Samuel_Tow

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Truth is that those comments don't get noticed.


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Incorrect. A while ago, shortly before the launch of I7, I started a thread about my serious dissatisfaction with the "I R EBIL!" direction that CoV was taking. It was a combination of several things - "evil" red electricity, "evil" Dark Invulnerability, all those promises that we'll feel "more evil than ever" (as far as I remember), the Patrons idea that basically had you lackey up to one of the lead characters... It was a lot of things, really.

I debated this with the CoV community at the time, and I have to congratulate them on the maturity and intelligence with which they discussed it. I did what I could to keep the thread on track and ignore the "whiners" and "fanboys" lables that were occasionally thrown around and the other participants did the same. We discussed the Issue and eventually one could see from readin the thread that there were a substantial amount of people with a very legitimate concern on the matter.

It took a lot of posts, but eventually the Statesman, himself came into the thread and explained things from his own perspective, explained why things were the way they were (I still can't get over the "We made Electirc powers red so they'd match Scirocco's pool) and his impressions after having read the thread.

It's true, not a whole lot changed, but one thing that I learned from there was that if you keep a thread civil, constructive and active long enough, you have a MUCH bigger chance to incite some actually meaningful developer feedback, and actually provide convincing perspective.

Ino longer buy the "Let's scream 'till we're blue in the face, or they'll ignore us." The fact is that ridiculous, abusive posts are much easier to ignore than constructive ones.

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Guess I can't be as blunt as Positron and have that be a Positive maybe next time I will be more "cryptic" or sugar coat it with fluff talking points.

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You know, you can't be snide and sarcastic and shoot for any sort of justification. It's just mutually-exclusive. That's like punching someone and then going "Yeah, but Billy punched a guy in class yesterday and he's the principal's son and he got away with it!" Because some people can get away with something doesn't make that something good.

And don't think I like Positron's view on everything. "All that crap's grey to me - no XP." was funny. "Posi, I really wish we could get some Epics for villains that weren't pastel "darkness" or fish powers, please." "You don't have to use them." "Gee, ya think? That's not what I asked for, though."

We've all had run-ins and disagreements with the developers on many points. Even I still hold a grudge against them for restricting important costume pieces through arbitrary tasks. But just because someone does something bad doesn't make it alright for you to do it, too. Where's your leg to stand on if you condem something, and then go do it anyway?

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You don't think it was a personal attack? A statement to the effect of "You could have had my money but now you won't, nyah!" is about as close to personal attack as it gets without using insults, in my opinion. There are ways to express displeasure with sevice providers that don't include taunting them. Personally, I find your wording insulting, but that's just me.

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Would you be happier with the following:

Statesman, due to the high volume of bugs the past few months and the poor communications (see removal of Holiday temp powers as but one example), I chose to cancel my yearly subscriptions on my two accounts. I may decide to go month to month when my time expires or not.

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Yup.

You don't think it was a personal attack? A statement to the effect of "You could have had my money but now you won't, nyah!" is about as close to personal attack as it gets without using insults, in my opinion. There are ways to express displeasure with sevice providers that don't include taunting them. Personally, I find your wording insulting, but that's just me.

I suppose I haven's seen a lot of his posting, but Judas struck me as a kind of "I R ANGRY!!!" kind of angry, whereas Taser struck me as more of a "You suck!!!" kind of angry. I'm not trying to pass judgement on the guys, that's just been my impression of their posting.

For some reason, I could just never take Judas'es ridiculously exaggerated angrynessnessness seriously. Maybe I just misinterpretted his postings this whole time, but to me he sounded like one of those people who are always in character. Kind of like Craban, if you remember him.

Yeah, that is bad.

I got a post deleted a while ago for no apparent reason (two weeks after the fact) and when I enquired LightHouse as the message instructed me, I received no reply. Kind of makes you wonder why they give that link to his inbox, come to think of it.

Aren't those things revokable, though? I don't know how it works.

It's interesting that you'd come into a thread about taking it easy and not attacking the developers on a personal basis and attacking the lead developer on a personal basis. Gotta love the irony of bittermuch, I suppose.

This is the story of an alien being that came down to Earth in a hail of fire and shrapnel as the vessel it occupied disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere. Miraculously, and as a true testament to its hidden power, the alien child inside it survived and crawled out of the wreckage. The blue-skinned, humanoid figure of a small child was horribly injured and barely clinging to life as the last remnant of its home burned around it.

But just as all seemed lost, fortune smiled on the unfortunate alien. Having detected the approach of the alien ship ever since it had passed our Moon, one person arrived to the crash site almost immediately, and just in time. One Richard Johnson, also known as the Steel Rook. He found the unconscious child, and though its anatomy was quite inhuman, it was comparable enough for his machines to stabilize its vital signs. He then rushed the child to his lab, where he toiled for days just to keep the small alien alive, patching up its wounds as he went.

In the end, the alien's recovery came to fruition. Most of its wounds had healed remarkably well, but regrettably Richard had been unable to save its right arm. As soon as the alien awoke, however, everything changed. For this small, fragile blue creature had a frightening and sad story to tell.

The young alien girl the Steel Rook had barely saved was Princess Inna, daughter of King Ian and Queen Illia of the house of Inamen. Her house was the greatest and most ancient on the mother-planet of Varr, and were as such the keepers of the power of the ancient gods that created much of the known universe. Their duty was to protect this power from evil intentions and to use it only when absolutely necessary. The ancient energies held within the centre of that planet were far beyond the ken of anyone but the ancient creators, themselves, and even the Keepers of Varr - the Inamen - were only allowed a small portion of it for emergencies.

