everyone is saying about how OH NO ALL THE RICH BPERS!!!!!

well shut up. BP has not made any billionairs (as far as i know) and the people who it has made 100millionairs, so what about them? so they can afford a few more cap ships? eh? who cares? lets all watch them parade around showing off, and then kick their asses with our super dee duper light fighters? eh? no more rich BPers.

The only people who are able to stay consistently rich are REALLY REALLY good BPers, or traders. Besides, if someone is so rich, what are they going to unbalance the game? EVERYONE has the ability to do BP, and to become an UBER BPer.

quit complaining, and quit saying that there should be a "reset" of any sort. the rich will die out soon enough.

You can make just as good, or even better money with trading :D.

Well there's certainly a well thought out, tightly argued, impeccably defended, surgically concise thesis

There won't be a reset. Momerath said so.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11391?page=3#136794

/me hands out tequila shots and tells everyone to relax.

That doesn't make it any less broken. BP circumvents the leveling and trading systems, never mind the faction system (Itani and Serco do still get faction pts for completing BP missions, right?)

No, the faction points are a lie! ok, what I mean is, the xp is fine, its in line with having one guy retake the mission, but somewhere along the line there is a *money* bug, it kinda quadruples the money per person somewhere in the (exploit) and then reduces it to normal levels after so many repeats of the (exploit) I think the max limit before it goes *to normal levels* is around 3500 bots, which is a big damn gap.

Max group size is 8, limit the (exploit) to this if you must, but a fix (or disabling of this mission for now) is damn well needed, everyone and there dog has 100,000,000, I know removing crack botting was a good idea in the long run (even though some people argued it was a feature, it was a result of retarded bot AI, which thankfully got fixed) i'd personally rather have that back than this.

yes indeed, give us back our crackbotting

Thank god that pilot skill is still a large determinant in fight outcome.

The whole issue is just sad...

its the monetary part of the exploit that makes BP so annoying. The XP doesnt really matter as much. (tho i still think 100xp/bot is way to high for how easy the bots themselves are, but maybe the AI changes will fix that anyway)

The fact of the matter is that leveling a new player with the exploit is really no harder than leveling the new player taking the mission 1 list at a time, since rockets are the preferred quick kill weapon for the BP bots, you have to go reload every 12th-15th bot anyhow, so retaking isnt really that big of a hassle. once you are into double digit character levels, even exploiting doesnt help you gain levels very fast, 100,000 XP is still 1000 bots after all.

It would be better if you had to actually be in the BP sector and either be hit by or hit a bot to get any reward for it, just to prevent leeching, but thats a minor side issue.

Additionally it would be SOOOO nice if the bots all went away if more than 4 people had the BP mission on each side and had been in the BP sector within the last 10(20?) minutes. It's supposed to be a PvP mission after all, so why not encourage the PvP part of it. As it is now its hard to BP against another group because the bots are just plain annoying.

BP is fine EXCEPT for the fact that theres a money bug that multiplies your money once you kill a certain # of bots.

I don't really agree that you should only get rewards if your in the sector, kill bots, or whatever. If you let leachers into the group that's your decision. HOWEVER I would like a way to kick leachers out of the group if the group doesn't want any, and this brings us back to reworking of groups.

Also about the bots in the sector while players are there too, I think it's fine the way it is. Yes the bots are annoying but once you become a good enough pilot you can take on a group of bots at once or players and bots at the same time. There was one time I had a group of 4-5 players attacking me AND about 2-3 bots and I managed to take out about 2 players before I was killed. (I was pretty shocked I did so well against such a group... O.O)

Also as a side note some people have accused me of using the BP mission to inflate my levels,(Which REALLY annoys me.) but that is not true. When I started BP I was already 13/17/18 and the only level I've gained is combat 13-14 since then. (Though I am under 200k xp away from light 18.) If you do not believe me ask Martin, Lebermac, and my fellow guild members for varification.

