While I have not been writing many posts here, I have been keeping up with the behind the scenes maintenance stuff. Keeping WordPress updated, dealing with spam buildup, updating plugins, dealing with spam buildup, updating themes, dealing with spam buildup, figuring out how to run PHP5 on this blog, and finally, dealing with spam buildup.

Spam, Spam, Spam & More Spam

As hard is it is to believe, most of the time I spent on behind the scenes stuff was dealing with spam. Akismet does a great job filtering it, with only a few pieces getting into the actual comments section, but on occasion, some real comments get sucked into the spam section. Since I get so few real comments here, I hate to just delete those, but that means at least looking at all of the spam that was sorted out.

This doesn’t sound too bad, but if I did not do it for a week, I could easily end up with a couple of hundred messages to look through. There were times I was getting 60+ spam a day in the spam section. Doing searches of obvious spam terms, like certain drug names, and doing a mass delete of the results made it somewhat easier, but still time consuming and not at all fun. (One of the things they do not tell you about when sharing “The Joys of Blog Writing”.) So I finally decided to check out the plugins and see what was available to cut down my numbers.

I was not looking for a spam filter. Akismet does a fine job at that. I wanted something that would catch a known spam IP address and prevent it from even reaching Akismet. I had faith that WordPress plugin writers would have something to address the issue. And my faith was rewarded in the best way. I not only found what I was looking for, I was lead to something greater than I knew existed.

Blocking IPs

Clicking on the spam link on Add New under Plugins will get you a lot of results. A lot of it is probably quite useful, like the various CAPTCHA plugins for comments and contact forms. But I was looking for something that could filter based on IP addresses and preferably was fairly automatic. Fortunately, one of the first plugins I noticed was AVH First Defense Against Spam which mentioned that it used 2 outside services for checking IPs. That was much more appealing than the ones that required my building my own blacklist or having to manually update a provided blacklist.

The installation from the WordPress site worked fine, which is always nice, and it added a separate menu under the regular dashboard menu. The new menu includes an Overview, General Options, 3rd Party Options, and a FAQ page.

The Overview page is not very useful at first. It provides information about stopped spam and some of the settings you use. The place to start is the General Options, which has 5 windows that require some kind of decisions from you.

Most of the settings are easy to understand. Do you or don’t you want to receive and email from the plugin when it runs its daily cron jobs? If you don’t know or care what that means, leave it unchecked and ignore it. Use IP caching or not? If you have a high traffic site, probably a good idea, but again, a simple check in the box to make it happen or not. Do you want to receive an email if a comment fails the security checks? If you want to see it in action, check the box, if you want to set it & forget it, leave it empty.

The two most important parts of the General Options are the Blacklist and the Whitelist. One of the reasons I picked this plugin was the use of outside sources that didn’t require me to set up a local blacklist. And the use of both of these lists is entirely optional. You don’t want to mess with them, uncheck 2 boxes and ignore them. I personally would recommend at least using the Whitelist, to list various search engine IP addresses, but it is not really necessary. I do not know of any search engines that have been blocked from my site by the plugin.

The 3rd Party Options page is where the really important stuff needs to be decided. Under the Stop Forum Spam window, you need to check the top box. That is the minimum requirement for using the plugin successfully. If you don’t want to bother with anything else, check that box, set the number in the email threshold under it to -1, save the settings and move on to other stuff.

What I would recommend, even if you do not want to get any emails from the plugin, is to go a bit farther. One of the options in that window is using an API key from the Stop Forum Spam website. This requires signing up at the website, but that is painless and quick. And doing so give you a way to pay back and improve the service.

When you have an API key, an option is added to anything on the Spam section of your comments. (Yes, you will still get some spam. None of the plugins I looked at say anything about stopping all spam, most say they will not do so. C’est la vie.) You are able to Report & Delete the message with one click. That is, report the IP address to the Stop Forum Spam database, so that it will show up when others check there. I have also been adding the IP to my local blacklist, so I never have to worry about it showing up again. That is not necessary, but since the local blacklist is checked before the Stop Forum Spam database, it saves me an API call on a known spammer.

The other side of the 3rd Party Options page is for dealing with Project Honeypot and their blacklist. In order to use the information from Project Honeypot, you need to join their site and get an API. This is also pretty painless and quick, and they do have a different blacklist, so it works well with the Stop Forum Spam to catch spammers. One of the things that I like about the information you can get from Project Honeypot is it includes things like whether or not an IP address is from a search engine bot. This allows you to easily add them into the Whitelist, making sure they do not get blocked from your site and decreasing the number of API calls you make.

