Friday Feature: Last Six Months! Whew!

I took a little hiatus and returned recently to so many updates and additions to an Empire in Flames. I started to compile the list and realized I likely wasn’t the only one who would like to know what EiF has been up to! It was a lot of fun turning the devs loose on the list I started. I was able to see which areas were important to each staff member. EiF is blessed to have gathered a diverse group of people who give so much to the community. Contributing to this article was Halyn, Anishor, Jeil, Kelta, Phoenix, and Abi.

Enjoy! If you haven’t visited EiF in awhile, this is the time! The Easter event is coming and Anniversary Week is around the corner!

Content

  • Planets
    • Coruscant
    • Moncal
      • Screenplay added
    • Kuat
      • Screenplay added
    • Chandrila
    • Hoth
  • Instances
    • Sith Shrine
    • Nym’s Auction coming soon!
  • Loot
    • Tatooine, Dantooine, and Dathomir have receive major loot overhauls
    • 650+ new paintings added
    • Corvette SBD Loot Tables Fixed
  • Faction Recruiters
    • More items
  • GCW
    • Warfame
    • New planetary control system
    • Planetary Control Bonuses
  • Painting Vendor
    • AOJ’s Original Artwork
  • Annual Events
    • Anniversary Riddles
    • Boonta Eve
    • Galactic Egg Hunt
      • Sponsored by A.M.A.
  • EiF Events
    • Jato RP Campaigns
    • The Exchange – Black Market (Get sponsor 😛 )

Crafting

  • Architect
    • New wall appearance added
    • Some furniture has color choices added
    • New craftable houses
  • Armorsmith
    • New craftable armor types
  • Artisan
    • Flooring appearances – 100+
  • Bio-Engineer
    • Backpacks can now be crafted with BE tissues.
  • Droid Engineer
    • C1 Droids
    • Wearable Dark Trooper Exoskeleton
    • BB Droids coming soon!
  • Tailor
    • Backpacks can now be crafted with BE tissues.
    • Armored dusters
  • Weaponsmith
    • Updated Proton Carbine with original fire & sound effects.

Quality of Life

  • Newsnet Terminals in Starports
    • Patch notes
    • GCW updates
      • Galactic Politics Results (Imperial Council/NR Senators)
      • Planetary Control
    • Current events
      • Player Sponsored
        • Weekly Game Night
        • New Zeltros Lottery
        • Galactic Racing Circuit
      • EiF Sponsored
    • Around the Galaxy
  • Player City banks also have a Bazaar terminal
  • /Rattle can be used to make your pets/droids “Talk”
  • NPC droids now come in variety of colors.
  • New armor encumbrance calculations – minisuits now equivalent to full suits
  • Player buildings can now have additional lots added to increase storage – assign as many of your 10 lots as you’d like to a building you own
  • Locked briefcases can now be sliced
  • HIgh-speed airspeeders – T-16 Skyhoppers, T-47 Airspeeders, Twin Pod Cloud Cars

Combat Professions and Skills

Smuggler

  • Last Ditch has been updated – use it as a last ditch.
  • Added Shoot First – used to initiate combat
  • Added Lucky Strike – roll the dice and be rewarded with a high damage special

Doctor

  • Revive Player now revives player with more than 1 health.

Melee Damage SEAs turned on, gives up to 5% extra damage

Sandarie, Community Manager

Welcome to Empire In Flames

An Empire in Flames is a post-Endor server offering a new, unique Star Wars Galaxies experience!

What’s the 10,000 foot view?

Empire in Flames began conceptually before the shutdown of the live servers with a design friendly to Roleplayers, PvE players, PvPers, and pilots. It started as, “What’s your ideal server?” It started with a new profession system, expanded to housing and races, and dreamed of a Galactic Civil War in practice instead of imagination. In short, it’s the concept of a Star Wars game as dreamed by a small group of long-time Starsider players – players who were RPers, PvErs, PvPers, crafters, and pilots, none of whom fell into the trap that any of the major combat systems – pre-CU, CU, or NGE – was by any means perfect.

