark and explode. There's a lot of exploding. 5 -Commendations Are great. Find the missions you enjoy the most and do their dailies to get their bonus commendations. Even if you're not grinding xp anymore out of them. For one thing, you still get some xp and cash, which doesn't hurt, and for another, you will accrue commendations and be ready to buy the 4 ability pieces right on time. Upgrading The most important part of your upgrades are your blasters. You can dodge fire. You can be spare with your missiles. But what you *can't* do is make things explode faster without better equipment. Always get blasters first and fastest, and when you hit the level to get the power conversion module, buy it immediately, and always set yourself in weapons mode at the beginning of every flight. Completing the first round of 'new' missions when they're unlocked usually yields a special upgrade, as well. These upgrades are generally some ship piece with an oddball improvement thrown in. for instance, blasters that include extra toughness for your ship, or shields that add to your blaster damage. Always keep the ones that add extra damage as long as you can get away with it, and replace the ones that add extra toughness whenever you can get one that does more damage or gives you more missiles. It's a very one-dimensional upgrade process. There is no 'tanking gear set' for the space missions. You will *always* be limited foremostly by the damage you can dish out, and will have many options to improve your survival. Weapons and prioritizing targets You will begin these missions without the missiles to really make wholesale slaughter possible. You should *always* have a dry magazine at the end of a mission, because that's more things that will explode while you're dealing with other crap. When the game suggests you use your missiles for certain targets, sometimes that's a good idea. Sometimes it is ridiculous. The best examples are missions where your primary mission is fighter kills and the game is telling you to missile the fighters. In general, there are 3 situations that call for missiles. Targets which cannot be hurt without missiles A field of targets which are all relevant to the mission or the bonus objective which are impossible to destroy, completely, with blaster fire alone (the first pass on the stations is typically like this--especially later when you want to shoot at the frigate on the side that you only get one further shot at) Hard targets, especially when they only show up briefly, or share screen time with objectives. As you fly around, your weapons will auto target very generously. Any time you see the red attack reticle, hold down your left mouse button. Don't let up unless there is nothing in view worth shooting at, or you are dangerously low on shields. While you are firing your missiles, move your mouse back and forth over all visible targets, like you're scrubbing something off your mousepad. The game's generous autotargeting can cause a fair number of blasts to be wasted on exploding enemies--by scrubbing back and forth, you'll avoid wasting shots, and instead of having 1 or 2 ships explode as the 3rd gets away, all 3 will explode at roughly the same time. This is particularly important when you see two tiny bright engine flares in the distance--as fighters approach from very far away. Scrub your mouse back and for for a second or two while firing (after the reticle is able to target them) and then wait and watch as, a couple seconds later, they spin or flare and go boom. Frigates have turrets arranged in convenient patterns. Hold left click as you start at the back of the ship, and then click and right drag across the ship. Release the right click as you get to the front to unleash your missile volley, and then look at which turrets were not outlined in blue, and target them specifically with your blasters. When a couple turrets are close to each other in the view, remember to scrub, to make the most use of your blaster fire. Cruisers, in particular, with their long rows of turrets need efficient fire. Scrub vigorously along their gun batteries, and make sure you blast a different battery than you target with missiles. You generally have time for 1.5 volleys of missiles on a cruiser as you go past--make sure you get those other 2 missiles in. Learn about what are threats and which things matter in the field of view. Fighters which come from behind, generally, take several seconds to turn around--if they turn around at all, and generally do not take many shots at you. By ignoring them for as long as you can, you are able to shoot at oncoming fighters (who generally do fire at you, and generally fire more times) and turrets, or, simply stop firing and allow your shields to recharge. Once your missile magazine gets bigger, do not hesitate to shoot them in the rear with a missile as soon as you see them, and allow your shields to recharge while you wait. If shields are full up, don't waste the missiles. You can shoot through most objects in space. Mouseover asteroids and ships to try to fight 'targetable' spots. This will often be gunbatteries on a frigate or cruiser that is in your view, but hidden at the moment. Once you have the power conversion module, you need to use it to the hilt. Always be in blaster mode. When you pass a difficult section of the level or an area with a mission objective, immediately go back to shield mode. Missile damage is unaffected by shield mode--and you can take advantage of this. In the latest levels with best upgrades, your shields are FAR more important than your armor (though your armor is somewhat important). They can recharge in about 5 seconds, completely, if you can give them a rest. There is a small rhythm to switching energy modes, as well. Learn to work with it. Hit shields, then wait a count of one-one thousand, and switch back to blasters. You can often get away with this during periods where the only targets are fighters. When the level has asteroids to dodge, don't be a hero. Make sure you direct your fighter out of the way *first*. If it is hard to get in position to shoot something, just revert to shield recharge and focus on dodging within the space that's safe. Asteroids are a huge pain to run into and do a lot of damage. They're your biggest concern in some areas. The later missions are not comfortably able to be won without use of the EMP and Electronic countermeasures. Always time the