A nice rundown, Nem. Unfortunately, as per the Reality is Unrealistic trope, at this point, the "pain" that they'd likely have trying to change people's views of the spaceships isn't likely to be worth the effort. Edit: In particular, the Old School Dogfight trope would apply to why it won't work with the audience to change things.

There are others with WAY more experience than I have. But I'll say that what I've done is basically focus on three ships for now. I have 2 bombers and a gunship that I'm building. My reasoning being that I want to really max out the builds on those ships first. Also, it lets me get used to some things about how those ships fly. How fast they are, how quickly they can turn, etc. When I am forced to play a scout to go gunship hunting, it is disorienting at first how differently it moves from the stately soaring that my Rampart does. After my first couple of weeks, I also started to try to focus on a particular area of learning as I'm flying. On my bombers I'm focusing on trying to put my mines and drones right where I want them to be, and on how to weave around the sat better. On my gunship it's mostly about increasing my awareness, not being so sniper visioned. Once I have a handle on these types, I'll branch out more into my scouts then strikes. In my five I can bring with me, I have one scout, two gunships, and two bombers. I keep the scout for those times when the enemy has an overabundance of gunships which need to be annoyed.

Well, fascinating sidetrack aside, I will spend some money this week simply out of a desire that Bioware see some income from GSF stuff. I know the ships they're offering won't mean a lot. Personally I would have rather had the scout in the mix instead of the strike. But I'll give them a few "sales" to show that someone cares.

Suspected, yes. Player I'm thinking of is known to play from a high latency location. However, latency only seems to be an issue when being shot AT ... when shooting at someone ELSE the network seems very stable.

I suppose the least impactful to your gaming PC would be a second computer with a capture card (or a device). But if performance is an issue, that's probably not an option. I did have a friend in another game once who created a little rig to hold his cell phone to record (brief) periods of game play by pointing it at his monitor.

I think (in general) the audiences are different. While there may be some crossover, I don't think it will mean the queues die completely. I know that for me, I enjoy the meta part of the game almost as much as the flying part. Discussing ship builds, playing with strange combos, etc. Most FPS games are based on the idea that everyone gets the same gear and it's about player skill. I prefer a game where my ship isn't necessarily like everyone else's.

At some point, one must realize that "Working as intended" does not mean "Is written in stone never to be changed while time continues marching onward." All it means is "This doesn't fit the definition of a 'bug'." In other words, nobody mistyped a value into a spreadsheet or wrote a piece of code incorrectly. If Honda were to make a car which can only turn right, and people complained, they could respond with "The car is working as intended." because it was designed to only turn right. If they change the design so that the car can turn left now, the new car is still "Working as intended." even though it is different than the original design. Realizing that a design is flawed and changing the design does not invalidate the "Working as intended' reply that was first issued.

At some point, one must realize that "Working as intended" does not mean "Is written in stone never to be changed while time continues marching onward." All it means is "This doesn't fit the definition of a 'bug'." In other words, nobody mistyped a value into a spreadsheet or anything. This is very similar to the whole slot machine fiasco. If Honda were to make a car which can only turn right, and people complained, they could respond with "The car is working as intended." because it was designed to only turn right. If they change the design so that the car can turn left now, the new car is still "Working as intended." even though it is different than the original design. Realizing that a design is flawed and changing the design does not invalidate the "working as intended' reply that was first issued.

Nope. One can't fix something if it isn't broken. Working as (currently) intended.

Also, keep in mind you still only have the 20% chance of learning it. I imagine you'd need to have tokens to spare to be willing to use the implants to learn schematics. Doesn't seem like a good cost : benefit ratio to me.

Just thought I'd mention that AMD (f.k.a. ATI) has a game client overlay which includes a recording module now too. Raptr: http://raptr.com/amd I haven't tried the recording part of it, but the other features (like adjusting game settings to perform well on your system) seem to work pretty well.

Another tactic occurred to me just now... Start of match, 1 scout doesn't "Ready up". A Rampart/Razorwire boosts toward A or C, dropping their beacon about halfway there. Then the scout that held back uses that to spawn from and sprints the rest of the way to the sat. Not sure if the delay waiting on the bomber to drop their beacon would be worth it in the end. Might be interesting, though. Could even work if they waited to drop it until their boost was out and 2 or 3 ships used the forward spawn location. Imagine it one is a gunship. You're the opposing scout thinking you won the race and suddenly a gunship (or two) spawn already in range.

The text in SW:TOR Reverse Engineering is slightly different from the blog article as I did a final edit pass on the blog, but it's very close.

Alternatively, take a look at the GTN and price things you can make (especially implants and stims). You can often find hidden treasures in the lower level items. Especially look at items around the 20, 30, 40, etc. level range. That tends to be when people will upgrade their equipment while leveling. I have found that in certain categories I can make more profit by making a level 41 item than I could making the "endgame" equivalent. You'll want to track things for a little while, though. Temporary "blips" in the market can give you a false vision of what the market will bear for your goods.

