Anarchy Online
From Dual-Boxing Wiki
Multiboxing in Anarchy Online
Submitted/Written by Korruptor
I finally got off my lazy butt and added the info from my posts on this thread.
Multiboxing Anarchy Online
Why multi-box this game? I'm not even going to bother an attempt in answering that question since we have our own personal reasons. I love and will always love AO because I prefer Sci-Fi over Fantasy. There are other reasons to multibox this game, or at least give it a try. The original game is free and there is no limit (that I have seen) on the number of free accounts you can make. So if you're interested in trying the game for an unspecified duration to try before you buy into it you're more then welcome. There are other subscription options as well and those will be discussed later.
Anarchy Online is a very PvE heavy type of game and multiboxing works well for this end.
Player vs Player in AO has always been an more of an after thought and is more of a chaotic free-for-all then many other games. You can definitely use multiboxing in PvP and since there is a lack of fear mechanics currently in-game it would be harder disorient a group. There are serious imbalances between some classes and the imbalance changes depending on level ranges.
The biggest down side to Multiboxing in AO is the lack of macro commands and how they can be executed. For example /follow doesn't take a parameter so you have to have your /follow target already selected. There is a way around this as I will discuss later.
Originally I attempted multiboxing a group of engineers but this group lacks some balance and as with many games pet pathing can be weird and cause additional headaches. I will discuss the different classes and their multiboxing synergy later.
Hardware limitations:
• On the down side, AO (currently) is a game based on DX7 and wasn't coded to make much use of your video cards GPU. This means it taxes your CPU to hell and running multiple instances even minimized can easily cap your modern CPU to 100% and when overloaded, cause the game clients to crash.
• On the up side, the games memory requirements can be scaled way back.
• Got a sweet video card? Great, it won't help you until they roll out the new engine based on DX9c. I imagine then, if that day comes, multiboxing AO will become far more friendly.
Group limitations:
• AO allows six characters per group and with the new Raid interface you could link groups up to form a Raid but that is out of the context of this guide. • There is an exp block if there is too great of a level difference between the lowest and highest in the group the lowest level member will get no exp. This range broadens the higher level you get but the simple rule is if the lowest group member con's grey to the highest, he will get no exp.
Expansion Brief:
• Anarchy Online: The "free" original game limits you to using any and all gear not stamped for the "Shadow Lands", "Alien Invasion" or "Lost Eden". That, having been said, there are some items, gear, and nano's that have been introduced with expansions that ARE usable for use by characters with only the original game but these are few. A great website for information on gear usable by free accounts and a forum to post is: www.AOFroobs.com. The level cap is 200 under the original game. Limited to Rubi-Ka. Can participate in Alien Invasions but cannot gain axp (alien exp) or enter into the alien ships. Cannot participate in alien mothership missions as part of Lost Eden. Notum Wars booster is also included with this and introduces Org buffs. Depending on the land controlled by an Organization (guild) and the "Towers" planted on that land the Org members receive passive buffs to their stats prorated by the characters level.
• The Shadow Lands: This is the first and greatest of all the expansion packs. It doubles the content of the game and provides the best possible exp gains for your characters. It is often said that if you want to make money (credits) to grind out missions/mobs on Rubi-Ka, if you want exp, you go to the Shadow Lands. The equipment introduced with this expansion shames most all equipment from the original game. Most notable are the Symbiants that can be used in place of traditional implants. You can upgrade a free account to SL for $10 USD and the monthly fee is $5 USD. I highly recommend this option as it is cheap per month and the benefits are the best for exp and equipment. Level cap raised to 220. Existing accounts with other expansions (AI & LE) cannot utilize this option. Every 10th level (1-200) and every SL level (201-220) grants a specialization "Perk" point to be allocated an any of your available Perk trees. The current cool-down to un-spec a single Perk point in a specialization is two hours. These are kind of like talents used in WoW's talent trees. The cool-down time is server time not played time.
