Strike Force Pictures

There's one child in the game of CoH/V. Penny Preston, in Founder's Falls. But there are tons of mini-toons (which tend to get on my nerves for some reason). And, the rare free-roaming midget.

If the mission hadn't been so freakin' insane, I would have tried to get better and more pictures, because it WAS cool, visually.

Awesome view. Except for the Sky Raiders


Ryu, Luna, and Bomber, after one of the mass-deaths during that final mission. Kain escaped and teleported the bodies to a safe place. Or, maybe I'm mis-remembering and there was a twenty on the ground.

Stike Force: From Hell

Okay, really, we were Strike Force Scalpel. Whatever.

A lot of it wasn't that bad. Most of it, even. We needed a base computer, which neither Winter's Fury nor Guns and Roses had, or the resources for it, so we got started thanks to Kit and Carnivale (with an "I"). Carnie stuck with us for the first couple of missions, including the first mission where even the minions were purple. It was like slogging through quicksand, but it was "CRAAAZY XP" and few, if any, deaths. We knocked it down a level, and we all leveled, so it got much easier after that. Until the last mission.

I do have to say, it looked cool as hell. Visually. Looking around and considering tactics and goals, it looked pretty sucky. And it was. Worse than it looked, even. We died, a lot. As a group and separately. And four people against an (unexpected) AV is a dicey proposition, to say the least. But, we did it. There were some complaints about the suckiness of the mission during it, but I saved mine for after. I won't do that SF again...

With that character. Eighty percent was destroying guns. And more guns. And yet more guns. Luna hates robots and inanimate objects. With good reason. Her powers don't work on them, or at least don't work well. Yes, you can confuse a Skyraider force field generator. You cannot, however, confuse an incendiary missile launcher. Trust me. I tried. I tried having the Sky Raiders fight their own guns, but they tended to head toward other Sky Raiders instead of the guns, when I could even find Sky Raiders in range of the guns. Plus, I just seemed to have bad luck. With Domination, I can hold or confuse just about anything. With the stealth, I can sneak up and confuse minions and lieutenants so they start the fight while I build up to Domination. I was working on that at the second attempt at the AV, hit Domination... and died. Sky Raiders circled around and set me on fire.

Sigh.

But, I did get a rare recipe that I sold for 500k infamy, which was a major plus since Luna was totally broke. I couldn't most of the IOs I wanted, but I subbed in SOs until I can. And I got about 2 1/2 levels out of it. I suppose it was worth it.

Sybil and her thugs got up to level 14. Instead of taking a travel power--which I usually treat as a MUST, except for all the nifty temporary travel powers-- I took one of the force field shields. No, I didn't have any yet. Normally, Sybil duos with E's elec/elec brute, REDS. He hasn't needed any extra shields, so I was concentrating on damage powers. The thugs died every three seconds from all the toxic damage they were taking, so I hope the shields will help with things like that when Sybil's solo, or with a different team make-up.

I noticed, too, somehow, the "anti" Mason doesn't seem so evil anymore. At least compared to the "real" Mason? Or was it just because it was a short session? Hard to tell.

I know E wants to put a couple of levels on Will before the Rikti invasion hits, and I don't think we have much time before that happens. Plus, after a day with Luna and the Strike Force from hell, I think I'm ready for a change. Fyre's still not into what I'd call the more interesting powers, so I'd like to get her there, too.

Strike Force Sunday and New Programs

So, I quit my job today. Well, gave my two weeks. I'll have some extra free time real soon. I've been putting in a LOT of hours lately, and I've had to put some pretty important things off, so I have some things to catch up on. Uh, no, the timing has nothing to do with I10. But, I'm sure some of that "free time" will be spent fighting off Rikti. What? I need a break, okay?

Anyway, though. Before TF Sunday... er, SF Sunday, I downloaded new cheater maps (Vidiotmaps. How did I ever live without those things? I hadn't updated it since back in.... I7, maybe.) And, just for kicks, I chose the download pack wtih HeroStats. So, download, install... no HeroStats? Huh? And the FAQ "Instructions for Dummies" picture links were dead on the page, so that didn't help me at all. But, by now, my curiousity had morphed to determination, so I downloaded HeroStats on it's own. Ohhh, there it is. I linked it with City Game Tracker, which you may notice off to the right here.

So, how's it work? Well, I'm not going into the instructions; you're smart, you can figure it out, if you haven't already. But, it's.... uh, okay. Doesn't help me at all, thanks. Do I care about XP per minute? Well, no. I'll admit, I felt a twinge when it slowly, slowly dropped while we sat and talked or took a break. Sure, it was nifty to see that the team defeated 104 "villains" in our first mission. And it was kinda cool to see how much infamy and prestige I earned. It is sort of helpful to see how many times each power missed, or what the average damage was when it hit. There was a small thrill of accomplishment when I saw the badges I earned during the play session listed. However, I am not a badge wh-- er, hunter, so even though you can link it to Badgehunter.com to "verify" your badges, I probably won't be doing that. So, nifty? Yes. Necessary? No. At least, not for me. I'll keep it, but I won't be running it every play session.

