Techwright

Late to the party, but I'll share a handful of things: 1. Do a little badge hunting/earning...specifically Accolades. Some of the awarded accolades for badges come with bonuses that will boost your character or unlock a special ability. Hero accolade powers Villain accolade powers 2. Ask in advance of tackling a new-to-you opponent group. Several opponent groups have one or two character types that need to be dropped quickly, otherwise your fight will be much harder. Seasoned players know these, and tend to set targets to them before wading into the mob. For example, the high-level group, Malta, has a category called "Sappers" that can make fighting the group really miserable if they're not dispatched in a first strike. Malta's "Gunslingers" are usually my second target for reasons that will become obvious. I'll add that a few groups have NPCs that can resurrect once if dropped, so knowing that can save you from having them hit you in the back once you've stepped over their body to deal with others. If you're doing solo work, you can ask in Help channel or in zone broadcast before tackling a new group. 3. Squishy types can target through the tank, tanking Kheldian, or brute. This works when both are actively involved, and its probably best if the squishy lets the tank know they'll be using the tank's targeting. Squishies: Setting your target on your tank and just firing everything will have your character hitting whatever the tank is pointing at. This allows the aggro you create to rest on the tank's sturdier frame, rather than the squishy, increasing survival chances. It's not an absolute. I've seen NPCs leave the pack and deliberately target my squishies, but it reduces the heat you may bring upon yourself, at the exchange of not getting to pick a target. Tanking types: This also means that the tanky types should remember to target something even if they are just throwing out taunts. You're creating opportunity for your range strikers by doing this. I've had several times I've targeted through a tank and the tank is...just standing there absorbing blows, no NPCs being targeted. As a result, my squishy has to break with the tank and take the heat himself. 4. If you've not already done so, check out Fort Trident, the secret base right out in the open. The entrance to Fort Trident was moved a few updates back, but for some reason, it is still hiding in plain sight to most players. To find it, just stand on the front porch of City Hall in Atlas Park. The building to your left, across the street, houses Fort Trident. (It has a big FC banner on it, and states "Freedom Corp" above the door.) FT was designed to act as a sort of base to those players who don't have a base. It doesn't offer everything (no base storage), but it does offer much. Be certain to check every room as there are some very useful things stuffed in some of the back rooms. Fort Trident has another interesting feature, in that you can use it to teleport to the starting point of Freedom Phalanx Task Forces. For example: don't know how to find Manticore to do your first Manticore Task Force? Go to Fort Trident and find Manticore there. The glowing circle behind him is a portal to his location in Brickstown. I can't tell you how many times I've seen teams try to coach a new player into finding the path to a task force start, when really all they have to do is get the player, already acquainted with Atlas Park, to go into Fort Trident and teleport to target. One other thing to note: A first timer in Fort Trident might think the fort only extends to the wall behind Back Alley Brawler (the trainer in the fort) and the submarine (yes, it is a sub fort). However, that is an optical illusion. Most of the fort is behind B.A.B. 5. Day Jobs - when logging out, consider parking your character in a Day Job location. Examples include hospitals, police stations, train stations, and City Hall, but there's many more. While you are away from the game, the character begins earning time towards a Day Job badge for that building or plot of ground. It takes several days to complete one, but once earned, the Day Job starts to accrue charges that can be used for a variety of benefits. Continue parking in the Day Job spot to recharge anything that's been used up. Pairing the right two day jobs together will create an accolade which has further benefits. Here's a list of Day Jobs, Day Job accolades and what benefits they give.

Down-then-up is only effective until the knockback enthusiast on your team starts yeeting the opponents into the center space. Then you're headed back down again. For this reason, I'd personally prefer to start top and work down.

Bribes can, allegedly, shorten the time. You can make all bribes payable to @Snarky.

I am now imagining Rikti struggling to identify all the boxes with normal, everyday human-related stuff in them.

Resolved by very specific two elevators utilized, or resolved by any two elevators used? I can see the first as annoyance, the second adds a dash of player-choice variety, though admittedly it would be better if there was a random number of elevators used each time.

Normally, I notice this when I click the link to go to the unofficial wiki, but I noticed it today when signing into the forums after clearing cache. The "verifying you are human" message came up, ran a bit of animated graphics, seemed satisfied, and let me in. My camera and mike are disconnected, and I offered no input. So...what is it really doing to "verify"? (Yes, I know my handle is "Techwright". I don't know all of IT. I have a very particular set of skills.) I'd recently learned that a lot of those verification hoops we had to jump through on other websites, you know the ones where you're supposed to pick out all the pictures with a traffic light, bus, bicycle, nuclear weapon, etc., were actually about training A.I. using humans as unwitting teachers, rather than about true security. I'm not saying this is the same, but with no interaction, I find it curious.