• Alien Invasion: Cities and the GMS! Now an Org can develop a city if they can locate and hold a compatible plot of land. In turn, the various types of buildings grant additional passive buffs to the org members on a level pro-rata basis. Org members can setup player run shops within the Org's shop building and the items can be queried thought the GMS terminals located around Rubi-Ka (Traders are able to query the GMS through a Trader only device without being at a GMS terminal). With Cities comes city raids. Cities can hold their own raids by lowering their cities "shields" allowing an alien attack on the city. The Aliens attacking are based off the level of the participants in the city during the course of the invasion. The motivation behind raiding are the drops off the General that you encounter during the ground assault phase and the Admiral you kill once you board the Alien drop-ship. Axp goes towards a separate leveling structure and each AI level gained grants an AI specialization point to be used only with AI Perks. Also there were added Alien Playfields (s10 etc). Having AI requires full sub costs of $15 a month.
• Lost Eden: Global and Personal research! While Global research has been completed for sometime now (until they add more things to research) Personal research is very much alive. Personal research grants passive bonuses to skills and stats as well as two lines of "Personal Research Actions" aka procs. These "Personal Research Actions" are unique to each class and have a variety of actions. The scope of these is outside this guide but here is a detailed link: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=473772. Additionally you can now enter Alien Mothership missions to help grind out your Axp instead of city invasions. Mech's and Turrets have been added to the PvP area. Mechs are best at killing turrets, turrets are best at killing PC's and PC's are best at killing Mechs. This is subjective though as anti-mech requires the use of a bazooka type of RPG. Players tend to ignore Mechs unless defending Turrets. In my opinion Turrets are great for non-twinked characters to assist in Tower Warfare (fights for land control). If you can get a player(naked or not) of the appropriate level into his turret (which the player is summoned into) before he gets shot or nuked you can easily kill the "Tower Twinks". The Orbital Battle Station provides a PvP battle ground for players of a certain level bracket. There are the new OFAB armor and weapons which are very good but hard to save your VP for. VP is granted for Battle Station PvP and looting certain alien drops in AI Mothership missions. Having LE requires full sub costs of $15 a month.
Ok, enough briefing on the expansions.
Grouping:
Grouping has the benefit of granting more total experience then when solo. The exp is divided more like each person gets around 2/3 of the full exp. Thats just a rough number but it holds pretty true. There is a generous bonus in having a full group as well. Combined with the speed of killing as a group and group exp is better then solo.
Classes:
Here is an overview of classes: http://aovault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guides.Detail&id=116. With links to the official/fan forums.
Multiboxing Software
I've had great success using Keyclone to send keyboard commands even with the clients windowed & minimized.
Game Client Setup:
Here is a trick to run the windowed client (for alts) as small as possible:
In your Anarchy Online folder find the folder called "Prefs" (for me it was D:\AnarchyOnline\Prefs).
Edit the Prefs.xml file with notepad
Find the two values: <Value name="DisplayHeight" value="1050" /> and <Value name="DisplayWidth" value="1680" />
and set them like so: <Value name="DisplayHeight" value="480" /> and <Value name="DisplayWidth" value="640" />
Those settings might not work for you and you might need to step up to 800x600 but 640x480 worked for me.
Also, if you haven't already configured this client to be in windowed mode change: <Value name="DisplayFullscreen" value="true" /> to <Value name="DisplayFullscreen" value="false" />
And set the depth from <Value name="DisplayBitsPerPixel" value="32" /> to <Value name="DisplayBitsPerPixel" value="16" />
When you are done saving your Prefs.xml set the file to read-only. If you don't set the Perfs.xml to read-only the game client will change the settings back to a higher default setting.
Since your viewable room will be so small it would be best to install a custom interface. I personally use "RaeSkin" as it is very clean and saves a lot of view space.
If you google Anarchy Online UI or something similar I'm sure you will find something you like. The custom interfaces have their own instructions and installing them is outside the scope of this thread.
