#11 Golden Skull Level

[DiangelionN]

I believe the real question is: will it be possible to equip a Gemini technology in the ninth tech slot on a Gemini ship and use it in PvP? In this case, a Gemini Resu on a Gemini Tank Ship?

 

[StickManTwit]

I believe the real question is: will it be possible to equip a Gemini technology in the ninth tech slot on a Gemini ship and use it in PvP? In this case, a Gemini Resu on a Gemini Tank Ship?

Yes that should be possible as far as I understand the patch notes

 

[Highway]

balancing of the extra slot is done by:
- Active Time
- Warmup Time
- Cooldown Time

The testers and GMs tested a few combinations and created a good baseline balancing. But I am certain that we need to adjust it further in real scenarios when players get their hands on that feature.

 

[franelguay]

Hi Highway, I have a suggestion for you to consider.

Could achievement points be used as "currency" to purchase skull levels? This would be a great long-term way to obtain more skulls without relying entirely on the ranking system (since theoretically it would require daily activity for a whole year for 10 gold skulls).

I would recommend that 1,000 achievement points cost 1 gold skull.

This way, we can incentivize players to complete other aspects of the game that are currently being ignored.

I was thinking on the tipical "Achivement + Reward" system like in WoW when u complete some Achimentens you get the rewards attached to it, so some hard one could drop skulls (killing the queen for example). but not only that but other rewards like 3h exp boost or 3h cryonite boost, etc.

I was thinking of this and even if this is a nice addition for people to have a reason to farm achivements would be a "pain in the ass" for programmers for a feature that won't really add hours of play forthe hardcore players becouse they already farmed most of achivements so there would be hours of programming spent for no real users play conversion (and we all know new features need to bring years of farm and requirements to make the playerbase play this game until new features)

So I was thinking a "profitable" feature and joking arround I joke about a "battle pass" with the same rewards I said before (3h boots, cryonite, even Remnant BPs parts) and the last reward could be a golden skull, just saying ¬.¬ (if you endup implement it I want a portion of the benefits ;P)

 

[ben1982]

balancing of the extra slot is done by:
- Active Time
- Warmup Time
- Cooldown Time

The testers and GMs tested a few combinations and created a good baseline balancing. But I am certain that we need to adjust it further in real scenarios when players get their hands on that feature.

How many people already have skull level 15 to even test the new items though, live server gameplay wont be a good baseline we are only going to have a handful of people running the new tech its going to be a small sample size, especially where pvp in concerned getting "even" gameplay will be practically impossible

 

[ben1982]

The additional item surely makes a difference in a fight but it will be more difficult to use and less effective. For example the cooldown, warmup is longer than usual. In addition the time the item is active can be shorter/longer etc. We are currently in the testing phase to balance each item type accordigly so that the extra item slot will not be OP.

i feel like this downplays the impact an entire additional item would have, this isnt the same as like Asura cortex for example where you have conditions to using it, its just an additional button you can press for no cost except energy i guess

Currently cqs especially otbs tend be very unbalanced due to differences in skill of players but tech absolutely plays a role too, now we are just widening the spectrum of imbalance even more...

Balancing items based of cooldown warmup and duration is inherently flawed, certain items are much better off balanced by strength such as bomb and os i mean i certainly dont think its funny if in the future u can have it be a theoretical possibiliy that everyone has a functional full damage os or bomb and u can do funny instant wipe strategies with any ship, or do funny spam strategies with any item even rfs turrets domes or anything of that nature especially since if i understand it correctly it will only cost cryonite to swap items on the 9th slot and maybe remnant bp parts for tc
Balancing items like these by adjusting cooldown or warmup is almost certainly going to be more challenging to getting them into a healthy state than by simply nerfing their strength accordingly to account for the fact that they can spammed as many times as there are players in your team, again there is 0 disadvantage to using item 9 only opportunity cost

 

[ben1982]

These item slot upgrades can be found at the XC remnant carriers. There is a slot item kit for each item type. (excluding: collector, blaster, repair)

i guess update drops in a handful of hours but ive been wondering because i dont think i saw much clarification but can you use duplicate items?

 

[gonzaabel]

i guess update drops in a handful of hours but ive been wondering because i dont think i saw much clarification but can you use duplicate items?

• A specific type of slot upgrade kit can only be installed if the current ship does not already come with that same item type (no doubled item configuration possible).

 

[ben1982]

• A specific type of slot upgrade kit can only be installed if the current ship does not already come with that same item type (no doubled item configuration possible).

ah i see

 

[space mercenary]

How many people already have skull level 15 to even test the new items though, live server gameplay wont be a good baseline we are only going to have a handful of people running the new tech its going to be a small sample size, especially where pvp in concerned getting "even" gameplay will be practically impossible

I don't understand why this should be a problem. The only system where your enemy would have an upgrade is Tau Ceti. In the rest of the systems, if you collected everything in Sirius, it will be on equal grounds. You can even hunt other players to slow down their progress or fight in Tau with more numbers instead of better equipment.

 

[Dresnov]

I love the new update to how the ships look in the shop and on the profile, but I do miss being able to view them from underneath; there were interesting details there that can no longer be appreciated. The effect is interesting, but it gets a bit dark underneath, making it even harder to see that area—though I suppose it’s a matter of taste, and many people might not have appreciated those details anyway.

