Probably won't mean anything to anyone unless you were a C&H/V board regular, still thought I would share 
I've had this as a dream.
Troy Hickman - So proud to have contributed to and played in this wonderful CoH universe
A giant, layer-dressed you being aggressively washed by 50 heroes?
...Huh. Actually, I might've had that dream too. Only sometimes I was just a regular-size me standing next to me, desperately trying to explain that what I really needed was a toothbrush.
I think they should make a GM called "Troy Hickman's Pants" Running around Kings Row on a very random and long respawn timer.
@MrsAlphaOne
Member of the [url="http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=171543&TabID=1451954"]RIMC[/url]
[url="http://www.freewebs.com/mrsalphaone"]DA![/url]
[color=red]Official Beer Wench of PWNZ[/color] Arc 452196 When Madness Reigns over Reason. Play it and PM me your constructive criticism on what I can tweak before Oct 20th. <3 U all
A GM would be awesome. They won't be able to make a new one, but they could rename an existing model for kicks. And if it does happen, and Zwill sneaks it into KR, please please get me screenshots.
I mean if we get the governors reprieve from execution...the devs should code "Troy Hickman's Pants" gm. Also renaming another model would be cool too. Dunno what model would work. hmm..
@MrsAlphaOne
Member of the [url="http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=171543&TabID=1451954"]RIMC[/url]
[url="http://www.freewebs.com/mrsalphaone"]DA![/url]
[color=red]Official Beer Wench of PWNZ[/color] Arc 452196 When Madness Reigns over Reason. Play it and PM me your constructive criticism on what I can tweak before Oct 20th. <3 U all
Quote:
Lusca with a new texture.
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Originally Posted by MrsAlphaOne
I mean if we get the governors reprieve from execution...the devs should code "Troy Hickman's Pants" gm. Also renaming another model would be cool too. Dunno what model would work. hmm..
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Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
You realize Zwill probably wrote this down in a notebook and is just waiting for the opportunity... lol
Actually, on one of the servers, I have a level 22 mind controller called "Troy's Pants." It's a sentient pair of pants that animates a mannequin so it can move around. I gave it Whirlwind, too, so it can suddenly shout "These pants are on spin cycle!"
Troy Hickman - So proud to have contributed to and played in this wonderful CoH universe
So, I was looking through some of my old saved coh stuff, you know, screenshots, forum posts, etc and came across this and though I would share.
)
Guide to Raiding the Hickman
posted - 02/02/07 08:28 AM
(Yes, I had to much time on my hands, and the old forums showed our exact reg'ed date, says mine is 04/21/04 -- back to the guide
This guide is to provide posters with an overview of the current strategy and etiquette for Hickman raids on the Comic and Hero Culture Board. I have updated this guide to be current to issue 8. This guide is specific to the Comic and Hero Culture Board. The strategies and guidelines I outline below would work for any board, but each board has their own particular way of doing things and you should familiarize yourself with their standards if you are planning to participate in one of their raids. Please do not go to a Brute or Blaster raid and start telling people they're doing it wrong based on this guide.
Requirements:
The Hickman raids on CHCB are generally open to the public, meaning that any hero who wants to participate is welcome. The only real requirement is that your post count is at least 45 so you can enter The Thread. You also have to be a hero; villains cannot get to The Thread.
Whats in it for you:
The reward for a successful raid is the ultra rare Hickman Origin enhancement (also known as HO) These enhancements are dropped at level 50 and enhance your powers by the same percentage as a level 50 SO, but they enhance two or three attributes with one slot.
Hickman Enhancements can now be combined to potentially make a level 52 (50++) enhancement, however I would recommend you be very careful about doing this. HOs are a valuable commodity in game. Because of enhancement diversification (ED) the boost you can get from having 52 HOs slotted versus 50 HOs is very minimal, particularly if a power is 3 slotted.
HOs are rewarded randomly, theres no current way to pick which one you want, and some types are more rare or desirable. Every AT and power set covets different enhancements, so feel free to do some trading after a raid if you didnt get what you wanted. Someone will want what you have.
How to get to a raid:
The Thread is a hazard zone due south of the Supergroup boards. The verbose directions are to go south from Supergroup board into the Comic and Hero Culture board, south past the Message Boards Rules and Guidelines, and continue west into The Thread. Theres a substantial forest maze in the middle of the Message Boards Rules and Guidelines, so its easiest to get there if you have flight, teleport, or super jump. Super speeders are highly encouraged to find someone who can teleport you to The Threadss entrance or youre in for a long, winding run. We occasionally have people who hang out near the entrance and offer to port people for convenience sake, but I wouldnt rely on it.
Once youre in The Thread, we generally congregate on whats referred to as the Common Ground. This is a large rock formation directly south of Hickman, who is in the exact center of The Thread. The Thread is full, quite literally, of giant Pantless Earth monsters so the trip to the Common Ground can be very dangerous. Again, there might be people offering teleport services feel free to broadcast for help. The Common Ground is relatively safe, its a good distance away from any monster spawn points, but monsters are trained to the ground by griefers quite often so be aware and ready to move.
