Monday, November 28, 2011

Galaxy Online II: Battleship Analysis


Just the sound of it should strike fear into the hearts of many. Battleships have the most amount of space for modules and He3 storage. And with the widest variety of hull types out of the three classes, Battleships can be the most versatile ship type in Galaxy Online II.

These monstrous beings can take the most punishment and are often used as tanks in the battlefields of space. They are, however, painfully long and expensive to make.

Battleships are ideal against Cruisers and yet can hold against Frigates despite being disadvantaged.
ShipHullAgainst (Damage Type)
ChromeNanoNeutralizingRegenHeatKineticMagneticExplosive
Estrella
Howler
Tiamat
Nettle
Palenka
Alliance Admiral
Diaz
Cerberus
Presidio of Glory
RV766 The Explorer
Whirlpool
Genesis
Aggressive Warlord
✓ - Good✔ - Very Good✗ - Bad✘ - Very Bad
Depending on whether you like your Battleships going up close and personal in a fight or whether guerrilla warfare is more of your style, you can be sure there will be a ship design fit for it.

If you prefer close range battles, you might opt to use Chrome or Regen hulls and arm them with Ballistics and Directional weapons. If you prefer long range, you can choose Nano or Neutralizing hulls and equip them with Missiles or Ship-based weapons.

Perhaps you would like to give your opponents a hard time? Just mix and match your hull types and slap on some shields. You can be sure that the opponent's weapons won't be effective against all of your ships.


Sunday, November 27, 2011

Galaxy Online II: Cruiser Analysis




Cruisers are supposedly your mid-sized ships which serve the purpose of swatting pesky Frigates off the backs of Battleships. Cruisers have a small bonus in attacking and defending against Frigates.

Despite being slightly slower and having less shield points than Frigates, Cruisers have more space for modules and He3 storage. This advantage more than makes up for the handicap. With the right tech and ship design, Cruisers are generally more sturdy and can last longer than Frigates in battles.
ShipHullAgainst (Damage Type)
ChromeRegenHeatKineticMagneticExplosive
Typhoon
Duke
Watchman
Wraith
Nicholas
Industrial Ship
Quick Assault
Nihelbet
Bombardier
The Shuttler
Spinner
Encratos
Helena
Bolencia Warship
Striking Sword
✓ - Good✔ - Very Good✗ - Bad✘ - Very Bad
According to the breakdown above, Cruisers guard well against kinetic type weapons, but may do well or poorly against heat and magnetic types (depending on hull).

Against Frigates which are typically armed with Ballistic or Directional weapons, Cruisers with chrome hull would perform slightly better than those with regen hull.

Ideally, Cruisers should be taken out with explosive type weapons (Missiles), however we must take into consideration that missiles have a longer cooldown.

Compared to Frigates, Cruisers are more suitable for short range clashes as they will stay well under the firing range of missiles (their weakness). With this in mind, it might be more suitable to arm Cruisers with Ballistic and Directional weapons instead.



Galaxy Online II: Frigate Analysis


Frigates are agile ships useful at taking out the heavier and more expensive Battleships. Although they are good at that, Frigates can't take as much punishment as Battleships can.

They have excellent shields and an innate critical hit bonus. However, they have the lowest amount of space for modules and He3 storage. Once their shields are gone, you will find that they can be surprisingly fragile.

Furthermore, with this low amount of space, their choices of arsenal is severely limited to Ballistic and Directional weapons. Unless of course your willing to sacrifice precious space to install He3 storage modules.

Against the wide variety of Battleship hulls, you might find that the effectiveness of your Frigates can be a hit or miss. This of course practically negates the damage bonus Frigates have against Battleships.

