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Comm-Arrays, Local Chat & Potatoes


Anaximander

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Well, given some people in here are not familiar with the Local Chat in EVE, I will explain real quick so you can understand.

Local Chat, is the chat in which you join upon entering a star system in EVE after a jump. That may seem non-important, when you realise the chat covers the entire star system. That means people can simply check Local and have advanced intel of your presence on the system before they can actually have a scan of your ship (which in Wormholes it's needed, since in Wormholes there's no Local Chat). Even in an invisible ship, you will still show up in the Local Chat.

Now, the arguement can be made that in EVE's universe humanity has colonised the star systems nad put up comm-arrays and all that. But in DU, it's not the case. So, here's my proposition.

Comm-Arrays, set up by a faction, enable a Local Chat within a cerrtain radius of them, with the Comm-Arrays acting as radars as well, meaning, that if you set up a Comm-Array, you got both comms for the masses that are not in your org's chat (like traders for example), with the org owning the Comm-Array acting as the adminstrator of said chat. I mean, if I want to be the Emperor, I must have a way to censor people within my Empire. I R ebil.

Said comm-arrays, of course, can only detect ships not cloaked, and cloaked ships, above a certain mass, will show up in the Local Chat, but not on the radar of the faction owning said comm-array, so no cloaked battleships sneaking up to comm-arrays.

A string of Comm-Arrays, that are interconnected, could even enable an entire star system to have a common chat room - which I guess most EVE veterans will find as a proper excuse for nuking at least ONE of those arrays to stop the scam-spam on said Local Chat in a trade-hub.

Beyond that, said arrays can act as an alarm, for when an enemy fleet arrives at your system, so your fleet can mobilise in time. Likewise, said enemy fleet may want to send forward a scout in a stealth-ship, to take down one Comm-Array by hacking it, in order for the fleet to arrive without being immediately detected. Every second counts on a blitzkrieg after all.

Furthermore, said arrays will need repair, which is an excellent reason to have jobs and duties like maintenance, with a monetary incentive for people to do said jobs, while factions would have a pretty good reason to pay high for such jobs.

One extra feature, could be for the Devs to have asteroids refresh high value minerals if no Comm-Arrays are present, with less and less quality asteroids refreshing on the system the more Comm-Arrays are present, thus creating the Risk / Reward nature of EVE's high-sec (ultra-safe systems), low-sec (relative safety system) and finally Null-Sec, which is pretty much the Australian outback.

Down the line, if NQ decides to add Sovereignity Towers for a faction to lay claim on a star system, said Comm-Arrays can be used for that, via an "upgrade" system, but that's just an afterthought.



Sorry for the long post, here's an astronaut potato :


4tQjM62p59-2.png

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I like the idea. It creates good gameplay

- engineers setting those antennas up

- repairing them

- planning the locations

- giving thought of the actual usefulness of antennas for your faction (as pirates you maybe don't want a local chat and anyone to know that you're here or you want to make them feel perfectly safe because there is a local chat but you use small ships yourself to go under the radar)

- building a network for perhaps better/more boni

- as intruder you would have to gather intel carefully, hack or kill some antennas and then send the fleet

- antennas should come in different sizes/variations. Size = radius, variation = basic,mediocore,advanced. Basic=only radar for example, medium= radar+local chat, advanced= radar+local chat + how many player per ship for example.

 

Problems i see with this:

- could be too op (you just build fail-safe grid or at very hard to attack positions like inside a moon with a TCU so noone can dig there) but then again - just put more effort to attack it.... difficult call

- depending how it's implemented it could be annoying to run those things

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I like the idea. It creates good gameplay

- engineers setting those antennas up

- repairing them

- planning the locations

- giving thought of the actual usefulness of antennas for your faction (as pirates you maybe don't want a local chat and anyone to know that you're here or you want to make them feel perfectly safe because there is a local chat but you use small ships yourself to go under the radar)

- building a network for perhaps better/more boni

- as intruder you would have to gather intel carefully, hack or kill some antennas and then send the fleet

- antennas should come in different sizes/variations. Size = radius, variation = basic,mediocore,advanced. Basic=only radar for example, medium= radar+local chat, advanced= radar+local chat + how many player per ship for example.

