Perhaps if/when we see the other subsystems or if more work is done on subsystems then perhaps the experimental lab could just spit out EXP weapons, then the focused lab could allow you to but X amount of EXP weapons in to exchange them for an officer variants so every 2-3 EXP weapons you'd get 1 x Officer or if basic crafting you could use the refining lab and get Officer grade nanites which you put in focused lab with EXP grade nanites and out pop X amount of Officer weapons so we can still get a reasonable amount of officer weapons with some work invested but you have to lose some EXP wepaons in order to get them, so its a case of do you want a regualr flow of EXP weapons to use or trade them in for a smaller supply of Officer in return.

Another thing could be restricting trading on Officer weapons. that way people can't farm labs and pool them all onto their main. they'd only have the small few they get from lab on their own account whereas EXP could still be traded.

alternativly trading based on Loyalty rank and meta level, the higher the loyalty rank the higher the metal level upto Loyalty 5 being meta 10 (officer)

Lv0 - no trading
Lv1 - Meta 1-2
Lv2 - Meta 3-4
Lv3 - Meta 5-6
Lv4 - Meta 7-8
Lv5 - Meta 9-10

this would allow players to trade their old stuff as their characters grow, selling STD gear to newer players to fund ADV gear, then sellign their ADV gear to fund their new proto gear ect.

Those of us who have played for a while wouldn't be affected by it on our mains, but any alt accounts created to farm labs will be restricted

I really really agree with what you're saying, but:

TBH it's already too late. Even if you stopped new officer gear coming into the game from all sources, they're still going to be a problem for months to come. Look at the quantities available on the Player Trading sub, then imagine how many people have more in their assets but aren't bothered to sell them.

Restricting where they come from won't have it's effects felt for ages, so it's going to be a crazy hard thing to get any feedback on in-game and in turn balance properly. Are you aiming to have them not be a viable option in certain game-modes? Pubs? FW? Anything is a viable option when you've got enough ISK, and there's plenty of players that do. At this point trying to balance the prevalence of an item in Dust through rarity is probably not going to work. You're still going to see those items in at least the top end of the battle in all game-modes. Unless, of course, you lock them out.

You are correct, introducing fun and an ability to make ISK for the first time outside of exploits of broken and ignored PC mechanics will be hard to put back into the bag.

FYI Aeon thinks Apex suits are game breaking, just for some context. Possibly the single best thing to ever happen for newer players and he also dislikes this. This dude is more anti-fun than Soraya was and that ladies and gentlemen is hard to pull off.

Respect your opinions but you guys are going about this the wrong way.


- Officer weapons are rare.

Player Trading made them plentiful in the hands of collectors who spam them. Thats players making lage collections via meta gaming. Don't ignore the effect trade had in making large amounts of proto into the hands of players that afford them. That was determined by the free market, not by the warbarge availability.

- Collecting via the warbarge is hardly passive.

You do not make enough components per day to collect your officer/experimental gear. You'll run out of components simply logging in and collecting weapons then signing out.You have to activley play and finish either missions or salvage warbarge components from matches in order to have enough to collect from the warbarge. I have my exp. lab, and the component factory at level 3.

1) Warbarge produces 600 components every 48 hours

2) Experimental lab cost 1,188 every 48 hours. Produces 6 random experimental/officer gear.

3) Wait 56 hours to collect 48 hours worth of gear with zero 12 components left over or

4) make up the 588 components up through active gaming every 48 hours and via active gaming save unspent componenets fro futre investment.

I reiterate, these are active gameplay rewards rather than passively generated ones.


Which leade me to my next point
- The biggest cause of officer weapon production is that there is nothing else provided by the warbarge to invest worth investing compeonents into.

I have the option of investing 10,000 warbarge components:

1) 100 more components per 24 hours, 25 days to earn back

2) A tiny increase of SP (67 million SP whats an extra 1,00 going to do for me?)

3) 1 % of damage.

4) A ferw thousand more Isk

5) Experimental / officer gear which in turn gives me access to trade markets and meta gaming.


Its not even a realistic comparision.
There is no levels 6 to save components for and invest into. That leaves the only worthwhile option collecting weapons to trade and enhance the meta game experience.

Have something cool for the remaining, unfinished levels of the warbarge, and you will see player invest more components in other items than just officer gear.

Much better than punishing the entire playerbase for the market forces that lets us use officer in pubs.

- Collecting via the warbarge is hardly passive.

You do not make enough components per day to collect your officer/experimental gear. You'll run out of components simply logging in and collecting weapons then signing out.You have to activley play and finish either missions or salvage warbarge components from matches in order to have enough to collect from the warbarge. I have my exp. lab, and the component factory at level 3.

1) Warbarge produces 600 components every 48 hours

2) Experimental lab cost 1,188 every 48 hours. Produces 6 random experimental/officer gear.

3) Wait 56 hours to collect 48 hours worth of gear with zero 12 components left over or

4) make up the 588 components up through active gaming every 48 hours and via active gaming save unspent componenets fro futre investment.

I reiterate, these are active gameplay rewards rather than passively generated ones.

Tesa, what are you on? Just claim the experimental lab's goods every other day and you still net positive warbarge components. You can speed it up by playing matches, sure, but it is still passive.

At level V a warbarge produces 600 components per day, by the way. Veterans have the mobile factory V by now.

