Luminara

Now I find myself wondering what kind of insane hilarity would occur if someone with a Repel PBAoE were to use Fold Space...

Some veins and deposits happen that way, typically when superheated steam or water passes through ore deposits. Some are organic in origin, deposits from single-celled organisms which utilized a mineral or element while alive, sank to the ocean floor when they died and were later buried under more layers, then tectonic activity, and brought to or close to the surface tens or hundreds of millions of years later. Some are caused by natural separation of materials, heavier minerals and elements sinking lower in a magma pocket while lighter ones rise to the top, creating veins and layers naturally. One process of vein and deposit formation is even happening right now, with single-celled bacteria eating rock, concentrating things like gold in their guts and leaving behind veins when the bacterial colony dies. Well, the process of diamond formation isn't quite the same as the process of coal formation. Diamonds require significantly higher heat and pressure to form, to such a degree that real diamonds aren't actually found in coal mines, they're found in the remnants of extinct volcanoes and ancient magma deposits. That's what a kimberlite pipe is, the trace remains of the magma corridor which fed a volcano, carrying things like diamonds when magmatic upwellings occur. When diamonds are found on or near the surface, it's because weathering has eroded the stone which brought them to the surface and trapped them. In the abyssal formation of diamonds, it's not actual pieces of carbon material being crushed together, rather, it's carbon gases, like CO and CO2, compressed and heated and molecularly altered until the carbon atoms bond with one another in a very specific way. Coal forms at lower temperatures and pressures, through the repeated deposition of layers of carbon-rich organic material (plants, animals, poop (fossilized poop is called a coprolite)). A peat bog is a coal seam that never quite finished, for instance. >.> <.< I have a diverse range of interests.

They're repulsive. Come on. No-one got to that before I did? Slow morning, apparently. They'd be more utilitarian as location-targeted AoE area denial powers.

Yeah. I deliberately used the floors as modifiers instead of treating lieutenants and bosses as immune to the -Special to emphasize how little it would improve Flash Arrow. In actual play, it doesn't do anything at all unless they've got more resistance than the floor. I suppose I could've just said that, but I'm rarely a practitioner of brevity. Underlings would have the same floor as minions/players. -300% is the lowest possible value with the clamps in place (all buffs and debuffs are clamped at the top and bottom), presuming that is the clamped value (could be -400%, but unlikely). So against +3 minions, Flash Arrow's mastermind value of ~17.55% (after slotting with +56% -ToHit) would drop to ~11.41%, and with Acid's -Special it would only rise to ~14.37%. Slightly less than a 3% increase. Underlings would be slightly more impacted by the final -ToHit value (~14.04% and ~18.53%), as they con -1 to the rest of the spawn, but the gain from Acid still wouldn't be much, ~4.5%. It's also worth noting that those +3 minions and +2 underlings would have higher hit chances, so that ~3-4.5% would be of even less final value in the hit checks. That may make it more worthwhile for some players, since it is, in fact, doing something, even if that something is almost nothing, while others, such as myself, will choose to skip it. Might still be worthwhile for the -Def, considering that the T1 henches are -2 to the mastermind and might need that extra hit chance, but for mitigation, it's just not valuable from my perspective. There are too many other alternatives available to increase mitigation, or hench hit chances, without sacrificing PGA's Sleep, even if the mastermind is allowing the henches to run willy-nilly.

I was thinking about that earlier today. It would be thematically viable. Inhaling acidic vapors doesn't tend to be healthy. Acidic vapors cause watering of the eyes, difficulty breathing, pain in the throat, eyes and chest, and a build-up of fluid in the lungs. Among other things. But I wouldn't expect it to be an appreciable amount, likely no more than 5-10%. I still wouldn't bother with it in my solo builds at those percentages. Especially if it's affected by the purple patch.