 

Problems i see with this:

- could be too op (you just build fail-safe grid or at very hard to attack positions like inside a moon with a TCU so noone can dig there) but then again - just put more effort to attack it.... difficult call

- depending how it's implemented it could be annoying to run those things

Line of Sight requirements could fix the building said array within a mmon, or could not be placed witthi na shield for any scientific reason 

 

And as of the last point, yeah, but on the bright side, it means people can have "daily" quests to ear some cash I mean, in EVE we got missions for silly things that NPC give us that don't really affect the universe, in DU, not paying much for an Array maintenance job may be your faction's ndoing :P

 

Emergent Politics O_o

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I do thoroughly enjoy the idea of players building antennas enabling communication via chat in the large vicinity allowing people outside the organization of that geographical area easier communication for trade and whatnot. Simply that is all the emergence you need and is in itself brilliant.

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Line of Sight requirements could fix the building said array within a mmon, or could not be placed witthi na shield for any scientific reason 

 

And as of the last point, yeah, but on the bright side, it means people can have "daily" quests to ear some cash I mean, in EVE we got missions for silly things that NPC give us that don't really affect the universe, in DU, not paying much for an Array maintenance job may be your faction's ndoing :P

 

Emergent Politics O_o

 

I know how those mentioned problems could work out but I want to educate people to use their brain and think for themselves for pros/cons :P

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Line of Sight requirements could fix the building said array within a mmon, or could not be placed witthi na shield for any scientific reason 

 

And as of the last point, yeah, but on the bright side, it means people can have "daily" quests to ear some cash I mean, in EVE we got missions for silly things that NPC give us that don't really affect the universe, in DU, not paying much for an Array maintenance job may be your faction's ndoing :P

 

Emergent Politics O_o

 

The specific wavelength the Comms tower uses to create both a local chat and a radar are nullified by the waves the shield uses to maintain an effective energy barrier. Comm Arrays in a shield have their range reduced by 50%, and the effective mass required for Radar detection increased by 25%. The shield's effective energy (health) is reduced by 20%.

 

Maybe? You could still put one in a shield, but it would decrease the effectiveness of both units. It would still be harder to destroy the Array, but it's offest by some negatives.

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The specific wavelength the Comms tower uses to create both a local chat and a radar are nullified by the waves the shield uses to maintain an effective energy barrier. Comm Arrays in a shield have their range reduced by 50%, and the effective mass required for Radar detection increased by 25%. The shield's effective energy (health) is reduced by 20%.

 

Maybe? You could still put one in a shield, but it would decrease the effectiveness of both units. It would still be harder to destroy the Array, but it's offest by some negatives.

Thing is, that if a shield, even gimped at half and reducign the Array's range at half, is still more HP to the Array as a whole. Albeit, if shields rae costly, they will not be placed on each one of the Arrays individually.

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The specific wavelength the Comms tower uses to create both a local chat and a radar are nullified by the waves the shield uses to maintain an effective energy barrier. Comm Arrays in a shield have their range reduced by 50%, and the effective mass required for Radar detection increased by 25%. The shield's effective energy (health) is reduced by 20%.

 

Maybe? You could still put one in a shield, but it would decrease the effectiveness of both units. It would still be harder to destroy the Array, but it's offest by some negatives.

 

That could be a work-around, but as Twerk pointed out this still increases the overall hp of the array by many orders of magnitude.

I particular like your idea of increasing mass detection by 25%:

you can make your antenna more durable to attacks, but risk a battlecruiser going unnoticed.

