Mofeta

And so many e-mails to clear out @_@

As the title said, I haven't played in two years, but now I'm back. What are the critical things I need to know?

Most importantly - where is everyone? I enter Atlas Park and it is dead. Not 'kind of quiet' dead, but 'not even people spamming for contests or sewer team' dead. Am I in the wrong zone, or is my 'home' server (Pinnacle) just dead?

There were rumors for a while that Atlantis was going to be one of the new zones... but those rumors are as old as the rumors that we'd be fighting on the moon.

Myself, I'd just like to get a bunch of storm defenders (a SG or two worth) to crash the Shadow Shard and flood it so we no longer have to get jet packs there, but that's just me...

Tengo los pantalones spandex y quiero salvar la ciudad Paragon. =p

Seriously, 10% of the US market speaks Spanish at home, and there's no major MMO which publishes their game in Spanish. You'd also have a leg up on entering other markets.

If you don't want to have to pay obscene translation fees, just do something like Google In Your Language and let us do the grunt work for you. If you're paranoid about quality or trolls, limit it to people who have a certain veteran level (12 months?). You'd need all of two or three people to oversee the translation (mostly by defining official translation of common terms, upkeep of the translation's server, and booting/reverting the occasional spammer).

Hmm.

Performance Shifter +Endurance would be interesting in Heat Loss, which takes endurance from enemies and caues each enemy to radiate an endurance buff to allies (somewhat like Siphon Speed)... would each enemy have a chance to boost the endurance of your allies?

Okay. Since I'm about to return to campus (where they have blocked CoH, and I have found no workaround), and won't have CoH for a while, let me get some of the things that I like best about the game here.

As a note: I previously was a MapleStory addict. I've played about a dozen other MMOs, rarely for more than three months, including Anarchy Online, Shattered Galaxy, Flyff, World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, Everquest, and Trickster.

Accolade Power: Do something epically awesome in another game, adn you get a piece of equipment. Do something epically awesome in CoH, and you get a special buff that will make you last for the whole game.

Altitis: The easy ability to make multiple characters, the few but distinct communities (don't call them "servers" or "shards"), and the ability to make really descriptive characters with powers and costume that match cause one of the most awesome effects unique to this game, altitis. (In FFXI, you have pay another $1 per month to even have another character; and that cost is per-character, not per-server.) Many people have dozens of characters, but only one or two 50s (if any). Just imagine: instead of having to spend too much time grinding to have fun, people in CoH are having too much fun to grind!

Auction House: Who needs to go hunting umpteen million times? Just about everything you could want is for sale. And if you need influence -- all the "junk" that you've been given often will sell for much more than you think it will. (And you're given it when you defeat the beastie -- you don't need to chase down bodies you knocked halfway to the Shadow Shard to click the corpse to drag items into your inventory.)

Badges: THere are hundreds of badges (my main just got her 320th), and more are always on the way. They reward you for doing new and different things.

Characters And Foes I Care About: The first day I played, I actually got to tag along with one of my relative's L50 characters to see Infernal. Do you know what seeing something like that on your first day of playing does to a newbie? It gets them hooked. I'm actually interested in the stories behind the characters. I tuned in every week to watch JLA and Teen Titans, and I wondered how they'd do each week. Now, those shows are off the air, and I worry about the continuing adventures Faultline and Fusionette, the loose grip on sanity of Malaise and Statesman, the story of the Clockwork King (which starts at level 10 and runs all the way up to level 50 -- maybe more in the future, with Ouroboros now). Heck, a good day's run with a few story missions will inspire me to write, draw, and have crazy dreams when I'm done playing -- no other MMO can be said to inspire me as much as this game does.

I wonder what motivates villains and villain groups. I think Back Alley Brawler and Manticore are cooler than Batman. (They're cooler than double Batman.) I'd watch the movie, and eat the breakfast cereal.

City of Villains: Don't get me wrong, I like the spandex tights as much as anyone (maybe even more, but that's for another thread and another forum). But when I feel like a little black humor or like a dystopia, I've got an entire other world to play in -- and the awesome comic-book style cutscenes are there all over, to great effect. Grand Theft Auto? Heh, sure Tony Whatsyourface, you enjoy your guns, I'm going to go take over the world.

Controllable By Default: There are only two MMOs which I've found "controllable by default:" this game and WoW. Other games, I have to waste time working with the customization commands. Heck, in FFXI, I had to either use a complex heirarchal menu system for every single command, or -- worse -- use a poorly documented (undocumented?) slash-command system to get the game to work.

Costume Contests: While sometimes annoying when organized in, say, Atlas Park or other major throughfare, just think about it. People will give you rare stuff and millions of influence just for looking stylish. (This just doesn't work in most other games.)

Delivering The Undeliverables: Every so often, they add soemthing major to change how the game works -- something that they said would be "too complex," "too expensive," or "too out there" for a currently existing game. Weapon Customization -- and it was retroactive to everyone with the right powerset! Ouroboros -- going "back in time" to see previous missions? Inventions -- creating gear out of salvage where previously neither existed? PvP, both in the blah "punch each other until someone dies" variation, and the intriguing "wargame with NPCs from all over the world" version? Global chat? Many times, the devs have delivered major features as part of an issue that, in other companies, would be the driving force behind an entire (stand-alone and seperate subscription fee) game.

