Luminara

That would depend on the voice actor. Clancy Brown? He'd own Recluse, figuratively and literally. Rainn Wilson? Recluse's shoe-shine boy.

Defenders are what I consider good generalists.

The inherents of brutes, stalkers and corruptors always felt underwhelming to me, and lacked a compelling differentiation from corresponding heroic archetypes. Dominators and VEATs lack coherence. They're trying to be all things to all people, and being none well. Masterminds were designed better, but they aren't sufficient to compensate for the sense of disappointment I always experienced when traveling around the Rogue Isles. The zones lack the immersive scale and thrill of places like Steel Canyon and Skyway City. Hero-side zones are grand, imposing, exciting to be in and move through. Villain-side zones are... arbitrary filler between mission doors.

Haikus... not my thing. I like nice, long sentences. And paragraphs... mmm...

I don't love you. I've been having an affair. With the water heater. We're leaving together. I'm filing for alimony. You can keep your floozie blow-up dolls. 🤪

Your entire premise is based on this piece misinformation, and it is patently and demonstrably untrue. Prior to merit rewards, on the original servers, a Trick Arrows defender or controller could generate 7.5-10 million inf* per hour running radio missions. Below x4/x8. Solo. Trick Arrows. This was how I financed all of my alts and paid for multiple multi-billion inf* builds. On the Homecoming servers, one can generate 2-4 times as much inf*, without counting merit rewards. A build using common level 25-30 IOs was less expensive than a build using SOs, and slightly more efficient, on the original servers. On the Homecoming servers, recipe, salvage and crafted IO prices are aren't even a tenth of what they were. Frankenslotting with select inexpensive set IOs is even cheaper and significantly more efficient. On those two points alone, your assertion is disprovable. Going further, you imply that, for some reason, anyone "needs" to generate an inf* income of multiple millions per hour. This is fallacious. Inf* requirements are dictated by each individual player's preferred pace and performance level. Someone who prefers casual radio missions has no inherent need for an "uber" build with multiple expensive IO sets and maximal bonuses, and is therefore generating inf* at a pace appropriate for him/her. In fact, not one player, in the history of this game, has ever "needed" inf* generation on the scale you think should be mandatory. There is a finite limit to spending, after all, and beyond that, accumulation of inf* is little more than a goal unto itself. Additionally, this game was, and still is, an MMO, with an ingrained necessity for player retention. One of the ways this is accomplished is through controlling progress by careful regulation of things like XP gain and inf* generation. This is not theory, this is science. We, humans, typically place very little value on that which is obtained with no effort or time. We lose interest in the shiny toy and leave to find another shiny toy. This behavior is detrimental in an MMO, resulting in a notable decline in player retention. Furthermore, your proposal would result in wildly spiralling inflation. People would be playing significantly less to acquire the inf* to achieve their goals, which would lead to fewer recipe and salvage drops. Prices on everything would climb rapidly when the existing supply of recipes and salvage diminishes and is not replenished at the previous rate. Even with merits, converters and the Homecoming team seeding salvage, the market would experience massive fluctuations and increases in prices across the board. In the end, your altered inf* accumulation rate would do no real good, because everyone would be right back where they were before. The only notable difference would be the additional zeroes on the prices. No-one "needs" 500,000,000 inf* per hour. No-one needs 30,000,000 per hour. In truth, no-one needs 1,000,000 per hour. All anyone needs is enough to pay for the enhancements they want, and the game already supplies that. People have to play for more than an hour to get it, but, in all honesty, if waiting more than an hour to kit out a character is such a hardship for anyone, they probably shouldn't be playing an MMO... or anything more complex than Checkers. Lastly, "income inequality" is inapplicable in this context. There is no glass ceiling here. There is no differentiation based on color or sexual preference. There is no limitation imposed on one player which does not exist in equal measure for every other player. Everyone has the option to play the market, or farm in AE missions, or run task forces back to back. Everyone can achieve equal inf* generation rates. There is no inequality in Co*, income or otherwise, that I have ever witnessed.

Surprisingly, none, despite my interest in several comic book heroes. My characters were always designed around a specific costume piece which sparked a new concept. Co* actually pulled me out of comic book hero obsessions and drove me to explore my creative side.

You think everything needs procs. You added procs to your washing machine and turned your super-suit into a fishnet body stocking. You dropped out of medical school when you discovered that proctology had nothing to do with procs. You even tried to "enhance" oatmeal with procs (those scars really don't look too bad, by the way). 😛

Emotional development isn't a product of puberty. It's a result of time, experience and intellectual capacity. The timeline of the game indicates that his confrontation with Blue Steel occurred in August of '02, and it's only a couple of years after that when players encounter the Clockwork King in his present form, so he is still, essentially, an adolescent or early adult at that point. Point being, he can grow up, meaning, learn to behave in an adult manner, given time. A lot of story potential there for a future task/strike force.

