Olantern

It looks like we have enough interest to try this thing, so I've edited the OP with some details. If we don't have sufficient people to do it tomorrow, we can try again Saturday or Sunday.

It's nice to see those pictures again, Dead West. I'm in them as Kid Eros, the archery blaster with the wings and the red toga.

EDIT: The Dropship Assault is happening! Details below.

Several of my accquaintances who are newer to the game and have never experienced a fight with a Rikti Dropship have expressed interest in taking one down. Normally, that just isn't realistic, since they appear so erratically, but it's certainly possible during a scheduled Rikti Invasion, like the one that will start November 4. It should be even easier now that characters can meet the "you must be able to fly" near-requirement by buying a jetpack.

Therefore, I'm hosting a heroside attack on dropships on Friday, November 5. Teams will begin forming at the Base Portal in Independence Port at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, with an eye toward undertaking the actual attack as close to 9 p.m. as possible. If you need to reach me in-game, my global is @Djinniman. I'll most likely be leading the assault as Sidereal Knight, a blaster.

Here, edited from an older post of mine, is a primer on fighting dropships for those who have never done it:

***

1) Some caveats: what fighting dropships is NOT.

Defeating a dropship does not grant a badge, merits, or other special rewards of any kind. The xp and inf you gain from defeating one is nothing to sneeze at, but you could earn more in the same amount of time doing something else. This is something you undertake purely for the fun of it (or for the bragging rights, if you like bragging about making things that make scary noises explode).

Dropships have hitpoints well up in the Giant Monster range, but unlike GM's and AV's, they cannot be taunted, slowed, knocked down, or diverted from their flight paths. In a dropship fight, everyone is there to pile on the DPS.

Fighting dropships is also not for the faint of heart. A ship has only one attack, a powerful energy blast that hits you with multiple packets of energy damage. This attack can kill lower-level or very squishy characters. If you die, just hit the hospital and get back in the fight. After all, debt protection is in place during a Rikti invasion, so who cares? (By the way, for what it's worth, I've taken hits from a dropship on a blaster and not been killed outright.)

2) What you need to do to beat one or more dropships.

Defeating a dropship requires four things.

First, we need enough people to take out a ship before it flies off the map. I believe we'll need at least three full teams, hopefully with a level 50 leader for each. I'll coordinate with other team leaders during the half-hour staging time to ensure that each team has a leader of the proper level. Keep in mind, the enemy may hit hard, but it attacks so slowly and so rarely that it can't dent us if we act as a group.

Second, we need to know the ships' flight paths. Dropships cross zones on preset tracks, some of which are too short for some teams to deal enough damage to destroy a ship before it gets away. The ships can't be slowed or taunted, and they fly fast enough that they might get away before we can blow them up if they're on one of the shorter tracks. I'll be handling flight path mechanics and calling targets tomorrow night, but if there are other team leaders who know the paths, that would be wonderful. Ideally, we can fight in Talos Island, which has a very long, curved flight path that takes the ships through most of the zone.

Third, everyone involved must able to fly. If the character you want to bring doesn't have Fly, head to the Shadow Shard (or Grandville, if you're a Rogue) or the market and purchase a jet pack. The ships fly very high in the air, and even with long-range attacks, they're hard to hit from the ground. They move slowly enough that melee characters with flight powers can get in regular hits against them. Regardless of your powerset, you'll need to fly alongside or otherwise near the ship to keep up with it and keep piling on the damage. I'm told by friends who've tried that Superjump can't substitute for flying here. (On a related point, while the ships can't be slowed, kineticists shouldn't despair; their ability to boost teammates' flight speeds is a godsend.)

Fourth and most importantly, people need to act with a modicum of thought. Not much, just a modicum. I'll be calling out which ship the group should target, and the group members need to concentrate fire on that ship. Additionally, buffers should be buffing, and teammates should support each other. I'll be calling out instructions in Request, as on a Mothership Raid, unless anyone has any objections; please keep that channel for team leaders.

