Topics

UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie

This series had long been suggested to me by a friend in highschool back in 2004. I finally watched all 32 episodes of it a few years back and though I felt it heartwarming and a good story, I was kinda (:/) at they way they ended it (though I wont spoil the contet nor ending, this is just my opinion). I thought "Surely there must be more to finish the story", so I went looking for the manga hoping to see the story continue to it's end.

that... did not go as planned.

What I found is there's only 4 issues of the manga in existence. The manga doesn't even cover the majority of the story in the anime. And the manga doesn't really provide any insight into how the author desired this story to end. (which is probably why the anime never got that far, they didn't want to overstep their authority so as to give the author a chance to decide on an ending on his own).

Most of the story in the anime is well composed, perhaps better than in the super short manga.

But the questions I have are
"Why did the author stop writing the manga after 4 issues?"
"Who's bright idea was it to make 32 episodes of anime content out of a 4 issue manga?"

Other than that it's a highly suggested anime, it does have some adult content(so it's not for kids), but it's no more so than a similarity to nudity in dragonball (casual nudity in anime was actually normal in japan back then. even japanese children's shows would use nudity in casual or comedic ways), this anime was designed for teenagers in japan, given it only has top nudity and minor adult themes; mostly alcohol, that would qualify it for PG-13 or T for teen ratings in the USA.

The English dub was at one point on cable TV in the US.

If you've never seen this story, it's a kinda heart string puller and perhaps a little depressing at times in my opinion, though I think the story is potentially a great story.

a few notes; due to the plot of this series it may not be legally safe to view in the EU, UK, Canada, nor Australia. If you live in these regions, do not watch it online without a really good script blocker that blocks analytics and trackers, and perhaps a vpn.

sadly alot of japanese anime series are illegal materials in the UK, canada, australia and the EU, and could send you to jail for ordering, watching, sharing, or viewing them.

with that said, I'm not linking where to watch it.

If you do want to watch it, I suggest starting with episode 2 and 3 then episode 1,4 and on. they misordered episode 1 as a kinda "Pilot episode" releasing it first to give a general synopsis of the story without explaining events that led upto it clearly, where as Episode 2 shows the real beginning of the story, and episode 3 is a direct continuation. Episode 1 chronologically fits in after that.

https://betanews.com/2025/03/10/firefox-addons-breaking-update-now/

so, I had to learn to hack my browser to reenable addons, all was well but advanced cookie manager was causing firefox 51 to drop all my other addons. I eventually hacked them all back in successfully, but then.. some sort of timer expired and disabled my addons. in the end I toasted aushelper (as it's the primary addon shipped with ff and built in and needs to be hacked to disable it) so now there shouldn't be any update checking functionality. I also removed all the update urls in about:config.

at first doing that broke all my addons, I had to remove them individually add them in temp, then hack them in permanently and changed the extension update interval to as high a number as it will go then disabled all updating in about config as well. even so I expect it to break again, just maybe half a year later instead of daily or every 2 days.

I'm hessitant to try to hack advanced cookie manager in again, I do have ccleaner as a backup, but that only allows cookie deletion while the browser is closed, where advanced cookie manager allowed full cookie manipulation while the browser is active. As it took some major messing about with hacking and backup files to get the main functional addons (a good adblocker with an options page that actually works and is visible, noscript, and downthemall download manager) in place again, I'd rather not attempt to hack in an addon that requires a browser restart right now and risk it bumping all my addons.

at this point I'm almost tempted to go find the sourcecode for ff51 and modify out all it's addon restrictions and just put in a confirmation window and password to install addons as a security measure..

I'm strongly considering palemoon atm as that will be easier as I wont need to do anything other than install a browser. I'm only a hero if I have to be, redoing sourcecode? I'd rather not, I have enough projects this addon disabling issue is already effecting (I'm spending time hacking my browser and fighting mozilla's new attack on legacy addons instead of working on projects). Worst part is the disabling seems to happen every few days in the evening time. I honestly hope adjusting the timer helped.

software built like this is the epitome of poorly designed. everything relies on connections to some server and opinions of the devs rather than user preference.

oh well, if anyone has any info to help this addon protection process let me know.