Final Words

This is a very nice plugin. It scales easily with user knowledge and desires, allowing you to control everything in the set up, from emails to what databases to check.  You can set it and forget it, or be more proactive with the black and white lists. No matter how active you want to be dealing with spam, this is a good plugin to use. And just to give an idea about its value, according to the Overview page, as of this writing, 2302 spam stopped in the month of October.

It has been over a month since my post about the upcoming move of Issue 16: Power Spectrum to the live servers. And just short of a month since the actual release. I thought I would talk about how things look at this point, since the Issue was very large and anticipated by so many players.

Very Pretty Colors

A lot of people complain about not being able to get the names they want anymore on City of Heroes, because all the good ones are taken. I have never really had this problem, for a variety of reasons, but partly because I like to use colors in various ways. The problem of course, with naming someone Purple Charge (Elec/Eng blaster) or Lightning Red (El/El scrapper) (I never said they were great names. ) was the inability to make the powers fit the name.

That is no longer a problem. As I have been working my way through my alt list I have been updating their costumes and power sets to better fit the various characters. Purple Charge now has purple lightning bolts and Lightning Red has red effects from her attacks and shields.

But they are not the only beneficiaries of the new customization. My SS tanks and MA scrappers use a variety of the different animations, depending on exactly which costume they are in and how I feel the differences fit the characters. Some of my Dark Armor scrappers still disappear when they turn on Cloak of Darkness, others don’t. For a character like Lady Flames, a Fire/Rad controller, while I could put the powers together in the game and her backstory, they did not look like they went together. Now her flame control powers have the same look as her radiation powers, which doesn’t affect game play in the least, but does affect my enjoyment in playing her.

Not all of my characters need to use power customization by any means. Chilly Death, an Ice/Ice blaster is perfectly fine using regular colors on his powers. The same is true of Fire of Gamab (Fire/Fire tank) and a lot of other characters. But when you come up with a concept for a character, it is really nice to be able to make the powers fit it so well. I was in fact surprised at how much of a difference it made in my enjoyment of a couple of characters. (I wasn’t surprised at how much it improved my enjoyment of my Spines/DA scrapper. The original look didn’t really fit her origin and are ugly besides. The metal spike though, look great and do fit her backstory. What a difference some graphics make.)

Other Changes

What I have done with the Super Side Kicking has been okay. I do not team very often, and it was a surprise the first time I joined and got the pop up asking if I wanted to change my level. Since it was in the middle of fighting a Paladin build in KR, it was almost a fatal surprise. But once I accepted and was level 49, things got much easier. It is possible to remove the popup in the Options window, I just haven’t bothered on any of my characters since I mostly solo.

The ability to change challenge levels is very nice. On my low level defenders, sticking it at -1 to level makes things much easier until I can get a few more levels on them. Of course, when you outlevel a mission and are suddenly fighting greens, it can be kind of strange. And it does lower your XP intake, but I at least have found the speed trade off worth it.

I have not messed with increasing the levels and number of heroes settings yet. One of the unfortunate things that came with I16 was a bug for the Invincibility power. It kept playing the start up sound over and over again whenever there was an enemy NPC in range. For every NPC in range. I didn’t think it would be too bad, until I actually played my main, an Inv/SS tank. It did not take long at all until I had a bad headache, so he has been sidelined until it was fixed. Which was yesterday, but I was busy last night so did not get into the game at all. When I finish the MA arc I was playing with him, I will ramp things up and see how much he can take in some Radio missions.

Not Nice

Besides the already mentioned Invincibility bug, there were a few others added into the game with I16. Unfortunately, this is a fact of life when dealing with large programs with lots of intacting parts. That doesn’t make them less annoying, but unlike some people on the COH forums, it does allow me to give the Devs a break when it happens. They play the game too and I sincerely doubt they enjoy the bugs any more than the regular players do.

The biggest one for me is a spawning issue in the Mission Architect system. When custom critters and standard mobs are in the same group, they do not spawn correctly. The regular spawns do not show up at all most of the time, and when they do, the level ranges will be badly messed up. Having grey mobs 20 levels below the character level show up in a mission takes a lot of enjoyment out of it, and can mess up the story if they contradict something the writer has put in.

There were also some bugs in the way Mastermind pets would follow through doors. It is a great feature, but when you zone and are suddenly surrounded by a bunch of bots that follow you around but don’t obey your instructions, the results can range from annoying to deadly. That has not been fixed yet, although they did get the Protector bots to properly buff again.

Final Words

Issue 16 was almost completely a Quality Of Life issue. They did not add in any new zones, or revamp any existing ones. They did not add in any Task or Strike Forces, new contacts, or new missions. I know that there are people that are upset when an issue comes out without adding in new content. Some have been complaining since Issue 13, because the only official new content has been the Reichmann arcs in I15. I can understand that point of view, although I think many of them are being a bit silly about not caring for the stuff in the MA system. There are some very good stories, both canon and non-canon, in the MA, and it is not that hard to find them.