emp as early as you can to avoid a spot of early damage by destroying packs of enemies (for instance in the station protection levels by firing it as you fly by the first big bomber swarm where, in later difficulty versions, you will see a heavy fighter appear--this softens everything and means faster killing and less shots coming at you). Save the EMP for times when you have to be in danger while shooting things down. So, for example, if it's a brief pass over a Cruiser that will hurt you, but isn't an objective or bonus objective, just dodge around and avoid the shots. If it's a heavy fighter, bomber swarm, or turret battery that you have to dive on and destroy to complete the level, use your emp to ensure some time to focus on getting it done. Try to avoid wasting ammo on meaningless targets. There are some elements on frigates in particular, like engines and their sensors that seemingly give no benefit or xp, but are targetable. Generally you have better things to shoot at. Don't get caught up trying to destroy them. The mines in the blockade missions also fall under this heading after you've hit your quota. Learn to look at the reticle, not what's in front of you. Often, when you're doing well, frigates that are pouring gouts of smoke will fly around in front of you. Move your reticle back and forth to find fighters in the distance that you can't see and destroy them before they come rushing past you and land some hits. Try to observe moments in the rail when you can target something far away that you might not think to hit, otherwise. The defensive satellites in the station attack missions are a great example--you can target a couple of them very early in the level for a few shots and a missile. In fact, if you're quick, on your very first station pass, you can lay a few hits on one (and even destroy it if you have a full missile magazine--though that's generally not worth it). Always keep an eye out for times that you can shoot at a vital or bonus objective when there's nothing but enemy fighters on screen or there's a frigate in the way that isn't a threat. Barrel rolling is overrated and occasionally self-defeating. The movement isn't exactly the same every time, and depending on your class, your ship can be easier to hit (the trooper, in particular, has these wings that flop around and seem to grab laser hits like a moronic farmer reaping a harvest of trauma). The best time is to try to wait for the enemy to actually shoot at you--when the blasters will be flying through space, and *then* barrel roll, thereby getting out of the place that they were aiming at. I see a lot of people just kind of hyperactively pressing the space bar when they play (either in youtube vids or when I'm by a friend) and, while it's fun to see the ship spin around, it's not the best approach. This is especially hilarious when someone barrel rolls near an asteroid and clunks into it. Like a farmer who's dumb and hits asteroids. You do more damage if you say 'pew pew pew' when you left click and 'boop boop boop khssssswaaaaa' when you right click and drag. Above all, do not go outside your ship. You will have to play an MMO. And nobody wants that.
  3. If you're trying to use deductive reasoning, that doesn't make any sense either. The buff goes away and you get an item, but there's plenty of times in the game where you use something and lose an item and there's no reason a buff couldn't make an item go away too. Just because most of the time it's 'you had explosives, you planted a bomb, now your explosives are gone' doesn't mean that they actually need a metaphor that makes sense to take an item out of your inventory.
  4. I agree, and the jump between +2 and +5, is, itself, a pretty big deal. Even when imps have a critter, assuming you want to specifically run up a class just for access to that crew member, they don't have it at as high a quality. Smuggler, trooper, and jedi knight dominate the options for armor, biochem, and arms. This is that old routine of the game bonus question where you offer a player +30% xp, or a 1% extra damage. It sounds like you want the xp while you level, but you're going to be cap someday, and the efficiency improvement won't matter to you anymore--all you will want is access to better stats which you can't get any other way than RNG and luck. Maybe they should just put crit into companion opinion of you and give them base efficiency improvements. They simply classify a companion as 'talented: cybertech' or whatever. That way they can do a behind-the-scenes calculation to crit, regardless (which they can also balance whenever they feel like universally across companions), and give a uniform speed bonus in the chosen discipline. So for example: 4X; talented (Cybertech). His crafting comes out 15% faster, from word go, but as you get him more affectionate, behind the scenes he gains an extra cybertech crit bonus. Which helps him make awesome droid parts. Which nobody cares about and won't buy on the GM. But good for him--he should have a hobby. :jawa:
  5. I don't know, man. It's great when an officer offers himself up to die--beats getting the short straw, myself --but it's also keeping your priorities straight. I don't think they'd officially recommissioned him at that point. He's just some prisoner you've been ordered to retrieve. They say the person he orders you after is a high priority target, but so what. There's high priority targets all over the place. If everyone stopped to shoot at everything high priority, nobody would get 5 feet from their ship. It's darkside to go chasing after some guy for revenge and letting your mission die on you, and it's lightside to stick to your mission even when you're tempted to want to do someone a favor, and, in the end, put a good guy back in the pilot's seat to fight for the right side. It's a little contrived that the choices is he dies/you do what he asks or he lives/you ignore him, since it seems like those things shouldn't be related--either he's mortally wounded or he's going to pull through. The medicine they've got is supposed to be incredible. This is why it doesn't pay to have a vet write it. Ask 10 guys and you get 10 different answers on what they're willing to put up with/find believable. Depends on service, duty, or just their bad/good experiences. There are vets out there who think this story is true to life because they had a weird CO in a crappy post and no friends.
