Doctor Vivian

I am a member of a SG on Guardian that has done a large number of Base Raids, so I'd like to chime in as to the timeline of events.

Before I begin, it is important for me to clarify -- there are two types of base raids. These are Real Base Raids and Instant Base Raids.

Real Base Raids were turned off (disabled) very soon after they were released due to major problems with the Cathedral of Pain Trial and Item-of-Power system (I have heard all sorts of rumors, ranging from exploits to major crash issues to people getting REALLY upset that actual items were getting destroyed in their Bases during raids in exchange for a measly +1% damage buff, etc).

However, although Real Raids were turned off, Instant Base Raids (i.e., "Practice" raids) remained available, and were thoroughly enjoyed by many SG's and VG's all the way up to Issue 13, when they were also turned off.

After a Real Base Raid, objects and items that were destroyed in the course of the Raid very often stayed that way. You would come back to a partially trashed base. Telepads, Dimensional Anchors, Generators, Weapons and more would need to be rebuilt. You could purchase extremely expensive Robo-Fabricators, which would attach to Worktables and gave an additional base 5% chance that destroyed items would be automatically re-built, but needless to say, once the novelty wore off, the +1% buff of an Item of Power very quickly lost its appeal in that it would open your base up to being partly wrecked by Hero or Villain Group attackers who were trying to steal your Item of Power -- especially since, before the base repricing of Issue 13, everything quite literally cost 10-100x more Prestige than they do now, and most "Elite" class base weapons required large numbers of items that were very annoying to get, such as Unstable Rad Pistols. To come back to a base and see those very hard-to-build items wrecked didn't make anyone happy.

After an Instant Base Raid, any and all destroyed items are automatically restored back to the way they were before the start of the raid. That lack of risk, combined with the fact that there is no debt in an Instant Base Raid and that all participants are auto-SK'd to Level 50 made them a lot of fun and widely enjoyed -- they represented one of the most strategic, exciting and delightful forms of PvP to be had anywhere in the game.

The originally-stated reason for the taking of Base Raids offline in Issue 13 was that the Devs were revamping Raid Pathing, which was an automatic system in the Base Editor to ensure (a) a clear path existed connecting all rooms with no wall-to-wall obstructions, (b) no items overlapped one another's bounding boxes, and (c) no Active Objects (Anchorpoint, Generator, Computer, IoP Ring, etc., etc., etc) were blocked by too-close proximity to other objects, so that they could be reached and attacked during a raid. With Raid Pathing turned off, objects can be placed inside one another, or even half-way through walls. There is no restriction on placement from the bounding box, and no concern if you want to entirely wall objects off and make them unreachable. An added "bonus" from this for most Base Architects was that once they were freed from the restrictions of the Raid Pathing Bounding Boxes, they had a much greater freedom in placing and stacking items to create innovative base elements and areas.

I remember reading a Dev post before Issue 13 (that I can't find anymore) that a new programmer had come on board, and that they were revamping the Base Raid system, which is why Raids had to be disabled for Issue 13.

Mistakenly, I assumed this to mean that the IoP system and Cathedral of Pain would return after Issue 13. Although I do remember wondering to myself, how on earth they were going to turn Raids back on after people had been revamping their bases with overlapping items? Raid Pathing was a necessary component to ensuring Base Raids could be performed.

However, as Base Raids remained disabled in Issue 14 and 15, I could only hypothesize that the new programmer had been pulled onto more urgent, major tasks for the upcoming Issues (like the AE system, Power Customization and the next major, major release -- Going Rogue, in Issue 17), and that Base Raids, which were only ever done regularly by a relatively small segment of the CoX population, were placed on the back burner.

I am highly confident that Base Raids and Items of Power will return to CoX in due course. We just need to wait. Once all of these major projects get completed, and possibly others that even now are just on the drawing boards and percolating in the fertile imaginations of the Dev Team, Back-Burner items like Base Raids will get around to being fixed.

The question as to how the Devs will be able to make Raids once again possible after people have been allowed for so much time to build Bases without Raid Pathing will have to wait until then to be answered.

However, to be realistic, given what's already been announced as being in the works, I would not expect Base Raids to return to CoX until Issue 19-20.

Should you successfully put this group together, we would be willing to host a Base Tour and social chat of our Base-Raid oriented, Tech theme base on Guardian.

Send an in-game /tell to @Doctor Vivian to work out the details.

Hi, Red!

Welcome to the Forums! Although you're probably pretty "in gear" already -- I suspect that Niviene and the rest of the team have already sat you down for two weeks or so as a pure lurker and had you read every thread, to get you ready for your upcoming work here.

As to your name, if you're really serious about this whole sidekick thing (and a lot of folks aren't, they figure it's just a stepping-stone to greater glory), there's no shame in taking a related name to your Mentor, even for the time being. Remember, if you don't do it yourself, you'll just get branded with an annoying and inconvenient nickname by the mass media the moment they get wise to you.

What about "Gyrfalcon"? It's a lot better than, say... Chicken Hawk.

Anyway, I think I speak for everyone on this side of the sanity index when I say I hope you have a great time here with us all, and as part of the CoX team as a whole. See you around!

-- Vivian

At this particular juncture in time, in this current revision of the Base Editor, there does not seem to be any method that I am aware of, of mounting "Floor" class items on walls or the ceiling (rotating them 90 off their vertical plane or inverting them).

However, this does not mean that some enterprising soul has not figured out a trick to do it in combination with some other objects.

So, I ask:

1. Is it currently possible to invert a floor object and mount it on the ceiling?

2. Is it currently possible to rotate a floor object sideways and mount/float it on a wall?

After reading through 9 pages of this thread, then running searches, I realized it would probably be a lot faster if I just posted my question.

During pre-Issue-13 Base Raids (instant or normal), while I know the attackers can win through either placing 5 Disruptor Pylons or destroying 5 Anchorpoints, can they also win by touching the IOP? In other words, if one of the attackers manages to reach the IOP Vault and clicks on the IOP, do the attackers instantly win?

This makes me think of Catsi. *^_^*

During one day at the height of summer, six glittering starships appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly, everything went dark. It was the curse of the evil monkey that eats cotton candy. The people all fled in terror at the sight of the sticky-fingered monkey. It hurled large chunks of cotton candy at the innocent Omegatron Zeta Warbot, "Koo Koo Katchoo", who, caught unprepared