Without making it up in numbers, Frigates will most probably be having a hard time going against Cruisers.
ShipHullAgainst (Damage Type)
NanoNeutralizingHeatKineticMagneticExplosive
Weikes
Valkyrie
Space Hunter
Devourer
Cybra
Hedgehog
Daybreak
Shadow Guardian
Air Wanderer
GoGetter
Sparrow
Polymesus
Hamdar
Fleetfoot
Last Stand
✓ - Good✔ - Very Good✗ - Bad✘ - Very Bad
Frigates have only two classes of hull types - Nano or Neutralizing. And if you look at the table drawn up above, you will find that it would generally be a bad idea to use explosive type weapons against them. When going up against Frigates, an optimal choice would be to load your ships with kinetic weapons.

And with players primarily preferring ballistics due to its zero cooldown, Frigates are surprisingly vulnerable in short range clashes. The fight may have already been lost before it even started.


Friday, November 25, 2011

Dragonica




Dragonica If you like games where your character is darn cute-looking, you should give Dragonica a check.

Dragonica, also known as Dragon Saga, is a free-to-play 3D side-scrolling MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) developed by Barunson Interactive.
Dragonica - RaceDragonica - DrakansDragonica - Humans
At the beginning of the game, players are asked to choose between one of the two races, Human or Drakan. Depending on which race you chose, the jobs you have access to will be different. Humans have four jobs to choose from, Warrior, Magician, Archer and Thief. Drakans on the other hand have fewer options, only Summoner and Twin Fighter. What's more, the Drakan jobs are gender-locked with Summoners being male and Twin Fighters being female.
Dragonica - Ranger Skill TreeDragonica - Twin Fighter Skill Tree
Like most other MMORPGs, you will have to accumulate levels in order to advance into deeper specialties with more abilities and skills. And interestingly, each job is vastly different and have their own unique skill tree in which players place acquired skill points into to gain new skills or enhance already acquired ones.

With different jobs having a different skill set, the combat style of each job is totally different and is guaranteed to give players a unique experience.

Dragonica Although there is a character stats window, there are no stat points for you to allocate to your character when you level up. All these stat points are hidden and distributed automatically for you.

Without having to worry about stat points allocation, you can focus all your attention on which skills to learn.
Although the game is said to be 3D, the scope of movement is mainly focused on the horizontal axis.

Depending on which map you are in, the vertical and depth movement may be limited. In general, the larger the map, the more freedom of movement you have in the three axes.
Dragonica - Port of Winds
For instance, town maps are generally larger and allows for more movement in the three axes while monster maps might be smaller and thus are more restricted.
Dragonica - Combat
Combat in Dragonica is much like arcade styled side-scrollers. Moves are performed in real-time but with focus on the use of skills. Naturally, these skills have cooldowns, but with the right skill sets, players can perform ground and aerial combos which will render enemies incapable of retaliating.

While hunting in the regular maps, players can gain treasure boxes when they successfully accumulate certain number of monster kills. These treasure boxes will randomly give items like Gada Coins, Weapon Enhancement Powders, Armor Enhancement Powders or even weapons and equipments.

Apart from regular monster grinding, there is also a large number of quests and mission dungeons for a player to complete co-operatively with others.

The entrances to these dungeons are littered randomly around the world of Dragonica. And for easy recognition, they are marked as a huge padlock on the mini map.
Dragonica - Dungeon EntranceDragonica - Boss Monster
Each of these dungeons is guarded by a "boss" monster. Upon killing it, you will be rewarded with bonus experience and random items.

Depending on the rank you received, the amount of bonus experience and number of items you get will differ. The rank is of course calculated from various factors like, your level, the monsters' levels, the dungeon difficulty and how much you contributed to killing the monsters in the dungeon.

Sometimes, if your lucky enough, you may even get set items from these dungeon runs.

As you equip more of these items from the same set, your character will gain additional stat bonuses like extra agility or accuracy.
Dragonica - Set Items
And while we're talking about items, you ought to know that there are various things you can do to your equipment, in Dragonica, to enhance their capabilities.
Dragonica - Enchant Items
Firstly, you can enchant (upgrade) your equipment. The upgrading is done using weapon or armor enhancement powders (depending upon the equipment your upgrading). Upgraded weapons will increase in ATK (Attack) and MATK (Magic Attack) while upgraded armors will increase in DEF (Defense) and MDEF (Magic Defense).