[I need them all at Lvl 28]

Bids on the L 28 recipies are up in WW

I'm a need a slew of LOTGs(Luck Of The Gambler): will buy for 10 mil each and 25 mil for the proc in any form.
the catch: I need them all at Lvl 28

I need a total of:
4: 7.5% global rech/def
4: Def
3: Def/End
3: Def/Rech
1: Def/End/Rech
1: End/Rech

sub-total: 220 mil

I can always convert so I just really need a total of 16 LOTGs at Lv 28. thanks.


next

Reactive Armor Lvl 28, 5 mil each:
3: Res
31: Res/End
32: Res/Rech
21: Res/End/Rech

sub-total: 55 mil

again I can convert if needed.


next:

Kinetic Combat Lvl 28, 5 mil each:
1: Acc/Dam
1: Dam/End
1: Dam/Rech
1: Dam/End/Rech

sub-total: 20 mil


after that:

Miracle Lvl 28, 2 mil each:
1: Heal
2: Heal/End
1: Heal/Rech

sub-total: 8 mil


even after that:

Mocking Beratement Lvl 28, 1 mil each:
1: Taunt
1: Taunt/Rech
1: Taunt/Range
1: Taunt/Rech/Range

sub-total: 4 mil

yet after that:


Performance Shifter Lvl 28, 10 mil each:
21: EndMod
21: EndMod/Acc

sub-total: 40 mil


and last:

Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control Lvl 28, 10 mil each:
1:ToHit Buff
1:ToHit Buff/rech
1:ToHit Buff/rech/end

sub-total: 30 mil

Grand total: 377 mil


I'll cross off and red what I get.

So, RTTC as I have been told has a weak taunt ability. It allows taunt enhancements, and mids seems to think it allows taunt sets too (but the game does not allow taunt sets to be used on Rise to the Challenge.

I was going to drop a [perfect zinger: chance for psi damage.50] on it to make it deal some minor damage to enhance the Threat it makes enemies think I am. Mids says it'd add 2.2 psionic damage, so, not much but enough to be annoying to mobs to make them consider me a greater threat and stay agroed better.

However, when taunt sets are not allowed it kinda disables this approach.

so I would like to kindly ask if perhaps Taunt Sets could be enabled for RTTC?

I know this has been reported multiple times, this thread stands as a record of what it is and when it happens.

What it is: some players go to get a nuke in warburg, you know launch the missile,( "but I'm le tired" "well, then take a nap, then launch the missiles!" -if you get the quote), in the process of doing so as soon as they tell a lab tech to follow them all players in zone experience getting disconnected from the mapserver. Apparently, the mapserver resets to some previously known state before you told the technician to follow you, so you may end up standing in a different place when you return to the game.

I suspect this is a built-in failsafe to protect against bugs permanently bricking zones or characters.


Observations: When it happens:
#1: Genesis Incarnate Powers are Slotted

IF you do not have incarnate genesis powers and have this bug; clear all enemies around the lab technician and turn off ALL powers and unslot all incarnate powers from their incarnate slots. then talk to the lab technician and ask them to follow you.

If this works, the problem may be one of your powers or enhancement procs etc., to remedy it: With ALL powers off, as the lab tech to follow you, Try turning on each power ONE-at-a-Time, walk around and then turn on the next one. repeat until you mapserve, if none, slot your incarnate powers ONE-at-a-time, then walk around and slot the next one. What ever power you turned on before you mapserved is the culprit, report it. Someone else with the same power but no/different enhancements should try it. if they are also bugged then it's the power, if they are not bugged it's an enhancement.

If it does not work!: It may be one of your Auto powers, these are powers you cannot deactivate easily, you'd have to get someone to make a build with the same sets without those Auto powers, then if that doesn't cause the problem you'll have to build them in one at a time until it causes the issue.
It could be power casts too, or pets, or pet power casts, or bonuses, chances for something etc., use a process of elimination, watch Combat logs, and see what powers/pet powers cast before you mapserv. report them.

simple tests really.

But for now I do know that the following causes it 100% of the time Definitely:
Socket Core Flawless Genesis

it is not known if ALL genesis powers cause it but it is highly suspected as such.



Other possibly relevant information for Game Moderators and Devs (the following did not cause this bug during my successful tests)

Code Select Expand

AT: Tanker
Primary: Willpower
Secondary: Electrical Melee

Willpower Powers:
All.

Electrical Melee Powers:
Charged Brawl
Jacobs Ladder
Taunt
Thunder Strike
Build Up
Chain Induction
Lightning Rod

Pools:
Fighting
Concealment
Leaping
Speed

Fighting Powers:
Kick
Tough
Weave

Concealment Powers:
Stealth

Leaping Powers:
Combat Jumping

Speed Powers:
Hasten

Energy Mastery Powers:
Conserve Power
Physical Perfection

Incarnate:
Alpha: Musculature Radial Paragon
Interface: Diamagnetic Core Flawless
Judgement: Ion Core Final
Destiny: Barrier Core Epiphany
Hybrid: Assault Radial Embodiment
the following did cause the bug in all my unsuccessful attempts:

Code Select Expand

Genesis: Socket Core Flawless
temp powers not listed. I have a ton of those, it'd take me a long time to list them lol.