Man-scaping isn't going to be sufficient. There's a whole topiary garden somewhere in there.

There were numerous predictions that the world would end in 1999. Paragon City has experienced several apocalyptic situations. Prince indicated that the best parties would be in 1999 (and that we should revel as though that time had already arrived). Party is a word interchangable with team. Conclusion: it's 1999 in Paragon City. Also, something something Freemasons something something Illuminati something something NWO something something Mender Silos something plot.

As has been pointed out in many threads, the djinn is out of the bottle. It won't matter if the eventual licensing agreement fails to reach fruition, or forces all but one acknowledged server to shut down, or NCSoft throws their collective hands in the air and says, "Whatever. Keep it, just stop bothering us." There will never again be a day when there are no Co* servers. There will never be a single point of failure. It's in too many hands for that to happen now. And if the situation did play out with only one licensed team or server group, the HC team would lose nothing by offering to fold the other teams in, on separate servers with separate rules, as part of a collective, centralized community. If anything, they'd benefit from the increase in players and more stable revenue flow, as well as having more options to offer without detracting from their own focus. Having one team singled out for legitimacy doesn't mean all other teams, efforts or ideas have to go away. Especially not in consideration of the situation which led to the dissemination of the server code.

One team or server group laboring under the necessity to be all things to all players will, inevitably, crumble under the weight of expectations. Different teams and server groups can offer different things, and adopt or discard ideas from one another as befits each and to the benefit of the players supporting them. It's not a competition, beyond the obvious need to attract enough players willing to assist with server expenses. It's offering all players more options.

Inspirations. I was always certain I'd need them for the next spawn. However difficult a fight seemed, I couldn't convince myself to use inspirations, because the next one might be harder and I had no guarantee of the "right" inspirations dropping later. All of my characters clung to their starter inspirations until I could buy the more powerful versions, at which point I'd clear the tray and stock a specific selection "just in case I need them", then let those gather dust until the next tier became available. I've done this in every game with consumables that I've ever played. Regardless of availability, I just can't bring myself to "risk" using them. I'm always absolutely certain that I'll regret using what I have because it means I won't have them "when I really need them".

I go. I hunt. I kill Skulz.

I can't play at all and I know more about the current state of the game, AH, AE, Incarnate process, farming situation, etc. And if the OP is old enough to have loin fruit, he/she had better be grown up enough to handle a little abrasiveness over his/her willful ignorance, and do what he/she expects the larva to do - learn from it.

Dear MasThoven17, It's going to be hard, and you're going to cry a lot at first, but you have to break up with Architect Entertainment. He isn't helping you, he isn't there for you and, I'm sorry, hon, he doesn't love you. Remember that you're a strong, independent woman who "don't need no" fire farm to live. And that's what you'll do when you walk out that door. Live. Finally and completely. There's a whole world of quality content out there, waiting to be discovered. New and equally rewarding ways to generate inf*. Chances to stop and read those IO set descriptions and apply a tiny bit of very basic math, so you don't have to use one of those third-party tools common to modern MMOs if you don't want to. You've taken the first step, asking for help. Now take another, and another after that, and keep taking those steps until you've walked out that AE door and started down the road to true happiness with a better companion, one who will always be there for you and nurture you. Eventually, you'll look back on this and realize how much happier you are without him, and how much you should appreciate what a tremendous gift you gave yourself when you stopped grinding fire farms and started growing, as a player, a person and a woman. Get out there and show Paragon City and the Rogue Isles what you're really made of. You can do it. Love, Abby's Stand-in

Powerful in the ways of the Freem, Null is. Luminous being is he, not this crude matter.

Could also be a piece of Freem was lodged in a crevice and shook loose when you were cleaning.

That's the last remnant of Pinnacle, hung over and begging you to whisper.

Plausible, but we have to go back to that 30+ year period between the Nostromo and the founding of the colony. That alone implies that they didn't know the alien ship was there. Someone knew, but that knowledge apparently disappeared in that span of time. Had the person who knew really been keen on further investigation, he/she could've had a ship there in far fewer than 30 years. In Alien, the cockpit chatter after they wake up suggests that, despite using sleep pods, ships travel relatively quickly. Ripley also promised her daughter that she'd be home for her twelveth birthday, again indicative of ships traveling fast enough to transit large sections of space in a comparatively short period of time. Where you see inefficiency, I see conspiracy and cover-up.

They were using buckets to add plutonium solution to a mixer in Japan. Caused a criticality event that killed three people. There was a US Army small reactor that went critical when one of the men climbed on top and yanked the primary control rod out (it was stuck, and they were operating the reactor with far too few control rods in that particular assembly). Three people died... one when he was impaled on a strut on the ceiling (the rod yanker). These are real events. These actually happened. Never underestimate human stupidity. Especially when there's a bottom line involved.