Descriptions: You can describe your character. You're not just a paper-doll with bonuses, class, and level; when people look up info on you, you get to say what you want to them. Serious description? Silly one-liner? Parody of or homage to other characters of your archetype? OOC notes about your play style? Often times, they can tell you mountains about what that character (and importantly, that player) will be like -- a well-thought out description shows someone who's putting a lot of time and effort into playing their character and archetype right. Heck, while we wait for people to get to missions, those descriptions are awfully fun to read.

The Devs Are People Too: Statesman. Back Alley Brawler. Castle. Ghost Widow. Positron. War Witch. They're not just NPCs, they're developer handles, and you can identify their roles in the company, may know their real life names, and know what they've worked on to make your game more fun. Heck, as a RPG gamer, I own their books in a few cases. Unless you're playing a game in which the head developer is credited in the packaging (Tabula Rusa), what other game lets you know the artists behind the madness?

And back when I was part of the Steel 70 -- the experimental raid to see if a group of PCs could take down the undestroyable drop ships -- we succeeded. (It turned out to be a bug because the ships weren't sufficiently resistant to slow powers, but still -- we took down what was essentially a flying Hamidon with laser beams!) And when we succeeded, Back Alley Brawler himself logged on and congradulated us. That was not only inspiring, but that was the sign of a great man, who made us feel like, yes, they too were in awe of those who rose to the challenge -- what other game can you say the devs do that for their players

Enhancements: In other games, a skill once learned is largely set in stone -- some of WoW's "best" skills increase the recharge speed of another skill by 0.1 seconds per point spent in them, and you get one of these skills every level. In City of Heroes, we get to choose how we set our enhancements; up to 6 slots per power, 1 slot free per power, and most powers have at least two ways to be improved. Schedule A enhancements (the vast majority of enhancements) let you double any one aspect of a power with three slots. Do you want damage? No, now you're having trouble hitting; slot in an accuracy enhancement for now. Reduce the endurance cost, improve the accuracy, increase the debuffs or mezzes. Do what you like, when you want it. For all other games, you have to schedule out the builds starting before character generation. To add to the awesome, Inventions let us build our own side-effects to add into our own main powers! Even your pea shooter power becomes pretty nifty when it now has a 5% chance to power you up for 2 minutes or a 10% chance to drain endurance.

Eye Candy: Now, I'm not one impressed by "realistic" game graphics. I mean, I played Maple Story for over months because the graphics, as simple as they were, were innovative, consistent, and beautiful, and not hampered by the need to have "realism" (read: jiggle physics and bloom). But, even with my bias against such games, I have to admit -- City of Heroes is the most beautiful game I own (maybe second to Exteel, but I don't play that near as much). The humans look like humans, and they look good in whatever costume they use. And the world is beautiful. And -- perhaps this is too much -- but a battle where people are using Propel and Whirlwind makes for infinite fun times.

Faultline and Talos Island: Believe it or not, these two zones are the most "Paragonish" for me. Faultline is struggling to recover from a disaster, with zombies and clockwork and alien psychic hobos and sky pirates and Arachnos trying to take the zone over; Talos is a classic culture clash, with ninjas, badass warrior guys, the horrible creations of a false nature god in the northwest, the dark manifestations of tainted ancient horrors in the southeast, cyberpunks, and freaking ghost pirates. Even if the rest of the game were lost, these two zones would be City of Heroes to me.

Giant Monsters: Raids are cool. You're not fighting Nameless Dragon #666 to get Foobar Of +0.1% Awesomeness -- you get to fight giant scrapyard dinosaurs, demonic snowmen, giant squid, pumpkin-headed beasts and giant freaking amoeba about the size of the starting zone. Raids are limited, and what raids and monster fights you get are iconically awesome.

GMs: No, not giant monsters, gamemasters. There are GMs in the game, trying to keep the game running right and resolving player disputes and simple map issues whenever they can. Just let that sink in. The sheer awesomeness of what this means for the game is a big part of why I stay here, and not anywhere else.

Inspirations: In most other games, temporary buffs are rare, must be purchased appropriate to your level (or be wasted/ineffectual), and very rarely drop. In this game, the bonuses are always scaled to you (+25%/+33%/+50%), drop all the time (4-8 on one radio mission), and don't "go bad" as you level up.

Leadership: Just imagine the subtle effect this power set has on the game. Yes, you can power yourself up. But you can also make others stronger; your power gets more and more effective with every other person you team with. Stick with the rest of your party, and both you and your party benefits. The more of those purple dots line up in a party, the broader my smile -- not just because I've been effectively handed dozens of IOs in accuracy, damage, perception, and defense, but because I know my teammates will be able to stick together and fight together more effectively than most random PUGs.

No Fog Of War Outside: When I enter a new (non-instanced) zone, I have the map tell me where all the major points are. (Which only makes sense. It's a city in the modern world. "Lonely Planet: Paragon City" is probably handed out to all new heroes upon entering outbreak, if not just telling them to go to Google Maps.) Compare games like MapleStory, where there are entire CITIES where you are not allowed to view the map (in many cases, you're not even allowed to view the world map in those locations).