Going to do a bit of break-down here: 0:47 - Everyone's favorite "hairless Wookie" Rebel in glorious combat action! He's even using his species' traditional multi-function weapon, the bo-rifle, though the live-action version looks thinner than the animated version. Rotta seems to have taken a different path than every other Hutt. It actually kind of makes sense. I'd been wondering for years how George thought that giant, fat slugs would ever rise to dominate species that could so quickly attack and kill them. Seeing what appears to be a physically powerful Hutt, seems to close that plot hole a bit. If he's shown to move with serpent-like speed as well, then the plot hole closes, and Hutts rose to power on their physical prowess, but grew soft, fat, and indulgent when they gained enough power for others to do their fighting for them. Also, is Rotta a slave gladiator, or a ruler gladiator? Is he Maximus or Commodus? I'm very curious as to what merits the Anzellans having such a prominent place in the teaser. As robot techs, they really had a very narrow role in the series. Second Razorcrest. I've been expecting this for some time. The Naboo Starfighter has no room for hauling bounties. It's great for anything not requiring hauling. I'd imagine Mando is parking whatever craft is not in action, probably at either Mandalore or Boba's Palace. 0:54 - Grogu is eating Mantel Mix, the treat some of the Bad Batch enjoyed after each successful mission. As the name implies, it was sold on the planet Ord Mantel, where Cid was based, so, is the arena and Rotta on Ord Mantel, or did some clever entrepreneur bring it to another world? And...if they're on Ord Mantel, is Cid going to be tied into this movie? I've been waiting for that shady Trandoshan to get her just comeuppance, warm or cold. I don't recognize the two giant droids nor the symbol on the door they guard. I feel like I should, though. Perhaps they're a reference to some of the Star Wars I've not seen this past year and a half. Guess I may need to go see Eric Voss' explanation on New Rockstars channel. Nor do I recognize the giant reptilian gladiator, though it's design, especially the elongated neck, reminds me of one of the many reworkings Star Trek did on the Gorn species to make them truly terrifying. EDIT: Ah, the gladiator is a Mantellian Savrip which answers questions. First off, the species is represented by one of the pieces in Dejarik, that is, Star Wars holo-chess. We first saw a game of that on the Millenium Falcon in that funny "let the Wookie win" moment. Secondly, its species is from Ord Mantel, which, with the Mantel Mix, seems to cement that the gladiatorial fights are on Ord Mantel. I also didn't recognize the cobra-hooded nasty with the metallic grin. I've since learned that it is likely an Amani, and species that I should have remembered from an episode of the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars. They were the aggressors in one of the many Star Wars reinterpretations of the Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven movies. AT-ATs in the mountain pass - first thought was "Dude! Why you be putting the heavies in the narrow, snap-rock pass? It should be the chicken walkers (AT-STs)." That obvious mistake aside, I'd note that, although we're several years into the 30 year gap between Original Trilogy and Sequel Trilogy, the Imps are still using the AT-ATs, and not the "gorilla" version, the AT-M6 that shows up in the Sequel Trilogy. This suggests in the over-arching story of Star Wars, that the Imp warlords are using up whatever scraps and surplus they can find at this time. They've yet to create a serious, new engineering and manufacturing center that will fuel their return to form as the First and Last Orders. The creature attacking Grogu and the Anzellan at the teaser's end appears to be a womp rat, the rodent species native to Tatooine that Luke used to "bullseye" as a younger teen. If it is a womp rat, we may have just seen evidence of yet another visit to Tatooine.

Right, so to expand on what I stated earlier, when a player out-levels a contact and their missions, it's not the end. The player can go to the out-of-time zone of Ouroboros, to "travel back in time" to do those missions at a lower level. If you've not yet encountered Ouroboros, go to the area around the Atlas Park trainer, Ms Liberty, and ask in the Broadcast channel if someone would be willing to drop an "O-portal". Invariably, someone will do so, and you'll see a gold effect appear on the ground and the air above it for a limited time. Click on this, and you'll be transported to Ouroboros, and your powers trays will gain a shortcut control so you can generate an "O-portal" yourself on a timed basis. Ouroboros has several interesting features, but for this, run up and into the building, and you'll see one large and several small Pillars of Ice and Flame. Clicking on any of these will present a menu of possible story arcs of the past (lower levels) that you can experience. What you'll be seeking is the (blue/hero side) 3 Faultline arcs (parts 1, 2, 3) titled "The Rumblings of the Past". If you accept a story arc, the game will reset your level and abilities to the appropriate level and you'll remain that way while you work with the arc. It's worth noting that should you join a supergroup with a fleshed-out base, the base creator might have installed a Pillar of Ice and Flame in the base. There are two other ways I can recall in order to handle this: 1. team with someone who is the appropriate level and is doing the arcs. The trick here is that you'll need to stay on top of the reading of the clues and such, since the setup is geared more towards informing the main player of the arc. 2. Visit a S.T.A.R.T. vendor, and ask them to turn off your ability to earn XP. This can be reversed later. Using this, you could remain at a level that all the contacts in the Faultline arc can work with. Just remember to turn XP back on afterwards. The easiest START vendor for a blue/hero side player to find stands next to the fountain to the right of the giant statue of Atlas in Atlas Park. Another can be found in Pocket D, the pocket dimension nightclub, ski slope, and entertainment complex zone. Lastly, if you're visiting Faultline zone, it's entrance is found at the southern end of the Skyway City zone, not far from the Skyway City (south) train station. There's also a supergroup portal in Faultline by which you can reach it, if you have access to a supergroup base with zone portals.