It's a good point about the slot machine analogy. And, perhaps, highlights another issue with the current system. I would posit that the part of Reverse Engineering which most closely matches the slot machine experience is when you've clicked on the item to reverse it and you're watching the progress bar move toward completion of that process. Perhaps part of the problem is that the process that it takes to get to the point where you can actually "play" the "reverse engineering game" isn't really fun. It's sending a bunch of NPCs (most of whom you rarely see anyway) off to work for a few hours. There are definitely parts of the SWTOR crafting system which I find to be more like "work" and less like "play". At this time, I'm about 60% of the way through discovering all of the Tier 11 Implant schematics. When I started (about a month ago), there would be some anticipation when I was logging in to see how many more cells in my tracking spreadsheet I could check off. Now, I often have to scroll back through the chat window to see which schematics I discovered. And I start to look at the tracking spreadsheet with an eye toward "How much longer do I need to do this?" rather than "Look how far I've come!" I don't normally like to bring other games into discussions like this, but I was a fan of the Everquest 2 system (in its original form). Yes, there was some tediousness about it, but at least you were actively engaged in the process. I also liked the system in SWG (from material gathering through final product) because with some thought and patience you could affect the quality of the end result. SWTOR's crafting isn't awful. But the mechanics do feel a bit more like managing a factory than playing a game.

Thanks Buggles. I enjoyed the series. As a (mostly) new pilot myself it seems like every time I watch someone's videos I see things that I never would have thought to try. Like flying through the gap in the "solar panels" on the satellite.

So this will be the first one of these for me since I became a GSF pilot. I imagine we'll have a fair share of "I'm just queueing for the conquest points". Which probably works out to be both good (faster queues / fuller matches) and bad (don't count on the PUGs). Any tips from the vets for surviving with sanity intact?

True, ranting / flipping tables / etc does have it's use. This discussion reminded me of a convo I had at work the other day, though. Co-worker: Ugh. I hate Mondays. Me: I don't know, I kind of like them. Co-worker (incredulous): Why in the world would you like Mondays? Me: Because if we didn't have Monday, we'd just hate Tuesday. Eliminating Moderate missions would only be followed by a call to eliminate Adequate missions, etc. until all we had were Rich ones. Then why not just have the java vendors sell materials directly for credits? But we'll need 1 of each in our Strongholds, right? Who wants to mess with going to Fleet just to get materials?

As most long time members here are aware, the topic of "Reverse Engineering must be broken!" comes up fairly often. After an interesting discussion on this topic, I started doing some calculations and ended up writing a blog entry on the topic. I've published the blog entry (along with my spreadsheet) this morning. Fair Warning: This was a 6 page Word document before I posted it. So there is a LOT of text in it. Star Wars: The Old Republic - Reverse Engineering I try to cover the math of what is REALLY going on behind the "20% Chance" of reverse engineering as well as some of the psychology as to why it feels "wrong" sometimes. Finally I offer a couple of suggestions as to how one might adapt to the system.

Just wanted to mention that I've been watching some of the vids on Youtube, etc. So you have at least 1 new subscriber this week. Honestly, I'm a little impressed that you can narrate and play at the same time.

This discussion has prompted me to draft a blog entry on the mathematics behind the re-engineering process. Almost have it done. I also go (a bit) into the player's view and emotional/psychological impacts of the current system.

Crud. Have to re-calculate now. :S Thanks for setting it straight, though.

I like this idea. My problem is from the array of pilots out there to watch, how does one choose who would be a good example? As to the 2nd point, what software to people use to capture videos of their matches?

We know this for sure? Or is this based on sampling data?

Statistically, if we can assume that the distribution curve is a standard normal bell curve, then we can extrapolate some expectations for the results of RE'ing an item. Average chance : 0.2 (20%) Standard Deviation: 0.0816 Within 1 STD, we'd expect a 68% chance that you'd see results within the following ranges: Min: 0.1183 (11.85%) Max: 0.2816 (28.16%) This would translate to somewhere between 3 and 8 attempts in order for a RE to be successful. Within 2 STD, we'd expect a 95% confidence that our results should be between the following ranges: Min: 0.0367 (3.67%) Max: 0.3633 (36.33%) This would translate to somewhere between 2 and 27 tries to get a new schematic to proc for you. Of course there could still be outliers, but needing more than 30 attempts to get a result should occur less than 5% of the time. The calculation gets somewhat more complicated when you consider things like the Tier 11 implants where you have 3 possible blue results which in turn result in 3 possible purples (each). If your goal is to get a specific purple, then starting from the green schematic, it will take a lot more time. The time calculation (which has also entered this conversation) is another factor which (I believe) is more significant in the player's satisfaction level when learning new schematics.