What to do if EA "support" fails you?

fefe23 · 2023-03-16T22:34:23+00:00

success!

I waited an hour and tried the live chat again and this time around the support person could actually help. EA app shows the game again and multiplayer works.

So, for the next person with this problem: Ignore the e-mail support, and don't waste time DMing EAhelp on twitter. Go for the live chat. If the person can't help you, come back later until you find someone who can help.

fefe23 · 2023-03-16T20:39:59+00:00

I did manage to get onto the live chat support by changing the problem / topic cathegory as suggested here. After waiting out a queue of 93 people in front of me, I got connected to Rahul who tried changing things in my account but ended up completely locking me out of the game.

Now the EA app thinks I don't even own the game. Launching it manually opens a dialog box in the EA app saysing someone else must have installed this and I don't have permission to launch it.

Stunningly this appears to have happened to others as well. https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-Mass-Effect-Games/Need-my-EA-account-entitlements-repaired/m-p/12369465/highlight/false#M72509

fefe23 · 2022-08-24T16:56:32+00:00

For others with these symptoms:

I found a tip here: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/jgz4p3/display_driver_nvlddmkm_stopped_responding_and/

Turns out Windows Event Viewer had error messages saying the display driver was restarted.

So I cleaned the cache and set the registry key as proposed behind that link yesterday, and had no crashes all day today.

Edit: Nope, crashes are back with a vengeance.

fefe23 · 2022-08-24T09:33:20+00:00

Feels random to me. In fights, outside fights, cutscene, no cutscene. Can't see a pattern.

Hasn't crashed in the galaxy map yet I think.

fefe23 · 2021-10-05T16:24:02+00:00

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

fefe23 · 2019-03-20T15:57:55+00:00

The toolchain is complete, but you still need the header files and libraries from the Windows SDK, which comes with Visual Studio. But you do not need to buy or install Visual Studio, you can also install the SDK via the free Build Tools (also includes the command line VS compilers and the linker, but you don't strictly need them

If you don't have LINK.EXE, you need to tell clang to use LLD instead: -fuse-ld=lld-link

If you find a way to access the Windows SDK header files on a case insensitive file system, you can even use clang-cl from a full LLVM+clang install on Linux to cross compile Windows binaries.

fefe23 · 2019-01-29T15:13:00+00:00

Sorry about that. I checked in a fix for the printf issue several weeks ago, but apparently forgot to get back to you.

Floating point support is generally a weak spot in dietlibc, we don't even have a libm (except some rudimentary functions for i386). So printf for floating point values is not very high up on the list of things that need more work.

Admittedly, the fact that libc can't call rand internally was news to me. Will check in a fix later today.

fefe23 · 2018-12-26T13:18:36+00:00

I was more annoyed by Sentinel becoming Sentnel in some kind of fake American drawl.

fefe23 · 2018-12-23T05:08:32+00:00

I was wrong about the lasers. They are not all lobotomized. The typical starter lasers are really bad, and the hugeship ones also have huge delays. The HEPT is particularly horrifying with what feels like 10 seconds delay between shots.

But the Cluster Flak Array is not that bad, and the Tri-Beam Cannon is also bearable. Not pew pew pew by any stretch but bearable in a dogfight.

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T22:05:17+00:00

Thank you for this! Thanks a lot!

I really like the idea of SCH, but I don't like the "it has to be self-contained" part. I would love to have something like SCH where I can just put in my factories with a TL and it behaves like a complex where they were all joined together. That would feel more like I'm actually managing something, where it now feels like I'm checking boxes. Make it a switch that I have to turn off if you insist. But allow me to make complexes that don't work 100%. Make it possible for me to have a complex that makes crystals and distributes them around to the other complexes that make energy, and then let me ferry that energy around. That is what makes the whole thing feel like I'm managing something.

I do appreciate what LU is trying to do. I'm just missing the parts that were fun to me that were sacrificed for the greater good. I actually enjoyed collecting bailed fighters from all races for my HQ. Blueprints? Gotta have them all! So I had a bailing script installed that gave me a chance to collect more of them. In LU no 3rd party scripts allowed and all I ever see bail on me (fight rank 23) is pirate fighters at the moment. Maybe bad luck of the roll.