So we all know energy control right?

Wait? you don't?!

oh.. right, it doesn't exist.

this is what went through my mind today when I had the bright Idea of making a new toon. I openned up a planner and chose controller then went looking through the different primaries and couldn't understand it. I thought I was just failing to see it. I thought "Energy 'everything' was one of the earlier sets in CoH, you'd think there'd definitely be an energy control."

turns out, no, there isn't an 'energy control'.


I know I suggest a lot of things. but this one seems like it should have been done on Live in like Issue 8 or so. how could we have not created this upto now?!

I got to thinking about the set, based on the hallmarks of energy, we're talking a situation of a Mez(Disorient) show where "would you like some Knockup and repel with your knockback good sir?" is the basis of the control set.


then I got into "what would an Energy Immobilize or Engergy Hold look like?" Immediately I was brought to the thought of the energy rings around the fists of my energy manipulation blaster.

So I imagined an energy immobilize places an energy ring around the enemy's legs. a hold could be anywhere from multiple rings one around the head, one around each hand and foot, to, energy balls around these, then I thought "well they could still move their arms if you just put energy around their hands" then came up with the mental image of "Energy Shackles" simply put a bar of energy connecting each shackle hand to hand, foot to foot and hands to feet, and an energy ball around their head. then I figured it'd restrict airflow so it'd probably cause choke and -recovery.

but as I thought about that I said to myself "where's the trademark knockback?" and so I paused until I thought, "well if the enemy tried to move and touched the energy ring.... BOOM. they'd go flying, and probably be significantly damaged too, add on a nice disorient for good measure if they trigger that Knock Up by trying to move or trying to attack when held."

then I was like "but there's no Anti Fly..." and then I thought "well, that's moving, even just hovering in place has some motion.. so.. that'd trigger High Energy Damage + Knockup+disorient. Ouch. I'd hate to be hit with that while flying.." cast> target is flying BOOM> 1,2,3,4,> target is still flying/trying to move/trying to attack, and attack duration has not expired = BOOM> repeat.

" '-fly' why would I do that? you can fly all you want! here let me help you fly higher! but that cieling looks like it'll hurt.."

*I now imagine a loop animation where someone is being controlled and smacked repeatedly into a cieling.* and the controller saying "stop smacking yourself into the cieling, stop smacking yourself into the cieling, stop smacking yourself into the cieling".

I mean they are "Trollers" what kind of behaviour did you expect? I'm surprised they aren't inventing magnet powered flight and trying to make schemes to bankrupt organizations they don't like and profit.

jokes asside, Energy sets are typically fairly Single-Target Centric. They typically have limited AoE or Cone in each set, and as a troller really needs to address the crowd, not just single targets, I figure after the first 2 single targets there should be alot of swirling energy fields, auras and bubbles. and tons of enemies getting knocked around and repelled and maybe even pulled back in to go all over again via a single attract, top it off with disorient and I think that's a good basis for an energy control set.

Thinking about a swirling energy aura, it could be fairly defensive +Def (all) +res(energy negative) add in Moderate Damage when enemies touch it, and repel and disorient and I think it's a good L8

but then I ran out of ideas for L12, L18, and L26... at that point I kinda thought it was too heavy in AoE, cone and chain already. and most sets do some variant of an AoE here.

I figured, an "energy controller" probably should be able to controll masses of energy and make them do his bidding, so he should get a pet, or 2. probably an energy golem/servant/spectre at L32 similar to dark servant but with a bright color tintable energy aura body-part-basis rather than dark clouds. it'll probably fizzle out on it's own over time, so a limited time summon perhaps. then I got to thinking about attacks for it and thought, "what happens when all that energy making this energy pet gets dispersed when it dies?" and I went looking through Energy sets and saw [Energy Blasting: Nova PBAoE Extreme Damage Energy/Smash foe: knockback] and was like "yep. that's what happens when energy golem or energy specter dies. it's pretty much a bomb with legs and arms.." and figured it should have 1 ranged and one melee attack probably in high damage due to it's limited summon time, so I added in [Power Burst(High Damage Energy/Smash foe Knockback)] for a ranged single target, and [Staggering Burst(Melee(AoE) Smash/Energy foe disorient)] for kinda an energy dispersal attack from the pet, as it's attacks, also it definitely needs a healthbar, that way if something does kill it BOOM.. either it's timer runs out and Nova, or something kills it and Nova, or the player(with enough haste to perma-summon it) replaces it's summon and: Nova on desummon.

and with that I'm semi-fresh out of compiled ideas for this set.