Player Recognition: I was in one of the first issues of the City Scoop -- in my first month of playing the game. Beef Cake got turned into a comic book character. Even though that 'ownership rights' thing in the EULA is a bit of a pain (I want to make fanart of people I see without worry!), it makes something else much more exciting possible -- you, and your exploits, can become canon. Even if I quit playing now (and I'll have to unless I find a workaround), I am now a small but happy part of the ongoing story of Paragon City. Try THAT in Generic Fantasy World #9.

Pool Powers: The idea of powers that everyone gets a chance to do is awesome. Everyone can buff (Leadership), fight, fly, go fast, heal (Medicine), be tough (Fitness), taunt (Presence). No, you don't have to be a "heal0r" -- Everyone can be a healer.

Radio: Don't feel like doing a contact mission? Don't have a contact mission you can do alone? No worries -- your friendly Radio will give you a mission appropriate to your zone's level, complete with a randomly-generated instance, randomly generated objective, randomly generated enemy groups, and randomly generated NPCs, just for you. Imagine -- being able to have an instance just whipped up for you right then and there, whenever you feel like it.

Respecs. Did you know in Maple Story, you have to pay something like $1.30 to reassign ONE attribute point? If you accidentally do something really silly and come to regret it later, you can easily earn or buy a respec -- heck, I have four I haven't used on virtually all my characters, and I haven't been consciously gathering them.

Quick Startup: If you really want to burn through with a new character, you can have said character to level 10 in 3 hours -- sewers and any level 5-10 story arc will get you 20% of the way to 50.

Travel Powers: There are four of them, each with their own benefits and limitations (max vertical control but slowest movement, second fastest movement but limited duration air time, second slowest but with PvE stealth, or pure speed but weak control and high enduranc ecosts). Oh, and you get Sprint for free at level 1, a power that moves you faster than WoW's epic mounts do at level 40. Now only if I could do a loop-de-loop in mid-air so me and a few friends of mine could form a Blue Angels powerarmor supergroup, it'd be perfect. =D

[ QUOTE ]
Heck, I remember some mech game in which failure to press the eject button before you get defeated means your game save is erased.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah, the Nethack model.

Lighthouse,

your rapid intelligence will be of great use.

They could not defeat us when they had us off-guard. Now that we have had time to prepare, we will be glad to prove to the Rikti that no mere 24-hour skirmish will bring this city to its knees.

It's stickied. That's a pretty dark affirmative dev response.

Grats for both to my main (Radmofet) and my friend Big Imp; our pickup group got us both 50s within moments of each other. Double fifty for the win =D

The only problem I had with yours was that some powers came in chunks of 2 or 3 points; however, it's important to note that you only get one point at a time, and there's a cap on how many points you get (18, namely).

I agree that you should be able to bend the rules a little -- after all, this is your epic power! -- but there should still be limits, to prevent breaking.

Assuming I get 1 point per level starting at level 33 as per the OP, and my main's level 49, here's her epic:

Overcharge
By allowing her nuclear blood to run hot, Radmofet gives herself a temporary boost in energy, giving herself intense buffs to regeneration. There is only so much radiation in her, so she can only activate this power after extreme accumulation.

Attributes:
Low Endurance Cost (4)
Extreme Recharge (-1)
High +Recovery (4)
Extreme +Regen (5)
Long Duration (4)
Fast Animation (1)

Total 17 picks -- for Level 50, I'd reduce the Recharge time back to the default, for a full 18-point power.

You might want to combine some of the effects into a single category, 'delivery systems':

EDIT: Hey, while I'm here, combine more of the systems.

Buff Effects

[u]Ability Boosts[u]
(These can be taken up to 5 times; they add together. For example, four +10% Accuracy Buffs add together to form one +40% Accuracy Buff.)
+Accuracy (1 point per level): Buffs your Accuracy by 10% per time taken.
+Damage (1 point per level): Buffs your Damage by 10% per time taken.
+Defense (1 point per level): Buffs your Defense by 10% per time taken. Normally global; you can optionally increase this by selecting damage types it does not apply to, up to 25% per time taken for defense that only applies to one damage type.
+Jump (1 point per level): Buffs your Jumps by 50% per time taken.
+Max END (1 point per level): Buffs Max Endurance by 10% per time taken.
+Max HP (1 point per level): Buffs your Max HP by 20% per time taken.
+Movement (1 point per level): Buffs your Movement speeds by 20% per time taken.
+Perception (1 point per level): Buffs your Perception by 250 feet per time taken.
+Range (1 point per level): Buffs the Ranges of your (non-melee) abilities by 15% per time taken.
+Recharge (1 point per level): Buffs your Recharge speeds by 10% per time taken.
+Recovery (1 point per level): Buffs your Recovery by 20% per time taken.
+Regen (1 point per level): Buffs your Regeneration by +25% per time taken.
+Resistance (1 point per level): Buffs your Resistance by 10% per time taken. Normally global; you can optionally increase this by selecting damage types it does not apply to (up to a +25% bonus for only one damage type).
+Stealth (1 point per level): Buffs your Stealth by 200 feet per time taken.

