Luminara

Some of what he's doing isn't as taxing as it appears, if we take his physiology into account. That tank might weigh a few dozen tons, but it weighs a tenth as much to him because he's a heavy-worlder. Still needs more than sheer muscle to lift it, but not as much muscle as a human would require. His pew-pew eye lasers aren't really drawing power from him, they're refocusing incoming IR via a mechanism similar to the tapetum lucidum in various species of animals. But, you're right. Even if that tank "only" weighs a few tons for him, comparatively, it's still too heavy to lift. There has to be something enabling his special abilities. It can't be photosynthesis and complex hydrocarbon chains (sugars and starches). So where does that extra oomph come from, and what does he do with the sunshine his body accumulates? In many species of animals, small clusters of magnetic particles are embedded in specific cellular structures (the human nose, for example). Seemingly unrelated, there are elements which react with sunlight in various ways (photoelectric effect is relevant to this discussion). If we reach a little and assume that kryptonite is a yet-to-be-discovered radioactive element, we can also assume that various "colors" of kryptonite are, in fact, isotopes. One of those isotopes, blue kryptonite, is depicted as providing Superman with significant benefits (makes him stronger, for example). Putting those together, what if Superman's extraordinary capabilities were the result of blue kryptonite particles in his musculature and nervous system, reacting with sunlight, massively enhancing his native strength (resulting from his heavy-worlder anatomy) and granting him other, more peculiar abilities, such as partial gravitic inversion (flight)? Of course, that still doesn't solve the power storage problem. Nor can I hypothesize a reasonable, scientifically acceptable means of such. This is where the comics depart from reality completely... unless kryptonite also has the capability to store energy like elements used in batteries (cadmium, lithium, etc.), but if that were the case, it would be incredibly unstable, prone to explosive release and couldn't exist in nature in more than trace amounts (and those fist-sized pieces depicted in the comics would blow up, Tsar Bomba style, on exposure to sunlight). It also doesn't explain how Superman can be unharmed by radioactive decay, a process which we know to be hazardous, in all forms, to everything. If anyone had nodules of radioactive material in their bodies, they'd be tumors with legs, presuming they lived for more than a few weeks after birth. That's the real conundrum. If we can resolve the energy storage issue, we can explain Superman. I can't. Everything else, I can see being workable within the laws of physics, but not the energy storage. Or, not the energy storage without every form of cancer imaginable, and a tendency to explode.

The concept is still scientifically feasible, in theory. Evolution has produced some remarkably bizarre results, such as the platypus. Presuming Krypton was a heavy gravity world orbiting a aging star, therefore several billion years further along the evolutionary chain than our planet, and in conditions significantly more hostile than any known environment here, it wouldn't be unlikely for any existing life to have adapted to those conditions in a way which would appear to be extraordinary on an Earth-like planet with lower gravity and more favorable conditions. Food, for instance, would be more difficult to acquire, as it would either have evolved better protection or would struggle in the harsh environment. It wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility, then, for animals to evolve a mechanism for harvesting energy directly from the most abundant source, the sun. The age of the star also suggests that any intelligent life on that planet would have had, at a minimum, several tens of millions of years of further evolution and technological progress than we can lay claim to in the scant few million years our species has experienced. What natural selection might fail to accomplish, science could, given that time frame. Take our current DNA splicing and cloning abilities as an example. Right now, we can give one species the abilities of other species, such as bioluminescence, or producing spider silk, by manipulating DNA. We could, in fact, give an animal the ability to photosynthesize, today, but we can't make that animal's photosynthetic process actually provide any sustenance because we haven't finished unraveling the entire process in plants, or translated it to the anatomies of higher life forms. But in a few decades... Krypton would've had millions of years, so it's plausible that Kryptonians could have done that long ago, and on a world beset by high gravity and poor sunlight from a dying star, it would make sense to do so in order to aid the dominant species in survival, and even provide a level of comfort previously unobtainable. So between some fiddling with Kryptonian DNA in a bygone era, and having been born on a heavy gravity planet, Superman's ability to utilize sunlight makes sense, from a scientific perspective. His heavy-world origin would imply a denser cellular structure, thus accounting for his near invulnerability, and on a world with Earth-normal gravity, his strength would seem significantly greater than ours. Retinal coating could be reflective in the IR spectrum, giving him heat vision, and specially adapted cones and rods could allow him to see in the X-ray spectrum (many animals can see into the UV and IR spectrums, neither of which we can accomplish without technology). As his DNA would've been adapted to poor sunlight, a brighter star, such as Sol, would provide significantly more energy for his body. One could hypothesize that this energy would be used at a cellular level, for repair and growth, and stored in much the same way our bodies store excess energy in the form of fat. Flying... that one isn't scientifically explicable. Neither is super breath. Or super speed. Or super knitting. Or super baking. Or super mind wiping with a kiss. Those aren't abilities which would develop from evolving on a high gravity planet, or a planet orbiting an aging star, and they can't be gifted by DNA manipulation. They defy the laws of physics, and unless Krypton was inside a black hole, it was still subject to those laws. But his strength, invulnerability, use of solar energy, even pew-pew eye lasers and seeing womens' no-no bits through their clothes, those can be explained, and are within the constraints of the laws of physics. If anything, they're less of a stretch than time travel or white holes, both of which are scientifically proven and accepted possibilities.

