Tag Archives: SWGEmu

Friday Feature 10/27/2017: EiF’s Combat!

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EiF knew combat would not be fully balanced when we went live. Over the past months we’ve had a much larger player base using our system than the 5-10 players pre-launch on the test center. Our community’s feedback has been invaluable. I reviewed the Q & A with the Devs, to be sure this was the most accurate and up-to-date information. There are a few changes, such as with the armor. 

Below is the current state of EiF’s combat systems, as it relates to Professions and Skills.

General

  • EiF is about player choice and counter play in our balance.
  • Professions vs Skills
    • The New Profession System and Skill Trees: One of the core ideas of EiF was to separate “What you do” from “How you do it”. “What you do” are your Professions – Bounty Hunter, Commando, Doctor, Entertainer, Merchant, Ranger, Smuggler, and Squad Leader. Any person can pick any profession; they cost 0 skill points, but a person can only have one of those professions at a time. Professions grant non-combat abilities and some combat specials, but no combat modifiers – for example, picking Smuggler doesn’t give you extra pistol speed/accuracy/etc.
    • Skills are the “How you do it”, and it’s almost everything else from the original skill trees. Pistoleer, Carbineer, Rifleman, TKA, Fencer, etc, plus your crafting skills and dancer/musician/image designer. Those do require skill points, so you mix-and-match to your heart’s content, up to 250 points worth. The trees are recalculated so that you can basically take two and a half skill trees; I suspect most players will have a line or two of Medic in their builds, but some of our testers already surprised me on that point by forgoing it for more defensive modifiers.
  • No Legendaries
    • Weapons or Armor
  • Core Based Crafting System
    • Separates the appearance from the performance
    • Crafting revamped -Damage is substantially higher and resists cap much lower than 90%
    • Weapons
      • All stats have been revamped to actually matter on a weapon. Assuming similar crafting, pistols will be faster than carbines which are faster than rifles. Rifles have higher damage than carbines which have more damage than pistols.
      • Accuracy calculations come into play; a melee character on top of a rifleman will absolutely destroy him, but at 64 meters the rifleman will shred a melee character.
      • Additional weapons, including some from the NGE will be added as EiF progresses
      • A recent tease from Halyn was an A280-CFE which is a convertible weapon. With the proper certifications (details coming soon(™)) it can be switched between a pistol, carbine, or rifle.
      • Armor piercing/armor level have been removed from calculations, as it pushed players to AP3-only weapons (or stun!)
    • Armor
      • Not all about Composite anymore, appearance is separated from performance
      • Armor is capped at 60% resists
      • Suits of factional armor will come in with the GCW patch. The Imperial and Rebel variants of Mandalorian armor will be part of the Mandalore patch
    • All armor and weapons decay
      • An armorsmith can best repair armor
      • A weaponsmith can best repair weapons
      • Any player can use a repair kit, but the master AS and WS have better chance of not breaking the piece and getting a better repair
      • Crafting stations improve chances of a good repair
  • HAM
    • The HAM/buff system has been inverted. Pre-CU features low base HAM and extremely strong buffs; EiF flipped that, so players start with high HAM and buffs add around 10% total.
    • Starting HAM is closer to 5000
    • No longer incapped by depletion of:
      • Mind
      • Action
      • PvP
        • Action and mind bars can still be targeted by other players, even if they can’t force an incap. During, say, a 4v4, a valid tactic may be for one or two players on each side to focus on keeping the enemy healer’s mind bar locked down to prevent them from throwing heals.
      • Players only incap on the health bar.
    • Action and Mind regenerates faster
      • 3-4 sec from empty to full
      • Action and mind regen very fast, but specials actually /use/ action and mind – firing a pistol special, for example, might take 30% of your action bar, but a few seconds later you’ll be back at full action.
      • Health is regenned faster by sitting
    • No species starting differentiation for HAM
  • Speed
    • Not capped at 1 atk/sec, but 75% reduction of weapon speed
    • With a focus on speed all the way down (speed crafted, speed sliced, speed PuPed) pistols can fire well faster than once per second…but given HAM costs for specials, it’s not real practical.
    • Speed is calculated differently. HAM costs and encumbrance matter. AP is no longer factored into damage calcs. High HAM and low buffs. Lower armor protections.
  • Dizzy
    • Dizzy/KD doesn’t work the same way here.
    • Dizzy is only a 15% chance to K/D you on posture change, not 85% that is is traditionally
    • Dizzy however affects you offensively, reduces your accuracy
    • Stacks with Blind
    • Reduces your primary defenses by 20%
  • Primary Defense – caps at 125
    • Melee/Range
    • SL bonus pushes the cap above 125
    • Pikatta Pie – pushes the cap about 125 too
  • Secondary Defenses – caps at 125
    • Dodge – Pistols/ 1H mele
    • Counter attack – Carbines/2H Melee
    • Block – Rifles/Pikeman
    • Defensive Acuity – Unarmed
    • In the future we’ve talked about adding in schematics that drop with different combinations, such as a dodging polearm.
    • SEAs help to reach Cap, but not push above the cap. Still keeps the cap of +25 to one stat from all your attachments.
  • Buffs
    • Doc buffs
    • Moved status from doc buffs into base stats, so now unbuffed you are close to what a doc buffed character was. Doc buffs only increase stats by about an additional 5% ( as was intended in Raph Koster’s initial design )
    • No longer required for play, intended to be at same power as other buffs such as food and drinks
    • No Doc Bots
    • Buffs are weak on EiF
    • Ent Buffs are reduced from Live
    • The classic SWG model is “low HAM, high buffs” – we’ve swapped that around, so you natively have high HAM with buffs providing far less of an increase. Playing without buffs is perfectly feasible; in PvP, buffs give an edge.
    • Further tweaking to ensure Doc buffs are viable is planned, but not outside the scope of current design. Atm they’re a bit underpowered.
  • Professions – Profession skills require the ‘mind’ pool to activate.
  • Racial Bonuses – Some bonuses do affect combat.

