Dirtside's Journal: Arduinne planet - don't go there

In keeping with Zarf's warning about profundity, I'm going to comment on something I discovered about Earth & Beyond last night that I hate.

Namely, the planet Arduinne.

It's big. It's green. It has lots of things which make me hate it.

1) The mobs are mostly level 30-33. This in itself is not a bad thing. However, the mobs fire very slowly and infrequently, which means they are easy to kill, which means they are always being camped.

2) The mobs are HEALED by plasma damage -- and since 4 of the 6 missile launchers I own are plasma launchers, this does me little good.

3) The mobs spawn in clusters of 4 or 5 at a time, making them harder to kill.

4) They drop huge stacks of level 3 and 4 minerals, which are essentially worthless, even in large quantities.

5) In the October patch, the maximum impulse speed on planets was TRIPLED (not doubled, like those liars said) on planet surfaces. However, your acceleration and deceleration rates were not changed, making it somewhat difficult to stop quickly. Overshooting your intended destination by a kilometer or two is rather common.

6) There's a huge squad of turrets and NPC ships at the exit gate, that will "protect" you from any mobs that get within 5 kilometers. Unfortunately, this is a large chunk of the map, so you get killstealed a lot.

7) For some reason, my framerate on the planet was appallingly slow -- about 15fps. Not that there's exactly a lot going on there -- gas clouds, a few mobs and ships, and that's it. No world geometry to render. Yet it's slow as hell on a Geforce4 ti4200. Argh.

Ok, I'm done bitching. Whine whine. Back to work.