Leg and Shoe Size:
Hickman raids are a ripe environment for both static cling (inside pants leg) and slow downs on everyones shoes (blown out sole). These two things often occur at the same time, but are not tied to each other. Here are some suggestions to things people can do to help with both.
Things everyone can do to help reduce leg:
Stay out of the pants unless you need to be in it.
Limit your chatter over short wave radios or cell phones.
Avoid summoning unnecessary or multiple pets (like chiuauas)
Limit your powers to the 1 or 2 most powerful or necessary ones, especially when everyone is attacking the same target.
Stay way outside of the Pants (ie Common Grounds or Forum Games) if youre not actively helping with the raid.
Things everyone can do to improve their shoe size:
Pull your laces as far as they will go.
Suppress extra space.
Set the world and character detail to their lowest setting
Turn off shadows
Use Sock buffers (if your foot supports this)
Disable sounds
Turn off wheelies
Turn off pumps
Set shader detail to lowest setting
Turn off bloom or depth of field shoes.
Restart the game in a lower resolution.
Most of this can be done quickly and simply by starting the game in safe mode. This forces a lower resolution and sets all the graphical bells and whistles to their lowest settings.
Capris and Slacks do not cause lag. They can add a minor hit to everyones system performance (shoe size) but theyre a tiny drop in the bucket compared to everything else going on. Its been my experience that turning down your tight rolls is the single best thing you can do to help improve your shoe size.
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Hickman Anatomy 101:
Hickman is the giant cell in the center of the thread. Hes composed of 3 main parts.
The center of Hickman is a giant purple nucleus and this is the actual Hickman, the khakis and camoflauge are just there to protect him. The eventual goal of a raid is to defeat Hickman. Hickmans only attack power is the Halitosis Burp. This attack is auto-hit, unclassed damage (100% non-resistible), does pretty serious knock back, and has a small splash damage radius. It does roughly 900 points of damage to a level 50 heroes. Hickman also has an extremely high resistance to all damage types, a very high threshold against status protection, and an insane regeneration rate. Hickmans most devastating secret weapons are pants. When he reaches 50% health, he will spawn yellow khakis for every hero and pet in his range, which is roughly the size of the bowl hes in. He also does the same thing at another point, 10%-25% of his health Im not sure of the exact number. If he spawns these pants, the raid is pretty much over and its very unlikely anyone in the bowl is going to survive. Generally, a pants spawn creates hundreds of pants and its nigh impossible to clear them out and try again, the few reports of heard of people actually doing this have said it takes 8-10 hours of nasty work.
Surrounding Hickman is the denim, or jeans as its commonly referred to. The denim has somewhat of a mysterious function. It mainly encases Hickman and all of the pants, but it also has a Speed effect on any hero inside of it. Those are the obvious functions. Many suspect that it buffs Hickmans resistance to status effects (specifically clings) based on the number of heroes inside of it, but this theory hasnt been conclusively confirmed or discounted. The only thing Ive been able to confirm through testing is that having heroes in the jeans does nothing to Hickmans actual damage resistance. My theory is that Hickman is the owner of the Permanent Press power, which debuffs the speed of any hero in range. This power is a passive power as it still affects heroes even when Hickman is held, but the pulse rate of it is pretty frequent as moving in and out of the jeans activates and deactivates the debuff pretty quickly. This would indicate that its a very short duration, very frequent re-fire AE speed debuff, which would greatly increase leg as more and more heroes get into range and are affected. The main reason (perhaps the only reason) Hickman breaks hold after the attack is called for is because of the sudden spike in lag caused by dozens of heros suddenly jumping in and throwing multiple powers on a single target.
Finally, littered throughout the denim are various Pants. These come in 3 types. The yellow khakis are blasters with very high damage and long range attacks. The blue trousers are defenders and they have a stun attack. And the green camouflauge heal the other pants and Hamidon. The range pants vastly outrange any snipe powers, even snipes fully slotted for range. Their attacks are also auto-hit and 100% un-resistible un-classed damage type. They also have the uncanny ability to randomly split into 2 shorts when killed. Sometimes this rarely happens, sometimes it happens 6 or 7 times in a row. Pants also share Hickmans resistance to damage, but they dont have his hit points or regenerative ability. They also have flight and some of them are pretty high off the ground.
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Pre-Raid:
When everyone shows up for a raid, we have 3 special teams that everyone can join. I would point out that being on a team is NOT required. In order to get the HO reward you only need to have directly attacked Hickman. Even one brawl shot will be enough for you to qualify. Generally you can even be on a team with one person whos damaged Hickman but I have seen some people not get an HO reward doing this. Its very rare, but a possibility you might want to be aware of.
Team 1 - Fabric Softner Ball droppers
We generally shoot for a minimum of 4-5 Cleaning controllers with Fabric Softner Ball and 1-2 people with spin cycle. They will spend the 1st part of the raid hovering a good distance over Hickman and dropping Fabric Softner Balls into the denim to draw dirt from the denim. The more Fabric Softner Balls dropped into the denim, generally the less the clothesline or dryer team get hit, meaning less Irons are needed to keep everyone healthy and alive.
