Dark One

He is not truly invulnerable. Bullet can kinda pierce him if he isn't concentrating, iirc. Also, he can dead lift a van. Think they said he could something like 11 tons. Plus, he can also superjump, which if you think about it, would require super strength in his legs to be able to propel him such distances.

Which makes me think that lawyers would be epic at crafting a wish. It also makes me want to read Beastyle's wish thing.

It's called a Required Secondary Power. Super strength without an increased toughness level (by no means automatically granted with super strength) would be useless. Or worse than useless. However, if it's a magically granted super strength, it doesn't need to follow the rules of physics and biology.

But an exoskeleton is not a super power. And while it may not be invulnerable, it is a damn sight tougher than the meatsacks known as people. You also have to work in controls to keep the exoskeleton from hurting or killing the user (Iron Man 2 and Mjolnir armor on the un-enhanced, for example).

A dampening device defeats the purpose of the power. If you can dampen it, then that means others can as well. And there is only so much control that you can have over autonomic functions without decades of monastic training.

Only if the Touch works when you want it to as opposed to a constant-on power. Midas Touch, if taken literally, means that you can't touch anything lest it turn to gold. No scratching your nose, no hugging your kids, no high five after the touchdown, no feeding yourself, nothing.

Well...technically you could keep running ITFs and build your stuff. Since shards transfer at the whopping rate of 10:5 or 10:10 (once a day), it would only take you...let's see here...

4 ITFs, more or less, to make a single common component, assuming a return of 5 shards per ITF and using the 10:5 conversion.

A Tier 1 Lore/Judgement/Destiny/Interface would require 12 ITFs. But hey, it's not like shards shouldn't transfer into more threads, given the relative rarity of shards in terms of dropping compared to thread obtaining.

Unless you've already unlocked your slots, you're SOL.

It really is a wonder that in 7 years, they've not managed to figure out the lag thing and/or incorporate power supression that actually works. I imagine if the players could actually shut off the viewing of everyone elses power effects, lag would diminish mightily.

Genies, as found in popular mythology, appear to be creatures bound by a geas. As such, part of the magic appears to be able to understand and communicate with the wisher. If the wisher must make a wish in a dead language, then the wisher wouldn't be able to make a wish, interfering with the function of the geas. Intent is comprehended by the fact that wording is so sloppy in most described wishes that the wish-granter can do the worst-possible pathing to the desired outcome.

Say you wished to be the richest man on Earth. Worst-possible pathing? Remove all other people, or just have every other man on Earth die. You get the wish, but the intent of the wish was ignored, giving credence to understanding the intent, but following the letter of the wish.

Or say you wished to have 10 quadrillion dollars. Is that American dollars? Zimbabwean dollars? Is that money obtained legitimately? Are you going to have the tax man or various cartels knocking on your door for their disappeared loot? Again, intent is "understood", but without specifying intent of the wish be granted as well, you get screwed.

It's also compounded by the djinn. Are they good, evil, neutral, capricious, wise, or whatever?

Instead of a word limit, I'd place it as "as much as you can get in a single breath". That way, the wisher is more inclined to speak as fast as possible, thus insuring some form of messing up. Though one could get around that by saying, possibly, "I wish for the outcome expressed by the words on this paper to be fulfilled to the spirit and intent of the wisher." or something along those lines.

You could always just call a mulligan on it.

Or say, "I get a Do Over!".

Now, what would be even more entertaining is that the person transmogrified into said cat girl assumes the mannerisms and personality OF a cat girl. The more divergent that personality is from their baseline personality, the better.

Then, the icing on the cake is that once turned back into a normal human, the subject knows and remembers exactly what they did as a cat girl.

Bonus points if you turn a big, burly, stereotypically masculine guy into a valley-sounding cat girl with a prediliction for pink and frilly things.

Even better...

Turning others, regardless of their current gender, into a cat girl for an hour.

One thing that would help immensely, IMO, is to give the players a graphics suppression option that actually works and prevents said data from being sent to an individual client. There's so many power effects going off on, say, Siege and Nightstar, that actually SEEING anything beyond the effects is effectively nil.

You'd still see the power activation animation, but wouldn't see say, the graphics of 10 Fire Armor users Plasma & Fire Shields or half a dozen Dark Miasma users Shadow Falls.

Or possibly have a selectable graphics suppression option that prevents certain powersets from displaying their graphics. Set it up such that for Basic Suppression, everything is suppressed. If one clicks it over to Advanced, they get a list of all powersets in the game (not distinguished by AT) and let the user select which ones to suppress.

Problem with super strength without an invulnerability modifier (or at least increased toughness) is that your muscles would rip right off of your bones when you go to do something. Unless one is going the mystical route of super strength. Even with a force field, you would still have biological issues that it couldn't help with.