Jump speed.

No, he can't. Some of the photons are reflected. If they weren't, he'd be a blank space. Not invisible, but a spot of absolute blackness, like Vantablack. As we can see his rather colorful undies and bright blue eyes, that isn't the case. So his ability to absorb visible light is limited. Some, but not all, or even most. He also can't absorb infrared radiation,, and more likely reflects it, else he'd be a walking polar vortex, leaving a trail of frozen corpses in his wake. And he's unharmed by combustion, of any kind, further indicating an inability to absorb IR. UV, he might absorb completely. But not x-rays, as evidenced by his ability to see in that band of the EM spectrum (he couldn't see and absorb x-rays, it would be one or the other). He likely absorbs gamma radiation far more efficiently than humans, but lacks any ability to convert it to useful energy, given the portrayals of him being weakened by nuclear weapons (The Dark Knight Returns) and over-absorption of solar radiation (All-Star Superman, most probably cause of death would be too much gamma and UV, not photons). And radio waves... everywhere he went, every radio, television and cell phone would lose signal if his physiology reacted differently to them than ours does. That doesn't occur in any comic, cartoon or film, so we can assume he's "radio wave normal". Just over half of the solar radiation reaching the surface of the planet is IR, so we've already cut Superman's conversion rate by that much (45-48%, in fact). And as he can't absorb all visible light, his conversion rate would drop further, making him only slightly more efficient than current prototype photovoltaic cells (which can convert 47% of visible light to electricity). He also can't "charge up" in moonlight, which is merely reflected sunlight, so he either has a minimum amount of solar radiation necessary to enable conversion, or he's more reliant on UV than photons (nearly all of the solar radiation reaching the surface of the Earth is IR, visible and UV), of which there's almost none in moonlight.

No travel powers for most (almost all) of my characters. That includes Ninja/Beast Run. Rewarded temp travel powers are hoarded for "emergency" usage (such as acquiring the one badge that cannot be obtained (Top Dog) without a travel power (or a taxi)).

Something I feel necessary to append to this sentence - if calculating with higher market values, not only is the income percentage from drops higher, but the value of inf* per unit is lower. What that means is F is worth more now than it would be using old market values. So, the farmer may be accumulating inf* at a slower rate, but that inf* has more buying power. It's worth more now. Therefore, that value should be calculated as well, as it's highly relevant to the question of how much of the percentage of income it represents. But I'm watching Pretty Woman right now, so my math co-processor is off. Someone else can figure it out.

Eh. How it's supposed to work isn't necessarily how it actually works. You might get that Brass for 10 inf*, but spend 500 on the Alchemical Silver. Or vice versa. Pooling the salvage doesn't control player behavior, it merely ensures that something is available. The price on that something is primarily driven by players. Seeding ensures that there's always supply, pooling ensures that the supply is larger and keeps marketeers from cornering the market, but ultimately, prices are dictated by players, both buyers and sellers. So prices, even on common salvage, fluctuate frequently. As such, it would be best to factor individually.

