Tahquitz

It bugs me that somebody KNOWS, and just can't talk about it right now. (Damned NDA's.) That's the only reason I was disappointed about not getting into this CB. Personally, the rest of the CB's later for the loyalty program I can happily pass up now, I was interested in Ultra Mode more than anything else. But I digress...

I see farming as "I need Arcane Salvage for a recipe, I do a mission that has the salvage, I repeat it until I get the drop, everything else is sold unless I need it." Once I have the piece I need, I stop. But that is more accurately called "camping" in most games, except that in CoH I can't wait for respawns. Once I get the item, or verify that there's nothing left to kill, I stop or repeat the mission to get all the mobs back. The XP or Influence I get from the mission is none of my concern, which is why I play AE missions lately... tickets are very useful as long as it's not common salvage.

Some players don't see a distinction between Farming or Exploits. I'm not one of them: Personally, I see it as "It's your $15." GM's and Dev's warned you that missions that are questionable in raising your risk/reward ratio may get you banned. If you want to risk it, fine, but know there is ample warning out there about this behavior and if you're caught, I'm not going to comfort or condemn you.

Preaching about this to folks is a waste of my money and time, so I don't. (As to why I'm writing this at all, I'm just sharing my perspective... Haven't read anything sounding like it in this thread, so I thought I'd pipe in.)

If you can find memory that's cheaper but rated at a faster speed, remember that you can use it if it's the same type.

Important to remember as hardware retailers shore up on selling older DDR2 memory DIMMs that aren't selling as much. My 533Mhz box two years ago needed more memory, Newegg sold it but ran out of stock, and no one carried the sticks. I ended up giving up and partaking at a local sale in a Staples and put in 667 Mhz instead. It worked out well, and I ended up $30 cheaper than the 533Mhz price on Newegg (which was still out of stock).

Just remember the DDR2/DDR3/SODIMM jazz can't be substituted: if you get DDR3 or a DDR2 SODIMM (For laptops) when you need a DDR2 DIMM for a desktop, that's a no go. (I bought a SODIMM instead of a DIMM by accident before, I know they're shorter, I still brainfarted until a day later when I looked at the package. It happens.)

Particularly if that card is IGP (Integrated Graphics). Does it say if it's in-board, or is this a separate card you're looking at? Easiest way to tell is the VGA Plug: if it's in the lateral slots, it's a card, if it's in the big block with a jumble of other ports near the USB, Network and Audio plugs, it's in-board. (Laptops: look at the sticker on the wristrest. You can't tell otherwise without prying into the Control Panel.)

NO IGP PRODUCT will run Ultra Mode. It's doubtful it'll leave the "Performance" slider at have better than 30 FPS.

However, keep in mind that if this is a laptop that has Radeon HD 3200, this shouldn't dissuade you from purchasing the machine if you're thinking about it: gaming laptops that CAN run ultra mode are really expensive... $1,000 and up. Laptops that can play City of Heroes acceptably or well at all are not as expensive ($600-800, $500 if you're lucky, $400 if you can settle for a netbook). If you want to play on the road, this is still a good way to do it; it's at least worth getting, compared to a laptop that doesn't have a Radeon or GeForce card which will not run COH at all.

For your latter example, I take it you're not using /powexec_name for a particular reason, that whatever is in Tray "0" Power slot 10 executes regardless of what it is?

Otherwise, I'd suggest to bind separate powers to separate keys (/bind e powexec_name "Sprint", and map them to different buttons) as a possible workaround, but if you like rolling the active tray per situation (choose a tray, all buttons execute the same tray positions every time regardless of power), that woundn't do you any good.

That does strike me as odd, though. Haven't tried this myself, I'll noodle around with it tomorrow.

Nothing but smiles here. Grats Ironsmiter!

What the heck is a Beckett?

Regardless, congrats ParStu!

Yeah, I suck too. After an 8 month absence, all of my friends are purpled out and missions with me in them feel like I'm more of a charity case than a necessary part of the team.

I find myself soloing a lot too.

Weird, isn't it?

I wish I knew what the heck did that.

Grats, Nakayama! Great news!

1. Try dropping system process except for critical ones. See if that helps.

Advice from NCSoft:

Please disable all startup items to make sure that no background programs or processes are causing this problem. To do this, click on the Start button, type MSCONFIG in the Search box and press Enter. You'll need to answer Yes or enter an admin password in User Account Control. This should open the System Configuration Utility. Click on the Startup tab and make sure that ALL entries listed are unchecked. Then click on the Services tab. Check the box to Hide All Microsoft Services and then click on Disable All. Once that is done, clicking either OK or Apply should prompt you to restart your computer, which you should do before attempting to play the game again. Do not start any other programs and then try the game again.

