Rudra

Looking at City of Data... Fault is weird.... I'm looking at the Scrapper version, and Fault executes two different versions. The 1st version, Stone Melee.Fault Scrapper, does no damage, has a guaranteed KD effect, and a guaranteed Mag 2 Stun effect for 2 seconds. The 2nd version, Stone Melee.Fault Cone Scrapper, has a 100% chance of doing damage with a 5% chance of doing a little more damage to low tier mobs, but lacks the KD and Stun effects. So... I guess report this as a bug that you aren't getting the damage component applied as well?

It's not a question of self-preservation. It's a question of logical and efficient use of resources. The presented AI doesn't seem like it lacks self-preservation as a goal, it seems like it is actively seeking its own destruction and the destruction of its assets. Edit: Oh, and I should also point out that just because a robotic shell or body includes comms, that doesn't mean there is a CPU to override or take control over, or that those comms are even connected to robotic control systems. In the case of the Freakshow and most of the Arachnos "robots", in order to take over their bodies, you have to attach a control unit to seize control from the organic components that are their control units unless the AI has a means of overwriting or taking over organic brains. In which case, why didn't it just take control of the PCs? (Edit again: That was something I didn't understand or like about the Battlestar Galactica reboot. "We have to go low tech or the Cylons will remotely take over our craft!" Uhm, why not just make your ships and fighters without remote radio or wireless control or software access? If you limit access to your computer systems to physical interfaces rather than radio or wireless update capabilities, then they can't be remotely seized and you can use as state of the art electronic systems as you want. Best defense against remote hacking? "Air gapping". Keep your systems isolated except for direct physical, in-person access. You still have networked comms, and you include as many counter-measures as you can against Cylon interception, jamming, and mimicry as you can, but if your control systems are isolated and can only be changed at the base/ship by direct hands-on access, then the Cylons having exceptional remote hacking ability means nothing unless they attach a drone or other launched device that burrows into the craft and then overrides the computer software.)

I don't like the "took one for the team" part. That's a cheap way to write off characters. Hells, even in Justice League looked at the cliche of a trope and said "Nope". When Batman was steering the League's orbiting base to crash into the Hawks' facility to keep it from wiping out Earth, Superman tore his way back into the falling station looking rather pissed as he grabbed Batman and flew him out of the station before it hit. There are so many ways around that self sacrifice bit. The players can disable the steering thrusters after setting the course and then all leave. A flying character can steer the satellite down until it is impossible to redirect to unwanted areas, tear or blast their way out, and fly off. A teleporting character can just teleport out after redirecting the satellite becomes pointless and keep teleporting to safety. The controls that steer the satellite can be destroyed after setting course with the same effect as destroying steerage thrusters. Creative players can figure out even more ways. I don't like perma-death scenarios in video games. Setting aside my pet peeve over forced character death, the AI itself doesn't make sense. The OP reads like the AI is suicidal and so makes all its bots also suicidal. Destroying its own facilities and combat force as anything other than absolute last resort is not a sensible AI. You can take a page from the TF or SF (I can't remember which version) where you fight Reischman at the end, but instead of just 20 minutes of constant ambushes, the mission can spawn constant ambushes of drone swarms or combat bots or whatever that the players have to deal with. And to keep it from being a farm, make these constant ambush units worth 0 xp and inf' or very little xp and inf'. Have the AI doggedly defending its assets rather than throwing them away. Only have the AI destroy its assets when that asset is lost to take out the team and deny assets to its enemies. (Edit: If you want a timer, make it something other than the AI throwing its assets away. Like you have X time before the AI's system at that facility finishes breaking through military firewalls and seizing military drone vehicles and combat robots, making the AI effectively unassailable through conventional means. Or it is hacking into nuclear control systems across the globe and if you don't complete the mission in time, the world is a nuclear apocalypse. [Which obviously won't happen because of game reasons, but it does fail the TF.]) (Edit again: Or the timer could be the time before the AI activates a floor defense system which instant wipes out the party on the floor. So defeating the floor boss guarding the elevator buys you time by virtue of being on a different floor than the one the AI just triggered as death trap.) I do like the split the team for different objectives part, as long as it is not mandatory and the objectives are not linked for destruction or deactivation at the same time. The team faces a harder fight if they split up, but the mission provides benefits for doing so. Conversely, teams that stay together face easier fights for being able to directly aid each other in combat, but there are mission penalties for doing so. Edit: Also, you're going to run into network and coding problems between different factions. Praetorian and Rikti assets would most likely have had their networking and programming evolve differently than on Primal Earth. So they wouldn't be able to interface with a Primal AI without some external adjustments. And most of what we think are robots in Arachnos are actually robotic shells operated by a human head inside the 'robot'.