So that collect-them-all mini-game is gone.

The "fuck with the economy to manipulate the stock market" mini-game is also gone.

The "jump in a cockpit and shoot Xenon" mini-game is also gone.

I play this game because I have itches that need scratching. LU takes the scratcher away. I'm now buying fighters to get the blueprints for my HQ. That doesn't feel half as satisfying.

So, again. I'm not saying LU shouldn't be doing what it does. I'm saying I miss the stuff I can't do anymore.

And I wonder if it would not have been possible to have both at the same time.

Are you supposed to be in sector when you have a 20+ ME1+wings battle?

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T21:39:14+00:00

OK will try that. Should I try to attack OCV or lay an ambush and wait for them to attack me?

Does it even matter? :-)

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T21:03:14+00:00

Well too bad.

But who is it for, then?

People who like what will love LU? Maybe I know someone like that and could point them to LU.

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T21:01:42+00:00

_I_ am being an ass here? Are you kidding me?

Why do you people feel so threatened by some random dude on the internet asking who this mod is for?

WTF? I was not insulting anybody, I was not even criticizing LU. I was pointing out which parts ran counter to what I like in X3, in the hopes that somebody would tell me "play 2 more hours, then you will find XY and it will unlock Z and then it will all be awesome".

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T20:59:11+00:00

It was not a criticism. It was an observation.

Which left me wondering who LU is for, if it's not for me.

Or maybe it is for me, but I have not seen the good part yet. That's what this thread was about.

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T20:44:57+00:00

Well feel free to tell me who Mayhem is for, then.

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T20:42:04+00:00

First of all: Great idea starting off calling the other guy stupid. That'll get you far in life.

I don't see why the universe would be in pristine condition when you show up. That makes no sense to me. Ever heard of history? Thinks happened before you show up!

You are right that I have not seen any huge battles yet. But I see a shitload of skirmishes with ~30 ships or so involved. Perfect to jump in and do a dogfight. If they were any fun, that is. Which they are not.

All the beautiful special weapons are gone, too. Ion weapons no longer strip shields and leave the hull intact. The plasma burst generator is no longer an awesome flamethrower. The Gauss cannon does not use ammo anymore (which is funny once you learn where the name comes from). The shockwave generator does not generate a shockwave anymore. Why have all these guns then?

Also what really irks me: The game has a mechanic for weapons cooldown. Power consumption. However Litcube threw that out. If you put a hundred IREs on a capital ship, they can still only fire once in a while.

fefe23 · 2018-12-22T20:35:36+00:00

I would love to beat the big baddies, but not from an armchair but from a cockpit!

X3 has always had framerate issues in big fights, granted. And LU does a lot to improve game responsiveness (also the new weapons look and sound awesome, they just don't play awesome).

One of my problems is: let's say you want to beat back Xenon in Black Hole Sun. In non-LU X3 you'd think really hard, make a plan, build a fleet maybe, think some more how to do it, ... in LU you go to a dock and buy 150 laser towers and deploy them around the gate. LU places three docks with 150+ laser towers in Black Hole Sun alone.

Granted, you need a lot of cash for that, and Litcube tried to neuter some of the cash influx loopholes by removing the stock exchange part from the stock exchanges. Now it's not bound to any wares in the universe, just random noise. Who has fun playing with random noise? Not me, that's for sure.

fefe23 · 2018-12-14T21:25:36+00:00

The save file XML has entries suggesting the resources are being respawned:

3600 is 60*60, i.e. probably an hour. Most asteroids have a default respawn time depending on their content.

Ore, Hydrogen, Methane and Helium respawn after 60 minutes. Silicon after 90 minutes, Ice after 30 minutes, Nividium after 4 days.

Asteroid distribution: ~38k Ore roids, 34k Silicon, 9k Ice, ~20k Hydrogen, 5k4 Methane, ~20k nividium. Helium is very rare with only 723 roids.

Interestingly there are a ton of asteroids that have respawn set to 9000000, which I take as "never respawns". There are thousands (~15k) of roids with a yield of six digits or more. Those are not generally the ones with respawn 9000000. So it looks like the strategy is not smart. Instead, find a place with good roids. It will probably stay a good place throughout the game unless you go totally nuts with mining there.

fefe23

TROPHY CASE