A new profession system

Empire in Flames offers a new approach to the system – one that combines the best of the ideas of the NGE and pre-CU.

Trees are categorized as “professions” and “skills.”

Professions cost no skill points (though they require XP to level). However, a player can only have ONE profession at a time. Professions include:

Bounty Hunter
Commando
Doctor
Entertainer
Merchant
Ranger
Smuggler
Squad Leader

Abilities acquired from professions can be used with any weapon, or even unarmed. Professions offer enhancement, access to specialized skills like slicing, vendors, creature harvesting, and so forth.

Skills, on the other hand, require skillpoints and can be freely mix-and-matched. They, too, require XP to level; however, all skills can be learned from their novice box up. Prerequisites are not required.

Architect
Armorsmith
Artisan
Bio-Engineer
Carbineer
Chef
Creature Handler
Dancer
Droid Engineer
Fencer
Image Designer
Medic
Musician
Pikeman
Pistoleer
Rifleman
Shipwright
Swordsman
Tailor
Teras Kasi Artist
Weaponsmith

Skillpoints have been adjusted to allow a player to pickup approximately 2 1/2 trees, with some exceptions. (Image Designer, Dancer, and Musician together reach 250 points, for example.)

A new approach to housing

Like most branch servers, Empire in Flames offers additional housing options not available on Basilisk – and a few not available on any other branch server. However, player cities take a central role; player houses are required to be built inside city limits.

No more crust of housing on the edge of the no-build zone around NPC starports. No more endless sea of houses on Tatooine. Instead, players have more reason than ever to cooperate – “home” is now a community.

New Races

While “new races” are proliferating across the branch servers, they started with Empire in Flames. After unauthorized use of our code on other servers, we decided to release them for other servers to use…and used they have been. Still, we’re not resting on our laurels – we’re working to add even more options, even when it means we’re pestering Timbab for a new tool to make it happen.

A New Setting

The decision to move post-Endor is partly driven by roleplay, but also by a desire to implement a proper Galactic Civil War. While the immediate ramifications of the time shift are largely cosmetic, it does mean new themeparks will be coming – after all, Jabba the Hutt, Darth Vader, the Emperor, and Xizor are all dead.

How will you position yourself to rise to power?

We respect existing lore that has happened before Endor, but past that we will be creating our own lore, pulling bits and pieces from varying sources. We simply don’t think the way things go in the new canon with Jakku and all makes for very compelling gameplay or storytelling, but we also can’t trod down the path of Legends as its over saturated and restricting.

Crafting Revamp

One of the most controversial changes we have adopted is a crafting revamp for weaponsmith and armorsmith.

Instead of the old crafting system, we moved to a “core”-based system. The base of every weapon is a core, whether it’s a pistol, carbine, rifle, or melee weapon. The core determines critical stats like HAM cost, damage, and speed. Additions like stocks, scopes, and customized barrels are done at the weapon-level to modify those core stats. In essence, any weapon or armor can be made good. Empire in Flames is more than powerhammers and T-21s and composite armor.

A Roadmap Forward

Post-launch, the next three major patches are planned: Galactic Civil War, Schisms of the Force, and Underworld. The first is to bring a proper Galactic Civil War to the galaxy; the second to implement the Jedi profession; the third to reveal black markets, smuggled goods, player bounty hunting, and Crime Lords.

Along the way, other content is planned – new themeparks for the New Republic and the Empire, a three-faction questline over the fate of Jabba’s criminal empire, and a series of post-Endor based heroic encounters.

Also check out our Q&A from the summer!
And the whole Friday Feature Archives

Friday Feature 10/27/2017: EiF’s Combat!

