Samuel_Tow

I have an aversion for immobile pets, myself. I'd personally love to see both Acid Mortar and Triage Beacon be made mobile. The arguments that this means they'd have to lose performance assume that the powers are balanced by annoyance, which is a balancing metric I like to believe isn't actually being used.

This sounds like a good idea. I like the idea of leaving missions in a more interesting way than just fading away, and we definitely need to make pets despawn, not die.

Adding voice chat to the game robs people like me of the excuse that we don't want to bother with Ventrillo or Team Speak or Skype or whatever. I have personally found that chatting with large groups of people over voice chat turns them all into "the class clown" and I don't want any of that. It's best of the game doesn't provide the imperative to do so anyway.

I've been accused of just not getting Roy Cooling's arc and its plot and continuity, and I'm willing to concede this may be true. So, in the interest of getting it, allow me to ask the following questions:

1. What is "tech" that MediCorp scientists created, physically? It's referred to as a circuit board once (when you find it on the sinking ship) and as a chip twice (by Roy Cooling himself), but those are not the same thing, and they aren't interchangeable. Finally, what I give to Malta is neither a board nor a chip, but actual digital information - the schematics of the thing. I've been told that the tech may actually be just information, something along the lines of calibration data or software, but then why would it constitute a chip or a circuit board when neither is an information-carrying medium? If this were data, I'd expect it to be a disk, a disc, a flash drive, a memory card or anything else which is designed and made to hold electronic data.

2. Why are MediCorp scientists unable to simply reproduce the "device?" Neither chips nor circuit boards are hand-made, one-of-a-kind custom products that are inherently unique. They require precision machines that need to be programmed to produce them, and these programmes could have been kept. In fact, all Malta need to replicate the device is its schematics. Furthermore, why do I need the device itself in order to get schematics from it? Why would MediCorp scientists destroy their schematics? Wouldn't they have working blueprints or backups or a prototype of some sort? Why would they only ever make one copy? What if it broke or malfunctioned? What if it turned out to be defective? What if they ended up needing several? What if it turned out to not work all that great and needed to be changed and remade? What if it fried and needed to be replaced? I would understand if it involved some kind of space rock that's not found on Earth, but this is never explained.

3. Why are MediCorp scientists unable to replicate the device once they have it? Why, more specifically, when Roy Cooling seems to be able to replicate its schematics just fine to give to Malta? Now, an argument can be made that MediCorp were trying to replicate the physical device while Roy was only replicating its schematics, but then replicating the physical device becomes irrelevant when they're not losing the physical device. They don't stand to lose anything by trading to Malta, because all Malta want is information, and information is infinitely copyable. So why bring up their inability to copy it at all? They act like I'm going to give up the actual device and MediCorp won't have it to install it, which is clearly not the case.

4. Why are MediCorp scientists trying to replicate the device to begin with? They clearly only need one copy, on account of their having only made one copy initially. They have no reason to replicate the device's physical form as they're not losing its physical form to Malta, and apparently replicating its schematics is easy enough for Roy to do it himself. So why are they trying to make copies of it? If they needed more copies, then they shouldn't have burned the formula and just made multiples right from the start. In fact, they should have done that even if they didn't need multiples, just to be fail-safe.

5. Why do Malta want the device? They already seem to have mediport technology of their own, or at least technology that allows them to teleport away, so do they just want to protect that from the Praetorians? Do we WANT their people to be unable to mediport and die? I guess the implication is that if the device can be used to prevent the mediport system from being suppressed, it can be reverse-engineered to suppress it, but that's my own assertion, because this is never addressed. When given the chance to explain it, Roy just says it's unthinkable. The problem is that this implies that we all know what the consequences of Malta getting the device are, but we just don't want to think about it, when I am in fact dumbfounded. Come to think of it, the whole affair of "getting back" the data seems to make the story act like we gave them the physical device and we're trying to get back, and what's unthinkable is us not having the device and our mediporters suppressing because of it. But this is not the case, as we don't give out our device, but rather a copy of its schematics, so what's scary isn't what we don't have, but rather what Malta have, and this is never addressed.

6. Why are Malta bothering cartoonishly extravagant plans? If they're trying to maintain a low presence, then sinking ships and kidnapping famous executives seems like a bad way to go about it. If schematics is all they need, why can't they just hack MediCorp's computers and pull them from there? Assuming MediCorp foolishly erased all backups making this impossible, why not dump the schematics from the device when it first passed through their hands? We know the leader of the Rogue PPD is working with the Sky Raiders. I'm sure he had access to the device at some point, or could have had access to it if he wanted to. Why couldn't he just copy its schematics, send it on its way to Europe, supply that to the Raiders and on to Malta and that way no-one even knows Malta were ever involved. In fact, why did Malta even need the device? Why stage a raid and sink a ship, when they could have sent one guy to sneak aboard, copy the schematics, reseal the crate and leave before anyone knew about it? They end up having the device stolen, sent abroad, stolen from themselves, and then they hold a hostage for ransom for it yet again.

7. Why are Malta even trying to maintain a low presence to begin with? One would assume what Malta is interested is discretion, not uninvolvement, and the best way to be discreet is to use professionals who can be discreet, like their own commandos. We've seen that Malta use commandos for something as trivial as ruining a young heroine's career, banking that they'll be in and out before anyone even knew they were involved. If Malta wanted the device, they could have had it stolen by professionals on any number of occasions. Right at the start, beating the Rogue PPD to the punch, or taking it from the Rogue PPD with their own commandos, or infiltrating the ship with their own commandos. There are options there, and options that would have been far more discreet than relying on incompetent mercenaries. This just comes off as an excuse to not have Malta in the 20-30 games without actually explaining why they aren't there. Not being involved just seems like tying their own hands when it makes them more visible in the long run.