Can't. -Res is a very strange mechanic. It's resisted by Resistance, it's buffed by +Damage, and it doesn't have a -Special counterpart because of those interactions. It would take a lot of extra work to create a mechanic to buff -Res without doing something odd, and a lot more time testing and straightening out issues. For instance, it might cause incoming damage on the target to be buffed, above and beyond the -Res applied, because of the way +Damage buffs +Res and -Res. Or it might cause -Res to drop Resistance values below the floor. Or, hell, it could even cause enemy attacks to be buffed in some way. -Res is one of those things best left alone.

Acid only applies 36% of the Special debuff to lieutenants and 32% to bosses, so you'd increase Flash's -ToHit from ~17.55% to ~23.87% on lieutenants and ~23.17% on bosses. That's presuming +0 foes. If you're fighting +3 foes, you're looking at something more in the range of going from ~11.41% to ~14.08% on lieutenants and ~13.78% on bosses. Basically, ~2-6% extra -ToHit, level differential dependent. Weigh that against the potential to keep every minion in your PGA awake with Acid's DoT. With a slightly improved debuff on minions (minions have a 300% -ToHit resist floor, as opposed to lieutenants (10%) and bosses (20%)), the higher the difficulty setting the lower it's going to be (purple patch) and the larger the spawns, the more attacks made and the more hitting you and your henches. Acid's going into my secondary build on all of my characters, including my masterminds, for teaming or AV/GM combat. For soloing, the DoT and lack of any broadly applicable Special debuffs in every-spawn-usage make it counter-productive. PGA's Sleep is more effective at reducing incoming damage than Acid's -Special -ToHit.

Interesting kink.

Objects we're required to defend, objects we're required to destroy, objects which might cause problems with the /interact command being added... wasn't there a patch years ago which was applied specifically because players could teleport some things they weren't supposed to be able to teleport? The desks we were supposed to defend from Crey critters? I remember something like this... Allowing any interactive object to be teleported could lead to exploits or griefing, or in some cases, break missions, objectives, AI or cause crashes.

There's nothing inherently wrong with Super Reflexes, it's just been overshadowed by shinier toys. The Defense is all positional and easy to cap, so it's viable against everything in the game, and it's got Defense debuff resistance, so it's less prone to cascade failure. In the event that attacks do bypass Defense, it has scaling Resistance. The only real problem is perception, in that other sets also allow capping Defense, and offer things like increased regeneration or a heal, or extra damage output, or other tools. Capping Defense isn't enough to make a set stand out these days, so SR doesn't have the traffic it did in the past. Much like Regeneration being the red-headed stepchild now that Willpower is here, SR lacks the appeal of other sets for similar reasons.

Thank you. That was exactly what I didn't know and needed to understand. I was wrong. 👍

The point is, as long as the streak breaker exists, 95% is irrelevant period. Whether the forced hit was at 90.01% or 95%, it's still a forced hit, and unless streakiness is addressed in some other way, or the streak breaker changed to respect successful hit rolls rather than kicking in even if a hit roll would've succeeded, you're always going to be beholden to the streak breaker's actions. The streak breaker is what determines whether we have enough +Acc or +ToHit, not the hit chance clamp.

Tanks have a little more survivability, but lower damage output than brutes, who have a higher Damage cap and Fury as an inherent. That's a rough generalization. You can make a really tanky brute, and you can make a decent damage dealer out of a tanker, but the primary role differentials (archetype scale values and caps) ensure that they're not quite interchangeable with one another. The tankiest tanker is always going to be tankier than the tankiest brute, and the most damage-dealing brute will always deal more damage than the most damage-dealing tank. IO sets, procs and creative approaches to slotting can close the gap considerably, but they'll never be exactly the same. If you solo a lot, or just don't like tanking, brutes are probably going to feel more like what you want. If you like or don't mind tanking (taking Taunt to help lock aggro on yourself is a serious consideration for optimal tanking, so it means sacrificing at least one power you might otherwise take) and aren't eyeballing every 0.1% difference in damage output, you'll be find playing a tank.

Nor would I, but the streak breaker forces a hit on the next attack at 90.01%, rather than 90.00%, which makes everything above 90.01% utterly irrelevant. It doesn't make any difference if you're at 90.01% or exactly 95.00% or 141.59%, if you miss and your next attack has a hit chance higher than 90.00%, it's a forced hit. Anything above 90% is functionally identical because of the streak breaker.