EiF knew combat would not be fully balanced when we went live. Over the past months we’ve had a much larger player base using our system than the 5-10 players pre-launch on the test center. Our community’s feedback has been invaluable. I reviewed the Q & A with the Devs, to be sure this was the most accurate and up-to-date information. There are a few changes, such as with the armor. 

Below is the current state of EiF’s combat systems, as it relates to Professions and Skills.

General

  • EiF is about player choice and counter play in our balance.
  • Professions vs Skills
    • The New Profession System and Skill Trees: One of the core ideas of EiF was to separate “What you do” from “How you do it”. “What you do” are your Professions – Bounty Hunter, Commando, Doctor, Entertainer, Merchant, Ranger, Smuggler, and Squad Leader. Any person can pick any profession; they cost 0 skill points, but a person can only have one of those professions at a time. Professions grant non-combat abilities and some combat specials, but no combat modifiers – for example, picking Smuggler doesn’t give you extra pistol speed/accuracy/etc.
    • Skills are the “How you do it”, and it’s almost everything else from the original skill trees. Pistoleer, Carbineer, Rifleman, TKA, Fencer, etc, plus your crafting skills and dancer/musician/image designer. Those do require skill points, so you mix-and-match to your heart’s content, up to 250 points worth. The trees are recalculated so that you can basically take two and a half skill trees; I suspect most players will have a line or two of Medic in their builds, but some of our testers already surprised me on that point by forgoing it for more defensive modifiers.
  • No Legendaries
    • Weapons or Armor
  • Core Based Crafting System
    • Separates the appearance from the performance
    • Crafting revamped -Damage is substantially higher and resists cap much lower than 90%
    • Weapons
      • All stats have been revamped to actually matter on a weapon. Assuming similar crafting, pistols will be faster than carbines which are faster than rifles. Rifles have higher damage than carbines which have more damage than pistols.
      • Accuracy calculations come into play; a melee character on top of a rifleman will absolutely destroy him, but at 64 meters the rifleman will shred a melee character.
      • Additional weapons, including some from the NGE will be added as EiF progresses
      • A recent tease from Halyn was an A280-CFE which is a convertible weapon. With the proper certifications (details coming soon(™)) it can be switched between a pistol, carbine, or rifle.
      • Armor piercing/armor level have been removed from calculations, as it pushed players to AP3-only weapons (or stun!)
    • Armor
      • Not all about Composite anymore, appearance is separated from performance
      • Armor is capped at 60% resists
      • Suits of factional armor will come in with the GCW patch. The Imperial and Rebel variants of Mandalorian armor will be part of the Mandalore patch
    • All armor and weapons decay
      • An armorsmith can best repair armor
      • A weaponsmith can best repair weapons
      • Any player can use a repair kit, but the master AS and WS have better chance of not breaking the piece and getting a better repair
      • Crafting stations improve chances of a good repair
  • HAM
    • The HAM/buff system has been inverted. Pre-CU features low base HAM and extremely strong buffs; EiF flipped that, so players start with high HAM and buffs add around 10% total.
    • Starting HAM is closer to 5000
    • No longer incapped by depletion of:
      • Mind
      • Action
      • PvP
        • Action and mind bars can still be targeted by other players, even if they can’t force an incap. During, say, a 4v4, a valid tactic may be for one or two players on each side to focus on keeping the enemy healer’s mind bar locked down to prevent them from throwing heals.
      • Players only incap on the health bar.
    • Action and Mind regenerates faster
      • 3-4 sec from empty to full
      • Action and mind regen very fast, but specials actually /use/ action and mind – firing a pistol special, for example, might take 30% of your action bar, but a few seconds later you’ll be back at full action.
      • Health is regenned faster by sitting
    • No species starting differentiation for HAM
  • Speed
    • Not capped at 1 atk/sec, but 75% reduction of weapon speed
    • With a focus on speed all the way down (speed crafted, speed sliced, speed PuPed) pistols can fire well faster than once per second…but given HAM costs for specials, it’s not real practical.
    • Speed is calculated differently. HAM costs and encumbrance matter. AP is no longer factored into damage calcs. High HAM and low buffs. Lower armor protections.
  • Dizzy
    • Dizzy/KD doesn’t work the same way here.
    • Dizzy is only a 15% chance to K/D you on posture change, not 85% that is is traditionally
    • Dizzy however affects you offensively, reduces your accuracy
    • Stacks with Blind
    • Reduces your primary defenses by 20%
  • Primary Defense – caps at 125
    • Melee/Range
    • SL bonus pushes the cap above 125
    • Pikatta Pie – pushes the cap about 125 too
  • Secondary Defenses – caps at 125
    • Dodge – Pistols/ 1H mele
    • Counter attack – Carbines/2H Melee
    • Block – Rifles/Pikeman
    • Defensive Acuity – Unarmed
    • In the future we’ve talked about adding in schematics that drop with different combinations, such as a dodging polearm.
    • SEAs help to reach Cap, but not push above the cap. Still keeps the cap of +25 to one stat from all your attachments.
  • Buffs
    • Doc buffs
    • Moved status from doc buffs into base stats, so now unbuffed you are close to what a doc buffed character was. Doc buffs only increase stats by about an additional 5% ( as was intended in Raph Koster’s initial design )
    • No longer required for play, intended to be at same power as other buffs such as food and drinks
    • No Doc Bots
    • Buffs are weak on EiF
    • Ent Buffs are reduced from Live
    • The classic SWG model is “low HAM, high buffs” – we’ve swapped that around, so you natively have high HAM with buffs providing far less of an increase. Playing without buffs is perfectly feasible; in PvP, buffs give an edge.
    • Further tweaking to ensure Doc buffs are viable is planned, but not outside the scope of current design. Atm they’re a bit underpowered.
  • Professions – Profession skills require the ‘mind’ pool to activate.
  • Racial Bonuses – Some bonuses do affect combat.

