Modes The Solo vs Open vs Groups Thread [See new thread]

Archvillain · May 8, 2015

When you're in the mood, open is nice just because it puts you on edge. I haven't had a CMDR attack me, but when I'm tootling along, doing my own thing - trading or mining or whathaveyou, then I see a CMDR, there is that frission of the unknown. Suddenly I have to consider whether (s)he might be hostile, even while I assume the best of them I consider my situation and my options. It's like the game just threw a potential wrench into your finely-tuned plans and you have to adapt on the fly.

When you go exploring, then people prefer open because it's extremely rare to meet a fellow explorer, and if you do, you may make a new friend.

Unfortunately, when I go exploring, I do it in solo - I don't like that I do so, but you can only get high-res screenshots in solo, so I feel I have to - screenshots are a higher priority for me

Sandmann · May 8, 2015

Archvillain said:
Unfortunately, when I go exploring, I do it in solo - I don't like that I do so, but you can only get high-res screenshots in solo, so I feel I have to - screenshots are a higher priority for me

Why is that? Do hi-res ones not work in open?

You know you could always explore in open then change to solo when you want to do a screenshot, yah?

Cody · May 8, 2015

Sandmann said:
Why is that? Do hi-res ones not work in open?

No, they were disabled - they work in Group and Solo (and possibly with the cam drone?).

Asp Explorer · May 8, 2015

Cody said:
No, they were disabled - they work in Group and Solo (and possibly with the cam drone?).

Yeah - the hi-res ones got nerfed because peeps were using them as a temporary combat-log. Pointing your Pictures folder to a particularly slow USB 1.1 device was popular - by the time the file was written, your opponent had no idea where you were and instances broke

Sandmann · May 8, 2015

Asp Explorer said:
Yeah - the hi-res ones got nerfed because peeps were using them as a temporary combat-log. Pointing your Pictures folder to a particularly slow USB 1.1 device was popular - by the time the file was written, your opponent had no idea where you were and instances broke

Ahh I see. Damn some people are clever.. I wouldn't have thought of that if my life depended on it.

W0OCQCK · May 8, 2015

Amazing, Absolutely Amazing, an honest civil conversation here.

I play solo & Mobius primarily because I have very limited time to play, one or two hours a week max. I just don't want the setbacks PVP can generate, as it's taking me forever and a year to get anywhere, earn a new ship etc. I'm 65 years old, and a bit contrary. I honestly don't appreciate the type of PVP offered in games like this. I do however love my "Planet Side 2", and "Dark Soles", which are both pretty hard core PVP games, IMHO.

Bottom line I just don't have the time, my gaming prime has actually past some time ago. But I still very much like my Solo, and Group play.

I have no Ill will what so ever towards any type of PVP'er in open. It just offends me when people try to force me to be there.

PS It's nice to be civil.

Schmack · May 8, 2015

Obviously I haven't read the entire thread, the game is still available. However I am one of "those" people who prefer groups or solo (groups mostly) over open play. That's because, as bad as it sounds, I don't like interacting with strangers (the forum notwithstanding) because I don't trust that some people out there aren't living for the very purpose to ruin anyone else's game play.They find every loophole imaginable and you work your butt off to get ahead and when you get there, there are a host of "got here months ago" types who just farmed exploits. That might never change. It was that way 15 years ago and it's that way today.

Alex Futura · May 8, 2015

I'm quite happy with SOLO play option. Yes, it has multipe advantages over OPEN, but everyone has a chance to go SOLO to get the same advantage.

Asp Explorer · May 8, 2015

Sandmann said:
Ahh I see. Damn some people are clever.. I wouldn't have thought of that if my life depended on it.

Oh it's just going to get better from here

Now that FD's stance on combat logging has been reinforced, you can expect many people to buy USB floppy drives and set their Pictures folder to point to that. Even at standard resolution, it'd take an age to write, and if it runs out of space it hard errors to desktop - which FD can do nothing about.

xkjacob · May 8, 2015

Asp Explorer said:
Oh it's just going to get better from here Now that FD's stance on combat logging has been reinforced, you can expect many people to buy USB floppy drives and set their Pictures folder to point to that. Even at standard resolution, it'd take an age to write, and if it runs out of space it hard errors to desktop - which FD can do nothing about.