8. If Malta are trying to keep their involvement secret, why do they introduce themselves as Malta? Why wouldn't Peter lie and say he represents The Patriots or some other made-up organisation? Why even introduce an organisation at all? There are really only two reasons to give the name of your real organisation in such clandestine dealings, and neither applies here. Either you want your organisation to take credit for your actions, which Malta clearly don't want here, or you want to capitalise on your organisation's reputation, which Malta shouldn't have to begin with being that they're a secret conspiracy. This strikes me as a rather unwieldy attempt to tell players about Malta, which isn't actually necessary and, to a large extent, ruins both their secrecy and the story's sense of mystery. Players don't need to know who Malta are before they find out "for real," and throwing an unexplained reference to them 20 levels too early could have been a much better approach.

9. How does Roy Cooling know so much about Malta? He even implies he could talk about them all day if we had time, in turn implying that Malta are well-known. Where does this leave Crimson, then, when he claims Malta are almost unknown, even in intelligence circles? Where does that leave his and Indigo's spy game, their need for secrecy and their whole clandestine style operation when Malta are treated as knowns even in the early game? Knowledge of who and what Malta are is supposed to be restricted, to the point where in the above-mentioned hero career destruction, it's expected that no-one will believe the heroine when she talks about masked commandos, meaning that people don't know Malta exists. If everyone knows that, then she could simply claim it was Malta who attacked her, and everyone would believe it. Malta's entire shtick is their anonymity. It's what they need to operate, so how does Roy Cooling know so much about them? This is never explained, and it's a legitimate question.

10. Why can't mediporters be made available to civilians? This is what this whole story is about, and yet the only reason we're given is "but I won't go into that." Why? This is legitimately interesting. What makes heroes any different from the ordinary folk when so many heroes are actually just ordinary folk, themselves? Roy mentions it's dangerous, but in what way? Is it bad for their health? I doubt it, considering they're enabling it for the sick and elderly, exact people for whom health-deteriorating effects would be the most dangerous. Is their some kind of extreme physical stress involved? Again, no, because we're talking sick and elderly here. Is the system somehow getting overloaded? We know there is some kind of bonding process involved with it, as Dr. Steffard explains in Praetoria's tutorial, but again - this doesn't explain why a cop on the force can't have a mediporter whereas a cop who has a super hero ID can. I can understand if the writer just didn't want to freehand what is essentially very important root canon, but someone has to, eventually. Isn't that what the story bible is for?

These are some of the questions which bothered me as I played through Roy Cooling's arc the last few times. I would appreciate any help in answering any of them.

Hats with customizable hair shouldn't be as technically challenging as it sounds, considering each hat can come with three or four version of hair - none, short, long, something else. However, the problem is that each hair option would have to be unique to each hat, making for a LOT of work for the art team. You can't just use regular hairs and put hats on top, because hats would normally compress hair they're placed over, which can't happen with a 3D mesh unless it's done manually (or via technology CoH doesn't have) meaning unacceptable clipping.

Precedent for this already exists with Shields, more specifically the Targe and Tribal shields which allow you to pick from a small selection of custom doodads to place over the existing shield.

Ears, similarly, could work like that as well. All heads can be designed without ears, with the Ears category given a "none" option.

Of course, Standard Code Rant may apply.

I want to warn first and foremost that some of the things I'm about to ask may sound like stupid questions. Please understand that the character in question is THE most important one I have short of my namesake, so a lot of these things need to be asked even if they're obvious. I just want to hear someone else say them.

Here's the plot:

Way back in January of 2005, I created a cyborg girl - we'll call her "Crash" - who was designed around the concepts of being practically unkillable, immensely strong and very, very fast. At the time, Super Strength was not an option, being clumsy and unwieldy looking, as well as being in the hands of an AT that I have a series of gripes with. So I made her as a MA/Inv Scrapper, passing off the martial arts as expressing massive super-human strength. The advent of alternate animations worked, as well, but now that we have alternate and far more elegant Super Strength animations, I'm really starting to cast an eye towards remaking this character (level 50 for a few years now) into a SS/Inv Brute, made in Praetoria and done as a hero.

Here's the question: Will I lose a lot of damage potential in doing so? Probably the key reason I haven't done this change yet, and why I didn't do it immediately with I18 was just that - being massively strong is central to her concept, and being able to take things out with a few hits is a representation of that. But going from Scrapper to Brute means I'm losing quite a bit of damage mod, and I'm not sure how that would compare to the improved Martial Arts damage.

Granted, a Brute should give me considerably better unkillability, but damage is still my concern. So, how does it compare? Should I remake as a brute or should I hold my ground and wait around for another 10 years before Super Strength gets proliferated to Scrappers?

Better than what we have now, certainly. It explains why rocket troopers were shooting rockets out of thin air if their current costumes are placeholders. It's good to know that the visuals are still being worked on, and these guys do indeed look pretty cool.

Again - since we only have one option for Music Volume, better music in the D will only be relevant if we have better music everywhere. And, really, we have an audio guy now. He's the one who made (found/added/dunno) the new footstep sounds. Can we not spring a little cash for a decent soundtrack? It doesn't have to be Daft Punk or Iron Maiden or the Spice Girls, but just something that I don't keep seeing on various History Channel programmes would be nice.

Well, at least your guy came off as having enough brain power to function, and was indeed kind of courteous about it, whereas he could have been a complete dick.

See... I don't actually mind the "nice creeps," because they at least seem capable of sentient though, will get the hint and will usually leave you alone, even if they weird you out. It's the creeps with the apparent intelligence of an unusually round rock that won't take no for an answer and will proceed to follow you around, grief you and pester you that really bug me.