The more the better
SWG really makes you want to upgrade I guess.
There are a lot of tweaks in the SWG forums to optimize the results. Overall stability of the client and the server is very good now (after heaps of patches I might add).
Here my specs and what I can do with them:
- P4 2.6 GHz (I guess some older would also do)
- 768 MB DDR-333 Ram (512 MB is the lowest I would use for SWG)
- Radeon 9600 TX 128 MB graphics (perfect - 1280 resolution with all effects turned on)
- 5.1 surround sound over my (reference) Logitech sound system
- good cable/ADSL connection (there are 3 european servers right now, with very low pings, but even on the US servers its good. Rune and I play on the Ahazi US server, and no lags)
Make sure to defrag the HD and kill all background tasks (like resident scanners).
PS: met Rune last night and introduced him to basic SWG playing. Gave him a pet and a pistol, as well as some clothing and a few credits. He seems to be eager to "hunt 'em all down" - hehehehe, we have to work on that.
PS: here is the latest patch that runs on the SWG testserver now. Lots of (good) changes will be heading our way soon. Might be a bit fuzzy to read if you never witnessed SWG, but at least you can imagine the complexity of the SWG world....
****** PATCH DETAILS *******
Major Publish Features:
Imperial Crackdown: The Empire will be searching for members of the Rebel Alliance and anyone with contraband throughout the galaxy.
Bestine Redesign: Bestine has a few special modifications based on Star Wars history. Imperials will control it, Sand People will raid it and players can seek out historians for quests to learn more about the genuine history of Bestine.
Chef Profession Revamped: The entire chef profession has been redesigned from the ground up.
Vehicle Customization: New tool allows players to 'paint' their vehicles.
Theme Park Loot: Revised Theme Park rewards for Imperial, Rebel, and Jabba theme parks.
NPC Quest Loot: Tatooine and Dantooine quests, given by NPC's have all been given better loot as rewards.
New Visual Buff system: A new 'buff' system has been put in place to give players a powerful and flexible method for applying and 'debuffing' attribute and skill modifiers with an easy to use graphic interface.
Vehicle Customization Instructions:
Type /consent (name) - (name) can now customize your vehicle colors, assuming they have that ability, tools necessary, etc.
Type /unconsent (name) - (name) can no longer customize your vehicle colors.
Update Notes:
Bazaar / Vendor
Increase the max bid amount on an auction from 3000 to 6000.
Vendors will no longer show most vendor menu options before they are initialized. Using some of these options was causing some vendors to not initialize correctly. An initialized vendor will show all the normal control options.
Combat
Combat XP grants were removed from combat healing, poisons and diseases. Those actions will still count towards looting permissions.
DoT damage is now tracked for loot permissions.
XP rewards in combat now correctly reflect amount of damage that was done by dots.
DoT stacking has been changed so that each player attacking a target can only have one fire dot, one health bleed, one action bleed and one mind bleed.
Weapon DoT effects now only work if you are certified to use the weapon
Crafting
Added new shellfish harvesting tool to find mollusk and crustacean resources. Schematic for tool can only be obtained after completing a particular NPC granted mission.
Fixed a visual bug with transferring objects between containers that are not on your player (e.g. factory hoppers).
Fixed not being able to remove a schematic from a manufacturing station unless you have another schematic in your datapad.
When a manufactured item is pulled from a crate, the item will have the manufacturer labeled as its creator, not the person who removed the item from the crate.
Increased the amount of fish resources received from fishing.
Added a warning message if you access a manufacturing station and don't have a schematic that can be used in the station.
Increased the amount of eggs that can be found when searching a lair.
Some creatures can now be milked! (See the Chef profession notes below for more details).
GCW
DoT resist changes will make AT-STs more resistant to DoT damage. Dot resistances have been added giving the AT-ST extra protection against flamethrowers and other fire DoT based attacks.
Imperials are now more prevalent in Cantinas.
