SkarmoryThePG

I kinda like this idea. Hell, I'll throw out an expansion of my own.

At two points in your career (say, a Blaster's lvls 8 and, oh, 26) you get to pick a ammunition toggle. What's the catch? You get to pick two out of a number of different but balanced ammo types (+dam (cold) - rech; +dam(fire) DoT(fire), +dam(nrg) -end, DoT(tox) -regen (villain only?) etc...).

I'll try and be brief.

This is a suggestion for two new MA critter power sets - Minion Ranged and Minion Melee. These differ significantly from normal sets in that powers you select don't all go to the character you create, but create different versions of that character. Much like there's four or five breeds of Blood Brother, choosing five powers from Minion Melee would create five different minions - for example, the mob "Ruffian" will become "Ruffian Brawler", "Ruffian Chopper"; etc.

Powers in both sets that I can think of off the top of my head, with suffixes in parentheses.

Minion Melee:
-Heavy Brawl (Brawler)
-Fire Axe (Chopper)
-Knife (Slicer)
-Sledgehammer (Slammer)
-Baseball Bat (Slugger)
-Machette (Hacker)
-Torch (Torch Bearer)
-Pipe (Scavenger)
-Boxing + Kick (Muscle)
-Rapier Stab + Parry (Fencer)
-Rikti Surfboard (Swordsman/woman)
-Swipe (Claw) (open-handed attack)
-Shovel (Digger) (made up name)
-Pick Axe (Miner) (made up name)

Additionally, if Primary, must choose one of the following, shared by all the minions:
-Pistol
-Revolver
-Hand Crossbow
-Bow
-Crossbow
-Throwing Knife
-Throwing Knives (cone attack)
-Throwing Dagger (fancier looking)
-Shuriken
-Frag Grenade (AoE)

Minion Ranged:
-Shotgun (Buckshot)
-Sub-Machinegun (Gunner)
-Assault Rifle Burst (Assault)
-Flamethrower (Fire)
-Cryonic Rounds + Incendiary Rounds (Marksman)
-Chain Gun (Force)
-Frag Grenade (Grenade)
-Rocket Launcher (Rocket)
-Sonic Blast (Sonic)
-Tommygun (Gunner)
-Rikti Rifle (Rifleman/woman)
-Rikti Pistol (Blaster)
-Quantum Rifle (Quantum) (follows normal Quantum spawning rules)

Additionaly, may always select to have Brawl and/or Gun Butt.

I'm of two minds whether selecting only one power should drop the suffix altogether. Likely yes, since it's easier to name your chaingun-wielding troops somethingsomething Force than work around it if it's enforced.

Oh and, despite the misleading name, it should also be available to Lts and Bosses, but with reduced XP at higher levels.

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If your using an agent to gather resources in the past you will be displacing those existing resources from their initial use. All resources are finite, and if the agent is greatly disturbing the original resource distribution and competing against the native activities and inhabitants of the the Time Line, you will create enormous disruptions to the Time Line the agent would have come from. Even if Time was some-what elastic to allow for minor changes, at some point it would be stressed passed the point of improbability and create a paradox, at which point you've killed your original Time Travel program.

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No, you're harvesting resources in your own present to send agents into the past. You can direct all of them to the same time, forever (for low values of 'forever').

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I'm reminded of that Shoryuken animation... How did that work, again?

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In early I10, Granite Armor removed your weapons even when drawn. Stone/Dual Blades performing Vengeful Strike in Granite Armor.

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I know your trying to say something. I have no idea from this what that is, if it was anything at all.

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Allow me to rephrase. Let's say it takes five years' worth of gathering resources to send an agent into the past. So what? We've got hundreds of years. Lots of time to send agent after agent after agent to now.

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had a woman slam into the side of my 67 custom 500(4 door galaxy like on the andy griffith show) and bent my front fender in, but totaled her car! I replaced my fender and head lights, her car when to the junk yard.


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Remind me again, what would happen if either car was to hit a pedestrian?

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2. What exactly happened to the Ghost Ship Moraine? Was it sabotaged, did it crash, or did some other fate befall it?


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There's clues of it being sunk by Adamastor.

What's the political positions of Dr. Aeon, Marshall Brass and Olivia Darque? There's conflicting information...

"You can only travel X years safely."

"Every time somebody discovers time travel it ends up with a chronal cataclysm that makes it impossible to travel to before it."

"You are about to destroy the human race, making the point moot."

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And why would time travel become common place? It it takes the resources of a national program or major corporation to actually build and run a time travel program (much like a space program), then even if it was possible it would still be highly restricted.

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So it takes the resources of a program.

Then again, ten years later.

Twenty years after that, a different program.

The next five years are prosperous so three different programs get started.

Repeat ad infinitum, until humanity explodes. It's commonplace because every single one of those programs could send people to the same point in time

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That's why I set up my own hospital in my base. My characters are not beholden to Arachnos no matter how much the game acts as if they are.