That's already done by the engine. It either rounds up, rounds down or just drops everything after the hundredth when calculating hit chances. Granularity is relative in this context. In context, it's a question of the granularity of 1-20 versus 1-100 versus 1-10,000, and how that corresponds to the 5% clamp, and specifically, the granularity of 1 miss result versus 5 miss results versus 500 miss results within that 5% and the probability of streaking miss results.

Natural and man-made disasters have something to do with that. Earthquakes, floods, fires, tornadoes, molasses and other things have destroyed buildings and landmarks over the last couple of centuries. Chicago burned, several cities in California have had to be almost completely rebuilt, cities all along the Mississippi and down south, such as New Orleans, have experienced devastating floods, anything in Tornado Alley can be considered impermanent... it's not even safe to build in places where one believes there are no disaster scenarios. There's a town in Missouri which is almost on top of a massive fault line, New Madrid. It once caused an earthquake so intense that it reversed the flow of the Mississippi river. In the northwest, there are volcanoes like Mount Saint Helens, and people have settled relatively close to some of them. Few of the oldest cities in the U.S.A. haven't experienced some kind of disaster which destroyed a significant part of the infrastructure and buildings. When nature isn't reminding us that what we make isn't going to last forever, we're accidentally torching or demolishing things ourselves. Humans aren't the most forward-thinking animals, despite our large cranial capacity. That was mostly due to the after-effects of the end of the Great Depression and the economic boom after WWII, the move out of cities and into sub-urban neighborhoods and the popularity and general availability of the automobile. People had money, they had cars and they were happy to live farther away from where they worked, so construction and expansion revolved those things. Urban decay. Partly racial tensions, partly political policies (and corruption), partly economic issues, partly response to disasters. People left areas, prices went up, tenancy and occupancy went down. Buildings and streets fell into disrepair, utility providers neglected their infrastructures. The longer it went on, the more the decay spread, until entire sections of cities were all but abandoned and falling in on themselves. No-one wanted to live in these places, work in them or build in them. As people spread out more, away from the centers of cities or sections of cities, the car was reinforced as the ideal mode of transportation. People in the U.S. loved their cars. They weren't just a mode of transportation, they were an expression of freedom and independence. Route 66, road trips, vacationing at places like the Grand Canyon, television and film, sub-urban living, a lot of influences catalyzed the image of having and driving a car as the American way. Cars themselves were not only affordable, but designed to capture the imagination as well as the eye, and they did just that. A bicycle was a couple of wheels, a frame, a seat and handlebars. It wasn't stylish or artful or impressive to look at. A 1959 Cadillac, with those outstanding rocket fins, or the mid- to late-60's Mustangs, however... those were eye-catching and awe-inspiring. Seeing meant wanting, and with the average income gradually rising, cars like these were affordable to more people. Someone working at a gas station could own something like that, rather than only someone born into wealth and privilege, and they were eager to buy them. Engine displacement, raw horsepower, were also important points. Small engines weren't desirable. Big thirsty 8-cylinder engines with aggressive rumbles and growls, enough torque to burn up the rear tires while doing donuts, they drove car development here. Even after the gas crisis in the 70's, people wanted the sheer power offered by cars. They felt good to drive, they sounded mean and some of them looked outstanding (again, Cadillac and Mustang). They excited the imagination and satisfied a deep urge to tame something almost untamable. And speed... speed was everything to some people. The more powerful a car was, the faster it could move, the greater the thrill of driving it. Drag racing on city streets, cross-country racing... the whole idea of NASCAR came from moonshiners buying cheap cars with the "right" engine, making a few modifications to speed them up and driving at breakneck speeds to outrun the Feds and local police. Speed and power ruled