Thunderforce

I hope this doesn't mean a fresh upsurge in join-my-SG spam.

If it does, perhaps those Praetorians should instead get a Patrol XP style bonus to earned prestige until 100,000 has been earned? That would give very limited benefit to "dockpressing" someone who left shortly afterwards.

I unselected "Enable Hotkeys" in atitray (third-party replacement for the hippo-sized Catalyst Control Centre) which completely removed the problem, although I don't believe atitray's hotkeys are implemented with the ATI Hotkey Poller (whose service has always been disabled on my machine.) From posts elsewhere it seems pretty much anything that watches the keyboard constantly might cause this problem. However, AutoHotkey does not...

That way lies double boxing, US accounts, and the situation where your highest numbered veteran badge is under 50 but the number is still higher than your highest toon level.

Hi, Crayons. Think we may have met. :-)

Hm, I didn't know that - not having a dual-core, it's not been relevant. I'd still like to try on a dual-core CPU, but apparently if you want a socket 939 CPU these days you take what you can get. :-)

The answer is "an Athlon FX-53". With the old 1.8GHz CPU, sound normal; 29.5 average, 3.0 minimum. 22050Hz sound, 47.9 average, 11.6 minimum. With an FX-53, sound normal; 36.5 average, 4.5 minimum. 22050Hz sound, 52.4 average, 18.3 minimum (!).

I wish I could scare up one of the dual-core socket 939 Althons and try with -renderthread 1.

... which doesn't work. My hope was there would be one or two explodey sounds that would be played a lot and could be replaced with 11025 Hz oggs, but it seems like the slowdown is pretty well proportionate to the fraction of the sounds that have been replaced.

Another thing that does not work is putting all the data/sound/Ogg directory on a RAM disc. Yes, I have enough memory that that isn't obviously boneheaded.

I don't either (between your runs 2 and 3), but then you have considerably more CPU than I do and my theory is that Ogg decoding itself makes CoH slow - the effect vanishes with sound off and decreases if I reencode the Oggs at 22050 Hz and a lower bitrate.

Anyone with a slow machine wanna try it - or can you radically underclock your machine somehow?

When I get home next I'm going to use that Perl script to replace chunks of the sound with the reencodes to see what happens...

Er... I doubt it could be done to _every_ EB, but before second builds I soloed a few Elite Bosses with a one-attack Empath by the time-honoured method of going away and gaining a level or two. With second builds and the ability to -1 enemies straight off the bat, I should think it is far easier now. Certainly far easier than getting the heal badges on a scrapper, and I think I am totally confident that there is no AT/powerset combination that would find it impossible to get _a_ badge for soloing an EB.

Albeit one that has largely abandoned the early design with forced teaming (lieutified bosses, EBified AVs, no more simultaneous glowie missions, you don't have to go to Perez and hunt 10 CoT at level tiny, etc) for one that is perfectly happy to take your money if you want to solo.

There's badges in the game for all kinds of random junk, like spending 1,000 AE tickets on a badge. I really can't understand the hostility to the idea of having a few for things done solo.

Unless, of course, people vendor them when the price fluctuates down, which (obviously) they do.

The market mechanics aren't set in stone; they could presumably be changed to make life more convenient for people who buy stuff to use and sell stuff to get rid of it.

For example. a restriction on reselling of goods that have already passed through the market or an interplayer trade would make being a marketer considerably more difficult. For clarity, I'm not saying I think that's a good idea; the ramifications are certainly not obvious.

I am not convinced. My answer to the salvage issue is to run a personal SG base for storage, and buy in (or ticket-roll) salvage only when I need it. With nine racks of common salvage, I could accomodate 7 1/2 of each salvage item; I always sell what I have most of, so if I am not playing exclusively in one tier and crafting in another, I approach something like that situation.

I've only ever found myself buying or rolling more than a very small quantity of salvage when doing Invention badges - and that doesn't represent a net shortfall of production over consumption, it just means that if I expect on average to have 7 1/2 Masterwork Weapons and go for a badge that needs 8-9, it's obvious that I don't necessarily have enough in store.

