Atlantea

I've been wanting to post about this character since I created her in Beta. (These are actual Beta screenshots of her. I saved the costume file and re-created her on Virtue).

Sassinak came up through the ranks of the Praetorian Police the traditional way. From street level rookie cop to working with the Seers in Pre-Crime to running homicide investigations and Special Tactics cross-training with Powers Division.

"It was the contact with Powers Division that changed her career and her life. It was discovered that she had some minor energy building and TK abilities. The TK abilities give her preternatural accuracy with ballistics. And her energy powers, while not offensively useful on their own, could provide the power supply for a prototype light powerframe and PPD Shock Gauntlets. Now, inducted into Powers Division, she serves Praetoria and Emporer Cole to the best of her abilities. She truly believes in Praetoria and wants to keep her people safe."

For her powers concept, her "Minor TK" abilities allow her to do the nifty "gun-fu" tricks like the curving bullet trajectories (like from the movie "Wanted") and the Energy generation is bio-electric, sort of like an electric eel. But not enough to be useful as an offensive power. But as a trickle source for an on-board capacitor in the suit it does just fine.

The suit provides her with light armor and power assist (For the "Ninja-Leap" affects and speed running), as well as medical nano-gel that seals wounds and keeps her alive. If she has extra reservoirs of it on-hand, she can heal any injury to the point of unconsciousness. (Greens in the inspiration tray).

Her guns are magnetic accelerators and don't fire normal bullets, but shave off slivers of a block of metal for acceleration (mini sonic booms still insure the guns are loud). Settings in the suit allow for variations in local wind speed, temperature, unexpected shocks and the like. But don't help Sass to aim.

And yes - the nanogel and the tech of the guns are cribbed concepts from Mass Effect, but it explains the in-game healing and "endless ammo" effects. ^_^ It will also help with the concept of the ammo-switching.

The Energy Manipulation powers in her secondary is just a variation on the stun gloves of the Praetorian Cops. Especially such things as the knockback and stun effects.

So anyway. Fun character and glad to be able to post her finally.

A friend of mine introduced me to the game in late Sept/early October 2004.

(Dude has introduced me to so many games, he's like the local game pusher. "Hey! The first hit's FREE!" We joke. )

I played on his machine over at his house for a few hours, making a character based on one of my old Champions RPG characters. I was hooked then, and when my next paycheck came around, I bought the game with my own account.

And joined up right in the middle of the very first Halloween event! LOL!

So yeah, memorable times.

Started out on Justice but mostly moved over to Virtue full time around mid 2006. Been here ever since. Seen just about everything and done everything, but STILL find little corners of the game that surprise me. And looking forward to Going Rogue!

I enjoy coaching new players on details of the game. If you ask me for help, I'll almost certainly give it.

For all the time I've spent in the game, though, I've only got 5 level 50s. I'm pretty hardcore about experiencing the content. And certain things I love seeing again on my lowbies. And yeah, altitus - I has it. :P I love the lore and the content, and I love doing AE missions. I'm not very good or creative at doing my own. But I love doing others and seeing what they come up with.

Yeah - I'll be here until they shut down the servers. (May that be NEVER!)

I was playing around with the costume creator as many of us do. And I came up with a pretty cool "mecha" character. Very much a tank. Even wound up looking vaguely like a Gundam. Couldn't think of a decent character concept for it at first. Except I knew that it was totally robotic and no human was actually in the suit personally driving it. I thought at first to make it a classic "combat robot escapes from corporation" thing, but that's been done to death.

Then a couple of bits of info collided in my brain and gave me an idea. I rushed to log on and write up the new bio on the character and it all kinda... rushed out of me at once. I love it when that happens.



I present MACSS-01 - a "giant robot" (well about 9 feet tall qualifies, right?) designed and built by 5 genius teenagers. They take daily turns on a tele-presence rig piloting him around Paragon City righting crime and bashing evil!




Team MACSS is

Mark - the Hot-headed excitable kid who's kind of the "idea" guy. Lots of imagination.

Alex - The quieter, moody one. Friendly rival to Mark, it's a constant game of "hey! watch THIS!" between the two of them.

Colin - The logistics guy. Always fiddling with the tech and the numbers. The one who takes care of maintenance the most, and takes MACSS out the least, and is most upset when it comes back with damage...

Samantha - Colin's younger sister. They had to let her onto the team or she'd tell their parents what they're up to...