[u]Grantable Powers[u]
+Flight (1 point per level): Grants Flight at a speed of 20 FPS per time taken.
+Intangibility (1 point): Grants Intangibility. Remember, intangibility is two-way...
Teleport Other (1 point): Teleports the target.
Teleport Self (1 point): Teleports the user.

[u]Rezzes[u]
(Obviously, if the target is Affects Self, then it is also a Self-Rez. All rezzes provide XP Debt protection for 60 seconds.)
Low Rez (1 point): Rezzes the target with 1/4th HP.
Medium Rez (1 point): Rezzes the target with 1/2 HP.
High Rez (1 point): Rezzes the target with 3/4ths HP.
Extreme Rez (4 points): Rezzes the target with full HP.
Endurance Restoration (+1 point): This option improves rezzes by also providing Endurance.


Damage Effects

[u]Damage Intensity[u]
Minor (0 points): The damage is Minor.
Low (1 point): The damage is Low.
Moderate (2 points): The damage is Moderate.
High (3 points): The damage is High.
Superior (4 points): The damage is Superior.
Extreme (5 points): The damage is Extreme.
Over Time (-1 point): The damage done is over time, and is scaled down to match. (This is a penalty because it's easier to heal!)

[u]Damage Types[u]
(What type of damage you do. Values are based on the frequency of defense and resists to that type of damage.)
Smashing (0 points): The damage is Smashing.
Lethal (0 points): The damage is Lethal.
Fire (1 point): The damage is Fire.
Cold (1 point): The damage is Cold.
Energy (1 point): The damage is Energy.
Negative (2 points): The damage is Negative.
Psychic (3 points): The damage is Psychic.
Endurance Drain (3 points): The damage is done to their Endurance. Obviously, this scales the damage down to the 1-100 scale.

Delivery Systems

[u]Targets[u]
Affects Self (0 points): The power only affects yourself.
Melee Range (0 points): The power affects one person in melee range.
Short Range (1 points): The power works at the typical short range (60 feet).
Medium Range (2 points): The power works at the typical medium range (120 feet).
Long range (3 points): The power works at the typical long range (240 feet).
Extreme Range (4 points): If you can see it, you can shoot it. (480 feet).

[u]Area of Effect[u]
(These modifiers make the power effect an area. Cones use the ranges you purchased above in Targets, but halved. Without any Range mod, circular Areas of Effect are PBAoEs.)
Small Cone (1 point): The power affects a 15-degree cone.
Medium Cone (2 points): The power affects a 30-degree cone.
Small Area of Effect (2 points): The power is an AoE with 20' radius.
Large Cone (3 points): The power effects a 60-degree cone.
Medium Area of Effect (3 points): The power is an AoE with 30' radius.
Huge Cone (4 points): The power effects a 120-degree cone.
Large Area of Effect (4 points): The power is an AoE with 40' radius.
Location (+1 point): The power is not centered on you, or a targeted creature, but a set location. Does not work with Cones.

[u]Duration[u]
(These modifiers affect how long the effect lasts.)
Instant Duration (0 points): The power works immediately.
Short Duration (1 point): The duration of the power is 15 seconds.
Medium Duration (2 points): The duration of the power is 30 seconds.
Long Duration (3 points): The duration of the power is 60 seconds.
Toggle (4 points): The power is a toggle. This converts the Endurance cost to endurance-over-time, and the endurance cost lasts until you say it's done.

Mez Effects

[u]Mez Type[u]
Knockback (1 point): The power deals Knockback to the target.
Taunt (1 point): The power Taunts the target.
Immobilize (2 points): The power Immobilizes the target.
Disorient (3 points): The power Disorients the target.
Fear (3 points): The power instills Fear in the target.
Knock Up (3 points) The power deals vertical Knockback to the target.
Sleep (3 points): The power puts the target to Sleep.
Hold (4 points): The power Holds the target.
Confusion (5 points): The power Confuses the target.

[u]Magnitude[u]
Mag 1 (0 points): The power is Magnitude 1.
Mag 2 (1 point): The power is Magnitude 2.
Mag 3 (2 points): The power is Magnitude 3.
Mag 4 (3 points): The power is Magnitude 4.

[ QUOTE ]
Drop Ship Raids are already described as "not giving anything but bragging rights." Heck, Paladin, which doesn't give a badge, gives XP - which is more than can be said for anyone wanting to get a bunch of heroes together to take down a drop ship.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, drop ships give XP and (from my own experiences) seem to drop salvage, inspirations, and suchlike at the same rates as a lieutenant.

I had already written one guide, feel free to add it into this one so we don't have conflicting guides.

As the Rikti attack in I10 (and continue to make attacks in later issues), we will be provided the chance to clean up UXBs and deal with ground forces. However, some of us may want to take a more proactive approach to the coming invasion. This guide will help you to take down the attacks at their source.

This guide is still very much in development. Any comments to this thread may be added in to improve the guide.