Because that's how the NoXP setting worked. It was never double inf*, it was XP = inf*. When the setting was activated, all XP was turned into inf*, so you received your normal inf* from the source, plus the inf* which would've been XP. In some cases, that might've resulted in more than 2x inf*, in other (most) cases, less than 2x. At old market values, C and E would represent higher percentages of income, and the percentage coming from F would be lower. So although it might be worthwhile to investigate the difference using old market data, it wouldn't present the best possible case for farmers, and it wouldn't really be reflective of the actual contribution of F. The percentage of income represented by F is always in flux, always changing, because the values of C and E are always changing. As @Coyotedancer pointed out, C and E have different values at different times of the day, and week, and trying to nail anything down to a fixed number would be far more taxing than is necessary for this. All we're looking for is a general estimate of what F could be contributing to income in relation to what the other income sources are contributing, meaning, how much is bonus inf* really worth in the overall picture. A rough percentage calculated using current market values will do for that.

Inf* (A) + enhancement drops (B) + salvage drops (C) + common IO recipe drops (D) + set IO recipe drops (E) + XP (F) Empty salvage, recipe and enhancement inventories before beginning. Screenshot of XP and inf* before and after run. Enhancement and common IO recipe drops should be calculated at vendor value. Salvage drops should be calculated at average market value. Each type of salvage should be checked individually, as opposed to simply counting the number of each category of rarity and assuming that all salvage in a category has the same value, to ensure an accurate appraisal. Note that converters are categorized as salvage. Set recipe drops should be calculated at average market value, and should include recipes the subject would keep rather than sell (a penny saved is a penny earned) A+B+C+D+E, then A+B+C+D+E+F, compare the two totals to determine the percentage difference. At least ten runs should be conducted. A hundred would even out the variability of drops more effectively, but a very (very) rough estimate can be obtained with ten.

It's not obscure, and it is easy. Converters weren't in the game when I stopped playing, but it didn't take me more than three minutes to figure out how it all worked. Converters are just gacha boxes in a Co* interface, merits are the currency. And crafting has never been unintuitive, it was just irritating to run back and forth between the market and crafting stations. /ah resolved that completely, waiting until the portable crafting station was unlocked is no longer necessary. Nothing to fix here. Move on to adding -Regen to PGA (or Disruption Arrow) in Trick Arrow. Off you pop.

