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Multi-Player Ship Operation Guide V 1.30
Formally known as the decimator operation guide!
1.15: Added some adv. strategy info, more to come!
1.20: Added some more information, wish list, bug list etc..
1.25: Added Advanced Pilot MPS Technique, Added 1 item to wish list
1.26: Added a paragraph comparison, yt-1300 vs. VT-49 Decimator (need Nova info yet)
1.27: Added comparison for Nova Cruiser, and thoughts info, Submitted by(hase2 &KyrYxus)
1.28: Fixed typo's, added wish list items, edited bug list items
1.30: Added a few things about elite components and included the y-8 mining ship and mining notes for pob's, also removed bug list since theres a far more up to date version! ENJOY!
Positions:
There's 5 types of positions, Pilot, Operations Officer, Engineer, Gunner, and medical officer.
Crew Minimum for combat operation: 3
1 Pilot/Operations Officer/Engineer
2 Gunner's
Crew Preferred for combat operation: 8
1 Pilot
2 Gunner's
1 Operation Officer
1 Medical Officer
3 Engineer's
The phrase "a well oiled-machine" comes to mind. With this group you cover all the bases of operations for this ship. However no matter how good you are, or well equipped, lets not forget that fighter escort!.
Weapon Specs(for all 3 ships):
2 Rotary Gunner Turrets. 1 for each gunner
3 Missile Ordnance. All controlled by pilot.(FIX: if you have the yt-1300, this only has 2 ordnances -Thnx to Kyr'Yxus )
Ship total mass is near 5,000,000 so load it up!
Multi-Person Ship comparison:
I've grinded up Master Privateer on my alternate character and picked out my yt-1300. I loaded it will all of the exact same components In my decimator and Have put it through full crew extensive testing. Below is a simple list's of pro's and con's in my opinion which may differ from person to person. The courier comparison was brought in by hase2!
Rebel YKL-37R Nova Courier
Pro's
- 3 Ordance slots instead of 2 for the YT-1300
- can go overt in any system. Opposed to the YT-1300
- very good visibility due the cross shaped layout.
- imp ships show red.
Con's
- difficult to navigate through the interior compared to the YT (several rooms, narrow corridors)
- less style while dogfighting as opposed to the YT
- hard to find 'matching' furniture
- HUGE target, much larger than both the YT and the Deci. The hit profile on the Nova is unbelievable.
Corellian YT-1300:
Pro's
- Better Gunner visibilty and angle of attacks
- Smaller Ship shape making it harder to hit
- Better looking interior even though its not shaped right(the gunner turret ladder is supposed tobe centered, its not even close)
- More fun to dogfight/fly in then the big hulking decimator
- Repairing panels are easier to navigate and find for the engineering crew
- 2 static chairs in the cockpit that anyone can use
Con's
- Only privateers can man the operations chair, no rebel or imperial pilots
- Only 2 ordnance launchers instead of 3
- All faction enemy ships will appear as yellow not red, unless in deep space making it harder to target
- You can't go overt in space in this craft no matter what. Not even for deep space ***(this seems to be tied directly to your crew, will test further but seems that if you have a privateer manning ops chair it won't let you overt status, whereas solo you can.)
Imperial VT-49 Decimator:
Pro's
- Gets the full 3 ordnance launchers instead of 2 like the yt-1300
- Both imperial and privateers can man the operations chair
- Can go overt in this vehicle in any system
- Rebel ships will show up as red to even privateer gunners. Allowing for easier targeting
Con's
- Bigger and fatter, looks a lot uglier when dogfighting with it.
- Harder interior to navigate to find and repair panels or conduits
- Because its bigger its easier to be hit.
- Gunners have less visibilty because of the long front(mainly bottom gunner)
- No other static furniture, crafted furniture doesnt "match" the interior well.
Y-8 Mining Ship:
Pro's
- Gets the largest cargo capacity for minerals
- Anyone can use this ship!
- Can go overt in this vehicle in any system(but strongly not recommended!)
- Can equip the most powerful mining lasers
Con's
- Bigger and fatter, looks a lot uglier when dogfighting with it.
- Harder interior to navigate to find and repair panels or conduits
- Because its bigger its easier to be hit.
