Theodore Baggins

(duplicate post; sorry!)

I love anything with an abandoned amusement park!

Great! I hope the suggestions help! I agree that the convoy needs some teeth to do some damage to a building, along the same lines as what the higher level helis used to do. It was uniquely satisfying for the build to get partially demolished and still be able to bring the heli down. Another thought would be for the heli to work with the APC's to also fire before it gets line of sight— a volley of fire rockets to a convoy base's windows would definitely make it harder to manage. Also, sometimes I think a bit too much about things and I can type way faster than I can talk and it can come across way more intense than I intend. You also probably saw my best attempt I've made so far at taking the convoy solo—probably primed with adrenaline by dodging the shells from that nightmarish convoy's brads while on the Intergalactic Market earlier! I got pretty lucky to even get two brads from that—I don't think I've ever tried to hit something with an HV rocket from that far before. I had no other strategy than to get the shots that I could while staying alive... admittedly, not the best plan, but I was excited to see one. It definitely helped to have Alpha1 distracting them at the other end of the convoy. I've been thinking about the challenge of trying to build a structure along the path of say a medium convoy and try to take it during the hour that you have from just what you build. It would definitely be a wildly different experience since you probably couldn't do any electrical during that time. Event idea perhaps?

After hitting a hard convoy last night without aggroing the tanks, I've been thinking a lot about both the hidden design of well-built convoy base designs and ways to balance the system. However, I'm concerned that there's been a lot of talk about taking turrets off the table when building a base, and I worry it overlooks a lot of nuance. I think we can agree that the amount of loot yielded by fighting a convoy is often disproportionate to the amount of work or skill—with or without a convoy base. The amount of components from the NPC's, alone, can be recycled into enough scrap to make a level 3 (pending blueprint scrap changes) and it's quite possible to end up with multiple L9's even from a medium convoy. @Sean_Rendo19 has developed his convoy bases incredibly quickly over the last three wipes, and when you see how quickly the NPC's go down, it's easy to miss the things that make them more so powerful. Some of the hidden features are the peeks that are precisely aligned so a player can hide from the APC's, a wall-framed second floor raising the fighting floor out of the line of fire or splash damage, and embrasures that are both ablative armor (armor that protects by being designed to fail in the process of protection) while also allowing precise shots to take out snipers and stragglers. When Sean and the team added turrets on the other side it also meant that they NPC's no longer had any cover from their vehicles (though I'd argue that they're not the brightest at finding cover in the first place. We even have a redundant protected electrical system for lighting instead of passthrough so that one light breaking doesn't cut all of them. The prime example, though, of the convoy driving innovation is the added chain-link fences in front of turrets: at the beginning of this wipe, we had a turret problem; while they worked well, we were chewing through them quickly enough (and didn't have the best guns for them) that computers and CCTV cameras were important to hold onto. As a measure of protection, Sean and the team put in chain-link fences to act as ablative armor for the turrets, themselves. Fences are cheap—turrets aren't. Since then, we haven't lost a single turret. There are other critical points that I'm probably missing here. Sean and the other members of the team are the experts here: these are just the invisible innovations that I've been able to point at, myself having seen things progress. It's that sort of quick adaption that makes me worry that we're in an arms race against the convoy, and I worry that removing turrets from the equation altogether might not balance things in and of itself. Just like taking a heli without a base, a good god-rock and slowly keeping pressure by alternating damage and healing can yield similar (if more time-consuming) amounts of loot. I think the work that @Catatonic21and @Raul have done to make more convoy paths is an excellent start towards de-escalating the arms race. And I think the increased damage of the nightmarish convoy APC's was really exciting to see when I took it without much cover. However, I think there are other ways to de-escalate further that are alternatives to removing turret targeting entirely. Some ideas for changing the reward-to-skill/time include: Lower the amount of loot from the dropped NPC's makes it far less economical Changing the amount of crates, and/or adjusting the loot tables of them so that we don't get an overwhelming supply of M2's to feed into turrets Make the bags dropped by NPC's killed by turrets have a certain chance to despawn—reward players for manually taking them out. For turret balancing, these steps could be taken: Lower turret health significantly Remove the ability to use fully automatic weapons in turrets Lower the amount of ammo allowed per turret Make turrets consume health of the gun inside Remove the ability for the turrets to target and shoot through chain-link fences There are also changes to the convoy, itself that could help by adding much more pressure to their buildings: Put rocket or grenade launcher NPC's on the flatbeds of the modular cars; the turrets don't target them, and they can do considerable damage to buildings, players, and turrets if a player didn't prioritize them. Allow the APC's to target the building of any player who has hit the convoy, even without line of sight (I think it's best for this to be strictly limited to players who have hit the convoy so someone with a tommy and a garage off the road doesn't end up reviving into rubble). Adding to the last point, consistent covering fire directed towards the players would make peeking out with a rocket launcher much more dangerous and staying accurate with a rocket launcher while moving is tough. Sometimes I like to think of things in terms of combat robotics. There are times when the engineering of one team far outstrips what others can do in a tournament. Most of the time, this drives other builders to adopt similar strategies the next year, such as changing armor, choosing higher density batteries, tuning driver boards, etc. In addition, the actual battlebox will undergoes changes like adding hazards to make it harder for, say, a flipper's wedge to get underneath another bot. There are times when a robot becomes too good (or too dangerous) and a rule has to be made to level the proverbial playing field, but they are rare. They are almost a badge of pride—builders who pushed the boundaries (yet were within the rules) so far that the innovation had to be limited. But that stagnates things in a way that can feel like a gut-punch to builder that spent so much time and money building a system, and being penalized for doing it too well. I'm not impartial to this; Sean is on my team, and I have benefitted directly from the convoys I've run in our base. However, I'm genuinely trying to think of solutions for balancing that drive further innovation. I agree that changes need to be made but I think it's best for the community to soften that gut-punch by not erasing the knowledge gained already. I'm all for upping the ante and lowering the reward; just cautious about completely changing the game. ----------------------------------------------------------------- PS: I think it's important to keep in mind that this is also all against the backdrop of the difficulty of other events and monuments. A solo can land a mini on cargo with a tommy and a double barrel, clear it without dying, and get four locked crates plus enough lootables that it can take halfway around the map to get everything. You can also take out some of the bosses by just mowing them down with a car. As with much of RustEZ, players are often the ones ultimately in charge of setting the difficulty level for themselves.

