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If the surgeon's name is Vahzilok... run.

Quark: "Read me the first word of every rule." Rom: "'If' 'never' 'keep' 'profit' 'a' 'good' 'smile' 'honesty'"... Quark: "Aha! If never keep profit... a good smile. Honesty!" Rom: "What does it mean, brother?" Quark: "It means... absolutely nothing."

Origin powers offer a small degree of additional flexibility. Example: Oil Slick Arrow can only be ignited by fire or energy damage. Creating a tech or magic */TA or TA/* character means one can select any primary or secondary available without sacrificing the ability to ignite OSA, or relying on procs or limited-use temp powers. So no, they are not pointless, or outdated. As with everything in this game, nothing is truly worthless, merely less valuable to some and more valuable to others.

What?

Several hundred million tons of water would cover a few miles quite easily, quickly and as destructively as a high yield nuclear warhead (or ten). Even with the War Walls in place, Galaxy City would likely be scoured off the face of the planet if the dam were ruptured.

My solution would be to add the ambushes to the next indoor mission in the player's queue. It would require new code, or jiggery-pokery with the existing code, but it would be more thematic and less traumatic for the lowbies (been on the receiving end of someone else's purple-con ambushes as a lowbie... not fun to be one-shotted by a bunch of Malta casually loitering at the tram in AP).

I acquired the Illusionist badge on my TA/A. I never even attempted it again, even on my strongest characters, because the experience of farming those insufferable jerks nearly drove me to quit the game. Leveling that TA/A to 50 before Issue 7 was a cakewalk by comparison. My loathing for Carnies burns with a heat unrivaled by the corona of a blue giant. Also, Warwolves. For years, the lieutenant who self-destructed and respawned as a Warwolf always became a boss, regardless of difficulty setting, and they typically conned purple to my characters. This was before IOs, and always in the mid-20 level range, so I never had a key power, or sufficient slotting or enhancements, or anything more than a few inspirations. So many hospital runs, so much debt... I eventually just stopped doing any Council or 5th Column missions. Even long after the bug was fixed, I avoided them.

Force = mass * acceleration Propel would, theoretically, have a specific limit to the force it could apply. Thus, while a pool table may have significantly greater mass than a desk phone, it would also experience less acceleration, as the fixed value of force would impose a restriction on acceleration. As a result, while it would deliver the same amount of damage to a single target, the reduced acceleration and subsequent loss of kinetic energy as it struck the initial target would leave too little force to damage additional targets. It would knock them down, but likely not hurt them. Physics.

KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE AND KALKIN AND ROSE YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Hi. Missed you two... a bit. >.>

Are you retired? That probably seems like an abrupt question. So I'm editing this post to clarify the reasoning behind it. Your profile states that you play from ~5 p.m. to ~10 p.m., and that you're available for teams. This indicates that you have a "normal" daily routine. You wake up in the morning, do something during the day, return home in the evening and sleep at night. Your post history (which is all over the place) supports this, and you also say "Been in the biz for almost 30 years" (present tense, not "was in the biz", past tense), so your morning through afternoon commitment isn't high school. Thus, you're either posting from work, or you're retired and behaving like a cranky millennial SJW because whatever you do during during the day isn't fulfilling. If you're retired, I'm certain the bright minds collected here can help you find something more satisfying, and worthwhile, to do with your day. If you're not retired, then it might be a good idea to excuse yourself from further discussions of this nature.

I've worked in IT, healthcare, farm and dairy, food service, warehousing, banking sectors and more, across half the North American continent, and had more than 3000 co-workers over my working lifetime. I don't have to take my shoes off to count the number of them who truly were overworked and underpaid. The vast majority of people just don't care, when it comes to employment. Employers and employees. There's always another job somewhere, and there's always another employee, somewhere, so neither side puts much effort into retention. Like everything else these days, employment is disposable, so few bother to treat it like it matters. There's little or no incentive, on either side of the fence. This is the modern work culture. So when I say "lazy and sloppy", it's a reflection on that culture. Not an accusation or admonishment of the individual, but of the system, what it has become and what it has done to us as a whole. Employers expect little from employees, and most employees deliver precisely that. The people who actually are overworked and underpaid are the people who grew up in a different culture, with stricter employment standards, or those compelled by desperation to hold on to that job (people with social anxiety disorder, for example). The people who don't know where the restroom is because they've never used it. The people who go to work instead of going to the hospital when they're in serious distress. The people who work off the clock to keep the business afloat, just to ensure that they've got a job the next day.

This works, folks. System Shock 2 was out of publication for over a decade, the licensing and distribution rights so muddled that it seemed as though it would remain in "abandonware" limbo for eternity. GOG managed to untangle the web of crap and resurrect it.

In the final minute of the Apollo 11 mission's lunar landing phase, there was a computer error. The computer was signaling an obscure error code, and MC was seconds away from aborting the landing. One man in MC had a list of all error codes the computer could generate. He identified the error and gave the thumbs-up for the mission to proceed. The success of Apollo 11 came down to documentation. This is the legacy we should strive for. Instead, we settle for "Not on fire? Ship it".

Because many of us remember the days when code was tight and clean. It had to be, and developers took pride in making software work efficiently and in as few lines as possible. Even the most complex software was kept as simple as possible, and thoroughly documented. Modern software developers working in businesses are lazy and sloppy. Code bloat has become rampant, with everyone assuming there's no need to trim lines or remove unnecessary code. After all, we aren't using floppies, and we aren't restricted to a few megabytes of RAM, and we aren't measuring our CPU cycles in kilohertz, so why bother? Screw it, it'll run, good enough. And documentation is either buried in the code as a paltry few commented lines here and there, or skipped altogether, because time spent noting what was done and what it does is time not spent selling the product. We're constantly surprised because we haven't forgotten the elegance and efficiency of yesterday, and we can't understand why others don't seem to remember... or care.

