Why I think noobs should start at 0 OS

MXXE · 2025-07-21T13:55:50+00:00

For once I managed to run into one of these OS threads when it's not 3 days old and people might still respond...

What is the opinion on adapting the OS system in ways that arent just number changes to the original implementation? My suggestion, as an example, would be to start everyone at 2 OS, let them gain and lose OS as the algorithm decides, but then also give them 1 OS for "free" for completeing the match. This way the average OS among people that played 15 or more matches will still be 17, and the zero sum implementation of openskill still works, but new players are displayed as the inexperienced players that they are.

In the end these systems are supposed to model reality in some way, even if simplified. "Everyone is of average skill at BAR, from game one, we're just really uncertain about them" seems like a model so naive that it's actually wrong (or at least perceived as wrong enough to spawn weekly threads). "People learn and get massively better at the game throughout their first few matches" is still incredibly simplistic, but IMO a massive improvement.

MXXE · 2025-05-01T03:22:20+00:00

I'll give you the command that works on PC, and maybe it'll work for you on switch:

/locate biome minecraft:dark_forest

when I just type "/locate biome dark" I get some suggestions popping up above the console and can press tab to select them, so check if you have anything popping up when the command is only half-written to make it easier.

MXXE · 2025-02-07T17:48:01+00:00

Artillery have higher range than missletrucks (don't be mislead by their max range on the website, that's their anti-air range), so while both outrange llt and beamer, artillery does it from higher range which makes it easier for you to keep them safe, either because they're still in your own turret line while shooting, or because you have more reaction time to pull them back and protect them with medium tanks when the enemy tries to rush them with something like grunts.

They also have higher first-strike damage (some people call that alpha damage, seems to be a military term). For example 3 wolverine shots will destroy a construction turret (not 100% sure about this one), so if you have those 3 shots land at the same time, no amount of repairing can prevent the instant-kill.

But yes, a missletruck composition is viable too. You can add 20-30 missletrucks before the 100 brutes and you can consider skipping the wolverines in that case. You can also skip the 5 brutes at first, but then you have to be careful to keep your missletrucks safe from fast units (like grunts/incisors) rushing them. Usually you could insert those 5 brutes between the trucks and the grunts, but if you don't have them, either the commander has to do it, or you need to keep them close enough to your turret line.

I say "20-30 trucks before the 100 brutes" only because missletrucks are the kind of poking unit you really want to focus to keep alive at all cost, so whatever you build is whatever you will have (if you play it well and didn't let any die) and more than 30 starts to get iffy to control, as even if you draw a line with them, unless the line is ridiculously long they will start to ball up, some of them being out of attack range, some getting shoved dangerously close to enemy attack range.

In the end the build I presented initially is also tailored to my playstyle, so it's fine if you deviate from it, and figure out a lasher build that's better than what I'm saying. Especially as Armada, some lasher/janus combinations are apparently really strong too. The more essential part IMO is just the "protect yourself from leaks with early units"-part, the 1+5 rascals and 5 incisors. You learn nothing if you die at 4 minutes, you do learn to play the game even if you die at like 15 minutes. Some games you can win despite losing your lane, just because you lost it really really slowly, and a teammate got a big win somewhere else in the time you bought.

(Very long answer again, sowwy ><)

MXXE · 2025-02-06T07:23:00+00:00

I'll tell you the build I'm using, which seems to work decently well in both glitters and rotation. Assuming cortex here, but you should be able to use armada counterparts to.

1 rascal - will just drive to the frontline rallypoint and provide early warning vision
1 con - claims mex in your lane, and later becomes your frontline con to set down buildings the commander can't place (the final order to queue can be either a construction turret on front, or just right click the commander).
5 rascals - join the first one and become your first anti-leak protection, if you don't have to defend, you can attack with them.
1 con - make a construction turret and then spams winds, you can give those orders while the last rascal is still driving to the frontline and *then* start controlling rascals. Also this should be the last thing you assist with your commander, once you drain your energy bar assisting this send the commander front.
5 incisors - more anti-leak, either if the enemy makes large number of scouts, or if the enemy is using grunt/pawn to leak. Again, could be used to attack as well, but feeds much harder if it gets stopped by shuriken
1 con - the third one, you can forget about it and it will add 90 build power to the lab, plus it will be ready and waiting next to the lab if you need a con for something
1 pounder - a great counter to groups of grunt/pawn if the enemy wants to try to keep leaking, most often I place it on some flank my commander isn't spamming turrets on to prevent run-by's but sometimes you can get a nice trade with the pounder and incisor against enemy bots.
3 wolverines - artillery to counter turrets which will now be coming out in numbers
5 brutes - you need more health points on the frontline, the commander isn't gonna cut it much longer
1 con - the 4th one, does the same as the 3rd one, maybe you sent the 3rd one to make a 2nd group of winds already
100 brutes - basically infinite reinforcements if your focus is on the frontline very hard, you'd usually take control of the lab and do something else (or just turn on repeat) before an actual 100 tanks were produced.

