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First Contact event really cool but observed possible hacking!
dvrocc
Member Posts: 22 Arc User
First of all thanks for the First Contact event it is really cool and a nice quick break from the daily grind xD My observation is something i am rolling around in my head, is it a bug or flat out hack?! here is what happened twice today, standing at my table waiting on the countdown and a players resources start turning grey to green right away but what got me thinking was that before i even scouted out my 3rd scrap pile that player had all purple scrap Engine, Hull and Shield (or what ever the name is) and never left the table, all this started durring the time countdown and was finished about 30 seconds ater the timer hit zero, so is this a bug, glitch or straight up hacking? on my 4rth pile of scrap i seen my table on fire so i went to put it out and seen the player still standing with all purple scrap.
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Definitely sounds like something isn't working as intended (either because it's hackable, or bugged).
I wouldn't worry too much about it though. The quality of the gear doesn't even influence your score that much and your score in turn doesn't influence your rewards I believe so... it really doesn't matter.
And they're stabilisers by the way
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
It is also correct that how your flight goes has no effect on the rewards. Everyone gets the same thing, no matter what.
Honestly, I've taken to going in and just poking around on this amazing map, and seeing all there is to see. It doesn't effect my participation in the event, and it lets me see some neat stuff before I lose the ability to enjoy this amazing map for another year.
We come in peace, SHOOT TO KILL!
As for the "bug", I did notice that Cryptic took out the the point display. Whether you want to grind of parts or not is up to you. No need to worry if you rocket explodes. Just collect the rewards and enjoy the map and music.
That's not really correct at all. Certainly, there is a random element to it that can cause a rocket with great parts to fail quickly, and one with lesser parts to go farther, but underneath all of that, the better your parts, the better your rocket will do. You can even look at various videos on YouTube of the event and see that in the vast majority of cases, the better rockets went farther.
It does not have any effect on your prize, though. That part is quite true.
What point display? The one that matters at the end that shows how far each rocket went is still there. The only thing that isn't displayed that was last year is how many pieces you gathered, which was only visible to you, and really only told you how many total things that you gathered, not even which category, since all of the extras stacked up in the engine "buff" icon.
That RNG is really a big factor. I had all purples and my rocket exploded pretty much around the time as those who had not moved from their counters. Another time myself and another chap had all Purples and I came third to omeone who had not. Honestly if there is a random element, makes me wonder why I am running around.
Because it's more fun than sitting around doing nothing?
If it isn't more fun than sitting around doing nothing, don't do it.
For the most part I see the highest part score win, with some variation. The rocket system doesn't appear to be fully deterministic. Ie. you affect the probabilities involved with your rockets performance (ex. distance, trajectory, early exploding), not the performance values themselves. What this adds is a feeling of uncertainty and hope (ie. excitement) when watching your rockets. You can never be quite certain of how things will work out (which is appropriate for the armature rocketry experience).
Still, you generally do better with better parts. There's just a non-zero probability (that someone in the community is likely to see during the event) of an AFK player getting the best score (just from being obscenely lucky.) Still, no affect on reward but what this all means is that there's still a game involved in participating (like monopoly or risk, you play around the dice rolls at every level.)
Hacking is directly manipulating information going to the game or the game itself. It doesn't apply to all exploits. What I'd look into here (if this isn't just a visual bug or spontaneous starting glitch) is what those players are bringing with them into the queue. Is scrap removed from a player's inventory/passive stats (depending on how the resources are being tracked) when they leave the queue? Can you cause this to happen [say, by quitting mid-game] or is this an instance where STO isn't properly clearing player progress between runs? (so, some people are arriving with what they had in the last round, by no intention of their own.)
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What? A water fall??? I missed that! LOL!
Well...I have 3 more days of exploring I can do....
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Lol, you can see it from the bench area.
I've done this thing a lot and that rarely happens. I would put the chances of an all-purple rocket blowing up within 20-ish whatever units they're using (about the farthest that I've ever seen an all-gray rocket go) at about 5% at the highest. Now, when the random element kicks in on your all-purple rocket, it usually kicks in in a big way, usually causing it to fail as early as those where the player collected nothing. It stinks, but what do you expect from something cobbled together from junk in 5 minutes? It's amazing that we all don't get severe burns every time, to be honest.
There are deterministic and random elements at play here, but it is easy to see that parts with a greater rarity do better a good 90% of the time or more, and to even reverse-engineer the relative effect of each category of part. It turns out they're in alphabetical order. Engines>Hull>Stabilizers. Go for those purple engines first to get the best results, barring a random mishap, of course.
shame they don't enable the Risa Bathing suits
My character Tsin'xing
I had my doubts about this, till tonight. No one moved for the entire 5 minute collection. Yet, when it came time to 'tweak', one person acquired a engine and a stabilizer.
Doesn't happen everytime though.
My character Tsin'xing
- I still get my 120 marks
- The odds of getting a good build go up from getting more parts, so I have a better chance than someone with a few leftover parts
- The parts quality does matter. There's a lot of RNG mixed in, but my last few runs have had 2-3 AFKs and their no-parts ships blew up much sooner than the rest of us
that seems to happen when you get scrap parts from the "large caches" that sometimes appear
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