Billy Mailman

Yeah, I put a mention of the Dinner's On Us bit into the Calls To Action part of the wiki's front page, and the very next time I checked the wiki, it was just like "Oh, well then, never mind. I... I guess I shouldn't have bothered. I'll just remove that, then. Huh."

I hadn't been too sad about my premium status leaving me out (all my global slots are already applied to my native Pinnacle), but now that I see that image, I really wish I could get in.

Zwill, you were incredible. The coffee talks have been the best form of interaction I've ever seen any development team maintain with their players, outside an indie, two-man team. Wherever you go, the people there will be richer for having you.

So, there's no chance that the studio could survive in some other form? Get bought up by some new masters, who'd take over NCSoft's end of things?

...they said they had vague plans out to I32!
And no announcement on the boards...
and... and... this can't be true. It just can't. Can it?

Well, both powers should certainly get a single enhancement into their first, free slot, but after that, anything in Fly isn't doing squat unless Afterburner has a second slot in it.

Powers such as Tactics trigger procs once every 10s. So, every ten seconds, there's a 5% chance of the effect.
In click powers, such as normal Build Up, every time you fire off the power, there's a 5% chance that the effect occurs.

It should be noted that this will change somewhat in I24. All procs in the game are moving to the PPM-based system. For now though, that's how it works.

Should be able to handle it. The game did launch eight years ago, so the lower end of the settings are designed for cheaper machines from that area. And I know my old Toshiba laptop used to run it just fine on an Intel on-chip system, so it ought to be fine. Can't guarantee it, and it may vary from one Ultrabook model to another, but I'd expect it to run smoothly, if not necessarily the most beautifully.

AFAIK, the order is:
First, Tina's and Maria's old arcs. Maybe. They're in Ouro, and while there are similarities between them and the new arcs, they're probably still canon as being the initial way we discovered Praetorian Earth.

After that, comes the Praetorian 1-20 content. Which arcs really happened, and how they went, depends on what character you're on, but overall, these missions are next in the timeline. Notably, you can see some of the early war preparations, the creation of the warworks, etc. during these.

From here, staying in Praetoria leads to the FW/NW arcs. These mostly ignore the war, and timeline-wise seem to be set alongside the war. The one thing we do know is, because Diabolique pops up, at least that much of them has to be set prior to DA.

Staying with the war, we get the new Tina arc, and the new Maria arc. Essentially, they're Primal Earth seeing, and dealing with, the first few operations conducted by Praetorian Earth. We're not at open war yet, but they're sneaking over here, stealing technology, kidnapping people, etc. to get information.

After that, is the Sutter TF. It's the opening volley of the war proper. Praetorian Duray has allied with Primal Duray and the Sky Raiders, and they launch an attack, damaging most of Skyway City. Apex and Tin Mage show Primal Earth's first proper counterattack.

From there, presumably most of the governments in Primal keep fighting off Praetorian attacks, or something, but the players mostly get involved in the offensive. And not even because of the war. Prometheus has found out that Tyrant is the Champion Of The Well, and has decided to gather incarnates and take him down, which coincidentally ends up stopping the war. Lam, BAF, Keyes, UG, TPN, and MoM happen, in that order.

DA then cuts in. Problems happen here on Primal Earth requiring incarnate power to deal with them. Diabolique resurfaces, Dominatrix finally shows up in the incarnate line, and Dream Doctor appears.

DA is capped off by the DD trial, and then focus goes back to Praetoria with Belladonna's arc. After her arc comes Tyrant's personal mission, which is probably set all of five minutes before the Magisterium trial. With that trial, Praetorian Earth has been evacuated, Tyrant defeated, and the war is over.


I24 will have some stories dealing with the aftermath, but I think that covers all the major Praetorian activity up to now.

First Question: Escape. When the chatbox has focus, Escape will take it away. It's the generic cancel button.
Second Question: No. Two problems. "keybinds.txt" is only loaded on new character creation (AFAIK, the defaults are set first, then it's automagically loaded, so that not having such a file won't leave you with an unbound alt. keybinds.txt is basically for overriding the defaults). Every character you already have has their own set of keybinds, stored on the server, and those only change if you manually change them. You can, however, fire "/bindload" to load the generic keybinds.txt file.
Second problem, though, is that loading a bindfile only changes any binds explicitly mentioned in that file. Loading a bindfile with only one bind in it, only changes that bind. To reset keybinds to default, use "/unbind <KEY>". To blank out a keybind, rather than restore default, use "/bind <KEY> nop". The nop thing works in bindfiles, too, so you can change your keybinds.txt file to NOP a bunch of keys, and it'll clear them out that way when you load it.

The basic idea behind enhancements in pet powers is as follows:
For every power P the pet has, look at all the enhancements in the power that summoned the pet. If their type is one that could be slotted in power P, P counts as having that enhancement slotted.

So, basically, starting at http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/power...rrion_Creepers I can find four actual attacks.
The vines have Vine Smash, which'll take slow, KB, and damage procs, and Vine Thorns, which takes Slow and Damage.
The base creeper patch has Bramble, taking slow procs.
And the creepers that spawn on dead bodies have Entangle, taking Immobilize or Damage procs.

For each power, work out the PPM proc's final % chance as per the usual PPM formula, and every time one of the pets uses that power, that's the % chance. Notably, Bramble and Entangle are auto powers, and thus should use a 10s cycle time in the PPM formula.