For those people, Issue 16 was just a waste of time and resources. But personally, I found it has enhanced my enjoyment of the game. I knew I would like power customization, but I did not realize how much it would add to the characters I create and the fun I have playing them. That by itself makes I16 a huge success in my book. Because that is why I play the game, to have fun.

With the pre-release download and the warning on the forums about an upcoming freespec (Free power respecification for all characters, for those who don’t speak the COH dialect of English.) it looks like Issue 16: Power Spectrum is just about ready to hit the live servers.  It hit Open Beta on the Test server on August 26, so this is about right in the usual schedule. Having played with it for a little while in Closed Beta and more so in Open, I can say it is a lot of fun.

I spent most of my time either checking out the new colorization and/or animation choices or a couple of the new powersets that were moved around. I also spent a little bit of time looking at the new difficulty system that was added, but not that much.

Pretty Colors

The color customization system is very nice. There are some limitations to it, especially with Dark Melee or other powers like it, because of the way colors are done in the game engine. And some options were blocked because the Devs did not like the way they looked. But the variety that is available is almost overwhelming.

On most powersets, you have a choice between a dark palette and a light palette of colors. You pick 2 colors for each power and can either have those colors automatically shared by all the powers in the set, all powers in both sets, or set each power individually. And you can change the colors for each costume slot, is you want to have different power colors to match a different costume theme.

The new animations are also pretty nice. Not all the powers in Martial Arts and Super Strength have new choices, but the ones that do look good. I was never that bothered with the continuous kicking in MA, but it is nice to be able to add a few punches in.  I have a few quibbles about a couple of SS animations, the ground punch for Footstomp and the new Knock Out Blow animation. The ground punch feels fast and the KO Blow feels like it is taking too long. But those are both because they have to match the times for the original animations, so there is not really a lot that BAB can do about them. And the new KO Blow really looks great if you have a Shield on your arm.

New Powers

Well, sort of. For I15, there was a lot of complaining on the forum about no new powerset proliferation. Well, this time there is plenty going on. Every AT gets at least one new powerset, with several getting two. (Master Minds just can’t get a break on proliferation. Always stuck at getting a new secondary.)

I was in at the end of the Closed Beta, so I did not get to play any of the new sets at a high level, and I only checked out a couple of them. I don’t enjoy playing on Red side that much (Mostly at low levels because of having to do the mayhem missions over and over again for new contacts.) so I looked at a couple of the new possibilities for heroes. And I played them without using my Veteran award attacks. They make low levels extremely easy and I wanted to see what it was like with just the new stuff.

I found the Electric Melee/Electric Armor on a Scrapper to be a lot of fun. Nice protection with great attacks made for a fun romp through the low levels. I especially like the Jacob’s Ladder cone attack. It was very easy to get 2 or even 3 mobs in the area of effect, which is not always true for the melee cone attacks.

I also started up a Traps/Assault Rifle defender to see how that worked out. I did not enjoy it as much as the scrapper, but it was still a lot of fun. And it is a very versatile combination. A primarily teaming defender can pick up the Traps powersets and do very well at helping the team, while a soloer can pick up the AR attacks and go to town on the mobs. And with the ability to have two builds, you can do both builds and suit your powers to your mood.

I really enjoyed both characters as I was playing them, and have already decided that both powerset combos will make it to live when I16 gets there. And I will start up some new alts for most of the other sets also I am sure. Such is the curse of altitis.

Other good stuff

Some other things are showing up in I16 that have been pretty much overshadowed by the color customization and new powersets. This is a shame because they are pretty major changes that have been wanted for quite a while.

First up, there is the change to the Difficulty setting for mission running. Instead of just having 5 levels of difficulty, you can fine tune your adventures. Running an Inv/SS level 50 tank that likes to take on all comers? You can set your difficulty to think you are on an 8 man team, mobs spawning at 2 levels above you, with bosses showing up. (Yeah, been there done that. It rocks being able to jump into huge spawns without worrying about the squishies on a team.) If you are running an Empath defender with lousy attacks, set it to a 1 man team, with the mobs spawning 1 level below you, and no bosses ever show up. Yes, -1 level. A huge help to characters that have problems soloing.

Aside from those settings, you can also control if AVs show up, so if you are one of the folks that like soloing them, you can make it happen with out needing to pad a mission. And that brings up one of the nicest parts of the new system. It should pretty much stop requests for padding teams so someone can farm them for an 8 man team. Farmers can just set their difficulty to what they can handle and have at it all they want. This is good for everyone involved.

