400000 Prestige, what can I do?

I've been trying to figure out how to add to my base but every time I try to add something I'm lacking energy or control. I have a little over 400k prestige and you can say this is a SG of one, my other two members have been MIA for days now.

So far I have the Oversight room and combo unit, teleport room with two teleporters and four beacons. When I try to add a med bay I'm lacking in energy and control. I can't seem to add another combo unit, apparently is one per base, and other than that I don't know how to increase energy and control.

What if I wanted to add more teleporters and forget the med bay, I'm going to have the same problem with energy and control. How can I use 400k to make my base into a teleporting base only with enough control and energy?

I figured at this level the only purpose the base has for me is easy access to travel back and forth. Storage space is seriously lacking and at this point I'm better off selling my junk than saving it for when I need it, no reason to have decorating rooms just for me, no reason to have a med bay when it gives me half health and hospital gives full health, and the crafting has not appeal to me in this game. Plus from what I hear the base item crafting is now useless?

I don't know what to do here. Help?

The combo unit is just to get started, as you've discovered the hard way. It doesn't power a whole lot, unfortunately, and you run out control really fast.

When you're in the base edit screen, on the tool bar all the way to the right is a pair of green/red bars, with little symbols. One of for control, one is for energy. As long as the green bar (available) is longer than the red bar (used) that it's above, you have enough power and/or control to do what you're trying to do.

Right now, you're trying to figure out how to get more power and control. The bad news, it's expensive (getting over the hump from "tiny base" to "small fully functional base" is not easy). The good news is that if you're not all the way there, you're really close - and I think you're there.

The first thing you do is place an energy room and place a control room (for starters, I suggest going with the 2x2 of each. They're the cheapest, and they'll hold what you need to get started). Delete the combo unit (and if you're not using it for anything else, the oversight room) - that'll get you the spent prestige back, so you're not losing anything.

In the energy room, place the item "basic generator" out of the energy items tabs (for tech - if you want arcane, there's a similar item in the arcane tab, but I forget what it is).

In the control room, place a mainframe (same note as above) from the control items tab.

Now, keeping in mind that I'm doing this from memory and my numbers may be off , you should have about twice as much power and control as you used to have. The better part is that over time, you can upgrade your basic power and control items, to get more power and more control.

For now, if you need more, you can place up to two circuit breakers in the power room, which will add on to the amount of power you have. You MUST have a main unit (such as the generator) before you can add on an axillary unit (such as the breakers). Once you have the mainframe or arcane equivalent in the control room, you can add databases (bookshelves, in the arcane version) for more control. Control is likely going to be more of a limiting factor than power will.

The above is just to get you started. Someone will probably come along and post a link to the handy "guide to small bases" that was written - it's useful for a starting builder. The other thing to remember is that you can always join the global chat channel "basebuildersinc." (make sure to include the . at the end), and ask questions there - usually, there's someone available to come on and take a look at your base and help you out a little. Or show you their base.

Hope that helps.

I read the guide and what I have ATM is all I can do. Like most of you I too find it very limiting.

By the way, do you have the full prestige bonus you get from the the first 15 members of the SG? You mentioned a couple of others, but not whether you've brought alts, fillers, etc. to make up the 15.

If you don't have 15 members in your SG yet, the first thing I'd do is bring in alts, and if necessary, create some filler characters to get as close to 15 as possible. It won't get you to 730K, but it'll get you closer than you are now.

Since you can't invite your own alts, let me know if you need help inviting and I logon an alt on your server to invite them.

Yeah, got the 15 alts, seven by me and seven of a friend.

Well said Finduilas, Pardon me but - I'd like to add a few other notes of my own...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Finduilas Your conclusion that it's never going to happen is pure speculation based on statements that bases were primarily intended for groups. My response to that is two words: market merge

And in that same spirit, I'd also like to add two words = Power Customization!
Oh wait, while I'm at it... a few more words "Cathedral of Pain". (Most commonly followed by "shelved indefinitely", and something along the lines of 'broken beyond all hope of a fix'.)