Maybe a ground-pounder, some field/energy-object that comes down on top of enemies and hits them with Energy smashing and Knockdown every time they stand up as it attempts to bash them into the ground repeatedly like an energy troller made a giant energy mallet and decided to play whack-a-mole.


and maybe a single target mega-hold at some rediculous magnitude.

maybe a Range Wide Cone energy smack, like a mass-target(upto 30) mega KB+disorient

maybe another energy aura with -acc -tohit to go with that disorient

another pet? Idk.

this is what I came up with:

Energy Control:
    L1 Energy Ring: Ranged, Moderate DoT Energy/Smashing (6.12x5), Foe: Immobilize. When foe tries to move/or is flying; Foe:  KnockUp (Mag 4.99), High Damage Energy (50.16)
   
    L1 Energy Shackles: Ranged, Moderate DoT Energy/Smashing (6.73x5) Foe: Hold, Choke, -recovery. When foe tries to move/or is flying or tries to attack; Foe: Knockup (Mag 6) High Damage Energy (50.16). "Energy Shackles Cover the Foe's Head, Hands and Feet rendering them unable to move or attack, the head covering restricts breathing, leading to a lack of ability to recover strength for a short time. If the enemy moves or tries to attack, the shackles tighten and release an energy pulse which will severely damage and send the foe flying up."
   
    L2 Energy Wave: Ranged Cone Chain, Minor DoT Energy(4x2), Foe: -fly, Knockup (Mag 10), Foe: GrantPower: ["Energy Conduit", Ranged Cone to player foex1, Minor DoT Energy, -fly, Knockup (mag 10) if time remaining on player cast: grant power ["EnergyConduit" from each target]] "you release a  fast-vibrating wave of energy that loops from target to target repeatedly for 27.94 seconds, violently knocking them into the air and pulling them back down every time it hits disabling their ability to fly. the energy burns as it runs through their nerves causing minor energy damage over time on each hit. This power can effect upto 7 targets at a time, it then arcs off of them to any other nearby target which has not recently been hit on the previous tick"
   
    L6 Energy Torus: Summon: Wide Field, Foe Attract, When the foe touches the center; Foe: High Damage Energy, Knockback Mag 16, Stun, Disorient. "you create a feild in the shape of a large energy bubble in the sha[e of a donut, the center has a gravity anomaly which pulls enemies in rapidly, when enemies touch this anomaly it violently reacts causing high damage and sending foes flying backwards leaving them stunned and disoriented for a short time."
   
    L8 Energy Cyclone Toggle: +Def(All) +Res (Energy Negative), PBAoE Aura Moderate Damage Energy(30.59), Foe: KnockUP (Mag 4), Repel (Mag 3), Disorient. "you create a whirling cyclone of energy around yourself that redirects attacks around you, any foe that touches it will be moderately damaged, then thrown up and away from you causing disorientation for a short time."

    L12 Energy Flash: TAoE Minor Damage Energy(5), Foe: Stun(160s), Blind(320s), Disorient(160s), -ToHit(20%), -Def(20% all), Knockback(Mag 1)

    L18 Weld: Ranged High DoT Energy(10x5), Foe Hold(Mag 36, 360s), -Def(30%), -fly(Mag 10) Knockdown

    L26

    L32 Summon Energy Specter: High Damage Energy, Attacks: Power Burst(High Damage Energy/Smash foe Knockback), Staggering Burst(Melee(AoE) Smash/Energy foe disorient), On Death: Nova (PBAoE Extreme Damage Energy/Smash foe Knockback).


Edit1/21/25:
thinking about this I've come up with another power:

Energy Flash/Flash: TAoE Minor Damage Energy(5), Foe: Stun, Blind, Disorient, -ToHit, -Def, Knockback
"You launch a very bright exploding ball of energy at your foes kocking them back and blinding them for a long period of time, it waves through them stunnign and disorienting them. because of the light burned into their retinas they are unable to see well causing a -20% decreased in ability to hit targets and defend themselves from being hit."

essentially energy has the ability to bind and knockback sure, but it can also blind, probably some of the strongest longest lasting blinds in game, like laser eye surgery gone wrong.


Weld: Ranged High DoT Energy(10x5), Foe Hold(Mag 30, 360s), -Def(30%), -fly(Mag 10) Knockdown
"You use your energy to literally, not figuratively weld your enemy to the ground. they find it very difficult to move so avoiding attacks becomes almost impossible, the welding process damages them over time for the initial application phase." -single target Super Hold

autofollow appears to be based on a gradual speed curve rather than based off a linear progression rate, in addition it slows you to the speed of the target you are following. One more issue is the pacing, it seems to stop you just out of melee range.

Even for PvE this is annoying. why can't I zip to a target at my speed? why does it always take forever to get in melee range?