Second big change is one that was not announced prior to beta. There are some major changes in the requirements for various badges. As in, you will be able to get the epic level badges without overnight farming of damage, healing, etc. A lot of the defeat and gladiator badge numbers were also lowered, making those much easier to get.

Some badgers are not happy about this, saying “I got Empath when it was hard! Everyone should have to!” Well, you didn’t get it by playing the game. You got it by setting up a heal farm then walking away from your computer for 8 or 10 hours. I have no problem with someone doing that if they want the badge, but they really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to the requirements being lowered. It sounds too much like “I got mine! Screw everyone else!”

I already have the Exalted badge (What can I say, I’m a tank, I don’t run when it hits the fan. I stand there so the squishies can run. And ship raids really help for this badge.) but the fact that a lot of others will be able to get it more easily doesn’t bother me. I do admit, it does give me a leg up on reaching Immortal (Wish they would fix it so the Accolade hp counted.) and Jailed (You know how hard it is for an Inv tank to get mezzed without farming? And I will be lucky if I get the Imprisoned badge.) As for Empath? Still a tank. Healing is not my forte.

They are also looking at easing some of the Super Group badge requirements, but I am not certain those will make it to live with the rest of I16. I have not seen anything on the forums about them and my Test SG does not have any.

Not so good stuff

There have also been some changes that are not for the better. Most of these have to do with the Mission Architect system and experience earned. The Devs are really serious about stopping people from exploiting things in the MA and making it a place for people to tell stories. I certainly applaud this, being one of the people that like telling stories there. But while some of the changes make sense, others are not as well thought out.

The change that makes sense deals with custom groups. In order to get xp for mobs in a custom group, the group has to have at least one mob at each level of power, minion, Lt., and Boss. This prevents people from creating boss only groups and farming them. This may cause some problems for MA authors, but overall it is a decent change.

Another change was making the Freakshow villains worth less experience. A lot less. They went from being worth 1.2 times normal xp to being worth .8 normal xp. This raised a huge stir on the forums, for good reason. While the Freaks are not hard enough to merit being worth 20% more than normal mobs, they are also not easy enough that they should be cut down to less xp then normal mobs, especially in the 20s when players first start encountering them. They can be a challenge at that point.

This was obviously done because farmers would create farms with Freaks and mow them down using powers the Freaks are weak against. This can happen with almost any mob, but the Freaks being worth more xp made them a favorite for it. Thus the xp nerf.

Fortunately, the Devs heard the outcry and determined that yes, they had overreacted a tad. They changed it so that early Freaks give .95 normal xp, with the high level ones still at .8 normal. This is a much better solution, and has quieted things down a lot.

The changes for custom critters in the MA have also been eased a bit. The original set up for using the Custom setting for selecting powers was just horrible. This was pointed out repeatedly, and was also open to exploitation (oops!), and was changed so that as long as the Standard powers are used, the mobs will be worth Standard xp.

But that brings up the biggest problem with the current build. Standard/standard settings for powers in the MA will only give 75% of the normal xp for non-custom mobs. This is despite the fact that even on Standard settings, custom mobs are much more difficult than regular mobs. Creating custom critters that do not overwhelm players is one of the hardest things to do in the MA, especially for low level arcs. If anything, Standard mobs should be at 100%, with Hard mobs at 110% and Extreme someplace higher.

The Devs have said they will keep working at getting the settings right, but they need to set something now or delay I16 another month to get it right. Since that would push back Going Rogue, we will have to take what we have and try to make the best of it. And at least they got rid of the really bad system.

Final Words

Looking at this, I see I missed several other changes that are coming in I16, like the new exemplar/sidekick system, removal of most hazard zone limits, and some real improvements and fixes in the MA system. But I am already about twice as long as I like on these posts, so they will have to wait.

Overall, this is a really great update coming from the Devs at City of Heroes. They have put a lot of work into it and it really shows. When compared with the really good stuff coming in it, the problems I listed are really not that important. Because when I think about all the stuff I have tried and liked, and think about the stuff I haven’t tried yet, my reaction is  still “Oooo, shiny!”

So I was reading news again today. It was fairly depressing, which is not too unusual unfortunately. But I saw this article on the Huffington Post and was inspired to write one of my periodical letters to the White House. I know the President never actually sees anything I write, but I figure someone adds up the numbers of supporters and/or commenters about various things, so I can at least make my opinion known.

Then I thought, well, I can also let my opinion be known other places, so here is my latest missive to the man in the Oval Office.

I see in the news today that Press Secretary Gibbs said that it looks like Senator Enzi has given up on bipartisan healthcare reform and walked away from the table. I believe this statement is incorrect. In order to give up on something, you first have to want it to happen. It has been apparent since July that very few Republicans in office have any desire for healthcare reform to happen, especially in a bipartisan manner, so they can hardly give up on that now.

