malonkey1

Yeah conceptually it's not a bad, and I like the idea of a Mastermind counterpart that's a little more actively participating in combat, with an Archetype inherent to match. It also seems that making a pet class that has Assault secondaries is a popular idea, as I had the same idea for the Synergist. Personally, though, I think it might be more interesting to do away with the traditional "pet and upgrade" paradigm that the Mastermind uses. Instead of needing to buy explicit upgrade powers to enhance your pets, it might be neat if your pets' powers grew organically as you picked primary and secondary powers, passively enhancing and modifying them based on which powers you pick. So hypothetically if you're a Wizards/Ice Squad Leader, then your Acolytes and Initiates would get more spells as you take more powers from the Wizards powerset, but they would also receive Ice-based powers as you take more Ice Assault powers.

Once again I have been summoned Yeah the Synergist actually got implemented on a couple other servers, people seem to like it.

If a "completionist" badge were implemented, I feel it would have to be "completed all launch content" with separate badges for "completed all content for this update" added with each content update.

That would almost definitely require some code alteration, or some extremely clever manipulation of the existing power systems. The way the game's powers work, under normal circumstances powers are pre-built before you even open the client, so having any kind of dynamic power system would require a lot of chicanery with the systems as-is. I could imagine a few possible ways it could be implemented, but my understanding of the game's nuts and bolts is limited, and based upon i24 stuff that may not be true for HC/i26+.

Hey, that's Homecoming's policy and that's all there really is to it in the end. If they want the Synergist, it's available to them as with every other server, but it doesn't seem that the HC dev team is interested, and that's fine.

Yeah, it's available on some other servers (I don't think I'm supposed to promote them here?). If you look around, you'll find it.

Well, I've been meaning to learn Rust anyway.

Hey, @RubyRed do you think it would be difficult to adapt this to read Parse6 Bins? It would be really helpful for retrieving power data and the like for build planning tools on various servers.

Oh, yeah, it's available on the We Have Cake server, and it's coming to Sanctuary.

Actually it just directly grants the powers, much like how MM upgrades grant powers.

Approximately, I'll have to double check later on specifics.

It does, the name changed during development to "Synergist".

I suppose I could also host it on my own personal gitlab. Here's the publicly available git for it. It's mirrored to the original, so it's going to be the same as the one available on Ourodev, but you will need to follow the instructions for "IF YOU DO NOT USE MY BRANCH". I also updated the def files so Mental Projection is more easily usable without my code alterations, but it will still take a small alteration to the power definitions. I would still recommend joining the Ourodev discord, as they have a lot of helpful people with valuable information on how everything works. EDIT: It is important to mention that this is based off the i24 data, and so if you're not running off that, you may run into compatibility issues.

They have two sets: Synergist's Coordination and Shared Victory. They're both Damage sets that can be slotted into Assault or Pri/Sec Pet powers. Synergist's Coordination's sixth enhancement applies a Build Up Proc to the user (the player if slotted in an attack power, the pet(s) if slotted in a pet power) Shared Victory's sixth enhancement applies a Level Shift proc to your pets, regardless of if it's set in your assault power or pet power. Otherwise, they resemble the Mastermind ATO sets.

Alright, so I know I've been basically totally absent for months, but I wanted to let you guys know that I actually have the Archetype (including ATO enhancements) working and playable. It's going to be on the Sanctuary server in a future update, but it's also publicly available for use by any server, including Homecoming on the Ourodev Gitlab, so you can find it there. Fair warning, it does require a minor server/client code alteration to fully work, so if anyone running a server wants to run it, they'll either need to incorporate that change or slightly alter the data files. The git is here: https://git.ourodev.com/mods/synergist-at In order to access it to use on your server, you will need to join the Ourodev discord and request access: https://www.ourodev.com/

Nah, I'm super inactive with City of Heroes, I haven't even played on Homecoming in forever. I just occasionally pop by to lurk at this point. Besides, while there's some thematic similarity, I think it's more a case of the devs having a similar idea, rather than anything I could possibly take credit for.

I HAVE AWAKENED

Pretty well, actually. I've got the powers working with Ouroboros's i24 dataset, except for the capstone powers. Basically, the T9 for the secondaries is a transformation, either merging with your partner or transforming into them. (For example, wearing the Assault Bot as an armor suit and getting some Absorb and access to some of its attacks, or taking an Astral form and getting similar powers to your Astral doppelganger). Some of those have been...funky. Especially since trying to wrap my head around how the game's animation system works is a giant pain. I'll see if I can record a video on one of my days off showing some of this stuff.

