Dark_Mave

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I'm not sure I understand the suggestion:

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When you do the Task Forces don’t “stealth” the missions, so you can take advantage of all the XP available.

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XP from mobs on TFs isn't better than XP from mobs outside of TFs. Some, though I suspect not all, missions that can (could once be? I hear a rumor clicking from stealth is being nerfed) stealthed yeild more XP per time than killing mobs.

And how much XP is available has ZERO to do with quickly levelling. There is *always* a near-infinite amount of XP available-- counting every respawnable spawn on every street in Paragon.

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I just wanted to repeat all that... I wish more people realized that maximizing XP/kill or XP/mission does not necessarily maximize XP/hour.

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I disagree with most of the stuff in your guide.

I don't know if it's particularly useful to give details; it won't change your mind.

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Please do give details... You may not change his mind, but you'll still give the rest of us some additional ideas to work with. (I had a gut-level 'disagree' response to the OP in general, but nothing specific that I can put my finger on.)

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I've been complaining that, even with a small group, your base should be able to do something interesting (beyond just looking pretty) shortly after getting it, if not immediately.


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I think this is where a lot of the arguments come from. I don't expect my base to do something except look pretty immediately. It's more than I had before CoV, even if just decorative. And I'm quite happy to wait for everything else, however long it takes.

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Initially, I agreed with you. But, after the first day or two, rearranging the furniture lost its appeal and I don't think I've even entered my small sg's base more than once in the last 2 or 3 weeks because, well, yep, it's still there and I can still look at the furniture, but there's nothing else to do in there until the sg's 4 or 5 (not particularly active, aside from me) members come up with another 300k prestige or so.

If the base is going to be purely cosmetic with no interactive features for so long, why is it even available to small sgs, much less advertised as a major feature of CoV?

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I do understand your viewpoint, however, and can see why it would be frustrating. Hence my suggestion previously about having "beginner" rooms and items to significantly lower the time to minimal functionality.

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Yep, and I agree with you completely about the starter versions. If it takes me years to make a huge, defended, raidable base, that's fine. Being able to do everything right away wouldn't leave anywhere to go. But if it can't do anything, what's the point?

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A character has two powers (four if you count Sprint/Brawl - Rest doesn't come along until level 2) from the instant you create them. A base does absolutely nothing at the start and it takes many, many hours of play accrue enough prestige to get it to do anything...

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This isn't exactly fair, because there is nothing to do in the game except use your characters powers - it is the point.

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It's not meant as a general argument for base interactivity, but as a specific response to the argument (which I've seen made at least twice) that bases being immediately functional is analogous to characters being given all their powers at level one. In that context, I think it's fair (or at least as fair as the argument it's intended to refute).

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Imagine meeting a four man SG, being invited into their base, and finding yourself on the largest plot, with all the fanciest whirlygigs. How impressed would you be? "Wow, these guys having been playing a long time." That's my Vision(tm), and I'd hate to see it cheapened by the high end stuff being easier, just in the name of making the earlier bases quicker to attain.

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I absolutely agree about not wanting to see the high-end base facilities cheapened, although I'm cynical enough that my first thought about that hypothetical four-man uberbase might instead be "I wonder how many lowbies they bribed to grind prestige...".

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I know a lot of people complain that its impossible for a small VG to do anything.

I'm here to dispell that myth.

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I've been complaining that, even with a small group, your base should be able to do something interesting (beyond just looking pretty) shortly after getting it, if not immediately. Your post supports my complaint rather than "dispelling" it.

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So to me, it seems like its timed to give you a workshop after completing roughly one and a half toons. Strange you don't hear complaints it takes months to build a toon, but people say that about bases?

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We're up to 800K now, after a month and a half.

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A character has two powers (four if you count Sprint/Brawl - Rest doesn't come along until level 2) from the instant you create them. A base does absolutely nothing at the start and it takes many, many hours of play accrue enough prestige to get it to do anything. (Except looking pretty, but characters do that at the start, too, in addition to their powers.)

