srmalloy

Your character record on the server records what level you selected your powers at, but not when you placed subsequent enhancement slots. So even if you didn't put any slots into your level-1 powers until you were 45+, you'd still have the slots if you exemped to 1. Part of the reason for this is so that the order in which you slot enhancements is immaterial -- if you lost slots as well as powers, then if you exemped down to only have one slot in a power that you'd six-slotted, putting an End SO in that slot would disadvantage you compared to someone who'd put a Dam SO in the slot (remember, respecs predate IOs).

Since Astoria was relatively untouched by the Rikti War, and didn't have the initial takeover by the BP until after that, it's possible that the solar panels were installed prior to 2000, before anything happened.

(knee-jerk response) HIPAA, not 'hippa'.

All your powers go on cooldown, just as if you'd used them (or turned them off, in the case of toggles), so each of them had to recharge normally before they are available. This is (aside from activation time) not much of a problem for most armor toggles, or for the first few tiers of powers, but some of them can have significant recharge timers.

With the constraint that all of your abilities go into cooldown when you switch builds. This isn't an issue with fast-recharge powers like most armors, but switching builds isn't something you want to do in the middle of combat.

I have a character I recreated from Live, a Fire/Rad Controller born to a woman exposed during the Chernobyl accident, who I'd kitted out with the full Chitin set colored to look like chitin plates over exposed muscle tissue, the most visible effects of her mutation. After a few comments about her 'costume', I created a bind for quick response, saying "Это не костюм, это мое тело. «Подарок» «славной советской техники»." ('This is not a costume; this is my body. A "gift" of "glorious Soviet technology".') She has issues...

Also, there is Conserve Power in the Force Mastery and Body Mastery ancillary pools, but those aren't available to all archetypes.

It's rare for me to get shot at by a sniper in PI, probably because I don't spend much time in the area where they normally spawn. FF, however, is another story. Atop the buildings in the SE, on the awnings between the two E/W rows of buildings in the west, the Nemesis sniper on the east side of the N/S building west of that corridor, another on the roof WSW of Peter Stemitz, and more on the awnings on the N/S road south of the hospital -- there are snipers across much of the zone.

It was released (live, not the beta) on April 27th, 2004. If I remember the history correctly, the version that was announced for 2002 was the first incarnation of the design, where you got different numbers and strengths of abilities depending on your origin. It was determined that it was too easy to gimp your character or produce a 'tank mage', so it was pulled back and rebuilt with the current archetype system.

This, along with powers like the buff pet summons -- you can summon a Blue Wisp standing on the ground, but activate Fky, so your toes are a couple inches off the ground, and suddenly you can't.

There are a number of badge markers that stand significantly proud of the surface they're embedded into in the various zones. I think 'geometry errors' is more for gaps in the terrain that can be used to get under the map.

Assuming that the design software to edit animations like that was part of the code 'liberated' before PS was shut down...

The power visuals have specific locations on the character rigging where the power originates. Take Fire Blast; the snipe has the character hunching into their chest, then extending both hands out in front of them, and the fire blast comes out from the extended hands. Now look at the AR snipe animation -- weapon to the right shoulder, sighting over the barrel. Attach the Fire Blast power effect, and it's coming from a spot to the left of the character's weapon. Every single power, to be usable as weapon fire, would have to have a specific animation for that power for each different weapon -- the Redding Rifle is a different length than the Thompson SMG, so they require different 'muzzle points' for the power visual origin.

If you have your tier-3 Lore and/or Destiny abilities, opening your Combat Attributes window, then in the General section select 'Monitor' for 'Level Shift' (stick the window in a convenient corner or something), you will be able to see when you are in 'incarnate content' -- level shift is capped at +1 for normal content, so if you see '2' or '3' in the window, you know that you are doing incarnate content.

Who will be creating all of the new power animations for this change?

While that is currently the more popular usage, "another think coming" is the original form of the phrase, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The phrase originated in British English in the mid-1800s, coming from a comic expression, "if that's what you think, you've got another think coming".

To be fair, this was my attitude toward AE rewards all the way back to its introduction on Live -- the devs had stated that influence (prior to CoV and, later, Praetoria) was a reflection of your reputation and how readily you could get people to do things for you; I didn't see how your facility in some virtual-reality environment could increase your reputation as a hero/villain, since you weren't out and about doing heroic/dastardly deeds for people to notice. How many times do you encounter some NPC saying "Isn't that [character name]? Weren't they the one who *crushed* AE arc 55368?", after all?

And I had a brief mental image of a minimum-height Staff/WP scrapper -- "Wee Will, Wee Will, Rock Yew!"

It's not 'no FX', and you still get the shield-based animations, but you can color the 'Energy Shield' under 'Elemental Shields' to be almost invisible.

Or make influence/infamy/information work as described -- a measure of your reputation that represents how readily you can get others to supply you with stuff. Crawling into your electronic navel and destroying thousands of virtual opponents may teach you how to use your powers, but it gives you absolutely no reputation in the 'real world', so AE missions shouldn't award inf -- all you get are XP and tickets.

Particularly with the Asian MMOs, where it rapidly becomes virtually impossible to complete content without a group. But that's part of the way MMOs evolved in Asia.

Then you're just making them wrong:

It's not "10% Recharge", it's whatever the bonus is named that controls the max count. If you have five 10% Recharge bonuses named "Huge Recharge Bonus" and another five 10% Recharge bonuses named "Ultimate Recharge Bonus", you'd get all ten, because you don't have more than five of each named bonus. https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Enhancement_Set_Bonuses

You can be transformed by some bizarre biogenetic goo into a twisted plant creature, but it doesn't change who you are: [NPC] Crey Juggernaut: I'm ready to break some noses. [NPC] Razorvine: I'm ready to break some noses.

And while it would require an animation change, the recock twirl for a loop lever action rifle would be entertaining.