Linuial

[ QUOTE ]
You are thoroughly familiar with Telix, and the SALT scripting language.

Your phone book in Telix had 10 or more BBS phone numbers, and you used each of them every day to play your turns for Trade Wars, Global Destruction, and Legend of the Red Dragon.

[/ QUOTE ]

[cough, cough...] Perhaps I am showing off my ignorance, here, but are you referring to "Telex"? As in Telex/TWX?

I programmed a Telex, using punched holes in paper tape as the input medium. As a matter of fact, I even made paper tapes to control the forms spacing for our company's computer printer. How many people can say that? (It worked a bit like a piano roll...)

I worked on a computer with a big, red "Stop" button on the front of the console. If a program got into a loop, you hit the button, which stopped the entire CPU, and then you queried individual memory locations, and typed the corrected code in directly from the console's keyboard, and hit the "Run" button to have the program continue at the point at which it stopped. :-) Sure made it easy to debug programs.....

You know you're in a good PUG when.....

...without a word, the team forms up with tanks and scrappers in front, controllers and defs in the middle, and blasters at the rear.

...a tank or scrapper says "ready?", and then stands there, waiting and waiting, until the "other" member of the party finally says "ready" (after being nudged).

...you suggest pulling, and someone says "good idea".

....you suggest lowering the difficulty level, and someone says "good idea".

....there is lots of team communication, lots of business chatter, lots of joking and laughter.

....there is NO team communication, and the team acts like a well-oiled machine without it, because everyone is playing their ATs and knows their role by heart without having to say a word. (spooky, but tremendous fun)

....everyone on the team is courteous, and all members are constantly watching out for all the other members.

If someone on your PUG says, "I don't mind debt", "I love debt", or "I have a million points of debt, what are you worried about?", invent an emergency call from your SG. If you don't have an SG, register one.

It is well to learn CoX terminology. "PL ME PLZ" means "would you please leave this zone as quickly as you can, and put me on ignore as well?", "gimmee some inf" means "When you don't cough up your hard-earned cash, I will stand here and insult you to your face", and "Why the hell would you slot THAT power?" means "I am really looking for some debt, so would you mind leaving the team and the mission so I can get down to business?"

It's all in understanding the language correctly. :-)

- you had one of the original "Barbie-tail" Barbies, with the bumble-bee swimsuit.

- you still have a copy of Crystal Cave.

- you know who Space Angel and Clutch Cargo were. (and can name their companions)

- in Houston, you know who Kitirik was, and where she got her name. (Catgirl warning!)

- you know who Mingo was.

- you know his name is Brutus, not Bluto.

- you can finish the quote: "I will gladly pay you Tuesday..."

- you are used to playing computer games with a pad of paper, a pencil, an eraser, and a straight-edge next to the keyboard.

- you know who Infocom was. And/or Perry Sim. And/or The Wabewalker.

- open mailbox

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
She is gathering her army.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ha! As if it would ever have the impact Miss Kitty's Catgirl army had!

[/ QUOTE ]

[sniffle] Nobody nominated me.....and I'm a real girl, too.

Mantid, I hearby rescind your "Official Starfire Leader Irritant" card. [pout]

So, there.

NYAH!
(patent pending, Mantid, all rights reserved.)

[ QUOTE ]
First Person Camera View

Sometimes, the camera views get messed up and you end up in First Person view.
When you zone the game resets you to a default camera angle and position, this 'bug' happens because at some point you hit 'b' to enter first person mode, and then hit 'b' again to leave it, for some reason the reset on zoning picks up on the 'b' and sends the camera back to first person as the default position.

Here are a few solutions:

[/ QUOTE ]

I tried all of these, over and over again (except the mouse wheel, as I don't have a mouse wheel), and nothing worked until I tried this:

1. zone.

2. DO NOT hit the "b" button, page up or down or any othe button.

3. type /camreset in the dialog box and hit enter.

This worked for me when nothing else did, and the fix was permanent.

Brag, brag, brag.... ;-)

SPOILERS

Did the Hess yesterday. Kept having DC issues (on Liberty). One team member kept DCing every 30 seconds, and gave up and quit at the door of the first mission. We did all right up to the final mission. (If team gets separated in the trap room, recall friend can be a literal "life-saver".)