Of course they knew it was there. WY issued the original order which took the Nostromo off course and woke the crew. But that doesn't tie in with your theory. The 30+ year gap between the disappearance of the Nostromo and the founding of the colony on LV 426 indicates that whatever information WY had was purged (by whomever was responsible for sending the Nostromo to investigate) and LV 426 was forgotten until it popped up as a potential colonization prospect, with little more than a celestial map reference and basic passing scan data. In other words, they knew it was there, but nothing else.

It would be more economically feasible to make the coolant system double as complex heating and hydroponics and greenhouse climate control, as well as easier to package for transport and assembly on site. There would also be the cost of power delivery if the reactor were housed away from the terraforming rig and colonial settlement. Presumably, these rigs are in large-scale production and use, and rarely fail, otherwise WY wouldn't be in control of a colonial operation, and cost-saving measures like combining a reactor, terraforming rig and colonial outpost would be exactly what one would expect. Even an explosion of simple hydrogen would be extremely dangerous in that sort of situation. Keep in mind the size of the reactor and facility, and the length of time it had already been in operation ("We've had colonists on LV 426 for over twenty years, none of them ever complained about any aliens."). Presuming it was the least expensive type of fusion reactor, even if they only used what they created in situ in the process of developing a breathable atmosphere, there would have been an enormous amount stored. When the reactor went, there were many scenes indicating that none of the safety systems were functioning (if there were any to begin with), and with 20 years of accumulated hydrogen stored... Again, not Nebraska, but definitely not a little pop.

That's not how it went down. Burke sent a request to the colony, asking them to investigate a coordinate. That was, initially, all he did. He wanted firm confirmation or denial of Ripley's reported "derelict alien ship". If she was lying to The Company, he lost nothing, but if she were telling them the truth, he saw it as an opportunity to acquire control over the evaluation, research and development of the site and potential contents. The Wildcatter, Newt's father, had the same general idea. All he'd been ordered to do was find out if anything was there. His greed drove him to enter the ship, subsequently leading to his ensnarement by the Facehugger. Events ensue, colony goes silent, etc. Burke, either realizing or strongly suspecting that Ripley had been honest, concluded that he had to go to the colony and secure whatever he could. Remember, at this point, only Ripley really comprehends how bad it could be, and Burke sees only percentages and exclusivity. It's likely that he already had Gorman on standby, someone with little field experience, looking to make his career or find a comfortable niche to sit in until retirement. Alternatively, he may have asked for Gorman based on that same psychological profile (inexperienced, easily manipulated). He did have access to Ripley's psychological evaluation records, which implies he could obtain records for others. Burke doesn't order the Marines to drop their ammo. Ripley suggests that shooting around the reactor might not be the best idea, and Burke reinforces her, but it's at Ripley's urging that Gorman gives the order. Later, when the survivors are shoring up defenses, Ripley confronts Burke about being responsible for the situation, as he was the one who asked for the "grid reference" to be checked, and tells him that she intends to inform The Company. Then Burke goes all in. He decides to infect Ripley and Newt. Whether he would've sabotaged the Marines' sleep pods as well, or expected to buy Gorman off, or had another plan, is all speculation. Also, there was no distress signal. "Ripley, we need to talk. We've lost contact with the colony on LV 426." He did protest to "nuking the place from orbit" because he couldn't be certain he'd manage to smuggle a specimen back with him, but once the reactor's cooling system was breached, that was moot. Regarding the reactor, it was a fusion reactor. Fusion reactors use hydrogen for fuel, not enriched uranium. The entire complex was a multi-use facility, providing energy via the fusion reactor (as well as water, likely), fulfilling the purpose of terraforming LV 426, and housing the colonists, manufacturing workshops and hydroponics gardens. Regarding the likelihood of an explosion "the size of Nebraska", that part is Hollywood fiction. But reactors can explode, both fission and fusion. Fission reactors can vaporize water in a few milliseconds, creating enormous pressure and blowing apart containment vessels, pipes, etc. It's happened a few times in reality. Fissile material can cause an explosion even if it's not in a containment vessel, under certain conditions (Japan had one criticality event which blew out windows when a mixing machine was switched on). A fusion reactor, being reliant on hydrogen, would definitely explode without proper cooling if the hydrogen were ignited and safeties were compromised. Given the events portrayed in the film, I consider it plausible that the reactor in the movie would explode, though I couldn't hazard a guess of how much damage it would do. It would depend on the way the reactor was constructed, the types of safety mechanisms and how effective they were, etc. Lastly, addressing Haijinx's comment about weight, that's only applicable when a ship is entering or exiting the gravity well of a large body, and given the accomplishments of civilization in the film, namely, the capability to create and maintain large space stations, it's irrelevant. The question you should be asking is, why was there a queen? "Cain... the crew member who went onto that ship, Cain, he said he saw thousands of those eggs."