toblix

Elite: Dangerous (Kickstarter)

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Found a joystick scheme that seems to work. Alt-tab works now.

 

I am soft locking repeatedly when entering jumps, and when trying to launch from stations. When I get back in, sometimes I'm in the station mesh, sometimes I haven't accepted missions, sometimes time has jumped forward so instead of being able to easily complete missions I'm fined and have stolen cargo I can't get rid of. It's really not fun at all. The problem is I can see how fun it COULD be. The simple act of navigating the menus and systems to go from one station to another is awesome. I haven't even upgraded a ship or done anything but haul shit on a mission (mostly because I've lost more money than I made because of fines due to crashes!)

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Found a joystick scheme that seems to work. Alt-tab works now.

 

I am soft locking repeatedly when entering jumps, and when trying to launch from stations. When I get back in, sometimes I'm in the station mesh, sometimes I haven't accepted missions, sometimes time has jumped forward so instead of being able to easily complete missions I'm fined and have stolen cargo I can't get rid of. It's really not fun at all. The problem is I can see how fun it COULD be. The simple act of navigating the menus and systems to go from one station to another is awesome. I haven't even upgraded a ship or done anything but haul shit on a mission (mostly because I've lost more money than I made because of fines due to crashes!)

 

Hey man, sorry to hear about all your bugs... these seem pretty rare now, so  I would recommend ticketing them. I had one total crash this afternoon, generating a crash report, but that's the first real trouble I've had in ages. It might be to do with when you play though. Peak European hours are worst, but I live on the East cost of the US, and get quite a bit of time in after hours. Have you tried Solo mode? that often helps.

 

There is a ginormous thread about connection issues and possible solutions, dating back to the alpha, but the last post was in the past week or so. Maybe you'll find some helpful info there:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11361

 

 

One important thing to remember is that the game is played in REAL TIME... GMT (aka universal time, or zulu) plus about 1300 years. This means that if you log out when on a mission, and log back in later, it may have timed out.  Also, some missions right now have impossibly short time limits.

 

Some stations have black markets available in your contacts menu; I think the idea is that we will be able to establish links by gaining the trust of certain NPCs. They will buy stolen goods, but at a marked down price. Also, some bulletin board missions involve getting stolen cargo, so you might luck out there. 

 

If you're really bogged down by fines, you can clear your save in the options menu (I think, it used to be in the start game menu). This will start you with the basic ship and 1000 credits, but no debts.

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Hey man, sorry to hear about all your bugs... these seem pretty rare now, so  I would recommend ticketing them. I had one total crash this afternoon, generating a crash report, but that's the first real trouble I've had in ages. It might be to do with when you play though. Peak European hours are worst, but I live on the East cost of the US, and get quite a bit of time in after hours. Have you tried Solo mode? that often helps.

 

One important thing to remember is that the game is played in REAL TIME... GMT (aka universal time, or zulu) plus about 1300 years. This means that if you log out when on a mission, and log back in later, it may have timed out.  Also, some missions right now have impossibly short time limits.

 

Some stations have black markets available in your contacts menu; I think the idea is that we will be able to establish links by gaining the trust of certain NPCs. They will buy stolen goods, but at a marked down price. Also, some bulletin board missions involve getting stolen cargo, so you might luck out there. 

 

If you're really bogged down by fines, you can clear your save in the options menu (I think, it used to be in the start game menu). This will start you with the basic ship and 1000 credits, but no debts.

 

Yep, I actually really enjoy that it takes place realtime. That doesn't explain how I'll accept a mission with 30+ minutes, attempt to launch or hype and the game crashes, and then lose the mission and be credited with stolen cargo within 10 minutes after I'm back in the game. I accepted a mission with 25 minutes, crashed, logged back in, and there was 1 minute left on the mission. It expired as I was getting landing clearance. Even if I'm under exaggerating my time to return to game, it's not 20 minutes per crash.