 

Problem with this though: we don't know yet how shields work. (for reference:  https://board.dualthegame.com/index.php?/topic/10496-timer-on-shields/ )

If all shields have that 48h timer, you can only operate in that space in some small ships, which go unnoticed. You can't attack the antennas to make them blind, you have to use hackers to shut them down.

So a large invading or attacking force would have a very hard time. Don't get me wrong here: I'm not talking about the attack itself (a large attacking force SHOULD be hard to hide and SHOULD be detected with ease!). I'm talking about the aftermath:

- Will the shields drop automatically once the defender loses?

- If yes, that would just suck because all assets of the defender are rendered vulnerable and killable - blob wins and takes all

- If no, that would suck too because then the attacker has to bring down ALL shields (which is fine for bases and stuff - that's why you're building shields at all isn't it?) - even the ones protecting the antennas. Imagine a big system with 3 planets in 4 years with 40 antennas. That's just grinding HP down and this is no fun at all - but then again you're right when you say something like "But a well developed system with a large nation there has the right of being a fortress"-

This is a very delicate topic and should be discussed in another thread.

 

The line of sight rule would fit well with technology

 

Overall I think this idea has potential in it and enforces great gameplay mechanics

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This is another area that we know little about.  Aside from the fact that it made NO sense in EVE why my top of the line Covert Ops battleships location could be pared down to the sector by looking at a local chat.  If it's only a comm array why SHOULD it be able to locate anybody even down to an arbitrary sector of space (a solar system for instance)?  Are the comm arrays triangulating my signal?  If so shouldn't I simply turn my comms off?  

 

Personally, I wonder if this will be less of a gameplay feature and have more to do with how the actual chat client software will work.  If it is simple Internet Relay Chat will we be able to establish lines (or in the case spheres) of communication in-game?  Since the game works on a single "shard" and everyone is technically sharing the same game is it even POSSIBLE to limit how far an IRC can communicate to this degree?  It's a serious question I honestly don't know.  Maybe we could set up comms like in ARMA where each group working together have their own comm frequency and encryptions?  Food for thought.

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This is another area that we know little about.  Aside from the fact that it made NO sense in EVE why my top of the line Covert Ops battleships location could be pared down to the sector by looking at a local chat.  If it's only a comm array why SHOULD it be able to locate anybody even down to an arbitrary sector of space (a solar system for instance)?  Are the comm arrays triangulating my signal?  If so shouldn't I simply turn my comms off?  

 

Personally, I wonder if this will be less of a gameplay feature and have more to do with how the actual chat client software will work.  If it is simple Internet Relay Chat will we be able to establish lines (or in the case spheres) of communication in-game?  Since the game works on a single "shard" and everyone is technically sharing the same game is it even POSSIBLE to limit how far an IRC can communicate to this degree?  It's a serious question I honestly don't know.  Maybe we could set up comms like in ARMA where each group working together have their own comm frequency and encryptions?  Food for thought.

The idea is, that above a certain mass, a ship can be detected via gravitometry. A battleship is massive enough to be detected (in my opinion). However, a cloaked corvette won't be possible to pin down.

 

This also enables the idea of "paper cannons", like stealth bombers. Very light, very fast, able to cloak  and fly (quite literally) under the radar's gravitometric threshhold but once caught they are turend into shreds. This could also give birth to some very "interesting" ship ideas, like light-weight ships that have the firepower of battleships, are very fast and are able to sneak under the radar's gravitometric detection. And let's face it, in EVE the detection systems do not really change from type to type.

 

The idea is also for each territory to self regulate and enforce politics - like good ol' politics. I mean, we all know Twerkland is gonna be the Best Lan, due to heavy censorship of critics. :D (and one too many assassinations. )

 

Also, it would provide game admins with less of a workload, if an owner of a trade-hub could just simply mute the scammer who spams the local chat with offers of "gib 100000 spacebucks, I gib you back 200000 spacebucks, no scam". Or, you know, Gold Farmers who spam chats all day and all night. We all know some people will be permanent residents of a trading station, so let them be adminstrators of said station in full, controlling even the Local Chatit provides.

