I think it would be a good idea to allow NPC hunters to define their preference for NPC rewards.
The definition of the preference has NO effect on the odds of different rewards being made available, but the NPC hunter should be able to nominate his preference.
The player that deals the most damage has 'first pick' from his preference list, then the second player etc...
At any time during combat, the player can moniate his first, second third choie of artifact, and if that artifact is available, he gets it.

This will encourage/motivate players to do more than minimum damage to NPC to improve their odds of getting the artifact they want.

So all 12 people will get Rescued Stryll Prisoners from every Graxis alerted? While it's theoretically possible now, everyone on every one... Sorry but no chance of this suggestion ever making it.

no he means that the drops will be what they will be but top damager gets to pick, then second highest and so on.

still will never happen though.
all command nexus' will get alerted with 49% left.

Your idea works against what most legions do.
Now that I'm rank 600, I occasionally tap on hyperports from time to time, (okay, on the 1 I've seen so far) just to fill up the slots. Most legions try to fill up the slots so that way the most people can get the rewards.

Can't have it both ways. If they are going to be what they will be, that's called random (as it is now). It's not as if there are only x number of y drop on z NPC. Each person gets their own roll on the possible rewards, so letting the top damager pick, it has no bearing on what number 2 will get, etc etc. If the people actually get to pick their reward (and thus removing the RNG) then everyone will be picking Stryll Prisoners and Smugglers' Caches. At least once they have the ship mods from the first couple they hit...

what hes saying is if a prison has 12 people on then 12 items are rolled for in a joint pool of artifacts not individually. so say 3 prisoners are rolled and nine trackers if the top 3 people have said that they wanted prisoners they would get the prisoners and the other 9 would get the trackers. but hypothetically if say the 2nd and 3rd place person had said they wanted the trackers then the prisoners would got to the 4th and 5th place damagers. in essence hes suggesting what most people suggest about base disables that if they do the most damage that they get to choose there reward. the difference is hes suggesting there is still a row but the roll goes into a pool from where the reward is then chosen.

all in all id say good idea probably wont be used as it really just makes powerful ships more powerful.

For many elites/Bosses, there are ship artifacts / planet artifacts... There are always limits to how many ship artifacts can be installed, so a keen NPC hunter may want to focus on those rewards first, then go for the planet artifacts... For example right now, with the Zebeeren, Scruuge Despot, I have found 12 of them, and have only managed to pick up one cannon, and 11 Hovertanks.. very frustrating (for me..as I am after the Cannons.. note that finding 12 cannons would be equally frustrating for the player that is looking at Artifacts producing .. artifacts !).. For my efforts, I would have liked to be able to get 2x cannons, and then only hovertanks.. Once I have the 2 cannons, I would have my first choice be a hovertank, effectively letting others (who do less damage) get the Cannons... Getting 5 cannons would be a waste as the extra 3 would need to be scrapped for CTP...

To confirm what is said above, this would not change the drop (which is always radom generated.. always), but it's to let the player who did the most damage pick first, etc...

AGAIN... Can you not see how this would be abused? The only FAIR way to distribute NPC rewards is by straight RNG. Adding in "if this" and "if that" not only will create an abusible situation, but also create a large amount of work on Dan's part to recode. Is it frustrating to get Hovertanks instead of your second Zeb Cannon? Yep. It's also frustrating getting Vesicles all the time when the other two guys get Energy Sacs.

As a wise philosopher (Jean-Paul Sartre maybe) said... You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have: The Facts of Life.

You mean with every Nexus I kill I could get a chach? So I could get roughly 800K arti's every time. Wow thats crazy I could get like 6 of these a day if I wanted easy. And that is just from the NPC's I alert. So what is that like 4.8M arti's a day. Then the dozens that would be alerted most likely so I could get around a months worth of arti's a day if I really really wanted to just like others here. That wouldn't be OP at all right. I mean whats an extra 1200 or so rank points a day. Just around 2400 extra attack or energy. What is that any more right? I mean you got people with over 100K attack all ready so who cares if they can double that every month right. Or more. Just saying.

No, I do NOT mean that you will get a Cache for every Nexus... from the Wiki, the Cache is a 10% drop, so it will only be available in the loot 10% of the time.. It's not because you say that is what you want that you will necessarily get it. If it drops, and you are the one doing the most damage, then yes you would get the reward.
And to get your choice you would need to do the most damage.. so if you want to really make sure you get a cache (if it drops) you'd need to do most of the damage (and your legion mates will be thinking the same thing by the way..) with no guarantees a cache will drop.

We have 4 Nexus disables in our recent log, and I counted 2 caches only...

If this is still too generous, then make the player spend 1 GP to enter his preference (it's free to accept the random allocation).

The idea here is really to give a player opportunities to improve his odds to get what he wants.
It's also to motivate players in participating in elite fights.

look at it from a reality point of view.. how frigging long am i supposed to wait for my rewards if player X, doesnt come on for WEEKS! until they can pick what they want.... or opt for a better reward..

10% means that on average there will be one per nexus. And doing 50% isnt really that hard.
if you want to improve your chances kill more npcs.
Sounds like your legionmates aren't pulling their weight.

Ya ok so I won't get them from my legion mates Nexus's but I will still get them from my own. Since I will do the max amount of damage off them. I can do 51% of the damage on every Nexus I found no probs. That isn't very hard at all.

If the purpose of this suggestion is to increase participation on elites, I can see it backfiring horribly - not many people will want to help out once the top player has done enough damage so that no one else will have a high chance to get a good reward.

First off, having a greatly increased chance of getting more caches and prisoners would be overpowered. Secondly, this would compel players to do as much damage as quickly as possible the moment the red box pops up, making the npc's killed much sooner with not all slots filled.

-1

This feature would not encourage early disables of Elites (ie before all slots are filled) as you suggest. It would simply encourage players do to more than their minimum lock damage in order to allow them to be the first to pick from the rewards available.

You don;t have to wait more or less than what you wait for now. As soon as the damage is done, or at any time during combat, you can set your preference from the theoretical drops, and then when the elites is disabled a very simple algorithmn (which shouldn't challenge even the most novice of developers) would allocate the random drops to the appropriate players by order of damage according to their preference list.

This would encourage players to participate in NPC combat, and yes ... it does seem that my legion mates are not pulling their weight in NPC combat .. hint hint nudge nudge..., and encourage them to do more than their 10% on 10-slot elites... I do admit I get frustrated when I am regularly doing 20%-50% damage on elites, and not getting "first pick" of the available drops...

I don't think you get it.
the good bosses would be alerted with 49% left.
Low ranks would NEVER get the good drops as bigger ships would out gun them.
And you honestly don't think that when a nexus gets alerted half dead and everyone is falling over each other to get the second spot that it won't often be dead before ten hit it?

dont know what rank you are, but i bet your not soloing hyperports. so dont complain too loudly.
they only take ~9K energy 20-50 cages and a few nanos

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