If you had to wait a month and a half for your character to get his first power, then I'm sure people would be complaining about that, too. If you had to "complete" (I assume that means "get to max level") even one character, that would be even worse - can you imagine the uproar if the devs decided that only Kheldians got powers and other ATs had to get by on their looks?

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Now that I know how to manipulate the Medbay/Base Portal returns, the Base just got useful again. Helps to have a travel power tho.

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Am I correct to read this as saying that you know a way to control (or at least influence) where you arrive in zone when using the medbay? Care to share that information? It seems pretty random to me - sometimes I arrive at the zone's teleport arrival spot, sometimes at the mission door/where I died, and even once hit 'go to base' and immediately appeared outside the mission door without going through the medbay first. If there were a way to control which of those places I'll end up (or even to predict it), I'd be a much happier camper...

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once you get beyond a couple of starter rooms, control and power will go pretty quickly... add a mission computer, medical stuff, raid teleport, zone telepads etc and you will see control just vanish.

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That's beside the point. As I read the "starter" generator/control suggestion, it's about providing a way for a new sg to get a base that does something (not necessarily everything, for which needing the full-size generator/mainframe is appropriate, just something) without having to spend months raising 3/4 million prestige.

I think that would be a good thing to do. But, then, I think that you should be able to get your base to do something (again, definitely not everything, and maybe not even something useful, just something cool besides sitting there looking pretty) almost immediately after getting it.

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I *like* having a progression on my base. I like coming in every couple of days and seeing something new. It's cool to see progress. 36 million is enough so that quite a lot of people would never need any more than that.

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Earlier posts had already said that 36mil is "a bit much" and suggested that maybe 500k to start with a membership bonus of 50-100k/member (I assume for the first 15 members, like the current member bonus) would be more reasonable. Basically start you out with enough to build a functional base, if only just barely, and then the progression would be in making it better rather than just making it do something in the first place. How do you feel about having bases start out at that level?

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Just giving us all 36million Prestige is like starting every character at level 20. Those first 20 levels aren't perfect, I certainly wouldn't mind having a travel power for them, but I don't want to skip them completely. Superbases are the same way, the system needs some tweaking, but the early stages shouldn't completely go away.

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But the current base system is like requiring a character to get to level 20 before they get their first power, which is even worse than starting characters at level 20 under the current power progression would be. A base cannot do *anything* except look pretty until you've sunk 735k into it (and all that gets you is a work table to make stuff from salvage that you can't do anything useful with until you spend another couple hundred k on buying the appropriate rooms and placement). For a small sg, that means a month or two (if not longer) of grinding for prestige while their base does nothing at all, much less anything useful.

I agree with you that progression is nice, but you can have a progression without the period of uselessness at the start. Even a level 1 character has two powers, after all.

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That's waste of prestige in my opinion. They last only for a minute or two and when they're used up, they're gone. You're best bet is just saving up for a generator or if you have one already, place two circuit breakers next to it.

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Waitaminnit... Caps self-destruct when used? OK, yeah, in that case, using them as a non-emergency power source would indeed be bad. I assumed that, after they ran out of power, they'd still be there and just need to "recharge" (i.e., wait until the next raid, or some fixed period of time if usable outside of raids) before providing power again.

Now I get what you were saying... Caps suck even more than I thought.

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What I would suggest though, is actually working for the Power room and Generator before anything else. It'll seem like a step back if your SG already has an unpowered Workbench and Control room, but you can't have a decent base without decent power.

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I don't see how it actually makes any difference. Whether you put in the workshop first and add power/control later or the power first, then control, then workshop, it'll still take the same amount of prestige (and, therefore, the same amount of time) to get it functional.

Well, OK, I suppose it does make some difference... I've chosen to build the power/control after the teleporter room because people will be coming into the base and going to use the teleporters, but there's nothing for them to do in the power/control rooms, therefore, the teleporters should be near the entrance. To get that, you either have to set up the tp room first or else delete and recreate rooms later. Setting up the tp room first is less work, so that's the way I decided to go.

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So in answer, I do not believe those little capacitors work outside of raids, so no, it would be much better ot have an actual Generator (and get capacitors when you're ready to become Raidable).