Gibbs also says, “”It looks like Republicans are stepping away from seeking a bipartisan solution. It is bad for this town but it’s worse for this country.” Again, this in not correct. While it would be better for everyone in Congress to work together to make the best bill possible, that is not what has been happening. They have been using the cover of bipartisanship to do their best to delay and stop any kind of reform from happening. If that cover is finally wearing thin and falling away, then that is very good for the country. Now you just need to corral the cats (i.e. Congressional Democrats and moderate Republicans like the 2 ladies from Maine) and pass a bill that really is good for the country.

A single-payer system like Canada’s may be out of reach, but the HELP committee’s bill looks pretty solid to a layman, and is at least a good starting point. Republican’s want to force the responsibility for reform on the Democrats? Well they did that 40 years ago with Medicare and that seems to be pretty popular these days. I say the Democrats should say thank you and get on with passing it.

This is not where I want to be at all. Just sitting at home, reading various news sites and considering playing a game, but not really feeling like it. I finally figured out why I have been feeling this way.

My sister left Monday, with her daughter, to drive to California so that my niece can meet one of her grandparents. Yesterday, they went to Arches National Park. They are planning on doing a few other things along the way, maybe Bryce Canyon NP, Hoover Dam, Malibu Beach, the coast highway from LA to the Bay area. And that is just on the trip out. What they see depends on what they feel like doing and how much time they want to take.

At the same time, there is in Montreal, Quebec, the Anticipation Worldcon. Since I started going to Worldcons in 1994, I have missed Glasgow in 1995 and Nippon in 2007. And I at least made the NASFIC in 2007. But not this year.

There is fun going on on both ends of the continent and I sit in the middle and miss it. No wonder I don’t feel like doing anything.

But this too shall pass. Things will eventually get better, and I will be able to once more travel and go to conventions. Probably not in time to make AussieCon next year, but maybe I can make it to Raleigh for the NASFIC.

Well, the news of the day seems to be about the current attempts to get healthcare reform through Congress. Not surprising, it affects pretty much everyone in the country to some extent, which means all the news channels know they have an audience. And there are those doing everything they can to bring even more attention to it, using any method they can think of.

I have no problem with people wanting express their views to their representatives in Congress. That is one of the most basic foundations of how our system works, and it is necessary to truly have a government by and for the people. No matter how much I agree or disagree with someone’s views about something, they have every right to express them, especially to the government. And I think the proverbial town hall meeting is a great way to do just that.

Unfortunately, there are those that seem to think that matters of how our government works should not be determined by looking at all options and working out what is best. Instead of coming up with better ideas, they want to pack the town halls and prevent others from disagreeing with them. If this succeeds, they can make it look like their position is in fact the overwhelming majority, no matter how big it really is or isn’t.

Rachel Maddow had an excellent segment on it last night:

It is a rather long segment, but has some excellent points.

There are also the people out there that are being less then honest about the current healthcare bills in Congress. There is apparently one of the ubiqitous emails floating around full of many of the lies being spread. It has been effectively refuted by Polifact.com but of course, those spreading the lies discount that, after all the words of the bill mean what they want them to mean, not what is actually written. Always an effective debating technique, change the meaning of the words.

One of the biggest lies and scare tactics showing up in the various ads and news stories is how horrible the Canadian single-payer system is. Of course, the vast majority of Canadians do not think so, and they even have real facts (as opposed to the “facts” reported on most US news) to back up their support for their system.

So if reforming healthcare is supported by most Americans, and the actual facts about the bills and how the reforms would impact our lives and economy are so favorable, why is it so hard to get the changes made? I am afraid that the answer to that can best be explained by Keith Olberman, on his #1 story last night, a Special Comment on healthcare.

And that is the real crisis facing our healthcare system. The outright purchase of the Senators and Representatives that should be taking care of the people in their states and districts, not the corporations that give them the most money. One Senator, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, has even pretty much admitted this is true in a phone call to one of his constituents. He is all for a public plan, which he says will be better for the public, as long as it doesn’t hurt the profits of the insurance companies. He seems to have forgotten why he is supposed to be there.

I was getting my morning news when I came across an article about the Senate and the “Cash for Clunkers” program funding. I didn’t like what I read, so I wrote the following email to both of my Senators here in Ohio. I expect at most a form letter in return, but maybe it will nudge them in the right direction.

I am reading the news online and see that the Republicans and some Democrats in the Senate are going to oppose more funding for the “Cash for Clunkers” program. I hope you are not one of the people that will be doing so.

Senator DeMint seems to think that the program is just helping car dealers and ignoring other small business owners. If you interpret the program as narrowly as possible, then he is right. If you look at the practical effects, it is much more than that.