In essence, Princess Inna was the descendant of the ancients, a Keeper of Varr, and the rightful heir to the greatest throne ever known. As her mother and father before her, and as their parents before them, it would be her responsibility not just to keep the peace between all the sentient races in the galaxy, but also to protect the galaxy itself from dark forces that would wish to destroy, remake or enslave it. For these dark forces originated from the magic of the same creators, and were as such impossible to destroy, or even imprison. They could only be banished, but they always returned.

But her fate was not to be. The dark ones - the followers of the ancient dark sorcerers who sought to undo the work of their brethren and rebuild the universe anew, destroying all life thus created - had been hatching a plan spanning aeons. After they had been banished from the universe by king Isander millions of years ago, they had returned, weaving their magic and building their numbers at the edges of the known galaxy, out of sight of the the Keepers. Never challenging the Keepers' authority, they instead had sent their missionaries of corruption to defile the minds of the weak-spirited, and so spread the power of the dark ones unseen.

It all came to fruition when Kragos - head of the house of Krull and King Ian's most faithful general - started a coup. He had long since communicated with agents of the dark ones, listening to their promises of power, striking deals and making bargains with them, and in the process falling further and further under their power. When the coup finally happened, General Kragos was no longer himself, his mind altered almost to insanity, building on his natural greed and lust for power.

Kragos made a move to seize the throne of the Keepers, and so to take the power of the ancients for himself. King Ian could not allow that, not only because of Kragos'es intentions, but also because the power of the ancients was too dangerous to use in itself. But the king's armies had turned against him, his allies were overrun by the corrupted nations on the outskirts of the known galaxy, and his own power was greatly diminished by the dark presence that had settled in his kingdom. King Ian knew he would not survive the battle, so he instructed his wife to take his daughter and run as far away from Varr as they could.

From what little else Inna remembers, it appears that Kragos did win in the end and he tried to use the power of the creators. The result was predictable, but the events themselves had not gone quite to the dark ones' plans. They had intended for the fight between Ian and Kragos to destroy the power of the Keepers, thereby allowing them to seize the power of Varr for themselves. But Kragos'es greed and zeal, amplified by the dark ones' corruption simply made the battle short and one-sided. King Ian was killed and his last remaining supporters slaughtered as Kragos attempted to seize control of the the power of Varr.

But the result, once again, was predictable. In his lust for power, Kragos unleashed ancient energies of a magnitude that even the dark ones had never even suspected. There was no way any living creature could control that much power, for it had taken all of the magic of the creators just to control it back when they made the world. The unchained burst of eldritch energy that Kragos so irresponsibly released wiped the universe clean of all life and all matter, returning it to the state of nothingness that the creators had first encountered, and from which they began their work. Ironically, even though that's what the dark ones actually wanted, the apocalypse destroyed them, as well. Such was its power that even the creators themselves had feared their own creation.

Many of the sentient races had seen the apocalypse coming, and a few had taken the desperate measure of vacating their occupied worlds and just launching their entire races into the unknown of outer space. Some survived for a while, some survived for longer, and some even found new galaxies in which to live. Inna's race was not so fortunate, as the princess was the sole survivor of her entire race. Her mother had placed her aboard a shuttle and sent her into deep space, while she herself returned to aid her husband.

Alone and held in suspended animation, Inna drifted through space for untold years. Eventually, her shuttle matter for the first time in a very long while. Matter that should not have existed. As the shuttle fell victim to the gravity wells of stars and planets, it sped up, slowed down and wobbled through our own galaxy, until it reached Earth. There it finally ran out of power, lost propulsion and simply plummeted towards the planet.

Inna had no idea what had happened to the universe. Had it reformed after the destruction, or was it only the galaxy the creators made that was wiped out? Could other such galaxies have existed beyond the vast emptiness of space that even the science of the civilised races could not locate? The creators had to come from somewhere, after all. Were there more of them? Others like them? Inna had no answers, for the creators of her own home had become little more than myth after the many billions of years they had been gone. Some even refused to believe there ever were creators, claiming instead that the universe formed naturally.

Feeling sorry for the young princess and for the monstrous tragedy that had befallen her, Richard took her in and treated her as his own daughter. He nursed her back to health and even built a bionic arm to replace the one she had lost. Inna adapted to it pretty quickly, as she adapted to life on Earth. She had been just a child when her world came crashing down around her, so she was very happy to have someone to look after her. But more than that, she was happy to have someone close to her. To have a family again. She never wanted to feel the kind of disabling fear she felt when her mother stuffed her into a capsule, said "Goodbye" and closed the door.

Over the years, however, Inna developed a strong character. She proved herself decisive, outgoing, strict and very responsible. But she was also kind, understanding, tolerant and even playful at times. Richard could already see that had she not lost her home, she would have made a worthy ruler. Her skills at organisation and time management even rivalled his own, and he was supposed to be the productive genius of the family.

Inna was an outgoing, active person, but she was not allowed to go out much. In a time before the Might for Right act and before the official recognition of superheroes, her blue skin, white hair and pointy ears - to say nothing of her big metal arm - would just get her into trouble if people saw her. So, grudgingly, she mostly stayed in the lab and only went out at night, or when Richard took her out of town where people couldn't see her.

However, another great tragedy changed all that. The Rikti Invasion shook the world to its very foundations, and it changed the lives of almost everyone it touched. Like most people with access to superhuman powers, the Steel Rook joined the fight against the hostile aliens. His young daughter, however, got involved, too.

One day Richard's lab came under the direct attack of a platoon of Rikti soldiers. Their intent was to kill him and destroy his equipment, to stop his contribution to the war. The attack caught him unprepared, and though he fought fiercely to protect his daughter, he was defeated in the end. But just as he was about to lose his life, Inna manifested the power that had been lying dormant within her for untold years. Without understanding what she was doing, she reached out her hands and fired an enormous blast of pure energy, devastating the Rikti soldiers and forcing them into a retreat.