Knowing the Enemy

The Rikti dropship is a potent force; it was made especially to counteract the various super-forces, whether individual exceptional heroes or forces such as Longbow or Arachnos. Even the Freedom Phlanax would have a hard time doing it. But we're not talking about Statesman doing this. We're talking about you.

The Rikti Dropships move at a fairly fast clip; faster than running or Group Fly, but not faster than unslotted Fly. If you cannot defend against this, you will have a chase scene on your hands. This also means you are fighting against the clock; every second you have to spend flying is one less second you have fighting, and one less second you'll have to fight all the other dropships.

They are fairly defensive, having a modestly-high Defense and very good Regeneration. They have poor offenses, compared to the power of their bombs and the troops they teleport down -- however, their cannons are very accurate and potent, able of taking most squishies out in two hits and tankers in three.

Dropships come in groups of nine. Who knows why nine and not then. Maybe Rikti only have thumbs on their right hand. They come in predictable patterns, always the same in every zone; they may come in more than one group at a time, and they always come in two distinct waves, a bombing wave then a ground assault wave.

Getting in the air
The biggest problem is getting in the air. Obviously, you're fighting a spaceship; you have to be in space. (There is a strategy that gets around this discussed later, but for now, let's assume you want to do this the easy way.)

If you're a Kheldian, feel free to skip this part. Lucky punks.

If you are going to have any chance at all in the air, you will need to be able to fly. That is a given. Luckily, taking the Flight power pool isn't too bad; the bonus defense of Hover helps out builds that need a little more defense, while I often hear scrappers gush over the power of Air Superiority.

Hover, however, may be the best choice for several reasons: Low Endurance cost, a Defense buff, no suppression after attacks, and not needing any other prerequisites. With speed boosts (including the Kinetics power Speed Boost, as well as powers like Radiation Emission's Accellerate Metabolism), you can reach the Fly movement cap without any suppression at all, with a Defense boost, with a reduced Endurance cap.

Since we have to follow a moving target, scrappers should probably stay on the ground and help the 'ground forces' clean out EBs and UXBs. However, no archetype is useless; almost all builds have at least one ranged attack, and almost all builds have one debilitating attack.

Group Fly, or the Mobile Weapons Platform
The alternative to taking Hover or Fly, however, is relying on someone who took Group Fly. One character can provide Flight for eight people, which can help specialized builds, people without the ability or will to respec, and random members who join your raid to get in the air and do some damage to the Rikti menace. This is where the villains will have an advantage, as many Masterminds have discovered the joy of being able to turn their pets into a flying weapons platform and just fly through missions and zones alike.

There is a nasty side effect, however: Group Fly drains extra endurance from the fly boy for everyone held aloft, and it causes major accuracy debuffs. Tactics will be a must for any team to counteract this debuff (and unless you play solo and don't like to do extra damage more often, you should have Leadership anyways). The 'fly boy' should concentrate on defense, to keep their endurance from getting too low and suddenly dropping them out of the sky, and let their entourage do all the damage; when they do attack, it should be a debuff, and they should watch their endurance. The Group Fliers should each take a large number of blues to make sure they keep flying; powers like Conserve Power will be invaluable. But don't think of this 'passive' role as being a taxicab; think of it as piloting a giant superpowered weapons platform!

Additionally, Group Fly isn't as fast as normal fly. If you can't get the ship slowed, you'll be in trouble

If you are in a group relying on someone else's Group Fly, for pete's sake, be nice to your pilot, and listen when they say someting! In the original Steel 70 event, I told my team to have me on autofollow, and that we would be doing tests; about half the team followed this instruction, and were able to contribute versus the spaceship. The rest did not, and were not aware of the 100-foot radius of Group Fly; two of them wound up falling out of the sky. The rest, however, were able to enjoy uncapped Fly speed (from the multiple stacked AMs and SBs) with no endurance cost on their part, and were able to blast, tank, and scrap away happily.

Cannon fire
The dropships have only one direct defensive method: Their main cannons. As listed above, they can two-shot most builds (three-shot tankers), in most situations; for this reason alone, soloing the dropships is a bad idea.

However, despite the fact that they do massive damage, mitigating their damage output is not a serious concern to a modest sized group, and almost no concern to a large one. Why? Because they can only hit one target at a time. Rikti dropship damage is effectively a sniper attack, not a AoE; they don't even have forcefields. Even any random smattering of heroes will have enough self-heals and PBAoE heals to cover everyone; damage mitiagtion will not be a problem.

This is very different compared to other giant monster raids. No longer will we need to build dedicated ressurection teams or will every team need their own dedicated Empathy defender. Instead, defenders should heal as needed, but instead concentrate on their more potent abilities: Debuffing.

Debuffs
After reading the logs of the original Steel 70 event, it seems that debuffs on most abilities are effective, although the ship may have some slight resistance to debuffs. This includes, for sure, Resistance of various types and speed.

Obviously, hitting both of those caps is going to be very handy. In the first ship in the Steel 70 raid, we thought of debuffing as a secondary afterthought behind our main attacks; we were astounded, all of us I think, to see the large ship slow down to a halt -- with its damage per second quickly going up... Every ship after that, more of us caught on, and fired our debilitating effects first; that made every ship faster than the last. But we still have incomplete numbers (this will improve as logs are analyzed).

