On the contrary.

I have already explained it in more detail in another thread, but there has already been three periods of times in this game after the launch that where you could be immortal on Beta island due to the syndicate protection and three times it was reverted by Devs as it was abused to hell and back.

Now they have, this time willingly, added Beta side immortality for the fourth time...

Seriously, I can understand making same mistake once easily and I can barely understand making same mistake twice, but making the same mistake 4(!) time in a row makes me ask to myself: really? W-T-F?

And furthermore, outpost access rights do absolutely nothing for the inner island teleport immortality.

Personally how it should be imho is like this:

External teleporters: You can even keep as it is or revert it back to old system, I really do not care the slightest tbh.
If people find jumping from Alpha to Beta and from Beta to Alpha as their favorite PO passtime, well, then all the power to them.

Outposts: Enemy scouts at outposts should be killable before the docking right system is implemented, end of discussion.

Inner island teleporters: If you have made the choice to run in to so deep into Beta island that you are able to use the inner island teleporters then you should be killable, end of discussion.

In fact even the old system was *** as in you should have been vulnerable more than 5s period of time.

Uh-huh?

I beg your pardon, but it was/is not a bug at all, but the very design of the game that the molecular instability timer lasts 5s longer than the syndicate protection timer.

The reason for designing the timers to NOT to overlap for their full durations was to DISENABLE the ability to be completely immortal at Beta islands and with this latest patch they just re-enabled the immortality yet again!

I guess now you are asking what exactly do I mean with “yet again”? Well let me explain myself then...

My memory is somewhat vague of all the details and as such people who have better memory than me can correct if I make mistakes on details. 

After the launch there were small circle of protected zone at the beta island entry gates and naturally people abused the hell out of this safe zone. GotEvil and his Kain sitting whole day at the protection zone should bring nostalgic memories to those that played the game in Domhalarn back in the day.

I can’t remember any more if it was a design or if it broke down in some patch, but regardless there was a period of time where the protection timer and instability timers overlapped full their full duration and yet again as is natural people abused the hell out of this up until the dev team fixed it.

Then there was a time where protection timers and instability timers indeed did not overlap, but the protection timer could be exploited to restart by players who knew how to pull the exploit off.

I never quite got how people pulled the exploit off (it had something to do on jumping from one character to another to generate lag spike?), but abusing this bug was running widely and rampant until the dev time finally heard the outcry of the people being completely sick and tired of the exploiting and they fixed it.

And fastforward and here we are at present day, but this time it is the Devs that have decided to bring back the immortality to the Beta islands.

Ironically your signature more or less sums up the situation: “Take the long way around back to square one”

We are now indeed back to the square one: November 18 or 25, 2010, with safe zones around teleporters and outposts.

I disagree on the ability to respec.

The 45 days respec timer was and still is a good thing to fix possible newbie mistakes and as what comes to veteran players getting a free respec after what nearly 1/2 year timeline in the game? It certainly does not sound too bad to me.

Now, what I actually do fully agree on is the fashion how the respeccing is done as in you should have to keep your character's original name and your inventory/faction reputations and so on.

I mean in online gaming we are already hiding behind namemark and now there is even a possibility to change that namemark to hide your previous online gaming identity? I am sorry, but that is just...

Indeed, it will be interesting to see how it will play out when the new islands are introduced.

I just don't share your optimism about L4-5 Kernel research getting any easier regardless of the new islands being introduced and so on.

But, all in all, I fully agree with you that we will just need to wait and see how it all will play out

The only good thing about the change that I can see of is that there is option for gaining NIC apart from grinding the transport missions, but that is about it.

But as what comes to the kernel research; no one cares about the low level kernels, those were and still are easily researched with the new system.

What is now even more difficult than before is getting the high level kernel research done.

I don't really see why anyone who is still in progress of doing the research would sell any of the high level kernels instead of using them for their own research (apart from stupidity or greed for NIC ) and those that already have finished up the research have no need to grind nor sell them as they are already swimming in NIC anyways.

Well... I would imagine that pretty much every player in Perpetuum has some kind of an opinion about the game balance and as such it would be very interesting indeed to hear an interview of Dev Alf about the topic.