After he recovered from his injuries, Richard began research into how Inna was able to do what she did. From her stories and from his own research into her biology, he came to a startling conclusion. As Inna was the legitimate ruler of the House of Inamen, and so the rightful heir to the throne of the Keepers of Varr, the power of the ancient creators was hers by right. The position of Keeper was not something given or earned, it was a position one was born in, and control of the power of Varr - the power of the creators - was impossible to lose. From her very birth, Inna had possessed the ability to control this untold power, she had just never been able to manifest it. And even then, so far away from her home and with her ancient power scattered across the cosmos, she was still able to call on her power, on her birth right.

As Inna grew up, she kept mastering her power and learning how to use it in more effective and more creative ways. A curious fact popped up along the way - her right, metal arm seemed to be better-suited for focusing her power than her left. Going off that, the Richard constructed a full set of gauntlets and boots to boost Inna's power even further. As the war had passed and heroes were now officially recognised, Inna was now able to go out. She used that opportunity to sign up as a licensed hero, as that was, as she put it: "The best way to master [her] power." She had developed a sense of duty towards keeping the innocent safe, as well as putting the hurt on those who would harm them. Tolerant as she may have been, she had zero tolerance for bad people.

But that is not the end of her story. After she established herself as beginner hero of the city, fate intervened again. An unidentified alien craft crashed on Earth and the team sent to retrieve it were found murdered. Something had arrived to Earth, and Inna would soon know what. The following day, a horrible glowing creature broke into the Steel Rook's lab and defeated him with amazing ease and power. But it was not after him. It was after Inna.

Despite the horrible corruption, she was able to recognise the face. It was the one she used to call "uncle," it was was her father's best friend, it was the person everybody used to trust. And it was the same person who had brought the apocalypse down on their old world. General Kragos had found his way to Earth, no doubt drawn there by Inna's unique energy. The explosion had not killed him. Through his corruption and through the circumstances that were present when it occurred, Kragos had been imbued with the same ancient energy that was Inna's birthright. The dark ones' magic that still flowed through his veins and that had mutated his body and mind so completely was now giving him an unnatural control over this power, one that almost rivalled hers.

Kragos sought to use Inna to gather the scattered energy for him, and then intended to siphon it all out of her, along with her life force. He still hoped to steal the ancient creator's limitless power, partly through madness, but mostly through his own greed. The man that the Inamen family had trusted most of all. The man that had betrayed them so horribly now sought to complete his corruption.

But he failed. In the moment of truth, when it seemed like Inna would fall into his hands, something happened to her. Something awakened from deep inside her and released a blast of energy so powerful knocked Kragoss clean out of the building and into the sky. As the other dark ones before him, Kragos could not be killed so easily. His defeat only slowed him down. What Inna did, she did not do consciously, nor should she have been able to summon that kind of power at all. But the explanation for it all came in the form of a legend. It was just a child's fairy tale held in a small pendant that her mother had given to her.

The story told the history of the creators, written as a bedtime story for a young child. It spoke of how they came "here" to make a world. How they saw the emptiness and thought it too lonely and cold. How they crafted a source of limitless power and with it built everything - the planets, the stars, the nebulae, as well as the first sentient creatures. It told of a war within the race of the creators, of jealousy, of treachery and of the use of forbidden magic. It told of how some of the creators were unhappy with how the world was coming along and wanted to start over, but how others believed that the creatures they had created now had a right to live and could not simply be destroyed for convenience.

The story went on about how a war broke out within the race of the creators, and how the splinter cell known as the dark ones was cast out. The dark ones used forbidden magic to gain unnatural power, and they returned to fight again. This new war was catastrophic for the race of the creators, and it doomed anyone it didn't kill. As a last gesture, the creators handed their power down to their most faithful and most deserving servants - the In, from whom the Inamen are descended. For their loyalty, their generosity and their dedication to the good of the universe, the In were given the power of the creators, but under the condition that they never try to use it.

The legend then tells that the creators left "something else" with the In, as well. After many hours studying the wording of the story, the Steel Rook deduced that the creators left themselves to the In. Or rather, their essence. The legend told about how one day, the creators would use this "gift" to return to the world and complete their work. That he interpreted to mean that they will reincarnate within the actual bloodline of the In. Which could lead to only one conclusion - that Princess Inna was, in fact, the incarnation of the ancients. After millions of years of evolution, the In bloodline had finally evolved enough to where it could manipulate the eldritch energy of the creators, itself, without danger.

It was Inna's destiny to return that power to the world, and to once again rebuild her home as the creators had done at the beginning of time. The weight of that responsibility changed the young girl in a very profound way. Up until then she had always been a princess, a child, a daughter. Someone else had always been there to make things happen and take care of her. But now she had become the leader. The queen of her people and of their legacy. She had found her destiny and met with a responsibility that was hers alone to bear.

Richard Johnson lost his daughter that day, but the Steel Rook gained a powerful, dedicated and loyal ally. It's never been a trade-off he has been happy with, but he has learned to accept that his little girl has grown up and taken on her own responsibilities.

Princess Inna Inamen continues her fight against crime and the forces of evil to this day. As she likes to say: "There's no better way to learn to control my power than by using it to put the hurt on bad people. I'm training to acheive my destiny, and I'm doing a good thing along the way, as well." She remains as outgoing and cheerful as she ever was, but she had grown a lot more serious in her mannerisms, and she has developed a sense for things that one should simply not joke around with.