What we know works: -Resistance, -Defense, -Speed.

What we think works: -Accuracy, -Damage, -Recharge.

What we think does not work: Confuse, Disorient, Immobilize, Hold.

-Fly is a special situation. It seems that ships do not follow the normal flying rules -- or the clipping rules, possibly as a side effect of whatever allows them to move through the War Walls unlike normal objects. When you defeat a dropship, it will fall under the ground. If -fly is worthless, then the point is moot; if -fly works, it's entirely possible that (somewhat like the old Arachnos Flyer bug) it will fly under the stage!

Good sources of -Resistance are the Sonic sets. Good sources of -Speed include any Cold or Ice themed set and Spines. Sources of -Regen are rare, but include Poison and Thermal Emission (both villains-only). And of course, the Radiation Emission and Trick Arrow sets can debuff just about everything, and are available to three archetypes each.

Slowing and non-fliers
The greatest benefit of slowing seems to be by design. It seems that every Rikti ship comes to short range of a certain landmark or piece of ground, perhaps intentionally. Almost all characters have at least one attack that can reach that sort of range -- even Super Strength characters can throw rocks, and many scrappers have taken a Super Jump-recharge-repeat policy towards attacking airborne foes.

If your group has a large number of characters with minimal or no melee attackers, or if you just want your raid to be open to all comers (like our Steel 70 was -- at least 30 of those 70 just heard about it by running by), using Slows bring a Rikti ship to a crawl will be invaluable. They aren't that fast to begin with, and this strategy will limit the amount of time you have -- but since travel is no longer a problem when you let the ships come to you, you could have many more attackers at once.

Buffing
Leadership, as always in 8-man teams, will be handy. Tactics is a must in Group Fly teams due to the accuracy debuff incurred by Group Fly, and Assault will be very useful for everyone (solo or group). Maneuvers are not necessary, however, as the ship seems to attack random targets.

Other PBAoE defenses and buffs will be great -- in a recent fight outside a hospital, I was hit by five different Accelerate Metabolisms almost as soon as I walked out the door, peaking at 8 later. And this was just from a modestly sized group fighting randomly.

Additionally, keep in mind that two SBs or a number of AMs (or some combination of these two) can let people with Hover or relying on Group Fly move at the uncapped Fly speed -- an invaluable asset.

Endurance
An important consideration in this fight is Endurance. In addition to (1) having several people with a highly taxing Group Fly that we Just Can Not allow to drop to 0 endurance, we'll be (2) running lots of copies of Leadership and other toggles, and (3) nobody can attack for the 1000 or so hits you'll need without running out of Endurance eventually. (Fortunately, -Resistance abilities drops that number significantly, and you can run all three togglable Leadership powers for less than the cost of keeping a travel power going, and with Group Fly we shunt the cost of the travel powers over to one designated 'pilot.')

Thus, we'll need endurance out the wazoo. This, of course, is where the Defenders, Controllers, and Corruptors come into play -- specifically, Accellerate Metabolism (Radiation Emission), Transference (Kinetics), and Recovery Aura (Empathy). Since two of these are PBAoEs, and the third is a targeted AoE, these will work great with multiple teams coming to one common point.

Where to gather
Each area probably has an ideal point, for ease of reference, accessability (to both hospitals and transporation), and ease of support.

Atlas Park: The airspace immediately above Ms. Liberty. Characters without fly but with decent Jump (or a friend with Recall Friend) can stand on top of Atlas's head and fire at ships that skim nearby. Additionally, you can get support from the ground below -- you can even use sniper attacks or some regular attacks at that distance.

King's Row: The airspace immediately in front of the Paragon Police Department, near Blue Steel, behind the 'coin.' It looks like it may be possible to stand on the coin and fire at the ships as they pass, but this is not confirmed.

Steel Canyon: In the Steel 70 attack, we waited on the skyscraper in the extreme NE quadrant of the zone, aside the War Walls and near a construction site. One group of the second wave first breaches the war wall there; you can see it in the Steel 70 video on Youtube.

If you have anywhere else that is good to go, please leave a message so we can get 'perfect' locations for every part of every zone!

The big names. You know who I mean. The Freedom Phalanx, the Vindicators, and maybe a few other lone heroes like Atlas and Talos who have made their names known throughout Paragon City's history. The big guns. The ones with all the merchandising, all the fans, all the glory. When the world goes to pieces, they're the ones they call on. Every other team -- even the big ones, like the Legion of Kitties or the Lethal Ladies -- they're small fry, barely worth the occasional talk radio interview. I mean... don't get me wrong. I'm not bitter. I mean, I've cleaned up my share of muggers, I've saved babies from burning buildings, I've taken down some big threats, and when it comes down to it, if I hung up the tights tonight, I'd sleep content because in my time as a heroine, I made the world a better place. But... sometimes, you want to make a real impact. Something that will help save the world.