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But, then, that assumes that you have a desire to be raidable... Guess I'll never be buying any caps.

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Do capacitors work outside of raids? If so, that would be a great boon for us smaller sgs - sure, the workbench/teleporters/rez rings may only work for a minute at a time, but at least you can get them up and running a quarter million Prestige sooner if they'll run off a cap while you save up for a real generator.

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No, nor would you want them to. They only last for a few minutes and are supposed to give you a few minutes of power after your generator is destroyed.

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On the contrary, yes, I would very much want them to work (briefly) any time that power is required above and beyond that which the base generates, as it would allow smaller sgs to get a useful base going much more quickly. Basic cap = 10k prestige vs. minimal energy terminal + generator = 375k prestige. If the cap would trigger on demand even outside of raids, that would allow you to get work tables, teleporters, or rez rings functional (if intermittently) for 365k less prestige. If an sg is bringing in 10k/day, that means a little over a month less of "why do we have this useless base, again?" before it's able to do something. How is this something you wouldn't want?

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I believe the difference between hidden & secure base plots is in the types of rooms you can purchase. IIRC secure base plots allow you to buy rooms that can contain defensive items in addition to their main purpose.

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I hadn't noticed that distinction (but I haven't looked for whether you can put secure rooms in a non-secure base, so you're probably right), but there is one other significant difference: Secure bases can have backup power and control rooms. A hidden base can only have one of each, so if invaders get in there and trash your mainframe, your base will shut down. A secure base lets you put a second one off somewhere else to keep things going until the raid is over and repairs can be made.

Now for my question on base building, which I've never seen raised anywhere... Do capacitors work outside of raids? If so, that would be a great boon for us smaller sgs - sure, the workbench/teleporters/rez rings may only work for a minute at a time, but at least you can get them up and running a quarter million Prestige sooner if they'll run off a cap while you save up for a real generator.

I do recall Paragon's place in the world, but I think we have different views of where that places it in comparison to normal supers settings. Or, to put it another way, we have different views on when CoH characters become true "superheroes". I see them starting out as "super-normals" with just one or two piddly powers that don't really do all that much. Equating that to a standard Hero character with 100, 150, or 200 base points (at work, no books, can't look up the system's description of how powerful each of those point totals is meant to be) doesn't seem right to me.

Consider that most starting Hero characters, in my experience, have multiple decent attacks, a servicable defense, and a moderately-developed travel power - even back in the Champions 3D days (when most of my actual play experience was; I've read FRED, but never played it) when 100 points was the norm. A starting CoH character can't even remotely match that. It takes them until at least level 6 to even get the basics of a travel power and level 14 for it to 'mature'. Unless FRED has increased the costs of things more than I've noticed, I just can't see a level 1 CoH character as being in the same league as a 100-point Hero character, much less his equal.

Really? That high of point bases? Keep in mind that a level 1 hero in CoH is just starting to discover their powers - 150 points seems way, way too high to me. I haven't thought that hard about exact details yet (I'm still in the 'trying to get my D&D3-a-holic friends to consider stepping out of the dungeons' stage), but, gut feel, I'd say 50 or maybe 75 points would be an appropriate base with maybe 5-10 points for each level above 1. It might also be appropriate to award double (or even triple) XP in Hero, both to offset the low starting point base and to reflect CoH's rapid advancement. (Maybe reducing that multiplier as the point totals increase - say 50 points base, triple xp until 100 points/level 10, double until 150/level 20, and normal thereafter - again reflecting that they've hit the standard Hero power level and that leveling in CoH slows as you advance.)

For the bad guys, I would focus more on modeling their abilities than worrying about their CoH levels, but would base point totals on the range of levels they appear at (Hellions - CoH: levels 1-10/Hero: 50-100 points), adding maybe 20 points for an lt and 50 for a boss (or less)...

In any case, the thing to keep in mind is that, compared to what's normal in Hero (and most other games), CoH is a pretty low-powered supers setting. There are a lot of supers around, but, individually, they're not really that powerful.

2.a) Don't go afk outdoors if you can avoid it. Duck into a nearby store, City Hall, or other building instead.