Once we got to the final room, within 2 minutes 2 more people DC'ed, and at one point we wound up with only 3 people.....a tank, a controller, and an empathy def.....in the fight of their lives. During that period, no one died. ;-) Unless I missed something, we only had one death before the mountain blew up.

It's interesting that I was one of the people who didn't get out alive (I was stupidly still healing people and yelling "get out! Out!" over and over again....), and I discovered that I could use an awaken when it was all over, and explore the room afterward....the same explosion that killed us also killed all the rest of the mobs. It's the ideal time to explore the room looking for the exits (I found one on the bottom floor that I didn't know about, an elevator with automated guns in front of it), and taking screen shots. (I think that bottom level exit might be easier to find than the one we came in through at the mid-level catwalk.....just let yourself fall to the floor, and look for the exit from there. YMMV; If anyone tries this and fails......don't blame me. )

[ QUOTE ]
(I don't have time to log and check but would this work?
/bind <key> autoreply, "message here")

[/ QUOTE ]

No, it won't.

"Autoreply" is a command that takes zero arguments, i.e., the interpreter doesn't look for anything following it.

The command you want is "Reply". Reply DOES take an argument (the thingy that follows it), and you can use it to keybind an auto reply in advance, instead of having to stop during a battle to tell someone "hang on, in battle, get right back to you".

If I recall correctly, I think "Reply" was only activated in I6, and it was a big relief when it appeared.

If the entire team faceplants spectacularly, and the dedicated full-time empathy def has some suggestions, listen to him/her, instead of calling them nasty names.

I announced "I'm going to be following the tank, if you want heals, stay close." I got catcalled and called "mother" for that one, as well as being told that it was MY JOB to follow the team, not their job to follow me. This was after the team split into 4 groups and faceplanted. Normally I run too fast to get caught in the insanity....this time I didn't make it.

I give PUGs one free healer faceplanting...after that, if they still appear to be playing stupidly, I WILL make suggestions, and if I'm bad mouthed, it will get my Irish up.

Keeping people alive is the empathy def's specialty. Unless they are incompetent (and I've seen a couple of those, too), they have good advice worth listening to, because I guarantee, they've seen it all.

Hey, I'd be willing to stalk Manti any time. :-)

I've wanted to play an archer in every single game I've ever owned. Never before have I found a game in which "being an archer" didn't mean "shoot one or two arrows, and then pull out a sword, because there is no other way to prevent your enemy from running up and bopping you to death." A piddly 3 hps damage from an arrow, then 1,000 hps with a sword to kill a mob. That's an "archer"?????!

I play her like a blaster, I WANT her to be a blaster....but despite that, Diana is a friggin' full-time archer, dang it all! Even if I had to roll her as a Def to do it!

If Manti is responsible for making it possible to play a full-time archer, he's my favorite Dev! So, there! :-D

After all....what would the Elves of Mirkwood and Lothlorien have been without their bows?

"Linuial"....Sindarin for "evening song"

So, Happy belated Valentine's Day, Manti! Thanks for the chance to play a full-time archer!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Alright, Flash Arrow is equal to Smoke Grenade, maybe a whole 2.5% better. It's still a lot of your damage mitigation, a good 40% of it, so take this power and slot it. Doesn't stack, but it misses often enough that you'll want to fire it pretty often.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've got to disagree here. Unless you're fighting -1s or less, you'll barely even notice the debuff

[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you!

When TA and archery first came out, I created a def TA/archery and a blaster archer just to see how I liked them. I NEVER saw anything I could identify as far as Flash Arrow being helpful, and have wondered why it is that everyone raves about it.

I finally settled on the TA/archer, but I play her like a blaster, which is really what I wanted in the first place. (I HATE that all the archer/blaster secondaries force your toon to put away the bow! It looks just incredibly stupid....if only it was animated so that that she would toss grenades with her right hand while still holding the bow with the left, I'd be less incensed....) Despite everything said here, I avoided Flash Arrow the second time around, and I've been a lot happier with the result. I haven't any any trouble soloing her at all, which I can't say for my empathy def.

(very big grin)

I'm a fan of yours, RM, although you might not remember me, I had some nice things to say about one of your previous versions of this guide....I just updated my pointer on my SG's web page to v6.0 a few minutes ago.

An excellent guide all the way around. Both for those "fur" and those "agin".

Give me credit, and you can use any part or all of it verbatim. ;-)

[ QUOTE ]
7) "I wanna be UB3R!!!!!11!!1!!oneoneone!1!!"

