I could go and search feather's (I think?) post where he said that they want to force people to do missions but I cba.

making it harder for beginners time and time again, and still they wonder why they dont have many new players
one of these days So many players are gonna quit that it makes their heads spin

did you notice our newest member has been tericon for ages?

Have you noticed that he registered ages ago, look here:
http://www.starsonata.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=&start=17200
He was bit over 17200th, now we are HERE:

http://www.starsonata.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=&start=21300

so at the 21350th user. thats over 4000 new registrations in the last 5 months.

That only states, how the forum is bugged.

Do you guys know what conversation i had the other day? It went something like this:

Me: Darn rags, they're too hard for their level.
Dude1: Yep
Dude2: Lol noob, i kill them easy.
Me: Seriously? They're super hard for me.
Dude2: Lol, i've been raping them for ages.
Me: One at a time or something? I can kill them like that, but get any more...
Me: Ever tried fighting like 5-10 at once?
Dude2: Lol, no problem, i did that like yesterday.
Me: Wtf am i doing wrong, then? I've gotten the best drones i can get.
Dude2: You're not using slaves? Lol, theres ur prob
Me: ...what if i dont want to use slaves?
Dude2: Then ur a noob, lol. My slaves rape them.
Me: But what about other classes?
Dude2: Just use slaves
Me: But what if you dont want to use slaves?
Dude2: Just use slaves
Me: But-
Dude2: Just use slaves
Me: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-

noob

I hate being forced to do anything, aint a good game if it doesnt give a choice.

I hate being forced to use slaves, drones, and sss drones to level on anything bigger than a volcom.

That skill change may only be a 250 or so level difference, but it hurts low level so hard, the end result may as well be a 9001 level difference. I've never had such a hard time getting to level 4....

Try level 100. I thought I would pop into C2 and have a bit o fun getting to lvl 100 without doing something like proto or copper. or slaves. or drones. I had such a hard time just getting to level 60. And I had to do it using the wingship3 SSS. Bah. I ended up in proto anyway.

If the admins really wanted more sp to be used, why not do it like how eve did it? Besides the basic and "class"(racial equipment) type skills, there are skills that boost the stats of various parts of the ship. That also aren't obtained using things like their equivalent of Imp Seals.

The skills don't affect Eve that much. You can be a competent Battleship pilot without them, but every thing helps and gives you that little edge over the target.

And change skills so that they don't multiply with augs, but add to them.

Light Fighter Agility: +1% Thrust and Turning on LF's.
Heavy Fighter Firing Chamber Enhancer: +1.5% ROF on HF's.
Capital Ship Fighter Augmenter: +0.5% Fighter Damage if launched off a CS.
Freighter Logistical Boom: +2% Tractor Efficiency on Freighters.

And add them to conspicuous places where the different hull classes would be. Don't have a capital ship missile skill in one of the bases in The Dark, instead of Beta Antares.

1. Require most of the skills to have a class requirement, to prevent a seer from being stuck with freighter skills(accidentally).
2. Skills be reset-able via neuro doc.
3. Skills do not cost big money to get. Like 100k max per level.


Admins should tally up all the sp a level 2000 will have and make sure all skills(Class, Tech, Extra Ship Bonuses, NT50, CG25, Slave/Aug Tweak maxed, station skills, etc) all fit within this parameter.

Eh, i dont like it. Getting to level 4 is ridiculously easy; just do 3 missions and boom, you're there. Heck, getting from 0-20 is also really easy, just do the nexus missions and you're there with some really nice gear to boot.

Combining different strategies will always be more powerful, i think, but it will also be more expensive. Personally i specced in drones and was able to get all the way to level 100 with nothing but fire drones and magic attacks. I died a lot, but that's mostly a content issue(no real better drones available) than a balance issue.

And SD's have always had it easy; they can dodge just about anything and level for hundreds of levels with just their basic wingship or hotrod.

And FC's can obviously do pretty much whatever they want at low levels. At least it's slightly harder now than it was before, which i believe was a good balance.

So Engineers, Shm's(slaves), FC's, and SD's can level at low levels without much in the way of problems. That leaves 4 classes; Zerker, Seer, Gunner, and Sniper. This is a problem that is really prevalent at lower levels; they dont have the skills to be able to do what they're actually supposed to do.

A zerker, for example, cannot MF until level 5 in their class skills, pretty much making anything until then useless. On top of that, they really cant tank any better than any other class, and they lack the healing options an engineer might have.

A seer isn't stealthy and cant crit hit...they might as well not have any class skills at all. Plus cloaking SP costs.

A gunner might give maybe a 4% debuff, which is practically useless. Then again, gunner is pretty much unusable all over the place, so that seems like an entirely different can of worms.

And a sniper isn't stealthy and doesn't have very much range or damage. And they have to get an additional skill(cloaking).


It seems to me that the solution to this lies in content, though, and not in gameplay balance. Sure, the AI are maybe a bit strong for their level and SWARMING IS INCREDIBLE ANNOYING....

ahem...

...but it's managable for the classes that can do what they're supposed to do. The solution to this, I think, is to add some content that is only functional at lower levels, making these classes into something at least vaguely similar to what they're supposed to represent.

For example; available from the zerker base, an item that requires zerker 1 and gives a significant damage soak to all types of damage with the caveat that it doesn't work once a certain damage threshold has been passed. say, 50 soak but over 300 damage per shot and it stops functioning.

For a seer, an item that gives crit hit chance and - vis in exchange for losing some stats that are extremely useful at higher levels but not at lower. For example, it removes the seer ethereal laser damage boost from the skill in exchange for 50% crit hit chance and -85% visibility.

Gunner...lets not talk about gunner. Sigh.

And sniper could have something that gives range and -vis in exchange for, say, the ability to crit?

Of course, these would only be patches, but at least the classes would become somewhat playable at lower levels.

Good suggestion and btw, zerker can MF with 2 right away and healing isnt worse than any class as that level(magics). Elseway good.

OMG you noobs, shut your cry holes, Either kite, drone, slave, your way tell you can get your combat classes... RC linked with Piloting skill I thought was really ballanced, I mean im kiting as a hotrod sniper with a hotrod slave set to stay close to me, and killing lvl 350-420ish ai in dg's and im like lvl 100ish. if you want to hold your ground and fight ai foes then use fighters, drones, slave ships. If you want to kite stuff then use slaves and range and damage and RoF. Also if you just want to make peace with everything... then do loads of boring missions and gain your lvl's.

As for income its piss easy to do a dg in like 4min and get 20m, im talking even the dg in sol and other DF0 gal's. I read your posts and its just super sad you guys cant like think on your toes. Im not even using anything super cool other than mod dg gear and best ai base gear I selected for my combat ships. I got spare skill points as well to do some base crap to and I purchased leadership skill. Still got spare SP and the stupid helper bot tells me its not a skill hording skill points or some crap it says.

Also got few lvl's in ZofR, that and lagrange skills with zen skills might need some different tweaking on how you lvl up in them. At least Lagrange make it take 1+lvl per catagory instead of all skills cost go up when you lvl in one field of skill, aka Lagrange copy Zen skills ladder system.