I propose the creation of a setting or 2 to control this:
Auto-Follow Distance: Close Melee, melee, short range, moderate range, long range, sniper
Auto-Follow Speed: Target Speed, Player-Character Speed
Auto-Follow progressing: linear, distance movement-speed curve 


yeah, sometimes you may overshoot an enemy at fast follow speed, but it's better than following a slow moving stone armor Outcasts enemy at Thier speed essentially waiting til they stop and then slowly reducing speed until you enter melee range... that's gruelling.

so yeah, I suspect there shouldn't be any real opposition to this change, other than the amount of work it entails. but really this is a quality of life thing.

Melee is typically like 4 to 7 feet so at current the auto follow tends to stop right at the outer reaches of melee, which means sometimes the angle puts you just out of melee range. having a "close melee" that takes you in to 2 to 3 feet may have you push against an enemy, but also supply a greater cast-rate for melee attacks as it ensures you are closer than the melee attack distance.

so, travel suppression especially the actual "travel" parts of it are outdated. I assumme they have not been updated nor reconsidered since Live.

since live there have been alot of changes to travel powers, and recently a change to the movement speed caps.

we could at least adjust the travel suppression proportionally... but actually no we cannot(using the current travel suppression system, I'll explain later). I did a bunch of math, the base fly speed (without fly powers) in example is 21.48mph at lv 50. I went into a pvp zone and attacked an enemy and got the travel suppression info for lv 30, it's - a multiple of 1.87 base fly speed(only dependant on level, one Uniform rate for everyone regardless how many speed boosts you have and regardless the max (uncapped) speed your powers total to) which comes to -40.1676mph. now with jetpack my fly speed is 51.04mph (at 50), these numbers wont be exact as I'm comparing lv50 and lv 30 stats and suppression but it's illustrative.

51.04 - 40.1676 = 10.8724mph remaining, which is like a slow jog in game. meanwhile with default out of the box fly, fly speed totals to 67.76, which is understandable that a power choice would be slightly better than a temp power. "roughly 17.72mph better". which means roughly we're talking 28.2924mph after travel suppression. this is also relatively slow, and quite fair honestly, it's still with-in reason for such an attacker to be attacked back as people can catch up at 28mph, and no one is dropped to a speed of 0mph by suppression alone.

according to mids the old flight speed cap was 58.64mph, however somewhere (mids) I get varying caps now with afterburner, from 67.76mph to 80.11mph as a cap. alot of this is new and was not present when travel suppression was designed. I've been told the cap was raised even further in game now to 4x this (another player as source).

if the old travel suppression for fly speed was 1.87*base fly speed, based on a cap of 51.04, if the true cap is now 80.11, travel suppression should echo this; 80.11 / 0.5104 tells us that the new cap is 156.9553291536% of the old one so increasing the travel suppression multiple by that to compensate for this raise in cap would give us 1.87 * 1.569553291536 which gives us a modified travel suppression multiple of 2.9350646551 or roughly 2.94 which * the base flight speed 21.48 would be -63.0451887931mph which is obviously well above the default fly speed of jetpack and would slow down default out of the box fly to less than 4mph.

this means such an adjustment is unreasonable, meaning the changes to the flight speed cap cannot be reflected in travel suppression the way it's handled now.

this means adjusting travel suppression for flight speed would have to factor a multiple of the individual character's Total flight speed, rather than their base.

wait stop, why is this necessary at all?

alot of changes have happened, major revisions to aerobatics for example, changing afterburner into it's current form, ALOT more +fly speed is now possible than on Live. just flyspeed IOs 6 slotted alone on both fly  and aerobatics with afterburner yeilds 102.4mph (capped at 80.11), and inherent slots on health and stamina have freed up 4 extra slots which could be abused to more easily cap fly speed even to 80.11 easily, giving a stark disadvantage to non-flying players. it is my understanding that travel suppression sutracts from the total mph uncapped then applies the cap if necessary. where 102.4 - 40 is 60mph which is greater than the former cap of 51!! thats cruising

Zip Zoom YEET I attacked and I'm gone seeya! I'll be back to snipe ya just out of range SUPA FAST you wont have to wait long for defeat. essentially you don't even need a good build, just a glass cannon with lotsa flyspeed, recharge and tohit from a couple build-ups. real easy to just destroy anything in pvp without trying. all because of increased fly speeds and travel suppression disproportionally effecting players compared to what it was before all this. make a good build with some def, regen and some good pvp tricks like debuff AND the glass cannon sniper trick? that's a blatant abuse of the pvp system, it'd be hard for much to stand against it.. it's a very one-sided fight.