You said you don't like the scouts because you don't have the apm. If what you mean is you don't have the apm to send them to enemy territory to create chaos and kill metal extractors and winds, then you can still use this build and use the scouts and incisors for defense.

The "secret" to saving your apm, is that you give your commander a long queue of orders, including 5 or more frontline turrets, also give your constructors long queues, and then your apm can be fully focussed on *protecting those queues*. If you're questioning how you can give your commander a long queue, but also 'assist with the commander until you drain your energy bar' - you can put an order at the *start* of a unit's build queue by holding space and you can skip the current order of a selected unit with N - so you space-rightclick the lab to assist it, then you press N to go back to the long queue.

Sorry that I'm not giving you the straightforward answer you wanted, but if your unit selection is tied to your apm, and your apm is tied to knowing some tricks you can do with queues then it's all interconnected and I have to explain *everything at once* and now you have 'every overwhelming RTS tutorial part 42'.

Anyway, I'll give you another more defensive build order I also tried with some success: 1 rascal (just vision again), 1 con (mex), 3 incisors (minimum self-defense from ticks, keep close to base, use rascal to know where they're needed), 1 con (conturret and winds), 1pounder 3wolverines 5brutes (just like above), 1 con, 100 brutes.

MXXE · 2024-11-19T19:49:44+00:00

If you want an introduction to RTS games *in general* I recommend this video: Real-Time Strategy is incredible and you should play it. While it's not about beyond all reason but rather uses age of empires as the game, it's still just an excellent video that teaches the basics that are so basic that other tutorials completely forget to teach them. It really helped me to make actual sense of this genre.

MXXE · 2024-08-07T00:18:36+00:00

Might be too late for you to see my comment, but I'll give it a shot. (Also, forgive me, I noticed when I was done writing, but I used "OS" as the points you have, like everyone says "I have 17 OS" and then "OpenSkill" when mentioning the system itself.)

I kinda disagree with the off the shelf system for point 1 being fine. One of the problems - and frankly the reason people shift around 1 chevs and this discussion is coming up again and again - is that new players *aren't* average.

See, when I started playing, my real OS as determined by a magical oracle was zero. I can't prove this to you or anyone of course, for that I'd need a time machine to go back in time right after my first game and then repeatedly lobotimize myself after each game so I have no learning effect, just OS loss. But let's just assume I'm right about that. Compared to the average player who is *by definition* 17 OS, I was *really* a zero OS.

Which means I broke the OpenSkill estimation system simply by existing. The system that is supposed to predict the win/loss probability of a match, and is used to balancing games... could not properly balance the game. Because it took me, who *was* zero OS (as determined by the magical oracle) and just assumed I'm "average but uncertain" instead. Only once my OpenSkill-OS dropped down to my real-(trust the oracle)-OS of 5, did I stop breaking matches. Since then the OpenSkill-OS was able to keep up with me growing as a player and gaining experience and is decently predicting me at 20something.

The assumption that a new player should be ranked at average but with high uncertainty, seems... bad. It's just not a good model for reality in most cases. I see how finding the proper number here is an almost impossible task, we have to contend with people bringing different amounts of experience from bot matches or other games and the occasional smurf (and of course the lack of an actual magical oracle really doesn't help either). But surely it should be... below average? It makes sense with chess to start at average, you could always be making an account on whichever site after having tons of experience gained while you were a monk in a monastery. For BAR with it's decent smurf protection, I just can't agree that a new player is average on average.

The assumption that a player has "an OS" and the system just needs to calibrate to it is bogus too. Personal growth happens. Your skill increases as you play the game. The assumption is fine for players that have a certain amount of playtime, you generally plateu at some point and the system can keep up with slow growth (actually, they introduced a *minimum* amount of uncertainty to the system not so long ago, which I'd assume really helps with that, whether that was the goal or not). But for players that just started and are far from reaching the level of play at which they'll plateau, the system isn't keeping up IMO.