the road, and average people loved feeling like they were the ruler of all they surveyed. It didn't really matter whether they were driving in cities or across the entire continent, just having and driving a car were what mattered. They saved time, they were comfortable, they were private and they gave people the sense of... of having their piece of the American pie, of living the American dream. Somebodies owned and drove cars. Nobodies rode bikes. The American obsession with cars still hasn't faded. Smaller, more economical vehicles are becoming more commonplace, but the streets and highways are still primarily the domain of large, powerful vehicles with sleek looks. The price of gas being less than half of what it was a decade ago, and in some places and at some times, even down to pre-2000 prices, keeps the love affair going. As long as cheap gas and cheap cars with some grunt behind them are available, people in the U.S. aren't in a hurry to switch to two-wheelers or public transportation, and with so many living on credit, there's a mindset that any necessary change can be dealt with "tomorrow". In a newly settled place, it's not uncommon to believe that there's always more room, more resources, more whatever. If things need to change, they can change "later". Poverty, corruption and the belief that problems are someone else's problems are also common reasons for things to be left alone, especially these days. Politicians don't want to stand behind, for example, projects to renovate poor neighborhoods, because they aren't guaranteed to be re-elected by whoever moves into those neighborhoods later. Poor people don't feel like they have the power to enact change, so they typically don't try. The bigger the problem, the more likely it will be passed on to the next person in the hot seat, too. When it comes to bicycle lanes, though, it's mostly money, of which there's never enough, and people feeling like it's going to ruin the driving experience in some way, like adding delays to their commute, or changing the way a street is laid out so they have to learn a new route. We're creatures of habit, and driving is a habitual activity in the U.S. It's not easy to change that. All of those. And more. Our political structure is very encouraging of bad behavior and corruption, our legal structure makes it difficult to change things like our political structure easily (too much emphasis on the letter of the law, less on the spirit of the law), so bad politicians outnumber good politicians, and good politicians find it very difficult to do anything meaningful or important. We're also fond of what little "history" we have, since our country is still very new by comparison to Europe, Asia, the Mediterranean area, etc. A 100 year old building is seen as something to cherish and protect, not to replace. A street which has dozens of old houses is a landmark, not a potential place to institute change. Cut down a 40 year old tree on a block and you'll have the entire neighborhood coming out with pitchforks and torches. The U.S. isn't Rome, it hasn't been around for a couple of thousand years, it's barely out of its infancy, and it's still stuck in the idea that it needs to validate itself by having old things to make it relevant as a culture. You have to keep in mind that many of the settlers came from places with real history behind them, history stretching back before records, and having to start over, create a new history, also created an almost obsessive need for what history there is to be important. We have no Parthenon, no village which has been in the same place since before the Great Plague, no aqueducts from the pre-Byzantine era, no pyramids, nothing like that. No roots in the soil of history. What old things we have aren't very old, but people can point to them and say, "That's the oldest X here" and feel some sense of pride or awe. This makes them very hesitant to change them, even if they're just 50-75 year old streets or buildings. And yes, Americans tend to be short-sighted. It's an attitude reinforced by things like Social Security, governments acting like nannies, credit cards and delayed interest loans. "The problems of today can be resolved tomorrow" is the best summation I can give. It's wrong, but it's prevalent, and it's going to take time for it to fade. Some progress is being made. Richmond, VA started adding bicycle lanes several years ago, including on old bridges which couldn't be rebuilt or widened, in "historic" districts and even in the downtown area. Where money and community desire meet, other cities are doing the same. It's happening, it's just proceeding slowly.