I have an extra. I'll DM you a code for a box outside my base the next time I'm on. They're fun, but not necessary for my build this wipe!

Sounds Good! I think I might have both forgotten how rare they are and just gotten really lucky on my cargo ship runs last wipe. I think I might have been a bit alarmist about this; next time I'll check with more people; bug reports should probably for known issues instead of suspected ones!

Welcome to the Double Helix Gallery and Art Store at Z26! I still have some more that I need to wire, but I finished most of my shop today. The photos on the walls are a selection of some I've shot in different places over the years (cropped to fit Rust-resolution!). This is a follow-up on my previous post—I'll take a couple more shots tomorrow after I've stopped seeing mazes of wires and industrial lights!

Theodore Baggins here! I'm opening a gallery and art store called the "Double Helix" on the road through the north of Z26. The gallery spirals up then down on the outside, and has a collection of some of my photos. I have dropboxes to get people's thoughts on my work—I love feedback! My hope is that this can be expanded on the inside with submissions from other players with the second double helix on the inside. Right now, I'm working on the lighting—would love any and all feedback! Sign is in progress!

Quick question: Are there any guidelines I should follow for a maximum amount of lights on the shop? I'm making a gallery and I want to get the lighting right, however I want to make sure that I don't negatively impact other players' experience in the area.