  6. They need to let it happen and then have Jaesa be a a healer to compensate. But only if you go through with it.
  7. how did 'there fixed it for you' supercede 'fixed that for you' as the acronym when that was the original meme. I just spent a bunch of time trying to figure out where that came from because I assumed it didn't just mean 'ftfy'. Or 'fixed' which is the same number of letters and makes more sense. Society is crumbling.
  8. If you marry both of them, you get a purple light saber.
  9. I would like flying mounts. The current slow speeders trapped by the ground do not look or feel like star wars, and make no sense for the setting. In almost every movie there are small personal craft that fly at high speeds and have freedom of movement. Surely there can be a balance between being shot at while you fly by and risking a crash, and implementing cool free feeling flying mounts. In fact, that would be an incredible experience--to fly by on your flying car, have a missile launched from some ground mob hit you, and take falling damage. Problems solved. Keep the flight ceiling low enough, and you have a fun trade off between risky speed and safe behavior which resembles the current system, but is more fun and feels more like star wars.
  10. I would also like faster speeders. The speeders do not feel like star wars. They do not feel like technology. In a world where coruscant has 'speeders' that are always flying back and forth at 100s of miles per hour, it seems strange to be both stuck on the ground all the time as well as at a snails pace. I do not care about what anyone thinks an average person's walking or running pace is in real life. In a world where people have their muscles augmented by the force or biomechanical implants or powered armor or all 3 at the same time, even bringing it up is mindless. It also has nothing to do with the speed of a space motorcycle or flying car. The taxi service should only be useful for its autopilot feature or because there's inaccessible areas of the map that have to be flown to. Otherwise, once you get a speeder, it should behave like the speeder bikes, cars, and pods that you can see in most of the movies--something that moves fast. If your first mount was a tauntaun or an ATPT, I could understand moving at +90-120%. This is not true to the background or the universe, or even real life experiences with vehicles, and feels strange.
  11. There are over the top light side options. I don't think comparing wimpy light to exagerrated dark is anything but moralistic favoritism--people who think light side is 'good' favor that kind of spinballery. In reality, light and dark side are insane constructs of a bunch of writers that only apply in the universe of star wars. And even there, really, light and dark are nothing but 2 political parties who's membership is made up entirely of midichlorians. It's better to say there's plenty of light side examples where you're being polite and merciful to someone who's clearly going to kill a bunch more people, or you're destroying perfectly good data that could be used to save lives and help people just because it was procured in an ugly way --even if you put a stop to what was happening, personally, and make sure it won't happen again. Allowing disasters to happen in the name of temporary apparent largess is just as ridiculous as allowing disasters to happen in the name of temporary personal gain. And you can be just as insulting on the light side--it's only a matter of how condescending and irritating you find passive aggressive holier-than-thou types. Personally, I'm anti.
  12. I sympathize with him. You don't understand what's going on and you're giving orders. There's two parts to the statement about the effect of accuracy. One is on defense. The other is against resistance vs energy and kinetic. Armor penetration is not precisely what is happening, but that is irrelevant. It's linked because armor is effectively where you get your resistance for most purposes, and having an effect which changes your resistance effectively neutralizes your armor--it's the same as saying pressure and temperature is equivalent, which is basically true. He's observing something which is ambiguously worded, but undeniable. The point here is that resistance is a damage multiplier that goes both ways. If you accumulate accuracy beyond 100, it operates as negative resistance for the purposes of kinetic and energy attacks. Which is useful information. The testing part is probably excessive. If you don't like it, you can go to the suggestion forum and ask bioware to remove it, I guess. I'd be curious if the language is still the same after the patch, or if the damage type of force choke is typed differently than tech kinetic. Like in the mode of (force) Kinetic instead of (Tech) kinetic or something like that. It would make some sense, since it's not an attack that relies on accuracy in any way. I mean, in the metaphor of the animation. To do this right, someone really needs to set up a couple cheap orange armor sets for themselves with the right kind of enhancements and mods, and then switch out between sets of punching something.