Welcome! I've watched the entire 20 years of the original Time Team at least 4 times over now, and I follow the revival show on YouTube. Does that count for archaeology? 😁 I'm a bit of a history nerd, too. Since you're new and an archaeology buff, don't miss running the Faultline zone missions (levels 15 to 19, or visit the Pillars of Ice & Flame in the Oroboros zone if you've moved past those levels), beginning with Jim Tremblor (zone coordinates (-330, 0.5, -1211.5)). He'll eventually introduce you to the contact Doc Delilah, the game's resident archaeologist/historian. It's comic bookish at best, but she's fun.

I would suppose you're not including the Well in this. As the sentient source of power for many of the magic wielders, it would seem to be the most powerful. With that in mind, while it would be hard to top the Dream Doctor, I suspect, I'm not certain there is one being who is the Most Powerful. It's more like each has their own strengths and weaknesses. Ghost Widow's strength, for example, is durability. She literally cannot be destroyed until all of Arachnos is wiped out. In Dream Doctor's case, if you read up on it, he's been increasing in power ever since first tackling the CoT in the 1930s child abductions case. Eventually, there's the breakthrough realization that he's the counterpart of one of the most powerful being in existence.

My young step-nephew was visiting in summer 2004, and I had taken him over to meet my life-long best friend. BFF and I had grown up as 1st generation video gamers with about 3 decades console, arcade, and early pc games experience at that point, but I'd never seen an MMO played until that day. BFF showed us multiple games, and while my nephew was fascinated by a baseball game, it was CoH that caught my attention. (BFF and I had always liked superhero stuff, and he even owned a small comic shop for a time.) Fast-forward a bit as I had to upgrade my PC of the time, but I ended up joining him in the game at the start of the first Winter Lord event at the end of 2004. Things are a lot easier now, but we had a blast chasing down Winter Lords in Kings Row. As our characters were so low, we ended up roof searching by running up and down fire escapes. Hilarious, as I think back on it. It's hard to pick a single best "like", but it's probably the PUGs. At first, my BFF and I were shy and uncomfortable teaming with anyone else, and we played for quite some time as a dynamic duo. It wasn't until some time in WoW, and joining a casual guild there, that we had any interest in running with a PUG team here. But the results were so much nicer here than in WoW. The (usually) pleasant community of CoH, just made the PUG experience so much better. I like to tell the story of one PUG where we entered a large room that often spells doom for a team, only to find it largely wall-to-wall Tsoo sorcs, which were much nastier in groups back then. It took us 3 hours and a huge hospital bill to clear that room, and the team did it without rage-quitting and even with a fair amount of humor. Overall, definitely a better experience than other MMO PUG teams.

Ouch. If this was a game cartridge, I'd have said Atari's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had a rival.

Mender Chiron. True, we have a hospital called "Chiron" so perhaps an alternate spelling like "Kiron". In Greek mythology, Chiron was the wise centaur who trained a number of well-known Greek heroes.

Other than her hair looking like it was dyed (too consistent a color. Most redheads/gingers have multiple shades of red in their hair) this is a great A.I. piece. (I can get away with the redhead comment as I and several members of my family are natural auburn reds.) Which A.I. tool did you use with this?

Well, there was that time when someone put a portion of the game back into place. You couldn't fight anyone , but you could recreate your characters and move them around a zone or two. It was a synthetic fix, and I admit I utilized it once or twice, but yes, so much nicer to be back in the full game. From previous comments made, I know I was not alone in 2019 weeping real tears of joy when the CoH anthem rang out again on my computer for the first time in many years.

That may be the most coherent troll I've "heard" in the game.

Nasty? Nah, their cute!