Today is exactly two weeks since I started playing again. In that two weeks, I've accumulated almost 100,000,000 inf*, and every IO I wanted on my level 34 character, including several waiting to be slotted and some uniques for my other characters. I started with nothing. 0 inf*. No costume contest prizes. No random fly-by gifts. No friends to "help". No farming. Haven't teamed once, in fact. The sum total of my interaction with anyone else in the entire two weeks has been one /tell from a stranger asking if I "need some levels" (i declined). I'm not even playing above the default difficulty. And the only marketeering I've done has been to sell what I converted if I thought it was worth something, but didn't want it for myself. Frankly, I don't consider that marketeering, it's just sensible. Oh, and I have a pile of merits that keeps growing, despite my frivolous use of them. I didn't have a mouse until two days ago. I had to play on a touchpad. And I'm on a shitty Verizon pre-paid plan which makes it almost impossible to log in, much less play, between 8 a.m. and 2 a.m. because they "deprioritize" my traffic. Meaning, throw my data into the garbage. My ping time right now, if I were logged into the game, would be between 750ms and 2200ms, and I'd be up to around 5000 duplicate packets in less than three minutes. That's a whole lot of waiting and pressing the same key before a power executes, and rubber-banding back and forth fifteen or twenty times just to travel a hundred yards. By the time I'm working on Incarnate levels with my first character, I'll have enough merits and inf* to fully kit out the outrageous "dream build" I never could've completed on the original servers (not an exaggeration. my main's build, last day i played, was worth almost 15,000,000,000, and it was only 2/3 complete). Still without farming, or marketeering, or handouts. I've been so impressed with the ease of generating inf* that I've stopped saving "rare" IOs for my other characters. I know I can get them any time I want, with those characters, starting from zero. The market is clearly accessible, in every way, to every player. I didn't have to read a guide to make inf*, I just sold what I expected to be worth something when it popped up during conversions. I didn't have to spend six months learning how it worked, like I did when I was trying to figure out how to get water up to my cabin. And while I clearly made some mistakes, primarily pissing away merits on conversion rolls simply because I didn't want to stop until I had what I wanted, I still came out waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead. And there's also, obviously, no need for farming to afford everything one wants for a character. My tastes, in regard to my builds, are anything but modest, and I'm easily accomplishing what I hoped for when I started planning my characters. LotG +Recharge IOs, 3% +Defense (All) IOs, Kismet +ToHit, full sets where I want them instead of frankenslotted powers that I couldn't fix until I'd been at 50 for a while and spent weeks grinding. If a player doesn't have what he/she needs to fill his/her slots, it's not the game's fault, it's theirs. The game throws merits at you. Grey-con critters drop converters. You can drool on your keyboard and make inf*. The only reason anyone wouldn't have what they want, far more than they need, for a complete and very "expensive" build at level 50 would be power-leveling, and if you decided to skip every last bit of the game to get to the end, you've got no-one to blame but yourselves for your "need to farm because I can't kit out my 50" situation. As a new player, I'm not seeing an income gap. I'm not seeing a problem with figuring out how to make inf* on the market. I'm not seeing outrageous and unobtainable pricing on the market. I'm not seeing a need for an inf* multiplier. I'm not seeing a need to farm to pay for anything. And considering that all of this was the driving goal of the changes, I'd say they worked. Marvelously. And as a long-time player on the original servers, I am seeing a lot of good things, including the efforts to control inflation, by the HC team. Things are so much more affordable here, now, than they were ten years ago, it's not even remotely comparable. I have four IOs which would've cost more than 12,000,000,000 inf* collectively on the original servers, here they're not even a drop in the bucket. Purples? Less than 12,000,000 inf* for the ones I would've had to pay 500,000,000-1,000,000,000 apiece on the original servers. And there are people who think they need inf* multipliers... that says so much about them, none of it good, and nothing at all about the game. If I can rake in inf* while leveling slowly, on a budget laptop, in spite of Verizon throwing away 90% of my packets if I try to play during normal times, solo, with a Trick Arrow character, anyone should be capable of doing as well, if not better. This isn't rocket science, lads and ladies, or manual labor, so stop acting like making ridiculous amounts of inf* takes a PhD or an 80 hour work week.

My main on the original servers. I've remade her here, going to start leveling her soon. Really looking forward to getting back to the "all AoE, all of the time" style of play that TA/Dark does so well.

Flash Arrow is unresistable. It exceeds every other single power ToHit debuff in AV fights. RI plus Fallout works out to 1.1% more -ToHit with both powers maximally slotted for -ToHit, but Flash Arrow doesn't need a defeated teammate to work. For solo play, it's X% Defense one doesn't have to build for in IO set bonuses, and while it's not as strong as RI, Fearsome Stare or Hurricane, it also has no toggle cost, Accuracy check or long recharge time, so "good" depends on one's perspective. I agree with you, anyone who skips Flash Arrow is making a mistake.

So your conclusion is that TA doesn't meet your expectations when paired with Archery, and rather than look for the synergy you'd prefer by pairing one or the other with another set, TA has to be drastically altered from a team support set to a fan-created blaster support set (which is clearly over the top and in need of it's own balance pass). By that logic, almost every defender primary has to be completely revamped. Damage dealing T1s across the board, AoE damage in place of debuffs and controls, etc. Yeah... that's likely to be the least worthwhile thing I've lost time reading this week. Perhaps if you'd leveled one of those TA characters out of the single-digit range, you would've been aware that Archery/TA does not only have "one attack with some fire damage", or overlooked that most of TA's powers can be slotted with damage procs to round out your need for greater variety in damage types. Or missed the two -Res powers which would've helped you deal with those ghosts and robots much more effectively (one at level 12 as a defender). You don't understand AT design, or game balance, that's apparent. And you not only don't understand TA, you couldn't even bother to look the powers up in Mids' or PWiki before complaining about the set. Lame.