Inna's ultimate goals are two-fold. First, Kragos still lurks somewhere on Earth, and no doubt he'll keep coming for her time and time again. He needs to be found and dealt with. Second, she bears a cosmic responsibility which she must work hard to earn the ability to use. When she is able, she wants to return to the empty space where her home was and build it anew. Though her last objective becomes harder and harder the longer she stays on Earth. The more people she meets, the more friends and allies she makes and the longer she lives here, the more Earth starts to feel like home. And when the time comes, she may not be able to leave her new home to rebuild an old one she no longer even remembers.

I don't think you've mentioned the crates entrance. Let me see if I can go grab some pics for you.

OK, I got a few screenshots. I'm talking about the path located here. The way to use it is described (in MS Paint) in the following two pics: pic 1 and pic 2. It's kind of a rush job, so the pictures are big and kind of low quality, but they point out a pretty easy and, most importantly, perfectly safe path up.

Thanks, Lighthouse! Let's hope it'll help people have a little more fun in Grandville

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Acc isn't too difficult either, granted it's a little time consuming (compare hits to misses against even cons for a sample of 100 attempts, 50 if you're lazy).

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From what I understand, the best way to get a stathistical value for your accuracy is to use Herostats and just go wack on things for a while. The programme should be able to log your hits and misses and compile a stathistical percentage. With enough attacks, that percentage should be fairly close to the truth.

And I'll have to agree with the Lemur. "Seems like" is a very poor argument when that's what you're basing your whole guide on, especially as concerns easily-obtainable numbers.

Short of that, my only contribution here is that the Undead Slaying Axe is almost unfairly strong against "true undead," often one-shotting Spectral Demons that usually take everyone other than Energy uses bloody ages to kill. It's equally good against other Undead, as well, but I haven't tested its usefulness much beyond Spectral Demons.

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Some constructive criticism: There are a few typos here and there. You may want to cut and paste it into a word processing program for a spell check and then back. I'm not trying to put you down or be a spelling Nazi. You are obviously intelligent and a good writer and I assume you would like to have a perfect product.

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Yeah, I kind of got very tired after I wrote it, so I never did proofread it. In my defence, English is not my first language I'm afraid I've lost the ability to edit the original post, however, so I'm not sure what it is I can do to fix my spelling mistakes.

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You did mention some badges and some of the contacts. I think it would be great if you could expand on that topic and include more information on the badges and unlockable contacts in the zone, including the Patrons. I think it might deserve a section of its own, or at least a link to another guide or website that covers the topic.

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I'm afraid I don't actually know a whole lot about badges, and only the bare essentials about the unlockable contacts. I actually omitted mentioning the Television contact, partly because I forgot and partly because I'm not sure where it is, offhand. It's either in the South or the East Ward of the Gutter, near a sewer entrance that's often used for newspaper missions, but I'll have to look closer for more detailed information.

As for badges, the Master of the Airwaves is quite literally the only badge I know about, and I found that one out when I was trying to unlock the Television contact. I'm afraid I'd be of very little use there, as I'm not a badge collector in the least.

As far as good sources of information, I think Trekain's contact guide is a very way to find out all you ever wanted to know about contacts in CoV, unlockable or otherwise, and it has a very detailed writeup of Grandville's contact for the curious. Other than that, VidiotMaps has a good map of grandville with most of the notable badge and historical plaque locations.

I didn't actually use those sources when I made the guide, however, as I wanted to focus more on the geography and sights of the zone. It has been my impression that people tend to not want to explore Grandville, get lost or get killed a lot. So I wanted to write a guide to help people see the cool side of Grandville, move around with less danger and generally know where things they are looking for are. It makes it easier to like the zone that way, I've found.

I will look into my spelling errors and see what I can do, though. I tend to pride myself on my spelling

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Excellent post. It's a bit more technical than I wanted to get in my guide - which I simply wanted to be a "here's the forumula" and "here's how you use the formula" sort of thing and not a "here's where the formula comes from" thing.

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I apologise for complicating matter. It's just that when I saw two coefficents that basically change to counter each other (at least at first glance), I had to figure out why that had been done like that. I thought it was stupid, but it turned out it was required to keep the curve uninterrupted. Now I'm happy again

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I spotted one error in your writeup and that is that you refer to 100% as 0.1 when it's 1.0, but I think that's just a late night fat-fingering.

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Fixed!

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If you'd like I'm perfectly willing to take your writeup and your graphs and use it as an Appendix for the guide. I'd just need to know how you want to be credited. Let me know.

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Reall? Cool, I didn't expect many people would like it I'd be happy if you'd use it, as I really did put a lot of work, to say nothing of thought into it.

As this has to do exclusively with City of Heroes/Villains, I feel you should credit me as Samuel Tow. No need for going into a name that hasn't been used in relation CoH/CoV at all.

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I've always been less concerned about the initial dev post and more concerned that the game itself does a terrible job of teaching the player the drawbacks of over-slotting - which is why I think simply limiting powers to a max of 3 +3 SOs worth of a single ability in a power would have worked better. And more people would get it.

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I agree. The game really does a poor job of showing you what you're doing wrong. For the witty, there is a simple way to test this - buy an extra enhancement and pretend to slot it into another slot. That'll give you a number of increase. Subtract that from the enhancement's actual value (which you can either simply know, or find out by pretending to slot it in a power that has none of that kind), and you get the percentage of loss on that enhancement. From memory, the loss for a seconf +3 enhancement is around 5% and from a third around 10%. Or at least thereabout.

But I'll agree - the game itself does a very poor job at telling you about ED. Even my workaround method only works once you get to SO levels, meaning it's very easy to not know about it and overslot on Training or Dual Origin enhancements. I was lucky in that I knew about it ahead of time, but many people aren't.