And then there are those people who, for whatever reason, just want to have a high level character. They don't know and don't care how fun playing a lowbie might be, because they've never bothered to try it. They're the ones you used to see standing around tram stations and ferries--the ones who get their character levelled to 50, then make a Kheldian and powerlevel it too. These are probably the same people who use god-mode cheats on single-player games. Why? Who really knows. Perhaps they feel that having a high level character gives them a degree of control over one thing in their otherwise-uncontrollable lives; maybe they want to see "the ending" even though there really isn't one in City of Heroes. (snip)

There may also be other reasons; if so, I will add them as they come to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have a possible explanation. Just as my opinion, mind you....

Remember the guys who come tearing up behind you on the freeway, ride your bumper, honk at you, flash their headlights, and then go tearing around you, to do the same thing to the car in front of you? They can't actually think that they are going to get where they are going that much faster, enough to make it worth risking everyone's lives over.

Some of them are the same people, I suspect.

They are people who are permanently stuck in "competition" mode. They see *everything* as a competition. If you are in front of them on the road, that means you are the "winner". So, they HAVE to get in front of you in order to gain back their self-esteem.

The really hard-core power levelers, the ones that are both rude and ruthless, seem to be intent on "reaching level 50 FIRST". In a shorter period of time than any other player in the history of the game.

It's a competition, is all.

Trying to prove to both you and themself that they are smarter than anyone else. If they can get XP faster than you can, then it is obvious (to them) that they are smarter than you are, because, after all, isn't that what everyone wants? Isn't that what everyone is playing for....to gain XP?

Content? XP IS content, to them. First, last, and always. Anything else is just getting in the way of the XP olympics.....proving that they are "the best".

Is it irritating to people who don't do it? Of course it is, just as irritating as the guy riding your bumper. You KNOW that he isn't any "better" than you are just because he swerved around you, but some ancient, animalistic part of your brain insists otherwise...and you get angry despite yourself.

And by the way, to the Devs and anyone else who is offended by the practice of powerleveling, I'm afraid that you have another reason for grieving. There are companies in foreign countries that accept credit card payments in order for one of their employees to sit at a PC and level a character for someone who doesn't want to do the work, for whatever reason. These are actual, probably profitable, companies, whose ONLY raison d'etre is taking cash for powerleveling. There is NO way that the game can be altered, nerfed, so that this practice would be eliminated. The client hands over his credit card number and his login and password, and the kid in Singapore does the rest, and pays his rent for the month afterward. The harder the Devs make it to powerlevel, the more those companies can charge and get away with it, so the more profitable it becomes!

Why bother buying a character on eBay, when you can have one constructed to your exact specifications by a teenager on the other side of the Pacific? And take over at level 40, or 50, whatever you want. These are the same people who think that just because they are walking around "wearing" a lvl 50, that people will be impressed and treat them as if they are something special. A "winner".

And City of Heroes/Villains is one of the games that these companies advertise strongly to their clients.

First, I would just like to say that the "bad boy" of the Freedom Phalanx, the non-powered guy with the chip on his shoulder, is my favorite in-game character. I just ran the Manticore TF for the first time, and his dialog is a real hoot.

Here's my question to Manticore, and forgive me if this seems a bit long.

I've submitted a story I've written to Fan Fiction Sumissions. I received the usual reply, "we received....because of volume....cannot respond unless your submission is selected...." All of which makes perfect sense.

However, it leaves me with a bit of a quandry.

It's stated that submissions become the property of CoH. Again, to be expected, that is standard in cases like this.

But I have no way of knowing if, or even when, my submission is accepted....or rejected.

It happens to be the origin story of one of my characters, the only one with a really well-thought-out origin.

If it is NOT accepted, I really would like to be able to share it with my friends. It is also important that anyone read the origin story first, before later stories that I have written and will write (including ones not intended to be submitted to CoH).

So my question is this: Is there a reasonable amount of time I should wait before I just assume that my submission has been rejected?

If I assume it has been rejected, and post it, for example to a web page, will that be in conflict with CoH "owning rights" to it?

If I post it somewhere, I assume that would make it difficult or impossible for CoH to copyright it....if it is still under consideration, won't that mean that CoH will *have* to reject it?

Thank you in advance if my question is selected to be answered.