Thank you, Anishor, for helping me to put this together!

-Sandarie, Community Manager

Clearly Not Combat Princess!

Friday Feature: 9/1/2017: Heavy Weapons Y’all!

The Empire in Flames Heavy Weapons Revamp has arrived! Commandos everywhere are rejoicing, or should be! New Entertainers should rejoice too, lots of healing XP should be available soon, from all the damage! The weapons were created unique to EiF by our lead developer and project owner, Halyn. All of the weapons require newly designed munitions components,as well.

In addition, in keeping with EiF’s mission to value crafters and interdependency, the munitions components will require items from an Artisan.

The revamp brings in four categories of weapons:

  • Heavy Weapons (40 Uses)
    • Acid Stream Launcher (this one’s gonna hurt!)
    • Heavy Particle Beam Cannon (starts singing, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s mah Particle Beam…)
    • Lightning Beam Cannon (Get out your Solar Eclipse glasses for this one folks! It’s Shiny!)
    • Rocket Launcher

Acid Stream Launcher, Heavy Particle Beam Cannon, Lightning Beam Cannon, Rocket Launcher

 

  • Special Heavy Weapons (Usable until it decays)
    • Heavy Acid Rifle (This one’s really, really gonna hurt!)

Heavy Acid Rifle

    • Light Lightning Rifle (Not as “heavy” as it’s brother…)

Light Lightning Cannon

    • Plasma Flame Thrower (‘cause who doesn’t want to shoot flames at a bad guy!)

Plasma Flame Thrower

  • Mines (5 Uses)
    • Anti-Vehicular Mine (Now we can seek retribution on the NPCs for all the vehicles they’ve destroyed of ours!)
    • DRX Mine (DRX? Dirty Rusty eX?)
    • XG Mine (XG – okay, I’m stumped)
  • Throwable Weapons (5 Uses)
    • C12 Fragmentation Grenade (Blow those suckers to tiny bits!)
    • C22 Fragmentation Grenade (Blow them to even tinier bits!)
    • CryoBan Grenade (brrr, now that’s just cold)
    • Glop Grenade (My personal favorite. Who wouldn’t want to toss a glop grenade at someone.)
    • Imperial Detonator (NR’s take your personal Imp pet out for a “spin” ahahahhaha!)
    • Proton Grenade (‘Cause who doesn’t want a mini proton topedo!?)
    • Thermal Detonator (BANG!)

