I am a blue pilot.

I would prefer a change in gauss guns that boost falloff and cut down optimal ranges. This would allow for magnedart ammo to be used in pvp more successfully, because you'll be doing most of your damage in falloff unless you want to be shotgunning it. This also synergizes with the Kain's falloff modifier.

Another alternative is to change the ammo itself so that it has a falloff increase and optimal decrease. Probably +50-100% falloff, and -75% optimal still.

I'd also prefer it if magnedart ammo was not 100% kinetic damage, as that makes it absurbly easy to tank for; but then, that might make it imba and also simply replace composite ammo.

Don't touch my PvP with your PvE stuff please. I have no interest in having to grind for months in order to be pvp-equipped. The Loyalty Point store worked in EVE because you could sell the items on the market. It wasn't exclusive to someone who missioned until their brain melted away.

Don't screw with the pvp balance please. It doesn't need any more 'must be this tall to ride' requirements as it is. Forcing a new player to grind for 3 months in alpha before being able to pvp? Pass.

I was going to write a long post, but I decided against it. However, thank you for bumping the thread. I will now post a generic rage against the casual player agenda.

Eventually, I hope you understand that Perpetuum is a game about conflict. Don't believe me? What do you do when someone posts their ore for a lower price than yours? You lower it? Why, that's competition! That's Player Versus Player interaction, that ever-so-feared pvp you decry as ruining your game!

In conflict, you have to take a risk in order to be rewarded. You could have quick-sold your ore, but you're willing to take time (and time = risk in a volitile market) to sell it for more NIC. You're risking more, you're rewarded!

Compare this to alpha versus beta:
-- The same ores at the same rates, with the exception of titan ore only on alphas, and epriton only on betas. Betas have mechs hunting your miner, alpha has 35kph roaming spawns that can catch you if you decide to go out for a night of partying while you make money.
-- Alpha has 90% of the kernels that a prototyper needs. I have t4 gear that I've only needed alpha kernels for. So the l33t zomg kernels are more or less a farce, because if you farm npcs on beta you're waiting for a roaming player spawn to come kick your mass at 80 kph.
-- Betas get a grand total of 5% average bonus on some outpost versus Tellisis/Hershfield/Shinjalar.

It's not "our behavior of KOS" that caused my corp to simply leave our outpost on beta. It's the total lack of benefit for living in it as compared to the risks.

While we're at it, why not add Local Island chat to the game? This smells like BACON (program run in the background in EVE that alerted you when someone jumped into your system, which was exploitable in so many ways by farmers.) No, this module/system is not worth development time.

Part of living on beta is that you should never be 100% secure, especially just because you spent NIC. If you make it so NIC ensures safety, you're going to end up with 3 things. 1) More people running the triangle of inflation on alphas. 2) Less pvp. 3) More people leaving the game because if you can't fight intrustion event-sized battles, you don't get pvp.

You shouldn't even be able to put arkhe scouts on the gate long term imo. The ability to be even more warned is not something this game needs when it takes 10 minutes to get to a possible target. I'd even support having no sound effects when you jump on beta; the only way you'd figure out that your scout is dead is by noticing its in the station if you aren't actually watching its demise.

You're all assuming that the collision size of a mech has to be large. It doesn't. You could have a narrow cylinder/rectangle for collisions. On alpha, the collision could be even smaller. For example, the Tellesis "only 5 entrances" issue. Well, if it takes 15-20 people per entrance to block it on alpha, let the griefers do it if they can pull it off. Gives a whole new meaning to the term "station camp". If it becomes a serious problem, I'm sure the devs could find an easy solution (like expanding the docking region so that to block all the entrances would take more people)

On betas, collision would force people to be more disciplined in larger engagements and in movement. I don't see a problem with that. The collision box on betas could be much larger as well, because if someone is griefing you on beta you can shoot them.

Tracking is something worthwhile to the game if it can be done. As it is, light bots might as well just try to blow up on a mech to try and kill it. Pilot skill needs to be put into play more, and a tracking system would allow for that much more than the current "hit size" limitations. Gun tracking should have simple angular change in addition to hit size calculations for missing, missile tracking could be similar to that other game; explosion radius, explosion size, and explosion speed.

[I'm not a game dev/network junkie, but using what knowledge I have as a learning programmer...]
The game already is sending positional-directional data. Projected angular calculations are not extensively difficult to do, and only need to be calculated probably twice a second, and only on locked targets (assume 8 calculations per player max, assume 200 player battle, that's 3200 calculations a second. Each calculation is definitely less than 100 floating point calculations, but let's assume it's 100. That's all of 320,000 floating point calculations, out of the gigaflops (1,000,000,000) that a server can do. That'd be a 0.032% increase out of total CPU usage if they only had 1 gigaflop. I doubt that would be the issue.
[/end probably half-correct calculations, which are probably only an order of maginitude wrong, if that]

EDIT: And as for all the "but you could kill my [insert big mech here] with a [insert small mech here] comments that are inevitable, that means you're doing it wrong. Being bigger does not always mean you're a better fighter, and if you're getting killed by a castel in your mesmer because you don't have a demob/tracking booster fit or you're not using terrain/cover... you're doing it wrong and should die. Just because you're big doesn't mean you are invulnerable, or at least, it shouldn't. The fact that you are shows imbalance, because it means even an idiot in a heavy mech is worth more than the best pvp pilot in the game in a light bot.

/me points to http://foom.electric-mayhem.org/wiki/us … nformation for a lot of the info you wanted. The rest of the wiki probably has some things you're looking for as well.

Alpha mining is only slightly dangerous compared to betas. Kentagura often gets 2-3 Superior observers waltzing through mineral fields, as well as 10+ npc spawns. In either case, if you're not paying attention, you will lose something. Only new alphas and betas got the spawns. You can go to ye olde alphas (NV, Dao, Att) if you're trying to afk. But then, you always have the chance of someone spawning an infestation or observer on your mineral deposit. But compare alpha mining to beta mining; if you don't have scouts on every teleport, a signal detecting mech, and even then some nearby combat pilots, you're asking to get killed by players. Vastly greater risk and effort required to mine, exactly the same reward. It is no wonder that corporations only mine epriton on betas.

Increasing the mineral intake on betas makes them more lucrative to mine. The more the boost, the more lucrative it is to mine there. By jointly increasing the kernel drop rate, increasing plasma yield, and possibly also increasing *good* module drop rates (t3/t2), mining overwatch can effectively make money while also being on standby for roamers.

A tangent on risk versus reward...
There should always be risks. If you get a reward without any risk, something in the sandbox is broken. See sequer courier trains (I like to call them inflation trains). If the devs were to remove those, all of a sudden, you'd have NIC being valuable to many corporations. As it is, any time you need NIC for anything, well, why sell assets when you can just tap the infinite courier faucet for cash? A riveler that mines in perfect safety is no different, other than they're getting free assets without even having to pay attention.