Assuming he's using small lasers then he can't miss normally. Lasers have a hit dispersion of 3. The smallest surface size is 3. Unless the NPC bot is equipped with an evasion module, which I doubt many of them are, you can't miss with small lasers.

On top of that a miss does not look like hitting the ground. A miss looks like shooting the air just next to your opponent.

If you want to experience when the LoS systems gets annoying try fighting on a slope where both you and your opponent are at the same height. So a slope that, when the camera is right behind your robot, goes from the top right corner to the bottom left corner of your screen ( or the other way around ). The steeper the slope is the more often your robot seems to not even be aiming at the enemy robot but instead his lasers leave the barrel at an angle of around 30+ degrees ( rotation ) and fire at the top of the slope.

This is basically why I suggested it.

There's a handful of situations where there currently just aren't enough visual clues to whether or not you'll hit. If you're in one of these you can of course just try and see. So you miss and you move around a bit, but often the terrain in which these situations happen isn't confined to a few square meters. It's a larger area, so once again you're in the situation where there aren't enough clues as to whether or not you'll hit.

It's not about missing your shots. It's about it being clear why your shots missed. Sometimes when you see 95% of a robot it's still not enough and you miss. Yet sometimes when you see less then 75% of it you still hit.

It's like using module when you have 100 Accumulator and getting the error that you don't have enough yet when next time it cycles and you have just 50 Accumulator left it goes off just fine. It's frustrating not because the module doesn't go off, but because you're just not sure when it will and when it won't go off.

As a mission runner I would just run the missions that you can handle, that aren't too busy and make good NIC. So that when Assault Bots and Mechs hit the market at large you'll be able to buy one right away and start enjoying all the advantages that such machines give.

As an industrialist it's a bit more complicated. If you're in it for the money I'd grab a calculator and spend one of your sessions finding out which markets are profitable right now with your skills. Probably one of the ammunition markets or maybe the light bot market as a casual indy. If you're in it for the crafting I'd focus on expanding your knowledge base, preparing your library of CTs and possibly stacking up materials.

The way I see it most of the casual player base and probably some of the hardcore is currently in Perpetuum University. You've chosen your major subject ( combat, trade, industry etc. ) and possibly a minor and now you're learning. Maybe you're a Perp genius and in a week you'll know exactly what to do and what not to do. Maybe you're not sure and you switch to a new major and maybe take up a new minor. Maybe you're just like most players and you've got a decent idea of where you want to go but not much of a clue on how to get there. So you stick around, you explore, you learn, you try things out and when you feel you're ready you go for it.

Sometimes you'll screw up, just make sure you learn from it. This weekend I lost my prometheus, had to buy a new one with all the mods. Cost me half a mill. Half my money. Taught that maybe lasers being long range weapons it isn't so smart to use them from 50m while 5 NPCs are pounding you. Maybe you should stick at 150m where they can't hit you. So all in all, good money and time spent. I consider myself in the second year of Perp Uni now.

Things are just starting.

There's nothing on the market yet, corps are still building up, most everyone is still in light bots.

It's a sandbox. We players create the content. We've only been here for a few days so there's not much to do yet.

I'd say right now it's all about the EPs, but they come slowly and nobody has a lot of them so things are a bit quiet right now.

First of all the resource market needs to get settled in. For this to happen miners are first going to have to reach the miner mechs and heavy mechs. Once this happens manufacturers can start focussing on specific products and start cranking out big numbers. When this happens the PvE people can start buying bigger bots on a larger scale and start raking in the NICs. Which in turn allows the miners and industrialists to start forming the economy because there's finally a demand for masses of ammo, bots and modules. This in turn will allow the PvPers to really get started as competition will bring the prices to a natural level on the market and the PvE content will supply sufficient NICs for them.

So right now things are slow while people build up sufficient EP to settle into their chosen professions with enough support skills to allow them to function efficiently.

As a hardcore player you now have the opportunity to be the first player to do so many things and get the related benefits from that.

As a casual player you have the opportunity to start stocking up NIC and EP so that once the market settles you can get right down to your chosen business without needing any additional time to prepare.

See it as a colonisation. First the hardcore scouts move in and explore and map the lands. All the while the casual settlers wait at base camp and prepare themselves to populate the lands. Once the hardcore scouts have started things up the casual settlers move in and will mostly take over all but the most dangerous areas where the hardcore scouts will still reign supreme.

Your industrial skills will advance at a slower rate then your combat skills. They'll still be able to advance to max level but it will take more EP, and thus time, to get there.

Basically you have 3 options:
- Train a single character in both, will take a long time but in the end you have one character that can do it all.
- Train 2 characters on the same account, one with combat and one with industry. Will still take quite a long time but shorter then the first. You'll have to relog if you want to do something else though.
- Get a second account and train an industry character there. Will take half the time of the other options but will cost you monthly. You can also dual box so you don't even have to relog ( just open 2 clients on the same PC and alt-tab between them. )

Overall ugliness Cornelius T probably has my vote.

But I find Demois to definitely be the most disturbing due to the sheer "Mi Scusi" factor.

Cornelius T I'd give an odd look, from Demois I'd run with both hands covering my ***.

I'd say be patient. More player feedback isn't always a good thing.

Players get excited. We think of stuff that sounds awesome at first but when thought through really won't work at all. We exaggerate stuff we deem negative, most of the time unintentionally. We often don't mention much of the stuff we deem positive, also most of the time unintentionally. We ask for fast patches and early releases and then we complain the devs didn't take enough time.

The devs have to filter through all this information, plus whatever logs they themselves have of server activity and their own experiences, which takes time. On top of that, judging by the fairly bug-free state perp was released in, the devs take their bug fixing seriously. Which takes even more time.

In the end I'd prefer a well-thought out patch that's bug free once 2011 hits rather then a quick buggy fix based on the limited experiences and flawed observations of all of us players ( myself included ) by the end of this week.

Not to say that it's a bad thing that we use these forums to suggest, discuss and even whine about all sorts of things. As long as it's done with a certain degree of respect for each other it's great fun for us players and it may just inspire a dev to come up with something new. But the forums are where the talk happens. That shabby office with the 10 year old couch is where the designing happens.

I'd personally say they should release a weekly dev blog, no matter how short, to keep us informed of what they're thinking about and working on. Release the blog weekly so all us rabid players stay happy and then focus on pushing out quality patches only when they're ready.