Fixed an out of range speed limit on the imperial detonator schematic.
Fixed an out-of-range range limit on the acid beam rifle schematic.
PvP Death Penalty reduction: PvP deaths will no longer suffer 1% decay if items are insured after the player's death.
PvP Death Penalty reduction: PvP deaths will no longer cause items to un-insure after the player's death.
Players are no longer able to shut down a faction HQ if they have declared only within the last 5 minutes.
Increased the maximum possible range for turrets to 80m.
Stormtroopers will now occasionally enter cantinas to harass rebel players
Only declared players may participate in GCW base shutdowns.
Graphic User Interface
Improved UI Examine Window - Fixed a bug where sometimes an object wouldn't render in the examine window.
A new UI is available to display certain attribute and skill modifiers currently applied to the characters. It is disabled by default but can be turned on in the Options screen, under the Interface tab. The UI also appears the very first time you receive one of these modifiers.
Added new buff icons.
Improved text fonts.
Made waypoint blips on Radar larger so player blips dont obscure the waypoint.
The inventory window now has an optional "examine" pane on the left side of the window, available by clicking the double arrow in the upper left corner of the window. The paperdoll has been moved to the right hand side.
Fix display issues with POI tab in the Datapad.
Fixed declared residence not appearing on the character sheet.
Added menu items to the house management terminal to delete all the items in a house that count towards the item limit, and to move items in your house to your feet in case they are inaccessible.
Spice buff duration and information is now displayed on the new buff bar.
Changed the examination text on weapon component damage to be more clear. It now reads "Maximum Damage" instead of just "Max".
Missions / Quests
Added some quest NPCs.
Borvo the Hutt quests updated.
New quests added to the Singing Mountain Clan and the Nightsisters stronghold on Dathomir.
Fixed a problem where some NPC's would not give positive Nym faction when killed.
On Lok, a server issue was fixed where invisible objects were being spawned. The accumulation of these invisible objects in a single area would prevent players from being able to load into the scene.
Some NPC Quest givers (not Theme Park NPC's) will now let a player know whether a particular quest is above or below their difficulty level
All of Tatooine?s and Dantooine?s static quests have been revamped. Bugs have been fixed, some conversations rewritten and they all have new rewards. This is part of a complete static quest revamp on all planets.
Pets
Fixed the Plodding Falumpaset & Motley Kaadu; both pets can now be called.
Player Cities
Player city clone facilities are no longer considered for "respawn closest". Only static NPC clone facilities are now considered "respawn closest". Players can still clone at a civic clone facility if they have stored their clone information there.
There is now an option on the city management terminal that allows you to revoke your citizenship at any time.
Citizens will now be removed from a city if they haven't been online for about 3 weeks.
Players will now get a popup when they are city warned, incase they miss the message behind other windows.
Fixed an issue with mayors getting 100 points of xp less than they should have on city updates.
You can no longer deploy a camp in a player city.
Player Structures
Restricted the number of characters in the name of a single permission list entry to 40.
Deeds place-able on a single planet that should be place-able on more than one planet now reflect the appropriate number of planets.
Repair cost and re-deed cost for structures now only takes into account the base maintenance cost. This means you won't have to pay your city property tax to repair or re-deed your structures anymore.
Added caps to access fee amounts and times.
Fixed the Corellian Style 2 (both floor plans) merchant sign placement issues.
Professions: Armorsmith
Added another optional layer slot to the RIS armor segment.
Professions: Bio Engineer
Fixed bio-component data being added to a prototype object after a critical fail.
Professions: Bounty Hunter
Bounty hunter marks will now be non-aggressive (Instead of running around town killing players)
Professions: Chef
Chef Profession Revamp: The Chef profession has been completely revised in this patch. Chef food items now have a more interesting and powerful set of effects and buffs and more flexibility in experimentation.
New Chef Assets: Several food items now have custom art. There are also two new Chef hats and one new Chef apron creatable by Tailors.