I have seen the suggestion that you simply limit enhancements to 3 and be done with it. That has a couple of interesting effects. Firstly, it gives you an even increase of gain between each of the three ehancements, while ED gives you diminishing returns. Secondly, I believe the original idea was that people may still want to slot things with 4, 5, 6 same enhancements, even despite the diminishing returns. I have it on pretty good authority that this was a wrong assumption, even though I have a friend who still 6-slots things, because he feels any benefit is a benefit. I think that was why it was left at possible 6-slot, but at a great penalty.

Oh, and I think I have forgotten to mention something - THANK YOU for that guide It's an excellent interpretation of the forumal, and it allowed me to understand what makes it tick. You have an excellent guide there.

OK, I figured it out. It kept me up until 6 AM or thereabout, but I figured it out. Now, bear with me, as this will take some math that's heavy in appearance, but is actually very (very, VERY) simple mathematical analysis, about the very vasis of the field. I will apologise if I use any terms incorrectly, as I don't know the proper mathematical terms in English.

Let's model your formula as a two-dimensional function, where our variavle is your pre-ED total. Looking at it realistically, it's the only value that varies without interruption. Your reduction base and reduction modifiers will be interpretted as numerical parameters, and your ED total as the value of the function. Essentially:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>y(x) = b + a*x</pre><hr />

Where x is your pre-ED total, b your reduction modifier, a your reduction multiplier and y(x) (as a function of x) your ED total. Now is a very simple linear function, describing a simple two-dimensional line. Something like this. Incidentally, that is the graph of the function

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>y(x) = 2 + 2*x</pre><hr />

Now, in a linear function, both paramaeters - a and b - are coefficents of two different things. The parameter a is the angular coefficent - it represents the angle (measured counter-clockwise) at which the graph is offset from the abcissa (the horizontal x coordinate axis). Translating that into an actual angle is a little bit more complex and requires a bit of trigonometry, but that is irrelevant to the matter at hand. What is important, however, is that as a increases, the angle of the graph increases, and so the entire graph rotates counter-clockwise around the point where it intersects the ordinate (the vertical y coordinate axis). Mathematically, this is a circular rotation around the point where x=0, or the point where the graph intersects the ordinate. Effectively, changing the a parameter does this. Those three functions are as follows:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
y(x) = 2 + 2*x
y(x) = 2 + 3*x
y(x) = 2 + 4*x
</pre><hr />

What does this mean in relation to us? Well, the angle of a graph basically represents the productivity of the action it describes - in this case the ratio of percetnage put into powers and net percentage gained at the end. A coefficent above 1 (or an angle greater than 45°) describes overunity - for each 1% put into a power, you gain MORE than 1% net. A coefficent of 1 (or an angle of exactly 45°) describes an even gain - for each 1% slotted, you gain 1% net. Unsurprisingly, a coefficent less than 1 (or an angle smaller than 45°) describes a diminished return - for each 1% you invest, you get less than 1% net.

Basically, the ED formual, as stated, starts with a coefficent of 100%, or 1.0, and then goes down through 0.9, 0.7 and 0.15. I feel it is quite obvious what this means - with each step the coefficent decreases, so you get less and less return on your enahncements with each consequent step.

So what is the purpuse of the reduction base, our b, then? Why not stick to just a reduction modifier? The answer to that is actually quite simple, but first let me explain what the b coefficent does. In simple terms, b just adds a flat value to the y of each and every point, effectively "raising the graph up." Mathematically, this is defined as a linear translation, colinear with the ordinate. Changing the b parameter effectively does this. Those three functions are as follows:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
y(x) = 2*x + 2
y(x) = 2*x + 3
y(x) = 2*x + 4
</pre><hr />

What does this mean to us? Well, it alters the speed of our gain again, but it does so in a different way. Instead of a percentage increase or decrease to our gain in relation to our investment, think of it as property tax, or a raise. So as b increases, now for each 1% you slot, you get exactly b% more on top of that, net. And when b decreases, for each 1% you slot, you get b% less, net. So as for a positive b (b&gt;0), you get a bonus on top of your slotting, and for a negative b (b&lt;0), you get a tax. When b equals 0 (b=0), there is no change.

But why is this necessery? Well, the reduction base is pit in there to fix what would otherwise be a very serious problem - a big drop in the gain at each reduction point. Without a reduction base, you would suffer not only a diminished return, but a flat decrease in enhancement values, meaning that actually sltotting more % into your power would actually give you a net total of less % post-ED. It would look something like this. Note how the Moderate section of the graph is actually net less than the Mild, and almost net less than the Unaffected ones. Note, furthermore, how the Sever section is net less than all of the others, and by a significant margin. What this means is that slotting ANYTHING in the Severe section would not only give you diminishing returns, it would actually give you a smaller percentage than slotting most anything into in the Unaffected section. This would be bad, and were it made like that, it would have killed the game.

The ED formula is a complex function. It is actually comprised of four seperate linear functions. What was needed for this complex function to be effective was for it to be uninterrupted. If you look at the "bad" graph, you will note that horizontally, where one sectin ends, the other begins, but it begins a lot lower. Well, one way to line all of the sections with each other is to "raise them up" until their ends meet. That is what the reduction base does. It brings the next section up to "start" from where the previous one ends. Because the new section has a different angle coefficent (or a different a), the gain is diminished, but the starting point is the same as where the previous section ended. This insures an uniterrupted increase of net % for each % slotted. There are no instantanious jumps.

In its final form, the graph of the ED formula looks like this. I've coloured the sections as close as I could to the colour scheme given in the guide, with green being Unaffected, yellow - Mild, orange - Moderate and red - Severe. You can tell how the Mild, Moderate and Severe sections have been "raised up" until their ends met. This tells me that the reduction base is not, in fact, a bonus or a means to "make up" for the percentages. It is a required translation to keep the complex function uninterrupted. They are also calculable as a function of x and a. It's a little complicated and quite unimportant, though, so I don't want to bother with it.

