BlackSpectre

OK! Really liking your ChatRanges popmenu! What I find especially valuable are the ranges you chose for the various levels: whisper, indoor, etc. I know it took a lot of testing to settle on those distances. Great job! And I even like the names you chose for them! I was going to suggest a 10 ft range for talking in a small group or across a table, etc., but in all honesty with all the testing you've done, you've probably already tested that range. And so... to your expertise I defer. 🙂 I do recommend you add the ability to check what chat range you're currently set to though... Divider Option "Check Ranges" "Speak_range$$listen_range" I put it at the bottom so as not to interfere with quick role playing. On my version of your popmenu I added the actual feet after the names just so I would have a better understanding on how far the "sound" is going. In practice, once I get used to it, I can totally see just using the names. Here's an example of what I did: Option "Whisper 3'" "Speak_range 3" Now if I could only find that dice rolling popmenu I ran across once... 🙂

I think I just couldn’t find this .mnu file or the mod at the site. I was doing a lot yesterday and I admit I didn’t look too hard. Hey, as long as I have you here, do you happen to know the reasoning for why the COH Modder changed to installing .piggs rather than just the .mnu files?

Ah, I see what they did! The used the different color of the “&” hot key to color the “+” and the numbers differently. They didn’t assign a color at all! I guess there’s no way to color the Option name. Bummer. We can color message text in a command, however. Blah. Hey ATC, I looked through the .piggs last night and couldn’t find it. What was the name of the .pigg file? Was it in the Assets folder? Also, do you know of a way to read the .bin files that we can extract from the .pigg fikes? I’m just full of questions today! 🙂

Does anyone know how to color the Option name in Popmenus? I see in the Quickchat menu that Homecoming did it with the Notoriety Difficulty Level sub-menu. Does anyone know how to get a copy of Homecoming's current Quickchat menu? I could probably just look in there...

Having trouble with the website. Would it be possible just to attach the .mnu file here? Thanks!

Hey! I thought it would be a good idea to call your attention to a simple slash command called /conprint. It is able to take a message and send it to the System chat channel. This is perfect for giving ourselves feedback that a command we just executed actually worked. I know some people have been using the chat variable $name to do this, but that gives you a double tell. /conprint is smooth and seamless. Works great in binds, macros, and pop menus. Anyway, just a tip. Check out the wiki page on the command that I linked above. 🙂

Wow. Sorry to see you go, PK. I know we only just started talking, but dang! We were like kindred souls. Messing around with the game mechanics and mods, etc. I'm sorry you were slighted by the Homecoming crew (or at least feel that way. I didn't read what happened and wasn't involved, sorry). But if what you love about the game is the community, the camaraderie you get from us, and the joy you get out of helping many, many players who have the same love of the game... then stay, PK. We weren't the ones who dissed you, and yet we're the ones who will suffer from your absence, not the devs. Anyway, I'm sure if you ever decide to come back that nothing will be held against you. You're always welcome here.

For the buff icon in the buff bar of the Status window for the Warmth of Prometheus temporary auto-power... The buff icon description reads +7.0%, but it should read +7.5% for recharge, damage, and healing bonuses.

Typos highlighted: Power description for Ice Slick Dominator/Controller reads: 'You can create a large patch of ice at a targeted area, causing all foes that pass through it to tale cplose their footing. Those caught in the Ice Slick are dramatically slowed, take cold damage over time, tend to fall down and will be unable to jump.'

Very good set. Meteor is awesome! Love the sound effects and the huge explosion! Brace yourself… Here it comes!!! Incoming!!! Lol It’s a bummer that stalagmite , a tier 8 power performs like a tier 2 power if you’re not on the ground or have built up enough combos. There are many times when neither of those circumstances are possible and it ends up being useless. Would be nice if its base damage was built up a bit and let the combo be extra but not necessary for the power to be useful as a damage power. I took Martial Combat as my secondary and the power Reaction Time when 3 slotted makes any endurance problems a thing of the past!

