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Used tactically? In what way?
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Very easily if you think about it and work the numbers.
e.g.
If your base consists of 5 functional rooms (control, power, vault, medical, workshop) thats 5 possible doorways that you can start a raid in. Each one gives an instant strike point to an expensive peice of equipment.
Now add 6 of the smallest decorative rooms and you could get a layout like
D-D-D
|~|~|
D-D-D-M-W
~~~~~~~~|
~~~~~~~~C
~~~~~~~~|
~~~~~~~~P
~~~~~~~~|
~~~~~~~~V
~~~~~~~~|
~~~~~~~~E
So there are far more doorways leading to decorative rooms than to functional rooms. Also if someone appears in the decorative rooms they have to go into a choke point to get to anything worth destroying or capturing. Any vault room only has a 2 in 13 chance of someone starting in a joining doorway. For the majority the attackers will be the other end of your base.
I remember back in the day people people praised CoH for having little to no end game grind and no loot.
How times change...
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Very easily if you think about it and work the numbers...
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Ah! It's a raid thing! Looking at it from a PvP perspective, I can see your point.
That explains why I didn't think of it, as we have no interest in raids. Our SG wants a place to roleplay, and do something with all this salvage we've got piling up in the back yard! 
Unfortunatly, it looks like the base system is designed solely to cater to very large SGs who want to do raids. That's a big shame, in my opinion.
Certainly in SWG builing a city (as a base is there) took months to do. Although the upside was eventually you appeared on world maps. Think it took us 6 months to completely build Elysium. And that was with about 60 of us.
wasnt a dig at u the pest, i dont think, it was adig at w hingers in general, i read a few things on here that i see coming up a lot of the time ithink when i posted that, i tend not to pick on 1 poster, and just generally go off about what have picked up on in athread wheter there is something to reply to or just things i think or have thought before.
a smaller sg in theory will hang about for loner as they are tighter, so its nice that they have an ongoing project other than makingloads of alts
i agree that most games have things to channel currency into, but here u dont need inf other than for alts or newbies in ur sg, so by choosing sgmode u are filtering to something useful, tbh as a lvl 40 odd character u shouldnt feel the pain of losing inf income, at 50, this shouldnt even be an issue other than for above reasons.
my toon is 50 and has been in sgmode since i6 launch, he has 60M inf and has given away as much over the last 8-9 months, so theres no shortage of inf abotu for sure.
Plight
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wasnt a dig at u the pest, i dont think
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Good to know!
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i agree that most games have things to channel currency into, but here u dont need inf other than for alts or newbies in ur sg, so by choosing sgmode u are filtering to something useful, tbh as a lvl 40 odd character u shouldnt feel the pain of losing inf income, at 50, this shouldnt even be an issue other than for above reasons.
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Again (and I know I'm saying this a lot recently!) I see your point, but all our SG are in the mid 30s. We still need influence for SOs and for the extra costume slot we'll be getting at 40 (OK, OK, so the costume is optional, but dammit, I like it! 
)
I think the pattern that's evolving here is that if you
1) have a SG of at least 40 players.
2) have a level 50 character
3) are interested in PvP
4) play for a good few hours per day, every day
then the base system is really great and works for you. And fair enough, I wouldn't try to take this away from those people because it will enable them to have fun. But if the above isn't true for you, then you can forget about it. I suspect this will be a case of "working as intended" in the developers eyes though, because all the recent changes seem to only really make the game better for people in the above categories.
Ho hum. To quote the mighty Bridger though, your mileage may vary. 
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my toon is 50 and has been in sgmode since i6 launch, he has 60M inf and has given away as much over the last 8-9 months, so theres no shortage of inf abotu for sure.
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You got to 50 before I6 so had stacks of inf. So did I. New players dont have that luxury, seeing as they stop gaining influence around level 35. Did you have enough influence on your very first run through of the game to see you to level 50 if you stopped gaining in your 40's? I sure as hell didn't.
The influence system was, to be frank, completely messed up. The higher lvl characters were very blatantly too rich. Now many main is 38th lvl - has 4.5m inf and has collected nearly 50k prestige for my SG. The truth of the matter is its very easy to earn large quantities of influence in a fairly short period of time. If I put my mind to it I can make well over 100,000 inf in an hour without breaking a sweat - enough for 2 lvl40 SOs (or there abouts).
In the same time I can make 4000-5000 prestige.
Now, my dilemma, what do I go for?
Personally, I love having to make that choice. I love the fact this toon will NEVER have more influence than he knows what to do with and I also love the fact that high lvl toons aren't going to be throwing inf about the place quite as much.
The bases will be an ongoing project for quite some time to come. We might not all get involve in the IoP raids, but then I'm not too fussed about that.
However, it should be a bit easier to get basic base functions running. This could have EASILY have been done by raising the 15k per member to 50k per member and the 300k limit to 1 million.
(\_/)
(O.O) Bunny: Our time is coming
(> <)
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my toon is 50 and has been in sgmode since i6 launch, he has 60M inf and has given away as much over the last 8-9 months, so theres no shortage of inf abotu for sure.