Beast Mastery is all about commanding nature, so how is that not a nature set? It's like an uber Ranger, Hunter, or Druid class in fantasy lore. Like @Greycat said, what exactly are you looking for as a nature set? Because the carve outs for what you don't consider nature has me thoroughly baffled.

I remember running around with 10 costumes for several of my alts well before then. That doesn't mean I'm remembering right, but your presented time frame feels wrong. If only because you could do all 3 tailor missions blue side, transfer red side, and do them all again for 8 costume slots including the Halloween one. And the Going Rogue update was not in the last year of the game's life.

Or Beast Mastery?

Explain how eliminating tedium makes the game easier. When getting buffs is essentially free, only costing 1 to 3 common salvage, having a limitation on length of availability becomes its cost. The cheapest temp power from START is 5,000 inf. Buying 3 common salvage from the AH can be 15 inf' for all 3. And those temp powers from START come with their own limitations, in the number of charges they give. And to the best of my knowledge, you can't buy more than 1 of each temp power at a time. (I may be wrong, I don't buy temp powers.) START's amplifiers have been used as a reference/justification for empowerment station buffs to stack up to 8 hours. However, at level 50, those are 2,500,000 inf' per hour of use. (At level 1, that is still 1,000 inf' per hour of use.) @Clave Dark 5, to the best of my ability to interpret forum posts, wants equilibrium. Right now, empowerment station buffs are basically free with the caveat you can only have 1 of any given buff at a time and it is limited to 90 minutes duration. And asking for that duration limit to be removed without something to apply a cost to compensate for it, means that players can always have those empowerment station buffs on their characters for a pittance in procuring common salvage. (Edit again: At least right now, they have to spend the time returning to a SG base to craft a new buff. That time is also the buff's cost.) I'm for players using the empowerment stations. Too many forget they even exist and what they do. They are there to provide buffs for our characters, so use them. However, they should either retain their 90 minute non-stacking limit, or they should have another cost applied so players and their characters aren't always running around with free buffs. (Edit: Or the craft clickable to activate power version works for me too. You can still get 3 hours of use that way, so those calling for stacking should still be happy.)

When the argument is to not make the game any easier, that is not a solid rebuttal.

Typically with a kusarigama, you throw the weight, never the kama. The kama isn't exactly a good thrown projectile, especially connected to a chain. Instead, the kama is used to strike the target you catch with the chain.

Didn't know that. So that lends more credence to the biological component theory.

That would still entail the Hamidon's infection with creating a secondary network, or at least usurping the existing network, after disconnecting the CPU's access to the lines it normally uses to control the 'bot so the infection can control the 'bots' actions instead. There isn't enough visible biomass given what we see and know of Praetorian Clockwork construction for the infection to simply imprison the 'bot with sufficient strength to keep the 'bot from either destroying itself trying to get free, the 'bot destroying the infection's tendrils, or the infection physically containing and manipulating a resisting bot.