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Transport missions getting cancelled happens to me constantly, to the extent that I've stopped accepting them.

 

Also, what's with the insane cost of ammo? Fuel is almost free. I just bought a pair of multi-cannons and took a few bounties, but I still ended up losing like 500 credits.

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Transport missions getting cancelled happens to me constantly, to the extent that I've stopped accepting them.

 

Also, what's with the insane cost of ammo? Fuel is almost free. I just bought a pair of multi-cannons and took a few bounties, but I still ended up losing like 500 credits.

There was a widespread probelem in 3.02 with missions getting cancelled, but patch 3.03 fixed that for a lot of people (including me). If you're still having problems, you should send a ticket. It would be good if you could sign up and say so in this thread too:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=53856

 

Using ammo for bounties can be unprofitable, especially to start with when you can only kill fairly low level bounties, and the time to kill is long.  In the early stages, lasers are probably your best bet. Later on, the guns get bigger, and/or  more powerful, and the bounties get huge :). I've seen bulletin board bounties of >140,000 credits!

 

In any case, lasers are better for taking down shields than projectiles, while projectiles destroy the hull better. So I personally think it's best to have at least one laser, unless you are going for stealth.

 

While everyone can have a go at bounty hunting (as with any career path), you really need to specialise to make the most out of it. You would need a kill warrant scanner to find out bounties in other systems, a FSD cloud analyser to track them through hyperspace, a frameshift interdiction module to pull them into real space, and top-of-the-range weapons for a quick kill. Heavily upgraded thrusters, power plant, and frameshift drive are very useful, but armour is generally discarded in order to have a larger  jump range. Here is how Frontier envision bounty hunting:

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=6417

 

A bounty hunting build is different to a general combat build, which would be more defensive, and I am LOVING this ability to have multiple ships and outfit them in very different ways to do various jobs.

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New patch released :). I think it focuses on multiplayer, but could very well improve things for badfinger and bakelite

 

Also, release date will be announced tomorrow!

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I'm looking forward to that. I'm still tempted to pay to get in on the beta, but part of me just wants to see the final product and not how the sausage is made.

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I'm looking forward to that. I'm still tempted to pay to get in on the beta, but part of me just wants to see the final product and not how the sausage is made.

Hi Dewar, what we know so far is that beta access will no longer be sold after November 22nd. In the earlier stages, the gap between selling one level of access and starting another one was longer  because the price difference was much higher ($150 difference between alpha and beta). Now there's $25 difference between the beta and preorder. While the gap between alpha being removed and premium beta started was about a month or so, I wouldn't be surprised if the if the gap this time is only a few days (taking us up to maybe November 30 / December 1).

 

 

What comes next is the "gamma" stage that anyone is free to anyone who pre-orders. It is hoped that no more wipes will be necessary after the transition from beta to gamma, making it essentially early access to the full game, which will be updated with content as time goes on.

 

Having seen the sausage made, and having had a fairly sizable say on what goes into the sausage (as a backer who pledged to the design discussion forum and as a consulting astrophysicist), I am extremely glad of my experience, but also kinda jealous of people who get to experience it with fresh eyes.

 

In any case, you won't have long to wait now :D. If you are going to definitely get it, then pre-ordering would probably be best, as you get an extra ship, shiny decals, and $10 off.

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I did back the project, but just at the base give-me-the-game 20 pound level. Beta access would cost me an additional 30 pounds on top of that.

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Oh right, in that case you're getting the preorder stuff anyway :).  I would say that anyone who hasn't abought beta by now should probably wait for a couple more weeks, since they clearly have more self control than the rest of us :P!

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So, I realize this is a bit late of me to ask considering I now already own the game...

 

What can you do in this game? I feel like I decided to learn the game by doing transport hauling to just get the mechanics down and earn some bucks, but there's plenty more that it could offer me. You can haul cargo via missions, you can be a space trader either by ferrying things between supply and demand at your own risk or piracy, you can go shoot npc spaceships... and? How do I make money? Is there more? I am asking more for cohesion than other things to do. Just the act of trying to fly between star systems is a tremendous amount of things to do.