All of that said, fighting a dropship is, in many ways, the simplest "destroy a huge bag of hit points" fight in the game. You don't really need to worry about aggro (tanks, don't waste your time on taunting), and there are no "necessary" debuffs. Just pile on that damage, and you'll get to see the cool "dropship explosion" animation.

Forgive me if I sound snarky or dictatorial about all this; I don't mean to. In closing, I should say that I've been on three or four dropship attacks over the years, and it's the most enjoyable thing I've done in the game. I hope that we can have a fun and successful run tomorrow. If you have questions, feel free to PM me here or send a tell to @Djinniman in-game. See you all in IP tomorrow!

I will begin preparing deer jerky rations in anticipation.

The Steam Punk stuff is great. I'm particularly impressed with the variety of colors used on them, far beyond the brown, gunmetal, and gold that seem characteristic of that aesthetic. And, unlike most times you see the term "steampunk" tossed around, these characters are clearly punks as well as using steam- a nice touch. Hopefully, something based on these designs will make it into a costume release or a villain group or something.

I found the extensive vehicle and structure designs for Praetoria especially interesting. I'd like to see some of those futuristic, hovering construction vehicles wandering around Neutropolis, even if they aren't targetable enemies or anything.

I'm impressed by how well the art realized the look of those pictures of the Resistance's tunnels.

Finally, it's interesting to read the artist's perspectives on the characters and structures designed, since they're presumably based on what the artists are told during the development process, some of which differs a bit from the way we see these things in the game, or at least the way we perceive them in the player culture. For instance, I wouldn't have thought of the Resistance as "a Mad Max kind of group," though I see the connection now that it's pointed out to me.

One thread that I'd like to see wrapped up is the "artifact smuggling ring" story from the low levels.

With the level 1-25 (or so) heroside enemies, there are two overarching arcs/factions, "the Superadine connection," consisting of the Family supplying the Skulls and the Trolls, and the "cursed artifacts being smuggled into the city for some reason" group, consisting of the Hellions, the Outcasts, and being run (?) by the Warriors. As lore pedants know, Superadine becomes fairly important to the later plot, and while I don't think there's an arc explaining where the Family gets it from, once you learn the source of Superadine, it becomes pretty obvious. (Hint: he loves anagrams.) This is a nice way of linking high-level and low-level content.

The artifact smuggling, though, just gets dropped. For twenty five or so levels, you've been searching for the villains behind the flow of cursed artifacts and trying to figure out their goal. Essentially, all we get for a wrap-up here is, "It was the Warriors all the time. 'Why?' What do you mean, 'why?'"

I tried to write an AE arc about this, but I sort of got distracted, and the arc ended up being more about where they get the artifacts than why they do so, so that doesn't even help much.

That 7-Up flavor looks nice, and I suspect it'd taste pretty good, too. Why aren't they making this stuff?

Also, if you're taking requests, I would like to see a Nemesis soft drink. Possibly a ginger beer. Because I like ginger beer.

Hasn't anyone considered the possibility that someone's just really, really worried about proprietary information leaking out? This is what drives so much of the business world, after all: the fear of being sued over something. I find that much more likely than the possibility that i120 itself is so unique that it requires special treatment. I expect signed NDA's for all these closed betas from now on.

If it isn't that, it's probably something along the lines of diminishing returns in PvE. I imagine this wouldn't be the Great Nerf of Doom everyone considers it to be, but even if it's handled perfectly, it'd be such a public relations disaster that I'm not sure the game could survive the sudden drop in subscriptions.

I would rather have had this free, but it looks good enough to pay for. I do miss the days of regular, free costume additions.

I'd be really impressed if it sold for less than $10, but I think that's unlikely.

I heard about this on the radio yesterday.

For what it's worth, I've seen a number of movie productions filming in the D.C. area over the years, and the production areas tend not to be marked very well. For instance, I remember mistaking the filming of the original National Treasure for a concert because of all the cables and sound equipment. Despite filming during rush hour right outside a busy subway entrance, the only boundaries they had set were a couple of guys in t-shirts telling people not to trip over things and a couple of tiny, photocopied signs that said "National Treasure" taped to things.

I can only imagine what it's like when they film in the street.