last night, I killed the levi - solo.

My observations during the two-hour fight are as follows:

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The Good:

1) the cargo did not time out =)

2) the Turrets were devestatingly effective against bombers, and of reasonable difficulty for medium ships - perfect

3) the Megaposi served a very appropriate role, given the requirements for accessing it

4) the Hive queen sector I cleared to trace the bots back to the levi was ideally balanced, and a lot of fun.

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The Bad:

1) The levi explosion dealt no damage to my warthog, although it threw it back a fair distance

2) the Arena Seeker rockets were both pathetic and annoying

3) the pickings of the victory did not compensate (monetarily anyway) for the high expense of fighting it (even if I was fighing in a large group, since then the group would need to divide the plunder)

4) Lag. There was a lot of lag in the levi sector, and although framerate was high and smooth, bots were bouncing about wildly from my perspective.

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The Buggy:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/12189 (Bugs Forum)

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Comments:

As far as difficulty, I actully found it a very fun, if expensive solo fight, though I will agree with the vast majority of the players that it shouldn't be that easy, and should require AT LEAST two people (and much more than that if not executed flawlessly for 2-3 hours) It should be impossible to do without having someone draw the queens and their ilk away from the levi, and significantly harder for anyone who stays with the levi once the queens are gone.

Thinking about the overall difficulty of it, I think it would perhaps be appropriate to have (eventually) a Levi (or two!) in every system, but have them range in difficulty and reward (ie. one levi in/near big nation capitol systems, and weaker/less rewarding (able to be defeated by one or two people, but with less reward) than those in unconstrained sectors, due to the slim pickings it gets with the human military presence supressing it's activities; conversely, in systems like Odia and Sedina run by independent factions, you would have very powerful and rich Levis, which without government supression, amass huge forces requiring a dozen or more players to take them down, with huge payoff (and maybe even two of them in one system))

Speaking of huge payoff, I'd like to see government-imposed bounties on the hive, proportional to the size of the hive in a system (only pays if you eliminate ALL the hive, by destroying ALL the levis (if more than one) in a system)

And could we please have the levi rings mineable and high in rare ore? it would give added gain and incentive to removing a levi from a sector... maybe you could even create a new ore of similar worth to lanth, which is only acquireable from levi sectors, produced as the machine's waste?

/givemoney devs 2c

>>>>>Please read both threads before commenting, and choose the appropriate forum thread to comment on<<<<<

Preventing a player from killing it solo is going to be an exercise in fine-tuning the repair bot behavior. I would suggest that the devs determine the mean time between deaths for an average pilot shooting the levi, figure out how much damage he could do in that timespan, and make the repair bots repair almost exactly that amount of damage.

We've already determined that when it repairs REALLY fast (see the "LeberMac is Broken" thread) it's imposible to kill even with a group of 10 or more.

Now it appears to be repairing too slowly. (Or the repair bots are too easy to kill.)

Ah, fine tuning!

I don't think the problem is so much the rate of repair now, as the rate of damage, which is enormous given that one megaposi warthog can hammer it relentlessly with virtual impunity - if the bots attacked me in more force, and actually killed me more than once every 10-15 minutes, I'd never stand a chance of killing it alone.

It already repairs fast enough to make anything other than a megaposi deal sufficient damage/time to kill it. I do however, think it should start repairing earlier, and not wait to get into the lower 1/3 of it's health (get a few repair collectors in there with the higher hive bots.)

Ideally, a 3-4-player team should be able to do it given enough time, assuming that one player could draw off ALL the queens and their ilk, allowing the other 2-3 players to focus on the levi itself, and the bots repairing/defending it respectively... that is, of course, assuming a levi of moderate difficulty... perhaps ones near capitol systems could be taken by two people, and ones in unmonitored grey space would take 10 or more people working together to kill it due to a much higher rate or repair and higher defensive bot presence.

Cunjo- to clarify: one player invading the Stronghold can down first the four queens, then all the defenders, and finally the Levi and it's waves of seekers in about an hour maybe a bit more. It takes about 25 minutes of continual N2 hammering to polish off the Levi once its repairing defenders have been toasted. I strongly suggest a Hog Mk II with an N2, a fast charge, and an Lmine launcher (for zapping those pesky seekers). Unless a queen's explosion takes you out, you should finish with no deaths.

Noted... I didn't test the bots' respawning ability, since I was more concerned about trying to take down the levi itself. I guess that needs to be added to the things-to-fix.

Cunjo, thanks for the input. Regarding the apparent "lag", what kind of connection are you on? We need to do some more network testing sometime soon, to get a better idea of how to optimize ship density to user bandwidth (currently, the bots are maneuvering too much and using more bandwidth than necessary).

Note: I totally agree that the Lev is too easy to take out at present. This is part of why we only have the one Sedina hive, rather than the three galactic-wide Hives mentioned in the Wiki. The Hive and the Lev are still in the "test & tune" stage as far as I'm concerned, which makes this sort of feedback all the more useful.

I'm on 1.5Mbit/350Kbit Down/Up DSL. My ISP is Verizon, based out of Tampa, FL. I'm behind a router and two firewalls, though I doubt they are affecting my speed....

my average ping (in game) is around 200. I've seen it as low as 150, and as high as 570 in the last month.

I'm not on much right now... maybe a couple hours a week. Life happens y'know?

Hoep to have a shot at some more gameplay this Christmas break.

That's pretty high latency for DSL. Still, I'm surprised you're seeing any sort of "lag" like effects if you're on DSL. Perhaps it's server-side, we'll have to look into it.

My pings are always in the 50-60ms range, but I've been seeing a lot of other people with crazy lag ingame recently. Just thought I'd, ya know, throw that out there.

perhaps there should be randomly (or semi randomly) placed turrets in the 'roid fiels surounding the levi. that way destroying a levi can't be reduced to a simple formula as esily (because you will have to adapt to the perticular turret configuration every time you encounter one). i'd think these turrets should fire a sort of uber flechet cannon, because it would look cool, and could be deadly if it catches you off guard.

otherwise i'd recomend that the levi's repair rate be roughly equivelent to the damage rate of 2 megaposi hogs. This will require either a more deadly tactic or a group of 3+ players to take down the levi.

Cunjo,
i'd rather there not be any levis in nation capitles other than that i like the idea of a levi in (almost) every system, and the ones in less monitered teratory being tougher.

The turrets thing would be interesting. How about if the Hive added ("built") them as time goes on (as the Levi fortifies its position)?

Levis ought to be allowed into nation capital systems, but not spawn there (other than perhaps once). I want to see characters (NPC and PC) have to work to keep the Hive contained.

LQ:
point taken. Levis in capitol sectors is a bad idea.. nothing bigger than queens should spawn there. Just outside of capitol sectors however... weak levis?

I like the roid cannon idea.