Get Bent, Rent

Now playing in the Training Room: an overhaul of base rent!

In the glorious world of the very near future, rent will be calculated solely on base size, with the basic (smallest) headquarters paying zilch, nada, zippo:

Tiny Hidden Spot 8×8 0
Small Hidden Spot 8×12 20000
Hidden Spot 12×12 43000
Small Secret Location 12×16 65000
Secret Location 16×16 105000
Large Secret Location 16×20 145000
Small Hidden Complex 20×20 200000
Hidden Complex 20×24 280000
Large Hidden Complex 24×24 350000
Massive Hidden Complex 24×28 610000
Small Secure Location 12×16 200000
Secure Location 16×16 420000
Large Secure Location 16×20 750000
Small Secure Complex 20×20 1300000
Secure Complex 20×24 2100000
Large Secure Complex 24×24 3200000
Massive Secure Complex 24×28 5000000

Both Infamy Unlimited and the Guardsmen live in a Tiny Hidden Spot-sized base. (Not the same base, thankfully.) Although it’ll still take a lot of Prestige to upgrade to the next larger lot, it’s nice to know there won’t be a constant rent drain in the meantime.

 

Lab Equipment for Dummies, e.g. You

[cheery music]

Hello!  Since 2005, Infamy Unlimited has relied on its valued employees to market its unique brand of evil throughout the globe.  And if you’re watching this instructional video, you’re one of the many highly skilled earners in the IU family!

In this video, you’ll be learning about the state-of-the-art laboratory found in Infamy Central, our secret headquarters.  Here, you’ll find an array of dazzling machinery designed to help IU’s personnel reach their full potential!

Say, what’s this?

Uh oh!  Looks like our friend, Curious Carl, is having a problem.  Carl’s confused by the sheer variety of equipment in the IU lab.  With so many high-tech gadgets at his command, how’s a fella to remember how everything works?

Well, relax, Carl!  It’s easier than you think.  Let’s check out each piece of equipment individually.  You’ll find that you’ll become a ”Lab Leader” in no time!

Inspiration Collector:  This eye-catching gizmo is used for storing Inspirations, and any member can deposit or withdraw at any time.  (Max capacity 100.)  Open the window and click on any stored Inspiration to take it.  To store an Inspiration, just drag and drop from your own pool into the window.  Help yourself at any time — the machine’s usually full!

To make the best use of storage space, please try to store only Level 3 Inspirations in the machine.  They’re the Inspirations most worth saving!

The other lab machines are all related to Salvage.  In a previous training video, you learned what Salvage is, and you also learned that you can combine it to create Component Salvage, which is then assembled into useful items.  Let’s take a look at the amazing equipment at your fingertips!

Salvage Rack:  This is a storage space for Salvage, and it’s used in exactly the same way the Inspiration Collector is used to store and dispense Inspirations.  (Max capacity 999.)  And, like the Inspiration Collector, the goodies in the Salvage Rack are freely available to every member.  The Grinning Ghoul likes to be efficient and combine his Salvage into components before he stores it (most things that use Salvage use components), but it isn’t necessary since the Salvage Rack is roomy and has a big capacity.

Radiation Emulator:  Here, you can spend Salvage components to imbue yourself with a wide variety of temporary effects.  For example, you can buy a Smashing Resistance buff with 2 Tech Material and 2 Tech Power.  Just click the “Empowerment Buff” tab to see what’s available!  Most of the buffs offered are defensive (Fire Resistance, Psionic Resistance, etc.) or increase your movement speed, and there’s also one for temporary invisibility.  These temporary buffs last about 15 minutes — the timer starts as soon as you purchase the buff, but that’s enough time to get you through that Mayhem mission or Elite Boss showdown!

You can also use the Radiation Emulator to combine your Salvage into components.  With the Salvage Rack in arm’s reach, this is truly your one-stop buff shop!  You can craft all 6 types of Tech components on this machine.

Basic Worktable:  This is used to craft some types of base equipment out of Salvage components.  You can also use the table to make the two basic types of Tech components (Tech Material and Tech Power).  Since there isn’t a regular demand for base equipment, and since the Radiation Emulator offers more flexibility for crafting components, the Basic Worktable doesn’t have much to offer ordinary IU members.

