Eire Unlimited!

Any group within a Legion may switch places with any group directly above them, no matter how much higher they are. This action is referred to as usurping. Any group Overlord can do this from their groups’ mission computer.

Usurping cannot be prevented, only discouraged. As befits Lord Recluse’s approach to finding the destined one, the threat of retaliation must be used to keep subordinates in line.

Once a position is usurped, the usurping group is locked in their new position, and it cannot be usurped again until after the next scoring (which takes place every three days as mentioned before).

Group who have their positon usurped have recourse: they gain a raid token against the group that usurped them.

Raid tokens can be spent by a group’s Overlord(s) at any time. They are usuable only against a single group (the usurpers), and can be held indefinitely until used.

When activated, three time slots of an hour each are chosen, starting at least 48 hours in advance and ending no more than a week in advance. Any Overlord from the group being raided may choose one of these time slots within 24 hours; if one is not chosen, the first time slot listed is automatically chosen.

The raid itself is performed as usual for PvP base raids. Only SG members that were in the raiding or raided groups at the time the raid token was generated may participate; groups cannot bring in ringers later for assistance. Members who join after the raid token is generated either cannot enter the raid (raiding group) or are ejected from the base automatically when the raid begins and cannot return until it is over (raided group).

Groups that take turns usurping each other between scoring rounds will end up with tokens against each other. Care must be used when deciding to usurp, as the benefit gained may be outweighed by the retaliation that follows. Groups will have to pay attention to the strength of their rivals, and the strong will intimidate the weak.

And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
- Book of Mark, 5:9.

Premise: Lord Recluse challenges super groups to build the largest hierarchy of loyal super groups.

This challenge is based on a Test from ATITD called The Test of the Bureacrat; reading that test description may be of help in understanding this challenge.

Super Groups can pass this challenge by obtaining Legion Points (LP), which are acquired by being part of a Legion. A Legion is a hierarchy of super groups, with a single group at the top. Groups can join Legions by starting their own or joining an existing one.

To start a Legion, a super group must successfully complete Legion missions, assigned from the mission computer at their base. These are super group missions; only group members may participate.

These missions are the traditional broker missions – kidnap/rescue someone, steal something, defeat a certain foe, etc. Neither new artwork nor new mission layouts is needed.

These missions are the usual difficulty as broker missions, but give slightly less experience, infamy, prestige and salvage (perhaps 25% or so less). Groups perform these missions in order to start their own Legions, not as an alternative to going to brokers.

Each Legion mission successfully completed is tallied and the number of missions completed is viewable by group members. Each day at a set time (probably midnight EST), the group that has completed the most Legion missions and which is not in a Legion currently, gets the ability to create a Legion of its own. This is accomplished by any Overlord in that group clicking on the appropriate button in the super group settings menu. The initial group is placed at the top of the hierarchy, at rank 1.

Once established, Legions gain new members by inviting other super groups. An Overlord in a Legion group may send an invitation to any other group; that request appears in the chat tab of that group’s Overlord(s). Any of them may accept or reject the invitation. A group accepting the invitation is placed below the inviting group in the Legion hierarchy, in the next rank.

A group in a Legion can have up to three groups directly below them; they reside at the next rank. These groups can in turn have up to three other groups directly below them, and so on. To prevent dummy groups being formed with a single alt, groups cannot be invited to a Legion unless they have a working mission computer.

Every three days, Legion groups receive one LP, plus an additional LP for every group underneath them, no matter how many ranks down they are. In addition, the group at the top of the Legion receives double LPs for being at the top of the hierarchy.

Example: a Legion has 13 groups in it – a group at rank 1, three groups underneath it at rank 2, and three groups underneath each of those groups, at rank 3. The rank 3 groups would each receive 1 LP, the rank 2 groups would each receive 4 LP, and the top group would receive 26 LP – 13 for the number of groups in the legion, and doubled for being the top group.

The number of LP a group has is viewable by members within the super group settings menu. Any SG member can view part of the Legion hierarchy from their SG settings menu. Displayed are their own group, all groups beneath them (no matter how far down), and the chain of groups directly above them, going up to the top group. Positions that are locked (to be explained in another post) are marked as such.

Example: in the above Legion, members of a rank 2 SG would see their own group, the rank 1 group above them, and all the groups below themselves. They would not see the other rank 2 groups or the rank 3 groups below those rank 2 groups.