Player Stomach: The stomach meters for food and drink now decay over a period of one hour. Each food item takes up a % of stomach space that may be determined by examining the item.
Food Effects: Food effects are no longer limited to stat modifiers. Food created by Chefs can now enhance skills, give new protections and enhance combat abilities. There are even foods for medics, entertainers, and crafters. Examining a food item will display what it does. Food created before the patch will be unchanged. We encourage all players to seek out and try the new foods!
Food Experimentation: Chef experimentation on food has been reworked. Chefs now experiment on four unique attributes: filling, flavor, nutrition, and quantity. Filling affects the stomach usage of the food, flavor affects the duration of the food?s effect, nutrition affects the effectiveness of the food, and quantity affects how many of the food the crafting attempt will yield.
Bio-Engineered Food Additives: The set of Bio-Engineered food components have been revised. Bio-Engineers can now create 3 intensities of component for each of the 4 experimental attributes (12 total). A Chef can then use these components in his recipes through the additive slot. For example: a Bio-Engineer could make a ?light nutrition component? and sell it to a Chef who uses it to enhance the effectiveness of one of their recipes. The impact of Bio-Engineered food components has been greatly increased.
Milking: Players can now milk certain herbivores. A 'milk' option will show up on their radial menu. You must be scent masked or concealed to milk. You?ll have to figure out on your own what can be milked.Drink Containers: Drink recipes now require a separately crafted container. As a Chef increases in skill, they will earn the ability to create new types of containers. The larger the container, the greater the yield of drink created in a single crafting attempt.
Professions: Creature Handler
Trick2 will be granted at Empathy III as stated in the skills window, instead of being incorrectly granted at Empathy II.
Professions: Doctor
Fixed some problems with Doctor enhancements being found even though they had expired.
Added visual buff icons to Doctor enhancements and performance mind buffs.
Professions: Droid Engineer
Added general module slot to the advanced Binary Load lifter droid, and both basic and advanced protocol droids.
Droid storage compartments are now using droid experimentation rather than artisan.
Droid customization tool now gives droid crafting xp instead of general xp
Droid socket modules can no longer be plugged into one another.
Multi-crafting station module droid capability fixed for some cases where one type would over-ride another type.
Combat-related stats removed from examine windows for non-combat-capable droids
Item Storage Module 2's now really are that, instead of becoming data storage module 2's during the crafting process.
Added transition from combat to normal idle for Probe Droid.
Profession: Image Designer
Fixed occlusion issue on Human Hairstyle 4
Profession: Jedi
Jedi XP is now granted after combat only if a Lightsaber was used
Professions: Merchant
Since housing contents are now loaded on demand, vendors were giving less xp than usual. They now take into account how many updates were missed and will grant a normal amount of xp when they are loaded. Players will see improved normal merchant xp rates.
Theme Parks
Revised Theme Park rewards for Imperial, Rebel, and Jabba theme parks.
If you have previously completed the Rebel, Imperial, or Jabba's Palace Theme Parks and have not yet received a badge, players receive them when they log in for first time.
The Rebel, Imperial, and Jabba's Palace theme parks now have Record Keeper NPCs that will give players the option of starting the theme park over if they are currently in, or have completed a theme park.
Travel
Fixed a problem where using the ticket collector and not selecting a ticket from the UI listbox could cause the player to get a "you must select a ticket.." message on future travel attempts.
Fixed a problem where traveling between 2 cities on the same planet could be stopped if there is an active battlefield on the line between them.
Vehicles
Improved Vehicle performance.
New tool allows players to 'paint' their vehicles.
You can now have 3 vehicles stored in your datapad at a time.
Radial menu will now update properly after generating or storing vehicle.
Vehicle Customization Instructions:
Type /consent (player) - (player) can now customize your vehicle colors, assuming they have that ability, tools necessary, etc.
Type /unconsent (player) - (player) can no longer customize your vehicle colors.