I was thinking that there might also be a need for a "EZ Hardware" or "EZ Performance" channel. I find that I often am giving performance advice through chat. However, sometimes that advice is the same—like check your VRAM and RAM usage to see if you're overflowing to RAM (or worse, your drive). I'm a huge advocate for squeezing more performance out of your older hardware instead of saying "you just need better <insert component here>". Moderation might be difficult—after all, there are still Team Red, Blue, and Green die-hards that might not give the most helpful (or friendly) advice. Clearly explaining the tradeoffs requires nuance that might be beyond a discord response. However, I think that it'd be good to start somewhere, see how things go, and adjust accordingly. It might be am idea that flops, but I genuinely want to try to help players who are having a rough experience on the servers.

And also train for recoil. I suppose I could learn better by chopping trees with it... it the x and such. 🤔

A simple QOL improvement for building: a dot or a crosshair for using the hammer and/or salvaged hammer. I admit it: I'm not skilled enough with the salvaged hammer to always hit what I intend to. Skill problem? Yes... I've lost too many walls and floors by crippling lack of aim 😂😭

That horse picture is the stuff of nightmares lol. Reminds me of how chickens in Minecraft used to "blob" into medusas of chickens in the corners of my feather farms back in the day. The question is: can you buy all of them at once? 😁

Yep, many tears have been cried over this since they came out lol. Might be difficult to fix, especially since they can't be shared like a normal box. When I put racks out for decoration, I always try to load them up so players can't accidentally do this. Just a warning: there is a maximum amount of rocks and/or prototype's that can be placed to fill the space!

In addition to regular maintenance, some of the servers have needed to be taken offline and tweaked fairly regularly to increase their stability. I believe this was the case with Scourge, at least, when you put in this bug. Personally, I check Discord to see if people are reporting issues (or in the case of last night, talking about the merits of Australia's cute-and-totally-not-deadly animals... lookin at epopp and Tiff...)

This wipe, @Deuuseyand @ExcelFX set up teleports on Scourge US at the pumpjacks and GE, respectively. Excel has actually been doing this for pretty much every wipe since December (correct me if I'm wrong). I really enjoy this player engagement—the fact that it's a community effort makes me very happy. Excel's incredible zero-cost ore and oil exchange to is a thriving community hub, and Deuusey really went all-out on making his bases very pretty. However... player-made bases are both risky and a huge drain. Risky, because you're in an arms race against bad actors; you have to keep the bases (and fragile bags) safe from bad actors who might use the base as cover for heli attacks and yet if you upgrade too much, those same bad actors might see it as providing even better cover. I've personally seen this around Deuusey's power plant TP and the secondary honeycombed base I set up to help recover some of the lost bags from Deuusey's base. I say it's a huge drain because people want their teleports immediately on wipe day, or they start building the familiar, but infernal twig/wood-teleport bases. It also means that the players building bases for community TP's have to be online and/or auth other players that can place bags and will advertise the option in chat. I think the amount of creativity I've seen in both players' TP bases this wipe (and the convenience of the shared "maker spaces") has been really wonderful. However, it's a big lift—one that I know I couldn't handle. However, if TP's like the quarries (I actually use these constantly to avoid the time needed to clear GE on Scourge—no personal quarries like Survival) might break the economy more by reducing the cost of building up your oil reserves, I propose these small changes as alternatives: A public TP directly into bases to prevent bags from being taken out by incendiary rockets. This would still involve the community, but removes some of the worry and reduces the footprint necessary for the building. Admins being provided with TC access to the TP bases to help monitor chat and the dropboxes for requests (and make sure everyone provides a bag so things aren't spawned in). I'm loath to add more work for admins, but my hope is that this would be a minimal lift. Barring that, I think that regular notifications of the option from admins or the server on wipe day / first weekend would just help minimize the 1x1's that both prevent building (Power Plant is rife with them this wipe on Scourge US). If players know that there will eventually be a much better (and cooler) TP point, then they might only temporarily put a bag down on the ground on wipe day instead of a 1x1 that will last all wipe and prevent building.