I also came up with the answer to another, less technical problem - why did the developers tell us there were two reduction points when in fact there were three. One look at the ED graph makes it pretty apparent. Visually, the length of both the Mild and Moderate sections taken together is still shorter than either the Unaffected or Severe sections. Indeed, the sum of the intervals of the Mild and Moderate sections is 30%, whereas the Unaffected has an interval of 70% and the Severe section can extend pretty high up. I've taken it up to 160%, which gives it a 60% interval. All calculations done on Schedual A enhancement, of course, but the calculations for the other Scheduals are no different.

Another interesting point is their reduction multipliers. Mild is 90%, or 0.9, and Moderate is 0.7. Compare that to the 0.15 multiplier of Severe and you see a marked difference. So, basically, on the grand scheme of things, Mild and Moderate are very similar in their numbers and very close together. If you look at the purpuse of the dveloper post that explained ED, you will see that it wasn't meant to give the number-crunchers a formula with which they could calculate. It was meant to give the casual players a relative referrence, so they knew more or less what to expect. So while there were, in fact, three reduction points, the middle reduction point was negligible for the purpuse of the explanation. It had an effect, sure, but not one big enough to bog down what was already a lot of numbers with. Most people don't like to see large fields of numbers. Heck, I don't like to see large fields of numbers. So the developers spared us one reduction point and melded two reduction sections together for ease of use without understanding.

That is my analysis of your Enhancement Diversification formula. I feel confident that I can visualise, predict and explain it, at least to myself. I'm open to any questions and willing to give any additional explanations, because I KNOW my math will scare a lot of people

Thank you for your time.

*edit* Because I'm stupid and I keep mixing reduction base with reduction modifier and vice versa. It should be correct now.

*edit2* Because I somehow turned 100% into 0.1, which is 10%. Thanks for pointing that out. This is embarassing

I'm afraid I can't consider myself as "confused" by any stretch of the imagination, your formula has me intrigued. I've toyed around with it, and I've convinced myself that it works as designed.

Now I'm a little more curious as to WHY it works. For a while I thought that reaching a certain level of enhancement percentage simply lopped a bit off the values for each enhancement. Apparently it's not quite as straightforward, as there appears to be a "bonus" on top of that, as well, this "reduction base."

The way I enterpret is like this: "Pre-ED Total * Reduction Multiplier" is actually the flat percentage lopped off each enhancement. Since the "Pre-ED Total" is a simple sum of the slotted enhancements, it's pretty easy to split it up into each individual enhancement's value, multiplied by the reduction modifier, thereby illustrating my stated inference.

However, the calculations seem to be geared so that "too much" is taken off the enhancements. It is my assumption that for this reason, a bonus percentage is given, I assume to make up for the difference acuqired by using these steep percentages. It's basically a flat bonus overtop of the bonus your enhancements give to "make up the difference, somewhat," as it were.

If my deductions are correct, then it only seems to beg the question: Why bother? Why not simply institute more appropriate or more gradual percentages and simply not bother with this flat bonus?

It would be pretty easy to model this formula as a linear function, where your pre-ED enhancement values are the the variable, though with a few limitations. At a glance, it would appear to me that the base and multiplier actually have opposing effects. Because both of them are pretty severe and change in pretty big steps, one assumption would be that this is done to keep the equation relatively ballanced. But it still doesn't tell me why such complication was even needed.

I'll need to examine this further, but I'm pretty sure that either I'm missing something big, or the formula could simply have been made... Well, simpler.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to do, but I did put a lot of time and effort into writing this Guide to Grandville. I keep reading Lighthouse's posts, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it, but I would like to offer it for inclusion into the Guide to Guides. I looked, and there are no guides about Grandville.

If posting a link to it here isn't enough (which I suspect it won't be), what am I supposed to do to get it noticed?

Wow, a lot of good answers, and I like them all!

GreyScribe and Blood_Wolffe, I'd like to address your posts together, because they complement each other.

GreyScribe
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I had a thought prompted by her organic component rather than her robotic ones. A lot of injuries in car crashes and similar situations are brain injuries caused by the brain bouncing around in the skull due to severe deceleration.
Theoretically, Crash would suffer similar problems - depending on whatever extra shock-absorbing technology her titanium skull contains.

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Excellent! Excellent, excellent, excellent! Why try to twist on the upgradable mechanics when I can rely on the unupgradable biological parts. That will work.

GreyScribe
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If I remember rightly, normal humans black-out around 8-10 Gs. Perhaps because Crash does not have a 'natural' biochemistry any more she is more likely to black-out at lower Gs - hence she cannot just blast-off whenever she feels like it and is limited to relatively gentle motions, such as her 'aerial glide'?

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A bit of a limitation on your idea, but not as much as it appears. That's 8G of sustained acelleration for trained air-force pilots, and it comes from the flow of blood pooling at their legs and starving their brains of oxigen. At impact, I beelieve a human brain can survive a lot more without significant injury. But then:

Blood_Wolffe
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Someone stated earlier about g's knocking out a human. I thought of something similar. In boxing you get a KO if you hit a guy in the right place and hard enough to move the skull and not the brain. The brain hits the side of the skull and thats what turns the lights out. I am sure the instant acceleration of a jet propulsion powerful enough to send a human sized chunk of metal 100's of feet in the air would be much more powerfu than a knockout blow. Her brain would hit the bottom of her metal casing probably hard enough to have the watermelon from ten stories above effect. Splort! You could have some advanced cushioning around her brain but technology isn't a cure-all.