 

[ben1982]

I don't understand why this should be a problem. The only system where your enemy would have an upgrade is Tau Ceti. In the rest of the systems, if you collected everything in Sirius, it will be on equal grounds. You can even hunt other players to slow down their progress or fight in Tau with more numbers instead of better equipment.

this is wrong, 9th item can be installed in any ship including phoenix , what im talking about is the spread of players who have 9th item for any pvp content such as otb cvc and colossus and also just pirate mode in general and for remannts as well since it depends on effort

also i wanna restate that you probably cannot rely on live server gameplay for that very reason as only few people will actually have it around it gonna cause inherent imbalances regardless of how strong 9th items actually are

 

[franelguay]

How many people already have skull level 15 to even test the new items though, live server gameplay wont be a good baseline we are only going to have a handful of people running the new tech its going to be a small sample size, especially where pvp in concerned getting "even" gameplay will be practically impossible

They said it would be 25 skulls, then this new update came and it's 15 skulls, the same as the aggresive players have (this is a Aurora GM basically clan with the CM on it where they have direct access to devs).. hmm seems a little bit suspicious.

I was expenting this new update arround summer of next years beocuse they needed 10 more skulls (so if you do the maths that's 10 more months) but when I heard the new update was comming I suspected that the skull requirements would 100% change and there it is.

 

[Rey Brujo/Sauronx36]

How often do the three new XC models usually come out? if the frequency of Generic Items increased threefold
can we assume a similar change given that we have even more XC?

And franelguay, if what you’re saying were true, where’s my gold? I can’t see it. Just because your clan doesn’t know how to manage its skulls like we do – having distributed them fairly amongst all our active members – doesn’t mean we’re sponsored by Highway.

 

[Jackal]

I do not mind being sponsored by Highway

 

[space mercenary]

the crashing keeps going with the client

 

[Alewx]

the crashing keeps going with the client

Another fix is beeing prepared.

 

[Highway]

I love the new update to how the ships look in the shop and on the profile, but I do miss being able to view them from underneath; there were interesting details there that can no longer be appreciated. The effect is interesting, but it gets a bit dark underneath, making it even harder to see that area—though I suppose it’s a matter of taste, and many people might not have appreciated those details anyway.

its darker to allow the alloys and glowing parts to be more visible. On most ships it looks good but as the raven ships are darker in their precolored base color they are pitch black. Can understand that the details are not good to see that way. Only way is to watch your own ship, that is colored differently.

 

[Hydraxon]

Balancing items based of cooldown warmup and duration is inherently flawed, certain items are much better off balanced by strength such as bomb and os

Including damage factor in the balancing would have opened up a can of worms and ended up taking a lot longer to try find a nice baseline to begin with, the idea of having it just affecting the other 3 factors and cooldown especially is so the timing of these items will matter more.

Without going into details on each item I will say there are a number of them that would only be able to be used at most 10 times in a CQ if you'd used them the moment you was able to each time, sure that number can be exponential based on who is using it but choice on when it's used matters more when a longer cooldown is involved rather than decreasing it's strength but retaining the old cooldown.

especially since if i understand it correctly it will only cost cryonite to swap items on the 9th slot and maybe remnant bp parts for tc

Both the Item Slot Kit + the BPs themselves onto them will cost Cryonite

The "9th slot" in essence also has parts, you install the specific item slot first which then can be equipped with any version of that specific item, for example you might get an Orbital Strike Item Kit, which after acquiring the necessary parts of, you can install that kit onto any ship in any system. But keep in mind you're installing currently obtained items on it, so while you **can** put it onto a Phoenix Ship, you will have to install minimum Mizar OS on it, so it won't be able to get used in a Vega CQ.

 

[daniel48090]

A question: Based on what I've seen on day 1 of the update, the content seems to be running smoothly (except for the occasional strange bug). However, during the day we were discussing how XCs are now only available to drop items implemented in the recent update. What I'd like to know is: Is this permanent?

If so, I think the Alloy Upgrade feels too forced within the XC system. Yes, I understand it's a "Free to Play" approach to the already familiar Shining Armor (Ion, Fusion, Antimatter), but (this is just my opinion) it's quite discouraging to know that you "must" kill an XC for a random Alloy Upgrade specific to a particular system and texture/model type. And yes, I put "must" in quotes because I know perfectly well that you're not obligated to do it; you can let someone else do it or simply leave.

So, what am I getting at? I think I speak for many of us who viewed the XCs favorably because of their value in obtaining large quantities of Remnant blueprints. However, if I know an XC has Alloy Upgrade, I'll definitely pass on it because I've had Fusion Brilliant Paint for over 10 years, I've seen Ion Paint, and I have Antimatter Paint on another server. Consequently, it doesn't impress me at all, and I'm sure many others in my situation feel the same way.

We thought the focus of the alloy improvements was on being able to see different textures on the ship models. For example: What would a Dominator AnIn-1 look like with a Raven texture? That would be genuinely amazing, and I know perfectly well that an implementation like that would be incredibly laborious in terms of art design, but that's what we thought (not everyone, but at least those I talk to).

My overall opinion is: The free, individual, and category-specific implementation of ship and system textures seems like a good starting point for many players who have never had Brilliant Paints. But for me, it's not important enough to warrant requiring an XC to obtain it.

I suggested that perhaps they could implement a new type of Carrier Remnant that distributes these rewards (but other players countered that this might trigger a rebalancing of Carrier Remnants). I'm not sure what kind: a LC or YC, so to speak, that, while an "intermediate" version, rewards with alloys. Or they could leave the XCs as they are and implement a "Legendary" Carrier Remnant version that returns the reward from the large number of blueprints and has a rare appearance during the day to encourage people to fight for it.