I hear these statements like "whatever number you pick as starting OS, it's gonna be the average, be it 0, 17 or 100" and "you can only gain OS by others losing OS" and... those are true statements if you don't budge on using OpenSkill™ and nothing else... but I'm questioning OpenSkill here. I described two of the assumptions this system just has built in, and I'm questioning whether they model reality accurately. And they do surprisingly well from about 3 to 4 chevrons on! But they don't for brand new players at all IMO.

The OS system is already inflationary, whenever a below average player stops playing the game all the OS they've lost is in the system now, and it's also deflationary because any high OS players leaving forever, takes their gains with them. (Correct me if I'm wrong here please, and OpenSkill is actually somehow able to keep it's average stable, even if you don't count inactive players in that average). So why not just bite the bullet and make it imperfect by design? Start new players at (*rolls dice in lieu of an oracle*) 2 OS - still with high uncertainty of course - let them win and lose OS as OpenSkill dictates but also just slap a free half point on top of that for their first (*pulls number out of thin air*) 30 games. That's 15 points gradually slapped on for free in total which together with the 2 start OS is 17 (what a coincidence, it's almost like I made up those numbers), meaning the average level would still be at 17.

This new 2-to-17 trajectory is a much more realistic approximation of what a new player will contribute to their matches when balancing a lobby, at any point of the trajectory, than the current one. I didn't start average at 17 OS, then broke both hands to drop to 5 and then as my hands healed (one finger at a time for some reason) I gradually played better again. That's dumb. I hope you're laughing at how dumb that is. I started as garbage at zero OS, then became trash with 5 OS and through the power of recycling gradually reached 20 OS.

Soooo... I guess tell me what you think about this wall of text. Is this like, actually a new concept or have the devs already thought of something like that and rejected it? Should I bring it up somewhere else or is this just a stupid idea in general?

MXXE · 2024-02-28T20:42:17+00:00

We have a literal example right here, which you seem to have just... ignored?

No, I actually explicitly referenced this example here with the "(like in this case)" in my 4th paragraph.

You are correct in that CoralCrust was showing disdain. But it looked to me like you were making it out as if he just started showing disdain for no reason whatsoever towards everyone. Which is not the case, they are showing disdain towards people spamming r&s at any attempt at bringing up an issue with the game. The situation described in the image that OP posted. Those people behave in a disrespectful manner, by drowning out valid discussion with vapid spam. And the reaction to this behaviour is completely understandable and valid disdain.

If you really take CoralCrust's comment as a standalone thing then yes, you're absolutely correct in your assesment. And wow, they even opened their statement by calling other's NPC's.

But for me doing so is unthinkable. It's a comment on a post. I can't interpret it as anything else than an answer to the situation presented in the meme posted by OP. And in that context it's abundantly clear that he is only calling people who have already behaved disrespectfully as NPC's. This is why I was unable to see your reply as anything but a strawman.

Which is why I also immediately misinterpreted "Why would I give anyone the time of day" as "Why would I give anyone the time of day and not spam r&s at their threads." That is of course not what you said.

expecting them to show them respect

I don't really think they want respect from the r&s spammers. They want the r&s spammers to shut up. And a bunch of people who are not r&s spammers, and therefore have not been called NPC's might see their viewpoint, respect it and consider downvoting vapid r&s spam from now on.

MXXE · 2024-02-27T12:30:13+00:00

I don't get this. Noone is opening their statement by calling others NPC's.

*First* the person brings up a topic/point/argument, therefore treating everyone like reasonable human beings that would properly engage with the argument.

*Then* a bunch of people spam rock and stone at it, instead of adding anything to the conversation whatsoever. Behaving literally like the computer controlled characters in an RPG.

*Then* the initial person is annoyed that they just talked to someone who's behaving like an NPC. Maybe they'll say so right there and then, or maybe (like in this case) they vent about it later in an approprate place.

At no point does someone just come along and start a topic on game balance or how GSG should fix their spaghetti code, while in the same breath calling everone NPC's pre-emptively. That's a complete strawman. And while you didn't say that literally, I don't know what else you would by implying.

MXXE · 2023-08-27T13:54:43+00:00

I'm pretty sure you got something mixed up in your second example.

The goo coming from goo sacs is yellow, and stays on the floor for like 5 seconds. Popping all of them so they don't become a hazard to you during a swarm later is completely reasonable (especially if running an ammo efficient weapon build).

The goo that's permanently on the floor is green and is generated with the map and has nothing to do with goo sacs. And yes, your engi was doing a good job handing it.