No, what I'm saying is that the streaky behavior of hit rolls is a result of the increased opportunity for misses created by the hit chance clamp. Using your previous 500 roll example, if you roll an icosahedron 500 times, you will have occasional streaks of your predefined 5% failure rate (miss streaks), but they'll be rare. Mathematically, it's very unlikely to roll, for example, seven 1's in a row. The probability of that occurring is very low, and drops with each additional 1 rolled. Streaks aren't a common occurrence when we're using small ranges of numbers and single-digit failure points. Perform the same test with a 10,000-sided die, with failure defined as anything between 1 and 500 (or 9501 through 10,000). The probability of streaks of failures increases because you have a significantly wider range of potential failures. A 1 is a failure, and so is a 2, and a 3, and so on, up to 500. Every roll has 500 potential failures, rather than 1, and with 500 failure points instead of 1, streaks are more likely to occur. Statistically, the overall hit rate would still average out to 95% over time, but I'm not addressing the average over time, I'm looking at streakiness and why it's happening. It appears to be happening because the formula creates the possibility for it to happen, through high granularity, and the clamp increases the probability of it happening by locking in a specific and comparatively wide range of sequentially numbered results which can be considered misses. The precision allows it occur, the clamp makes it more likely.

No kimberlite pipes around here. And I wouldn't know what specific geological features to look for beyond that.

One of the things on my bucket list is to make a brake rotor forge and play around with different metals and alloys. Reading and watching is one thing, doing is another. Also, there's gold in these here hills. There were mines a few miles north of my land, more scattered further south. I'd like to have a way to do something with it if I ever found any ore or flake.

Red + Blue + Gold = Purple Gold

In rural and sparsely populated areas, automobiles allowed people to make journeys in a few hours, or a day, instead of a few days or weeks, without sacrificing the carrying capacity of a wagon, so they could pick up several months of supplies from the general store 100+ miles away, or take the entire immediate family (which could be 8-12, sometimes more) to visit relatives or friends. In cities, they were seen as cleaner than horses, and less expensive over the lifetime of the vehicle (gasoline was originally considered a waste product from petroleum distillation), and still allowed people to move large quantities of goods/people or travel to distant locations within a short time span. Keep in mind, the U.S. was far less populated in those days, and even in cities, things were more spread out. Bicycles couldn't carry much, or many people, so they were relegated to leisure and children's activities. Cities weren't designed with bicycles in mind because the culture was still young enough, and the invention of the automobile still new enough, and the distances to some places still great enough, to be heavily influenced by cars. Cars fit the needs of the populace, so bicycles were relegated to leisure activities and children's toys, or something only relevant to those too impoverished to afford a car. The recent revival of the bicycle in the U.S. can be attributed to the health consciousness which has come to the forefront in the last few decades, in concert with a relatively high rate of poverty at certain times, the broader availability of goods (more stores on more corners), the way goods are packaged (little plastic or plastic-lined paper envelopes, small cans, shrink-wrapped packages, etc), and the ever increasing density of cities creating more opportunities for bicycles to be more useful. But cities are still trying to catch up. Bureaucracies are involved, and nothing is fast when that happens. We'll get there. Eventually. For what it's worth, the same problems are applicable to people on low-powered two-wheeled vehicles. Scooters and mopeds. I know from personal experience that having an engine and keeping up in traffic on city streets is no guarantee of safety... city drivers are horrific, and they'll blindly ignore anything that isn't on four wheels. I was run off the street multiple times, hit head-on twice (while in my lane) and cut off by someone swerving or turning in front of me more times than I can count. City riding on any two-wheeled vehicle in the U.S. is risking death. We need more than bicycle lanes, we need protection and consideration for all two-wheeled riders.

500 checks in a 1-20 range with 1/20 being the clamped miss rate gives 500 potential misses. 500 checks in a 1-10,000 range with 500/10,000 being the clamped miss rate gives 250,000 potential misses. Simply increasing the number of checks doesn't bring the two to equivalency. If anything, it emphasizes the problem with the formula, rather than proving that there is no problem. You can't treat a 500/10,000 range as a single number. It isn't. It's 500 possible results out of 10,000, not 1 possible result out of 20. Every hit check has 500 chances to miss, not 1. Statistically, they're the same, and they may both average out to the same over time without the streak breaker fudging the results, but this isn't about statistical averages, it's about probability, large numerical ranges, the hit rate clamp and how they're all interacting. Statistics and probability are two different things. I'm addressing the latter, you're addressing the former.

🍿

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I like where your head is at. Unless you've removed it and surgically reattached it to one of your knees, in which case, I don't like where your head is at. Put it back. PUT. IT. BACK. It never is. But repurposing and modifying existing content is an excellent beginning, and easier than starting from scratch. We'll wait another week before shouting at you to do that. @Jimmy already showed us some "stuff". I've been traumatizing the forums with it. 😁