A lot of people miss out on the storyline merely because they don't read... they can, they just choose not to. Making the text spoken by actors would be great! Just audio.

SEISMIC MASTERY FOR BLASTER EPIC POWER POOL PLEASE. I just rolled a seismic blaster and was very disappointed there were no epic powers that had a stone theme. I ended up picking Electricity Mastery, and reduced all the special effects to a low as I could get them... cuz my seismic dude isn't electric, but yeah, wish there was stone armor, stone shield, another stone attack, a stone hold, stone psionic defense, mud pots, sand storm, stone pet, earthquake, ground smash, stone hibernation, stone machine gun, tunneling teleport, volcano ranged AOE, hot steam thermal AOE perception/defense debuff and minor DOT damage, stone wall, space debris cyclone, or any of a number of cool epic stone powers. There's a lot to choose from.

There’s a lot that could be improved, changed, added, and removed. A lot. So instead of a lengthy list, let me just suggest 2 things… 1) no defense or resistance caps, soft or otherwise. Make the combat difficulty scale into perpetuity. Eliminate the possibility of any character to be completely invulnerable no matter how many mobs at the same level attack them. As far as I can tell, this is the biggest problem in the game. 2) Make missions less consistent and introduce surprise or unpredictability that goes against our expectations. Increase wandering groups of mobs, randomize ambushes, randomize mob group placement and numbers, include environmental traps, include tactical and strategic traps that are unexpectedly sprung in already difficult circumstances or circumstances that put the player up against the wall looking for a way out, include intellectual puzzles to solve that make sense in the context of the mission/story, have more than one storyline or outcome for each mission, etc. in short, try to make repeating missions less hum drum and boring while at the same time spicing up the game.

You're out of luck. /emailread and /emaildelete are internal commands that can only be used by the game system. If we were privy to the indexed inventory ID number for each email, we'd probably be able to use it... but that info is not accessible to players. Also, an "indexed" item is one where the game system assigns an ID number to the item that is based on the order of occurrence but also on the given structure of the data. It can potentially assign each item a new ID number each time the game client is restarted. Although not completely random, for all intents and purposes for the player, it's basically random. According to the game files, it utilizes an unsigned 64 bit process (U64) to do this. This means that an email message could have an ID number anywhere from 0 to 2^64-1 (2 to the 64th power minus 1). That's 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (yep, that's quintillion). The ID number could be anything within that huge range, and the likelihood that it's a manageable number between 0-100 is remotely possible but very, very low. This effectively makes the message ID number of any email message impossible to figure out. Any slash command that requires a message ID number is therefore also impossible for players to use, including /emailread and /emaildelete that both require message ID numbers. UPDATE: 12/18/22 I was just made aware of some information that shed light on the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to the in-game email system! Everything I wrote above I did find in the configuration files, and it did seem to be related to email... and it still might be. However, there's a lot of guesswork I'm doing since I'm not a programmer and can't just read the code and understand it like an expert. The new information I got was the ID numbers for 3 of my most recent global emails. They are surprisingly small numbers and sequential. The IDs were: 920, 921, 923. I have no idea if these ID numbers are the "Message ID" numbers that /emailread and /emaildelete require. All I know is that neither command seems to work... still. I tried reading and deleting messages from both my global and my local emails. Nada.