See how it works then and let us know.

To reverse this, follow the same instructions and when you get to the Services tab, click "Enable All", Click "OK" at the bottom, then reboot when it prompts you again.

2. Check your Router's port addresses. Again, from NCSoft:

All of these ports should be open:
TCP 2104
TCP 2106
UDP 7000-7100

One of the following ports should be open:
TCP 6994 or TCP 13094 or TCP 23094

Your Cable Provider will have to help you with this information and configuring your router which may consist of entering a special address (like 192.168.X.X where the X's are replaced with address numbers) into your browser and a username/password to get to it to open these ports. Arris sells their routers directly to cable providers and offers no customer (or in your case, end-user) support for their products. If you replace your router, you'll need to repeat these directions, so be sure to write them down in case you get the same router again.

If it works, it'll run around 20-30 FPS (fortunately COH is an older title... compared to Aion the requirements are far less), but don't dare hop blindly into a Rikti Invasion or Mothership Raid, let alone push the quality slider past "Performance" unless you want a crash to occur. Even on performance, I'd turn shading down to Low w/World Bumpmaps, cut world/char. textures down to Medium or less, and reduce the particle count to 25000 or less (but not below 1000... you'd like to see your own powers, right?)

And that's the best case: newer IGP's that come out may have the same limitations as laptops when it comes to driver support. I put a Zotac GeForce 9300 into a low profile PC I built for a friend, and installed CoH temporarily: 32 FPS on average, 22 when it's in a busy area or CoV, figured everything was gravy, so I deleted CoH and put in WoW (but I couldn't test it past the login, since I don't have an account and didn't feel like putting in for a trial.) He got on average 14 FPS or less with the manufacturer driver peppered with a BSOD every 45 minutes when in game, and what's more, the Forceware drivers did even worse. Ran Windows Vista perfectly fine with Aero support, just ate it on full DirectX games.

It did work out in the end, NVidia advised me to contact Zotac for an updated driver, and I had to wait until Zotac made an update 6 weeks later. But I got lucky. My friend could have easily asked for his money back anytime, and I'd be left with a tiny PC I didn't need or could be able to upgrade easily. (Low profile boxes don't like the newer full-size cards.)

If you found a motherboard with AGP/PCI-Express, the PCI-Express slot most likely isn't PCI-Express 2.0, which would be a bottleneck as well if you want the Radeon HD 5800 cards later. I tried to do the same three years ago: build a AGP system around faster memory and SATA to later gut the parts and put it into a faster motherboard with PCI-E. Then a recession happened and I kinda forgot the plan.

So, I guess my point would be two-fold:

-- AGP is dead. Let it go with your new machine. PCI-Express 2.0/2.1 cards with thank you. (PCI-Ex 3.0 comes out this year too.)
-- A graphics card is better than IGP any day, even if it's just to hold you over until something better comes along.

$35 gets this, it's the closest match to what you have now. It's not an upgrade I'm afraid, it's actually 5% slower than your 6800XT, but for the price, it makes a decent backup card should a future card overheat and fry itself: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-469-_-Product

You could go cheaper, but if you pay less than $25, IGP may make a better answer (GeForce 6200 cards are still being made. New in box. Hell if I know why.)

Yeah... laptop power technology hasn't changed all that much in the last 10 years I'm afraid.

Good luck with your studies!

I've gotten that a few times myself, and when it happens, I have no idea how to fix it since it just decides to start working after closing/retrying it frequently. (Usually happens for me about twice a year or so.)

I wish I had better info, other than "close and retry it, if it doesn't work, try again in a couple of hours".

I play on a netbook, and I've been keeping up with changes. If you can stand to wait, Ion2 Netbooks from Lenovo (C200), ASUS (Eee 1201PN), and Acer Aspire One will arrive in the next two months. Unfortunately, without the machine in front of me, I can't really size it up. But there is info on them. As a comparison factor, the Ion Netbooks (GeForce 9400M) are speed-wise as capable as a Ion2 (GeForce G305, around 400 MHz) but for some models, the Ion2 may be better depending on the machine used. 12" netbooks will use a more powerful chip equivalent to GeForce G310, desktop/nettop versions will use the full 500 or so MHz since power restrictions are not an issue. Initial reports have the 10" Atom Netbooks based on Ion 2 benchmarking at the same level as an Ion 1 netbook.