I find the comments about TA being awful in a vacuum very interesting. I've always found that exercising the options available to everyone else - the primary/secondary paired with TA, pools, IOs, etc., makes the game much easier, regardless of what set(s) I'm playing, and compensates for issues in just about every set. Including TA. But if you're trying to play with TA by itself, yeah, it's going to be rough. TA has a problem with end-game viability, in that it lacks sufficient -Regen to make it worthwhile in long AV fights, and doesn't bring enough -Res to the table to shore up that weakness (even with gross abuse of global +Recharge), but pairing TA with another set which provides -Regen/Res closes that hole. This is, by the way, the only "real" problem with TA. If it debuffed Regen comparably to other debuffing sets, it would certainly be more popular, because for everything else, it's fine. It's just the AV fights where it really falls behind. TA lacks the specificity of most other sets, but there are sets like Traps and Devices, and they don't have a specific focus on one thing, like Radiation Emission or Dark Miasma. Sets similar to TA are treated as "acquired flavors", though, while TA has negativity piled on it, amusingly. No-one says, "Oh, just do this, and this, and this, and it's awesome", like they do for those other sets, they just bitch about TA. TA doesn't buff or heal, but it does debuff ToHit (unresisted debuff, numerically superior to the strongest ToHit debuff available in any other power versus AVs), offers both a single-target and AoE Hold (one of the best available to any set), has a reliable Sleep (minions only, but that's significantly more than half the enemies you'll face), can keep most enemies at a distance without effort (Slows), and it provides excellent KD with OSA. What TA doesn't do is everything at a single key press, like some sets, which puts some people off. I don't know, maybe interactivity in gaming is dying and people really do like auto-play shit like the mobile market has become infested with. If that's your "jam", TA isn't. TA isn't reliant on toggles. There's no continuing endurance cost for any power in TA. There's never an issue with corpses despawning and powers suddenly shutting off, or endurance running out and leaving you defenseless because none of your toggles are usable. Unlike some sets. There is no redraw penalty for TA. The activation time with or without the bow is the same. The activation and animation times of all existing sets were equalized (on a power by power basis, meaning each individual power was examined and adjusted accordingly so the times matched) in Issue 11. It's been a decade since that change, might be time to get off the "TA only works with Archery" schtick. It's far more effective with other sets, like Dark Blast. TA's animation times are fast. All of them. You're not stopping to make a sandwich and coffee while you're waiting for an animation to end. You aren't stuck in a 3.3s animation while critters are hammering your health bar, you're getting the job of debuffing or controlling (or both at once) done and moving on to attacking. TA doesn't solo any worse than most sets, when played in conjunction with a primary or secondary (a real build, as opposed to imagining situations in which TA powers are used by themselves, that vacuum thing i mentioned above). Any given player's capability to solo isn't limited by a set, but by that player. I soloed a TA/A to 50 before I7. I've soloed almost a dozen TAs to 50. I've farmed, at every difficulty setting, with TA. Anyone who says TA can't solo well, or at all, is really saying they have a problem, not that the set does. Jesus on a pogo stick, I soloed a defender to 50 using only Kinetics and pool melee attacks, and TA is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more powerful and versatile. How much easier does this game have to be? The recharge times on some powers are, seemingly, prohibitively long, but that was by necessity, not malice. Many of TA's powers spawn pseudo-pets. Pseudo-pets can stack with one another. And there was no way to limit that when the set was designed. I don't know if there's a way to limit it now. But the recharge times were the only decent limitation available to prevent, for example, players from stacking 5-6 Disruption Arrows while solo. Yeah, it sounds heavenly, but it's bad for the game. Especially in the post-IO age, when -Res procs and massive global +Recharge are available. Allowing players to stack 200% -Res solo is not a good idea. Maybe the HC team has figured out how to limit stacking, and will reduce recharge times. Maybe not. But it's a fact you learn to live with as a TA player. We'd all love to have OSA available every 15s, but anyone with an ounce of sense realizes how broken that would be. Some limits are necessary. This, higher recharge times on some powers, is TA's necessary limitation. TA for masterminds needs some attention. It works for the other ATs with access to it because their primaries or secondaries can be used to complement TA. Masterminds have very little of that available to them, they're reliant on their pets to work with TA, and some of them just plain don't. And as for what I think of TA... it's good. It could do with some improvement to make it more palatable to teams in end-game content, but this isn't WoW or Everquest, there are no predefined team paradigms which have to be followed and, considering that almost every set debuffs and/or controls in some way, it's rarely, if ever, doing the job of supporting a team by itself, even in the unlikely case of being the only "support" AT on the team. It could also do with shorter recharge times on some powers (within reason), and a fix to the mistaken 10 target limit on Disruption Arrow, but those can be worked around easily enough (especially in the post-IO age).

