Techwright

I build and maintain business laptops and desktops (hence "Techwright"), but almost never work with gaming-quality laptops (unless the executive types decree they must have them...for business reasons, of course. ) . That said, I know there are trends within companies that supersede functional choices. To that end, I can make the following odds and ends observations: 1. Make sure you get all the types of connections and in the right quantities that you want. There's a transition going on right now, with more and more laptops dropping certain connections in favor of USB-C. If you have some peripherals with legacy connections, you'll need to take that into account in your search, or buy adapters. 2. Like Point #1, make sure you have what elements you need. People are still accustomed to DVD/CD drives in laptops, for example, but the trend in manufacturing is to drop those altogether in favor of USB-3 ports for external USB drives. You may have to buy peripherals if you can't find what you need. 3. Odd statement, sure, but side ports for power and Ethernet wire connections tend to be greater physical space hogs than connections in the back. That's because we tend to work in a side-to-side layout on desks, and wires don't do pure 90-degree bends, so the arc of the wire moving to the back and over a desk causes a lot of left-right space lost, as opposed to a wire running straight out the back of the laptop or dock, and then straight over the back end of the desk. 4. Speaking of ethernet wiring, a lot of laptop companies are forgoing the traditional ethernet port in laptops for...you guessed it...a USB-C port. This is in a silly quest to have bragging rights for the skinniest laptops, since traditional RJ-45 ports are thicker than USB-C. But it forces the user to utilize an ethernet-to-USB_C dongle (adapter), and the company might not always ship such with a laptop, forcing a purchase. We had to get Dell ones at work for about US$36 a pop. And I've yet to work with one of these adapters that maintains a firm connection to the ethernet's RJ-45 clip, which can lead to confusion if it loosens, severing signal, but still looking attached. As gaming is best over wired connection, this may prove important. Those adapters are pretty fragile, too, so if you go that route, take especially good care of it. 5. I prefer metal chassis over rubberized ones. Simply put, they're more durable. We've some users who are brutal on company laptops, and rubberized surfaces come back looking deeply scratched and destroyed, while aluminum chassis, though suffering the same abuse, have only a few scratches. 6. Batteries - it used to be all laptops had a pop-out battery, usefully for replacement on the fly, or even for popping out to drain the laptop of residual static charges when it started acting squirrel-y. I've fixed many laptops that way, popping a battery out for a minute while the power cable is disconnected. I'm seeing more and more models that are sealing the battery into the laptop, however, necessitating an A+ certification to open the laptop without voiding any warranties, not to mention its just nasty business towards those not trained to go inside the device. I theorize it is just greed to send the laptop in for repairs or hire an A+ tech. I see business laptops need battery replacements under consistent use about every 2-3 years, while laptops may function 5 to 9 years, so this becomes a problem. If they're out there, consider a laptop with a hot-swappable battery.

Is that Boomtown? I can bring my fire/fire blaster. Take down and roast at the same time. Dibs on a leg! EDIT: Oh, and I say we name the giant monster "Giblet".

I can get behind this idea, but with less...um, ethnic influence touches (would that be the word to explain it?) in the armor. For example, I like pieces of the Roman armor available already in game, but don't wear them because of the patterns on the plating. Those artwork faces and such just scream "Roman". Were there an option for plain or other generic patterns, I'd be using that stuff all the time. Same with this set picture. Those leggings are amazing, and as long as a generic, non-cultural specific pattern is an option, I'd gladly use them. I'm also highly in favor of the shoulders. We need more of the actual body-hugging shoulder pieces. Too many shoulders pieces look ridiculous because they are so far off the shoulders, the area they should be protecting. I'd like to make another costume point in regard to this picture. Look at the patterned metal of the shinguards. I'm guessing it was meant to suggest Damascus steel, which would be a cool option to have on all metal surfaces (hint, hint), but it reminded me of another surface, an armor surface I'd like to see for earth-bending types. Say, take the Roman armor and add this as an alternate 2-color skin. Gives us something other than rocks to wear. I'll call it "mineral cross section" for lack of a better term: Give me the right pillow, 4/5 stuffed, and with strong stitching, and I'll lay waste to large summer camps. With style.