That isn't all that weird when you think about it, depending on how the Praetorian Hamidon infects his victims. If he taps into the victim's nervous system, then yeah, it gets weird as his organics try to subvert the programming of mechanical creatures. So unless the Praetorian Clockwork include organic CPUs or similar, it doesn't make sense. However, if the infection creates a secondary network, then it could override both a biological and a mechanical victim's neural system. The difference here is the victim's own nervous system or wiring is disconnected as the Hamidon's created network corrupts the shell, basically turning the victims into puppets aware of the acts they are committing, but possessing no say in the matter. (Only for the organic victims to eventually be Devoured into a new life form, while the mechanical victims simply struggle in their prison until they break.) Kind of makes you view Hamidon in a different light when you consider the possibilities of how he infects and turns his victims in Praetoria, huh? Makes Primal Hamidon seem more humane.

While the original Mek Men of the 5th Column may not have been networked back in WWII, the current robots of the 5th Column and Council are networked. At least partially. That's why in that one arc I can't remember the contact for, you have to fight through Council (or was it 5th Column?) robots that have been hacked and turned against their creators. (They are also hostile to the players even if they should themselves be robots, but that is because the game treats all player characters as humans.) There is even a mission, I believe red side as part of one of the patron arcs, where you go forward in time and the robots have taken over the world with any surviving humans being slaves. (Not as severe as the Matrix, and only slightly less Judgement Day than Terminator, but it is there.) Like @biostem said, Primal Earth Clockwork including Babbage, Paladin, and the other GM I can't remember cannot be part of this because they are psionically maintained extensions of the Clockwork King; who is not a robot. Praetorian Clockwork could be problematic as part of a Primal Earth uprising because of likely differences in coding and networking between Praetorian and Primal designs. However, Praetorian designs converted to Primal forces such as Longbow Menders and Arachnos BCUs should be fine since their coding and networking should be updated to Primal Earth norms. 5th Column and Council robots already have precedent for doing this in the robot apocalypse future you go to in that one arc and with the blue side 5th Column or Council robot hack mission. Malta robots could be interesting to figure out if they should be part because the mission A Titan Named Joe shows that the onboard battle computer can most definitely override the human brain operating the robot, but there is also the question of the human brain taking back control. Arachnos robots would largely be inappropriate aside from the BCUs. While there are some that are robots like Number 204, most Arachnos robots are actually cyborgs with their human brain in control. Edit: Oh, and Rikti Drones could also be a problem to fit lore wise since like the Praetorian Clockwork, their code format and network protocols were developed in another dimension, and so are not likely to be able to integrate into the uprising.

You get 1 minute duration of day job benefit for every 2 hours you are logged off in that location, up to 2 hours duration. Are you staying logged off for 120 hours at Wentworth's on that character to get the 1 hour duration? If not, your time is going to be respectively less. Edit: Sorry, if you have the day job badge, then it is 1.4 hours logged off for every minute. So are you logged off for 84 hours at that location if you have the day job badge?

One of the complaints about the OP was that there is no mentionable cost to base empowerment station buffs. The reference are the amplifiers players can get from START. (Edit: And that reference was used by @Laucianna as justification as well. So using Start as a reference for pricing seems fair to me.) My proposed costs are for a level 50. So just have the costs scale down like they do for the amplifiers from START. So the base cost for level 1s would be 8 inf' for the 2nd hour progressing up to 512 inf' for all but the recharge ones, while the recharge ones would start at 125 inf at level 1 progressing up to 8,000 inf' for 8 hours of recharge. For those saying that there should be a cost, I think that is fair. I personally think players are fine with 90 minutes per buff and dipping back into their base to refresh. Or go with @Luminara's suggestion. The costs stay as is, nothing added, but you can carry 1 charge of each buff around with you until you click it. You can stack 3 hours that way or just use the buff when it is time. Believe it or not, that was an attempt to find a middle ground. Not as elegant a solution as @Luminara's, but a middle ground nonetheless. (Edit: And the 1st hour is still free of inf' costs.)

😋

Trout Combat/Fish Slapping first please. 😜

To the best of my knowledge, the server that does so uses up player character costume slots to do so. Some of us use our costume slots for our characters. (The devs also said they preferred to find their own way of doing so here. I would rather see what they have in mind than use that other server's method.)