  13. for instance, because it is a nerf. For one thing, the ideal situation argument is a wash. Either everyone is in it, or neither person is, since you are either 'in pvp's fast and furious world of gangsta unforsoothsayable skillzorz' or you're fully charged and trying to ruin the day of someone who's afk near the entrance to a class quest. The numbers went down. The fact that you can change your approach, to, in the midst of a furball where you see someone use up their cc counters, swoop in to do more damage than you could have with the jars of delicious jam, isn't an improvement to the tool box. The crux of your argument is that this class is still deadly--probably *too* deadly in the right circumstances, because we can watch for openings and obliterate someone who's put some of their **** on cooldown, or by cooperating 2v2 or 3v3 to fit in with our teammate's cc. If that's not the crux of your argument than your argument is heretical because it lacks a crux. Now, moving along that idea, that's fine, and it certainly makes it less likely that you'll absolutely destroy someone without support. It also makes it hard to justify delicious jars of strawberry currants spread on smug toast. So now you either need a friend to hold your bread while you butter it, or you hold the bread, and they butter it. And your spec makes that determination for you ahead of time. Should anyone ever be obliterated if they move more than 2 feet from the nearest trooper buddy? This is the question we need to ask. The answer is yes. Kill them all. Republic scum.
  14. Everyone and their dog recommends Agent it seems like. I played BH a bit, and I can only say that it's not particularly exciting, at least for the first part. It's more about whether the character is fun to play. Which--as a tank, it can be. Certainly I played a trooper, adn that's basically the same--and the BH is just a trooper without bugged animation times. So it should be fun. However, just as counterpoint on the trooper quest. I found several things about it to be fun. 1) it blends in very well with the actual missions. As other classes you show up at a world and people drop things in your lap and it seems odd that you're taking all these odd jobs sometimes--unless you're just a career adventurer. Which admittedly we all play as, but still--when someone puts the future of Balmorra on your shoulders, as opposed to just getting some help with their problems (and life continues on) it makes less sense than when it's part of the trooper's objectives. It makes sense that the premier special forces ****** would be going from hot spot to hot spot, problem solving, and picking up their awesome team of misfits at the same time. 2) It is SO great to make light/dark side choices as trooper if for no other reason than several of them are *actually* ambiguous and kind of interesting. Like whether you preserve 'one of your own' who's also mission-critical or a bunch of strangers that you don't know, but are the more virtuous thing to do. 3) the end point is much more satisfying. In the beginning you get thrust into a situation that's appealing, but immediately evaporates, and you kind of feel cheated out of a sense of belonging to your character's story--but then, as you go, you end up building the scope and experiences that create a sense of that belonging much better than you could have imagined. And at the end, you have a team of people in storm trooper armor all standing behind you that look ******, but also part of a unit--that you lead. Even their prime stats are the same, which feels cool in a way. Other players have a motley crew standing behind them. 4) Dressing as a dark jedi with gun.
  15. You just godwinned this thread. So that's great. The only way you can think the nazi regime was intelligent is if you somehow conflate germans with nazis to the point that you think they mean the same thing. Germans have brilliant doctors, philosophers, engineers, physicists, and artists. Nazis are a bunch of pig brained drooling morons who ate up insane rhetoric that, in the end, got their entire country scooped out like a rotten melon. Many of them came from Bavaria, and had no more sophisticated view on life than a sense of entitlement to the major industrial centers in germany to fund their modernization and economic recovery--at the expense of absolutely anyone else they could blame or sacrifice for it. Decades later, they're the ones who resist returning the favor when the cities are in an economic recession due at least in part to reuniting with east germany--something they only had to do because of the mob mentality creeps who helped get the nazis into power and provided their raw manpower. And that's all an oversimplification of just *how* unforgiveably stupid the nazi movement was, and the difference between it and general german culture. It's like saying the klu klux klan had some smart people in it because America and the klu klux klan are the same thing and America has smart people in it. That said, the Sith, if there's nazi callbacks going on at all (other than the color scheme) are useful in as much as they're a combination of pig headed jack booted thugs with no sophistication or brains who seemingly want to do bad things for the sheer hell of it, working with and controlling through intimidation a bunch of well intentioned people with genuine ethics that are just a hair over the line in terms of struggling between their national pride and larger duties. Also, as a republic trooper, I made a pact with a dark god to mortgage the future. So. You know. 6 of one... Edit: if you're just saying smart in the sense of 'beware of thinking that evil people aren't clever enough to take advantage of you', fair enough, but honestly, I don't even buy that. Intimidation and organization do not require intelligence. That's the benefit of training soldiers instead of relying on self-made warriors or knights. And you can judge the intelligence of the leadership by the use to which they put those 'troops'. In this case, not just the destruction of those they hated or felt superior to, but of their own people cause and country. Which is pretty stupid.
×
×
  • Create New...