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So, I realize this is a bit late of me to ask considering I now already own the game...

 

What can you do in this game? I feel like I decided to learn the game by doing transport hauling to just get the mechanics down and earn some bucks, but there's plenty more that it could offer me. You can haul cargo via missions, you can be a space trader either by ferrying things between supply and demand at your own risk or piracy, you can go shoot npc spaceships... and? How do I make money? Is there more? I am asking more for cohesion than other things to do. Just the act of trying to fly between star systems is a tremendous amount of things to do.

Wow that's a big question, but I'll have a go at answering!

 

As well as just bimbling around space for the fun of it, the idea is to have adventures in an ever evolving galaxy, where events that hang in the balance will be decided by player behaviour. As players explore and find new habitable systems, the frontier of occupied space will slowly expand, with colonisation of new worlds bringing many opportunities.

 

For a lot of people, the over-arching goal will be to join the Elite Federation of Pilots. The main ways to progress your character are through gaining money, reputation and power, which is expressed as a ranking between Harmless and Elite. Traditionally, this power rating only came from the number of people you killed, but now takes into account influence, accesss to information, or trading prowess. The Elite pilots are heavily in demand, so they established the Elite Federation of Pilots to recognise people that they think will be good enough to join the ranks in time... people who reach the rank of dangerous may have the opportunity to join the EFP at the Elite: Dangerous level , with some going on to be Elite: Deadly, or even pure Elite. But anyone at the Elite: Dangerous level will get  preferential treatment across the galaxy, as well as access to special missions and other opportunities. While many players can expected to become Elite: Dangerous, only a few percent are likely to become Elite.

 

It is expected that it will take months or even years to get into the EFP, but since there are no subscriptions, we can relax and take as long as we like. FD are trying to balance activities like trading, bounty hunting, piracy, exploration and mining so that each choice is equally valid. Some ships will be able to do several jobs at once pretty well, but other ships are very specialised, and the modular approach to outfitting equipment means that we can tailor our ships to do whatever we want. We will probably accrue a number of different ships for a range of purposes... we can only pilot one at a time, so others have to be put in storage (or sold of course). As well as having different ships for different jobs, it will be beneficial to fly an Imperial ship in Imperial space, and a Federal ship in Federal space, for instance

 

There are three big factions, the Federation, Empire, and Alliance, that each control large areas of space with multiple star systems; however, each individual system may have several small factions such as political activists, criminal gangs and corporations. We can work for whoever we like, and gaining reputation with a faction will allow access to cheaper goods and better missions with that faction. Gaining major reputation with the bigger factions will give access to some of the larger ships and equipment; for example the Federal Dropship and Imperial Clipper in Beta 3 restricted to people with good reputation. We also found out recently that the Sol system will be restricted to people with good Federation rep. But of course, good faction rep with one group might make you enemy number one for other groups, and they may attack on sight. 

 

One thing that is in the design documents but not in place yet is the concept of persistent NPCs. This allows you to build up trust and contacts with individuals as well as organizations. These individuals could offer various services (such as access to the black market) that you wouldn't have otherwise. It looks like any NPC has the chance to be promoted to persistent NPC status if you affect them sufficiently.

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I had no idea about literally any of that.

 

Though it doesn't really tell me, on a session to session basis, the things I can actually do.

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I had no idea about literally any of that.

 

Though it doesn't really tell me, on a session to session basis, the things I can actually do.

Oooh, you asked for cohesion rather than things to do :P!

 

On a session to session basis you can:

- trade goods from station to station. Buy low, sell high, pay attention to the economy type: extraction gives raw materials to sell to refinery systems, that can give metals and superconductors to high tech or industrial systems. Agricultural systems grow the food needed by everyone, and need crop harvesters and other technologies from high tech and industrial planets. The market is dynamic, so profit margins are often small for well-travelled systems.