- Gunners have extremely less visibility then any of the other 3 pob ships
- Not good in dog fighting, not good for fighting in general
Pilot: Fly level and straight as best as possible. The ship should be considered a heavy bomber with turret defenses. Pilot only needs to worry about flying even so the gunners can properly engage defensivly, and to drop the missiles where they need to go. Depending on your flight situation, whether your escorting a mission, engaging a series of fighter waves, or doing a destroy mission of a strong target you should vary your ordnance load. Against fighters and escorts i'd suggest loading up 3 mark 4 proton launchers, and use them as incoming waves enter the area to deal some basic initial damage that your gunners can finish off. This follows in escort missions as well. For destroying targets there are differences of opinion. I usually load up 2 space bomb launchers and 1 mark 4 for fighter defense. Some go 3 seismic launchers etc it can vary depending on your situation. Planning ahead is your best tactic.
Operations Officer: This guy is the one who runs the droid controls and the special abilities that comes with your pilot class. And is the only one to do so. Communication between the pilot and operations officer is critical for working together. The best thing for the decimator is to use eweapons and weapon overloads for the gunner, assuming your reacter can hold it. When going up against a destroy target focus on bomber strikes and the droid weapon overload.
Adv. Strategy: The best setup that I have seen with my decimator and will probably work with all three ships is to set up your droid interface at the lowest possible speed(lower the droid command speed the faster you can use them!), and use weapons overload three. NOT FOUR, four really really overpowers your turrets, makes them do huge damage. But will drain your capaciter to nothing in 2-3 shots. Weapon overload three, often increases your damage by a chunk without extra cost to your capaciter. This will give your gunners more power overall. I also do not suggest engine overload 4, i'd stick with 3. I so far haven't seen the advantage of tuning, or any evidence that it works. Only set this up if you have some spare reacter energy not in use(around 1k+ or more minmum). Otherwise it might disable some components(the most fun i had was doing an engine overload and having my droid interface disabled so i coudn't turn the overload off! ahhhh!). Also keep in mind that your standard pilot abilities half-stack. And what i mean by that is the advantages of your ability will hit, but any advantages from your droid command may override it. For ex. /eweapons will make my capaciter be stronger and add damage, but since my weapons are overloaded it only just makes my capaciter stronger. Having multiple operation officers has its advantages as well. One person can sit down and call a bomb strike or reload ability, then a 2nd can sit down and call theirs as well. Though i haven't tested with the actual abilites like emergancy shields or weapons twice, the double bombstrike is succesful. The ability timer is based to the player sitting in the chair.
Turret Gunners: Watch your capaciter and try to make sure to fire if you know you will hit o that you don't run out at a time you really need the energy. When you are being shot at, make sure to hit 'r' or whatever you binded to target what last shot at you and to shoot it down first. Two or three shots at it and the npc will pull off. In a pvp situation your job is to constantly spam the find nearest enemy player button which you may have to bind, and shoot at them just before they come into range and keep spamming it so they run into your fire before they get the chance to fire back.
Adv. Strategy: The best controls for a gunner to use is the mouse. Kick your mouse sensativity up to max for the quick turning and adjusting during fire fights. A mouse vs. a joystick just completly blew the joystick out of the ring.
Engineer: Runs around and repairs things, have lots of repair tools of many differen't types stored on the ship and on the player. Keep players posted in sections for quick repairs as you take hits. For quick grabs it may not be a bad idea to throw down some extra repair kits below or next to all the different components incase someone dies or you have the operations station jump out and assist with repairs. Best to have everyone on the ship admin for repairing purposes. (don't load anything in your decimator you don't want stolen!)
Adv. Strategy: Nothing incredibly big needs to happen here other it might be good to have at least one engineer if not all shipwrights so they can craft repair kits if necessary if you run out of your stashed set of kits.
Medical Officer: Keep everyone alive, have plenty of fire suppression blankets and wound packs ready. Without the engineers the ship will go down!
Fighter Escort: This is a big one. For your multi-player ship no matter what you have loaded in your equipment armor shields or otherwise you need a fighter escort with you to be mostly effective. Just like discover, don't leave home without it!
Adv. Strategy: Though the more fighters that are not aggroed on the MPS the better, sometimes it may get too hot on your tail, don't be afraid to use the advantages of the guns on the MPS. Fly the fighters on your six right past it and let the MPS lay waste to your enemy.