Thank you, Anishor, for helping me to put this together!

-Sandarie, Community Manager

Clearly Not Combat Princess!

Friday Feature 10/20/2017: A Chat with Kelta!

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Woo hoo! Another chat with one of the Empire in Flames Staff! Enjoy getting to know Kelta!

EiF: Which versions of SWG did you play? pre-CU, CU, NGE?

Kelta: I only played NGE. Unfortunately, I was a late comer to the game.

EiF: Which server did you play on?

Kelta: I played on Starsider!

 EiF: Which classes and which was your favorite?

Kelta: I played a LS Jedi and a Commando/BM. I tried to do Jedi/BM, but when they put my tanking heal at the bottom of the tree, I had to give up my narglatch.  I also had–at various times–a tailor, dancer/image designer, and a medic/BM.

My jedi was my favorite because I really enjoy tanking, but my commando was a close second. Who doesn’t love to set things on fire? Plus, my commando had pets!

EiF: How many accounts did you own/manage?

Kelta: I had two accounts. They both started out as my then-boyfriend’s  and then became mine.

(He paid for them though, so I guess that made them technically his!)

EiF: What type of gameplay style do you most enjoy?

Kelta: I was and am mainly an RPer. Tanking during instances was a close second, and gunning during space events was third. I also enjoyed just playing the game. I loved exploring the planets, following the quest lines, and fighting with my various pets.

EiF: What’s a typical gaming session for you, what activities?

Kelta: My gaming sessions vary. I have a tailor that I horribly neglect–when I get the crafting or decorating bug, I play her and start some wild scheme like creating a swimwear line! Mostly I hang out on my rangers and play with my pets. I spend a lot of my time hunting, taming babies, or running missions with my friends. I’m slowly getting into the RP scene. I have lots of ideas and not so much with the time right now.

EiF: What do you most enjoy about SWG?

Kelta: I love the pets!  I usually run with a pack of cats, but the variety of species I can tame is awesome!  I enjoy ferreting out the new tamables that have been added and searching for the super rares. I’m very excited that now I don’t have to be a bio-engineer or have a ton of money if I want specific pets; all I have to do is go find them and tame them! Taming is probably my favorite change from the NGE.