 

- menace other traders into giving you their stuff (piracy); you can either find them at navigation  points or unidentified signal sources, or use an interdiction module to yank them out of supercruise.  There are cargo scanners that will tell you what a ship is carrying. Then you can use harsh words, or special equipment to blow their cargo hatch so that their goodies spill out. Getting them to drop cargo is better than destroying the ship because you get less bounty, and some stuff would be destroyed in the explosion

 

- bounty hunt criminals; similar to piracy, you can look for wanted ships in nav points or pull them out at random, then blast them. However, there are bulletin board missions sometimes for special targets with large bounties. Bounty hunting can take place across several star systems, especially if you want to avoid a bounty yourself; if the target makes a jump, then you can get equipment to analyze the jump cloud, and if you can make the jump, you can follow them. A kill warrant scanner will tell you of any bounties in other systems. Upon killing a wanted criminal, you will get a voucher which must be redeemed at a station of the appropriate faction; this is lost if your ship is destroyed.

 

- Courier; people have stuff for you to carry, and will pay you over the odds to do so. Some things take up no cargo space. This is the probably the best activity to start with as it offers pure profit with no outlay, although if you fail the mission you get fined the market value of the stuff you took. As you get more and more trusted, you can be offered very lucrative missions (e.g.  I got 150,000 credits for shipping 19 tons of gold)

 

- Personal shopper; sometimes people on the bulletin board will need some stuff that is not available on the markets, and will pay well over the odds. You have to go to a nearby system and return with the goods, and often have several hours to do so

 

- Thief on demand; some bulletin board advertisements ask for stuff as above, but the goods must be stolen

 

- Mercenary; either get missions to kill X number of craft of type Y and return, or go to a war zone and choose a faction to fight for. Choosing a faction will give you combat bonds for every enemy ship you destroy, that must be redeemed

 

- Explorer; fill out your galactic map for fun and profit. When you start the game, you have a map of all the stars, and will know about planets and space stations in some of them. Many systems have no info. You can either buy info, or map them yourself and sell the data to whoever you like. If systems are well known, then the rewards are small, but if you are the first person to discover a planet, particularly an Earth-like planet or metal rich one, then the rewards will be substantially larger. To explore a system, you need a discovery scanner, which pings every planet and star in a particular range when you fire it off. Then you can go to each body and do a surface scan; a detailed surface scanner will get you additional info and more money. Getting far away from civilization means that we'll need fuel scoops to allow refueling from stars or gas giants, and auto repair things to stop breakdowns.

 

- Miner; if you don't want to boil ships, you can blast rocks instead. There are plenty of rocks in the (rocky or metal rich but not icy) rings of planets, and orbiting some stars. These can give off chunks of minerals or metals if blasted with mining lasers (normal lasers are too powerful and just vaporise the stuff). You need an onboard refinery  to sort out good stuff from bad stuff. Well known systems will be mined out, so you need to go far afield to make real money mining.

 

- [not in yet] Passanger transporter. From stasis tubes to luxury transports, we will be able to ferry people around, take them on tours etc. If your passengers are awake, then they might give you missions mid flight

 

- whatever other players ask you to do: soon we will be able to make contracts with other players so that they can e.g. be escorts for trade runs in dangerous areas, or you can form a band of pirates and share booty, Mining co-operatives could have some players blasting, others refining, and others selling the goods to stations

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WOOHOO RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCED!

December 16th is the official release date for pc, just in time for the holidays!

 

Also, backers have raised 7.5 million pounds (about $12 million) so far, with over 140,000 people having stumped up for beta. Since the original budget was 8 million pounds (but is now somewhat larger), it may have almost paid for itself already!

