Rant 471 / If I Type Something Witty For The Title, Does It Really Matter?

Now that I'm no longer a newbie in FoM, I find that I had a few misconceptions about the game's politics. Yes, politics. This game is very much about politics.

First of all, the police aren't always at war with the clans. The Global Dominion(GD) has anti-drug laws, so while the Law Enforcement Department(LED) has to enforce that, the Brotherhood of Shadows(BoS) has to make a living by selling drugs. Making and selling drugs are all the BoS is good for, really. Drugs are useful and are usually in demand because of their various ability-enhancing properties (eg one drug makes your shots more accurate).

Second, the Mercenaries of the Blood have the ability to make departments at lower ranks for a special reason. The MotB is actually more like a loose coalition of many bands of mercenaries that fought in some wars, according to the fictional history. So these departments are the cells of mercenaries. The large number of groups of mercenaries and the decentralization of power it causes are important aspects of this faction.

Third, the FDC doesn't really do anything at the moment. They are supposed to protect humanity, but there is nothing in the game to protect us from. Aliens have been sighted attacking FDC squads on Necar's Field (a planet owned by the Colonization and Mining Guild aka CMG), so I'm guessing they're testing alien NPCs for future updates. Alien raids! Yay!

Vortex Inc, my company, is the smallest faction in the game. This is probably why someone put a hit contract on our base planet, causing mercenaries to attack us all the time. At the moment, many VI employees are producing and stockpiling armours and weapons in case of larger attacks. Also, all mercenaries from the cell that took the contract and all mercs not in any cells (freelancers) are to be Killed on Sight (KoS) if spotted on our planet. Serious business. I've already killed and been killed many times, and have participated in dozens of patrols so far. The killing doesn't seem to be ending though.

The Eurocore (EC) is the largest faction in the game after the LED and FDC. I don't know why, but they have the most manpower and hence the richest. I understand why newbs and noobs join the LED and FDC (for a sense of power over the "civilians"), but why EC? Someday I'll find out.

The CMG has been keeping a low profile for some reason. No idea what they're planning, but everyone is always doing something.

The Guardians of Mankind, often seen as the "hippie" faction, maintains a high profile by organizing "heal-raids". These special raids are the complete opposites of the normal raids performed by the BoS and MotB because they don't kill people. The gist of it is that they run into other faction's bases and fire at everyone with their proprietary Cryotech Mediguns (only this faction can produce them), which heals instead of causing damage. Then they dance. The hilarity of these trips makes sure everyone in the game knows about them (quoting from one of them during a raid," Sucks for you to have so much health!"). Also, they're nice people and are allied with my company, so they have helped us defend our base quite a few times and sent out patrols for us occasionally.














Old song, I know.



Kanye may be an ass, but he makes good music. The above embedded video has a crappy stream rate. Use this link for a better Youtube stream.









In L4D2 I have observed players who don't seem to listen. Or maybe my headphone is making a big difference. In this game, you are not supposed to rely only on your eyes to spot the undead. Hearing them is a much better detection method because it doesn't have a limited angle.

Actually hearing is one of the most important things in modern FPS games. It's not just about shooting the things in front of you; it's usually the attacks from behind that kills. That's why playing these games without sound is a large handicap - you're blind for about 180 degrees behind you.

I first found out about this in Natural Selection. In this game, by the time you can see the aliens you're probably 0.1s away from death. All the aliens specialise in hit-and-run attacks except for the Gorge which builds structures. Listening for alien noise (footsteps or breathing) is the only way a Marine can prevail when he encounters an ambush.

Same with L4D and L4D2. They didn't design the common infected zombies to scream for better audio ambience. It annoys me that there are players who would join a game set to Advanced or Expert difficulty and doesn't react when a zombie runs screaming towards them from behind. Them getting killed may be a problem since the game requires a lot of teamwork, but it gets worse when they don't react after ones of us get disabled by a Special Infected. While one of us is being clawed by a Hunter there he is shooting at normal zombies like they're the top priority and I'm too far to help.

Another whine I have to make is on how some players don't seem to use their melee weapons. Sure you can't hit anything over a meter away, but at close range it's the only weapon that can kill everything in front of you with one hit. All it takes to hold a horde while trapped in a corner is to time your left and right click so that they alternate precisely to kill then push the next wave away and kill again (left click = attack, right click = push/elbow). If no Special Infected attacks, it is possible to stay alive that way indefinitely.

It's way, way better than spamming shotguns no matter that some of them have no cooldown time between shots. They don't killed everything as surely as a good ol' machete or katana. In fact, you actually don't need to waste ammo on normal zombies because they're all 1-hit-kills for melee weapons. I use a gun on them only to cover someone's back from a distance or for fun. Other than that, guns are only for killing special zombies. Hell, I use melee attacks on them too if they're near, except for the Boomer for obvious reasons (obvious if you play the game).

Some players think the melee weapon is more of a backup weapon. I say the guns are the secondary weapons.













Saturday morning, 19th Dec. Logged on to FoM just in time to find myself in the middle of a battle between KD Defense (KD stands for Kepler's Dome, our base colony, and KD Defense is an ad hoc army formed in response to the attacks) and a Mercenary cell named "We Ain't Bitches" (WAB). I was surprised when I saw about 10 of my fellow VI members with their guns out and firing at my direction.