EiF: What do you enjoy most about Empire in Flames?
Kelta: Cat mounts! xD
It’s having all my friends gathered back together in one place and getting to see familiar names popping back up both in-game and on Discord, honestly. When Galaxies shut down, we tried to find another game that we could all make a home and nothing ever clicked. Now I have my closest friends back creating a game together, while other friends come back to check out and enjoy what is being created. And I’m gaining new friends as well!

EiF: When you are not ingame, what do you enjoy doing?

Kelta: Sleeping mostly. 🙂 But I also enjoy cooking, baking, gardening, reading, writing, gaming, and spending time with my family.

EiF: What do you do outside of EiF / do for a living?

Kelta: I’m a high school English teacher. ( 1) No, you won’t hear me correcting your grammar. I only do that if I’m teaching, you’re a student, or you ask me to. 2)You probably have an urge to check for grammatical errors now. Go ahead. It’s okay!)

EiF: What is your role with EiF? What does that entail?

Kelta: I’m the wife of the owner and I have no programming skills whatsoever. Pretty much, I offer suggestions when asked, serve as a sounding board as needed, enjoy playing the game, and point out bugs as I find them. Occasionally I make wild suggestions that are either shot down or considered.  I also yell “Shuttle” whenever I miss them–which is frequently–and try to help the actual programmers remember to enjoy the game too.

Oh, and I enjoy being a helper when I’m in-game!

EiF: If you could have ANYTHING instantly in EiF, what would it be?

Kelta: Everything finished to the point where the team could play a bit more and my husband could RP with me!

EiF: What gives you Developer’s Crack?

Kelta: Ummm…Bringing one more person over the “Dark Side” and watching them join the CH fold! Or visiting the awesome player cities and observing the way they mold this virtual world into their own(which always gives me more ideas for decorating!) Or rping!

 

Friday Feature 10/13/2017 – A Chat with Abi/Gail!

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Continuing the Empire in Flames staff interviews. This week we get peek into the life of Gail! Enjoy.

EiF: Which versions of SWG did you play? pre-CU, CU, NGE?

Abi/Gail: All, but I preferred the CU.

EiF: If you played in the pre-CU live, approximately how long did you play in the pre-CU?

Abi/Gail: I played from June 25th 2003 until the bitter end. There were a number of times where I wasn’t in game for long stretches due to real life, but mostly during the NGE because it wasn’t as interesting to me.

EiF: Which server did you play on?

Abi/Gail: Starsider. For life.

EiF: Which classes and which was your favorite?

Abi/Gail: 

PreCU – Doc/TKM (Dizzy & Knockdown!)

CU – Bounty Hunter/Pistoleer/Combat Medic

NGE – Spy

EiF: How many accounts did you own/manage?

Abi/Gail: I had one that was my primary, but at the peak of the CU I had three.

EiF: What type of gameplay style do you most enjoy?

Abi/Gail: PvP, difficult PvE, and Space PvP

EiF: What is a typical gaming session for you, what activities?

Abi/Gail: There isn’t really a typical – Sometimes I’m in EiF crafting or running missions with friends, sometimes I’m being dragged into an RP – sometimes I’m playing another game like Battlefront or Skyrim. My gaming time has decreased a lot since having a kid. Now I can only squeeze in a little time after about 1930 when my daughter goes to bed.

EiF: What do you most enjoy about SWG?

Abi/Gail: Being able to do things with my friends – secondary to that is the ability to do what I want how I want. I also like that you are not forced to play one specific class in one specific way. You can be or do almost anything you want in a way that you enjoy.

EiF: When you are not in-game, what do you enjoy doing?

Abi/Gail: Spending time with my little girl and making costumes. I’ve been a member of the 501st for 12 years now and I’ve been making costumes ranging from Star Wars, to Star Trek to Firefly and many more.

My goal is to make it as movie or screen accurate as possible – to that effect, I own two screen used costumes (Starship Troopers and Stargate) and one screen used prop (The Dark Knight).

Time with my daughter involves going to the park, playing in the yard, coloring and watching either Star Wars, My Little Pony, Pokemon or Tangled.

EiF: What do you do outside of EiF / do for a living?

Abi/Gail: I am a systems administrator for NASA. I also run a small decal business on Etsy.