/jranger Okay, slightly kidding, I've just never /jrangered a thought before. The power! Here's why I'm not a fan of that suggestion. Powers like these are absolutely stellar for controlling mobs moving from a broad fighting area to a narrower one. For example, there's that one Council room that keeps showing up in Striga Task Forces: the one where you enter through a narrow hallway into a large open room slammed packed with Council. It's often a death room for careless or inexperienced players who charge through the hall into the thick of the crowd. But be contrary-wise, have a shot or two through the hall to tag a mob, then drop Freezing Rain into the hall, and you now have a mass killing opportunity as 1/3 of that room tries to run the bottleneck, forced through the Freezing Rain. As another scenario, you're fighting in one of the broader, tan-walled caves. Your team has bitten off more than they can chew, and a host of enemy leave one of the large endrooms in pursuit. You pause at the bend in the hallway, because you know the NPCs will take the inner turn of that bend. Drop Freezing Rain next to the wall, and suddenly the pursuers, slowing, slipping and falling become your next mass slaughter, er...arrest. Having the ability to place by location gives us the ability to herd the crowd in ways targeted AoE would not.

I never thought a bold color scheme that reminded me of a Howard Johnsons could ever look good on a character, but you've pulled off a very sharp look. Bravo! While the look is a bit "busy" for my personal tastes, I must confess it is an eye-catching look. Thumbs up!

I'm not even sure Ant-Man can get through those without hitting a wall.

Well, I've a handful of characters tied to my classic movie serial sci-fi "space rangers" theme, so I'd be wanting a powerful alien lorepet. Something with mind or tele powers: able to lift heavy objects, able to manipulate fire with just their mind, able to freeze armies in their tracks and turn them into adoring babblers. Something like... But seriously, something alien, and since we're allowed to go crazy, I'm thinking a floating spheroid body (we already have a few pets in P2W resembling this), but with elasticised tentacles that can act like powerful whips for high ranged damage in a variety of attacks. Give those tentacles a 33% chance to have a venomous effect on a target, and maybe give the space beastie a releasable toxic cloud, like squid ink, but with a vision/accuracy diminishing effect, not unlike Night Widows' annoying ability.

One... Two... Three... Why think small?

I tried redside once. After about a month of being unable to team more than 3 or 4 times briefly, I finally decided to go anti-hero. It may have been said often, and I've just never heard it, but I've long wondered if perhaps redside could benefit from a designated day akin to "Tanker Tuesday". Even if it was just once every two weeks, I'd be more inclined to park a character on the redside, knowing he'd have a couple of nights a month of solid teaming. And hey, if the devs wanted to add in a bonus, say 1.5x XP for the designated day, on top of any rested XP bonus, that'd probably drag a few more over to the red for the day. Alternatively, I'd be happy with a quarterly red-side weekend, with a 2x XP bonus for characters playing in red zones, or on red teams in PVP.

Asking with genuine curiosity: Let's say there was a design competition for creative 2-D Chest Detail images, with the top quality image to be added to the game. What happens in process from that point until a player can add the chest detail to his/her character? I'm speculating that it wouldn't require 3-D modeling and testing, more like just adding the image to a database of images which are then pulled from by a 2-D field on the chest center or over the coat pocket. Of course, separating the image into two color layout might be a sticky wicket. And there may be a limit to the number of images the game can store and handle. I realize all of what I just said was likely a severe oversimplification, or just flat out wrong. Just getting the thoughts out there. So what really happens? Is there a "simple" way? And yes, I've an interest in this. There's been several times I've not found an image that works with a concept, and I'd been wondering if the process was "simple" enough for contributions from the players, without overwhelming the design team, even if it meant single-color graphics.

The Flash has always been my favorite, ever since I was a kid of the 70's watching him guest star on Superfriends. That said, I feel it would be a horrible power from the perspective of the runner. If you're the guy waiting back home for the pizza from Pisa, it is mere minutes. But from Flash's perspective, you've got to run...every...single...step, there and back again, and do so while the rest of the world seems still around you. It's not a blur to you, it's a nightmare marathon, just without getting winded. The expansion of time perspective would drive me nuts over long hauls. I'm thinking Yo-Yo Rodrigues' short dashes would be a safer choice for my sanity, or perhaps a long-range portaler where all that foot pounding isn't needed.

And just to shortcut that yellow brick road to Everlasting server's forum corner: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/40-everlasting/ EDIT: Ha! CrudeVileTerror beat me. Welcome to the game, nevertheless.