Then I turned around and saw the mercenaries firing back. I had teleported right smack into the centre of a shootout! So I whipped out my trusty Orbit XB Infineon (High Quality, self-made) and started firing. When the other VIs saw me they probably thought I had charged out from their side and so they ran out too. I was close to dying by the end of that battle but the mercs died before they could fire that last fatal shot at me.

But that was only the beginning. I was invited to the KD Defense group, which I joined before I logged on to the VI Ventrilo server. There I found that despite having about 20+ buddies in the army, there were only about 8 of them on Vent. Worse is that many players not on Vent aren't being told the orders spoken there.

So as I ran with the group to the next place under attack, I helped to translate the spoken orders into the chatbox. I didn't take any screenshots during battles but someone else did. Here's one taken by a member of an allied faction, the GoM.

They sent about 15 guys to help us defend our home. Great allies. In the above screenshot they were in the vanguard and had just encountered the mercs. More reinforcements from our side arrived later and wiped the enemies out.

That was the final battle. After the mercs got exterminated we heard from our spy (he was listening in the mercs' Ventrilo server) that the leader of the merc faction(MotB) removed from their list of goals everything that involved our colony. No longer will they come here at all, at least for now, except for mercs who have accepted contracts. We don't mind the loss of business from them (we get money when they mine materials here) as long as they don't bother us.

From our calculations, we have also made huge gaping holes in their pockets. Dying costs money because in the game, dead people are automatically cloned back with their memories intact. Clones may be cheap, but it's still expensive when you die often.

Winning is always followed by celebrations. Here, we made a victory line with our allies. We're the dark green. They're the white and light green. (I'm not Nageth. His name is displayed because he's in my crosshair.)


With the declaration of truce and the news of the removal of KD from the mercs' list of goals, we had a 10-gun salute for our dead (who were cloned back to life).

Well we weren't exactly trained in this so we just fired randomly into the air.













Watching the original Iron Chef shows now. Since the episodes were in alphabetical order instead of chronological, I've just watched the first abalone battle.

First of all, ABALONE PASTE? I have never heard of that before.

Second, several huge fresh abalones were used only to make a broth. These were not eaten later, only the broth was used.

Third, abalone steaks cooked in butter. Enough said.













So the original Runes of Magic poster was first created by the well-known Azazel1944 from Deviantart. It was edited by some other people after he sold it to Frogster, but he could still recognize it.


All the equipment in this picture can be found in the RoM diamond shop. The developers actually made those equipment using this so that players can have their characters look almost exactly like the three people shown.

If you don't know this artist, he's a very talented guy from China and seems to be a big World of Warcraft fan. He's famous in some circles for his amazing WoW-inspired works. If you want to see his drawings, google "Azazel1944" with or without "deviantart". Some are not work-safe though, ie don't visit his gallery at work.












A new city was released in FoM today. Paris was in the game previously but taken out some time ago. It was the HQ of Eurocore back then. Now that it's back, lots of political drama occurred.

In a secret deal with the FDC (the military), EC had very quickly managed to convince them to let them have Paris because it used to be theirs. When my company found out about that, our CEO protested against the agreement because Tokyo, currently under the jurisdiction of the FDC, is the site of the VI HQ (my company). If we can't get our HQ back, how can they allow EC to have theirs?

The CEO of EC then tried to persuade my CEO to join them in a war against the FDC, to help them take back Paris. My CEO disagreed.

For either or both of these reasons, the EC CEO got pissed off and declared war on us. Not the FDC, but us! They are the wealthiest and largest faction after LED and FDC while we are the smallest in the game. Some conclusions are obvious at this point.

Then things got even more confusing when a GoM member reminded everyone, in the forum, of a tiny legal problem regarding the whole issue. According to the GD laws of the game, the FDC does not have the authority to decide who gets which colony. If anyone wants the control of a city/colony, they must have the approval of the Global Dominion Senate.

Hence, both our CEOs really did nothing useful whatsoever. In addition, the High Command of the FDC claims that they were not even aware of this so-called "deal". However EC is not backing down on the war. Their CEO insists that we're the reason for them not getting Paris. Our CEO gives us a different story, saying they are angry because we didn't agree to help them fight the FDC. Though we're small, we have GoM as our ally. Together, our VI-GoM alliance forms a significant military force.

So now we fight a losing war, trying to hold on to our base as we wait for the FDC to get the Senate's nod before helping us. GoM are great buddies but they can only spare so many men while defending their own colony from EC attacks.

Now to the technicalities of the war.

The way to take over a colony and gain control of it is to hack the various "nodes" in the map and kill our members. When these are done frequently enough, a countdown timer is started. If we kill their members the time increases, while them killing us decreases the time . Once the timer reaches zero, the Final Battle (FB) begins. On the other hand, the timer is stopped when we kill enough of the enemies before they kill more of us.

The FB is not really a huge fight but more of a race. Both factions must hack as many nodes in the colony as possible and the winner gains control of it.

At the moment we are only a few hours away from the FB. But it's already almost 1am and I have difficulty staying up any longer. It seems I will be missing the Final Battle. Since I cannot do anything physically, I have spent most of my money on several hitmen contracts to kill a total of 21 EC members. I'm hoping that this would help, even though members of EC now know my name due to the loose mouths of the Mercenaries. Yep, I'm expecting bounties to be placed on my head now.

(Next morning)

Servers were taken down last night after I left due to connection issues. The FB did not take place. The developers say the problem lies not in the bandwidth but in their codes. Whatever it means, they are going to spend at least a few days to revert their "protocols", so no FoM for a few days. :(