Every seven days, the three groups with the most LP are awarded the SG Legionnaire badge, and they are removed from their Legions. The group directly below them that has been in the Legion the longest is promoted up to their rank, and any vacanies created are resolved the same way.

The challenge as described so far is simple. The complicating factor is that any group in a Legion may at any time usurp the position of any other group, switching places with them in the hierarchy. Usurping will be described further in a later post.

My first proposed CoV challenge (“I Am Legion”) is up on the blog, but since the post was started December 15th and then not finished and posted until now, it’s appeared a little down the page, right below “Getting Our Craft On”. Enjoy!

From discussions in-game, everyone probably knows already that we’re presently saving up our Prestige to build a Mission Computer for the base.  The purpose of the MC, besides looking all futuristic in the control room, is to unlock a new Task Force mission available to teams level 20+.  It also has some functionality w/r/t base raids that I’m not clear on.  But in any case: functionality yay!

At the rate we’re going, it won’t be too long before we have our MC installed.  It ain’t too early to think about what we might want as our next base project, so I’ve provided a list of some of the more interesting and affordable options.  See what you think!

Teleportation Chamber
Cost: 150,000 for the room.  Each Basic Telepad: 15,000 (salvage: 6 Power; also need the appropriate SG badge).
What It Does: A teleportation chamber is pretty useful.  You can use it to exit the base into a specific zone, no matter which zone you entered the base from.
Advantages: Makes it easy to get around the Rogue Isles.  Makes it very easy for members to meet together for missions.
Disadvantages: You gotta buy a whole new room for it.  Also, in order to set a teleporter to a particular zone, the group must have earned an SG badge by having gotten all the exploration badges in that zone.  Not much of a limitation, since there are maps that show where all the exploration badges are, so we could hammer a zone out in 10 minutes when we were ready to.
 
Infirmary
Cost: 150,000 for the room.  Resurrection Chamber: 10,000 (no salvage).  Auto-Doc: 50,000 (salvage: 3 Material, 8 Power; also need the appropriate SG badge).
What It Does: Adds a sickbay to the base.  The Resurrection Chamber means that when you die, you have a choice between waking up in the hospital or in our base: if in the base, you wake up with 25% health as if you’d used an Awaken.  Auto-Doc is a vending machine that dispenses blue and green Inspirations.
Advantages: New rooms for the base are cool.  Being able to buy Inspirations would be great.
Disadvantages: The Resurrection Chamber is mainly used when defending the base in a raid.  Under normal circumstances, it usually makes more sense to go to the hospital.  Placing the Auto-Doc requires the SG to have earned a badge for healing.  It’ll probably be a while before we earn it, since the requirement is pretty high.
 
Decorative Room
Cost: 150,000 for the room (any size)
What It Does: Provides an additional room to the base for aesthetic and RP purposes.  Depending on how it’s decorated, this could be a meeting room, an office, a lounge, or whatever.  Decorative rooms serve no game purpose, so the cost is always 150K regardless of its size.
Advantages: It’s cool!  A large base is a sign of virility!
Disadvantages: No concrete benefits aside from the extra space.
 
Holodisplay
Cost: 97,000 (salvage: 3 Material, 5 Power)
What It Does: Increases base Control, looks cool.
Advantages: Doesn’t require a new room (it goes in the control room).  I think I’ve seen a screenshot of one of these things, and it looks pretty sweet.  Morgan has already crafted one out of his salvage, so all we need is the Prestige to place it.
Disadvantages: It’s not as cost-effective as other Control-increasing fixtures, such as the Database item — the price of aesthetics, I suppose.
 
Advanced Tech Worktable
Cost: 50,000 (no salvage)
What It Does: It’s like the Basic Worktable, except you make different components on it (Tech Hardware and Tech Prototype), as well as base items that are built with these components.  It does not supersede the Basic table: we’d keep both.
Advantages: Pretty cheap; doesn’t require a new room (it goes in the lab with the other table).  New crafting opportunities.
Disadvantages: There’s not a lot we can make with it that we especially need and/or can afford right now.  It’s mostly base defenses and improved versions of computer and power generators.

That’s why he’s so evil.  You would be too, I assure you.

Thanks to everyone’s tireless and villainous labors, Infamy Unlimited is now the proud owner of a Basic Tech Worktable, which enables the crafting of certain items for the base. Congratulations, everyone! But before we all start crafting things willy-nilly, let me first take a quick moment to explain how the table works, and when item crafting is (and isn’t) a smart idea.