Oh, if you don't know me, I'm Radmofet. I'd be just another girl going to PCU if it wasn't for these silly powers. Entirely by accident, actually. Now, I can control large amounts of energy and radiation naturally, and I can mutate fairly often if I can get to a lab. I'm not that strong or that fast or that tough, but I add in those little touches that make the front-liners sing. And, when worse comes to worse, I can make anyone who tries to take me on one-on-one regret it, although that's not my style.

I've done some fighting against the enemy. I've even done the unthinkable, and teamed up with some truly disgusting ne'er-do-wells for the sake of the fact that they had the will and the ability to stand up to our common foe. But here in Paragon City, though I've fought some of their ground assault teams -- pretty much everyone reading this has by now -- I haven't been too successful. Thank god the designers of the hospitals built those things for war; no matter how many times they bring down the walls, or how many heavy assault suits they pack around the place, the Mediport system stays powered up. Otherwise... I shudder to think of what might happen. In fact, it was there that I first saw the person who would lead this.

We spoke, and we thought it was a good idea. Her name's Sylph Knight, and she's a NASA quantum tech in a battlesuit. I had poked the word around, but she had a bit more organization and quite a bit more resources than me. Being a NASA girl, of course she had the ability to study schematics I don't. She eventually left a message, saying she had found a few like-minded heroes who were going to help. She didn't know how much there was to start. Steel Canyon, atop that big skyscraper by the contstruction zone, 8 PM. That's where their attack ships pass by, every day of this accursed war, according to her satellite images. That's where we were going to strike back.

She had the place right; the dropships came, just like she said she would. But she got the time wrong: 7:50. At that time, we had barely a half-dozen people, some of which only had the idea of 'counterattack' and not the 'gather' point. But darn it, giving up was unacceptable. It... was a rout. The same ship managed to knock me out *twice*, as after I hit the mediport the first time, I didn't have the sense to make sure I was prepared for the next battle. The ships recovered from every little burn I gave it, and I swore I could see the Rikti pilot laughing in my face. I wasn't about to give up, though.

My nightmare was that the war would be won, but not by us. What if the Circle of Thorns was able to ensorcell one of these things down? What if the Sky Raider's hard-earned knowledge of the Paragon City airspace, or the Freakshow's horrific weaponry, or the Troll's drug-fueled rage, was able to turn the tide in this war? Even some of the "good guys" I fear taking over; the fascist Longbow, or the Crey conglomerate. Giving up was unacceptable. So we gathered. She checked her charts, and saw the pattern to the attacks. She predicted 3 hours, tops.

Those three hours were a waiting game. We didn't know when they were coming back, or even if. However, we all had connections, and we began to call friends, leave messages, post messages up. This was not just a random fight: We were going to ambush these things. We have a few hours. We have some data to crunch, some number to analyze. Get ready.

I spent a little time and went to my lab, to tweak my powers for optimal efficiency. For example, I decided I would be best served learning how to fly if I wanted to take down a spaceship, and that my part would be best played in weakening it and not trying to do as much damage as my ... more offence-minded allies might be doing. I made a bet that I would have allies, alllies I could count on.

When I came back, now flying under my own power... I was shocked. There was much more than a team or two up there: There were dozens (a quick head count showed 40 at this point). There were all sorts of heroes. Strong, fast, smart, armed, unarmed. Paragons of virtue and the barely redeemed. Mutants, mages, geniuses, robots, and experts, all ready to defend their world. Heck, there were even a few aliens there, who thought our world was worth saving. We spent three hours up there, waiting, joking, planning strategies, swapping stories, trading bad jokes and worn-out but appropriate one-liners from pop culture. All the waiting did get on our nerves, and a few people left early, due to need or impatience. However, we soon had a goodly sized group, enough for nine or ten task forces, both in teams and in solo heroes. That's how we got the name 'Steel 70', I guess. The reports of attacks in other areas were damning: Founder's Falls! Peregine Island! Talos Island! Atlas Park! Some left, but others stayed, stayed by the advice that by the time it took to get there, the attack runs would be mostly finished. We waited, nervous, wanting to do *something*...

And then the war walls came down.

We waited just inside the perimeter -- the symbol clear. We were a cloud, fourty feet wide, the target for the ship to fly into. And it didn't even deviate course at all. Not an inch. And when the ship passed that line, and violated our air space... we burst.

At first, it looked like we had failed. All our defenses, all our plans, all had failed. I was expecting at least a 40-tesla shield around all of us, with at least fifteen greys per minute of impromptu area-of-effect chemotherapy providing us with the energy we needed to keep on, but I barely felt six tesla, and the fifteen greys fell to a single feeble grey per minute -- what I was extruding. The results everyone else had got were that those ships were invincible monsters, and that it was better to outrace them in the war of attrition on the ground than to try to take them down. When our defences fell through, I thought that this was it: another failed counterattack, another trip away from the battle thanks to Mediport, another swarm of Rikti wreaking havoc on the people ... on my home.