 

Anyone who buys will get the Mac version for free when it comes out next year. Saves are in the cloud, meaning that you can use the same character on PC or Mac

 

EDIT: GAMMA RELEASE ON NOVEMBER 22

 

Alpha and beta backers will get a pre-release "preview build" that was previously called gamma. Originally the plan was for all backers who paid for the game to get gamma, but I don't know if that's true any more. Also,  FD were saying that they didn't plan to do any wipes after gamma unless it's emergency.

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What comes next is the "gamma" stage that anyone is free to anyone who pre-orders.

Are you sure about this? The website makes no mention of Gamma access for pre-ordering. Regardless, I think I'm going to bite. If I have a Core i5 4670K (@4.2GHz) with a GTX760, my rig should be able to handle this, yes?

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Are you sure about this? The website makes no mention of Gamma access for pre-ordering. Regardless, I think I'm going to bite. If I have a Core i5 4670K (@4.2GHz) with a GTX760, my rig should be able to handle this, yes?

 

Frontier previously had said that "gamma" would be available to anyone that preorders, but I don't think if that's still the case due to the wording of last week's newsletter. Given that the preview build (i.e. gamma) will be released on November 22, which is the last day for ordering beta access, I don't think new pre-orders will get the preview. I don't know if people who pledged to receive the game during the Kickstarter will get access to the preview. 

 

Frontier has also previously said that they don't intend to wipe progress from gamma to release unless some major problem arises. So some people might be tempted to get beta for the head start; however, it's only a few weeks in a game that we could be playing for years. The Mercenary Edition preorder is 5 GBP / $10 less than the retail price on release, and has extra goodies over the retail version, so that represents best bang for buck.

 

Your rig should run it very nicely, I spent most of my time playing it with an i7 and a GTX 660, and that ran nicely at 1080p with max settings (though nowadays the max settings are a bit more max). I have a 970 now, with an eye on possibly getting an Oculus Rift DK2, or maybe CV1.

 

By the way, Frontier put out a new video outlining future plans for the game... ever since the kickstarter, the plan has been to release the core gameplay first, then continually update afterwards

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NO MORE OFFLINE VERSION

 

So in the latest newsletter, the second to last one before the Premiere, FD casually implied that they had dropped offline mode. Some of the early backers are very upset about this. Many of the newcomers never realised that this was ever an option.

 

A single player offline mode was a feature of the Kickstarter campaign that some people were very attached to, and some said that they would play this mode exclusively. Earlier this year David Braben was saying that he embraced the idea of people pirating ED, because people who got a taste of the offline version might be tempted to buy an online account. However, as more and more features were built in, it was apparently impractical to have an offline mode because all transactions are now authenticated by the servers, amongst other things, so that an offline mode would essentially require coding  entirely different game that shared the same assets as the online mode. 

 

After all the time and money that I invested in the development in ED, I would be heartbroken if a deal-breaking change was made, so I really feel for those guys that are so upset right now, and I am somewhat disappointed in the removal of this feature, but I don't think it will spoil my enjoyment of the game. However, I do think that FD could have handled this announcement a LOT better... I would have explicitly apologized for removing the feature, and explained why it was necessary. I don't think it was a deliberately dickish move, PR has never really been their strong suit.

 

If this game was developed using the traditional publishing route, I am sure that this would have been less of an issue, because we would have been presented with how the game is rather than how they were planning it, and anyone who was upset with the change could simply cancel their pre-order. Some people are asking for refunds, and this should be possible for people who haven't played yet, but I imagine that anyone who has played the game, or accessed the DDF, will not be refunded. 

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Hmm, that's disappointing. Why wouldn't I just go play EVE then?

ED and EVE deliver totally different experiences. I've not played EVE, but from what I gather, you issue orders to your ships; in ED, you fly your ship directly... while you can own many ships, the emphasis is very much on the in-cockpit gameplay for the ship you are in. Furthermore, while the economy in EVE is player driven, the ED economy is driven by the hundreds of billions of NPCs that inhabit the galaxy although the combined actions of players can cause significant changes in the galaxy. ED makes me feel like a  cross between Malcolm Reynolds and Han Solo, and with an Oculus Rift makes me feel like I'm actually in space. Oh, and in ED you can choose to play by yourself or in a private group if you wish, allowing you to control your exposure to the PvP enthusiasts that EVE is notorious for.

