The time has finally come to announce the opening of the floodgates - PBS will roll out to our temporary test server and you're all welcome to rip it to shreds during the following few weeks.
The server will open on Friday, 12:00 CEST, and you can already start preloading the test-client here. An important technical note I'd like to make: There's been a number of considerable changes in architecture, so it's important that you make this a separate installation! It is not recommended to install this over an existing Perpetuum installation or to try and skip ahead in preloading by using an existing datafile - this test client will only work with the test server! Other than that, it's the same old download-run-watch-progress-bar-login routine we all know so dreadfully well.
Now, this isn't the only thing to keep in mind. The test server, being somewhat different from the usual environment, needs a few things to be explained or taken note of:
- If you have a valid, paid account when the test server opens up, your account will be valid for the test-server as well. On the other hand, we will not perform continuous syncing; if you're late for the party, you won't get in. (That doesn't mean we won't do syncing later, but you have to have your best puppy-eyes in store.)
- The test server is subject to the same EULA/COC as the live one - be civil, even if something's broken (and oh yes, there will be blood).
- PVP on the test server should be strictly consensual; we won't limit your options via technical restrictions, but assuming that you're on the server to test, breaking someone else's gameplay won't help any of us, and we might revoke your access if you keep continually disturbing other players.
- For obvious reasons, some things will run in "cheat mode": The market will seed everything for low prices, you will get large amounts of EP and NIC, time-dependent processes will be sped up to minutes instead of hours, and robots will get automatically reimbursed after they've been shot. Of course this makes economic balancing difficult, but at the same time we don't want to wait two months for the first base to be built either.
- The test server will cease operation as soon as we consider testing complete and deploy the patch to the final live server. No data will be migrated back.
There will be a separate forum for the testing server topics here, so please open topics or post opinions there instead of other forums so we don't have to fish all the ideas and death threats together from other forums.
That's all I suppose, happy preloading, testing, and Lord Have Mercy.
Comments for this post
1 Obi Wan Kenobi
2 Cobalt
3 Ville
4 Cobalt
5 DEV Zoom
6 Sizzla
Will the changes of the indy patch also be incorporated on the test server, or only the PBS stuff?
7 DEV Zoom
8 Alexadar
9 Khader Khan
10 Arga
11 DEV Zoom
12 doctor drillbit
13 DEV Zoom
14 DEV Gargaj
15 doctor drillbit
16 DEV Gargaj
17 DEV Zoom
18 Lemon
19 DEV Zoom
20 Mistress
1) Material efficiency for factories is abysmal on alpha-2 now.
Even with all efficiency extensions maxed, which takes me almost two months of additional EP, I end up only 3% more efficient then I am now.
It also seems to me that relation has a far to great impact on efficiency. It always annoyed me to no end relation affects nearly everything to begin with, but this is downright and absolute silly!
It doesn't make any sense, it is forcing players to grind standing, even when they absolutely hate missions of any kind. I cannot get myself to go even do the rookie missions, they are that uninteresting! Missions should earn you something immediate and limited in scope. It should be rewarding in and of itself and not for the standing.
And standing in turn should affect hourly usage costs for using a facilities services and you should gain standing if you are a good customer, just like it is in the real world. There is no sane explanation while a factory becomes less efficient if you did not do missions for a faction. It is downright silly and is nothing but adding complexity for the sake of complexity!
In short, prices should be the flexible component and not the performance of facilities!
2) It has been written bots overall would get more expensive to make, and modules less.
By the looks of material costs, I estimate everything is going to get way more expensive! Especially when you take the issues of point 1 into account.
Please remove the unneeded standing complexity (now is the time) and keep things simple and logical instead of drifting of in a complex mathematical construction that tries to tie everything into one formula.
You are forcing us to do everything, but at the same time expects us to specialize this way.
21 Mistress
22 Shelts916