Afaik, the bot/mech speeds are calculated on the formula:
Navigation extension modifier X (base weight/[base weight X LWF modifier + weight of modules]) X base speed

That said, light combat bots fitted out with…
Head: 1 X s.amp
Chassis: 4 X racial weapon
Legs: small repper+LWF(T4)

… reach a speed of:

Prometheus speed: 81,5km/h
Yagel speed: 74,6km/h
Castel speed: 72,3km/h

I am not really certain at all as to how assault bots are fitted in PvP as I only use mine for PvE purposes only, but lets go with assumed fittings with…
Head: 2 X s.amp
Chassis: 5 X racial weapon
Legs: small repper+LWF

… and assault bots reach a speed of:

Baphomet speed: 78,3km/h
Arbalest speed: 79,2km/h
Waspish speed: 72,4km/h

In comparison speed fitted Kain speed is 79-80km/h, depending on if T2 weapons are used or not.

Since I already got started on the damage against smaller targets, I will comment on the armor scaling in this game as well.

Imho the root problem in this game is that the armor scaling dependency on fittings is currently really off the charts:

With 5/10 complex mechanics+5/10 mechanics Tyrannos has armor values of:

Speed fit, LWF: 2379
Plate fit, 1 plate: 4590
Plate fit, 2 plate: 6008

Artemis and Kain can add even one plate more and reach up to around 8k armor points.

I don’t really see how one could increase the mech base armor points by any considerable amount when the armor difference dependency on the fitting used is as immense as it is atm.

I can only see it possible if the amount armor plates increasing your armor points would get reduced. Perhaps that would be the way to go?

I don’t really have a strong opinion about this matter apart from that I don’t really see how you can balance a system well where your armor point scaling from lowest to highest point is nearly 400% at worse cases.

While I am not really interested in arguing on how many lower tier bots one mech should be able to take out (really an topic that would only get endless depate), I would like to express my own observations and opinions on what mr.Alexander mentioned in the quote above.

While I certainly do fully agree that there needs to be some kind of system preventing lower tier bots being hopelessly being literally one-shotted, I think this game has really gone overboard with the current mechanics.

Let us compare medium weapon damage (alpha strike) and DPS is on EW-light/ combat-light bot to what small weapon damage (alpha strike) and DPS is on mech size targets.

Small missile damage=35
t4 small missile launcher cycle time=6,5s

Light bot alpha strike damage against mech=140 and 21,5dps
Assault bot alpha strike damage against mech=175 and 26,9dps

Medium ballistic missile damage=70
t4 medium missile launcher cycle time=10,5s
Mech alpha strike damage=280 and 26,7dps

We can already see that because of the much slower cycle time the dps difference is already quite low, but then comes the damage dispersion in to play:

With lvl 5 seismics alpha strike and dps against smaller targets are as follow:
Against EW-light bots damage is 100,7 and dps is 9,6
Against combat-light bots damage is 109,8 and dps is 10,5
Against assault bots damage is 146,4 and dps is 13,9

With lvl 9 seismics alpha strike and dps against smaller targets are as follow:
Against EW-light bots damage is 117,2 and dps is 11,2
Against combat-light bots damage is 127,9 and dps is 12,2
Against assault bots damage is 170,5 and dps is 16,2

As can be seen when the damage dispersion comes in to play we end up in a situation where combat light bots and assault bots are capable of out alpha striking and out DPSing mechs and in my opinion game mechanics that allow this to happen are completely and utterly absurd.

Obviously enough, as anyone who has played this game have seen, in group play mech’s get a saving grace from being able to outrange the smaller bots by a factor of over x2. (Apart from the obvious increased armor points that is).

Tl:dr version of the wall of text above: the mech damage Vs smaller smaller targets should really get a hard look from the DEV team as imho the game mechanics in their current form are really absurd.

Same thing that happens when you make a fitting which exceeds your CPU/reactor cap?

You would get error message stating that you can't undock since you are currently exceeding your cargo capasity.

More or less /signed.

The research system should be transparent as in you should be able to see what techlines kernels contain so you don't waste them for nothing.

The roll system where you can get a roll with no research doesn't really make too much of an sense either.
Why not make it so that you can't get empty roll, but adjust the amount of kernel needed to fully research techlines accordingly?
I mean then the system would be effort based and not luck based as it is now... people generally tend to hate with passion systems based on RNG.