4.a) Do not turn on your travel power before entering a fight if it is Super Jump. Turn on Combat Jumping instead - it costs less end, gives you a Def bonus, protects you from Immobilization, and Super Jump has no discernible activation time.

4.b) Turning on Fly while fighting is probably also a bad idea.

4.c) You can't turn on Teleport because it's not a toggle.

4.d) Rule 4 really only applies to Super Speed.

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8 b) When you have one, let your Rooted Status-Proof Tank exit the mission first.

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8.b.2) Status-proof scrappers also work well. And those with mobile status protection are even better.

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Rule #21421:

Scrappers like to charge into groups of stuff whether it will get you, me, them, us killed. Sometimes a little reminder for us to slow down a bit will let the rest of the group heal up before the next herd of mobs. Although, being able to keep up with the scrappers can make missions go alot faster....

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Rule #21421a:

If you need a break and the scrapper charges into the next herd of mobs, take your break anyhow. A lot of scrappers (especially regen scrappers) don't really need much (if any) downtime and would rather take on a tough fight solo than sit and wait for everyone else. (IOW, most scrappers seem to have ADHD.) If he dies by not waiting for you, it's his own fault, but he probably doesn't mind much - most scrappers are used to dying, so there's no reason for you to get yourself killed by charging in with low HP and no End trying to save them.

(For the record, I mostly play hyperactive regen scrappers...)

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My contribution: Slow and steady saves debt. Fools rush in where Heroes fear to tread. You can play a good tactical team of 3/4 (and get better xp) where a bad team of 8 would die everytime.

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Don't be too afraid of debt. Taking on risky groups that net you 5000 xp/hour, but losing 1000 xp/hour to debt is still quicker than playing it safe with groups that never kill you, but only pull in 2000 xp/hour. More fun, too. Plus you may be surprised to learn that you can actually handle a lot tougher groups than you think you can...

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Well duh, this is a City of Heroes forum, and I'm talking about City of Heroes. I have no doubt that you can navigate more quickly in Microsoft Word with hotkeys than you can with a mouse. But pick a first or third person game and I'll show you why a mouse is far better for accuracy/control/efficiency than keyboard.

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*sigh* My mention of fine navigation (not necessarily all navigation!) was a specific example, not a blanket statement that mouse is superior to keyboard in CoH. There are a lot of things in CoH that I would never use the mouse for, such as activating powers, bringing up the map, or using inspirations. I can do all of these more quickly and accurately using the keyboard (and some custom /binds for the insps to free me from being tied to how they're arranged in the tray). I wouldn't use the mouse for much of anything other than fine navigation and clicking on objects if I didn't have to, but there's a lot of stuff that, AFAICT, cannot currently be bound to keys.

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Is there anyway to auto-set more than 1 power at once?

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Nope. The devs don't want you to be able to walk away from your keyboard and let the game fight for you, so they only allow one autofire power.

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3. Good grief, this may be the most important piece of advice in this thread: Learn to use your mouse! If you use the right button, you get free look. All you keyboarders need to evolve into the current century.

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I'm tempted to say something impolite and insulting in reply, but let it suffice to say that I can do most things in just about any program more quickly by using the keyboard. Many of them more accurately, as well. The main advantage of a mouse is in ease of use, not efficiency of use. (Again, in most cases. In CoH, the mouse is, for example, much better for fine navigation, as it offers a degree of precision that the keyboard cannot easily match.)

BTW, you don't need to use the right button constantly. Just bind a key to ++mouselook and you can hit it, use the mouse to steer for as long as you like (without having to hold anything down), and then hit it again to get your pointer back when needed. The one side-effect is that your character won't turn around while mouselook is active - e.g., if you run by someone and attack them, you'll immediately turn back to your original facing after the attack. Depending on the situation, this can be either a big advantage (when travelling to avoid being sent off in a random direction after conning a mob) or a bit of a nuisance (never automatically turning around while in a big fight so you only see what's on one side of you).

The real most important point in the thread: Learn to use /bind!

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4. It's been mentioned before but I'll say it again. Don't Recall Friend someone without asking!