Roles of the Multi-Player Ship:
Escort Missions:
Escort mission are probably the most fun for the crew, All the pilot needs to do is form up on the target your escorting. Usually right behind it either higher or lower, sometimes to the side. Make sure you give a good clearence so your top and bottom gunners can shoot forward at the waves of fighters as they come in. Load all 3 of your ordnances with anti-fighter type missles. Usually mark 4 protons or use concussions. Not bent on destroying unless you want to but more for taking down their shields for easier kills.
Stay with your escort and let your gunners do most of the work unless you start taking hits and your shields get low, then pull off increase speed and do some simple meanouvers nice and smoothly untill you have cleared of the fighters on you then rejoin the formation. Your fighter escort should keep anyone who aggro'es pretty busy.
Fighter Wave Missions(duty missions):
This is more challenging, You do basically everything you would for an escort mission except for 2 major points. The first is instead of flying formation with the escort(which doesn't exist in this mission) stay towards the back of your group. Leaving your fighter escort infront of you to engage the first wave of fighters.
Second once you enter or approach what i call the storm(the are where all the fighting is going on like a swarm of gnats so to speak) begin a nice easy simple non-changing turn around the equater of the battle. Giving your top and bottom gunner both plenty of targets to shoot at. Just keep the turn steady and stay with the crowd. As far as loadout stick with the anti-fighter as usual.
Destroy Target Mission(For the bigger then fighter targets):
This is the harder, but more fun part to play! First thing is first, load up your ordnance with at least 2 launchers that deal extensive damage. I personally go with space bombs, some go with seismic, depending on your target you may want one or the other. For your 3rd ordnance you can load up a 3rd launcher thats seismic or space bomb, or you can have a little fighter defense and grab proton's or cuncussions. Up to the pilot and the varying situation.
For this point lets say your target is a gunboat with its own fighter escort. The goal here is to have your fighter escort take on the enemy's fighter escort, keep em busy take em down all that fun stuff. Basically leaving you un-aggroed. Approach the target to about 2000m.
If you are imperial, call in bomber strikes on the target, they usually clear out the weapons for you. If your not imperial then you better have 1 or two fighters fly in before you and target the weapons subsystems with your gunners and the fighters. once the weapons are down close into missile range and release the boom boom's.
If you have high enough forward armor and shields, or if the craft is not aggroed you, you can go ahead and hit it hard with everything you got. Note however the guns on the gunboats and bigger cruisers may try to shoot the incoming missiles down especially space bomb's since they are so slow. If needbe i would go after the weapon system with seismics once the shields were down. Siesmics do pretty good for taking down components.
Destroy Target Missions(Corvette's etc.):
This is one of the more fun things. As an imperial in my decimator with a decent crew and a 3 man fighter escort i've taken down a corvette in under 5 minutes. First of all the corvette in kessel, spawns with 2 gunboats and fighter escorts. If you are imperial(you guest it) launch a few bomb strikes at the corvette itself to clear its weapons. If not, first send in your fighter escort to pull and drag the fighters from the corvette, take em down.
After that come up behind the gunboats and do the same from above. Take out the rear shields and weapons then release hell with your forward ordnance. Once they are out of the way its corvette fun time. Target and take down the weapons of the corvette, the have 8 each. SAVE your missiles. Mostly let your fighter escort do this.
Now for the primary and secondary shields there are 2 ways to do it. One which is the easiest is approach from the top or bottom or sides and release your seismic/space bombs on them. Both generaters are on the front side of the neck, right behind the bridge. They are hard to hit with just fighters because the corvette moves. Missiles however nail them very easilly.
The second way is to pull up next to the corvette's bridge on either side and have your gunners shoot at it while you match speed. After the shields are gone have the fighter escort take out the engines since its a very easy task. While they are doing it meanouver your craft to above or below the engine section.