The idea is that one comm-array provides a sphere of influence that overules each individual player's proximity chat and auto-joins them in it. A player may elect to turn off said local chat, but they won't be removed from the overview once they are within range.

 

As for the IRC, yes, that's the idea. Once Arrays are linked together, they combine their collective local chats into one chat, the Local System Chat ( which could be disabled, for the org to have only the radar bonuses of the Arrays). It's not something impossible or far-fetched tech-wise. The chat can operate on a different server grid with the Arrays being the area within the Local Chat activates (not to be confused with the proximity chat).

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Like the antennas idea.

 

As long as there are ways for small ships to not be detected, it sounds like quite a solid plan.  Course, an antenna suddenly going dark is also an indication that something is up.

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Like the antennas idea.

 

As long as there are countermeasures for small ships against being detected, it sounds like quite a solid plan.  Course an antenna suddenly going dark is also an indication that something is up.

Or, it could be a diversion. That's the beauty of it. Maybe the attackers wanted to divert your fleet towards that array, so they would lure you into a trap, or they may be attacking on the other side of the system, and you are late to stop them from barriading and taking up battle formations.

 

Also, what exactly do you mean by "countermeasures for small ships against being detected" ? It's quite confusing the way you phrase it.

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Or, it could be a diversion. That's the beauty of it. Maybe the attackers wanted to divert your fleet towards that array, so they would lure you into a trap, or they may be attacking on the other side of the system, and you are late to stop them from barriading and taking up battle formations.

 

Also, what exactly do you mean by "countermeasures for small ships against being detected" ? It's quite confusing the way you phrase it.

 

Fixed.

 

Also where are the potatoes?

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Fixed.

 

Also where are the potatoes?

Oh okay, so, the idea is not for the radars to detect "volume" but "mass". In other words, if your cruiser, weighs as much as a frigate, then you won't be detected by the gravitometers on the array. Likewise, if  your frigate weighs as much as a cruiser, then it will still be detected on the gravitometer.

 

The invisibility cloaking, only protects you from ladar (like radar, only working on receiving light, not bouncing it off of objects like radar dies). "Gliding" your way towards a target in space, protects your magnetometric readouts, and volume (and possibly the shape of an object) protects your from radar detection (similar to stealth planes IRL).

 

The idea is for a form of "doctrine" to be enforced for ship design, so we won't end up with cloaking on every battleship and every ship.

 

You want a cloaked cruiser? God, it wil lhave to be a glass cannon, made of lightwieght (and fragile) materials, in order for it to be completely invisible to the enemy, so it can unleash heavy damage on the target.

 

Stealth troop transports? They suddenly not only have a limit on size and durability, but also a limit on how many people can fit in before they get heavy enough, by virtue of players adding to a ship's mass, and the ship quite frankly, becoming slower, with the possibility of a ship running out of fuel before it can even reach its target.

 

As for stealth ship detection, that's a really complex subject and not for this kind of thread :P

 

 

Potatoes have been corrected into the title and they can be found at the end of the original post :P

 

 

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Oh okay, so, the idea is not for the radars to detect "volume" but "mass". In other words, if your cruiser, weighs as much as a frigate, then you won't be detected by the gravitometers on the array. Likewise, if  your frigate weighs as much as a cruiser, then it will still be detected on the gravitometer.

You could also have it so that approaching from or through a gravity well will reduce your chances at detection, whereas being stealthy in dark space is harder due to less interference.

 

Though, a gravitometer will only be able to detect if something is there and it's mass, not what it is or who it belongs to (thats more of a ladar signature). You could have two different objects with identical mass and not be able to tell the difference.

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You could also have it so that approaching from or through a gravity well will reduce your chances at detection, whereas being stealthy in dark space is harder due to less interference.

 

Though, a gravitometer will only be able to detect if something is there and it's mass, not what it is or who it belongs to (thats more of a ladar signature). You could have two different objects with identical mass and not be able to tell the difference.