Sean - The computer software guy. Socially stunted. Knows far more about hacking computer systems than what is really good for him.

They're all students at Paragon Preparatory Institute, a school for gifted youngsters. They're all geniuses to one degree or another. PPI is west of the city outside of the warwalls.

They're "stoked" to use Mark's term, that they've gotten in with The Legendary supergroup. Working with real heroes! Plus, it gives them a place to park the MACSS bot when they want to hide it from the school...

This was a fun event! I hope we can do more like that!

Just wanted to give a shout out. And give credit where it's due.

I'm proud to say that my team was the first to launch a missile for the first 500,000,000 prize!

Team Legendary consisted of:

Cyberman 8 (@Atlantea)
Captain Erzatz (@Z.Fox)
Purrfect Detective (@Ran-San)
Purrfect Mess (@DarkSeraphim)

I was the code catcher. The others ran interference for me. I have a Stealth(Celerity) and Superspeed so I was able to go right past NPCs while escorting my Lab Techs.

Once all three codes were assembled, we waited through the cool-down period perched on a high building. (Purrfect Detective played the field and tried to prevent others from getting codes.)

5 Minutes before Go time, I went far to the east and plunked down into the ocean. 1 minute before go time, I zipped into the tunnels to get the Chemical Nuke (easiest, straightest shot)

As soon as I got the code, I yelled "PORT!!" And my team Ported me back to the top of the buildings.

We all jumped down, Purrfect Mess laid down vines and such for DOTs while Detective and Erzatz engaged Melee and I hit Elude and 4 purples and just jammed the button down.

30 seconds after go-time the rocket was launched and we claimed our 500 Mil!

My thanks to my friends in the Legendary! We ran like a well-oiled machine! We split up the prize to the tune of 125,000,000 apiece.

Of course after that we got our A__es handed to us. I think because they didn't want us to do that again.

Congrats to the other winners!

Here's a few characters that I made almost solely because of the giggles they induce.

These first two are actual characters that I've played into the level 20s.



(Yes - the name for the above character was ACTUALLY AVAILABLE and I was gobsmacked! HAD to do it! )



As for Burning Sensation, well... blame it on staying up too late and falling asleep while Cartoon network is going on the TV.



And these next two ... er... I plead the fifth! ^.^;;;;

I present an homage that became much more of an original character as time went on.

Cyberman 8








No it's NOT a Doctor Who reference! :P

For those of you "old school" enough to remember him, yes - Cyberman 8 is a direct homage to 8-Man, one of the very first Anime. (First broadcast in 1963, a reference I wove obliquely into his story). Or to use his slightly different Americanized sobriquet - Tobor the 8th Man.

(And now you know just exactly HOW "old-school" an anime fan I am! I'm not just "stone-age" or even "Jurassic", I'm one of the "great old ones". Get off my lawn! :P)

Given a somewhat different name and tweaked background details to make him fit into the backstory of Paragon City. Surprisingly little effort, really! His powersets even fall nicely in line as well! (Martial Arts/Super Reflexes)

His physical design owes much to a costume piece that is part of the Veteran Awards system. The brim on his primary costume's helmet is from the Samurai Armor Set. I wouldn't have created the character at all if I hadn't noticed how it made the round helmet look during some random fiddling of the costume creator after I received the Veteran Award. I made a character with the round helmet and put that brim on it and before I added anything else, it tugged at my memory. I thought, "that looks familiar somehow" and started experimenting with it. Adding and removing various things until I found the "V" ornament. When I placed that, it finally hit me who it reminded me of and I quickly looked up reference of 8-man across the web to help get reference with other costume details. The rest of the costume just... came together magically. (I attribute any differences between the original version and mine as being due to the upgrades he underwent after his recovery from the excavation site in Faultline.) I've since made other costume slots for him that are less of a direct visual match to 8-Man (As seen above). Coincidentally, when his basic costume is in the Legendary Supergroup colors (blue and gold), his look is a close match to the videogame version of 8-Man from 1991. A bit of serendipity that I find amusing.

Cyberman 8 comes across very much like a "normal Joe". He steadfastly got over most of the existential angst over his artificial body years ago and came to terms with it. At first, he suppressed much of his outward humanity, though inwardly he was distraught over his perceived "inhumanity" for many years. Later, after an adventure to a mystical realm that proved to him that he still had a human soul, he acknowledged his feelings and firmly decided that, although his body and brain were constructed, he himself was still, in any sense that mattered, still human.