All of the sub components are found in the Munition Component section of the Weapons crafting tab.

So, there ya have it! All the ‘splodie, acidy, streamy, screamy goodness any commando could desire. Go git em! Take down those arrogant Imps or dirty, rebel… erm New Republic scum.

Sandarie
Community Manager

Clearly Not Combat Princess!

Friday Feature 8/4/2017 – Badges

((sorry for the day late! My family arrived in town and chaos ensued!)

One of the fun features of Star Wars Galaxies is the Badges which can be earned. Blue Pyros and Kelta updated the list of badges to make it current for EiF. I pulled the initial information from here.

My guild likes to do activities as a group and on a few occasions we’ve gone out and worked on the Exploration badges for a particular planet. Badge hunting is a great group activity. It’s also a wonderful way to scout for RP locations while racking up those badges!

Ohhh! While editing and formatting this information, I realized the badges from Taanab are not here! I’m not going to list them now, but I challenge you to go out to Taanab, find them, and post them here!

Q. What are Badges?
A.
 Badges are essentially just lines of text that appear in your Character Information Sheet(Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+P (this might be different, depending on keybindings)). Badges are earned by doing various tasks in EiF. These tasks can be as simple as visiting a location, or as challenging as fighting through one of the toughest dungeons in the game.

Q. Is EiF going to add anymore badges, or is this it?
A.
 Of COURSE they’re going to add new badges!

Badge Collector
Total Available: 7

How to: These Badges are received after claiming a certain number of other badges. These badges are cumulative. That is, Your Badge Collector: 5 Badges will count towards your total to getting your Badge Collector: 10 Badges badge.

…has acquired 5 badges.
…has acquired 10 badges.
…has acquired 25 badges.
…has acquired 50 badges.
…has acquired 75 badges.
…has acquired 100 badges.
…has acquired 125 badges.

Exploration
Total Available: 45

How to: These Badges are claimed simply by visiting certain special locales. AudioOrgana has put together this wonderful guide, which details all the Points of Interest in the game that will grant you badges.

…has visited Ben Kenobi’s old home.
…has visited the pool underneath Fort Tusken.
…has visited the famed Krayt Dragon skeleton.
…has visited the escape pod used by C-3PO and R2-D2.
…has visited the home of the mighty Sarlacc.
…has found the Lars Homestead on Tatooine.
…has found the hidden Krayt Dragon Graveyard.
…has discovered the hidden Gungan Sacred Place.
…has explored the depths of the Agrilat Crystal Swamp.
…has encountered the mysterious Palace of the Woolamander on Yavin 4.
…has discovered the ancient Temple of the Blueleaf cluster.
…has visited the Temple of Exar K’un.
…has climbed to the top of “Adi’s Rest”.
…has explored the horrid tar pits of Dathomir.
…has discovered the lesser Sarlacc on Dathomir.
…has found a mysterious escape pod crash-landed on Dathomir.
…has climbed to the peak of the Lesser Misty Falls region.
…has reached the Greater Misty Falls Peak.
…has uncovered the mysteries of the Ruined Jedi Temple on Dantooine.
…has visited the abandoned Rebel Base on Dantooine.
…has seen the majestic falls of Theed.
…has visited the stately falls of Dee’ja Peak.
…has visited Amidala’s Private Beach.
…has seen the Rebel Hideout on Corellia.
…has seen the Rogue Corsec Base on Corellia.
…has visited the famous outdoor theater on Vreni Island.
…has seen the magnificent crystal fountain at Bela Vistal.
…found a wrecked starship on Dathomir.
…seen the dreaded Imperial Prison on Dathomir.
…has walked among Dantari tribesmen
…has visited a Dantari Rock Village.
…has visited an Ewok Tree Village.
…has visited an Ewok Lake Village.
…has seen a Dulok Village.
…has found a Marauder base on Endor.
…has seen the lost village of Durbin on Talus.
…has seen an Imperial Base on Talus.
…has observed a battle between Rebel and Imperial Forces on Talus.
…has seen a cave populated by Aqualish soldiers on Talus.
…has seen the fabled Kobola Spice Mines on Rori.
…has seen a Rebel Outpost on Rori.
…has seen an Imperial encampment on Rori.
…has found the Imperial Hyperdrive Research Facility on Rori.
…has found an Imperial base on Lok.
…has found a Kimogila skeleton on Lok.