I'm still having some problems with Luna. Her powers are... okay. Once I get Total Domination, I'll be more amused, I think. That has to wait until level 24, though, and I just hit 20 yesterday. Stamina first, then I'll be free to pick "cool" powers. Her endurance isn't too much of problem, until I start "granting invisibility." That's a real drain, and sort of a pain to be chasing people around to make them invisible. Literally, in Bomber's case. The Bomb hates disappearing. I don't have the chat logs handy, but it mildly irritates Luna. "You're cute when you whine, Bomb." "Aww, really?" "No, not really. Cut it out." T3 doesn't have much defense, though, so I'll keep the invisiblity. I will, however, respec out of Luna's stealth and reverse "Invisiblity" and "Grant Invisibilty." I took "Stealth" as the prerequisite so Luna could sneak ahead and confuse mobs before the real fighting starts. I did that will my ill/emp over on... uh... Infinity? Pinnicle? Whichever... and it worked pretty well. It's slightly less effective with T3, but it's not completely ineffective, either.

Luna is starting to get more of a "voice," though. She's sounding a lot like someone I used to hang out with that ran with a bad crowd, sprinkled with someone from a soap opera (What? No, I don't watch it. My mom does. Really *coughcough*). A lot of the "comments" that I held back with on Fyre, Luna just lets fly. She *is* a villain, after all. Though none of our villains are especially evil, and Luna probably even less than the others. At least, at this point. She was having fun with "Green Corruptor," who's base costume is blue and yellow. Great costume, really. A very intimidating character. In fact, Luna and Bomb called him "the big scary guy" more often than not. When she wasn't calling him that, though, she was calling him "Blue." From the other side of the room, of course.

As a side note, one of my goals is to create an actual "evil" villain. Not just misunderstood, or morally ambigious. I've attempted it once or twice, but backed off. And, yes, this is probably a goal that will never be realized. But it could be fun for... oh, twenty minutes or so.

Fyre and Will are still more entertaining to me, though. Is it the characters or the powersets? Probably a little of both. I like burning stuff. That's kinda ironic, but neither here nor there at the moment. Fyre is still having horrendous endurance problems. Stamina will be her level 20 power, and she's about three bubbles from 19 at the moment.

Character-wise, she's still having "issues," too. She doesn't mind fighting any of the villain groups in the isles, or even the "RIPs," because it's blindingly obvious how corrupt they are. She has real problems with Longbow, though. Not only are they supposed to be "heroes," but E was Longbow. At first, she was able to justify it as Longbow did betray E and his daughter, but that only held out for awhile. Will and Fyre had a "steal something or other" with Longbow just the other night. They tried to sneak through using "smoke," but it didn't work out quite that well, and they had to fight their way through most of the base anyway. Will's pretty matter-of-fact about most things, except Rikti, and that keeps Fyre pretty calm, but I expect her to have some sort of break-down sooner or later with the guilt that being "evil" is giving her. I expect her demon to have a more active role in her actions, as well.

Fyre and I are also interested to find out more about Will. He's offered to sit down and talk with her a few times, as long as she buys the beer, but she's shrugged it off. She's not treating him like an employee, exactly, but at least just as someone she works with. She is paying him, after all, and that keeps her from looking at him as a friend. Or anything else. She's not paying him to listen to her problems, but to shoot things. She figures he's being nice because she's signing the checks.

I put a bunch of bids up for sets for Blaze. I'm sort of disappointed with what I had available for her, actually. As a dark/dark defender, her heal targets an enemy, so I need accuracy slotted, and "accuracy" isn't an option in the heal sets. The fear set bonuses just didn't excite me. So, I went for ranged damage for Gloom, to get the most out of the bonuses. Gloom is a good DoT damage power, so Devastation certainly isn't a waste. I was just hoping for something "more," I suppose.

Cass needs a respec. I hate doing respecs. But, the Epic powers weren't working for her, so I respeced her out of that and was just picking powers that sounded interesting, so I gave her Stealth. Character-wise, it fit, and the extra defense certainly couldn't hurt. However, I came across a Stealth IO, and shoved it into Combat Jumping. Nice effect, especially since she didn't particularly need it, anyway. And, no extra end drain, which is a bit of a problem for her still. I need to respec her back OUT of the Stealth, now, though.

I want to work on my Necro/Dark MM, too. Dominique De LaCroix. Yeah, I know, but the game hates spaces in names. I recycled the name from a "vampire" mind/psy Dominator, but now she's my creole/voodoo/goth chick. Somewhere I have a robot/ff MM, and Syn's got her "thugs," but I didn't have any zombies at the moment. So. Zombies was the real goal. I've goofed off with them, but never gotten past 20 with one, so I'm still interested. For the moment. At least until I role-play her and someone expects me to remember French. I'll have to Google some stuff and see if it jogs my memory. I don't have high hopes.