For the record, I want to say that despite the money bug & various other imperfections in the BP mission as it is now, I think it is still a vast improvement over how it used to be, and it did NOT in any way, shape, or form "break the game". There are of course several problems with the BP mission as it is now, chief amoung them the money bug, but here's the big thing that outweighs any and all other concerns: BP is FUN. It didn't use to be fun, and it is now. That, ultimately, is all that really matters.

If the mincaps and crafting are implimented correctly, people with millions won't be an issue anymore.

Ok, there's my 2 cents worth.
-Calder

Yeah, I'm fixing the money reward.. it was clearly wrong; it grew quadratically.

The whole BP mission is actually kind of stupid, and we plan to get rid of it as a "mission" and make it into more of an ongoing event in Deneb. In the meantime, I'm going to
a) make it 15 kills per player instead of 3.
b) not add any new kills when anyone joins the group.
c) make the monetary reward be linear in number of kills, not quadratic.

This kind of sucks - it _should_ just keep on going and give you bonuses along the way, or something. And it will, but for now I hope to curb "exploiting". These are just quick things I can do to help with what is perceived by many to be a big problem. (The underlying code is so buggy that it's kind of hard to make it work "correctly" - like regulate the number of bots and so forth... hence the upcoming rewrite) Comments?

Any details on the upcoming rewrite?

This seems like it will work as a 'fix', in the sense that everyone will stop BPing and go back to Sedina. Everyone only did it so they could level up real fast and get oodles of money...

But if there's a new mission/event coming, that's fine. Might as well plug the XP pipe until something better comes along.

Well with the kill count upped to 15 per person, then you will need to rearm at the base any way and thus get the mission again. So it will work I think. I don't really BP for the bots any way my self...

When they fix BP, I'll still be there, I'm there because it's fun. I like PvP and working as a team.

> This seems like it will work as a 'fix', in the sense that everyone will stop BPing and go back to Sedina.
> Everyone only did it so they could level up real fast and get oodles of money...

I beg to differ. I did it 'cause it was fun. Most the people I know did it 'cause it's fun. Levels and money have been almost meaningless forever, not just since the BP mission was changed. The BP mission made levels and money even more meaningless, but even before it did they were already meaningless, and I can't see how the BP mission really changed that. And since levels and money were already meaningless, I can't see why people would be doing BP if gaining levels and money were the only reason. It's fun. That's why people do it, not because of the reward.

Yeah, but they do it up there because there's a mission for it. Why bother with annoying gank bots when you can pound the paste out of each other in some other sector? My Soulcatcher character and company had a big battle with some Itani at the Deneb/Geira wormhole. It was just as much if not more fun than fighting in C-10, cause you had all the ingredients minus the gankerbots. The only reason we moved on to C-10 was to take the mission.

If BP doesn't give excessive money/experience, why bother dealing with the annoying bots? Just head to the Geira/Deneb wh and pound the paste out of each other. In fact, we should probably do that anyway. Evens out the number of jumps required for both sides, no bots - make it a mission to hold the wormhole for X minutes. XP is proportional to the number of the other side you kill. No on there, no XP. Or give a bonus to the nation that has the least number of deaths/most kills in that sector (to prevent /explode cheaters).

I tend to play at very off-peak times. There are times when I'm playing that the total number of players on can be counted on one hand. If it weren't for the bots, BP would consist of sitting & doing nothing. Not so much fun. Which is why there has to be bots, it's impossible to be able to rely on players to form an opposition.

As for "Why bother with annoying gank bots" - this is supposed to be a role-playing game. From an in-game role-playing perspective, there is no difference between players and NPC bots. Soulcatcher and *Tasena-Wa Tudane are both Serco pilots attacking Itani space, and Beolach is going to do his best to defend his nation's space by destroying both of them. He's not going to ignore one because "it's not fun to fight bots" - from a role-playing perspective, he's fighting to defend his nation, not for fun, and to him, *Tasena-Wa Tudane isn't a bot, anyway.