 

 I make choices about what games to play based on the features offered all the time... you pays your money and you makes your choice :). I think that paying up for a game where you don't know what you're getting is dangerous; I made an exception for ED because I was pretty sure I would like what I would get, and was more interested in saying thank you for the years of pleasure I had in the past. Once ED is released, people can make informed decisions about whether or not they want to buy it; I think a fair fraction of the backers were wowed by the graphics, but didn't know what they were letting themselves in for.

 

Cutting offline mode is a big deal, and pretty disappointing, but I wonder if the system requirements for offline mode would actually be more restrictive than the need for an online connection, given that background simulation likely tracks terabyes worth of data, and generates the skybox from the entire galactic map (400 billion stars) each time you jump to a new system.

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So, I'm starting to get quite frustrated with this game. Maybe I shouldn't be so reliant on the bulletin board, but the game is completely directionless without it. I've cleared my save and started over (not counting the times right after beta 3 when it was literally unplayable) 3 or 4 times due to not being able to deliver cargo. Systems it seems I should be able to reach comfortably I'm not able to go to, even when carrying no cargo at all. I am thousands of credits in the red over the time I've spent in the game so far for reasons I obviously know (fines for not delivering) but honestly can't understand. It's not an issue with the actual mechanics of the game. I have chosen to attempt to trade to make money to then ?(something?)?, but the game seems hell bent on denying me the opportunity.

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So, I'm starting to get quite frustrated with this game. Maybe I shouldn't be so reliant on the bulletin board, but the game is completely directionless without it. I've cleared my save and started over (not counting the times right after beta 3 when it was literally unplayable) 3 or 4 times due to not being able to deliver cargo. Systems it seems I should be able to reach comfortably I'm not able to go to, even when carrying no cargo at all. I am thousands of credits in the red over the time I've spent in the game so far for reasons I obviously know (fines for not delivering) but honestly can't understand. It's not an issue with the actual mechanics of the game. I have chosen to attempt to trade to make money to then ?(something?)?, but the game seems hell bent on denying me the opportunity.

That's very unlucky, because trading is depressed in the starting region, but is profitable well away from there. Similarly, mining is far more worthwhile off the beaten track, where rings labeled as major resources provide a ton of material for every 2-3 chunks scooped, rather than ~10 as it is for the depleted rings near the start zone, and metal rings can give you thousands of credits per ton. You could try your hand at combat, a lot of people got their start farming war zones.

 

The bulletin boards are only supposed to give you missions you can complete, separated into ones you can do right now, and ones that you could do with more cargo space,  so there's something *very* wrong if you still keep missing deliveries. *Please* ticket this problem if you haven't already, otherwise this problem might be overlooked. 

 

To be honest, I would recommend waiting for the next version. A new patch will be available on Thursday, Beta 3.9, while the "Preview" build is planned for release on Saturday (Nov 22)

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 Oh, and in ED you can choose to play by yourself or in a private group if you wish, allowing you to control your exposure to the PvP enthusiasts that EVE is notorious for.

 

Is this true? Because I was under the impression that interacting with other people was now non-optional. By referring to EVE, I was mainly talking about being at the mercy of those that have played for years longer (or in this case, bought more expensive Kickstarter packages.) Considering most of what I'm interested in is the trading, the piloting of the ship isn't as much the draw for me.

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32 pound reward is "Imperial Bounty Hunter: Have the option to start in an Imperial Colony with an Imperial Eagle Mk II Fighter with upgraded weapons and shields and 1,000 CR (randomised start system choice for multiplayer reasons)** plus all rewards above."

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