Salvage is converted on a worktable into components, which in turn are assembled into finished base items. There are 6 different kinds of Tech components, of which the Basic Tech Table can make two (Tech Materials and Tech Power), along with those finished items that require only those two kinds of components. The other 4 kinds of Tech components, and items made from them, require the Expert and Advanced worktables. For now, Basic is all we have – and all we should need for a good while yet.

When you click on the worktable, the first thing you’re going to see highlighted is a window that says “You need a different table!” In fact you do not. What the interface is trying to tell you is that you have SOME salvage or components which requires a different table (either Expert/Advanced, or else one of the three Arcane tables). Click over to the “Material” and “Power” tabs, and you can see which of your salvage can be used to craft Tech Material and Tech Power components. Feel free to make as many of those components as you like.

Once you have some components, you can then use the other tabs to craft those into actual base items. I do not recommend you actually doing so right now, though, for reasons I’ll get into below.

Base items that you craft don’t just appear – they go into kind of a “holding space” in your personal inventory. You can see them by clicking on that “Add Personal Item” button that pops up whenever you enter the base. Actually placing an item that you’ve crafted still requires a Prestige cost, just like all other base items. For instance, the Mission Computer requires 75,000 Prestige to place – even after a member has assembled one with their salvage.

That’s why I don’t recommend crafting a whole bunch of base items just because you can. The things you make generally can’t be placed immediately, and so you’re just using up salvage. It’s even more wasteful if, say, several members all independently decide to assemble their own Mission Computer. Even if we had sufficient Prestige to build them all, a single supergroup only needs one. Again, it’s just wasting salvage.

The organized thing to do is to decide, as a group, what base project we’d like to save up for next. When we have the necessary Prestige for the item, then we designate one member to actually build it. The team can give their components to that person, and he or she can then actually craft and place the item.

In a later post I’ll list some of the cool things we can build for the base, and we can discuss what would be good to buy next. For now, just keep this guideline in mind: make as many Tech Material and Tech Power components as you like, but please hold off on making actual items.

And oh yeah: have fun. Don’t forget to cackle wickedly as you craft – it’s all part of the mystique.

The game designer Will Wright has referred to the difference between games and toys – basketball is a game, but a basketball is a toy, which can be used for different goals or perhap none at all.

So too, City of Villains can be thought of as a well developed and engrossing toy without much in the way of goals. Level, progress – does it end? Or does the ceiling get bumped up every now and then, encouraging a resumption of the levelling treadmill? City of Heroes goes up to 50th level, CoV only goes to 40th – is there any doubt it will eventually go to 50? What’s the goal then? 60?

An brilliant, equally engrossing MMORPG called A Tale in the Desert is almost the polar opposite of CoV: a single shared world, one zone encompassing all players and items, permanent buildings, and – the biggest difference – no combat of any kind.

What makes ATITD so interesting is its Tests, minigames within the overall game. Proposed by The Stranger (a prominent NPC), these cover a wide variety of tasks; some are cooperative, some competitive. Some are performed in small groups, some in massive groups, some alone. What they all achieve is to bring the player back to the mechanics of the overall game – in the case of ATITD, the gathering processing of resources.

In CoV, the basic mechanic of the game is combat. The addition of minigames which players would use this basic mechanic to win would leverage the strengths of CoV with a fraction of the resources put into traditional new content – new opponents, artwork, etc.

In a number of posts I plan to sketch out rough ideas for challenges – minigames presented as goals set by Lord Recluse, the head NPC of City of Villains. In the same vein, challenges could be introduced by The Statesman in City of Heroes, although the nature of the challenges would be different, reflecting the different natures of characters in the two games.

Obviously, nobody here can make NCSoft do anything with their games. My goal here is to encourage discussion. I know that while thinking about some of these challenges, I often found myself wishing these elements were in CoV, because they would be fun to play. That’s the best kind of game design – when you find yourself wanting to get it done so you can play it.

Although it might have been cheaper for me to have waited till Christmas, when Saint Nick might have left it in my stocking in place of my annual lump of anthracite, nevertheless today I went out and purchased the CoH novel Web of Arachnos.  Over the coming days, I’ve set myself the task of reading it, after which I’ll share my (spoiler-free!) reactions with the group.  That’s the kind of friend I am — literate yet reckless.

As you’ll note, I’m a tad apprehensive about this reading project.  Past experience has taught me to fear novels based on games, whether computer or tabletop RPG.  From the TORG novel trilogy to the unspeakable Planescape: Torment adaptation (which somehow required two authors to screw it up so completely), all the way back to the mind-shreddingly awful Arthur Byron Cover Planetfall series . . . Oh, look, I just can’t continue.  Let it suffice to say, we’re talking about a literary genre whose quality historically ranks somewhere below your average fanfic, and above your average garlic-press instruction manual as translated from Portuguese.