And for weapons, upgrading it to +4 and beyond will give it a glow (+4: Yellow, +8: Azure, +12: Light Red). However, do note that increasing upgrades will increase the risks of the item breaking or being downgraded back to 0.
Dragonica - Dismantle Item
Next, you can soul-craft your equipment. To soul-craft your equipment, you will need souls. These souls are obtained from dismantling items which contains soulforce. When you soul-craft your equipment, they will give you bonus stat points (VIT, INT, STR, or AGI).

Finally, you can socket your equipment with cards made from crafting. Not much is known about this at the moment because I have yet to lay my hands on such a card. Apparently, the crafting process is pretty complicated, requiring crafted items from different crafting categories.

To add to this difficulty, our character is strongly discouraged from learning multiple crafting skills. Additional crafting skills are increasingly expensive and time consuming to learn and level. Yet, to actually produce a sellable end-product would require us to learn AT LEAST three crafting skills (One gathering skill, one refining skill and one production skill).

Generally, the crafting process starts from the gathering of raw resources to the refining of them and finally using the refined resources to craft actual products. However, these crafted products aren't weapons or armors which you can use. They are simply items which you can apply on your existing equipment to improve, modify or shift their enhancements.
Dragonica - Learn Craft Skills
To learn these crafting skills, find the Production Maestro, Midas in the Port of Winds. You will need to buy the necessary crafting tools from him too.
Dragonica - Windy FarmDragonica - Gathering Resource
Next, equip the gathering tool you have bought and enter the portal named "Port of Winds [Windy Farm]" right behind his back. You will need to position yourself at the correct location to start the gathering process. (Press "H" and right click on the gathering skill icon.)
Dragonica - My Home
Once you have gathered enough raw resources, you will need to go to your "MyHome" to access the crafting machine which refines your raw resources. The cost of getting your own home is 20 gold plus a weekly rental fee of 5% the cost. And with the costs of buying the crafting machines, you will need quite a sizable amount of money in order to start crafting.
Dragonica - Item Production
Finally, with the refined resources in hand, you will need to get back to Midas to start the production process. (And frankly speaking, taking all this trouble just to get these end-products, they had BETTER be worth the time and money spent.)

For hardcore gamers, all these features would probably sound very interesting. However, for casual gamers, we're probably better off ignoring this whole crafting thingy. You can probably live without them.
Dragonica - World MapDragonica - El Grego ContinentDragonica - Coast Area
For the most of it, Dragonica tends more towards the adventuring aspect rather than PVP. The world of Dragonica features two huge continents, El Grego and Fearas. The two continents are further divided into different sections and within these sections are smaller areas and towns that are interlinked. With these many places to go to, you can be sure that the explorer in you is satisfied.
Dragonica - PVP RoomsDragonica - Emporia Wars
However, I doubt I can say much for the blood-thirsty peeps out there. There is some PVP content in Dragonica, but it isn't grand in any way.

The first type of PVP is where the player can enter a room to battle other players. This is done via clicking on the "PVP" button at the lower right hand corner of the screen. Upon entering the PVP lobby, you can decide which rooms to enter or create your own (Each room can hold a maximum of 10 players). Basically, its just single or group battles with conditions of either death match or last man standing.

The second type of PVP is called Emporia Wars. In this type of PVP, guilds are pitted against guilds in a single elimination tournament fight. Winners of the tournament will gain the right to hold a castle for one week. (The perks of holding a castle is as shown in the second picture.)

All-in-all, if you like controlling cute avatars and have the heart of an explorer, by all means give Dragonica a try. If however, there is a blood-thirsty killer lurking inside you, I would suggest that you look elsewhere. Dragonica might not be the game for you.