Furthermore I have sold batches of surplus luck charms, etc.

As far as I can make out, there is no tier where production does not exceed ordinary consumption. I typically make and slot a plain IO as soon as I get a slot, replace it with a set IO as soon as a recipe bid fills, replace IOs every 5 levels on the low side of the elbow in the effectiveness curve, so I am getting through plenty of salvage. Furthermore I suspect if I could have an infinite amount of storage I'd have enough left over to do Field Crafter (and, of course, everyone does not do Field Crafter).

So... no, I disagree. I think in all tiers drops exceed usage by a considerable margin. I think they do so _more_ in the later tiers, but I think the greater price fluctuations are more down to inefficiency; new players vendor low-tier salvage not knowing if it has value, players can hold less salvage and so they don't have it when they want it, etc.

It's a lot easier now you can -1 the enemies, but regardless - sure, people mostly do them solo, but that's not the same as badges that can only be soloed.

Indeed, if anyone happened to be wanting the full set at the same time I did, I'd much rather do them with a duo. Less soul-destroying.

The OP presumably is asking why there are no badges _specifically_ for solo play, in the way that the TF badges and "Among Friends" and the PvP pentad badges (are there any?) are specific to team play.

It's not a bad idea. For example, a badge for defeating your first EB solo would be a nice one to have.

This extends even to soloing. Unlike in a real roleplaying game, what your character can _do_ is game-mechanically constrained. Accept that mission to rescue so-and-so's dog, and for all that you might like to roleplay the blackest hearted of rogues who would flip a coin to decide between selling the dog to a kebab shop and personally making it into gloves, you're going to rescue the dog.

You could, and it would be fair comment (as would the observation that PvP was initially a poor thematic fit with the hero-only game), but that doesn't really detract from the previous poster's observation that CoX shows you don't need successful PvP for a successful game.

This seems overly tinfoil hatted. A simpler explanation is that if doing X seems like it will bring in less money than doing Y, Y gets done.

I would love to see all the misplaced apostrophes and other typos that litter the game fixed. Will it get addressed systematically, as opposed to War Witch hitting a few here and there? No; 80% of the player base think "you" is spelled with one letter. What do they care?

What on earth would be the point of reverting to the situation where Inventions _most_ made PvP the province of a select few with very high boredom thresholds? It is no coincidence, in my view, that PvP participation was highest before IOs were introduced, when there was no possibility of grinding for hours for a game mechanical advantage. Sure, most of that select few flounced out, but the operative word is "few" there.

I suspect CoX PvP is doomed, but if I were trying to rescue it I'd go the other way. Introduce a zone, or alter (or double-instance) an existing zone, where you automatically switch to a third build (and away from that build on leaving). Plain IOs to slot in that build are free. Maybe plain double-aspect IOs, but with no effectiveness bonus for being double-aspect, just a way to slot half a slot's End Redux or whatever. Respecs for that build are unlimited. Any two players can have any build they please; the outcome of a match can depend on playing skill not tolerance for tedium.

For over a year and four subsequent issues.

"Only the devs know so it must be how I guess it is." A familiar tune.

You're missing the point, though. When PVP was turned off for bases, they were not just abandoned; another change was made that promoted the use of bases. This is an undeniable fact. Therefore bases are not seen as pointless without the use of PVP.

Who do you suppose is unaware of these facts?

Er... no, you aren't. It's not like there's a limited supply of missions! Defeat 100 mobs in 1 mission or defeat 100 mobs in 10 missions; the expected drops are the same, and so is the amount of time you spend fighting. You spend more time travelling (but that's not such a big deal these days) but you get 10 mission-complete rewards instead of one. There's not much in it.

I didn't find I had to - with even a little thought about sale prices, the money comes in faster than bidding on sensible IOs can use it up. And certainly I won't spend time to build up cash on any other toon - I'll transfer a chunk across and have done with it.

I never really mind too much about that anyway. Since running no-XP came in, I've run every TF no-XP, for example.