Soulwind

I admit it. It's me.

I'm spending hours and hours every day churning out "underpriced" common IOs.

What's more, I'm doing it to specifically p***-off Knightie there.

Thanks Frost.

I knew it was supposed to fix something, and I hadn't heard of the invisible cursor thing, so I'd assumed it was the jumping cursor.

Oh well, it's annoying for sure, but I guess we'll just have to live with it - and be more careful while slotting.

I know I'm probably just being dense, but how do you set the "compatible cursors" option?

My wife's new machine is using an ATI card and it's being hit with the 'jump 2 inches to the left' bug on the enhancement screens. I've heard that the compatible cursors option will fix that, but I can't find any setting to turn that on.

I've searched every option under both general game settings and graphics/audio settings tabs and can't find anything. I could of sworn I'd seen it as a regular on/off toggle before, but I'm not seeing it now.

Great Job. Reminds me of my SS/INV tank, Ordinary Joe, who was just a regular paragon citizen who one day realized that as long as you don't wear any spandex, you are totally indestructible...

One error though. Isn't Frostfire an (the?) Outcast's boss and not the Hellions?

^^^ this.

Also before striking out on your own, remember that any prestige you earn while in a super group belongs to the super group. You won't take it with you. And if you're not in a super group you won't earn prestige at all (so no leaving and "building up a nest egg" before starting your own SG . . at least as far as prestige goes).

Of course you could leave, establish your own SG and then work on building it's prestige up before you try to do any recruiting . . .

If you like the SG name you're in now, and it's got a nice little bank of prestige and/or a reasonable base, then it's probably better to just stay and see if you eventually inherit it (if everyone has really abandoned it).

But there's certainly nothing wrong, or even hard, about building up a one-man SG.

And as far as the "free smallest sized - one-man supergroup base" goes, it still exists.

You get the smallest base plot for free and *so long as you don't put any storage devices in*, there's no rent either.

Rent for bases is now determined by how many storage bins you have. And even with a few storage bins, it's exceptionally easy to pay base upkeep even with a one-man SG. I've been doing it for years.

I've been running "Western Union" over on Pinnacle since early I4 days.

We're all either old west themed, or are some kind of pun on a western theme name.

I like your backstory, but tbh there's a lot of cowboy sg's out there

I focused more on Ranged positional rather than S/L defense (using thunderstrikes and such). It's a bit different than yours (and it's not softcapped) but I like where he ended up.

Overall, I ended up with:
14.4% Def (s/l)
12.6% Def (f/c)
35.1% Def (e/n)
10.7% Def (psionic)

14.4% Def (melee)
34.1% Def (ranged)
14.4% Def (aoe)

51.8% Resistance (smashing)
49.3% Resistance (lethal)

[this is after taking the new numbers for BotZ into account]

It hurts a little. It will affect many, many of my toons to one extent or another.

It's not really that huge of a deal though, unless you've got one of those really strange builds that shoehorned in 5 different travel powers to stack it up.

If you're using 1 set:
you lose 1.875% ranged defense and 1.25% aoe defense.

Using 2 sets (probably most common for any non-softcapped-blaster build):
you lose 3.75% ranged and 2.5% aoe

Painful? Somewhat. Crippling? No.

Now, if you've gone and stacked it up 5 times, THEN it's gonna hurt:
-9.375% ranged and -6.25% aoe

But, with some reshuffling it can be mostly overcome (especially since you won't need 5 travel powers anymore and can go get something else like maneuvers or weave).

----

tl;dr; Yep, it hurts...some. Yep, it kind of stinks. But it's certainly not un-expected. I'd doubt there are very many, if any, min-max types out there who didn't know these were too good to last.

Castle,

I doubt it's easily done, so it might not be in consideration, but what about the salvage requirements for these IOs?

BotZ are the only IOs (other than purples and a couple of the very best procs) that require multiple pieces of VERY expensive, rare, salvage to create for each IO.

While I certainly agree that the set bonuses are currently too good, I had always just considered the high merit costs and high salvage requirements as part of the balancing factor for how good the set bonuses were, but with those being slashed....

I think in the hero-con videos there's a quick shot of the Praetorian Clockwork costume, but that's the only shot of any of the new costume items that I remember seeing anywhere.