Once the engines are out, target the reacter and again release space bombs/seismics. The reacter is a very hard component to hit, but not for missiles =). Once the reacter is down the bridge is pretty easy either pull in front of the corvette and let your gunners shoot out the window or do a pass and hit it with more bombs/missles to finish the corvette off. And boom boom boom enjoy the show =)
Advanced Pilots with Advanced Equipment and crew:
This is something I was able to do successful last night with just 2 gunners, and an operations officer. This was pretty awesome to do so i'm going to throw it up here for some of you very advanced MPS pilots to try out with your gunners. We've all see the falcon in ep6 flying around just as a fighter would, with both guns fixed forward taking down fighters in a fast dogfight. Well in JTL you can't fix the turrets forward, but you can do something slightly better. Below is all the equipment I currently load in my decimator, and a few things I have ordered that I will be getting for my decimator soon. With this set-up and lots of practice flying, I'm able to go head to head with xwings ywings bwings and in some cases after a good chunk of practice a-wings, all tier 5. ***** Now that there is also these new elite pob parts i strongly suggest you invest in them, they make the world of difference...*****
With a tight setup on my decimator of elite parts and some looted can dogfight with most fighters with, What i've trained my best gunners to be able to do is to keep the guns facing forward, and change them a little as I come up behind enemy fighters for them to shoot down.Now as the pilot thats not as easy as it sounds, you have to meanouver the ship regardless of the missing crosshairs to a point where both guns and shoot at the fighter, which is not easy to learn but do-able. Using this method one night SOLO my gunners I was able to take down the corvette in kessel with all of its escorts, A corvette in deep space with fighter escorts, and a half-dozen gunboats as well, with only 1 plasma fire to a reactor which was fixed and so far working properlly since the last patch, and a few armor hits, but the armor never got below half. Being able to turn and knowning when to accelerate/decellerate is the biggest key, you have to do it blindly and it takes practice. It does help significantly to have the FS boxes for vehicle control. Possibly even necessary but nothing is with the right amount of practice.
Added Thoughts From pilots:
Equipment
since MPS tend to die fast when in trouble i would try to use as much crafted equipment as possible. at least for the training phases when you and your gunners start getting used to new tactics or enemies. expect to die and suffer from decay (you cant expect to get a nova and own deepspace from minute one) so better use equipment that can be replaced easily. since mass isnt an issue on MPSs at all (at least atm) you can use heavy crafted stuff for a while.
Programs:
- engine overload 3 - must have. Good average boost with less of the damage, and won't disable weapon systems.
- weapon overload 3 - must have. Currently bugged(gives less energy per shot then more) but won't slow engines down.
- Shunt to shields 4 - must have. As long as your capacitor is overloaded you are very set.
- reactor overload 3- as nesseary. nice to have for situations when the reactor gets damaged and some stuff gets disabled.
- capacitor overload 3- very handy since it raises capacitor regen and max energy. more energy = more shields regened per shunt.
- shield adjust/reinforce - as nesseary. Shield reinforce is very useful for making an assult onto another slow moving vehicle, giving more power to the shields.
Space Mining with PoB's and Y-8!
First to start off I'm going to focus on the y-8 and you will understand as i go. A lot of people i've talked to all agree that the y-8 is a useless mining ship and i strongly dis-agree after playing around for awhile...first in order to get the y-8 ship to mine you need the following requirements:
- You need the pilot inside the pilot chair(mining lasers will cease mining the second the pilot gets out of the chair.
- You need to equip the "elite mining laser(y-8 only) into your weapon slots(all 3 of em).
- You need a y-8 only cargo hold(the small holds 5000 i think the large holds 15000 not sure).
- You need 2 gunners! =p
- Possibly an ops chair person for doing shield shunts in areas where you might get attacked by bandits a lot.
Once your setup to mine you can head out to your first asteroid i'd suggest carbonaceous in naboo system or other tier 1 systems to start off. First of all don't bother chasing asteroids down, right now the asteroids are infinate spawn meaning they will always be there if you blow it up another spawns etc... Point your main laser at the asteroid form about oh 2-300m away, and fire one shot, let the first asteroid chunk pop out. Watch the direction that the chunk goes, ROTATE do not turn your ship so that at least 1 of your gunners has a very good firing area in that direction(yes this means that sometimes your rear gunner may get bored sometimes your top gunner does). And then just fire at an even pace. Have your top/rear gunner shoot the large chunks primairly and then get what little ones he can while its within range, use 3rd person and make sure to keep popping out chunks so the gunner can immidietly switch to the next chunk once the asteroids get out of range.