EiF: What is your role with EiF? What does that entail?

Abi/Gail: The best description of my role is ‘Gap Filler’ – I do a little with textures, a little with code and as a sounding board for ideas from Halyn and Anishor. Occasionally I help Sandi with the community, but not very often since I think everyone would prefer I not interact with the community as much – I’m a grumpy guy.

EiF: If you could have ANYTHING instantly in EiF, what would it be?

Abi/Gail: CU Combat Medic – but just for me.

EiF: What gives you Developer’s Crack?

Abi/Gail: I am not a professional developer or programmer, so it’s a learning opportunity for me. Working on EiF is a chance to experience something that I don’t normally do day in and day out at work. That being said, I’ll keep my day job. Coding wasn’t for me in college and it still isn’t something I’d want to do to pay the bills.

EiF: Feel free to add anything else?

Abi/Gail: It is interesting to go all the way back to Pre-CU SWG. I really did the most in the CU, so to have the system be the older version is like going back to when I very first got in to the game with my friends. It reminds me of the person I was back then and how I’ve changed.

Also, I’m looking forward to having a TRE file full of stuff I’ve done to be added to the game and for players to start finding them. Don’t expect it this week, but the first things are on the horizon.

Friday Feature: 10/6/2017 RP on EiF!

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Plopping down heavily into a chair in her work area, the station manager leaned forward to fold her arms on her desk and laying her head on them. A sigh escaped her lips while recounting the events of the past few days. It all started with the arrival of a quirky droid who apparently was, and still is, looking for teams to help protect the shipments of his master’s cargo. In an of itself, that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for a space station such as Port Jato. Jato was really more of a shadowport, turning a blind eye to illicit activities, clandestine meetings, and the like. Heck she was working to create some private meeting areas to facilitate such activities, including sections where special cargo could be safely secured.

Shortly after the droid’s arrival and solicitation of her customers for escort and protection services,  the group out to harm the droid arrived in the Mistell demanding the droid be turned over to them. The type of clients she catered to didn’t take too well to being interrupted with a possible job being negotiated and the firefight broke out. A fire fight! Dammit! Not on her station! It was one of the few things Halyn made sure she understood, keep the activities to things that wouldn’t destroy his station!

“Meh,” she muttered into her arms, “Gotta get the new security team trained and settled. Get the new meeting rooms set up too, maybe that would have kept the scum away from the business activities being conducted.” A little bump against the blue hair covering her head startled her. Looking up she found a durni had landed on her desk. “Gah, seriously? My desk now?” Looking about she noticed several of the durni’s had escaped their pen and were nibbling on the fruits and veggies she was attempting to grow.

“Ugh! I’ll deal with you bunch later, right now, I have to get some secure rooms set up.”

—

Empire in Flames successfully launched its first roleplay campaign last Sunday. The story continues on Sunday with the droid, Custos, looking for teams of 3 to help escort his master’s cargo and keep it from being stolen while enroute to it’s destination. Two teams have formed so far and more are encouraged to be created. Each team will split a 1 million credit payment for services rendered at the successful completion of the campaign.

The staff of EiF are all avid roleplayers themselves and we are excited about bring the campaign to our community.  While EiF does not consider itself a roleplay server, it does think of itself as a friendly roleplay environment and it attracts a large number of people interested in roleplaying.

Port Jato is developing into a joint effort between the staff and community. The nearly completed arena has been decorated entirely by a member of our Community, Doreen. She has also set up Megan’s work area, complete with a test kitchen, working stills for her custom brews, and a garden. Other players are creating other sections of Jato, such as our arrival checkpoint and medical center.  (see this Friday Feature to learn more about features and plans for Port Jato http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=474 .)

Join us Sundays at 9:00 PM EST for more in the ongoing story. The storyteller is our very own Halyn, who has created a lot of epic story content not only in SWG Live on Starsider, but is also a published author with two books to his credit and has had his work included in a complilation with other authors.

Sandarie
Community Manager

Friday Feature 9/22/2017: A Chat with Anishor

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Continuing the Empire in Flames staff interviews. This week we get peek into the life of Anishor! Enjoy.