Macros and you
AO has limitations in it's macroing for core functionality of following and assisting.
Combat: You can /assist <name> but your assist target needs to be in-combat for it to work. By in combat I mean actually fighting/shooting a target. If your target is not in combat you will get a message that your target is not in-combat.
Follow: The /follow parameter doesn't take a name parameter so you need to have your follow target already selected. The easiest way around this I found is to have your leader send all group invites at one time and then, after all invites have been sent, accept them on the alts. This puts the leader in the second slot on all the alt characters. This allows you to hit F2 for all the alts and they select the leader. At that point all you need to do is hit your key for your /follow.
Another thing I noticed is that if you've exceeded the maximum number of AO clients on a PC they will break follow quite often.
Making a macro
You can create a macro a couple ways. For ease of maintenance I prefer to use script files.
/macro <name> <command>
/macro Ast /assist Johndoe
or, a script file
/macro <name> /<filename>
In this case create a text file called "ast" (no extension required) and inside that text file add what ever macro commands you want. As an example will add the line /assist Korruptor. Now is you decide to change mains then you just need to edit the one flat file vs every in-game macro.
Now we create the in-game macro reference:
/macro Ast /ast
Note: You will have to create the scripts folder under your AO directory, such as D:\AnarchyOnline\Scripts\.
Here are multiple link to script generators and pet naming scripts:
http://anarchyonline.wikia.com/wiki/Scripts
http://www.unityoftherose.com/tools/
Advanced Macro's
- Acquire the heal target
Here is one great command that will target the person that is currently the target of the mob you're fighting:
/macro heal /assist <caller> \n /assist
Just target the mob and execute this script and there it is, you have the target needing healing. If you hit it again it switches to the target the player is fighting.
My experiement
For right now I will just focus on what the classes I am using for my experiment. I will add more class information over time.
• Nano Technician: A very simple class, they blow crap up. Nanos for the most part are cheap and they really only need one stat to do the most damage: Matter Creation. They have a wide range or AOE/Single Target nukes and Nano regeneration buffs/group auras damage absorb buffs. Cost is related mostly to nanos and implants. I chose the Nano-Mage breed of human for this class.
• Doctor: They have single-target initiative slows (ie. the best one being "Uncontrollable Body Tremors" aka UBT), the best individual/group heals and individual/group HP buffs. Don't worry about weapons with them and just focus on heals until endgame. They also get the fastest Complete Heal (10k HP) and eventually a group CH. Cost is related mostly to nanos and implants. I chose the Nano-Mage breed of human for this class.
• Enforcer: The greatest hate-tanks bar-none in AO. Soldiers get some single target hate gain abilities but Enfo's can walk into a crowd and pull the whole group onto themselves with the execution of one nano - the Mongo line. They get damage shields, multiple lines of short and long HP buffs that stack together and with Doc HP buffs. Weapons are good for this line but they won't be doing the massive damage for the group. Rather they will be soaking up the damage for the group, it's what they do best. I chose the Atrox breed of human for this class.
My current setup consists of the Enfo leading the group of three NT's and a doc trailing behind on follow. The Enfo positions himself in the middle of a group of green-to-orange con mobs and pops off his best Mongo nano. Shortly there-after the three NT's are chain AOE'n the mobs and the Doc is either firing single or group heals. The mobs tend to be dead before the Enfo has lost aggro. If aggro has been lost the Enfo can Mongo as needed.
NT's are best at AOE damage but they aren't the best at single target DD (one reason is, in AO, nukes don't crit) but they can hold their own.
Due to current hardware limitations I had to step down to five accounts for the time being. My secondary PC is running three clients (three NT's) and my main is running two (Doc and Enfo). For buffing, I load up a Meta Physicist on a fourth client on my secondary PC and buff the groups Nano skills saving constant implanting and allows faster exp grinds before reworking equipment.
I am utilizing four SL accounts (NT's and the MP) and two full accounts (Doc and Enfo). SL accounts provide the best bang for your buck.