Now wow this sounds like a pain in the butt but it is somewhat faster then just a fighter, that is if you have a good gunner *wink*
But hey thats the y-8 what about the other pob's! Good question here we go:
The other pob ships like the nova, decimator, and the yt-1300 all have 2 turrets and decent visibility in almost 360' angles... so you have a better chance of getting asteroids using the stationary method above.. lets run through the requirements:
- Pilot again must be sitting in the Pilot Chair
- Equip 2 class 3 mining lasers(yes the ones from the fighters can work in pob's)
- Have an ops chair if needed and of course 2 gunners..
- The large cargo hold for(pob only) is about 3500 which still is better then a fighter.
Again with the y-8 method park yourself outside the asteroid about 2-300 meters, have your top or lower gunner fire 1-2 shots and see where the first chunk goes, then rotate your ship so that both gunners can shoot the same general direction of where the asteroid goes and designate one gunner to pop out chunks as you go.
Well mitoh thats all fine and dandy but its still only slightly faster then my fighter but takes more people and work! And this can be true in most cases..but hey put them all together and you got yourself one really fast mining operation. For example, put a y-8 set up on the asteroid, then align say 2 pob ships on either side but further out from the asteroids, or even put them about 5-600m out at the direction the asteroid chunks will fly off, bam as the ones get away from the y-8 you got 2 sets of sentry turrest picking them off as they come into range, far far more efficient then a fighter...and much faster...but even with sentry turrets mining lasers don't usually do enough damage to handle tier 4-5 bandits effectively(can take like 10 minutes just to kill 4) and they have a smaller range the any other weapon...so make sure to keep 1 or 2 fighters incase a chunk or two gets away or at the least escorts for the mining convoy, as i've stated plenty of times in this guide a pob isn't appreciated at its most without somewhat of a fighter escort =)
Wish List:
- Ordnance Panels Built into the ship as well. This would have 2-fold ability. One would be to repair it. The other would be to allow members of the crew to re-load the ordnance once it ran dry, mid-flight.
- Countermeasure panel. There isn't one that i have found and would be needed.
- Droid Interface panel. Also something i haven't found yet, perhaps this one could be built right into the cockpit area.
- More things the non-chair crew can do to keep busy. While en-route to various missions it can be very very boring to sit there and not do anything for a majority of the fight. Even when the MPS starts taking decent damage to the point things need repaired. It only takes a few more shots before the whole thing is destroyed anyway. Increasing the armor of the ship can help to a degree. However having a system where a player can plug into a pannel or run through some basic gui items attached to various panels like shields or weapons, can cause a slight increase in power or better efficiancy without causing any dmg to the item etc...
- A BattleStations Alarm!. There are times when a 2nd alarm for when the ship engages in combat would be handy and realistic among the pob ship to notifiy the crew to go to battlestations!
- On-Board Repair droids(Idea by: Moricky). Have Droids with special de made repair modules where you load them up with the repair kits, and when the ship components take damage, the droid would automaticlly go to the panel and start reparing it at X rate, for X multiplier of the repair kit. These droids should either be placed as a part of the ship, or made to work from any players who call one out anywhere on the Multi-player ship.
- On-Board Droid Power Boosting. Have Droids with special DE components that allow members aboard the ship who aren't manning a gunner or ops chair position to hook their droids up to specific devices to further boost their capabilities at a somewhat large cost to the droids power ability, requireing alot of droid batteries or a power droid to be running around recharging these droids.
- Docking Ability between ships. This is a big one. All 4 Multi-person ships including the sorosuub, as far as i know, have docking hatches in some form. Pilot owners should be able to add a name to a different list in the ship. The name would have to be the pilot owner of the opposite craft. Both would have to come to a hault, and then they could dock with each other. On the inside of the ships, at the docking hatch there would be a terminal that would open up. This terminal is nothing more then transfer to the other ship. Nothing spectacular needs to be done. Thus the characters can load into the opposing craft instead of dealing actually connecting the two in some way. This can also provide player content out the wazoo. Capturing ships, even perhaps npc' ships for non-space loot provided theres some heavy duty npc's guarding their ship on the inside... as well as transfering personell or loot if a guild should decide to move to a spot and camp it for loot they could turn it in to a MPS, to hold untill a sorosuub or some other ship could come buy and take a load of supplies back to a planet for home base. Of course as well as with this anyone not in an mps should be able to dock but the only thing they can do is transfer items to and from inventory to a loot box or a transfer box within that mps.