I'm not naming players, I respect the player that was doing it, but it highlights that changes to the game since live have yet to be balanced in pvp. and speed caps are one of them that is pretty badly needed.

on Live, it was actually pretty difficult to build a speed cannon that had any form of defense or regen or anything at all to help it stand. a few good hits and it'd probably be mezzed, held, stunned, slept or otherwise dropped. and so it was fair. but now, it's MUCH easier to do not just a speedy-glass-cannon but rather a scrappy-speed-glass-cannon.

however for builds that are not all trying to abuse the speed caps, or where picking a travel power means dropping alot of survivability (on an AT and sets where that is what you are is survivability), just so you can catch a speedster kinda says "don't play anything that can't fly", and "wasn;t this the whole purpose of Travel Suppression to begin with? (I remember the arguments from the Live servers which led to it)) and makes me look at those "you must be on the ground to use this power" powers and all those armors on tanks which require so much patching up with extra powers and being forced to take kick or boxing to get them, and no major improvement to the speed of getting def or res and say "this is no longer a pvp where most tanks that were good before can stand., this has become a lop-sided pvp system just down to move speed"

I mean did we learn nothing from the past? I've seen other PVP in the past where people learned the speed'n shoot realy fast, they'd just circle someone at range and fire fire fire., there was no way a non-ranged could ever reach them they were just too fast. that was so very long ago (in a game I can't even remember the name of) that, I thought we learned our lesson collectively, (that probably wasn't even an online game now that I'm remembering it a bit better, still can't exactly remember what it was exactly though).

the old speed tricks where "I'm not over powered you just either need to move as fast as I do, or have a full team to take me down."

So yeah Travel Suppression based on speed need to be proportional/relative to the amount of speed a player has. if the total speed is 102.4mph -40mph from a 1.87 modifier is still going leave sonic the hedgehog quite giddy with his puns about everyone being slow. but if it were not 1.87* base speed, and rather your flyspeed * 0.213, that'd be a different ballgame. that would bring it back down to where move speed is not king where builds can still play without move speed.

lets illustrate this: your flyspeed (102.4)* 0.213 = 21.8112mph after travel suppression.

Why 0.213?!

51.04(total flight speed at 50 with jetpack) - 40.1676(this is 1.87* base speed (21.48mph)) = 10.8724mph (the speed this jetpack user can fly at after travel suppression) keep these numbers in mind.

(10.872/ (51.04/100= 0.5104))/100 = 0.213 using this number gives us the proportional percent(multiplier) of the total fly speed that is fair to leave the character with after they attack for the next 3*attack tier seconds, (where attack tier is 1 to 8?, so for superior damage it's 24 seconds?).

1 to 8 is based on: weak(1), light(2), minor(3), moderate(4), high(5), very high(6), extreme(7), superior(8 ).

the thing here is "21.8112mph" is still comparitively much faster than toons with a jetpack (10.8724mph) and faster than toons with fly alone and one slot with an IO (80.19 * 0.213= 17.08047mph)

Speed still means somethign and gives a slight advantage without it being overpowering like it is at current:

jetpack(10.8724mph) "I can still move at a jogging pace", fly 1-slot (80.19 -40.1676 = 40.0224mph) "I'm almost fast enough for an average plane to take off", fly 6-slot aerobatics 6-slot +afterburner (102.4 - 40.1676= 62.2324mph) "Seeya! Byelo! I'm A YEET OUT after I spank ya."

can you see the difference?


also that's just illustrative for lv 30. but using the same algorithms with different numbers from different level pvp travel suppression can generate such a multiplier for any level.

this idea is far from finalized most of this first post will be talking about the potential of the sets.

So, the idea originated when I thought about a tank that instead of having a Taunt power, had a PBAoE (point blank Area of Effect) attract power, leaving taunting to the power of inherent Gauntlet, essentially anything hit by the attract power would be taunted over time. I'm thinking both Gravity Aura and Gravity Melee could have such a power, calling one Black Hole and another Gravity Well. I had an idea that One of these should be non-damaging akin to Taunt, probably in the Gravity Melee set, where the variant in Gravity Aura/Armor would be damaging not just using attract, but also applying powerful Smashing(Crushing) and Negative damage over time.

the question here is how this should be applied, Perhaps this should be a Click-type PBAoE power, activated for some given amount of time, kinda like Fire armor's Burn, but in Smashing Negative and with Attract. I'm thinking it should have 2 fields, one Wide AoE ring which is Attract only, and a central ball that when enemies touch it deals Superior DoT Smashing Negative. This way it's not completely unfair in PVP where players who have attract resistance or protection can get out of the damaging area.

Gravity Aura or Gravity Armor, would have some very powerful KB/KD/KU, Attract, Repel, Hold, Immobilize and TP Protection/Resistance.