As a matter of fact, I really hate to sound like an advertisement, but the truth of the matter is that I would feel bad if I *didn't* mention all the wonderful people who honored me by joining Starfire, the whole lot of them absolutely rock, IMNSHO.

SuperChris/Thought Crime, Mantid/Stray, Blood Nut, Zoshnell, Blackened Beef/Silva Bullet/Kimimarro, and all our newbies, too, Xavi, Brother Mathias, Lenka the old, Meredith/Peer Pressure, Gaara Ai/Muraki/Yomi Ko/etc. and everyone my terrible memory can't dredge up at the moment.

And Beef....if for some odd reason you should see this, *please* contact me, we're getting worried about you. Several of the guys have asked about you. linuial at terraforming dot com

Well, please allow me to say that one of the nicest people I've met on Liberty is Maggot Man/Wind Sheer/SuperChris. ;-)

He helped me out SO much when I was just a wee tiny little blaster....gave me oodles of Insps, when I didn't even know what they were good for.

Ditto for his wife SuperMolly/Anya.

[he, he]

Supergroup Registry

# Supergroup Name: Starfire (on Liberty)
# Website (if any): www.terraforming.com/starfir1.htm
# Leader or Recruiting Officers: @Linuial, and others
# Preferred Method of contact: ingame email or tell
# Guild Description:
Motto: Soaring the Heavens
A Strategists' Supergroup
membership requirements/guidelines:
Looking for players (not themes, toons, or power sets) who enjoy using their strategic chops as well as, or even more than, their fast-twitch skills. Team play emphasized, for example, pulling techniques, team support, planning and discussion, etc. Role play encouraged but not required. The most important skill is the ability to get along with, play courteously with, and enjoy playing with a wide range of ATs, origins, and power sets, and exploring how they all mesh with each other. We deal with the PL situation by avoiding it entirely.....players who enjoy PL are encouraged to look into our sister-SG, Public Defenders. Please see our web page for more information.

Someone asked that my Reader's Digest to the Positron be stickied.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...amp;PHPSESSID=

I've created a copy on a web page, which I will update if-and-when I think of something I left out. (which I just did) :-)

http://www.terraforming.com/starfir2.htm

[ QUOTE ]
Anchor - An NPC villian that is targetted and is needed for some powers to activate upon and/or continue working. Ususally killed last so effect stays.

i think if its important enough for my rad defender to have a bind to explain what it is and NOT to kill it, its 'portant 'nuff fer yer gee-ide here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay.....so fill me in. I've been told this on occasion, but even though I've asked, it's never been explained to me how *I*, personally, can tell exactly which mob it is which is the anchor. So far, I haven't seen anything about any one mob that looks different from any other.....perhaps because the mobs as a group all get killed so fast, while I'm occupied trying to do my share of damage dealing.

What do I look for in order to identify the "anchor"? So I know which one I'm not supposed to be hitting?

# Supergroup Name: Public Defenders
# Website (if any): www.terraforming.com/coh01.htm
# Leader or Recruiting Officers: Defend Protect2 and other officers listed on web page
# Preferred Method of contact: ingame tell; you can also send ingame email to Linuial
# Guild Description: Not restricted to Defenders, we look specifically for players who enjoy helping other players, particularly newbies, and encourage SG members to start from the SG list in recruiting for teams.

[ QUOTE ]
2) Don't want true newbies blowing all their INF changing their sock colors. Though just playing the game, you don't find out about the Icons store until you're old enough (in game) to decide if you want those new socks or enhancements.

[/ QUOTE ]

As opposed to....what?

Blowing all their INF by deleting their level 5 character and starting over, just to change a couple of costume features?

That's what I did. :-)

AND I kept fuming because I really, really, really wanted a floor-length skirt.....or robe/gown....or knee-length skirt.

So.....if they make these available (hopefully soon), I'll have to *buy* the changes, which I wanted in the first place? [pout]

I only joined CoH in late January (2005), so there is lots and lots I haven't discovered as yet. Like where the IP Icon shop is. And what you have to do to make costume changes. And what levels are required first. Oh, I'll find out.....eventually. :-)

I'm reading everything I can *find* on the new costume features....but so far I haven't see any ETA. Am I SOL as far as asking if anyone knows anything?

[....rapidly discovering a "clothes horse" mentality that I never knew I had.....]

[....and I don't care about the shoulder kittens.....I want a stuffed shoulder dragon....just like the one I wear to cons in RL.....]