Luminara

Any build can be pared down to a minimum of powers necessary to perform its expected tasks. Simply leveling up is one of the things which promotes this, as we gain access to and slots for more advanced powers and eschew the use of earlier powers. Consequently, most builds have an excess of powers, powers we don't use, powers we don't want, powers we don't need, and even powers we're forced to take and can't respec away. At least having the choice to replace some of those powers with mules gives us some appreciable utility out of our excess.

Some powers grant Toxic Defense, some don't. This is one which doesn't (currently). Maneuvers does, but Weave doesn't, to give a couple of other examples. Until/unless the HC team explains the rule behind which powers grant Toxic Defense and which don't, we can only assume that this is by design. Toxic Defense was added recently.

Meant to type physicists. Thanks for peer-reviewing!

I'm reviewing the published paper, and from what I'm seeing, no, no-one's discovered anything. First, it's a theoretical physics paper (and none of the authors are theoretical physicists), not an experiment. Nothing was created, observed or discovered. That's not to say that theoretical physics has to rely on anything but mathematics, but until some evidence is observed, properly analyzed and verified, it's just that, math and guessing. The video is hype and click-bait. Second, it's speculation on the Casimir effect and how it could be used to create a warp bubble-like effect at the nanoscale level, not a potentially applicable technology applied at the macroscale level. It's doubtful this could be scaled up, even if it proved, experimentally, to be viable, as the Casimir effect is limited to a distance of a few billionths of a meter. Not a few billion meters, a few billionths (nanometers). Third, the lead author previously built an engine which was claimed to have violated the laws of physics. That turned out to be a false positive in his team's measurements due to their improper accounting of variables. With this paper, he declined to publish the data associated with it, offering only summaries and references. That's sketchy, considering his past history of observational bias. Lastly, wrong forum. This belongs in Off-Topic.

I use the mace for culinary purposes. Sort of like an impromptu Slap Chop, but more RRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH. Mmm... maced potatoes...

I completed both sides with my vigilante Ice/Willpower sentinel this morning, solo. Didn't encounter this bug, but I already had every available contact unlocked, and am at 50+3 on that character, so those may be variables (level and contacts waiting to be spoken with) in reproducing the problem.

Flying cars have already been prototyped, some with the intent to go into production, but they've never been legalized or mass-produced, and likely never will unless they're controlled by something other than a human driver. People can't drive ground-based cars now without crashing into everything between them and their destination, no government in their right mind would allow those same people to fly.

My personal rules for boosting are: If it's a common IO and I'm not at the cap for whatever it does, I boost it. I have a single ToHit Debuff common IO slotted in Rise to the Challenge on my main, and it's boosted to +5 (the other five slots are occupied by 5/6 Panacea). If it's a */End purple IO, I boost it. I do not boost any other purples, only the */End. Purple sets offer more than enough Accuracy, Recharge and * (the specific attribute for the set, like Hold or Damage) for all purposes, but shaving a little endurance usage off of these powers is never a bad thing. If I'm frankenslotting the power, I boost the frankenslot IOs. If I take Stealth and slot it with 3 Def/End IOs, for example, I boost all three of those. It's like getting an extra IO without the slot cost. I'll break these rules in a heartbeat if doing so will achieve a desired outcome, such as perfecting a gap-less attack chain, but I tend to stick to them for most of my characters and slotting approaches.

The +X boosts will apply all the way down to level 1. The enhancements will perform as though they were 5 levels higher. Example: if you do exemplar down to level 1, those enhancements will perform as though they were level 6 (which, the way exemplaring hammers enhancement values below level 25, equates to "not much better"). The set bonuses on those level 50 Preventative Medicine IOs will be lost at level 46, when you go more than three levels below the level of the IOs.

If you +5 a bunch of level 20 IOs, yes, they'll perform like level 25 IOs, they'll continue to perform like level 25 IOs all the way up to 50+3, and you'll keep the set bonuses. But they won't perform like level 30 IOs, or level 50 IOs, whereas attunement will allow them to do just that. You'll be shorting yourself potentially critical attribute increases in the long run by boosting them instead of attuning them. And if you boost them at any level above their minimum, you'll be locking yourself into that level as the lowest level at which you can exemplar without losing the bonuses conferred by those IOs in the set. Attuned, they'll function as whatever level you're currently at, and not drop bonuses until you exemplar below the minimum level for the entire set. Yes, the same applies to LotG +Recharge IOs. You can boost them, but you're better served by using attuned ones instead. You also save merits/inf* by attuning them, if you do it by unslotting and selling them on the market, then buying the same IOs in the attuned version. Whatever losses you might incur from the sales are more than offset by the costs of boosters and catalysts that you won't have to purchase.

If @Yomo Kimyata were driving the price of unslotters higher, that would benefit new players, as they can acquire ~200+ merits at level 1, without engaging in a single second of combat, and turn them into unslotters to sell at those flip-inflated prices, netting even greater profits than they otherwise would.

Jet packs have been around for decades. My favorite thus far is the one Yves Rossy designed in 2006, a winged jet pack not terribly dissimilar to the ones in the game (a wonderful example of science fiction preceding science). In 2012, he appeared on an episode of Top Gear (Season 18, episode 5) in a race against a rally car. He's still performing demonstrations as recently as 2020. And someone out there is having fun in California right now.