- Optional Storage space components. 75 inventory is ok for a ship, but add in furniture, supplies and other storage you can fill that up rather quickly, thus as the ship collects loot theres no room for in the loot box. IDEA: Allow for optional storage components that add 75 inventory for a max of 2 extra spaces, each one would take 1 extra lot from your house lots but would allow you to have bigger space for loot furniture and supplies. These components of course should cause the max mass of the ship for components to reduce as well.
- Optional hard-points. On the both the VT-49 and theYKL-37R theres 3 forward ordnance and 2 gunnery turrets, 2 ordnance for the YT-1300, These ordnance slots should turn into optional hard points for either forward weapons, missile ordnance, possibly more countermeasure launchers, or in some cases depending on the physical design of the ship, the option to add another turret lot. I would remove both escape pod launchers on my ship in a heartbeat if i could attach a lateral turret to each side leaving me only 1 ordnance lot.
- Customizable soro-suub. I've looked the soro-suub out up and down inside and out, and it looks like it was originally designed to first, have a top and bottom gunner turret, as well as a rear turret in the top back. Theres 3 what looks like forward gunmounts on the bottom. Lando was able to customize his sub to have weapons and what not, i think we should have the ability to modify our sub's at one huge cost, one it should cost close to 100k to turn it into a modifiable deed, and it should be no longer in-vunerable when you do so. Of course it will still remain un-redeedable and un-tradeable as it is a veteran reward. The sorosuub should have the same thing as the decimator or the nova cruiser with one difference, 3 turrets, 2 top 1 bottom, no ordnance launchers, but 2-3 forward guns. I think it should be slower then a decimator and nova cruiser with all that extra equipment and turrets but still should be customizeable.
- MPS REWARDS. Prestige experience is mostly to completely useless, I've loaded up almost 10 mil on my imperial pilot and it starting to stack on my privateer alt. We should have the ability to max out our prestige xp and turn it in to get a rare reward ship. For the privateer they should get the yt-2000 model ship or some other corellian transport, the imperial should get some form of an imperial gunboat, where as the rebels would get their rebel gunboat. All the turrets being man-able, the gunboat would have ordnance launchers as well, nothing more then a bigger step up of the mpships we have now, just more firepower, more armored, and much slower(500 top speed with a 103 engine for example).
Trick/Tip List:
- Pilot: When doing a bombing run on a heavilly armed target, fire all 3 of your ordnance at the exact same time. Bind them to the same weapons group especially. Though it doesn't increase a whole lot, it does do a bit more damage then if you fired them seperatly.
- Operations Officer/Pilot/Gunner: Use the weapons overload 3. This decreases the charge per shot, and increases damage to the gunner turrets. It also increases the damage done on your ordnance as well! Overcharge 4 is pretty much useless as it increases the damage significantly, but at huge cost to your capaciter. It also disables your ordnance no matter what.
- Pilot/Operations Officer: During escort missions, use engine efficiancy in combo with weapons overload. Match speeds with your escort. If you have a decent enough engine you can use efficiancy and still keep up with speed. This extra power will go into all of your other systems including shields.
- Multiple Operations Officers: You can have one sitting down, call a bombstrike or some other non-droid ability. Then get up, and have a 2nd member sit down and use theirs. As far as this was written, the timers are tied to the player, and not to the ship. However using 3 eweapons or ethrust etc will not stack as far as how much power they do, just on how long they last.
- Ship Owner: It's always helpful to place down repair kits for the corresponding panels right below, or right infront of it as a last chance emergancy, incase your engineers get killed.
I will add more as i learn, still not doing the whole pvp thing with it as i'm spending most of my time helping my guildies level up in their pilot. If anyone has any info they would like to add please feel free and reply. As well as any tips/bugs/wishes they would like to see. I will be checking this every day or two give or take and try and keep this more up to date as i learn stuff. Enjoy!
Message Edited by Tellahane on 08-25-200510:48 PM
Message Edited by Tellahane on 08-25-2005 10:49 PM Message Edited by Tellahane on 08-25-2005 10:50 PM
Mitoh Uther -The original Dark Jedi Assassin- Pre-CU jedi!Novarp WavingSky - Master Carbineer, 4004 doc, 0404 bhTellah' Uther - Master Musician, Test Center Prime - | 
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