Those dealerships are continuing to employ people, who will have money to spend at other businesses locally. The cars are made by factories all over, which will be able to employ people, who will also remain employed and have money to spend where they live. And of course, all of the money gets taxed on each change of hands, helping maintain the tax base of each school district, city, county, and state that those people live in. And of course, all of those people that remain employed, and the people they help keep on employment by spending their earnings, are not on the unemployment rolls, yet another money savings to states.

The people buying the cars are saving money, both on the sale and by using less gas. Which means less pollution, which leads to less healthcare costs.

Frankly, the only people that I can figure would not be happy about the entire program are the oil companies, since they will sell less oil. But since, for example, Shell Oil’s profits for last quarter were $2.3 billion dollars, I find it hard to believe cries of hardship from them.

So there are a lot of reasons and benefits to continuing the program. Yes it does mean increased spending, but frankly, $2 billion dollars is a drop in the buck when dealing with Federal spending. Better to spend the money on a proven and successful program, with huge secondary and tertiary benefits then using it to do something like start a foreign war.

Well, new words from me at any rate. I just looked at my front page and it has been 3 months since I posted anything. It certainly doesn’t feel as though I have been silent so long. And it certainly is not because I have been so busy with real life, quite the opposite in fact.

I did mess my back up Memorial Day weekend, and the drugs I was on made the next two weeks disappear even more quickly then normal. The rest of the time, I have no excuse for. Not that there was a huge audience to disappoint here anyway.

I did re-read all of the Vorkosigan books during that period. While not horribly productive, it was certainly a great deal of fun. Well, actually, I am still in the process of reading Mirror Dance. It is the most difficult for me to read for some reason.

There is certainly enough in the political sphere to warrant attention here. From the lies being spread about the healthcare plans, to the idiocy of the Birthers, to the voting on Judge Sotomayor, there is plenty that I could comment on. But I have found that just reading the stories and seeing the clips from the news shows just wears me out. I see the politicians and talking heads spreading misinformation and outright lies, and I get angry at them. And I get angry at the supposed journalists that don’t challenge them on the lies. By the time I am done, I am too disgusted to write anything myself.

Then there is gaming. I have not been able to visit my friends to play board games recently, I have been saving the money. I have been playing City of Heroes and EVE Online. Thank goodness for annual subscriptions, or I would have had to let both of them go also.

The Mission Architect for City of Heroes has been a great deal of fun. While there are a lot of really bad stories, and a lot of farms, overall it is a very nice addition to the game. There are some outstanding stories already created, and I am certain more will be added as more features and abilities are added to the system.

And of course, the big news for COH fans is the coming of two of the most requested things in the history of the game. Power customization and switching sides. I was not really too excited about the power customization in Issue 16 at first. But as I have played more of my alts, I keep finding things that I would like to change, to better fit the character concept and look. And the animation changes coming for Martial Arts and Super Strength are very welcome, giving each player with those powersets the ability to differentiate their character from others.

I started out excited about Going Rogue and being able to switch sides. I have characters on both blue and red sides that can easily fit moving into the grey, or even out right switching. I created them with that idea in mind, some over 5 years ago when I started playing the game. It has taken a long time to get here, but I have had a lot of fun waiting.

Well, I will try to be a bit more proactive about posting here.

This has been a pretty busy time on City of Heroes. Issue 14: Architect just came out a few weeks ago, the 5th Anniversary celebration is starting today and running through May, and also today, they put up the first announcement about Issue 15: Anniversary.

The next issue looks nice, especially for those of us that have been missing beating up the 5th Column. They are back in a big way, with a separate Strike Force and Task Force for the Villains and Heroes in the game. New costumes, new faces, new emotes, and some needed updates to the Mission Architect UI. And the best news is, it should be coming fairly quickly. With a name like Anniversary, unless they want to push it back to November, they will want it out as soon as possible so it is at least close to the 5th Anniversary.

Mission Architect Stories

The Mission Architect is surprisingly addictive. At least for me. I was not expecting to do much with it, maybe mess with it to do an origin arc for a character or 2, but that was all. Instead, while testing it during the beta, I was looking at the maps and the villain groups and got inspired. That resulted in the Future Skulls arc, ID 4727, which eventually lost the map that inspired me, but otherwise came out pretty good. Probably not Hall of Fame or Dev’s Choice, but a fairly solid story.

But that story seemed to need a followup, and I came up with a slightly different explanation for running from mission to mission. It was different enough that the first person to run it had a problem following it, and gave me some very good feedback. That resulted in Simple Times, ID 70801, being 5 missions, with more writing, but again, what seems to be a solid story from the feedback and ratings it has received.