That is the point. Of having forward knowledge of an enemy cloaker in your system. Also, gravity wells are quite the difficult thing to code ( at least, in a procedural way), without having them being predictable as of their location, thus, being a mine infested area that will be perma-avoided. 

 

Gravitometers may only show up "a massive object is near THAT area of the star map" but it also means that a person who accelerates a lot, without letting the cloaked ship "slide", is going to be detected, by virtue of acceleration bringing in mass, thus requiring stealth pilots to know and use well things like slingshots (and quite possibly, for ship builders to be able to build stealth craft that got some advanced auto-pilots for maintaining trajectories of a flight). The idea for the whole comm-array, is to alert your faction if someone entered your system with a massive ship, but is cloaked, so you can muster defenses (if you bothered putting up comm-arrays).

 

Of course, for obvious reasons, a gravitometer can be able to detect with precision AND keep track of the lcoation of a massive object that is cloaked, like an EVE Titan. No matter the cloak, that ship is so massive, it can be easily be kept track of by gravitometers (about 22km length more or less).

 

As for LADAR, that can be used to identify signatures yes, but only signatures that are "active", meaning hot. A radar has its uses for ships that use a thermal cloaking module, making them virtually cold to the observer, which a radar would be able to scan and show to the scanner the shape of an object. And hey,  that also means that ships of a certain small volume can easily avoid detection by radars at a distance, by virtue of being impossible to scan down, which also means that radars have a predetermined limit of detecting objects in space. That being said, it also means that if you were to be chased by pirates in a "Dark Area" of the star map, where comm-arrays are not present, you could juke them by warping away, then slowing down to lower your mass to their ships' gravitometers (which are inferior to a comm-arrays), hiding inside an asteroid belt (to confused RADAR), turning off your ship (thus being invisible to LADAR) and then waiting til lthey leave. If I learned one thing from EVE, is that pirates give up after six scans )griefers, not so much, they will scour a system to find you). 

 

See, there are many things that can make different types of detection possible. A Comm-Array is simply, a double function asset. In one form, it creates a localised chat grid (which the owener of the comm-array or a legate of an org can administrate) and on the other hand, it's an alarm system, which can detect massive objects that didn't sign in into the chat, or for a "cold object" in a trajectory to the comm-array, via virtue of RADAR.

 

 

And to put it out there, I expect Stealth Modules to be as expensive as their difficulty to be detected. Thermal Cloaking? Medium cost. Radarr Cloaking? Well, it's not that much of a "high-tech" for FutureSpace, so yeah, pretty cheap. But Invisibility? That should be expensive.

 

 

Cheers :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

The idea is, that above a certain mass, a ship can be detected via gravitometry. A battleship is massive enough to be detected (in my opinion). However, a cloaked corvette won't be possible to pin down.

 

This also enables the idea of "paper cannons", like stealth bombers. Very light, very fast, able to cloak  and fly (quite literally) under the radar's gravitometric threshhold but once caught they are turend into shreds. This could also give birth to some very "interesting" ship ideas, like light-weight ships that have the firepower of battleships, are very fast and are able to sneak under the radar's gravitometric detection. And let's face it, in EVE the detection systems do not really change from type to type.

 

The idea is also for each territory to self regulate and enforce politics - like good ol' politics. I mean, we all know Twerkland is gonna be the Best Lan, due to heavy censorship of critics. :D (and one too many assassinations. )

 

Also, it would provide game admins with less of a workload, if an owner of a trade-hub could just simply mute the scammer who spams the local chat with offers of "gib 100000 spacebucks, I gib you back 200000 spacebucks, no scam". Or, you know, Gold Farmers who spam chats all day and all night. We all know some people will be permanent residents of a trading station, so let them be adminstrators of said station in full, controlling even the Local Chatit provides.