Well, besides my level 50 AH/banker/crafter, the only other special purpose ones I have are two kinds of place-holder alts: 1. reserves the name for a character or characters whose name/concept came to me suddenly, but whom I do not currently have time to flesh out. Essentially placeholders for the next guys I intend to build properly and take to 50. 2. Placeholders which specifically reserve the name of one of my key characters, but on a different server. That way, if there's an event (admittedly rare these days) that I want to jump servers to participate in, I can just rename the alt temporarily, transfer the main character to the other server, and reverse everything when I'm done. There's only a few of these, and only for those characters whose names are mainstream enough that I feel the name might be taken by others otherwise. Obviously, a name like "Illinois Johnson" would likely not need a placeholder, while something like "Superbman" might.

Just took my 50 electrical corruptor and teamed over in Neutropolis to deal with Bladehook. I noticed I couldn't drain his endurance like I do all the time with the standard archvillains and monsters. On those, I at least make a notable dent, and on several I can eventually create a nearly full drain (they always keep a bare minimum endurance). On Bladehook, my efforts barely registered. At one point he disappeared entirely for me, while my teammates seemingly didn't have such problems and fought on. So apparently one or more of his minions may have a blind function? Bring yellow inspirations, just in case.

I've been watching additional players, including this one who is tackling the early access game rather than just the demo. This one shows that additional Skills are earned, and that sometimes "Achievements" rewards can offer abilities, so there appears to be some power customization of some sort, though on the lines of a Superman to whom writers just keep piling up new powers. I've seen, for example, two different ways of fighting building fires now. The demo version had the character using some sort of concussive energy to smother the fire, while the full version had the hero using what appears to be ice breath. I've also witnessed a supervillain boss fight, though not the slugfest I expected. It was instead a high speed chase through the city, where apparently the hero's job is to use super flight to keep pace with a super speedster through all his twists and turns to ditch you. Stay on top of the situation long enough, and you get close enough to 1-punch him. An additional supervillain fight late in the video had the player tackling a giant robot that utilized tracking missiles. There was also an interesting bit where the player has to defuse a bomb in a precision mini-game. It looks like new types of opportunities unlock as you advance in rank. For example, I started seeing hostage rescue situations after he crossed level 20. In the secret-identity part of the game, players seem to be gravitating to picking Taxi Driver as their job choice in order to pick up some fast cash to hold home eviction at bay. Taxi driving is a timed event, forcing the player to take great speed and crazy risks. You can crash without loss, except the loss of valuable time, leading to a demolition derby that makes you wonder if you truly are a hero or perhaps a delusional villain. This view is reinforced when you realize that in hero mode you can very, very easily tear through skyscrapers, apparently flinging whole floors of office interns to their deaths as the debris is sucked out of the building by the vortex in your wake.

It's definitely early days. I know from one of the critiques, for example, that the early access didn't launch with a female form, though the vid below shows evidence that it is coming. Here's a video with 18 minutes of gameplay. You'll notice some costume customization in the first 2 1/2 minutes. Nothing to the level of CoH of course, but there's at least some customization. Power customization: yeah, I'm not sure that's added yet. The demo gameplay seems to show a Shazam-type character: powers rivaling superman, but with some sort of destructive energy blasts which can shatter a car or concussively knock the air defueling a fire. Now what it did show was an Achievements rewards panel at the 5:22 mark, though I'm not clear what's involved in that. Is it how players get more costume parts, tweak the powers, other? Travel and combat demonstration begin at the 2:45 mark. I must say, I'm impressed with the flight ability, and really wish CoH resembled it. There's some interesting speedster bits, too. Street combat shows blood, and knockback is, at times, significant here. The latter half of the demo dips into the troubled secret identity side of things.

Superhero Simulator This came up in my Steam daily queue today. Anyone ever played it? Thoughts? It's early access and on sale at USA$9 today. From what I've read, the game challenges you to not only survive your superhero life, but also your secret identity life. Reading the reviews so far, I'm seeing expressions like "very fun and promising game". Even the two negatives I found in English expressed their excitement at the "potential" of the game. One commented in the positive about the developers being quite active in listening to player feedback. Reading these two, it seems they're just hung up on the early development. (I've never understood why people insist on an early access game being practically finished.)

Was Girl Mercury's creation influenced, by any chance, by the name and intense white glow of the eponymous characters from The Mercury Men, a YouTube homage to old black & white sci-fi serials?

The Natural. That one was up-front-and-center in all the mid-1980s grocery store VHS rental racks for years, not because they couldn't unload it but because it was highly marketable. (The Mission was another.) I just got done re-watching the star-packed movie A Bridge Too Far, and although he had a secondary role, Redford had one of the most memorable moments, recreating the real Major Cook's tense, repetitious cry of "Hail Mary, full of grace" while paddling furiously across river into a curtain of Nazi lead flying past him, mauling Cliff the mailman in the process.

List: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Base_Control_Items List: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Base_Energy_Items Control and Energy items were more or less present to add strategy to the original concept of having bases that could be damaged during supergroup PvP taking place in the bases. That aged as well as milk on a hot tarmac.