One thing should be noted: This only changes the attribute modifiers the game's using to calculate the numbers. If you're looking at, say, the Blaster version of an attack, you'll see the hefty self +damage from defiance. Using the drop-down to check a Corruptor's numbers won't change the window to be looking at the Corruptor version of the power (It's a whole separate power internally), so that +damage buff won't be replaced with a chance for extra damage from Scourge.

Just something to keep in mind.

They're mission doors, just like all the doors in the various office buildings/houses throughout the game.

Specifically, they're mostly used for missions relating to the Spring Fling event, IIRC.

As far as I know, the combat attributes display only shows numbers if they're applying. Can't show them otherwise, actually.

Alright, thanks to the Beta server's 1inf Empyreans, I was able to work out what's really happening, and of course, everyone's wrong!

So, I'mma go through everything I've worked out, from the top.

There are four Hybrid trees: Assault, Control, Melee, Support.
On an MM, melee is designed for tankermind-style play. Buffs the PC only, not the pets. This is WAI.
On an MM, or anybody for that matter, Support is capable of buffing pets. There are rules relating to max targets, to max total buff recieved, and to certain versions giving pets twice the buff that PCs get. All of this is WAI.

The problems we've been having have all come down to either Assault or Control. But different Assault/Control powers have different effects. So, let's break it down by type of effect;

Assault has two effects. One is a chance for all attacks (damage-dealing powers) to apply a buff to your damage. The other is a chance for all attacks to deal extra damage (commonly called doublehit).
Control has three effects. One is a chance for all mez powers to have an extra 1-mag mez effect of the same type occur, one is a chance for extra damage on mezzed enemies, and one is a chance for all attacks to apply a mez effect (immob, fear, stun, or some combination).

Of these five effects, three flat-out DO NOT work on pets. Rather, the Control chance-for-attacks-to-mez doesn't work, and there is no generated text in any window indicating that either doublehit, or Control's chance-to-damage-mezzed-enemies effect work. Both effects generate text when my MM uses his own attacks, but nothing when the pets do.

The remaining two, the chance for +1 mag mez, and the chance for +dmg on attacks, work weirdly. Specifically, each eligible power on each MM pet you have is able to proc these based on whether the pet had that power when you toggled the Hybrid.

That's a tad confusing, so I'll give an example. Let's say I summon my Assault Bot. On summon, he already has Plasma Blast, and Smash. Then, I turn on Assault T1, which has a +dmg-on-attack proc effect. Because he already had Plasma Blast and Smash, they can't proc the effect. But if I now use Equip Robot and Upgrade Robot on him, he has Dual Plasma Blast, Flamethrower, Swarm Missiles, and Incendiary Swarm Missiles all get added. Since the Hybrid was on when these powers were earned, they can proc the effect until the Hybrid turns off/is turned off.

So yeah, One possible Assault effect, and one possible Control effect can be made to work, assuming you summon/upgrade the pets (not just summon) AFTER turning it on. And, AFAIK, using the upgrade powers on a pet doesn't reset this, so it only works the first time you equip/upgrade/whatever. The other possible effects, the pets ignore completely.

(Small caveat: The above data is technically based on the I24 beta, not live. I sincerely doubt there's a difference between live and beta on this issue.)

To be fair, I got confirmation from Arbiter Hawk a while back that it was a bug, so hopefully a fix comes down the pipeline soon.

Yeah, each pet has a stance (Passive, Defensive, Aggressive), and an action (Stay, Go To, Follow, Attack Target. And Dismiss, I guess). the various petcom commands can be used to change stance, action, or both, on any or all of your pets. But unless you do something which triggers one of the petcom commands (this includes pretty much any buttons in the pet window), then their current state doesn't change, and their AI goes on about its business as usual.

I'm reading this, and all I can reply is "At what point are you changing your pets' stance off def/follow?" You seem to want to put them back on bodyguard every time you attack, but your attacks don't have any impact at all on their stances or actions, unless you've already done some very fancy bind work.

Just make sure houtex knows about it, and has BH ready. He needs to stand out in the crowd, a shining beacon of Brawling might.

Three-second look:
Assault needs MAYBE two -cost enhancements.
Repair honestly doesn't need any. Try a rech enhancement or two.
You have tons of defense powers, and many of them have LotG parts, but none have the +7.5% global recharge piece, which is extremely useful.
Remove one flight IO from Fly. Even with Afterburner on, you're so far over the cap, the second piece is literally doing nothing.
Health would probably do better with one of the unique pieces from the Numina's or Miracle sets.
The Numina's unique piece in Vengeance, and the Panacea proc, are both contingent on having dead allies. Either one does far better in an auto power like Heal.
Upgrade and Equip don't need two -cost IOs each.
You have Aid Self slotted a fair bit for -interrupt. You might want to look into the I24 changes to the Medicine pool. I *think* they make Aid Self uninterruptible if you take the last power. Though, I'm not 100% on that bit.
Overall, you seem to be putting a lot of emphasis on the raw enhancement values in powers, and ignoring a lot of opportunities for good set bonuses.
(Edit: You also have a LOT of places where ED is massively reducing end enhancement values, making that effort counterproductive)
(Edit 2: The Mastermind ATO set is pretty garbage. The AoE defense aura piece is okay, but the actual enhancements value recharge too much, and +recharge is the one enhancement aspect that Does Not Pass to Pets.)

Also, for a player who started in jan., and has only been VIP in June, may I ask how you plan to afford something with so many purples/PvP IOs in it?

I think our server is impressive enough, having a Brawl/WP Brute as our main tank for things like this, but Viking's idea (assuming it's the one from the other day) is pretty sweet, I gotta say.