I'm not sure if it would have much Mez protection at all. perhaps paired with a power that grants a PBAoE debuff, a "Wormhole" which redirects effects to enemies and saps end, speed and recharge, granting the Gravity aura character +recovery, +speed, +recharge and some minor amount of Mez Protection or Resistance.

the sets are all about slowing down and pulling your enemies in and causing -fly and -jump and boosting your own -recharge to make your attacks faster.

The set does not provide much Resistance, it'd be mostly about Defense, though we might be able to think up 1 or 2 limited Resistance powers, limited in that they probably don't provide much res to (All), or provide basic res to energies+fire and Smashing Lethal.



White hole: so theoretically some have hypothesized that while a blackhole intakes all matter and nothing can escape, a white hole is the otherside of the black hole, like a wormhole connects them and the white hole spits out everything, light, matter and even time. so bringing this into a gravity set, this would be a self buff +Regen, +Recovery, +Speed, -Recharge. I thought of using Whitehole as a last power which would grant Self Rez Untouchable 30 seconds, then it could be a passive boost at other times just for owning the power.


another power I thought of which would likely be in the Aura set, would be "Increase Gravity", it's not really an attack as it does no damage, but it works much like mudpots in stone armor adding -speed to the enemy and yourself as a PBAoE aura, but also adding a -fly -jump and -def to all, including self. it sounds counter productive, but given that most of your armor and attacks boost your speed and recharge rate, you can take it, but this is a way to slow down enemies even further.


some other ideas to incorporate

Orbit: a defense power, that attempts to cause attacks to miss you, where orbit could not just apply +Def (All but Psionic). but causes attacks that miss you to circle you and hit the first enemy they come in contact with delaing some portion of their original damage.

Revolution: another defense power, though this time a simple +Def (Smashing, Lethal, Energies)
I thought of calling Revolution "EM Field" like the earth has an EM field arround it which deflects energies, fire and smashing lethal to some extent. perhaps this should be a Def&Res power not sure.

Event Horizon: this would grant some self-buff and an enemy debuff based on the number of enemies nearby, probably self +Recovery, +Regeneration, foe: -recovery -regeneration.


Gravity melee probably should have a "Meteor Strike" power, which TP AoE's the player down onto a given point dealing superior Smashing damage +Knockback initially then leaving a field which deals moderate Fire DoT for some amount of time.

other elements I came up with are:
chain powers:
for the melee set essentailly Magnetic Chain, or Magnetic Gearing, which would be a Melee-Chain Minor Damage Negative debuff power with Foe: -Speed, -Def, -Rech, -Recovery, self: +speed +rech +def +recovery which could hit upto 5 targets. probably the second to last power in the set.

and maybe an Radiation Wave attack, Melee Chain dealing High Damage Negative to upto 5 targets.

I don't really have enough Ideas to build a whole aura/armor set. and right now it's just a basic idea and needs more discussion.

[Mouth Cannon: Ranged, Narrow Cone, Superior Damage Energy/Smashing, moderate DoT energy + Knockback over Time (4 ticks), interrupt time moderate, activation/animation time 10 seconds, recharge time Long.]

We already have some sonic attacks which fire from the mouth, and of course flame and ice breaths respectively. but what about a big energy beam?

For those who are familiar with Akira Toriyama's works, the mouth-cannon is a staple attack to be expected. Yet here in City, we have yet to include this attack.

Rather than include it in a powerset, I was thinking it should be in a powerpool or ancillary pool. I'm leaning towards it being in an ancillary pool as that would afford it more power. for the attack itself I was thinking something along the lines of the following:

Mouth Cannon: Ranged, Narrow Cone, Superior Damage Energy/Smashing, moderate DoT energy + Knockback over Time (4 ticks), interrupt time moderate, activation/animation time 10 seconds, recharge time Long.


Knockback over time is a new thing, essentially the KB magnitude increases every tick, it could double every tick, starting at mag 2, then mag 4, mag 8, mag 16, and finally mag 32. naturally enhancement can effect this upto max KB enhancement value around +100%% so upto mag 64, kb bonuses if any could be added for comical effect.

naturally however the Mouth cannon beam would have an initial normal hit calculation done, but lets say the target has mag 10 KB protection from powers and bonuses, this would give the target a 3 tick time window after the initial hit to move out of the blast cone (which would not follow the target after the initial hit).

lastly it'd not be a sniper attack, and while it wont re-aim itself, it may extend on the given attack vector to the target if the target is knocked back which could cause it to hit more targets.


fitting it into a pool or ancillary set is the hardpart. I'm not sure what to package it with. it'd probably be the last power in the ancillary, requiring 2 other ancillary powers before it can be taken. but I think it should be available to all ATs not just ranged ATs..