Undead capybaras in the city! Mayhem! Terror! Doom cuddles! Heroes and villains teaming together! Mass hysteria!

This thread is like my kitten, Jessica... at 11:00 pm, when I'm trying to explain that it's bed time and she's careering off the walls like a kindergartner who drank a triple shot mochacino with 37 pumps of sweetener. Well, almost. No-one here has tried to eat my shoes, or declared war on my pants.

Someone on the original forums started a thread, asking what the worst powerset combinations could be. A lot of people suggested Rad/Energy (defender), because all of the knockback would make Rad's debuffs pointless. So, of course, I had to make one. Not surprisingly, fun. I had her up to the high 20's or low 30's and logged in to burn a respec (i forget why), expecting to log out again after running a couple of test missions. Before I made it to the door of the first mission, I receive a /tell asking for help. One mission is as good as another for testing out tweaks, so I consented and accepted the subsequent invitation. Turns out to be a full team. With the difficulty maxed. When I enter the mission, they're all standing together, near a room they haven't cleared yet. I peer in... Freakshow. A whole lot of purple-con Freakshow. I pop AM, pan the camera around and wait a few seconds with my fingers hovering over the number keys. And a few more seconds pass. Then a full minute. Tick tock, tick tock. AM expires, I refresh the buff, and still nothing. Finally, I ask who's tanking. They don't know. They're on Vent, trying to decide. Also trying to decide whether to boot me and go looking for a "healer". Well, that was the end of my patience. I buff the team again, then run into the room and start unloading with everything I have. I've got Freaks bouncing and flying all over the place. By the time the rest of the team realizes I'm not meekly awaiting their decision as to my fate, I've aggroed the entire room and have half of the Freaks pinned in one corner, juggling them with KB, the other half standing on my head with RI on one of the bosses. The rest of Team Chucklehead finally remembers that I was there, and start coming in to "rescue" me. Then they notice my full HP bar and actually start attacking. I stayed and helped them finish the mission. The only deaths were due to the Fire/whocares blaster, the team leader who set the difficulty so high and refused to reduce it in spite of the problems his team had encountered (he was +3 to the next highest level in the team, so everything was at least +6 to everyone else). He ran ahead of the rest of the team and tried to nuke. Three times. Died every time, before his nuke activated. Then he quit the team and logged out. And I made seven friends. From then on, my favorite tank has been the one who gets in there and tanks. My favorite tank is the one who's confident enough to do his/her job without making the team wait ten minutes. Not brash, not foolhardy, not stupid and reckless, but also not timid. Let the buffers do their job, then get your ass in there and do yours and I'm happy.

Lot of setbacks over the last couple of years, broken bones, black widow bite, equipment failures, haven't been able to do much in the way of hobbies when I wasn't working, much less finish the cabin, but it'll all come together eventually. The only reason I have time now is a couple of lung collapses last month forced me to drop everything. Really just killing time and waiting for everything to gel right now. And wishing I could find a laptop, so I could do more than refresh forum pages and play with this kitten. Especially with winter approaching. Not much work at that time of year, and a whole lot of sitting around, waiting for spring.

The IP has been "dead" for 8 years, other than a couple of references or playable characters in other games. They've generated $0.00 from it in that time, and there's been no indication of renewed interest... except by former players. Players who are so keen to get back into the game that they throw money at the HC team so quickly that the monthly donation goal is reached in minutes. But the potential revenue is actually secondary, because it's small potatoes. "Free" money, but probably not enough to pique their interest. The primary consideration is what it would cost to issue C&D orders, file infringement suits, pursue legal action, etc. Lawyers are expensive, corporate lawyers more so, and courts have fees. Realistically, they face the possibility of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to "protect" an IP they all but buried years ago. Yes, they could spend the money to shut down every publicized server and keep the "City of" brand locked in their basement filing cabinet, but unless they're planning to resuscitate the brand or launch a sequel, it'd be flushing money down the toilet, and considering that the server code is now publicly available, ineffective. Alternatively, they can work with the players, come to an arrangement and collect revenue from that. And that's the financially responsible response. Accept a small, regular income from a "dead" IP, rather than hemorrhage money trying to shut down every server.

NCSoft: "You stole my code!" Captain Jack Co*: "Actually-" NCSoft: *smack* Captain Jack Co*: "Borrowed! Borrowed... without permission, but with every intention of bringing it back."

That's supposed to be Posit Ron you're attempting to locate, a conspiracy theorist similar to DC's The Question (the one prior to Renee). Will these infernal text errors never be resolved? Will Maria tell Penelope that she's her doppelganger from an apocalyptic future? Will Will will Will (no, the other Will) everything? Find out next time, on Hero Soaps! Brought to you by Galaxy City Broadcast Corporation, subsidiary of Heroats, the superest breakfast cereal!

Without pants.

Whatever it is, continue. The Forum Cartel must be restored. Without pants.

Defense ceases to be effective above 45%. You can go higher, but there's always a 5% chance for critters to hit you. Aim for 45% and move the slots to other powers, or change your IO sets to drop it back.

TA/Dark. If I ever get a laptop and can play again, it'll be the first thing I recreate.