The problem was, the ending of Simple Times finished that story, but was an obvious set up for another. This was deliberate, because I have an end for the whole thing, but I ran into a problem coming up with the start of the arc. Then I got some detailed feedback on Simple Times, which caused me to add some information to that arc, and gave me the hook to start up the next arc. So I once again find myself spending hours at the Mission Architect, putting together missions, testing maps, and trying to make sure everything makes sense when it is done.

Mission Architect Resources

One thing I hear a lot, especially in the game from people that do not spend time on the forums, is how hard it is to find good missions to run. Well there are many places to do just that, this is the Internet after all.

• COH Forums: Mission Architect: Stories & Lore – The section of the official game forums that is devoted to promoting and reviewing arcs created on the Mission Architect. Many threads where people share reviews and advice about what they think is good and bad.
• City of Heroes Mission Review – A fan run site, with a nice setup for players to review and rate arcs submitted by the arc writers. If you are a writer, put yours up and review one. This isn’t required, but more reviews make the site more useful, so more people are likely to show up and use it.
• Mission Search – Another mission review site, ran by fans. It has a very nice Advanced Search set up for finding missions. I recommend putting your arc up on both of these sites for people to find and review. Assuming of course you think it will get a good score.
• City of Heroes Architecture – Another fan run site, this one is set up for posting articles about the MA and player written reviews of arcs. Not very busy so far, but if you are a writer, it is a place to submit articles or reviews.
• CustomCoH.com – This is a place to share your custom creations, whether from single mobs to groups to entire arcs. It is not very busy, which is too bad. It has some real potential, since there is so much creative energy making new enemies and allies in the Mission Architect. Unless I get a Dev’s Choice or Hall of Fame award, my Future Skulls group can only appear in 3 missions. Sharing them with the community would mean they could be used many times.
• City of Heroes Mission Planner – If you want to work on your arc while offline, Leandro is making that possible. The Planner is not finished, but already has some nice functionality.
• Paragon Wiki>Mission Architect Tags – For arc writers and players, these tags are a very nice way to search. They are player created, so there is no real standard, but they cover most things that can be done by the MA.

So there is a quick look at the resources available if you are interested in the Mission Architect, whether as an arc writer or player. There is already more content available in the MA than the developers were able to creat in 5 years, with more coming all the time, so there should be enough to keep even the most hardcore player busy for a while.

So I finally got over to my friend’s house again, to get some game time in. It had been far too long since I had made it there, due to conflicting schedules, a bad headache, and some stupidity on my part. But we all made it last night.

We started with a quick 3 person game of Ark of the Covenant, a variant of Carcassonne, which was so much fun the outcome was is blocked from my memory. Or it could be my brain damage acting up again. Whatever.

When our fourth got back from his Good Samaritan work, we turned to a game of Lunar Rails. Another of the many variants of Empire Builder, this one has some interesting changes. Like being able to build completely around the moon, going off of one side and coming back on the other. That is one of the most important aspects of the game, but is also one of the hardest go keep in mind when planning runs.

If you are interested in seeing where the various cities are place on the map, here are a couple of pictures: Near Side Far Side I would not usually worry about this, but is really hard to find good maps of Luna on Google for some reason. They make the cities really hard to see.

I went first, and was planning on running a small payoff of fish from Farside to near Mare Nectaris, then pick up the Circus there (We actually use a variant of the Circus rule. Yes, a variant of a variant. Fun times.) for a double Circus run back to Verne and Mare Ingenii. I wanted to turn over the low paying fish delivery, which I might not be able to do easily if I started with the double Circus run and got good cards heading off some other direction. What I didn’t plan on (Which was stupid of me I know, but again I blame my brain damage.) was Linda going second and starting in Mare Nectaris with a Circus run to the Northwest Near Side.

Needless to say, I had to make a few changes. So I went for a solo Wheat run to Mach, then headed up to Mare Moscoviense for a quick delivery and to pick up Workers. The delivery gave me a Solar Collectors run to Mare Crisium, so it was a build to Kulik for me. Then a build to Hertesprung, where I had finally realized I could pick up the other Circus and deliver it to Mare Ingenii. (This is also where I realized I could have started the game with that Circus for the double run, then went right on to the Fish delivery. Brain damage I tell you. And 3 hours of sleep Thursday night, that didn’t help.)

While I was screwing up my beginning game on the Far Side, Linda was turning over some quick cards on the Near Side, in the small towns between Mare Nectaris and Sinus Iridum. She didn’t get any big payoffs, the Circus to Sinus Iridum being the biggest, but she was cycling cards quickly and had a decent network there. Dan and Dave both started on the Far Side, in Apollo. Fortunately, one needed Aluminum and the other Solar Collectors, otherwise it might have gotten nasty.