If my conclusion is accurate, there is likely no fix. Movement after a K* occurs isn't a flagged or notated type of movement, nor is it likely that it could be flagged or notated, as the duration is varied in multiple ways. A Suppress MovementControl/MovementFriction flag couldn't be tied to the K* magnitude without potentially infringing on a player character's mobility unnecessarily. Nor would a suppression tied to the expected duration of the K* work, for the same reason. There would inevitably be suppression of the movement variables when no suppression would be warranted, leading to situations no less frustrating than being knocked around. Imagine, for instance, trying to jump away from a critter, only to discover that you can only jump straight up because your MovementControl and MovementFriction have been suppressed. The movement code and/or the related variables would have to be rewritten from the ground up, and probably the K* code rewritten again in concert, to resolve this by redefining what constitutes movement altogether and treat K* as an entirely separate, non-movement, mechanic. I doubt we'll see that happen, given the scope of such a project. This has nothing to do with K*-weak critters. I specified that with the following line.

No, not the film. Something's been nibbling away at the back on my mind for a long time. I noticed it on the original servers, but never paid much attention to it. This week, while I was hammering away at badges for Legionette, I ran the Founder's Falls safeguard mission numerous times, and it started to gnaw at me again. Certain critters, Council/5th Column Wolf critters and Crey * Tanks, for example, can be kept on their backs with practically any K* attacks. A gentle tap is enough to knock them down/back/up. One of my cats pawing in the litterbox will send them flopping and bouncing around. They're so susceptible to K* that it's even reliable when they're in the middle of an animation, and we've all seen critters ignore 100% Chance to K* powers when they're animating something (because the animation sequencer is a dick). Yet, there's no K* weakness listed in their attributes, and this is not something which began after the KB code overhaul, it was happening from the earliest days of the game. There's an unaccounted, unrecognized variable at work here. I suspect that this is occurring due to an unexpected interaction between MovementControl/MovementFriction and K*. The critters which seem to be affected by K* in this way all have extremely high MovementControl/MovementFriction, and K* is, essentially, movement imposed on the target. And if it is an interaction between MovementControl/MovementFriction and K*, wouldn't that also have some implications in our use of combat mobility powers and travel powers which offer high MovementControl/MovementFriction, leading to our extreme dislike of K* on our characters specifically because the very powers we've relied on for in-combat mobility have been making K* more likely to happen to us as well? I also find myself wondering how many of the K* powers were balanced with lower damage because they were tested against the wrong critters, against critters which had excessive MovementControl/MovementFriction, and gave the impression that they were too strong to warrant a higher damage scalar, even with low K* chances, because they were so "good" under those test conditions.

You have children aging you prematurely. I don't. Who's the fogey? 😛

The same way someone got their chocolate into someone else's peanut butter. Wow. It sounded so innocent in the commercials, but reading it now...

Because many of them instill a sense of punishment. I have a Savage/something scrapper. I like the character, but I don't like trying to use Savage Melee because I have to watch the combo stacks and use them at 4 so I'm not arbitrarily penalized (using at 5 stacks results in loss of the ability to gain new stacks for a short period). I'm not playing the game, I'm not watching the action, I'm not enjoying the animations, I'm not responding viscerally to the combat, I'm just juggling the combo mechanic and trying to get through that spawn without fucking up and being slapped on the wrist for not paying attention to the stacks. If I hit 5, I have to slow down and wait until one or more drops, so I can use my big hitter without losing access to the mechanic entirely; or I have to suck it up and give up having stacks for the next X seconds. I have better, and far more enjoyable, things to do with my time than stare at one icon on the screen. I can do that without logging into the game. I suspect that's true of most players. On the flip side, my main is a Staff Melee brute, and I have no quibbles with the combo mechanic in that set. I don't care if I "waste" it, or if I miss it, because I know it'll always come back after three more attacks. I'm not obligated to stare at that one icon with Staff Melee because it's a fairly implemented combo mechanic with no penalty for failing to ignore the game in favor of that one icon.

From what I recall of the discussions on the original forums, the theoretical bonus XP per teammate (to compensate for XP being shared) was never quantified. This would be an excellent opportunity to do so, if you're so inclined and have sufficient additional accounts (i don't, nor will my sad little laptop support multiple instances of the game without dropping to an unplayable framerate). Test with a single character, your farmer, defeating a single critter at +0, +1, +2, +3 and +4 (to determine the baseline and account for level adjustment when adding more teammates (as the game natively adjusts critter level upward when team size increases)). The critter should be identical, other than level variance, for each data point. If the original critter is a level 50 Council Marksman, for instance, then the test should be repeated on a Council Marksman every time. Note the XP for each defeat, and the level of the critter defeated. Then add one teammate and defeat the test critter, noting the XP for each teammate and critter level. Repeat that second step six more times, adding one teammate each time and jotting down the XP earned by each member of the team and the level of the critter, until you have the results for a full team of 8. Bring the results here and we'll do the math (and someone can add it to the wiki).

Sausage. Like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man, but a lot gorier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes_Palimpsest

Ha! The maul worked! He's still short a few... maybe I should hit him again, just in case.

Hey, whoa there, hold up. He actually is stuck at 999. Perhaps some percussive maintenance? *thwaps @Shenanigunner* Hm... let me try with my 8lb maul...

You've earned it for all of the useful little things you've created.

Congratulations, @Katharos! And thanks for the mental exercise, @Yomo Kimyata.