Sort of like the Mu or Seer's levitation? I could get into that.

With the way that PFX works, provided the SCORE/HC team hasn't changed stuff too much, it should be possible to make multiple customizations for taunts that use the different sounds selectable like any other power customization. The issue then becomes how many such options per taunt power the team would be willing to modify and add to customization options, which might be compounded for any taunts that have VFX, because then you'd likely also need matching versions for the regular and one or more color-tinted and/or no-FX options. So it's probably do-able, but might not be worth the time and effort for what's gotten out of it.

Looking at some of the def files, it looks like something like that might have been something the original COH devs were working on. I saw a few commented-out references to a "hyper-advanced clockwork" AT in the files. There doesn't seem to be any data for it, though, so it was probably intended for a much farther future.

Well, I don't know about that third part, but having a partner pet that has the model and powers resembling the Snakes would be within the realm of possibility, certainly. The Duo's partner is the equivalent of a Mastermind's final pet. The exceptions are for Ninjitsu and Hellfire Aura, which instead get the mid-tier pets from Ninjas and Demon Summoning respectively, starting with the first pet at level one, then adding the second at level 18. This was mostly because the final tier pets of those sets didn't fit thematically on their own (the final Ninjas pet for MMs is an Oni, and the final pet for Demon Summoning is an ice demon where the rest of the set is fire-themed.) They just add new powers to the pet. That said, if it were to grant any powers with weapons, I think it would also give the pet the weapon, too. And the powers could probably add a VFX while active on the pet (sparks, flames, etc). But that would require me making new PFX files for the powers and I know nothing of the FX file syntax.

Not precisely customization. What I did do, though, is I figured out how to make powers that can summon commandable Doppleganger pets, and can optionally set them to use any villain definition instead of using the summoner's powers. In this case, it's referred to the Phantasm pet's definition file, hence the phantasm VFX. It is a code change, but it's a fairly small one, and I don't doubt that Homecoming could easily implement it if they felt that it was worth including. If you want to see pet customization, Bubblewrap on the Ouroboros team has been doing stuff with that.

Those are certainly both good ideas, and I will probably do that, but first, tell me if you guys see anything odd about this Phantasm pet?

Okay, checking in because the last time I posted here was over a month ago. Progress: Primary and Secondary Powers: Mostly Workable. A few powers not doing quite what they're supposed to, but I'll be able to hunt those down. Epic Pools: Working. Patron Pools: Not done yet. They're probably going to resemble the Corruptor versions. Inherent Power: Working. Enhancements and Sets: Working, boostsets have been defined for the powers and work normally. Archetype Enhancements: Not done. Waiting until I can get some real testing done before I jump to that. Power icons: They look kind of rough, and a more trained hand will want to go over them, but they get the point across. The powersets are as follows: Primary: Dark Assault Earth Assault Electricity Assault Energy Assault Fiery Assault Icy Assault Martial Assault Psionic Assault Thorny Assault The secondaries are as follows: Hellfire Aura: Combination of Fiery Aura and Thermal Radiation plus Demon pets. Mental Projection: A psychic-themed set with a special twist that I'll post more about when it's not super late at night. Natural Instinct: A combination of Nature Affinity and Regen with a Dire Wolf pet Nether Force: Dark Armor/Dark Miasma with the Lich as a pet Ninjitsu: A farily straight port of the Stalker Ninjitsu with some tweaks, and the Jounin pets Robotics: Traps plus some Force Fields, with the Assault Bot pet Streetwise: A twist on Willpower with the addition of some Leadership-themed powers and the Bruiser pet Super Serum: Invulnerability plus Poisons with the Commando pet Epic pools: Shadow Mastery: Living Shadows Petrifying Gaze Dark Consumption Haunt Soul Drain Arsenal Mastery Web Grenade Cryo Freeze Ray Sleep Grenade Surveillance LRM Rocket Blazing Mastery Ring of Fire Char Consume Bonfire Melt Armor Energetic Mastery Energy Transfer Focused Accuracy Physical Perfection Conserve Power Power Boost beyond that, not a lot to report. Mostly tweaking stuff in between trying to wrestle with the i24 code with Ouroboros. But speaking of wrestling with code, having access to the code to make modifications means I can do a few neat tricks, which I'll tell you guys about in the morning. And I fully intend to make this available to Homecoming and any other servers, should they be interested.