But hey, you know, superheroes.  So I’m willing to give this a shot.

There have been novels based on comic books before, but I freely admit that I’ve never read any of them.  In that respect, Web of Arachnos is a new experience.  How well does the flashy, highly visual storytelling style of the comic medium translate to the pictureless page?  I have no idea.  In my mental worst-case scenario, it’s 150 pages of “Statesman punched Lord Recluse.  Then Lord Recluse punched Statesman back.”  However, a quick flip-through reveals what looks to be a fairly meaty book.  Several verbs which have nothing at all to do with punching are observed here and there.  Who knows?  It could be a good read.  Anyway, I’ll share my thoughts after I’m done.

Sometimes, after beating someone up, I get a piece of Salvage.  What’s up with that?

Salvage is totally a Supergroup thing.  You accumulate it while you’re in Supergroup mode, you use it to assemble special items for your base, and the assembly takes place on your base’s workbench(es).

Different enemies will drop different types of Salvage.  You can carry up to 20 of a particular Salvage item.

Woo!  Okay, where’s the workbench in Infamy Unlimited’s base?

Well, it’s . . . we don’t have one yet.  But we’re working on it!  Useful base items, such as the workbench, have something of an entry barrier in that a base must be generating sufficient Power and Control in order to run them.  Power and Control are provided by generators and computers, respectively — and like all base items, these things take Prestige to buy.

As of this writing, Infamy Central (our base) has a fully functioning power plant, and we’re saving up our Prestige for purchase of a mainframe computer.  Once that’s in place, our next addition will be the workbench.

So until that’s finished, all this Salvage I’m lugging around has no real use?

Pretty much.  Of course, you could sell your unwanted Salvage to other interested players — in exchange for Infamy, or Enhancements, or other Salvage.  But my advice for right now is: hold onto that junk.  We’re likely to need it later.

But once IU gets its workbench, I can use it to craft my Salvage into cool stuff.

Not technically a question, but yeah.  Actually, what you’re crafting from your Salvage are components . . . these components then in turn are used to build the finished base items.  While Salvage can be of many different types (Science, Magic, Mutant, etc.), the components you make from them — as well as the finished items you make from the components — come in only two flavors, Tech and Arcane.  Crafting recipes for all these things are recorded on numerous web sites.

For example, you can use the Tech Workbench to convert 2 Armor Shard Salvage and 1 Arachnos Gun Salvage into one Tech Material component.  In turn, building a Monitor Bank for a base requires 12 Tech Material and 1 Tech Hardware component (in addition to a Prestige cost).

Tech Workbench?

Yeah.  I should’ve said earlier, workbenches also come in Tech and Arcane flavors.  For that matter, both flavors of workbench come in Basic, Advanced, and Expert varieties — making 6 distinct types of workbench in all.  Each type of bench varies in what you can craft on them, and in what types of Salvage the bench will accept.

The membership of Infamy Unlimited happen to be mostly tech and science in nature, and our base is similarly bent.  Our first crafting table will be a Basic Tech Workbench, and we’ll go from there as needs dictate.

What kind of nifty base items can we buy once we’ve got the components?

Oh, plenty of neat stuff . . . including a lot of base defense weapons for the distant future when PvP base raids become a possibility for us.  Items with more immediate use include the Auto-doc which sells blue and green Inspirations, and Telepods which allow immediate transportation from the base into another zone.

So, how can I – an ordinary civic-minded supervillain — help with all this?

Just be sure you’re playing in Supergroup mode.  You’ll earn Prestige for the group, and the occasional Salvage item, doing your regular activities.  That’s it.  Think of all this fancy base stuff as an extra reward for doing what you already enjoy — namely, smashing your enemies and spreading evil across the face of the planet.  Buh-bye for now!

Welcome one and all to Infamy Unlimited, the eponymous web page for the supervillain group on City of Villains’ Triumph server.  IU was founded by the ingenious Grinning Ghoul (that’s me) shortly after CoV’s release, and currently has a roster of some 20 villains played by half a dozen players.

While I learn all about the features of this blog software, please feel free to post, share stories and ideas, gripe, or whatever.  We’re all evil, so it’s all good.  That’s our motto.  Or one of ‘em, anyhow.