je_saist

As I understand the spawning system, mission's spawn should adjust down to the minimum level required to start the Task Force.

So, if you start a Positron with 6 players, you'll have spawns for 6. If 4 of those players leave and you only have 2 players left, the spawns should adjust to the base 3-player spawn needed to start the task force.

There already is one.

The scaling reward is the greater amount of influence / infamy, prestige, and increased drop potential/

There's no point in adding another scaling reward system when the game already has one.

That presumes that STO will meet it's launch date...

and I seriously doubt they'll be able to do that.

The last modifications to the Task Force system are supposed to spawn mobs no lower than the bare minimum of players needed to start.

So yes, a Positron should spawn mobs no lower than a 3-man team.
A Synapse should spawn mobs no lower than a 4-man team
A Sister Psyche should spawn mobs no lower than a 5-man team

and so on.

One 9600, one 9800.

And... well... yes and no. While Vendors are quick to list the Thermal Design Power Envelope, or how many Watts of heat a particular product puts off, they aren't so quick to talk about actual power draw.

Now, while I don't like to quote Tom's Hardware Guides, they do have a handy chart available here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...t,1780-18.html According to their tests using one of the Stalker games, the 9600 GT pulled in close to 200watts of power.

Legit Reviews also looked at the power consumption, and their tests were similiar. The 9600 GT was close to 190 watts drawn from the power supply, while the 9500 GT was under 160 watts : http://www.legitreviews.com/article/760/13/

When TechPowerUp looked at the RadeonHD 4650, it's maximum power draw was sub 150 watts. They also placed the 9600 GT on a higher basis, at 181 watts. http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/S...650_OC/24.html

However, as a grain of salt, when Tom's looked at the 4650, they said it drew close to 180watts: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...gp,2383-9.html


***

For reference
Legit placed the 9800 GTX at 234 watts
TechPowerUp placed the 9800 GTX at 228 watts

***

I'm also aware that Dell likes to be... Well. Dell has a history of listing a power supplies peak performance, not the sustained performance. You can read about this more at places like http://www.80plus.org/ or www.xbitlabs.com

Various power supply vendors sell power supplies based on the peak amount of power they can output, rather than the average amount of power output the power supply can sustain. Generally, when it comes to Dell, you need to knock anywhere from 50 to 70 watts off of the listed rating to get an idea of what the power supply can actually sustain. So, while you have a 300 watt power supply, I'm betting it can actually only sustain 250watts.

With that kind of power limit, I'm not exactly sure if your particular computer can actually drive a 4650 GPU.

I am fairly sure that the 9600 GT and 9800 GT are out of the question.

Taunt's accuracy check only applies in PvP. Against NPC's it is auto-hit.

Really depends on who you ask.

For me it depends on who you team with. One of the components of aggro in CoH is damage. It's possible for several blasters, scrappers, and controllers to generate enough AOE tick-damage to gain aggro off a taunt-less tank just based on attacks alone, never-minding any other stacking aggro modifiers such as debuffs or other taunt auras.

Another component of aggro is the to-hit and accuracy ratings. Tanks generate additional aggro by attacking. However, if they can't land attacks, they are unable to build off of gauntlet. You can witness this case-in-point in action by running a Katie Hannon Task Force. Have the tank just use melee attacks, and no taunt, when fighting Mary. Blaster, defenders, and controllers launching attacks from outside of Mary's hurricane will almost immediately gain Mary's attention.

Another component of taunt is duration. Taunt effects only last for a certain amount of time. This can be important to remember when multiple mobs may have been pre-aggroed, which means they've been attacked or been alerted by a taunt aura or other method, but have been alerted after aggro-cap has been reached. Mobs that are pre-aggroed will seek the nearest target, even if the target is stealthed. This can be seen on both the Imperious Task Force Towers, in which tanks or brutes can alert several mobs, but only contain aggro from one or two mobs, and in the Dr. Quarterfield task force.

If your playing a tank with a damage aura, you can pretty much get away without putting taunt on auto since gauntlet, and thus your taunt, will build against success attacks of your own PBAOE.

If you are playing a tank whose taunt aura does not contain a damage component, such as willpower, invuln, or shield defense, you'll more than likely need to keep taunt on auto against even basic mobs to retain aggro control.

My own personal playing style differs between tanks. On my ice, stone, and willpowers, I'll generally auto-taunt. On my fire, I'll auto-healing aura and just hit taunt manually.

no.

I can't explain how no I am to this idea.

The Vanguard Merits, Candy Canes, Architect Tickets, and Reward merits are weighted differently to offer different rewards for different amounts of work. They are weighted this way by design.

*ish ready for the phaser after having watched Cien and successfully dodges, but loses the donut!*

Ack! My Donut! *chases Cien*

*pads up behind Cien munching on a donut and wonders what puppeh is up to and why he's shooting at a Sai Plushie*

....

....

pink. booties.

how. undignified

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soul Train Did you clean the old drivers completely off with driver cleaner, reboot to standard Windows VGA drivers, THEN install the new ones? If not, you may be still using older driver DLL's, which will receive instructions on how to render stuff, but the code may or may not work.

... ... no... I'm... gonna do that... now. then shoot myself for not thinking of that first.

Quote:

The OTHER thing to check... is inside the case. Specifically, airflow and dust. You need lots of the former and as little of the latter as you can manage. Otherwise your GPU may be getting close to overheat failure.

Heh. MOBILITY 2600.

It's a laptop. Hence this is an odd issue. ATi/AMD don't officially support Laptop GPU's because some vendors make modifications to the chipsets.

*prances about with ribbons*

*offers trout?*

*starts humming another song* Deck the sacks with boughs of holly, mew mew mew mew mew, mew mew, mew, mew!

OpenGL, for the most part, has been fixed on ATi's end since 2007: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6420

According to AMD's Bridgman, the 3D stack is shared across ATi's drivers: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showp...1&postcount=35

Also, AMD/ATi is generally quick to hear about, and do something about, severe graphics issues, again quoting Bridgman:

One of the.. issues... with OpenGL though is that it can be extended through proprietary vendor calls. The drastic case in point was the mixed precision shader path and proprietary shadow calls produced by Nvidia to make the GeforceFX cards look good under the ID Doom3 engine. Given the way CoH handles certain shader calls in game, I've long been of the opinion that the shader calls were written with Nvidia's help, or by Nvidia, hence the errors that occur on ATi cards.

***

Now, as to whether or not they work in the long run?

Well, I've been using Vista 64bit Ultimate on an Intel Core 2 Duo system coupled against Radeon x1800 XT, x1900 AIW, RadeonHD 3870, and RadeonHD 4650. Across popular OpenGL titles like No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, F.E.A.R., Chronicles of Riddick, Doom3, Quake4, Enemy Territory, and so on, I haven't really had too many problems. Honestly, I can probably count on one hand the number of glitches I've had under the Windows side.

Now, I have been directly told by AMD that they only really intend to focus on OpenGL for workstation usage, a stance I don't agree with. I think they, Intel, and Nvidia should be hammering OpenGL / OpenCL over another vendors rendering / physics API when-ever possible... simply because it's good business.

*pulls out a tennis racket and THWAPS the Sackthingy into a snow bank

One of these days you're gonna trip over that tongue of yours trying to say everybody's name.

He did suggest a certain amount of time. Not an immediate lock-out.

Still doesn't detract from the sheer what the bloody hell of it all.

... you are right. That would be more preferable.