SerialBeggar

I saw that Star Citizen Kickstarter, but I passed up on adding to it. It was already way over the goal. I never played any of the Wing Commander games, so while interesting, it had no emotional pull on me. Besides, speaking about throwing money away, I've already funded over 2 dozen assorted projects over the past year. I wanted to fill out my profile's color wheel. This I need to stop before I go broke. However, I did just toss money into this one. It was featured in the web comic: Yellow Peril.

I haven't come up with a hero name yet, but I'll toss this in for the character's real name: Maximilian or Maximina Roi

From thinkbabynames.com

\max(i)-mi-lian\ as a boy's name is of Latin origin, and the meaning of Maximilian is "greatest".

\max(i)-mi-na\ as a girl's name is a variant of Maxine (Latin), and the meaning of Maximina is "greatest".

We'll assume he/she likes to use Max as his/her nickname.

roi\ as a boy's name is a variant of Roy (Irish, Gaelic), and the meaning of Roi is "red".

Eh, we'll just use it as a last name. Of course, I'm going for "ROI" which is the acronym for "return on investment".

Thus we have: Max ROI.

Although, you could play the girls name further as Max/min ROI.

Well, they're not strobing or emitting a regular tone pulse, so obviously someone already clicked them. If you changed your search pattern, you may have better luck.

I think of the lottery more as insurance, ie insurance that I will have a chance to win. Whether that chance is almost nil is besides the point, guaranteeing a chance is way better than absolute no chance. However, unlike normal insurance where I'm throwing money at several assorted insurers on a regular and, sometimes, mandatory basis all the while hoping that I'll never need to have to beg them for a payout, I'm hoping for the lottery to payout (to me) as soon and as often as possible. I find this to be more uplifting.

http://www.powerball.com

As of today, the jackpot stands at $425 million.

I haven't come across this topic during the past few months (well admittedly, I haven't read through all the mega-sized good-bye threads), so for discussion:

How much does it cost to start up a game development studio these days? What are the average salaries for the critical positions? How many people in each expertise does one need, "at a minimum" for example? How much does other general monthly expenses run? Assuming the studio starts from scratch on a product, what's the average development time before one can expect any revenue? Eh, I know this is really subjective, but once there's a product, what kind of budget would one allocate to "basic(?)" marketing?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Aw, man. I didn't know you guys were really going to go after the Rikti Drop Ship yesterday. I thought the Hami Raid overrode that idea. I didn't have any interest in the Hami Raid, but I helped out on the EoE farm before calling it a night. If I knew the Drop Ship ambush was certain, I'd have hung around (and probably would have had to skip out on work today).

Was this related to the emergency fix for Base Storage Bins. As I recall, it had something to do with visitors being able drop items into the Bins.

I salute your dedication and admire the lack of typos.

Ah. Then I've been there before, 20 years ago when my department had a training budget. They'd put us up on the Embassy Suites and we'd go over to the Mall to kill time after class. Of course, crossing the 8 lanes of traffic on foot was dicey. There was a cross walk, but the green light only lasted 2 lanes if you walked normally. Most paused at the pedestrian median to wait for the next light, but I took it as a challenge to make it all the way across doing a "power walk". Thinking back on it now, I probably looked really stupid.

Crabtree Mall sounds familiar. Is there, or was there, an Embassy Suites hotel across the street on a corner?

88

Taken: 27, 33, 36, 48, 57, 88

58

Numbers remaining:
4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100

I just got back on Virtue.

26

Numbers remaining:

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 27, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100

Edited my list with Sin's numbers.

I'll choose the missing 88.

Numbers remaining:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100,

80

Numbers Remaining:
38, 40, 43, 56, 60, 64, 70, 74, 85, 87, 89, 90, 94, 97

10

Numbers Remaining:
15, 25, 37, 38, 40, 43, 45, 48, 50, 56, 60, 64, 70, 74, 80, 85, 87, 89, 90, 92, 94, 97, 100

1

Numbers Taken: 1, 2, 8, 9,11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 22, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 39, 42, 47, 49, 52, 55, 63, 67, 71, 73, 78, 79, 81, 82, 88, 91, 96

So, Hyperstrike, you were buying the level 50 Range IO recipes too, eh? I vendored the Range IO recipes exclusively for the first 3 years of the Market because I figured they were the most useless of enhancements (in general). That they sold for a pretty high amount relative to the other Common IOs recipes and especially compared to Range SOs which nicely made up for how frequently I got Range SOs as drops. The multi-millions I made from them funded many of my characters.

However, I had to move on when someone started buying up the level 50 Range IO recipes for 80K Inf each for several years. Was that you? I just couldn't understand the reasoning for the 80K buy price because the sell price at the store for a level 50 Range IO is around 92K Inf. I could make more buying the level 45s along with no competition. I even knew when this buyer was on vacation and couldn't play because there would be a brief lull of a few days every so often when the price would drop to around 50K Inf, only to suddenly return to 80K Inf again with no price creep.

