About

Balance

Balance is a large focus on Project Carbonite which is why the “meta” on Carbonite will never stay the same. Constant small changes will be made over time to reduce “OP” things, weak aspects buffed, and things that are kind of soso might be given a little touch up. There most likely will be some things that are broken, but don’t expect them to stay that way for long.

Quality of life

Many servers forget that SWG was built for thousands and thousands of players in a way that would keep them playing for years. The emulation community for an abandoned aging game isn’t something that functions the same way. A larger effort has been done on Carbonite to take into consideration population size and intent of its community.

Armor Changes

The meta in Pre-CU, for the most part, has centered around wearing “mini-suits” consisting of chest+helm+gloves/bracer+boots/legs. This was something we wanted to change in order to facilitate more freedom around what you wear and how you wear it

To facilitate that idea all defensive values have been moved to the ChestPiece. Every other piece of armor is now considered “Cosmetic Armor”. Attachments still work for these pieces, but now they only take durability when cloning just like clothing.

No, Jedi cannot wear these cosmetic pieces as that’d be confusing in PVP.

Surveying Changes

Surveying has had a massive buff. You can now survey at higher ranges with a custom draw-method used to show you “hotspots”.

With +25 tapes you can scan for massive distances for resource “hotspots”. Tired of driving for hours on end in random directions to find the highest % of a resource? Well, maybe you still have to do that but it’s a lot less now!

Non-Combat Progression Changes

Social/Econ professions such as Dancer, Musician, Politican, and Merchant have been given massive internal-only exp bonuses that stack with all other experience bonuses.

This was done to facilitate community growth and add an emphasis on the social aspect of these professions versus some need to keep someone grinding on mundane tasks.

Vehicle Changes

All vehicles are relatively fast now, however their “handling” is VERY different between all of the different vehicles.

A good rule of thumb is the rarer a vehicle is to get the better its durability, resists, handling, and accel. Most vehicles have the same top-speed however.

NGE vehicles will be added as the server goes along for people to obtain through boss mechanics or new dungeons.

City Changes

Cities have had all of their Specializations redone to make them more differentiated between each other.

Of the many different Specializations available most cities were only ever one of 2 or 3 types. In order to clean that up a bit we combined many unpopular modifiers into the “base” of other Specializations.

Check them out!

Attachment+Clothing Changes

Previously, the meta in SWG was to get the largest possible +mod on an attachment to build suits. These suits were sort of a hard long-term investment as attachment mods on clothing never stopped working even when the clothing would break from durability loss.

Now, clothing breaks, and players must “extract” their mods from said clothing. Extracting mods from clothing reduces their quality by 25%, but now Players can “combine” attachments with lesser valued attachments of the same time to create new attacchments.

This is a major economic change, and will be interesting to see how this affects both PVE and PVP. The goal, in the end, is to create a permanently fluid economy around attachments, tailoring, and custom tailored clothing!

Mission Changes

Missions were previously a chore to grab, and a headache to find what you wanted.

Now, you can choose the direction of missions that are generated from a Mission Terminal by radialing on them.

Missions will also tell you what you’re hunting before you even pickup the mission.

Mission generation code, behind the scenes, was also refactored to be a bit less taxing on the server.

Chef/Food Changes

Food has had a MAJOR rework done to it in order to facilitate more foods being viable, and to allow for more customization to be done for your character.

Food now digests fully from 100% in 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes allowing for more foods to be “loaded up” over time.

Furthermore, a new buff system was implemented to facilitate modifiers from foods/drinks/etc. This new system is a LOT more efficient and less taxing on the server than previously used.

Chef created foods have been completed changed in terms of their duration and modifier amount. Mix and match, create new metas, and find a combo that’s broken! This server will never stay the same, and balance changes will most likely occur to this aspect of the game more than any other.

Smuggler Changes

Smugglers now gain MUCH more experience from slicing, and slicing terminals now has a greatly reduced cooldown timer.

Smugglers can also now choose what slice they wish to perform, but for those who love risk and are gamblers at heart can also just stay the RNG path for even greater slicing rewards!

Both armor and weapons have had their own minimum and maximum slicing values shifted.

Rare/Legendary/Exceptional Changes

On Carbonite we’re trying to avoid massive broken OP weapons, but sometimes once in a blue moon it’s cool to create something truly stupid even if it’s only temporary.

To lessen the number of broken weapons that would occur over the lifespan of the server the overall yellow-modifiers have been lowered, but the chances of yellow items have been greatly increased.

