Adeon Hawkwood

Well, Independence Port isn't deep enough for an aircraft carrier .

More realistically I figure he's a staff officer (Naval Intelligence maybe?) who's come to Paragon city to coordinate the Military and Hero response to the Praetorian threat. As such the Destroyer isn't actually under his command but is stationed in Paragon in case he needs some firepower (or a bit of gunboat diplomacy).

This. I form teams because it means I can do the content I want to do when I want to do it.

Yeah. The problem would almost certainly be melee. I've never found a game with first person melee that I was really comfortable with control wise.

Market prices are, fundamentally, based on the amount of inf in the economy relative to the number of items.

Due to the way inf drops scale a soloer produces less total inf for each item generated than someone on a team which in turn helps lower prices on any items the soloer produces. Farmers tend to be the soloers with the highest efficiency.

Now obviously merits throw a bit of a wrench in that since solo methods for producing them (particularly the methods used by farmers) are less effective than teaming. So for that I thank the speed runners since their general tactics have the effect of decreasing the inf they generate for every merit.

Now if people want to bring market prices down they should aim to produce as much stuff and as little inf as possible which ideally means doing nothing except the following:
1. Stealth tip missions in a group of 8
2. Stealth/speed TFs with the goal of killing as few enemies as possible
3. Farm solo at a high a difficulty as possible

Of course, that isn't necessarily the most enjoyable way to play the game .

He isn't dropping a crafting table in, he's just using a map that has them already. The vanguard base conference map (used in one of the Vanguard missions and the Tin Mage TF) has functioning crafting tables already set up.

Yep, from a market health point of view farmers (or specifically farmers who farm solo or on small teams) are much better than people who team a lot.

I still find farming dull.

Additionally the I20 sneak peek had what appeared to be a naval destroyer complete with an Admiral (I forget his name) with text that seemed to imply he was there to conduct operations against the Praetorians so we might be seeing more military NPCs, but only in situations which wouldn't violate The Posse Comitatus Act.

I just wanted to comment on this. I really do not see this as a major concern. People can already do this by taking fly/hover themselves or simply buying a Raptor Pack (most people I've met seem to keep one on their characters). The devs have already balanced things multiple times to prevent hover-blasting from being to powerful, I really don't see how removing the to hit debuff on Group Fly would change the equation.

Hold are useful but in my experience what really makes a difference is ranged versus melee. The characters I struggled on the most were my two melee characters (and my Warshade when I tried doing it in Dwarf form).

Trapdoor requires movement and positioning while applying damage and those are much easier to do on a ranged character.

Now all of this goes away on a team, having two melee people means one can kill him, one can kill the clones and that makes it a lot easier.

If all you're interested in is leveling as quickly as possible then ITFs are the way to go. People are always running them on Virtue so it's easy to get a team and run one.

If you don't want to run an ITF and want to team then the best option is to start your own teams. Join some of Virtue's global channels (Virtue TFs and Virtue LFG Alpha are both good) and use them to recruit team members. TFs other than the ITF and the WST are less common, that is true, but my experience is that if you're willing to start it you can normally find people.

Personally I like running the Striga TFs (especially Hess) as a means of leveling characters when I don't feel like an ITF. Both of those TFs are pretty short (less than an hour) give a nice chunk of experience and are high enough level that you have most of your interesting powers.

Alternatively if you prefer solo play consider running through some of the story arcs. Tina Macintyre's arc is fun and a good way to get Anti-Matter for credit towards Dimensional Warder. I also quite like Angus McQueen's arc. And there are always the RWZ arcs.

I think most of the concern is related to the fact that this information would be exceedingly valuable to marketeers of all stripes so it seems like a bad idea to:
A) Make public information the devs have decided should be hidden
B) Do so in a way that will make it available to only a small portion of the population (since if someone doesn't read the forums or such they would not easily find out about it)

I personally would not object to something like Auctioneer since that is just facilitating something anyone can do manually. It's the combined database that I worry would cross the line. The devs are, for the most part, pretty cool about mods to the game even if occupy a gray area with regards to the EULA as long as they aren't detrimental to the game. I don't know how the devs would feel about the proposed mod, however since it's goal would be to specifically circumvent a restriction that the devs have put in regarding information availability and as such it's entirely possible they would regard it as crossing the line. Of course, it's equally possible that it would convince them to make more market history information publicly available in the interested of leveling the playing field and that would be fine with me.

Actually 100 times doesn't really surprise me at all. Supply and demand curves are not linear, doubling the demand for something while holding supply steady tends to result in the price more than doubling. Add in the fact that the shortage of alchemical silvers/luck charms is almost certainly depressing the price of scientific theories/boresights and a huge difference becomes unsurprising.

To a first degree approximation scientific theories and boresight are only used in Accuracy enhancements. The percentage of them used in other recipe types is low enough to be lost in the noise (particularly for Scientific Theories since Super Jump is probably the least popular travel and Flight doesn't really need slotting after the last buff). Therefore as long as the number available is greater than the number of alchemical silvers/boresights destined to be used to craft accuracy enhancements the price will be heavily supressed down to vendor trash levels.

Interestingly enough I get the feeling that a decent number of people do not know this. When I'm forming or joining a team through global channels I frequently get people either telling me their local name (if I'm forming the team) or asking me for my local name (if I'm joining their team). This implies to me that a lot of people don't realize that you can use the global name either to invite someone or to find their local name.

The reason for the difference in supply is due to the way that salvage drops work. Each piece of salvage is classified as either Tech or Arcane and there are equal numbers of each type. Enemy groups can drop either Tech salvage only, Arcane salvage only or an even mix of the two.

So in theory all salvage of the same rarity and tier should be supplied in relatively even quantities but in practice player preferences come into play. For various reasons the enemy groups that drop Tech salvage or both types tend to be easier than the groups that drop arcane salvage. For example in the mid level Freakshow are much more popular than Circle of Thorns. As such Arcane salvage is frequently more expensive than the equivalent level tech salvage.

Interestingly prior to the market merge the opposite was true on redside for Tier 1 salvage. The Mercy Island arcs featured the Snakes who dropped arcane salvage so Luck Charms tended to be cheaper redside than blue.

Additionally while all salvage items are used in multiple recipes, not all enhancement types are equally valuable. To use the alchemical salvage and scientific theory you noted.

Alchemical Silvers are used int he following common recipes:
Accuracy
Confuse
Defense Buff
Intangibility
Run Speed

Scientific Theories are used in:
Accuracy
Flight Speed
Jumping
Range
To Hit Buff

If you look at the rates that different enhancement types sell at (something I have done quite a bit while working on Field Crafter) you will see that Defense Buff and Run Speed enhancements are very popular while Flight Speed, Jumping and To Hit Buff enhancements are a lot less popular (Confuse, Intangibility and Range are all pretty much worthless in terms of sell price). So while both items are used in 5 common recipes the demand for Alchemical Silvers is actually quite a bit higher than Scientific Theories.

So the reason for the difference in price is that Alchemical Silvers have a lower supply and higher demand than Scientific Theories. I hope that clears things up a bit for you.

I can easily solo at +1/x8 on my Bots/Traps (or I guess +2/x8 now I'm level shifted) against the less annoying enemy groups (Council, Rikti, Carnies) although I do tend to lower it against Malta and Arachnos.

In terms of build I strongly recommend taking Tactics and taking an AoE Immobilize in your epic (which requires unlocking the PPPs).

Ummmm... minimum level for Khan TF is 45.

Go for it, I'd be interested to see it.