You would also need extremely good involuntary reflex control, otherwise, super strength could be seen more as a curse than a blessing. See Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex by Larry Niven. Heck, even breathing could be an issue, in that you could inhale so much that your lungs pop and/or burst right out of your chest.

Something else that happens on the Lambda maps...

When you actually open up your minimap to find your way around those godawful confusing messes, framerate drops immediately and stays even more horrible than it was with the map closed. Once the map is closed, it goes back a little towards being playable, but still pretty horrendous.

Ties in the with the clutter seen on 'em.

But wouldn't that power make for some...embarrassing...moments? Especially if you either forgot to turn it off or if it was a case of The Midas Touch.

Have to wonder...will they be able to subpeona and get all of Sony's financial records and hard drives?

See, I like Event Horizon because it pretty much is the equivalent of space travel ala Warhammer 40k. One merely looks at the method of travel that they do, and can very easily visualize that subspace/lower plane as being the Warp...and the resulting problems with travelling in the Warp without a Geller Field.

Didn't they have aliens supporting them, to some extent, on that planet? Can't recall the extent to which they had help.

A good number of the colonists are scientists that deal in quantum mechanics and advanced scientific concepts that have little to do with making basic items or soldiers that are more adept at destroying than creating. It's one thing to know in the abstract how a washing machine works, it's quite another to be able to build one from scratch. Same way with a lightbulb.

Do you have any idea how much time it actually takes to make a door hinge or nails by hand without the aid of a machine doing 90% of the work for you? And it's not JUST one person. It's many people required to make those luxuries. A light bulb requires glass, which in turn requires sand or other suitable material. But that's not all. You need the fuel source to melt the sand, the skill to shape the bulb. But oh wait, you also need metal for the filament and the conductor to the filament. You also need someone providing fuel for that filament/conductor to be smelted. Then you need (or should for the filament to last) provide an evacuated environment for the filament inside the bulb. What's the bulb going to sit in, in the home? Need someone to make that. Electricity delivery system. Need someone to make the wire, insulate the wire, string the wire, cut down trees for the power poles, dig the holes to set the poles. Then you still need generation facilities and the people to run that, the metal for the generators, the fuel for the generators (be it wind, water, fossil fuels).

All so that people can stay up into the darkness for a few hours when somone could just make a candle and wick and have transportable light. For far less effort, cost, and manpower.

There are some luxuries, like having glass windows, plates, and durable clothing that are more "necessary" than others. And if you have 40 people, are you REALLY willing to dedicate, let's say just 5 people, or 12.5% of your workforce, to making a light bulb so that you can stay up later? Nevermind that you won't actually have anything to do that late, but gosh darn, doesn't that light bulb look neat?

The problem remains that you are dedicating a section of the small populace to making something that isn't truly necessary for survival. When you have a larger population base to work from, with sufficient numbers dedicated to ensuring a reliable food supply, you can then branch out into other fields that allow for more specialization. Remember...everything in their society at those early stages, had to be made by another person. Every nail, every window pane, every piece of clothing, every door, every barrel, every cup, all were made by hand. There was no mass-production. They had it worse than the people who settled in the U.S., as they at least had the benefit of coming over with tools and some supplies. The Destinyites had (virtually) nothing but the knowledge in their heads. You can't just jump from that to mass production of tv sets, cars, and microwave ovens.

Some examples...

Someone who is making light bulbs isn't making glass planes for windows or creating containers to allow for medium to long term storage of foodstuffs.

Someone who is making copper wire for electric lines isn't using that copper (or their time) for the production of buttons, plows, nails, door hinges, arrow heads or tools for the creation of homes or the capability to clear/work more land to ensure food for the winter and lean times.

Someone who is mining metal for the filaments isn't mining metal for the things the smith needs. Or digging wells or ensuring that the water supply for the community isn't in danger.

Someone who is making the ceramics to hold the light bulbs isn't making pottery for storage or cookware.

They simply don't have the capability with such a small population base to dedicate towards maintaining those unnecessary luxuries. And yes, having light bulbs is an unnecessary luxury. It's a stupid argument. Simply put, they don't NEED electricity at that stage in their development.

The best thing that can be done (and apparently was done) is to have Eli and the other boffins make sure that a record is put in place of those technological advances so that once it becomes necessary and feasible, that the populace doesn't need to start from scratch and has a leg up on their development. They didn't even have a real school until all but Camille were in the ground. Figure 50-70 years after landfall.

The nearest home improvement store is manned by...people...that really don't like out-of-towners. Especially noobs that can't even give 'em correct change (they really don't like breaking a space-buck).