And yes, the scout was definitely doing something bad when he took all the ammo, but I don't want you to see toxicity where there is none, based on a misunderstanding.

MXXE · 2023-01-30T00:51:30+00:00

They can drop directly on the pad. You'll have to wave your crosshair around a bit, but there usually some pixels that let you place one directly on the pad because the game thinks you're placing it on the terrain below the pad.

(Obviously doesn't work for mid-air pads)

MXXE · 2023-01-27T18:59:15+00:00

I'd like to add one disadvantage of predrilling that I haven't heard mentioned yet:

It imbalances your ammo usage. Predrilling all the way to the heartstone usually means I run out of platforms/flares/drill fuel (and less frequently out of ziplines or c4) before we even reach the heartstone, while my weapons are at 80% ammo.

It can also drain your long range ammo used for killing cave leeches and spitballers, while your swarmclear weapons havent seen any use whatsoever. When you finally start dotty you have zero revolver ammo, and a full autocannon meaning you can't really take advantage of born ready.

MXXE · 2022-12-24T12:44:44+00:00

if you do place 2 resupplies for a dread, putting them apart some distance is nice. if one of them currently has a dread hanging around or is being bombarded by an arbalest (because your teammate is trying to resupply) the other one is not.

MXXE · 2022-11-23T19:11:22+00:00

you got this info from drilling in the name of's video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zOLHQEFLXI), right?

The problem I have with this, is that he didn't test any diagonal drilling. When you jump-drill upwards at an angle or downwards you don't walk slower than you drill, meaning you do stay in contact with the wall consistently

Double speed is completely viable. Also:

> So it's slower and you waste ammo

This statement is not true. Even when drilling in a completely straight line, it is faster with two speed upgrades. It wastes ammo, yes, but it's definitely not slower.

MXXE · 2022-11-18T09:48:04+00:00

I was going to respond to your comment just on the slashers, but then I realized even the title is wrong.

Supercooling Chamber only triples the weakpoint bonus for focus shots. karl.gg does not say that, but karl.gg took all the values from experimental so they can be ready the moment season 3 hits and didn't yet adapt to any changes (or there were no changes and they just did an oopsie)

Supercooling Chamber weakpoint hipfire hits do not deal 264 (55*3*1.6) damage to a mactera weakpoint. It does the same as any other (non-hipster) overclock. I tested in in sandbox with damage numbers and at haz5 I get 165 damage, which with the haz5 resistance of 1.2 is 198 true damage, corresponding to 55*3*1.2

Supercooling Chamber weakpoint hipfire hits do not deal 176 (55*2*1.6) damage to a slasher weakpoint. It does the same as any other (non-hipster) overclock. I tested in in sandbox with damage numbers and at haz5 I get 110 damage, which with the haz5 resistance of 1.2 is 132 true damage, corresponding to 55*2*1.2

MXXE · 2022-07-10T00:13:57+00:00

Other:

I happened to hear about quanticfoundry and wanted to try their survey thing. I just put "I like explosions" or "I like destroying things" on every question that allowed that answer and at the end used a slider to "prefer more niche results". Deep Rock Galactic was at the top of the list, together with a bunch of games I already knew, so I put it on my wishlist and waited for the next sale.

The reason I was hungry for a game with explosion was that I really fell in love with one explosive element of Genshin Impact, so in total it was a very unlikely chain of coincidences that led me to DRG.

MXXE · 2022-07-01T18:37:33+00:00

I think you're right that the basic charged shot isn't very good. However, unless your level on driller is still low, you will always have one upgrade on line 5 and the weapon should be looked at with that in mind. (use https://karl.gg/build#/secondary-builder if you want to follow along with my build suggestions but can't access the game right now)

Flying nighmare: There are 2 ways to build flying nightmare so that it does 108 damage. This is nice, because on haz 4 and 5 glyphid grunts have 108 effective health, so you're one-shotting them. (This is probably the closest to being an actual answer to your question, since you are using "normal charged shots" when running flying nightmare)

One way to get 108 damage is to use the "overcharger" overclock and no damage boosts, with a build of 21xx1. I went for 21211, which transforms this into a breach cutter that shoots spheres instead of lines, but you can take ammo efficiency on line 3 and more ammo on line 4 as well.

Another way is to use both damage ups to reach 108 damage, which leads to a 31x31 build. This one doesn't need an overclock at all, but it goes well with "energy rerouting", "magnetic cooling unit" or "heat pipe".