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You mean the base you registered with an Arachnos Arbiter, and pay regular rent for? The one tapped into Arachnos' mediport?

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Plus, I've ignored police drones dozens of times when they were trying to wipe me out. I don't see how arbiter drones are any scarier.

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That'd be because putting City Guard type mobs as normal ones shouldn't have ever happened. Try the same in Warburg or the RV (don't remember if they spawn there) and compare results.

Bat'Zul gains +regen in lava.

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After a certain point the game makes a point that when you 'succeed' you only succeed at hurting bad people, or good people come on and, beyond your control, fix what you did. You don't win. You can't win.

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Isn't that coincidentally the point where you succeeding would be a major blow to the status quo?

;struggle
;twitch
;getup (and fail)

I can get behind this!

I'd rather avoid that particular terminology. It makes it sound like the contact in question serves you, you alone, and every six hundred you's who talked to him in the past hour.

Now, I agree, there should be more 'fixer' type contacts.

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Of course, it's because you don't want Arachnos to be mad at you (oh no, what are they going to do? Shoot at me even more?)

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Revoke your Destined One status, medical insurance, and annihilate you the next time you get within 80' of an Arbiter Drone, possibly deleting the character for good measure.

Look at it from the contacts' perspective. Suddenly the Isles are chock-full of ultimately expendable superpowered villains who are given leave by Recluse to do things they wouldn't get away with themselves. It's the perfect opportunity to further their own schemes. A Destined One that amassess too much personal power would be a threat to Arachnos anyway.

I think I found it. Here.

"The Nemesis Staff generates immense power, though, like all Nemesis' creations, it is based on steam technology."

Which goes back to my Flanderization/RunningTheAsylum theory.

[edit]More here.

"Most engineers would agree that steam technology is hopelessly out of date, but not Nemesis. Truly, it is amazing how he has adapted such an old technology to modern warfare."

Eva: Hang on.

I think we've managed to start agreeing and nobody told us. My point is that it's entirely feasible that a Sufficiently Advanced Roboticist could make a robot capable of either A: infiltrating a mindlinked society or B: mimicking an invader on said society.

[edit] The post you quoted was my attempt to explain the Lost cry of "Aberrant thought patterns!" without making the Rikti capable of mind-reading.

Yet you didn't, partly because characters with that particular name aren't all that common in the vast sea of characters period.

End of the (my) line, it's not perfect, but it's the best way to do it. We now return you to the regularly scheulded awesome.

Love of the game if you ask me.

As for the aberrant thought patterns, it could be something as simple as the telepathic equivalent of "he looks funny!" or "his accent is wrong!". Just because your thoughts 'feel' wrong doesn't mean they have to be able to read them.

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Well, according to the canon, Nemesis did find a way to figure it out. And if someone says that he couldn't have figured out a way to mimic Rikti telepathy because he uses steam, I am going to flip out.

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Must... resist... temptation...

And, somehow I get the impression Rikti equipement is made to be psi-receptive, so those drones and whatnot are controlled by thought.

As opposed to $Name, which only ever works if your hero just so happens to be A: teen B: from the future C: interested in joining the Teen Phalanx?

My point stands.

I wouldn't call it a hive mind. More of a mind web. Many separate minds in constant contact. Internet 2.0.

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Actually, you know what? Someone show me proof that Nemesis Automatons are actually even steam powered. I've never read anywhere that they are. As far as I know only the Warhulks, Fake Nemeses, and Jaegers are steam powered, in addition to the rifles and such.

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My point precisely.

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Exactly. It doesn't make sense. Comic book logic says telepathy doesn't work on robots. CoH says psi attacks are largely ineffective against robots. The Rikti seem to have a lot of experience using telepathy, wouldn't they notice something odd if they can read some of the humans' minds and then bam, they're attacked by someone who either has no thoughts, or who's thinking "0001010010101?"

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...unless said robot was designed specifically to be psi-reactive by someone who knows what he's doing.

Time travel vs. Time travel

Ahem. Back to the subject on hand.

I believe there might have been some Flanderization, to steal the Trope term. We know that Nemesis uses Steam technology. But we don't know that he uses just Steam technology.

Consider this for a moment. This is a man who is capable of creating machines that:
-Fool telepaths (Rikti Automatons)
-Fool a hive mind (Bane Spider Automatons)
-Mimic any powerset in the game, including magic or mutant origin ones (Automatic Villainy)
-Mimic powers of a divine origin. (Statesman Automaton)

To me, that suggests Nemesis isn't at all adverse to using technology beyond mere steam. Why amke steam-powered robots then? Personally, I believe Nemesis reasoning is simply a combination of "To show that I can" and "I like steam". He strikes me as a bit of a insufferable genius. He's brilliant, and feels the constant need to show off.

I think most of the offenses are a combination of Flanderization and Running The Asylum - starting around the time of I6, with the introduction of Nemesis salvage. Consider. The first automatons, with their artificial lines are office workers. But later on (I7) you have Bane Spiders spouting lines that would have them found out immediately...