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You got to 50 before I6 so had stacks of inf. So did I. New players dont have that luxury, seeing as they stop gaining influence around level 35. Did you have enough influence on your very first run through of the game to see you to level 50 if you stopped gaining in your 40's? I sure as hell didn't.
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that depends what u mean by seeing myself to lvl 50? if you mean +3 SOs all the time then no, but at certain lvls i got a few forumites i was getting to know to give me a hand, and i remember those ppl when i see their alts, and i remember then when i meet a nice newbie, i throw em a few hundred k to see em on their way into the DOs. i shopped at 12, 17, 22, 27, 32, 37, 42, 47 and 50 only, as i had already been most of the way to 50 befrore my EU toons, this stood me in good stead, and from the 27 mark i had a full set of SOs with some help, and from then on with no help iirc.
now if u mean could i afford to play happily through without help, then yes i could, my lvl 23 ice ice dom is happily helping teams, with some TOs, some DOs and a few blank/expired slots and hasnt bought a single enhancement yet. sure he may be gimped vs a min maxed SOd dominator, but in teams hes ok, his biggest problem is aggroing too much even without SOs, with them im sure i would do far more dmg (not enough to save myself mind) and get more aggro.
anyways, its nice to see that inf is now something you have to really work for, the whole enh drop/inf system was a joke, and States admitted that they were not happy with the way the drop system worked out etc.
Plight
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Here's something you might like then:
Positron said:
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We have plans for personal bases (aka Hideouts or Player Apartments) to come in the near future. These won't be PvP playable maps, so there shouldn't be as many restrictions on what you can place where.
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Official thread on the US boards
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You know that would suit me fine. All I am really interested in is the decorative stuff. I like to play with base builders 
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I agree. Personal bases (or apartments) can improve rpg style.
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Yeah, I agree. This could boost the roleplaying ingame. Great I can't waint until they implement the apartmenst now
One thing. Please don't let it be something like Heroes get the clean and nice apartments and Villains the rat holes.
I don't mind living in a bad neighborhood as a villain, still I would make my apartment nice.
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I agree. Personal bases (or apartments) can improve rpg style.
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Personal quarters can also destroy RP communities. Most Neverwinter Nights servers with a pretence toward RP allowed player houses. Problem is/was, all the RP moves into the private houses and the community tends to devolve into cliques.
This in no way means I don't want individual houses, and they have been announced as something that Cryptic "are working on." Just don't hold your breath.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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I agree. Personal bases (or apartments) can improve rpg style.
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Personal quarters can also destroy RP communities. Most Neverwinter Nights servers with a pretence toward RP allowed player houses. Problem is/was, all the RP moves into the private houses and the community tends to devolve into cliques.
This in no way means I don't want individual houses, and they have been announced as something that Cryptic "are working on." Just don't hold your breath.
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But we are not talking about a very active RP game here. Even though I play on Union I don't see any RP at all (just saw it once or twice that people were roleplaying).
I think the Private Houses can only improve the RP for CoH/CoV.
I can sort of accept the high base cost etc. seen from a long term goal oriented point of view
.
What I'm having trouble with is the cost of bases encourage huge 50+ SGs and mass recruiting. It's hard to believe that all these mass recruiters are interested in getting ppl to join them for other things than to get prestig earning members, esp. when to get a base you need lots and lots of members. Not to mention that most mass recruiters all include the fact that they have/working on a base when they recruit.
It would be nice if they could scale the prize of bases and items in accordance with the size of the SG. So if your group was below say 30 members the prices were halved for example. I wouldn't mind if you could put in some restriction such as limiting the raid function etc.
But it would allow a small SG to have a functional base without having to recruit more ppl like crazy.
I just started an SG in CoV to which I naturally would like a small working base where members could craft salvage, use a telporter but mostly hang out. I'd would like to keep the group small but that won't be possible if I at the same time want a base. (of course since I don't like to broadcast to recruite, I'm not getting any members at all because every most players gets massrecruited around lvl 3)
I love the idea of small apparnments or hideouts for solo players or small SGs, provided it allowes the players to craft salvage etc. Otherwise it's just what most ppl or SGs got now. A single room were you can hang out but can't do anything in.
It's not actually that difficult with a bit of commitment for a small SG to get a functional base - without playing for any ridiculous amounts of time I've managed to collect 152k prestige since CoV went live.
So a six man SG on for 20 hours/week would ALREADY be at the point where they'd have a workbench and functioning telepad.
(\_/)
(O.O) Bunny: Our time is coming
(> <)
For those looking to build a solo-base in the mean time, would there be any benefit in setting up some sort of an unofficial support matrix?
I haven't played with the base builder since Beta so please let me know if the following assumptions are untrue :
1. An SG with one member does not have enough prestige to build 2nd room beside the portal room
2. You get a bonus for each of the first 15 members which cannot be taken off you if you have spent it before you kick them
(2.1 - if you then invite another 14 members you get the bonus again? that sounds too good to be true so I'll pretend I never thought it).
Say I want to start my own base for me and my alts. I log on and there are 15 members of the support matrix who log their alts on and I invite to join my new SG. I then spend all the inf building a couple of rooms and then kick all but one of the members. This guy gets invite rights. I then log all of my alts on one at a time and they get invites from the accomplice. I then log the leader back on and kick the accomplice. I have an SG with a multi-room base and all my alts can now work for prestige to decorate it.