Advanced Worktable:  This table works like the Basic version, but it makes slightly more advanced equipment and rarer components (Tech Hardware and Tech Software).  Again, the Radiation Emulator is a better machine for everyday Salvage uses.

So there you have it!  Using laboratory equipment is both fun and easy.  Whether you’re on the front lines in Siren’s Call or battling the Guardsmen, the Infamy Central lab can help YOU do your job better.  And that means an eviler, more dangerous world for everyone!

Right, Curious Carl?

Looks like he’s got the right idea!  If Carl can become a “Lab Leader”, you can too!  Good luck, and remember — buy war bonds!

[triumphant music]

 

Infamy Central Reconfigures Again

Somewhere beneath Cap au Diable, in the subbasement of a long-abandoned laboratory, Infamy Unlimited makes its hidden headquarters.  Only the Grinning Ghoul and a few select Ringleaders know the exact building under which their base lies (accessible only via teleporter due to the Ghoul's insane obsession with security).  In this secret hideout, the metal corridors of Infamy Central serve as refuge, meeting place, workshop, and prison for the organization.  And one of the base's most puzzling features is its tendency to alter its floor plan every so often.

How the Ghoul accomplishes this feat is his own little secret, since the base is always unoccupied whenever he does it.  Rooms will appear, move, or vanish; floors and ceilings will rise and fall; and huge pieces of machinery will somehow move from one side of the headquarters to the other.  Perhaps the Ghoul has some reality-warping gizmo which he keeps to himself.  Perhaps he contracts temporary workers to do the labor, slaughtering them afterwards to preserve IU's secrets.  Or possibly the abandoned lab complex is vaster than it seems, and the Ghoul only occupies a portion of it at a time for reasons of his own.

Whatever the truth, we can at least safely rule out the intervention of the "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" crew.  Or can we?

As of today, Infamy Unlimited members will notice yet another reconfiguration to the base floor plan.  This layout makes the best use of Infamy Central's 8×8 plot and should keep us comfortable for some time.  In the short term, it also prepares us for some seriously cool base upgrades that will become available in Issue 7, such as the awesome meeting table.  Here's a list of the base's various rooms:

• Entrance chamber (2×2)
• Power generator room (2×2)
• Control room (1×4)
• Meeting hall (3×3)
• Workshop (2×2)
• Teleportation chamber #1 (2×2)
• Teleportation chamber #2 (2×2)

Member interest in a second teleporter room was high the last time I asked, so now we have one! 

Some furniture had to be sold in order to buy the new rooms, but the sparseness will be merely temporary until we earn a little more Prestige.  After I7, I'll put Infamy Central through a heavy makeover to make our headquarters as well-stocked and modern as possible.  Then the world will writhe in our grasp!  Ha ha ha ha ha!

 

Expanding Infamy Central

On the headquarters front, we recently bought our newest teleport beacon (to Mercy Island), making four teleport zones in all.  So, you may ask, what’s next?  Where’s all our glorious Prestige going to go now?  Consider the following proposal.  In order:

• Database (106,000 Prestige).  This is another computer purchase for the control room.  We need it in order to increase our Control level to run other machines.  As such, it’s pretty much a no-brainer as to the thing which we ought to obtain next.
• Advanced Tech Worktable (50,000 Prestige).  We’re already familiar with the uses of our Basic Worktable in processing salvage.  The Advanced table gives us additional crafting options, including two new types of Tech components: Prototype and Hardware.  The last time I talked about this subject, I opined that IU didn’t have much use for Advanced salvage.  What’s changed?  Nothing, really.  But it’s relatively cheap, and with the additional base items scheduled to be introduced in Issue #7, who knows?  There might be some useful new gadgets craftable on the Advanced table, and we’d be ready to rock.
• Infirmary (150,000 Prestige).  This 2×2 room would be the last addition we could put on the base before needing to upgrade to the next size plot.  In here would be housed healing items such as:
• Resurrection Chamber (10,000 Prestige).  When you die, you have the choice of waking up in the Infirmary (partially healed, as though you’d used an Awaken) instead of some filthy Rogue Isles hospital.  Not overwhelmingly useful, maybe, but you can’t beat that price.

You might ask: What about a teleporter to Nerva Archipelago and St. Martial?  That’d sure be useful!  You bet it would, but we’re limited by the fact that a Teleportation Room can only hold 2 telepads, and each telepad can only be set for 2 destinations.  We can only add Nerva/Martial by removing one of the destinations we already have (such as Mercy Island).

