Arilou

D'aaawww. Low the expression on his face!

Thing is, I could see a Ranged!Tank working: Armour primary, ranged attack secondary, with relatively low modifiers. That probably wouldn't be that different from Melee!Tank really.

Say... Tanker damage, between brute and tanker defences.

You'd still be able to blast stuff: It would just take you a while, and you wouldn't die easily.

It's when you start giving serious armour to a ranged DPS class that you get into issues. (crabs and forts have protection, but they have some serious holes)

Haven't seen the new ponytailed Family have you?

A game like Space Marine is several orders of magnitude less complex than COH. You have at max maybe 30-ish players. Compared that to the number of players and enemies in a regular map in COH.

Getting decent (if not perfect) latency for these kinds of games is old hat: Even Quake could do it assuming everyone had decent computers, good enough connections, and a decent server.

I should point out there's a reason for this (and a reason we're starting to see more action-y MMORPG's now) latency.

Lag can be smoothed over a lot more in traditional RPG's (even a relatively fast-paced one lie COH) compared to FPS:es or similar. (Which as probably the reason the original Planetside remaiend all-but unique)

Actually Another MMORPG's (TM) has precisely this class. (powered armour, with, depending on side, gatling guns or pistols) they wear heavy armour, can spec as ranged tank or as heavy DPS.

The difference of course is that said game has a far different balancing mechanic.

There is a point in that mobility doesen't quite translate well into COH (it does translate slightly better in certain circumstances, especially PVP, in other games, said game for instance also has a self-rooting ranged DPS class) the problem is that MMO's are, essentially, attack-target based, and so the benefits of mobility re: harder to track doesen't exactly exist.

Not to mention that on the specific charge of war-crimes, Marchand can probably mention the fact that he tried to stop the war in the first place.

That would be "CHUNKSQVARNA" ("qvarna" is an archaic spelling of "kvarn" meaning "mill")

that's the point. They're a TF. With just the kind of mixed-together groups you'll find in any other TF.

I believe the term is "opportunity cost"?

It seems to be less a status protection than a russian Godmode.

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Well, Mot is a semitic God (he actually is the god of Death, son of El.... Which makes him in a weird way Jesus' brother)

Er, what? This is like saying that a car and a teleporter are the same thing, becuase they both get you to the same place.

Or that a hydroelectric power plant and a watermill are the same thing, becuase they both use the motion of water as a source of power.

The cosmic entities of the MU has a whole lot better a claim to Godhood than most of it's gods.

Just to nitpick: The power granted by a pact with powerful dimensional entities are not neccessarily the power of said entity itself.

To take an example, Dr. Strange is clearly Magic origin, he gets (at least occasionally) parts of the power of Eternity. Eternity however isn't Magic (the good doctor is using his own magic to channel part of Eternity's cosmic power) Similarily, even though he is Godlike, Galactus is not a magical being: He transcends magic. (and for that matter, science) basicalyl science and magic are two different ways for mortals to manipulate the fundamental forces of the universe (the "power cosmic") beings like Galactus or Eternity don't have to use such crude means: They can just call upon the power directly, because of what they are.

Because it depends on your idea of "evil".

Is your idea of evil in some sense consequentialist? (not neccessarily purely utilitarian, but just considering the consequences of someone's actions, the number of dead, enslaved, etc. etc.) By that logic the worst villain would probably be either (Praetorian) Hamidon or Rularuu, possibly Nemesis or alt!Clockwork King. All of these have (more or less) wiped out at least planets, if not universes.

A consequentialist view doesen't have to be just counting corpses, ofc. You can have some nice long arguments about the depths of suffering, etc. etc.

Now, a utilitarian would argue that you'd have to balance these things off, to some degree: How many would have died had you NOT acted? But that's a different ballgame. (any utilitarian scheme would probably make Tyrant go up in comparison to Recluse, just FYI)

There are of course other kinds of schemes of morality, some are rights- or taboo-based: IE: Consequences doesen't matter so much as the idea that there are certain actions that are inherently evil, and doing them makes you evil, regardless of the consequences. Philosophers tends to not like these kinds of arguments because they essentially end up as arbitrary lists of "evil" actions, and any attempt to bringing them back to first principles tends to end up as some kind of conseqeuntialism or deontologism anyway.

Now, the most famous deontological (that is, duty-oriented) philosopher is Immanuel Kant: He's really, really, really important for all sorts of reasons. Now, to sum it up, for Kant consequences doesen't matter: There are a bunch of reasons for this, but basically it comes down to they are impossible to predict: You don't know when or circumstance is going to make your good intentions have bad results, or vice-versa. The effects of your actions are in essence separate from your intentions, and thus should have no bearing on judging the morality of said actions.

Now, Kant was trying to come up with a purely rationalistic basis for morality, without relying on God (Kant was a believer, of sorts, but he felt morality could be rationalized without relying on divine fiat) he reasoned that the only thing that can be considered "good" in itself, without relying on consequences, is a good intention. Now, this seems like it would let people like Tyrant off the hook, right? After all, he had good intentions. Now, Kant was a bit more strict than this: His definition of "good intentions" is summed up in what is called "Categorical Imperative" (by this he means something rather profound, namely an imperative that binds everything and is not caused by anything but itself)

He has two major formulations of this:
1. "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

Now, what this means, is that for Kant, any intention to do something must be something that you could concievably want everyone else to do: The classic example is lying. Lying is wrong, because in a hypotethical example where everyone lies communication (and therefore lying itself) becomes impossible: The same is true of stealing, murder, etc. These things are wrong by definition, since they cannot be made universally applicable without creating a paradox.

The second formulation of the categorical imperative goes:
2. "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."

Which means that whenever you act you should act with the intention of treating everyone else (and yourself) not as a means to an end but an end in itself: This would eliminate Tyrant (he clearly treats persons as means to his various ends)

EDIT: there is also a kind of ethics known as Virtue Ethics, where the basic concepts to be judged is not the consequences of actions or the breaking of rules but rather what it says about the character of the person in question: IE: Lying shows that you have a character flaw (you are deceptive).

For a virtue-eticist it is entirely plausible to judge Recluse as less evil than Phipps, because Recluse has virtues (bravery, a certain level of determination, etc.) that Phipps lack.

Except Recluse does exactly the same thing, and Phipps has you hunt down one of them who escapes.

Not to mention that Primal Hami still exists, and has eaten part of the city.

You might want to start with staying away from anything having to do with satellites then.