EiF: Which versions of SWG did you play? pre-CU, CU, NGE?

 Anishor: I played all versions of SWG.

EiF: If you played in the pre-CU live, approximately how long did you play in the pre-CU?

Anishor: I played pre-CU beta 2 through the CU, So I’m not sure exactly how long that was.  That being said, I followed SWG since it’s first press release in 1999.

EiF: Which server did you play on?

Anishor: Starsider primarily, though starsider at launch was full and had stability problems so I played on Ahazi and Starsider 80/20% for the first two months..

EiF: Which classes and which was your favorite?

Anishor: Pre-CU : Squad leader, Rifleman, Bounty Hunter and Swordsmen, Medic, CH.  With the squad leader being my favorite. I enjoyed helping the base busts or saving Jedi from BH’s with the few squad leader buffs that worked. 

CU: Squadleader, Rifles, and Fencer. Was a lot of fun, OP at times too.

NGE: Squadleader, Melee Smuggler, LSJ.  Squadleader and Melee smuggler being tied.

EiF: How many accounts did you own/manage?

Anishor: At the height in the NGE I had 5 accounts, two were for buffing purposes. I had a main account that was for my wookiees, and another for my other RP toons.  With the final account being for secret alts. 😉

EiF: What type of gameplay style do you most enjoy?

Anishor: That’s a really hard question for me to answer, I love PvP on both the ground and in space. But RP is always right there so it’s hard to say.

EiF: What’s a typical gaming session for you, what activities?

Anishor: I check my vendors on my merchants, I check my housing maintenance, then I see if there’s anyone I want to RP or just do missions with.  If not, I just run missions by myself and talk about EiF’s direction.

EiF: What do you most enjoy about SWG?

Anishor: Living the Greatest Star Wars Story ever told, mine.

EiF: What do you enjoy most about Empire in Flames?

Anishor: Seeing other people enjoy the work we’ve put in and just enjoying the game. After that, I  like the hybrid skill set / profession system we’ve created and the balance we’re working towards.

EiF: When you are not ingame, what do you enjoy doing?

Anishor: I play three sports – I fence sabre, soccer, and ice hockey. Though I haven’t played hockey in a bit.  I also I enjoy playing CoD Zombies with my GF or playing the various battlefield series with my brothers.  I also enjoy eating out and working out.

EiF: What do you do outside of EiF / do for a living?

Anishor: I’m a senior software engineer who focuses on User Experience design and user interface implementation with an additional role as a semantic modeller. Though with this focus, I do embrace a full stack approach and am comfortable with a large variety of technologies, languages, and development approaches.

EiF: What is your role with EiF? What does that entail?

Anishor: I provide engineering support to Halyn as well as being the primary designer responsible for our combat/profession balance.  What that means is I spend time helping Halyn get passed server code bugs, figuring out how to implement some new features on the back end  if Halyn can’t. I also created our launcher, though not from scratch, I forked another team’s launcher and edited to suit our needs.  This is what good engineers do, don’t rebuild the wheel if you can just reuse and modify.  I also created our skill calculator beta.

From the designer perspective it means looking at numbers and doing a lot of play testing on my dev environment. To not only get balance right, but ensuring all the skill sets have a good/unique feel to them, don’t’ want to have cookie-cutter.

EiF: If you could have ANYTHING instantly in EiF, what would it be?

 Anishor: B-wings and JTL.

EiF: If you could find out one thing about our EiF Community, what would it be?

 Anishor: What incentives for PvP would everyone like?

EiF: What gives you Developer’s Crack?

Anishor: Depends: in EIF – seeing people read the new plans for skill sets and changing minds about long held ideas or must haves. You must stack Fencer with Pistoleer for example.

In my real life job – Seeing a noobie pick up my user interface and they’re able to understand and improve their job in less than 7s.  Also creating a semantic model of complex real world concepts that people were unable to accurately describe without idioms.

EiF: Feel free to add anything else?

 Anishor:  Wookiees > Zeltrons  > Zabraks > Everyone Else. But really I enjoy seeing our server community grow and look forward to the heights of we can climb together.

Clearly Not Combat Princess!

Community Manager, Empire in Flames