Although still very serious when dealing with villains, he can also crack the occasional joke with a teammate and has an ironic, dry sense of humor. He is quietly fascinated with the way the world has changed since he last saw it. Personal computers are something completely new to him, but he takes some pleasure in the fact that he is uniquely suited to learn about them!

In fact, for an android with a positronic brain, he sometimes comes across as a very old-fashioned kind of guy. Almost chivalrous in the classic sense to women, at least by modern standards. He's occasionally shocked by some of the skimpier fashions some Heroines choose to wear. (Though he'd never actually express any disapproval. He just chalks it up as yet another in the long list of things he's had to get used to.)

Only one thing brings him into a melancholy state - the fact that most of the people he knew and worked with in his old life are now old or passed away. He used to depend on Professor Tani for support and technical advice, but he was an old man even back in the 1960s, and is long passed away now.

He is quickly gaining new friends in the Hero community of Paragon City however. There are so many more heroes now than there were in his old life. He feels much less alone these days most of the time.

Doesn't matter. Even when it's up, it's unplayable. Screw it. I'll be back when they fix it.

Sorry - just had to vent. I'm REALLY frustrated. Most of my toons are on Virtue. I even moved a couple from other servers there last year. I'm HEAVILY invested in playing on Virtue, since that's where 99% of my friends play.

But apparently, the Devs have made that impossible! Good going guys! You BROKE the most heavily populated server in the game! >.<

For those of you who have used City of Heroes Splasher in order to modify the Pocket D "Canned" music, you may have noticed that the newest issue broke that feature.

I figured out what happened - to make a long story short, the sound OGGs are still exactly the same, but the file structure is now different. Why? Because the Devs (thankfully!) fixed the Pocket D sound setup so that the music volume an actually be controlled by the regular music slider.

In short - until a new version of Splasher comes out, you need to slightly modify your data folder file structure.

Go into your Data file, the file structure should be like this -

Data
Sound
Ogg
Rave

- With the replacement sound files for Pocket D sitting in the "Rave" folder.

Just add a new folder called "Music_Source" (without the quotes) inside of the "Ogg" folder and then dump the folder called "Rave" into it. So that it looks like this -

Data
Sound
Ogg
Music_Source
Rave


Your custom music for Pocket D will now work!

I was one of the ones on that group with Acyl and I had it bad. 1.3 mil - 1.4 Mil K usage. System could handle it for awhile, but it would inevitably start slide-showing and rubberbanding.

I have a quad-core Acer with 8 Gigs of RAM. Normally CoH runs around 500k to 600 K usage with no slow downs and no framerate loss even on max graphics sliders.

Something is definately screwy since today's patch.

This one... Ah... well...

Let's just face it, I'm going to HELL for this one.

Here's one I did just for the sheer "Mess with people's heads" aspect.

Ah I like threads like this. I have more than a few off-the-wall concepts rattling around my brain.

*rummages*

Here -

I was playing around with the costume creator as many of us do. And I came up with a pretty cool "mecha" character. Very much a tank. Even wound up looking vaguely like a Gundam. Couldn't think of a decent character concept for it at first. Except I knew that it was totally robotic and no human was actually in the suit personally driving it. I thought at first to make it a classic "combat robot escapes from corporation" thing, but that's been done to death.

Then a couple of bits of info collided in my brain and gave me an idea. I rushed to log on and write up the new bio on the character and it all kinda... rushed out of me at once. I love it when that happens.


I present MACSS-01 - a "giant robot" (well about 9 feet tall qualifies, right? He's at the height slider max anyway.) designed and built by 5 genius teenagers. They take daily turns on a tele-presence rig piloting him around Paragon City righting crime and bashing evil!



A commenter on the CoH LJ noted:

"Virtue has Susie-Bot, but that's teleoperated by only one precocious genius. You've also got the classic sentai team dynamic, and a little bit of Code Lyoko... it works well together."

Pardon me, haven't read through the entire thread, but how do you "find" these letters? Do they become part of your souvenirs? Or just part of the mission text that you can read when you get a spare moment during the mission? PM me or post here, I'd sure appreciate it. Just reading these on the forums has made me think of something my main might say or write in response in a journal.

Same here. I was able to get on early this morning. But not now. Same behaviour as noted above.

Wow. That is awesome!

What're you using for stairs?