Thursday, November 17, 2011

Galaxy Online II: Damage Charts



Ship Type
Ship TypeDefending
FrigateCruiserBattleship
A
t
t
a
c
k
i
n
g
Frigate-5%+5%
Cruiser+5%-5%
Battleship-5%+5%
Example:
Frigates attacking on Cruisers will deal 5% less damage than normal while attacking on Battleships will deal 5% more damage than normal.
Frigates defending from Cruiser attacks will suffer 5% more damage than normal, but will suffer 5% less damage when defending from Battleship attacks.

Damage Type
Damage TypeHull Type
ChromeNanoNeutralizingRegenLight
Explosive+50%-50%-25%-90%
Heat-50%-25%+50%-90%
Kinetic-25%+50%-50%-90%
Magnetic+50%-50%-25%-90%
Example:
Explosive type damage will deal 50% more on ships with chrome hull, 50% less on ships with nano hull, 25% less on ships with neutralizing hull and normal damage on ships with regen hull.
All damages regardless of damage type will deal 90% less on ships with light hull.

Commander
Proficiency LevelWeaponShip
Damage TakenDamage Dealt
D-30%+10%-10%
C-10%+5%-5%
B
A+10%-5%+5%
S+30%-10%+10%
Example:
A commander with Ballistic Proficiency Level "S" will deal 30% more damage using ballistic weapons.
A commander with Cruiser Proficiency Level "S" will take 10% less damage and deal 10% more damage when commanding Cruisers.

Fleet Formation
PositionDefending
Front RowMiddle RowBack Row
A
t
t
a
c
k
i
n
g
Front Row-10%-25%
Middle Row-10%-20%-35%
Back Row-25%-35%-50%
Example:
Ships firing from the front row will maintain 100% of their damage output, but will not have any defensive bonus.
Ships firing from the middle row will deal only 90% of their damage output, but will have a 10% defensive bonus.
Ships firing from the back row will deal only 75% of their damage output, but will have a 25% defensive bonus.

Attacked from the
FrontSidesRear
Front
Ships will not suffer any
penalty when attacked
from the front.
Side
Ships will suffer 20% more
damage when attacked
from the sides.
Rear
Ships will suffer 10% more damage
and a 50% decrease in stability
when attacked from the rear.
Note:
Depending on where your attacked from, your front, middle and back rows will change accordingly. So ships placed in the front row might not always be in front!


Monday, November 14, 2011

Galaxy Online II: Instance & Blueprint Drops




InstanceNameRewardBlueprint Drop from Treasure Box
1Ancestral RecallTreasure Box 01Air Wanderer BPAir Wanderer
Bombardier BPBombardier
Nettle BPNettle
2DeadzoneTreasure Box 02Atomic Framework BPAtomic Framework
Gravity Maintenance Facility BPGravity Maintenance Facility
Particle Stun Shield BPParticle Stun Shield
3BraveryTreasure Box 03Tempest Rapid Fire BP"Tempest" Rapid Fire
Pulse Laser Transmitter BPPulse Laser Transmitter
Rocket Booster BPRocket Booster
Hunter Streamliner BP"Hunter" Streamliner
Molotov Cocktail BPMolotov Cocktail
4AmbushTreasure Box 04Valkyrie BPValkyrie
Duke BPDuke
Diaz BPDiaz
5Defending YourselfTreasure Box 05Orbital Shield BPOrbital Shield
Heat Diffusion Shield BPHeat Diffusion Shield
Missile Interception System BPMissile Interception System
6To VictoryTreasure Box 06Wiseman Scatterbomb BP"Wiseman" Scatterbomb
Guided Laser Bomb BPGuided Laser Bomb
Razor Missile Pod BP"Razor" Missile Pod
Ladybug BPLadybug
Heavy Duty BPHeavy Duty
7AnnihilationTreasure Box 07GoGetter BPGoGetter
The Shuttler BPThe Shuttler
RV766-The Explorer BPRV766-The Explorer