Pretty sure that is a simple fix.
Check the available file space before you write. If not enough room don't begin to write.
Might want to pass that on to LA sandman. He has me on la ignore list.

Asp Explorer · May 8, 2015

xkjacob said:
Pretty sure that is a simple fix.
Check the available file space before you write. If not enough room don't begin to write.
Might want to pass that on to LA sandman. He has me on la ignore list.

Unfortunately - that's not how filesystems work - especially on removable media. FD have no ability to circumvent the OS and it's handling of filesystem IO, or Elite would be malware.

Sandmann · May 8, 2015

Woops, we've been merged into that "other" thread. Time to unsub.

xkjacob · May 8, 2015

Asp Explorer said:
Unfortunately - that's not how filesystems work - especially on removable media. FD have no ability to circumvent the OS and it's handling of filesystem IO, or Elite would be malware.

You can try diskfreespace() function. It returns the free space, in bytes, of the specified directory. This function is an alias of the disk_free_space() function
Friend does it with PHP. Perhaps you should try it that way.

Asp Explorer · May 8, 2015

xkjacob said:
You can try diskfreespace() function. It returns the free space, in bytes, of the specified directory. This function is an alias of the disk_free_space() function
Friend does it with PHP. Perhaps you should try it that way.

And what if your specified directory is changed upon a whim? Or declared unavailable after the initial request? Or if it doesn't exist at all? Anyway - this is getting pretty off-topic for the whole solo-groups-open thing, but I'd be glad to discuss this further elsewhere.

xkjacob · May 8, 2015

bool file_exists ( string $filename )
Checks whether a file or directory exists.
More PHP of course.
Coworker said it is more complicated than that, but if they are already interacting it will be silly simple for them to do so.
I don't work in PHP, but it does have its uses.

Asp Explorer · May 8, 2015

xkjacob said:
bool file_exists ( string $filename )
Checks whether a file or directory exists.
More PHP of course.

Indeed - but what if I invoke the old 80's nightmare and eject a floppy and make it read only? Or just unplug the silly thing?

xkjacob · May 8, 2015

Asp Explorer said:
Indeed - but what if I invoke the old 80's nightmare and eject a floppy and make it read only? Or just unplug the silly thing?

bool is_writable ( string $filename )
Returns TRUE if the filename exists and is writable. The filename argument may be a directory name allowing you to check if a directory is writable.

If you turn it off it fails a bunch of checks.

I work on legacy systems made in the 70s.
Hard to make trouble shooting more difficult than my 8 hours of clustered puzzles I get to sort out.

xkjacob · May 8, 2015

There is a bunch of stuff, with a lil love and polish, this game will get so right.
I have seen 0 deal breakers so far.
Once they switch over to formula generated memory values that are validated for game resources like energy, shields and hull. Fix a couple of the quirky write issues they have and add a super light weight boot up heart beat and maybe hourly heart beat afterwards they will be pretty golden in terms of security and anti cheating.

Asp Explorer · May 8, 2015

xkjacob said:
bool is_writable ( string $filename )
Returns TRUE if the filename exists and is writable. The filename argument may be a directory name allowing you to check if a directory is writable.

If you turn it off it fails a bunch of checks.

I work on legacy systems made in the 70s.
Hard to make trouble shooting more difficult than my 8 hours of clustered puzzles I get to sort out.

So what happens when it fails? Pass-off to the OS for it's usual "Disk not working" palaver? Or a FD-forced "disk WILL do this!" There are so many ways around this, or to provoke this, I really believe it will take some rather intense thinking on FD's part to make a workable solution.

I work on "legacy" systems also, brought a new HAPLEX online just this morning

xkjacob · May 8, 2015

LOL ahh they could just add a STOP in it and ruin it all.
All the checks return value for true if any not true do not execute the method for the picture snapshot. Or you could do a red highlight error, but we are talking about people cheating so doing. Nothing is fine.

God that is IBM you live in the nightmare.
My new system "can't" UNIX.
At least my coworkers thought it couldn't. We are using sendmail to send attachments now!! 20thcentury?!? Their lead Unix guy asked me how I did it and walked off mid explanation. They just turned on a firewall and now my working is at best intermitten.

Oh and all our reports are fixed width, but all our clients paste from a como into excel to actually work them.
I just made a easyBakeCSV and started sending comma delimited reports.
I think I will get bored of this soon.