While I'm not doing as much vendoring anymore, I do keep and eye on them out of habit.


Anyway, on other topics:

I still have not respeced all my characters to Inherent Fitness. The process of respecing a character can take several days for me and is thus requires me to be in the right mood for all the work. I don't use Mids, just paper and pencil to add up the stats. This can take a day or two depending on if I'm switching to unfamiliar powers. However, most of the time is due to swapping characters to log into my several personal SG Bases to find if I have the IOs I want to use.

I have collected a decent amount of Purple IOs as drops, but I hardly use any Purples other than as individual pieces. I particularly like the +chance to hold on the Immob Purple. The only character where I did make an effort to use significant quantities of Purples was my Regen Brute. I had the hardest time staying alive on it. My play experience with Regen was almost as bad as with my Electric Armor Brute back when it didn't even have a heal.

Of the many nerfs that have been implemented, there were only two that really upset me. The first was when the mission reward Nemesis Staff was changed from Targeted AOE to single target. I had recently picked it up on my Emp Defender and with it I was finally dealing significant damage. For the first time, I really felt confident in my soloing ability. The AOE really made up for the base accuracy on it. Once it went single target, it became unreliable and just not fun anymore. I didn't have Tactics back then.

The second were the Controller nerfs of Issue-5 (?). It wasn't so much the AOE mez nerf, I could deal with that. It was the Pets nerf that pissed me off. I only had a Fire/Rad at the time and when my mass of Imps surged forward, it always brought a grin to my face. Why did it bother me? Again, it was that I was finally powerful after a hard slog, that it was being taken away. This was my first Controller and I estimate that I soloed it 70% of the way to low-40s when this nerf was put in. I don't know how many here ever tried to endure 32 levels of using nothing by Brawl, Air Superiority and Char (which wasn't even slotted for damage).

Speaking of my first Controller, Fire/Rad, I learned how to tank playing it. I learned about Defense, Resistance, aggro management (getting it, clustering, maintaining aggro), positioning, corner pulls, AOE taunting (with my AOE debuffs), and of course, herding. I could herd a good chunk of Perez Park. To this day, I'll still rush in if the Team meleers are too slow.



That said, I think the only time someone had possibly petitioned me about herding Perez Park was when I was fooling around with my Emp Defender (using Energy Torrent).

Next to my Emp Defender, I felt that my low level human form Warshade was the weakest archetype I have ever played. Things got a lot better when I finally made the decision to ditch human form so I could use the slots for Nova and Dwarf.

I really believe the original villain archetypes were composites of all things the forumites had been asking for as improvements to the hero archetypes. When I realized this, it was like seeing how the Genie had twisted your wishes.

The first character I made in COH was an Elec/Elec Blaster. I ditched after a few days because it looked so weak compared to other Blasters, especially Energy. Even though I later found out that their attack stats are basically the same, Electric's effects just doesn't have any oomph. Energy was all BAM! + knockdown/knockback, it looked powerful. Whereas Electric was a light bzzt + an orgasmic shiver. Eh. Even Electric Melee's effects was underwhelming, except Lighting Rod of course. If the Electric attacks (ranged and melee) just had louder impact sound effects, they would have been a much better experience.

Even though the game is coming to a close, I am still hoarding Insps in my SG Bases. Each Base has at least 4 full or almost full Insp storage bins. A couple of less used SG Bases has 5 Insp storage bins. Prior to the Market merge, my home server's main SG Base had 7 Insp bins. Why the obsession? It can be traced back to the early days when you couldn't buy Insps anywhere while on a TF. I was on a particularly difficult Synapse TF and my Insp tray was empty. I had sunk to a low and was trying to beg for Insps at the Train Station while getting to the next mission. No one gave me any You might say that I was traumatized by the episode.

Edit:
Oh yeah, back in the day, the Rikti teleporting-in sound effect always creeped me out. I think it was in part due to the Rikti Crash Site being so desolate. It was very lonely there and then this loud, menacing sound suddenly shocks me. I finally got over it when I took my Tank there to farm the Rikti Portals for Prestige.

61

Remaining Numbers: 8, 54, 56, 70, 80, 89, 90, 94, 97, 98

26

used: 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 33, 37, 41, 42, 47, 48, 49, 53, 55, 57,64, 69, 73, 75, 79, 83, 87, 88, 92, 99

I'm #1!


The List:
1, 5, 7, 12, 13, 19, 27, 33, 42, 47, 48, 53, 69, 75, 79, 83, 87, 88, 92

39

Used so far 3, 7, 10, 12, 13, 17, 19, 23, 27, 31, 37, 39, 45, 47, 56, 57, 67, 73, 77, 82, 97

Wow. He's going for a goal of almost $2 million? That'll be tough to break through.