The big reason to consider these at all for netbooks is that Ion 2 netbooks use the new Atom processors that are dual-core (Pine Trail) and closer to 2.0 Ghz without sacrificing battery power. For gaming, you'll be clinging for dear life to your DC Adaptor regardless, since to get the 6+ promised hours of use your netbook will run on Power Conservation which will cut processor power and turn graphics features down or off. It runs at it's specifications only when plugged in and set to High Performance. Regardless, Multithreaded/Multicore support, more memory, and better graphics may make netbooks very desirable for entry-level CoH or in your case, backup play or on the road use.

These netbooks are around where the GeForce Go 6000 series or ATI Mobility Radeon X1800 series were a few years back... same fill rates, but with better shaders, DirectX/OpenGL support and unlike their predecessors, contains stream processors (at most, 16... again, not a great performance.) Granted, it will perform... at low to medium settings at best pushing 20-30 fps with everything turned down, the power settings on full performance and on a good internet connection. If you want better performance than that, this isn't going to go well for you.

Curious to what you're referring to as encumberance. If weight, can't argue that, lighter is better, and honestly Ion1 or Ion2 won't make enough of a difference for you to consider waiting for if a 12" netbook is too big. Cost, the larger netbooks do cost more than the smaller ones. Power use/consumption... well, for gaming, netbooks get hot and power use is equivalent to running a gaming console. The magic of a netbook isn't a powerful battery, it's "power-miser"ing circuits which cut performance to save all of that energy. When playing games, unfortunately, all of those circuits will be ran at full blast. If you try to run CoH on a battery, it'll drain it like crazy.

Any netbook that doesn't use NVidia Ion, TexasJustice is absolutely right. On Intel GMA, my Mom's netbook (Eee PC 901) crashes after server selection. If it costs less than $350, odds are it won't have NVidia Ion installed, and will not even run City of Heroes at all. On my netbook (Gateway LT3101u), it uses Radeon X1270, which barely cranks out 15-20 FPS in enclosed areas and falls to 12 FPS in open-sky areas. (Gateway claims my netbook is really a Subnotebook. AMD decided from the start to not take part of anything "netbook" due to low margins and high return rates reported from manufacturers.) I can play City of Heroes on it, as it's my only option since my PC died, but I certainly don't recommend it for that use. (I don't recommend anything that can't go over 20 FPS regularly on the lowest settings.)

But I have tried the NVidia Ion: my nephew's netbook, HP Mini 311, does have it, and runs City of Villains in the Mercy Island area around 22 FPS once High Performance is turned on in Windows 7. In Atlas Park, it averages around 28 FPS.

Ones with Stories attached:

-- Zero dB Lv. 24 Psi/Sonic Blaster - Named him 0dB initially, people kept calling O.D.B. from Wu Tang, really annoying.
-- Falcon Darovaughn Lv. 21 Elec/Energy Blaster - Left the SG he was made for, regretted deleting him, he was turning out so well, but I was running out of slots and too broke to pay for more (2nd Powerset Proliferation came down at the time).
-- Twilight Wing Lv. 21 Dark/Kin Defender - came out when Twilight hit theaters and I had no idea what the heck it was... folks kept calling my toon Bella and I didn't get it. Then like most of my defenders, I deleted her anyway.
-- Louie (Picture all sliders to full on Humonguous and made to look like a babyfaced overgrown child) Invuln./SS Lv. 8 Tanker
-- Bread, Soda, Pants? Lv. 8 Dark/Kin Defender - Fine, I was drunk when I made this one.
-- Mary Burns Lv. 2 Fire/Fire Blaster - First toon, went screwing around with the char. creator, didn't realize that this set my global to @Mary Burns as well. Whoops. Still, didn't get blasting just yet, so I deleted it.
-- Norman Lear Lv. 45 Screenwriter (Had to throw it in.)

As you can see, my tipping point is around Level 24. Past that point, I can't bear to delete them even if I'm not happy with how they turned out.

and my namesake...
-- Original Tahquitz Lv. 4 Broadsword/Regen Scrapper - Had no patience for melee at the time.
-- Extra Crispy Tahquitz Lv. 2 Fire/Stone Tanker - Same problem, I didn't figure out tanks weren't ranged just yet.
-- Current Incarnation: Lv. 50 Ice/Fire Scrapper... hey, it's my first 50. Fire Manipulation was a terrible choice, but when I figured out the setup of the game, I was already at 35, so like Doc Brown on Back to the Future, "I figured, what the hell?"

I've deleted far more in Villlains (I'm on #26 right now), so I won't bother listing them since I still don't play in Villains unless completely bored.

Welcome... pass the ammunition and load the beer!

(Hmmm... odd brass taste in my mouth.) Kif, fire the waiter!

Batz! Hai!