Quote:

Positron et al were MUCH more vocal on the side of never merging the markets than they have been on the issue of start-up base costs, and yet, that happened. And AFAIK, they have never come right out and said that base costs would never change again. Even if they have, or do so tomorrow, doesn't mean they won't change their minds next month. Besides, if I want to spend the time and effort to express the opinion that it needs to change, why do you care?

Oh, I can answer this, its a symptom of either: "Back in my day" Syndrome, or an equally nasty case of "I can't always find a team, 'cause of all these dam solo-ers & their single-person SG's"-itis. It's also commonly accompanied by severe bitter feelings and general contempt for "solo play", And rants about "MMORPG = Mandatory Multiplayer Online RPG".
And that "Super Group or Villain Group - means a literal Group of players" - as opposed to - say... a group of characters. And that group could quite plausibly be comprised entirely of Alts belonging to a single "City of" player.

Quote:

EDIT: By the way, this is certainly NOT only a single-player issue. A small SG just starting out could also find it very daunting to have to make the leap from 400,000 to 730,000 prestige to make any substantial improvements to their base. Finding a way to ramp up costs more smoothly would help every new SG, but small SGs in particular. If the devs won't improve the base building experience for a single person SG, what about a 3 person group? A ten person group? Or is building a base supposed to be enjoyable only for 50 player SGs?

The original "intended design", was horrible and at least one of the Devs has admitted this, and it was partially addressed when they adjusted the prices for Base Plots & Base Objects, reduced Base Rent (twice), and when they said they were re-working Bases for "all your base belong to us" I13.

Problem, (according to reports from a convention panel IIRC) they scrapped a bunch of that stuff, Because during both the "Friends and Family" Beta and in other "Internal Testing" the re-done Base Raiding sucked!

It was said to be no fun whatsoever (Note: I'm paraphrasing), it was hinted at being due to the system design of incorporating Base Item destruction SUCKED, to all but the very most masochistic testers/players.

I'll go out on a limb and say it probably included many of the PVP power changes in I13 as well - considering how those went over (like lead balloon) among the PVP crowd, and did nothing to bring PVE'ers over into the PVP game - like they had "intended by design".

And thank FSM, they realized that "Base Builder" crowd who'd gotten into "stacking" and whatnot... would have loathed that garbage because they'd have to 'turn up the volume knob of the Base Pathing to 11' (so to speak) and we hated "Pathing" with a passion already!
So they turned it "off" and fiddled with a few other things and gave us uber-stacking and there was much rejoicing = "Hurray for Pohsyb!"

Long rant, made short = Just because something was "intended by design" to work a certain way, doesn't mean nearly as much these days as it used to, stuff like this has been changed more than once. IMO, Probably because the people that designed those things aren't responsible for them anymore, or they left the Dev Team long ago... so there's no 'crow to eat' - which has been a long-time barrier to all sorts of change.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville City of Heroes didn't fail, City of Heroes was killed. If a 747 dropped on your house, you'd say you were killed, not you failed to find a safer dwelling.

They've already made some significant changes, because people weren't using bases as expected. They've made some changes [you only pay rent on things with a function, not on plotsize] that suggest that they're trying to ... avoid penalizing... people who primarily view bases as a way to make works of art.

In fact, if I remember they ADDED the combo unit to allow people to have functional starter (or single-person) bases.

The devs are neither angels nor demons. I would guess that they're trying to keep max-function bases as "slow-unlock content" (something to work for, like a purpled-out warshade) but I know less about their mindsets than you do.

600K for a small SG isn't an impossible gap.

Let's say you have 8 people. That's not what I'd consider a big SG.

Our SGs ran a Manticore TF over the weekend. I was on my newly-switched bots/ff MM. We had 8 people and we weren't looking to stealth it or speed run. I didn't monitor what everyone else started at, but Maker rolled up 15K in that TF. Using that as a baseline, that works out to a rough estimate of 120K Prestige in about two hours.

Do that sort of thing once or twice or week. Just once a week means you're at your 600K goal in 4 or 5 weeks.

When you look at it that way, it's not that tough.

No one said it was an "impossible gap".

But it still can be an impossing obstacle for small SGs or those that play on an occasional basis.

And honestly, there isn't any need for it; IMO it seems like an unintended consequence of some initial design decisions by the devs that didn't hold up well under actual player usage.