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Blood_Wolffe has a very elegant solution to this problem. Static or gradual loads, such as G-force from maneuvring a jet at high speeds tend to be much smaller than dynamic loads, such as acheived through collision for only fractions of the second. A human body dropping from 10 feet and landing on their head, for example, generate G in the dozens for just the instant of impact. And that ties in with something Hallucinogen said:

Hallucinogen
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And while perhaps her body could take it, it seems rather unlikely that it would be faster, or at all a good idea, to turn oneself into a high-tech, powerful cyborg shooting star. On the plus side, though, she'd definitely live up to her name. :P

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That, while I'm not sure it was intended like that, plays on my original idea of a limiting factor. The jet nozzles produce a LOT of force, even on their minimum settings. So if Crash tried to use them to jump, they'd shoot her straight up into the air with enough force to cause some serious brain trauma. That'll work perfectly

Hallucinogen
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But she's gotta land. It seems highly probable to me that jets designed to super-charge punches, stop trucks, and super speed all over are not really gonna be designed to cushion a fall. Or to produce jumps that are at all easy to control. Software can only do so much, y'know. XD;;

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And that is true, as well. Her jet nozzles are calibrated for high impact force to squeeze every last bit of power from them. What this means is that they're not very good at low-power burtst. Trying to use them for a landing is like trying to hammer a nail with a jackhammer. Of course, she is sturdy enough to weather a significant fall without serious damage purely on structural strength and muscule tension.

PlagueOfUndeath
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Personally i'd be wondering what would be powering these jets. I mean, that's actually the 'android/cyborg problem' isn't it? Does she need to eat? Does she require direct sunlight? Is it a battery?

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I like the self-contained power source idea, as used in things like The Red Planet (a nuclear reactor for the robot thing) or Unreal 2 (a fusion pack in in the unlimited ammo pistol). I'm not exactly sure on the technicalities, but I'm liable to go with Buzz Lightyear's crystallic fusion idea.

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Instead of jets, how about magnets? This would solve a few things: You could have them wired to her brain somehow, and have her skeleton covered with them like muscles, so this magnetic force moves the body as well as offers its chief form of strength.

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Magnetics is a cool idea, but I'd like to keep her "nozzle" concept seperate from the mechanical locomotion of her body. I can go with magnetics, actually. I never intended for these jet nozzles to be air and fuel-based. More like bursts of condensed energy of some sort. No reason that condensed energy can't be electro-magnicity. That will also give me a good excuse for why they have a cool-down - the condensors need to build up their charge between use. It would also make me limit them to single burts, however, which I'm not very comfortable with, so I'll have to invent some science to work this in I'm thinking I could model electro-magnicity after a physical model of air flowing through a narrow point, and I suppose that will work.

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Khellendrosiic

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I see that your question has been answered but I also noticed that you hadn't thought of anything about how her muscles operated. A standard that I work almost all of my robots from is the concept of myomer.
Myomer is the term for a bundle of metallic fibers that are wound together and then attached to the chasis of the machine much in the same way that muscles are to bone. By applying an electrical charge, the myomer tightens exactly like regular muscles do. The more powerful the charge, the faster the myomer tightens. Of course one drawback is that an uncontrolled electrical surge, perhaps from combat damage, could cause the myomer muscles to flex erratically and may cause more damage to the frame.

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Excellent idea! I was thinking something along the lines of shape memory metal, but that has never struck me as having much force. An metal that could be contracted by applying electrical current is a very good alternative, and for a few reasons. Firstly, of course, it works. More importantly, however, it mimmics human muscules, not just in operation but it appearance. An important part of this concept is that is must appear human, such was the design of the cyborg body. That fits that bill perfectly.

As Blood_Wolffe said, I probably won't keep the name of the metal or the technology, but I WILL keep the concept

Oh, and one more thing:

Blood_Wolffe
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And for people arguing that she could get tech upgrades. Maybe she doesn't want any. Maybe the process of getting the metal body hooked into her brain was traumatic or painful so she doesn't want any more. To get an upgrade she has to go through intense trauma/emotion/pain/memories.

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I suppose you have a point. I could bend that rule a little bit. Because the person who made her is a genius in his own right, replicating his work may prove incredibly difficult, so upgrades to her body aren't always possible. Cool, I'll use that

Overview

So, I've come to this conclusion so far. Crashe's jet nozzles (and I use the term jet loosely) are tuned to very high forces. Good for punching things and stopping things, but bad for controlled flight or jumps. Trying to jump would simply hurl her violently into the air, risking brain unjury and throwing any sembalnce of control out the window.

I still welcome more ideas, of course

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It sounded to me like you would be better served with Super Speed...

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Actuall, I did take Super Speed for Crash. At the time, I had no particular reason to take it, other than I had Super Jump and Flight and Teleport didn't fit her. However, recently I tried to picture her moving quickly, and the "anime slide" was the first thing that came to my mind. It looked really, really cool in my head, so I went looking for ways to justify it

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I wasn't sure if you meant either, the rockets shot her hands toward an object striking the object with her hands, or if the exhaust part of the rockets on her hands hit the oncoming object with air pressure.

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A rocked-propelled punch is the essence of it. As long as her skeleton can handle it, the boost the nozzles provide just gives her punch extra kinetic force.

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You could also so that the Extreme thrust into air isnt possible because whenever her Truck stopping move is active her other rockets automatically counter the force.

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I tried the software limitation angle before, but I have a chior of geniuses who'd be more than willing to fiddle with her software and upgrade it. It's human technology, after all. Then I'd have to go into what they can and can't do, why and a whole can of worms.

BUT

I have one even better that still works with your basic premesis. Let's assume that the thrust from the nozzles is VERY powerful. Too powerful to propel her body up into the air without causing some kind of structural damage, or at the very least seriously taxing either the overall skeletal structure or the mounts of the nozzles.