First, Junk loot has been mostly removed from being rollable on yellow-modifiers. Anything that can roll rare/legendary/exceptional should be able to have some sort of value either from stat mods on the item or the stats themselves. It’s still possible to loot something worthless, but not a Legendary Datapad-kind of worthless. This means that overall, looting useful rare loot is more common than before.

Second, the chances themselves are MUCH higher than bog-standard SWG, so we should see more yellow-named items over time with much more reasonable stats on them.

Lastly, a new “Rare” modifier has been created to replace the standard referenced “Yellow”. The order of rarity from least to greatest is as follows:

• Rare
• Exceptional
• Legendary

Chat Changes

Socializing is the biggest part of any good MMO. That’s why we implemented a callback to one of the best servers previously created for SWGemu, Warfront.

PVP, and factional chat channels have been implemented in order to have a cleaner experience than simply spamming the top of your screen every second when PVP is happening.

Furthermore, if you’re not into PVP then you won’t need to ever see these channels so no spam for you!

This addition to the game allows players to know when large pvp engagements are happening that should allow for dynamic player-driven content to self evolve and create a positive feedback loop of further reinforcements and content to active pvp.

Further work is planned for world-PVP so stay tuned!

Bounty Hunter Changes

Bounty hunters have gotten a bit of love on Carbonite. From Exp bonuses to investigation all the way to some new modifiers in their tree. We’ve also implemented a new “Trophy” system that allows a BH to receive a named skull of their successfully hunted targets.

You can use these skulls as a decorative morale-damaging item, or turn them in for rewards from the new Underworld Dealer in Cnet.

POI Changes

Every POI in the game is being actively reworked over time, and new/better loot opportunities are everywhere on Carbonite.

Bosses have also had some additional changes made to their encounters, and should be less single-dimentional than they were before.

Global hard-to-find bosses have also been added to the game for even greater rewards for those randomly driving around the world for exploration.

More is planned so keep your eyes peeled!

Pet Changes

Pets have, for a long time, been the red-headed stepchildren of SWG. Most of the time pets themselves are simply too easy to kill, or their accuracy is so terrible that there’s no real reason to use them.

Now, pets have been given accuracy buffs to their attacks, and pets have had their disease/poison attacks refactored to reduce broken values based on their overall pet damage.

CreatureToHit tapes, previously, didn’t do anything useful for pets. Now, they’re correctly applied to pets in a way that allows them to be more reliable in both PVP and PVE.

Lastly, pets now inherit the pvp-damage reduction that players have in PVP. This means that pets will be more formidable on the battlefield and not something you can simply swat away like they didn’t exist.

Loot Changes

Loot has, and will continue to be, a constantly balanced part of Carbonite.

Currently, most junk loot has been removed, or greatly decreased, from many popular farming locations. The emphasis being on reducing the amount of crud you have to constantly destroy in your inventory.

However, we’ll be focusing more on loot rebalances, and new ways of creating loot variety in dungeons as they are redone and refactored.

Most junk loot has also been removed from having the possibility of rolling rare, exceptional, or legendary. This should greatly increase that dopamine injection that is created in PVE.

Spin Groups Enabled!

MMO’s are meant to be social experiences, however most servers choose to not re-enable the ability for spin-groups to be a viable strategy for leveling anymore.

On live in Pre-CU group members could kill the same target and get full exp, but current code splits exp to all attackers of an NPC splitting exp based on damage done by each player.

On Carbonite, we’ve removed the per-player exp splitting, and given each participant full experience for the kill they helped to take down!

Group to your hearts content!

Doctor Changes

Doctors have historically simply been used as afk-buff bots that then limit pvp/pve activities if someone doesn’t have their afk macro buffing doctor online.

This has changed on Carbonite, as Doctors are now being made to be both an Elite Crafting Prof, and an actively played part of the group with healing bonuses etc.

Buffs have been redone and balanced with the always-buffed state players start with. Buffpacks have been crushed into one, singular, self-buff omnipack.

These omni packs are crafted by doctors, and sold to players who wish to add extra points to their pools. Doctors are the only ones who’s wound treatment skill affects buffs, and only when buffing themselves.

Glowy Changes

• Combat path towards glowy is as follows:
  • “exploration_jedi” x 3
  • “exploration_dangerous” x 2
  • “exploration_easy” x 5
  • “master” x 1
  • “content” from x5 -> x3

• A new non-combat Crafter Path:
  • “exploration_jedi” x 3
  • “exploration_dangerous” x 3
  • “exploration_easy” x 25
  • “master” x 1