The charging unit is fine. The problem is the inverter. It's not a quality unit. A friend purchased it for $12 and gave it to me, and it's all I have for now. I've got one last thing I can try on my old 1Kw inverter, and if that doesn't bring it back to life, I'll shop around for a new one. Or a decent UPS, they're just inverters with integrated batteries.

Archery blaster. All pink. No pants. Name yourself Eros (or some variant thereof). Arrows inject hot, viscous love into the targets, they faint from the extreme pleasure. I triple-dog dare ya!

You owe my cat an apology, @GM Tahquitz. After three years of off-grid living, I'd lost touch with the modern computing world and had no idea what to look for, or even that gaming-capable laptops existed at the $300-350 price point. But I'm posting this reply on a 15.6" laptop with a Ryzen 3200u, instead of the 8" tablet I've been using, thanks to the informative guidance provided here. It's not perfect (the screen is a TN panel), and I still have to iron out some issues (400w inverter shuts down if the laptop draws a full load for more than ten minutes), but it's downloading Co* and will be adequate for that... and having a full-sized keyboard is heavenly. And I don't have to quadruple my battery bank and PV array to feed it, nor did I have to spend all of the money I was going to save to make it through the winter to buy it. Still going to be a week or longer before the download completes, too, because I'm on a Verizon pre-paid line (read: aggressively throttled) with a weak signal (so, packet loss is significant), but it'll get there eventually. Oh, the apology... the only table I have is about 2' square, and this laptop is taking up most of the room where Jessica preferred to stretch out. She's both confused and displeased, which is a less than desirable situation for a half Savannah cat. Tell her you're sorry so she'll stop trying to eat the screen (not an exaggeration) and shoving the laptop off to the side to make room.

Names of historical figures are public domain, and the likeness and abilities of mythological figures are as well. Anyone can make a comic book about the adventures of Thor, the God of Thunder, for example, and not be subject to copyright violation because the name, likeness and the abilities are all public domain. What would invoke copyright protection would be plagiarism of existing stories which are currently protected under copyright laws. Making a comic book about Thor in a group of heroes who fight off an alien invasion in New York, that would be copyright violation. Making a comic book about Thor and Odin battling Níðhöggr in New York would not be copyright violation. Marvel would never have a case based on name alone, as the word is in public domain, and there's no plagiarism in our Valkyrie's back story or related content, so despite the two sharing a name, there's no case to be made for a copyright suit.

Knowing how to thrive without a crutch can lead to being the one still fighting when everyone else is down. Being reliant to and dependant upon the inspiration tray is a poor measure of "better".

God, Becky, you're, like, such a drama queen. The planet will be gone in 3.5-4 billion years, so they'd have to come to a decision before then. Like, no wonder Todd dumped you for Rachel.

No. Cryptic sold all IP rights to NCSoft about 20 years ago.

Frankly, I doubt anyone in power at NCSoft cares one way or the other at this point. Someone handed it off to their legal staff and said, "Talk to these people", and as far as the company is concerned, it's handled. It's almost certainly down to whatever agreement can (or cannot) be reached by the attorneys now. As long as the HC team isn't asking for anything "outrageous", a deal of some kind will probably be reached eventually. It's far, far more likely that the Homecoming server will operate in legal limbo for another 3-5 years, and eventually achieve an arrangement which allows it to continue, than it is for someone to order the talks to stop and C&D notices sent out.

I don't believe this is about purchasing. A large development studio or publishing company might convince NCSoft to sell the IP, but that was never in the cards for any fan-based operation. And given the small change value we can offer as donors, or even subscribers, there's no real money to be made in licensing fees for a company the size of NCSoft. Most likely, the negotiations are simply for use of the server code and absolution of NCSoft in the case of liability issues. NCSoft would retain IP rights, but wouldn't be dragged into any disputes over copyright issues. That's a different approach from an attempt to buy the IP, and given the all but dead status of the IP, one they're likely willing to permit, as long as their collective ass is covered.

That's what she said.