I was okay with everything until this.... Being able to reset, however infrequently makes this possible. I specialised in a certain way, getting to level 10 in uber artillery mega death tank the day it comes out is my 'reward' let's say for being dedicated to a path. In that, I also have to weather the hard times when other classes are FOTM or small balancing changes make my current build less effective. That's okay, I don't mind that.

But with resets, my advantage is lost and my hard times are harder. Made up example...

I specialise in mechs and big guns, this pays off big time 12 months from gamestart when uber mega tank comes out and everyone wants to play it. They all have to wait, I get 'paid' for my dedication by getting in early and offering an advantage to my corps/alliance. In the 12 months however, I have been less effective in small bots.

Someone else specialises in small bots, puts their EP into being the best small bot pilot ever, they have a great time for 12 months benefitting their alliance and corps hugely. When uber mega tank comes out, they still have a role to play but they can't jump in the shiny as quickly or as effectively.

This is nicely balanced. With a reset, the second guy could hint reset, dump all his EP into the right skill set and jump in the same robot as me on the same day. This either leads to everyone 'having' to reset to be competitive or we end up with everyone jumping ship once every (insert EP reset timer here) and everyone whines there are no balanced gangs because everyone turns up in artillery bots for a roam

Bah early morning rant mode off...

The Perpetuum Intelligence kill board is now live and in BETA!!

Go here for more details. It is pretty feature complete apart from two details pages (corps/bots) and those won't take me long to create due to the design of the core system.

There are known issues but I need assistance to find if there are any more!!

It certainly isn't as pretty as the FNAVY one (great job guys) but I am seriously considering opening it up to further community development and anyone who wants to assist me, either coding or graphic design for PI are most welcome to get in touch!! I plan on expanding PI as a community site primarily (away from its initial intentions) and am looking for feedback and suggestions from everyone.

You need to sign up for an account on PI, it is safe and secure (I use the PHPBB3 security subsystems rather than homebrew) and there is always a place for open discussion!!

I am working on an API document for Gargaj to highlight some areas I think could be expanded on with API's into the game, would be happy to open up discussion from other potential developers to add and comment.

Ideally the kill mails would have a unique id and a hash value, that would be the easiest method to do verification against the game state.

A simple export option would help greatly also, one of the planned features I have is to allow you to export all your killmails back out from the system. I realise there may be other KB's people want to use and PI may not be around for ever so I will code that in a later release.

Everyone on the kill mail will get 'assist' for a kill although I haven't seen any kill mails yet that show a pure ewar on there, only ppl who actually do damage. If the devs put ewar on there the system can handle it.

Given the data in the kill mails there will be quite a bit I can do in terms of data mining etc but that will be added in later releases. If I get it stable and with good features I may also open source it for others to build upon.

Arga confirms he plays with himself regularly although an argument is usually involved....

Back on topic, even taking into account some limitations or the inherent limitations of sparks, a respec late in game would be too powerful. Given enough preparation, you could switch completely to a dedicated build with none of the weaknesses which everyone will inevitably accrue as the game develops. That would mean it would become essential to respec, not optional and that is broken.

In a similar vein I am thinking Navigation will get defaulted/removed like stEVE did with learning skills. As soon as it becomes 'must have' for everyone, it isnt a differentiator. Unless speed gets some negatives, it will remain the skill everyone gets to 10. But hey, i could be completely wrong

The Perpetuum Intelligence Killboard is in development.

Currently I have completed the database and the entry verification code. I have spent about 4-5 hours over the past few days debugging and running through some simple UAT type testing.

I am currently writing the global statistics and personal stats pages which hopefully wont take too long. My hope is that I can get v1.0 into open beta testing by the weekend. Anyone wishing to participate should sign up for an account as this will be required to post kill mails. You must also ensure your sign up name on the forums is the same as the character you will be posting mails from.

There will be a number of early limitations but i will hopefully fix these as time goes on. Initially it will work like most other KB systems in that the Killer and Victim need to post their kill mails for a Kill to be verified.

If anyone is interested in being a beta tester, let me know by signing up and posting on the PI forum topic in General Discussion.

http://www.perpetuum-intelligence.com/f … 6&t=39

In before GLiMPSE.... This isn't a con and I am not trying to steal your details and sell them to nasty people. However, exercise good judgement, don't use your Perpetuum Login information to sign up for a PI account, use alternate email addresses if you can and use a suitably good strength password (the system enforces a certain level by default).

Apologies for not being clear enough, in terms of NIC sink I consider anything which would require you to buy from the market for large scale building/needs to be a NIC sink. Consider that for beta dwellers or large alliances, mining low end isn't actually that profitable compared to what you can make on the islands. Hence, add big stuff the alliances will want (add big stuff ideas here) that require things like 500m Titan ore, 400m hdt etc etc. Beta islanders will sell back beta stuff to alpha to make the money to buy in the volumes they need to make Big Stuff. This further stimulates alpha economy and brings prices up for the care bears which can improve the PvE experience.

I also agree with GLiMPSE, the disorganised blob will not be as successful as the organised small or medium sized corps. This is beneficial for all.

Edit for Gordon.
I never suggested inflating NIC, the issue we all have right now is that there aren't enough outlets for NIC, especially for the large island corps. As long as they continue to be self sufficient, everyone suffers. Reducing build costs will only exacerbate that as in easing life for the smaller players, you serve to further increase the gap to the island holders and alliances. The control needs to be the other way around.

I'm pretty sure Aunty Jelan will be most happy to also help with broken relationships, dealing with awkward bot on bot situations and other general life type problems...:D

One thing that sticks out for me is the point Arga makes above in relation to addition of new content. We had the observers dropped in and their kernels make a nice big dent in research, who's to say that in the coming months other 'stepping stones' aren't added that significantly benefit those earlier in the tree?

Possibly kernels from missions or alpha artefact scanning which have a bonus to research in the T1 - T3 realm if they say add T5 and T6 levels in. This way the corps with full tech trees get their new levels to hit and the gap isn't widened too much as others can concentrate on the bonus kernels to accelerate their research up a bit also. This also means newer corps aren't always crippled with the same rates which were needed to get to the top first.

QFT

People have long complained that the solo/small corps aspect of the game was lack lustre, well here is the first of many improvements. This is a TEAM game, there will ALWAYS be content which is designed only to be unlocked by groups of players.

Here and now there is a good reason for smaller corps and solo players to mission and farm to improve their lot in the game. As pointed out above, access to the lower tier production is easy to obtain, mass T4 production should not be available to a 5 man corps, however it should not be beyond the realms to aim for 1 or 2 aspects of the tech tree at higher tiers. This should also stimulate the Market actually IF the appropriate expectations are set.

Farm kernels > trade out those you don't need and sell plasma > buy kernels you need from other small corps/solo players who are also trading out

Seems eminently balanced and I will try and keep an eye on this over the coming week to give a view on the podcast Market view segment.

I have to admit it was a shameless plug on the podcast

All good fun though!