Explorer
Total Available: 5

How to: These Badges are like the Badge Collector badges, but only count the Exploration badges. These Badges are not cumulative. That is, Novice Explorer: 10 Exploration Badges will not count towards the Journeyman Explorer: 20 Exploration Badges badge.

…has earned 10 Exploration Badges.
…has earned 20 Exploration Badges.
…has earned 30 Exploration Badges.
…has earned 40 Exploration Badges.
…has earned 45 Exploration Badges.

Profession Badges
Total Available: 29

How to: These badges are received when you master any profession.

…has mastered the Fencer profession.
…has mastered the Swordsman Profession.
…has mastered the Bounty Hunter Profession.
…has mastered the Carbineer Profession.
…has mastered the Commando Profession.
…has mastered the Pistoleer Profession.
…has mastered the Pikeman Profession.
…has mastered the Rifleman Profession.
…has mastered the Smuggler Profession.
…has mastered the Teras Kasi Profession.
…has mastered the Architect Profession.
…has mastered the Armorsmith Profession.
…has mastered the Artisan Profession.
…has mastered the Chef Profession.
…has mastered the Droid Engineer Profession.
…has mastered the Merchant Profession.
…has mastered the Tailor Profession.
…has mastered the Weaponsmith Profession.
…has mastered the Bio-Engineer Profession.
…has mastered the Creature Handler Profession.
…has mastered the Ranger Profession.
…has mastered the Squad Leader Profession.
…has mastered the Doctor Profession.
…has mastered the Medic Profession.
…has mastered the Dancer Profession.
…has mastered the Entertainer Profession.
…has mastered the Image Designer Profession.
…has mastered the Musician Profession.
…has mastered the Politician Profession.

Trivial Librarian
Total Available: 1

How to: In the Royal Palace in Theed the Trivial Librarian awaits the explorer. She will ask a series of questions which the explorer must answer them. There is no limit to the number of tries, so don’t worry about getting any questions wrong.

…answered all the trivia questions posed by the Theed Palace Librarian.

Racing
Total Available: 6

How to: There are various races around the galaxy. Beat the current record holder, and you’ve got yourself a badge.

…has held the daily record on the Agrilat Swamp race track.
…has held the daily record on the Keren City race track.
…has held the daily record on the Mos Espa race track.
…has held the daily record on the Narmle City race track.
…has held the daily record on the Nashal River race track.
…has held the daily record on the Lok Marathon race track.

Hero of Tatooine
Total Available: 5

How to: This is a series of quests, which can take quite some time to complete.

…bears the Mark of Courage.
…bears the Mark of Honor.
…bears the Mark of Intellect.
…bears the Mark of Altruism.
…bears the Mark of the Hero.

The Warren
Total Available: 2

How to: The Warren is a dungeon on Dantooine [Under your POI tab in your datapad]. There are old guides which can bee Googled to work your way through the Warren

…showed great compassion toward the widow of an Imperial worker.
…proved Colonel Teraud’s perfidy and rendered great services to the Empire!

Happy Collecting!

Sandarie
Community Manager