No more passive than ISK or SP. Technically nobody needs to play to generate either. But if you aint playing you aren't earning enough.

May be true for some players, not true for others. From experience, I have my Warbarge set up so that I can get two (2) free weapons from the Experimental Lab and still have Warbarge Components left over. A player that takes the time to set up their warbarge correctly and invests components correctly will 100% be able to make passive gains. We know of one player (not saying names) that uses alt accounts to farm officer gear in this manner.

Officer proliferation is made much easier by the free market, yes, and there is no intention of limiting that. However the sheer amount that is being created and put into the market is cause for concern considering this possibility to exploit being that Dust 514 is a FTP game. Any player that has enough real life money to throw at the problem can create an alt farm and input much more officer gear into the system than is reasonable for simply logging into the game.

For what it's worth, I think the experimental lab should produce mainly experimental weapons, producing officer only on rare occasions. Perhaps something like 90% experimental, 10% officer. This would be an easy improvement for CCP to implement.

Firstly this makes sense based on the fact that it's called an experimental lab. The experimental lab is the only source of experimental gear. Also, experimental gear should be more common than officer since it is less powerful.

I feel officer gear is a little too prevalent for it's power. I do not think experimental gear is such an issue as it is only a small amount better than proto, whereas officer is a lot better.

As for the wider subject of the warbarge, I think it is unlikely to change much. I am against passive generation of assets. I thought the warbarge subsystems were going to provide a bonus to rewards earned in game, not just give you stuff. I thought the lab was supposed to use components salvaged from battle.

The augmented ammo providing +% damage I am against. This really is getting into pay to win territory. Many people were upset by this when it was released, but accepted it on the basis you could only get a 4 or 5% bonus. Now this has been increased, making it worse.

In fact, I wish the game was devoid of passive bonuses entirely. Skill points giving access to more expensive gear is fine, as you pay for the better gear. But skills that just bonus what you have are bad, and shouldn't have been part of the game from the start. At least they could have given minor advantages, not the major ones we have. This is a large cause of the poor new player experience in my opinion. To be honest, the more in depth I think about this, the more I want CCP to just start again with a clean slate.

By the way. An Apex suit is no more problematic than arum gear. You could always pay money to avoid the risk to your isk wallet. I don't have a problem with this. At least they are only a little better than standard suits. Giving medium frames the hp of an assault would help even the odds for new players.

But it's not a problem thing. The warbarge and the trading that comes from it is one of the games best features. You guys that don't play the game sound so freaking ridiculous talking about things as though you know what you are talking about.

The guys breaking out officer in pubs right now are not nearly as common as people make them out to be. You were wrong about respecs and you are wrong about this. Even if it were common it means there's some dude who enjoys trading more than fighting is making ISK off of the stompers.

I've proposed before that ISK be removed as a currency and make components our primary currency. Make one tier of suits and weapons and make the market 100% player driven outside of AUR gear. Then the warbarge is less passive as payouts would be your primary source of components. These are the types of things I'd like to see if the game were ported, but for now in the reality of the situation just leave it be.

The proto//officer whiners will find something else to whine about and blame their ineffectiveness on.

Sales on the aurum gear, to my knowledge, are so abyssmally low they might as well not even exist. They're just market clutter. That and the fact that LP gear essentially does the same exact thing (but actually requires playing the game!) drives the point home a lot.

That's because people don't like to buy something that isn't permanent.

I think of Apex suits as being similar to the starter fits. Yes they diminish the risk / reward gameplay. However they don't destroy it. There is plenty of room for escalation and risk vs reward with advanced, proto, experimental and officer gear. Plus vehicles.

They need to increase the CPU and PG slightly on the APEX suits

That's because people don't like to buy something that isn't permanent.

I think of Apex suits as being similar to the starter fits. Yes they diminish the risk / reward gameplay. However they don't destroy it. There is plenty of room for escalation and risk vs reward with advanced, proto, experimental and officer gear. Plus vehicles.

Whether or not there is escalation is of no circumstance to the risk/reward of APEX BPOs. You deploy in an APEX BPO, you are exempt from losses. Is there better gear? Yes. That has nothing to do with the fact that you're not spending ISK on the gear you are using and the fact that it is more competitive than Standard and Militia gear. The only items that should be free are the bottom of the barrel, low-end performance.

I don't get irritated when a player kills me with a Militia Ion Pistol in a Starter Suit. I get very irritated when Johnny Nobody kills me with a Prototype Weapon on an APEX Suit.

I absolutely agree that officer weapons are too prolific now. You see them in nearly every game. Killing a person with such weapons use to mean something but not anymore when the said person has hundreds of such weapons now.

Experimental weapon labs should only be able to pump out experimental weapons. A new subsystem should be made for officer weapons that produces officer weapon parts daily. Combining the parts with the experimental weapons should produce the officer weapon with a certain time period (maybe make another subsystem for this?)

The warbarge subsystem is not the only place officer weapons come out of. The strongboxes as well, its alright if no one uses aurum to buy keys, I feel that is just a pay to win tactic.

Like many things in the history of Dust, it was a bad idea in the first place, but it's probably too late to do anything about it now.

What about instead of using WB components for the experimental factory, we use ISK instead?

ISK as a limiting factor is pretty ineffectual at this point.