Yeah, I thought you could use salvage racks to make it work, then realized even they wouldn't. I've already edited the post.

Then how is this? The time gets reduced to 1 hour duration, but you can stack up to 8 hours. Each hour after the 1st you craft uses twice as many components as the previous hour, with the second hour also having a 100K crafting cost. So it would go as follows: 1st hour: Normal crafting as is except for reduced duration. 2nd hour: Requires twice as many resources plus 10K inf' (except for recharge speed which costs 50k inf'). 3rd hour: Requires twice as much as previous. (So components are quadrupled cost of normal and costs 20K inf' except for recharge speed which costs 100K inf'.) 4th hour: Requires twice as much as previous. 5th hour: Requires twice as much as previous. 6th hour: Requires twice as much as previous. 7th hour: Requires twice as much as previous. 8th hour: Requires twice as much as previous for crafting cost of 128 of each component and 6.4M inf' except for the recharge which costs 32M inf'. Total resources for all hours combined: 255 of each salvage and 1,270,000 inf' except for recharge which is 6,350,000 inf'. Edit yet again: (To move previous edit up here.) 1st hour: Normal crafting but is reduced to 1 hour duration. 2nd hour: Adds 20k inf' cost except for recharge which is 312.5k inf'. 3rd-8th hours: Doubles inf' costs of previous hour. Total resources for all 8 hours combined: 8 of each salvage and 2,540,000 inf' except for recharge at 20,000,000 inf'. So what happens if you craft 8 hours of buff, play for roughly 3 hours, and go to renew your buff? Well, if you have anywhere from 4 hours and 1 minute of time left to 5 hours of time left, then you are crafting your 6th, 7th, and 8th hour buffs again. If you have 5 hours and 1 minute of time left up to 6 hours of time left, then you are crafting your 7th and 8th hour buffs. What if you played for less than an hour and still have more than 7 hours of buff left? Then you can top off at the cost of the 8th hour buff. Personally, I think @Luminara has the best means of answering this suggestion to meet the requirements of those that want the stackable effect and those that think just going back to your base as needed to refresh isn't a problem. When you craft a buff, you get a temp power that you have to click to apply. This means you can save it for whenever you want. If you choose to use it immediately? Then you can craft another temp power that cannot be used until the previous active effect wears off or you cancel it. With that, there is no need to worry about your buffs wearing off while waiting for a TF, SF, raid, or trial to launch. You just don't click it until it is time to go. And if you click it and craft another, then you're carrying around 3 hours of buff. More than long enough for anything in the game.

Silent Sentinel is in Echo: Atlas Park now. To reach any Echo zone, go to Ouroboros and you will find the portal behind the tower. Rookie is now in Atlas Park instead of Silent Sentinel.

The not exemp'ed I will concede. The rest I find not relevant because most of the time, I don't either and it takes me only about an hour to run any TF/SF I'm on either solo or on a small team. And we aren't speed running them either. I haven't met a TF leader yet that when asked for a few minutes after getting invited didn't allow the player(s) a couple minutes to do what they needed to do before launching the TF/SF. And as far as MSRs are concerned? On the ones I've been on, there were so many buffers pumping up everyone that I doubt a lowbie, midbie, or anyone else would even notice that their empowerment station buffs wore off during the fighting. Edit: I would like to also point out that I am fine with the craft a usable power but can only have 1 in inventory at a time, and only 1 in effect at a time, proposal from @Luminara. That would address the concerns provided in this thread while still limiting the stacking ability of the buffs like some of the rest of us would like to maintain. (Though I would still want the buff itself to be cancel-able by the player.)

I could agree with that.

Make it 1,000,000 maybe, but 100K is nothing. That won't even get you a rare salvage.

The "fix" would be for Gauntlet to not apply to every ability. There is no reason why Gauntlet should trigger off of the Pacify power.