But still, we kept at it, defenses or not. We flew at it, magical spells thrown at it, experimental Crey pistols firing at it, assault rifles blaring, lasers and phasers blasting, trick arrows and missles launching, summoned imps claying and a few just flying in to punch at it or swing swords. Heck, one all-American paragon of patriotism just threw rocks at it -- how he got rocks, I'll never know. And then, despite our lack of coordination (we expected to destroy it in one salvo if we destroyed it at all, but wound up having to chase after it), something amazing happened: It slowed down.

It never completely stopped. But somehow, along the line, we got its engines so fouled up that it just wasn't pushing along as fast as it was. That was when we swarmed the thing: almost everybody got in close, pounding it, firing our best weapons at point-blank range, helping each other. And suddenly, just like that, there was a loud CRACK -- and the rikti dropship broke open. I never saw anyone inside as it fell to earth -- apparently, they have a mediport too. However, the greatest projection of Rikti military might (that wasn't stuck in a crater outside Paragon city) fell to the streets of Steel Canyon, useless. But we weren't done... for the Rikti attack in packs.

This one was easier to coordinate, as the dropship came right through us... again. Apparently, all the dropships in that squadron had the same flight plan. Maybe they thought that that was a fluke, or an alpha strike, or that increasing numbers would prevail. But no. First, we attacked sooner; second, we were caught less off guard, and targeted it with slowing and debilitating effects quicker; third, we swarmed on it more readily, now that we knew it was an effective tactic, which let our defenses grow; and four, we were just riding the pure adrenaline rush. We took out a drop ship!

The second one fell, too, with only a single fallen on our side (someone who had been knocked out of the sky and who was taken out by a ground assault). And then the third came. With each, we pressed our advantage more; with each, we lost less ground. With all of us working together, we slowed the movement each Rikti ship to a crawl, and swarmed on it like ants in tights. Eventually, the ships stopped coming... we beat them all. Not a single ship got past us. We weren't just damage control: We stoped an entire Rikti dropship squadron. When we landed on the ground and swept through the few Rikti that had teleported down, that was just sweet sweet gravy to add to our victory.

I'm sure the people at Freedom Corps are already taking the ship salvage into custody to study them. I'm almost positive Longbow and the Vanguard got some, as well. But the most important thing we got is knowledge. Yes, we know a few abilities are more potent than others, but in the end, the secret was synergy. We manged to get lots of people in the air, lots of people with all sorts of abilities. I only knew one of them beforehand -- all the rest were total strangers -- but our differences and our variety made us powerful, the sum so much stronger than the parts. Yes, natural leaders will evolve, and the efficiency will go up with smaller groups (two or three task forces worth, perhaps) assembling in known successful strategies as we discover the secrets of their attack patterns. But we did it together. The Rikti have attacked us as a planet, and as a planet -- not as individuals, not as a nation, not as a culture, not even as a species, but as a planet -- we must strike back against those who would destroy us.

Oh, but here was the best part: After the raid, as we did a dance around the statue in the middle of Steel Canyon, getting a picture with ol' chrome-dome as members of Steel 70. (The name that was given to us by our leader, Sylph Knight -- Task Force Vendetta -- really annoys me since I can't stand that movie associated with it; I much prefer the "Steel 70.") I was going to dump my hero duds down in my PCU dorm in southside Steel Canyon and spend the rest of the evening with my girlfriends in Pocket D... when Back Alley Brawler showed up. The big master of fisticuffs and fancy footwork himself. He looks at us, at our battle-weary but otherwise none the worse for wear forms... and then, he sees the crashed, disabled, smoking ruins of ships stretching out down the street behind us. I'll never forget the look on the face of that 'unfazable' master of the military arts as his jaw slowly fell open. He looked to us, and he gave us one word:

"Grats."

We left a core member of the Freedom Phlanax, an old veteran of the Rikti War, speechless. Some of us even studied under him for a short time in the beginning of our careers... and now, we had left him in our tracks, and he was giving homage to us. We took the dramatic first step forwards in discovering a way to destroy these dropships -- perhaps once and for all. We created what they will be using. We laid out the path that the big names, the epic archetypes of what it means to be a hero, will follow in.

Man, it's good to be a heroine.

And Rikti, you better watch out. We are the Steel 70, and if you think that we are the key to Earth's defenses, then tough luck, for the knowledge is already out. Where us 70 have gone before, another 70,000 will follow in our footsteps, and everywhere in Paragon City and on Earth you go, we will follow. This will be no war of attrition!

My favorite part: Invention salvage get!

(Oh, and cute Foreshadow 3D action, always awesome.)

My only change: Have it so that being in Pocket D actually played streaming music; there's rarely enough players in there that bandwidth would be an issue. Just commission or create a few new songs every issue to keep things fresh ... or let player-musicians create songs. Project Entropia's fan-made song "Gamer Chick" got into the game, and it's still one of my favorite songs.

(Not sure if this should go here or into Suggestions.)

Yay! I made it in -- as the first super quoted in the main article, no less!

The interview with Hertz was great fun. I'm sad I couldn't log it, as I was really getting in character (she asked a great number of questions). The really neat bits were, unfortunately, the really wordy bits.

It's cool to see my character (and those I TF'd with earlier that day to take down some Council lowlifes) get so involved with the story of Paragon City in such an unofficial official way.

Amazon's already selling copies.