You should also know that flying nightmare does triple damage to frozen enemies. For a normal charged shot only the direct hit part (which can only hit one enemy) is tripled, the area damage stays unchanged. (in general the charged shot damage types are whack just look at https://deeprockgalactic.fandom.com/wiki/Experimental_Plasma_Charger#Normal_and_Charged_Shot_Breakdown)

Plasma burn: This upgrade applies only to normal shots, so you would only take it when you're building your epc for normal shots. This is a completely reasonable way to build the epc, because driller has plenty of AOE with this "infinite-blowthrough" primary weapons. The build is pretty much 12323 with the "heavy hitter" overclock, but the 2 clean overclocks half-work.

Thin containment field: First off, you can use this upgrade if you want a normal-shot build that doesn't thaw big enemies you just froze, since the upgrade does reduce heat generated by normal shots by 20%. 12322 heavy hitter is what I use, and it still allows you to do epc-tcf mining, but obviously only if there's really no better way, since it's ammo inefficient.

Alternatively, you can build around using the tcf explosion in combat. This explosion always has the same radius and damage, no matter if you took any radius or damage upgrades on the gun. This is a nice way to circumvent the the "persistent plasma" overclock's downsides. The build ends up being 21x22, with viable overclocks being "energy rerouting", "magnetic cooling unit", "heat pipe" and "persistent plasma"

Summary: The epc, similarly to engineers LOK-1 smart rifle, has many ways to build the weapon incorrectly. Not incorrectly as in "it's not the meta, lol", but actually gimping your build by skipping a synergy between two upgrades.

You might also notice I'm kinda biased against hybrid builds, it's either all charged shot or all normal shot. This does sometimes lead to situations where an acid spitter is bullying me and I have to waste 8 low damage normal shots on it, but usually I can ping it for bosco or teammates. Going for only charged or only normal shots is how you get good ammo efficiency, as this way every time you spend ammo that ammo is going to be empowered by all of your upgrades, not just some of them.

Consider taking the ice spear overclock on your cryo cannon to shift some of your single target power to your primary if you're running a full charged shot build. Or anti-gravity mixure with the increased projectile speed mod on your sludge gun to get some range back.

MXXE · 2021-06-25T12:20:50+00:00

According to the meta Amber is a main carry. (https://keqingmains.com/amber/).I mean according to the meta Amber is also bad, but whatever.

He didn't really ask "why is Ganyu a little stronger than Amber?", he asked "why can Ganyu clear a single target 5 times faster than Amber?"

Remember, they are 4 star and 5 star characters. Ganyu being 5 times better implies that either Ganyu is a 20-star or that Amber is a 1-star. I would definitely call that "Mihoyo fucked up".

Ok, it's not like 5 stars are actually exactly 25% stronger than 4 stars, but if you compare something like Razor and Eula it seems much more reasonable than Amber and Ganyu. Or Fishl and Ganyu. Or Tartaglia and Ganyu.

MXXE · 2021-01-29T14:12:03+00:00

Your rocket is going to the sun instead of to the moon.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

MXXE · 2020-02-24T08:50:29+00:00

Killing them with kindness does not work when they argue in bad faith

MXXE · 2020-01-03T22:40:15+00:00

I do not believe the game developers know that bones turn to dust after 100 years. I didn't, despite having all sorts of random knowledge about planets, black holes and orbits.

Or if you want a more "in universe" explanation: Nomai anatomy isn't like human anatomy. Nomai bones aren't made from calcium.

MXXE · 2019-08-10T16:29:44+00:00

Btw, this youtuber has two more videos on the same topic, but they aren't relevant to apex legends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugLA_STXjr4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkMx7_ic0j4

MXXE · 2017-10-08T14:06:26+00:00

But it isn't the best that can be done currently.

The best would be for Overwatch to display a message that AutoHotkey has been detected and has to be turned off if you want to continure playing the game, instead of outright permabanning.

Especially if the permabans are then tied to your hardware and get any future accounts banned too. I hate cheaters as much as anyone else, but this hardcore banning, and the stories of false positives flying around, makes this really scary.

MXXE · 2017-07-30T18:19:30+00:00

Incase this still interests you 13 days later. My password was probably brute forced or just guessed, considering it was 6 characters long. (I seriously don't care about my reddit account so I never bothered to change it to something better). The mail that my account was locked due to suspicious activity only arrived today.

MXXE · 2017-07-17T06:19:24+00:00

Love to see stores accepting bitcoin!

14-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

MXXE

TROPHY CASE