Simply put, trying to jump up on the nozzles for any significant distance would require them to produce acceleration so powerful that it would run the risk of damaging things. Even a small hop would not be worth the stress, specifically when Crash'es limbs can produce jumps higher than is safe for the nozzles.

Simply put, the jet nozzles produce a LOT of thrust. They have some degree of control, but the technology is such that even at its lowest settings, it's still a heck of a lot. So when she has to counter forces lower than the lowest power threshold of her jets, the corresponding set of jets fire in the reverse direction, stabalising the forces. In fact, in this instance it might be simpler to go with acelleration, as I don't want to limit the stress factor on her skeleton in such a way.

So, yeah, I think that'll work. Thanks, guys

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In essence, I am saying that, combined with the force of downward gravity on her structure's weight, she would not be able to get any good upward motion. I mean, Combat Jump height would probably be feasible, but the jets would probably cut out from over-exhertion.

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Combat Jumping height is about all I'm after. Perhaps more, but with the way jump height scales in this game (judging from Super Jump), I'd say Comabt Jumping is about right.

The problem I keep running against, however, is the same as why firearms can't really knock a person back. Because if they could, they'd knock the shooter back an equal distance. Only in my case, it goes like - if Crash can counter the force of a truck colliding with her, what's stopping her from generating the same force?

However, your comment about "force of downward gravity on her structure's weight" has me intrigued.

I've been developing a character for a while now, and I'm running against a serious problem, concept-wise. Her powers, as I have designed them, would theoretically grant her abilities I do not want her to have. What I need help with is coming up with a plasible excuse for why she can't do what I don't want her to be able to do.

We'll call my character Crash. So let me explain what Crash is and what her powers consist of. One limitation that I'd like to point out before we begin, however, is that she's a science and technology-based character. So, anything about her needs to be based upon science and technology, albeit made-up such. No mysticism or magic allowed, and I'd like for the explanations to make sense, at least to me.

Now, Crash is a cyborg. In fact, the only human part that remains from her is her brain, encased within her reinforced metal skull. Everything else is pure machine, and a very powerful at that. Her skeleton is incredibly tough and nearly unbreakable. Her realistic skin is made of a soft and plyable material, but one that is very difficuly to tear or pierce. Her muscules, the nature of which I'm not sure of yet, are both incredibly strong and lightning fast, giving her both spierhuman strength and speed. Strength enough to tear metal like tissue paper and speed, along with her relatively light weight, enough to move fast and strike precisely.

The jewel of her crown (and source of my problem) is an array of jet nozzles scattered among key locations along her body that, while normally concealed, can be opened and fired at a moment's notice. Operating on condensed energy bursts, they can provide enormous latteral force in just about any direction she desires. That has a couple of positive effects.

Firstly, by firing them at precisley the right moment and precisely the right strength, she can effectively counter any force trying to push her or knock her over. So, she could stand in the middle of a street and literally stop an a18-wheeler at full throttle with her bare hands.

Secondly, these jet nozzles can assist her in her attacks, firing to propel her or her hands or feet into devastating strikes. Think of having a rocket strapped to your wrist when you're punching someone in the face. Like that. What this means is that Crash can, without almost any footing or anchorage, punch through heavy armour and thick metal.

And here is where the problem arises. For her "super human" mode of transportation, I have chosen an old anime stand-by - the aerial slide. Effectively, using her jet nozzles to create a ground effect, Crash can levitate herself about an inch off the ground and then slide along the terrain at tremendous speeds. However, in theory, she should be capable of a lot more in that regard.

For instance, why is she not capable of full flight? Surely these nozzles that provide so much force can muster enough thrust to elevate her off the ground. Of course, that's easily explained away by saying that they cannot sustain their thrust for more than a second or so, and that they have a bit of a cooldown period, making flight unfeasible. However, if they can produce enough force to stop a speeding truck, what happens if they produce that amount of force when there is no truch? Would that not be able to hurl her up into the air about a mile? So why can't they?

To that last question, I have no answer. And this is where I'd like to ask you for your help. Any answers are more than appreciated, as this is something that really bugs me. Thank you in advance.

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I dunno. Try renaming one pet ONE and the other MARCH and typing /petcomname one march stay

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Hmm... Won't that give me an error in the number of argumens? Meaning, won't that be read as two arguments? Might want to try putting them in brackets...

I will try that. Thanks!

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I was about to say what Konoko said, until I ready his repsonse. Sounds like quite a puzzle you have there! If you find a solution, please let us know what you discover. Sorry for not helping more.

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Don't worry about it

It's a monkey that's been on my back ever since I started trying to work with Mastermind binds, and it doesn't seem like it's going away. The ways I can fix this each have their drawbacks, that's the problem. Using bind files (or macros) will still not let the goto command work, and renaming my henchmen is just plain ugly (and they can't be named the same thing). I suppose I could take the Malta model and name them Toop Alpha-1-2, Troop Beta-1-2 and so forth. But what if I make a Zombie mastermind? I need a consistent system.

Unfortunately, I feel the solution here is not to fix the binds, but to fix me A very real option is that I don't do anything about it. That will work, but it dumps more work and micromanagement on my hands. If I can handle it, I suppose it's good, too, but that remains to be seen.

You have my word, though. If I find a way to solve this, I will surely post it here. The binds you have in this thread and the way you're using the commands is simply boggling to my basic approach to bind-writing I like it. It lest me learn new things and how the system works.

Oh, one thing that occurs to me - is there any way to get /petcom to execute for a list of henchmen, be it by name or type? That would solve my problem, but it does not appear to be possible.

Text should wrap automatically even without line breaks. Code, as identified by the "Code" tag, however, does not warp. If you have long lines of code without line breaks, that will stretch the horizontal of the page.

If your Word text does not warp properly outside of that, then I'm afraid I don't know what's causing it.