I would seriously doubt there's been any direct coding to support these things. However, since it appears (from my quick look at the website) to be mostly driven from the "3d drivers" and hardware - and not specifically from the game software, it might work....

(I'm getting that from the big list of games they say are already compatible - I'm pretty certain that all of those games haven't been specifically patched to support these goggles)

Frankly though, do you really want to spend 200 bucks (or more if you don't have one of the "3d ready display monitors") for [what is most likely] a rather lame 3d effect?

I don't know, maybe they are the coolest things ever. I'd have to see them operating in real life personally before I'd believe it though. To me they just look like a migraine waiting to happen.

While not exactly the same, the 'Wild Cards' series of books does present a possible 'supers in real world' view.

I also enjoyed the logic/reasoning behind the super-powers that Wild Cards uses.
(everything, in one way or another, eventually breaks down to a form of psionic ability)

Which is why the super-gadgets that some Aces make aren't being mass produced...they simply don't really work for anyone else.

That's always been one of my peeves with superhero worlds. Why isn't everyone flying around with thier micro-atomic powered anti-gravity boots? Why hasn't Nike signed an exclusive deal for the rights and mass produced them?

Hopefully somebody can help.

I've just installed (fresh - new HD and everything) Windows 7 64-bit on the new machine.

It's an I7-930, 6gb Ram, ATI 5870, Win 7 Premium Home 64 bit

I've got the game shortcut marked for "run as administrator" and no compatibility mode.

In-game, everything seems OK until I try to either chat (in any channel, even local) or to join a team. Then things just hang for 10-20 seconds, once everything starts responding again, then things seem OK until I try to chat again.

Any ideas?

Personally, I view Cinders the same way I view all of the AoE controller holds since the massive hold nerf.

As a purely situational " oh **** " power.

I rely on my single target controls (and flashfires of course) and just use the AoE's when things go bad.

I'll usually just 3 slot them (unless I'm looking for set bonuses) with acc/hold, acc, hold and leave it at that.

--

Overall, it's an OK power. Not great, but unless you've got something better in mind to replace it . . .

I don't know, every time I see that artwork all I can think of is:

Gee, when did Cap start undergoing Mitosis?

I swear it looks like a duplicate/clone is pulling itself out of him and the head just hasn't popped free yet.

My Human-Form-Only warshade was one of the Council captives used to house the weakened Nictus (ala one of the early arcs) where something had gone wrong.

When the Nictus attempted to possess him, he fought back. Rather than being able to expel the Nictus though, he somehow wiped out the Nictus personality matrix leaving him untouched mentally, but with full Nictus powers.

I rp him as working with the warshades, but that they are rather frightened of him as he's a full human without any of the loyalties or memories of the Kheldian race.

1000w power supply is more than sufficient for that rig. That doesn't mean the ps isn't going bad on you though.

Couple of things to check before you disassemble the whole machine.

1) Have you cleaned all your heatsinks/dusted the interior lately? Fuzz-bunnies and computers don't mix well.

2) You listed your GPU temps, how about your CPU though? If your cpu cooler has worked it's way loose or the fans are having troubles, that could cause an intermittant heat-fail.

3) Make sure all your capacitors look OK (on both MB and Video card if you can see them).

4) Double check all of your connections between the power supply and the components. Be sure to check the mb main connector and all the fan pins to make sure none have come partially off.

5) Try running with the case open so you can easily check and make sure all fans are spinning and aren't clogged with gunk.

6) Check your CPU cooler and Power Supply as well to make sure they clean and venting properly.

7) You can look at getting one of the various software monitors to track your utilization/heat levels/and voltages in real-time.

8) If you're the electrical type, check the actual output of your PS to make sure it's operating within specs. If you're not, DON'T mess with it unless/until you learn how to do so correctly (without ruining your PS or yourself via electrocution).

Question: did you originally load your chipset drivers from XP?

My motherboard (and the last 3 other mb's I've used) all came with thier own
driver disks for the chipset.

If you know what motherboard and chipset you're using, you can probably just get
the drivers directly from them. I know gigabyte and asus make thier chipset drivers available for download.