There’s another option, which is to build a second Teleportation Room and have a Nerva-Martial telepad there.  The choice would come down to that or an Infirmary, since we wouldn’t have space in our plot for both rooms.  (EDIT: Not quite true; see below comments.)

 

Pardon Our Dust

On second thought, don’t pardon our dust!  We’re wicked criminals who don’t have to apologize for anything!

• The Grinning Ghoul is in the process of redecorating Infamy Central, as you’ll quickly notice the next time you visit.  I’ve rearranged the rooms so as to make better use of our real estate — they’re a more efficient arrangement now.  We can add one more 2×2 room to our plot (a medical lab, probably), and any expansion beyond that will require an upgrade to the next size plot.  Since the next size plot costs about 3,000,000 prestige, we won’t be taking that step for a while.  But no worries — I think we’ll be comfortable in our present 8×8 home for a long time.
• We’re running short on Control!  Our new telepad has taxed our mainframe to its limit.  If we want to add a second telepad, we’ll first have to improve our computing power.  A Holodisplay would be just the ticket: cost 97,000 prestige plus a bunch of salvage which we already have.  For that reason I recommend the Holodisplay as our next base purchase.
• Finally, a bug observation.  While redecorating, I occasionally encountered a glitch wherein I’d enter the base, and get stuck inside the base portal in our entrance room.  It doesn’t seem to happen anymore, but if it should happen to you, here’s what you want to do: type /stuck at the command prompt.  That’ll automatically pop you a few feet away, and you’ll be fine.

 

A Bat’Zul Retrospective

On Saturday, Infamy Unlimited scored its most significant victory yet with its completion of the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force.  Five of the organization’s most notorious villains (Hellpyre, Zola, Omega Inferno, Jimmy Holden, and the Grinning Ghoul) proved their superiority over all opposition, leaving scores of bruised, slashed, and charred foes in their wake as they accomplished their goal.

The entire storyline is recounted in Infamy Unlimited issues #36-41 (watch for the trade paperback in August!), but a synopsis follows:

Centuries ago, the powerful demon Bat’Zul was imprisoned in the caves underneath Mt. Diable in the Rogue Isles.  Flash ahead to the 21st century, when the mad scientist Dr. Aeon has discovered a way to harness the demon’s thermal energy to generate cheap, unlimited power for Cap au Diable.  When Bat’Zul seems in danger of escaping his prison, the archmage Virgil Tarikoss calls Infamy Unlimited for help.  The Grinning Ghoul and his picked associates fight their way through Longbow soldiers, Legacy Chain warriors, and mages from the Circle of Thorns, to at last confront Bat’Zul himself in the demon’s cavernous lair.  Not only do the villains vanquish and re-imprison Bat’Zul, they also administer a humiliating defeat to the demonic superhero Infernal.

As far as our performance in the SF, we pretty much ruled from beginning to end.  Despite a few rough patches, and at least one team wipe that I remember, our villains complemented each other well, and each teammate pulled their weight with ease.  We had one member from each archetype on board, giving us a lot of flexibility.   

Before the SF began, I had voiced some concern that maybe five villains wouldn’t be enough (remembering how badly Infernal had kicked around our 4-man team in a previous attempt).  But my worries were totally baseless: we chewed our way through the SF and the two arch-foes at the end.  Zola did the heavy punching; Hellpyre and Omega Inferno kept their teammates healthy and their enemies burning and choking; little Jimmy Holden put numbers on our side with his endless ninja warriors; and the Ghoul stabbed people and laughed a lot like he does best.

The conclusion of the Bat’Zul story dovetailed with another enhancement to Infamy Central: a teleporter room.  Our base now has a telepad which connects to Cap au Diable and (as of today) Port Oakes, allowing transport from the lair to these two zones at the click of a mouse.

Please note that telepad “hot spots” are notoriously tough to find — you’ve gotta turn the camera to the side and poke the mouse pointer behind the control pad a bit.  Eventually you’ll find the spot that lets you activate the telepad.  It’s awkward until you get used to it, but it’s a game interface glitch!  This isn’t the Grinning Ghoul’s fault!  Remember that!

 

What to Buy Next

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.

 

Getting Our Craft On

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.

 

Salvage and Base FAQ

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!