They then both headed for Near Side, by different routes. Dan went west, through Mare Ingenii to Balmer and Tranquility Base before taking the remaining cheap routes in the NW that Linda hadn’t grabbed. Dave went north through Hertesprung, to Lorentz, then east to Near Side near Sinus Roris, where he was planning on building through the plains to Hayn, then down to Gauss.

This is where everybody hit a bit of a snag. Dan delivered to Sinus Iridum, and drew a calamity. Linda had drawn the Lava Flow card that prevented movement and drawing in clear spaces, which had stopped Dave’s building in the north of Near Side for a turn and encouraged me to draw to Mare Moscoviense, which didn’t really hurt him, and actually helped me in the long run.

But this time, Dan drew the Moon Quake card that prevented movement or rail building over Alpine, crater walls, and rills and valleys.  Linda lost a few movement, having mostly clear track, Dave was the same, getting caught by a crater wall, I was sitting right outside the crater around Hertesprung, so lost all of my movement, but Dan was really hurt.

His next delivery, was in Pythagoras, only 6 moves away. But he did not have the money to build into the city until he made his delivery in Sinus Iridum. And now he could not draw in because of the crater wall there. He would lose the rest of that turn (No change there, he would have to lose it anyway because he couldn’t draw until movement was over.), the entire next turn (The card doesn’t go away until the end of his turn so no drawing.), then the entire next turn again (Not being able to draw until after movement was over.) This was a really big time sink, so he decided to re-do his entire plan and head east again.

This was the turning point of the game really. I had the Solar Collector run and was thinking about doing a Diamond run to Sinus Roris, since I was going to need to get that way sometime. My initial build had ended just south of the crater wall at Tsiolkovskiy, so I was going to be near that anyway, and it would get me closer to the Golden Spike award. (What can I say? We likes our variant rules.) Then I got to Mare Ingenii. And drew Diamonds to Tranquility Base. Hmm, 33 million at Mare Crisium, 25 million at Tranquility, then 38 million at Sinus Roris. Picking up 2 more major cities and placing me just outside of Mare Nectaris. Yeah, that sounds very good, even moving at 10.

So I chugged to Tranquility Base, after the delivery to Mare Crisium and turned over the Energy Shortage card. Chemicals to any major city for 20 million? And I was 8 outside of Sinus Iridum, 2 out of Archimedes, and needed to build anyway to reach Sinus Roris. All the others could make the delivery. But they would all need to use their next turn to get the product, then deliver on the next. I drew 10 to get to Sinus Iridum and Archimedes, and spent 10 to upgrade to a 12 speed train.

I delivered the Chemicals and finished building into Sinus Roris, and extended my track through Russell and around to the Far side. Next turn I delivered the Diamonds to Sinus Roris and picked up some KREEP to take east for a delivery and finished connecting to Hertesprung for the Golden Spike bonus. In four turns, I made 136 million.

The game was not over at this point, I had spent a big chunk of that money building rail, but I was far in the lead, and the others never got close after that. When Dan drew the tax card, I had 205 million, Linda was just ahead of Dan with 75 million, and Dave was in last with 55 million. Even the 2 meteor showers Dan drew, one after the other, both of which hit my track, didn’t slow me down. I had just went over the destroyed track moving away from the areas hit.

The Decompression and Wildcat Strike I drew on myself did slow me down for a couple of turns, but not enough to matter. Dan was the king of Calamities for the night though. After the Moon Quake card early, he drew both Solar Flares cards, the southern hemisphere Cosmic Ray card, the earlier mentions Meteor Showers, and for his final draw of the game, Airlock Operator Strike. Every one of which, hit him.

The Airlock Operator Strike was especially irritating because of the circumstances. He also drew the Food Shortage card, which pays 20 million for the first person that delivers food to a major city. I was sitting in Mare Crisium with fish on my train, and the 20 million would give me 254 million for the game on my next turn. Dan was in Hertesprung, 2 away from Wine in Michelson, which would keep me from getting the 20 million and help him out big time. But he couldn’t pick up the Wine, because of the Airlock Operator Strike.

So I won the game with 254 million, Linda was second with 165 million, Dan was third with 163 million, and Dave was last with 105 million. I have to say, this was an example of luck making the game a run away. After my initial bad decisions for my start, I had good runs and ran them well. But the 60 million from the various bonuses I got, just because I was in just the right place for them, put me way ahead of the others. The last one for instance. I had the winning run on my train and would have delivered in 3 turns. But all the other players also would have made deliveries in that same time, with at least Dan making it over 200 million.

Most times, the luck is spread out more. But this time, Dan got stomped on, and still did well despite that, and I had it good putting, me way out in front. But Lady Luck is fickle, so it will even out in the future.