The idea is that one comm-array provides a sphere of influence that overules each individual player's proximity chat and auto-joins them in it. A player may elect to turn off said local chat, but they won't be removed from the overview once they are within range.

 

As for the IRC, yes, that's the idea. Once Arrays are linked together, they combine their collective local chats into one chat, the Local System Chat ( which could be disabled, for the org to have only the radar bonuses of the Arrays). It's not something impossible or far-fetched tech-wise. The chat can operate on a different server grid with the Arrays being the area within the Local Chat activates (not to be confused with the proximity chat).

 

My issue is the idea of a COMMUNICATIONS array being used in such a manner.  If the game includes different kinds of sensor grids THAT seems reasonable.  

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My issue is the idea of a COMMUNICATIONS array being used in such a manner.  If the game includes different kinds of sensor grids THAT seems reasonable.  

Yeah well then just rename it? It's only an idea...

Make two different kinds: one for comms and one for detection, doesn't matter much

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My issue is the idea of a COMMUNICATIONS array being used in such a manner.  If the game includes different kinds of sensor grids THAT seems reasonable.

 

 

Thing is, if a comm array puts you in a local chat, it IS a detection array. You played EVE, you know the issue with local chat, it's used to detect people in null aec, not to talk to them...

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Thing is, if a comm array puts you in a local chat, it IS a detection array. You played EVE, you know the issue with local chat, it's used to detect people in null aec, not to talk to them...

Communication array should be for... communication. If a ship is broadcasting, then they are not being particularly stealthy. But if they, say, could switch off their comms or decrease its scope to a direct LOS beam...

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It's a common theme that people don't get why they are called comm-arrays. It's because they combine both functions. It's not a relay, It's meant to gather data and scan down multiple channels for detection. As I said, it's an array, it's meant to boradcast and receive.

And yes, it would have to be an element of varying detection methods that can be added onto a tower construct in space to create said functioning comm-array, that both enables sphere of detection, with thresholds in which you can "fly under" the arrays' detection (as I mentioned before in this very thread).

What it comes down to, is nothing different than a passive probe scanning that acts as a forward notification of when people are in your system and do something funny and you don't got people around said area. People who played or play EVE will know of what I mean. It's like having eight probes up set in a formation to span a star system, and scan till you notice a ship popping up in it. That would be the way this would work, but instead of having a person doing this kind of scan manually, it's on a slower automated cycle, that can only update you as of the general area that a ship is (if it's detected by the arrays) with a player having to go into manual scanning to pinpoint the target ship's range and exact location, which then can be shared to a friendly interceptor that goes on and and checks the whole thing out.

The Comms part of the array, is just so people can communicate via text with the ships the comm-array detected, by requesting a private convo with a captain on board that ship - whoever they may be - or conversely, if the person in the ship has their comm units set to ON, they immediately show up on the local chat and are immediately recognised by their assigned "standing" status. If you're a lawful merchant, you are not in trouble, if you are ap irate ... why even got the comms set to ON Jack?

And that is IF, that person is detected, which again, brings us back to the start of this thread, with all the different methods of detection and yadda yadda. For all you know, you could be not detected on a comm-arra and join the local chat, just to troll the people in it, or spread propaganda, or w/e crazy people who yell on the top of thier lungs in full CAPS LOCK ON MODE DO FOR FUN.

I mean, Emergent Distractions, best distractions. A person starts trolling your Local Chat by advertising a black market with better offers than the local market, then goads the po-po of the local system to chase the guy, and when said po-po warps onto the trouble-maker, WHOOPS, cloaky fleet uncloaks and they get waylayed. And this is just one tactic emerging from the whole thing.


Maybe the Devs have thought of this already and this is pointless, but hey, I did my share of suggestions so far :P

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Thing is, if a comm array puts you in a local chat, it IS a detection array. You played EVE, you know the issue with local chat, it's used to detect people in null aec, not to talk to them...

 

Exactly my point.  This happened in EVE.  No reason it needs to work that way in DU.

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