This may only sound like a good idea to me because I have no actual in-game friends to help me get all my alts into one SG
first of all, if you get the bonus, and spend it, you keep the purchased items.
But when your member count drops below 15, you lose the 20k per member. Even into negative.
But other than that, your plan would work.
With a friend I've made a sg, with a decorative base.
Now that you have no ingame friends may put a damper on your ambition, though you could ask a random passer by to help you.
Often enough, they'll be willing to give you 30 minutes of their time. Though if they're allready in a SG, it's a bit doubtfull they will...
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
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I have no actual in-game friends
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I'll be your friend
I will help you out with this if you like, I have a few alts that aren't in my SG that will help. Is it CoV, or CoH you want to do this on, and which server?
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I'll be your friend
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Am I the only one who started craving a glass of KiaOra when they read that? It's too orangey for JDoggs, just for me and my crows!
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I will help you out with this if you like, I have a few alts that aren't in my SG that will help. Is it CoV, or CoH you want to do this on, and which server?
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Ideally Defiant on CoV or CoH but I have to get my alt to 10 in CoV. I may be on this evening and probably on thursday so if you're up for it drop a tell to :
CoH : Pizzazz / CoV : Wafflemaker, Malady, Bracken or Koshka
I'll be curious to see what the results are. Whatever happens, thanks for the offer!
Given that I'm responding to myself, clearly this is not that interesting a thread, but in case you are like me - a misanthropic sad case with a penchant for female alts and a burning desire to open a 1-room base, here's what I've learned :
If you broadcast, you will find someone not in an SG who's willing to help.
It's important that you promote the person who is assisting to the level within the SG that you want your Alts to have. You can't promote an offline member so you won't be able to do this later yourself. And they obviously have to have invite rights.
If you forget to get your helper to promote your alts, you can always set the base level rights to the same as the top level rights, but this will mean you can't invite others into the sg for any reason unless you are logged on as the leader - they will have full rights and your alts wont be able to promote them into a pre-prepared limited tier above base level. So now you can't have slaves to rake in the inf for you.
5 members will by you a functional room but not the stuff that goes into it. If it's window dressing cosmetic rooms you want, you'll need 8 members.
At the end of the day, you will probably not use the base at all - it would cost hundreds of millions of inf to get enough to have a functioning med-bay, workshop and/or teleporter and even an RP base with decorative rooms will cost a small fortune. It's more trouble than it's worth.
Well, with just the 15 members to get the 300k prestige (not inf) to start off, I've managed to make a 2 room base. Just eyedressing decoration, as you call it.
And yes, we'll probably never use the base for anything other than RP (also because our mains are in a different SG).
But for RP purposes, it suits us just fine.
Having used wall like items, we've created several 'rooms' in the large decorative room, each with it's own functionality (RP wise: Kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, office, libary)
So: Yes, you can have a solo base, or a duo base, but it's not going to be much more that what your imagination makes of it (for the longest while atleast)
edit:
the cheapest room I could find is the 2x2 controle room at 100k (5 members x 20k = 100k, no decoration funds)
The largest room I could afford and place is the 5x5 decorative one at 150k (8 members x 20k = 160k, 10k decoration funds)
For the small room, atleast one extra member gives a desent decoration fund, for the 5x5 one, I'd recomend 2...
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
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I suppose the main difference in this game is that, if I understand correctly, you needed to save up gold which you could divert to other things if you needed it. Whereas to earn prestige to build bases we need to almost stop earning gold (or influence/infamy).
as usual, i will say that it really isnt worth moaning about it, and to lump it if u dont like it, u dont have to pay, or play this game, and if u dont want to help a like minded sg then its probably ur own loss, even those that 'dont like to socialise' im sure can find a few ppl who are like them.
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Hmmm... I'm curious. Is this aimed at me? If so, did you actually read what I wrote at all? Because um there's no "moaning" in that? Also, isnt advising someone to leave the game because they raised a point about one minor aspect of it a little on the harsh side? Or is that just me?
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i dont see why a soloist should be able to get the same as kind of scale base as a whole SG... if you want to solo, play a solo AT, adn dont expect a large base.
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Agreed, totally. I don't think anyone here really thinks that small supergroups or solo players should have access to large bases.
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as for cheap decorative rooms, these can be used tactically so shouldnt be too cheap of course.
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Used tactically? In what way?
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A month of 'powergaming' or gold herding got me a decent sized plot, 2 weeks later I could afford to buy the first floor. One month after that I finished it (4 floors in all).
Then it took me a day or two to get most of the furniture in (handy whn you're the crafter).
It took me a lot longer to get the material for the high end furniture, an other month I think.
So all in all, the building itself took me 2 and a half months of playing 6-12 hours a day...
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Ouch.
Thanks for the feedback, Shadow Ghost. At least that puts things into a sort of perspective. Some people (not referring to yourself here) need to realize that not everyone who plays CoH has played other online games!
Hey, Im not implying to was any easier though!