It depends. The difference between /target_X commands and /team_select commands is that /target_X only works for targets that are in line of sight. Targets to the side and behind you can't be targeted. Whereas /team_select will select the target no matter where they are. I think the distance to target something using /target_X commands is perception distance, not power range. If my memory is correct, /team_select doesn't have a targeting range limit. The above macro will cycle through different teammates who are alive and within line of sight with each click. To use /team_select you'll need to create either a rotating bind or a rotating macro (AKA text binds or text macros). What I usually end up doing for powers that buff teammates is assigning a /team_select bind to each of the keys on the number pad (1-8), and then activate the power using one of the other keys on the numberpad such as "0", ".", or "+", etc. I'm not sure, but you might be able to assign /team_select to each key in Options--> Keymapping tab. Also, I vaguely remember a problem with binds meant to target/select something and then execute a power when combined in the same bind string. I think the target needs to be solidly selected first, pause a few milliseconds, and then activate the power. To do this I used the "+" prefix in combination with /bind_load_file to create a rotating toggle key bind so that the target is selected on key press, and the power activated on key release, but it still doesn't work perfectly. If the key is pressed too quickly, it messes up... and it didn't work well for healing powers that are frantically being fired off during combat. Long story, short... I recommend just using the numberpad.

So then is inf gain directly related to xp gain then? Xp goes down, then inf goes down. Xp goes up, then inf goes up? obviously, number of powers and class (minion, lt, boss, etc) i”are 2 factors. But is xp also a factor that’s considered when the game determines inf gain?

Thanks man. I'm an active farmer... but the changes still have a pretty big impact. Once my fire defense is floored to 10% or less, my health goes down so quickly that I need to retreat... even when using my heal. They just slaughter me if I stand my ground. Yes, I'm at 90% fire resistance and something like 85% S/L resistance. When using my Lore pet, the situation changes drastically. The pet takes enough aggro to make any Defense Debuff much smaller. So I can see dual boxing, using 2 toons, as an effective counter... even without changing my farmer's stats. But dual boxing is a pain. The AE map, The Story of a Real Big Dog, is a classic fire farm. The mobs have both ranged and melee attacks, and they are well built. Deadly. So I'm at a loss as to why they're now giving less influence. They should actually give more. They are far more deadly now than they ever were! I have tried some newer Page 5 fire maps made by people to maximize inf gain, but it's the same amount as I'm getting from Real Big Dog (I convert everything into inf gained per hour (inf/hr). With Real Big Dog I was about to make about 41 million inf per hour. Now it's 30 mil.

Does anyone know of a document that lists all enhancements sets and the totals for their aspects? What I mean is once you have all 6 enhancements, what are the totals for the aspects such as Damage, Endurance, Recharge, Accuracy, Endurance Modification, Healing, etc.? Just to be clear, I'm NOT taking about set bonuses.

I can tell you, after being away from COH for 7 years, I would have been seriously bummed if BlackSpectre was taken. I was just lucky it wasn't (however "Black Spectre" was taken... so got it by the skin of my teeth). If I ever take another long hiatus, I'd be very bummed if that name was given to someone else. But COH is a different animal for me than most games. It's kind of my digital home. Other games, if their names were deleted, wouldn't phase me at all. Please NEVER give my name away, even if I NEVER come back to play (right, like that will ever happen! LOL). The name policy could still be improved with a more nuanced approach... or just add more nuances. For example, I'd be OK with making most level 50 names available after 2 years of not playing the game at all (on any character, any server). However, I would permanently save toon names that are also the player's account name. One permanent name per account. Just a suggestion.

Just to add my voice... I know I've been saying I have no problems with the changes. My toons appeared to handle the changes fine. I liked the extra aggro from by-standing enemies not involved in the fight but within aggro/perception range. And then... finally... RNG kicked in. My fire farming toon was killed 3 times. After that, he had to RETREAT to a more isolated spot to reduce the aggro, and the number of times mobs get to roll the to-hit dice. The 3% Defense Debuff from fire sword when COMBINED with 3-6 times more chances for mobs to hit you ends up being a very deadly combination! I normally run Story of a Real Big Dog on the asteroid map. I've raised my fire defense up to 50%, but that doesn't seem to help. I'm eventually gong to try to make fire defense higher, maybe 55% to 59%, ... but it won't be easy and will require a complete reworking. That will take a lot of time. Another thing I just noticed, and I have no idea when this change was made.... but Real Big Dog now gives 25% less influence than it did the last time I looked into it! That's a BIG HIT. I understand the XP changes, but what happened to Influence gain??? Last time I checked, Read Big Dog yielded 3,444,894 inf per run. Now it yields 2,524,350 inf per run. What happened??? Did I miss discussion about lowering influence gain or something?