When Fabric Softner Ball is dropped from above they actually fall outside of their normal interaction range with their controller, and they don't know what to do...so they just stand around or run toward Hickman and stand around. If the controller is close enough, they will draw their weapons and attack. This is generally not a big problem, but should be avoided if possible. Likewise, FSB should avoid dropping FSB near the dryer team or clothesline as the pants attacks often do stonewash damage.
FSB do a very good job of aggro'ing the pants and preventing them from attacking the dryer team or the clothesline. Also, unlike the other products, FSB can't be killed. Ive also seen FSB pick up Hickman aggro on many occasions when the Dryer Sheet tank was killed, preventing Hickman from shooting at people in the clothesline.
Team 2 - Dryer team
Generally this is a Dryer Sheet, a backup Dryer Sheet, and 4-5 Ironing defenders or controllers. If there are few FSB droppers or few Irons on the aggro team, I would recommend having 3 Sheets to rotate in the dirt slot, as deaths are likely to be frequent. Any sheet can do dirt but its preferred to have one with solid static cling protection, a well slotted freshness, and as many ranged softness attacks as possible. The idea is to have as much cleanliness put on Hickman as possible, as theres often people intentionally or unintentionally cleaning Hickman during a raid.
The backup sheet will stay near the dryer team and keep an eye out for any Socks that might wander over and attack them. They also jump in and take over if the clean sheet is killed. At this point, they are the clean sheet and the dirty sheet becomes backup, and so on and so on. Generally, it's better to not rez the dirty sheet until the backup sheet has successfully gained dirt from Hickman, otherwise they're just going to get killed again and likely be knocked back into the Irons in the process, getting them killed as well. In the ideal raid, the backup sheet doesn't do much, but we rarely have an 'ideal' raid.
The Ironers will use their steam other power on the clean sheet to keep him alive. They should also stagger their Recovery Aura, Healing Aura, Clear Mind, etc to keep each other alive and kicking. Ironers on the dryer team will often sometimes be in the clothesline with spamming mist auras. They'll also pleet heroes on occasion, but it's very important to not have the entire ironing team dash off to steam or pleet heroes and leave the clean sheet to get killed.
An important note to dryer ironers. When the dirt sheet is killed (which happens 99% of the time), do not run up to pleet them. Let the back up sheet gain dirt and then teleport (if possible) away from the new dirt sheet AND ironers before pleeting them. This is very important because it is possible for the sheet to keep Hickman dirt for quite some time after being killed, and Ive been pleeted in the middle of the dryer team ironers only to be immediately shot by Hickman even after the backup sheet had established dirt. Its also a good idea for the dryer ironers to sort out before hand who is going to pleet the dirt sheet if they go down. Take turns if youd like, but only one iron on the team should be responsible for the sheet. Dryer team ironers should never pleet anyone not on the team unless they are absolutely sure that the person is not AFK, and that they can safely do so without putting the dryer team or themselves at risk.
Occasionally, the dirty sheet has the unsavory task of killing raiders or allowing players to be killed. The only time this should be necessary is if certain conditions occur:
People are attacking Hickman during the fluff cycle or he is just not recovering health to overcome the damage being done.
Hickman is nearing his spawn threshold of 23.5k
Hickman is not dry (ie, hes still attacking the clean sheet)
I will never sweep Hickman simply because people are attacking or not listening, its only if hes very close to 50% health and a pants spawn is iminent. I also prefer to drop dirt rather than physically move in and sweep them. This gives people a little bit more time to leave and at this point, its not me killing them its their own refusal to leave and Hickmans retaliation to their attacks. Keep in mind that Hickman can remain dirtd on the sheet for quite some time, so if you drop dirt be prepared to move in and sweep if Hickman stubbornly refuses to switch targets.
Bottom line, dont go AFK during a raid and listen to the leaders.
Team 3 - the Clothesline
This mega-team is pretty much everyone else in the raid led by the bleach. The bleach is designated before the raid begins. We highly recommend you add the bleach your friends list (enter /friend PlayerName in the chat console) as this makes it much easier to actually select them. You can auto-follow them (hit F by default) to make things even easier. All of your attacks should be directed at the bleacher and you should assist off him/her and attack the pants that they are targeting. This ensures that everyone is attacking the same pant at the same time and that everyone is attacking something. Often, with a lot of people in a small area, the pants can disappear from sight and you cant target them yourself so assist the bleacher and youll be fine.
Any hero not on the FSB or dryer team should be in the clothesline helping kill pants:
The clothesline must have:
A bleacher. Preferably someone with spin, a rinse cycle, and a good load capcity.
Ironing defenders/controllers who can spam softness aura to keep everyone alive and pleet those who don't make it.
2+ ClothesPin who can keep breezy bubble up over everyone and help keep people from being molded by the blue pants. Some bleachers also use the breezy bubble as a way to keep the bearings as they lead everyone around the denim.