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Not such a big deal any more since Update 2 added teleport confirmation dialogs.

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For some reason, binding a key to the 'nop' command is how you unbind the key.

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"NOP" is old-school shorthand for "No Operation".

Before reading about that bind here, I discovered through a little experimentation that you can also clear a key by binding it to "" (a set of empty quotes).

/bind , ""

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Still new here (level 13), not sure what the map patch is I have heard a few people mention...anyone care to explain?

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http://www.heroeshideaway.com/module...load&cid=2

It replaces the in-game maps with maps that have the store locations marked on them. It also adds an approximate map of the trails to Perez Park.

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I'm a scrapper, and like to test my limits.

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But that's redundant... (Well, OK, we scrappers call it "testing our limits". Everyone else seems to call it "being crazy" or "having a death wish", even when we don't die.)

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Ascending Fire-escapes : hold down your right-mouse button to steer (assuming you haven't rebound it). You can rip up a fire-escape in no time (or a stair-case, whatever) by steering with your mouse and not the keyboard.

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You can rip up a fire escape in no time if you don't steer at all... Run forward up the stairs, strafe right (D by default), run backwards, strafe left (A), repeat until you're at the top. Don't turn at all.

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Simply click a teammates name in the team window to select them (and set them as a waypoint. )

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Well... Click on the name to select them, then right-click and select "Set as Waypoint" from the pop-up menu to set them as a waypoint...

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not really...there is no exp penalty for SKing. you get the exp for the level you are fighting at currently. your logic would also say you get an exp penalty for leveling.

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First off, no, when sked you don't simply get xp based on your clev. A 23 sked to 25 gets xp as if they were 23 and fighting enemies two levels lower than they actually are (because they're fighting two levels higher than their actual level), just like the levels of any drops they receive are reduced by two. A 23 killing a 25 while sked to 25 gets the same xp as a non-sked 23 killing a 23, not the same as a non-sked 25 killing a 25. (XP inflation at higher levels would make this an incredible exploit if you just got xp as if you were your clev - a lvl 2 could sk to a 50 and gain multiple levels from one kill.)

Secondly, yes, if you really want to push it, I would say that there is an XP penalty for being more experienced. I accept that it should take more to gain levels as you become more powerful and there are two obvious ways to do this: Increase the XP required per level or reduce the XP gained from a given task (e.g., killing a lvl 5 minion). You definitely have to do one or the other (or come up with something completely different, but I'm not aware of any commonly-used third option), but I don't like systems that do both. That sort of double-whammy really bothers me... But at this point, we're moving into a more general game design discussion instead of good things to know about CoH, so I'll just leave it at that.

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Meaning that the time to slot lv20 enchancements for current 15++ ones isn't level 17, but level 18, as you'll get some benefit out of the current 15++.

If you have open slots, hit them with the new higher levels first. Once you hit 18, you can slot the 20s with 15++, making 21s.

Basically, don't replace "maxed" slots unless you don't have any free ones.

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I'll agree with your final statement here, but not the first. There's no good reason to go through, e.g., level 17 with yellow enhancements when you could be buying shiny new green ones. Not buying any until they're combinable doesn't buy you any additional effective time, it just delays the first purchase.

When you do buy them, though, it is definitely wiser to combine existing enhancements with each other where possible than it is to unnecessarily trash enhs by replacing them with level+3 enhs.

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And a final summary of the summary..

Sidekicking does not penalise your xp. But if you are killing enemy+3 unsidekicked, then start killing enemy+1 sidekicked, you will obviously get less XP. That is the way of the XP system.

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Oh, I get how it works. We're really just debating semantics here...

I look at it and see that I got X xp for killing a level 26 while sked and Y xp for killing an identical mob while not sked, where X < Y. Since doing the exact same thing netted fewer xp while sked than while not sked, I call that an xp penalty.

You look at it and see that the mob was +1 to my combat level when sked and +3 when not sked, then reason that it's appropriate for a level 26 (+1 to clev) when sked to give the same xp as a level 24 (also +1 to clev) when not sked, so, therefore, there is no penalty.

It's all just a matter of perspective.