OK. Thanks, ATC. I've moved these commands into the "Working Commands" section, and have rewritten their pages. trade_accept https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Trade_accept_(Slash_Command) coalition_decline https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Coalition_decline_(Slash_Command) team_decline https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Team_decline_(Slash_Command)trade_decline https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Trade_decline_(Slash_Command) The last 3 commands are actually non-functional, but they trigger errors that in effect cancel the invitations. So they kind of work... sort of. ******************************** UPDATE: On further reflection, I've decided to place the decline commands into the non-functional section. They really are non-functional commands. They only appear to work because of the game attempting to correct a request from a bad command. Trade_accept will stay in the Working Commands section because it actually does something and doesn't just generate errors. However, it's still only partially functional.

I'm torn. On one hand I think these commands should go in the "Working Commands" section, and on the other hand I think the should go in the "Non-functional Commands" section on the list of slash commands page at the wiki. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/List_of_Slash_Commands There are several commands that appear to only be partially functional. I figure they were either unfinished or they're internal commands used by the game system. One command is /coalition_decline and it's a good example. https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Coalition_decline_(Slash_Command) I currently have it in the "Non-functional Commands" section, but I'm troubled by the fact that this command (and the others) actually do work. They just don't work well. Also, notice that it requires 3 arguments or variables to work, which makes it very unwieldy and inconvenient to use. The other commands also need between 3-5 arguments in order to work. That's right, FIVE arguments. So what do you think? Keep it in the "Non-functional" section, or move it to the "Working Commands" section?

First, I like the idea of giving players options to make the game harder. I even like the idea of making the game harder for everyone! However... I'm not sure that incarnate powers blur the lines very much. Incarnate powers have 10 min and 15 min recharge times, that can't be shortened by recharge buffs, and don't come into play that often. Further, the defensive powers diminish over time fairly quickly. So characters who have massive AoEs are still king because they can activate their AoEs many times in the time it takes to activate an incarnate power once. Where players are getting high resists and def Is from enhancement set bonuses... not incarnate powers. That said, making the game harder = good!

In thinking about the commands we have access to that can interact with the user interface, I realized we have no way to select a tab (or a link) in a window using a command. We can open, close and resize windows. We can select menu items in context menus, but aside from chat and email tabs, there's no way to select a tab or link in a window. The command's name could be something like "/window_tab". I checked, it doesn't conflict with anything. The command would work similarly to the /contextmenu command where you could open a window with another command, and then add the "/window_tab" command to select the tab by its name. Something like: /link_info fire ball$$window_tab "detailed info" or /window_show clues$$window_tab "souvenir" or /window_show powerlist$$window_tab "incarnate abilities" Just a few examples, but there are many, many more. Anyway, just throwing the idea out there. It's a missing piece to being able to effectively manipulate the UI using slash commands, binds, and macros.

OK. I have some clues on how to make a mod for this... but no solution yet. The slash command /link_interact opens the exact context menu we're talking about here. /link_interact in turn has an internal command name of "chatlink". However, creating a popmenu with a name of either "link_interact" or "chatlink" does not work. In thinking about it, it occurred to me that the interactive nature of this context menu might mean it needs something different than a regular pop menu. The context menu needs to be able to import the character name that is clicked on within the chat window... rather than simply offer a list of menu items to select like a normal pop menu. I also found some code in the uiChat.c file that lists the exact menu items in the chatlink context menu. So it MIGHT be that this context menu can only be changed by altering the code in the configuration game files. Maybe. But I don't know for sure. So it looks like I've hit a brick wall on this project. I have no idea what to do next. 😞