My former roommates and I always enjoyed Scotland Yard, a board game by Ravensburger. I never understood why it was originally marketed as a kids game. It proved to be very challenging for adults. The premise is that one person plays Mister X. His job is to avoid all other players playing Scotland Yard agents. The board is a stylized map of London, and all players move using taxis, buses, or the underground. The difference is that the detectives have a limited number of passes for each mode of transportation, while X has unlimited. X also can use a "fog of war" feature to remain unseen for several moves at a time, though he must appear periodically as defined by the game. The game concludes either by X being corralled by detectives blocking all possible moves, or by X outlasting his opponents limited passes, effectively escaping. Probably my other favorite board game is Avalon Hill's Rail Baron. It's akin to Monopoly for railroads, but rather than squares, you buy, trade, and move on historic railroad lines. The game is out of print, but many copies can still be bought on ebay and such. There's also a fan group's free digital work resurrecting the game as a computer version, which I find speeds up the game considerably. You can learn more here; https://www.railgamefans.com/rbp/

I'd love to go back and play my other two favorite MMO's. Unfortunately both Firefall and Tabula Rasa were destroyed by serious mismanagement.

You reminded me of one of my favorite laughs from recordings of the old "Allen's Alley" weekly radio comedy sketch. If you're not familiar with it, popular radio comedian Fred Allen would "walk" an "alley" of the big city, knocking on back doors and interviewing several quirky neighbors about a weekly topic. The greatest of these comedic characters was Senator Claghorn, a Deep-South Southerner forced to live in the North and forever a comedic blowhard about how much he loved his southern origins. ("When I'm in the North, I'm in enemy territory!", "I'll never attend a game at Yankee Stadium", "Down South we got two states: South Carolina and North Carolina...North Carolina...why couldn't they've called it Upper South Carolina...and why do we have a South Dakota up North?") You've likely already known his character as it was cloned to create the popular Looney Toons character, Foghorn Leghorn, right down to the accent and comedic timings. That out of the way, Allen was interviewing Titus Moody, a plain-spoken, salt-of-the-earth, retired farmer. Moody began his reply, "Well just yesterday, I was talking to Senator Claghorn...the foreigner next door..." Brought the radio audience to tears, it did. I'm sure it was invented by coalition of greeting card companies, florists, and candy manufacturers.

Did they happen to mention a wash treatment for destroying the poison oak oils in clothing? The potentials for hurting oneself on poison ivy, oak, sumac, or giant hogweed are great enough that I'm surprised it isn't standard training in elementary school to identify for avoidance.

I just finished reading all the previous amount of the thread. I've a cathedral of pain-sized headache now. I'm going to go lie down.

Just clearing another possibility: Are all the capacitors on your equipment healthy? No signs of swelling or leaking including dry, crusted leaks? While I usually hear of these causing sudden shut down through general usage on the computer, I can see a scenario where one or two programs stress a bad capacitor just right to cause the shutdown. Of course, if you're playing other games that cause greater stress, but without result, that may negate the argument. Do you have access to another power supply? That is, can you borrow one of equal or greater power for a day from a friend? Swapping it and testing might identify or eliminate the suspected part. Is there anything else running in the background, like Steam client, if you routinely play other games? I point Steam out because I recently had some sudden power-off problems on my 7-year-old rig, and traced it to Steam running in the background even when I was not using a Steam-based game. I've made sure it was completely powered off, and haven't had a problem since. Some reading on the web revealed that mine was not the only computer affected by Steam this way, and it might be related to older equipment. I've got a new rig to build Thanksgiving weekend.

A knife show of Red Caps A patch of Fir Bolg A rwawaraaah of Tuatha de Dannan

This has such a strong look that it feels like it has the potential to be COH's answer to The Wasp, especially the friendly, feisty version in the animated "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes" series. Too bad the game does not have shrinking powers.

I'd been focused on knocking out the Echo Galaxy badges with my homage to serial movies sci-fi, when I suddenly realized how fortuitous this one was:

Nice work & excellent balance of color & shade. I'm guessing you're using Spectrum, but as it is supposedly a single-color feature, how is the 2-toned blue/magenta look achieved? EDIT: Ah, nevermind. I'd always worked under the assumption that spectrum was single color, but experimenting now, I realize it can be a subtle 2-color selection.

I believe it regarding the mosquitoes. My father comes from neighboring Minnesota, and the skeeters there are monstrous.

My baloney has a first name it's... X IT'S TAKEN??? Drat! Umm, how about 0scar Meyer? X 0scar M3yer? X Oscar_Meyer? X xxxOscar Meyerxxx? X xxx0zkahr_M3y3rxxx? X ...Weiner Whistle? ✔️

Zemo's about to get a chance at supervillain redemption. He's the villain of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and from what I've seen, he'll be closer to his comic book counterpart. Here's hoping they don't super glue his purple balaclava to his head though. I always felt that was a really ludicrous concept in the comics.