Edit, I'm now imagining an STF/MLTF where Lord Recluse gets knocked back to the grandville port by mouth cannon so the rest of the team can destroy the web towers unabated.

https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3633/~/opengl-%E2%80%9Ctdr-detected%E2%80%9D-meaning

I have an NVidia Quadro K3100M graphics card, over the past few years I have kept it disabled entirely as it was formerly setting itself as the default boot graphics card (so windows was starting up with it), but it began blackscreening. I figured the card was seated in it's PCIe slot wrong, but this is a dell laptop and taking it apart so I could even get to the graphics card to reslot it was confusing (and that's coming from someone who has no problem taking apart every other computer I've ever owned and installing new hardware.)

so I recently got a new harddrive installed and asked the technician to reslot the card for me as well. he did and it works again. City of heroes gave me the "this card can do ultra mode settings" message (but I chose to use my default non ultra settings) and I started playing but a couple missions into a Citidel TF something happened between lots of council and players in the area and the game slowed down, froze then quit with an error message saying the graphics driver crashed due to a TDR.

looking that up online told me it's just a graphics card overload because of too much going on on the screen at once. but my on-board Intel HD Graphics chip never TDRs ever.

so I'm wondering what can be done about this? whether something needs to be done on my side or whether the game is treating my NVidia card differently and this might need to be looked into by devs, I would appreciate help rectifying this error.

I will say this, when the NVidia card was on the game was running noticeably fast. as in it even looked like my run speed was faster, as if the framerate were higher. not sure if that has any relation.

so, many times I have trouble with the target recticle for [electrical Melee.Lightning rod] not only does it detect things like trees and stair railings that are not in mouseover-line-of-sight (or are completely out of view at some tangent behind the camera) causing a red recticle which returns "this power cannot be cast here" errors. but sometimes it also glitches while the recticle is white and will not cast till you move it around and find the sweetspot.

So I'm suggesting a feature to counteract that. how about mouse double-click causes it to cast at the closest valid casting point to the point clicked? and if there is no valid spot where clicked it will auto cast from the player-character position.

/ReDraw

/ReDraw should take One optional argument ("Window", "3DWorld", "Both") default being "3DWorld", all it does is redraw the window and 3D environment.

This is to handle issues on some graphics cards where switching resolutions or switching between windowed and fullscreen, or switching between windows causes an Undrawn black screen in the 3D world (Mouse icons, sounds and the game itself are unaffected (you could literally play blind with a black screen), but this is to fix that.

affixing this to a macro/hotkey would be great.

Does such a slashcommand already exist?

So, I was eating dinner tonight (here in reality(joke about my other thread)) and before dinner I let our cat back in the house anda  mosquito followed him in, then disappeared into the shadows like they do.

then as we were sat down at dinner (we had indian curry), I noticed something was fliying around hovering over my food. as I took a closer look, it was definitely a mosquito, not any of the look-a-likes an actual mosquito. I shooed it away and tried to clap it between my hands and told people at the table it was a mosquito. then it disappeared off somewhere, and I figured I had better finish eating quickly.

My dad got up mid meal to get more tea, and then I noticed the mosquito had come back and was now hovering over his plate rigth over some mango chutney he had smeared on the rim of his plate. and it landed on the mango chutney and started drinking it.

I told my dad when he came back and sat down and after a minute he saw it. the mosquito was not going to leave on account of him until he tried to get it with a napkin. then it flew away.

Needless to say I got a good view of it on it's escape path and killed it so that it wont fly in anyone's bedroom and potentially bite us while we sleep, and yes it was an actual mosquito. but I have never heard of mosquitoes eating chutney before, or really anything other than blood. Was this a new breed of mosquito that goes after sugar instead of blood? maybe I shouldn't have killed it, maybe if left alone it would have passed on DNA to make other mosquitoes prefer sweets to blood?

Perhaps this is a real thing that could actually be done, perhaps we could train mosquitoes in a lab setting enmass to eat sugary substances instead of blood and embed it in their DNA. then release them into nature and have them replace the blood sucking pests? imagine a world where mosquitoes prefer berries and fruits to humans.

[Warning, there may be some religious contexts in here, read at your own discretion Or not.]

So, some here that know me may know that for a while I kinda had some issues dealing with my dreams.

Let me explain, when I sleep theres a 99%+ chance my dreams will be vivid and lucid in every capacity. that means in my dreams I can taste, smell, hear, feel and see everything as if it were real. not only that things had been getting pretty freaky where characters in my dreams can respond to me in ways that I have no idea what they would say, but they tell me things; names of places and responses to questions I didn't expect.

So, I started to wonder, when I sleep am I actually going places? I ruled out sleep-walking. because there is no city called Co-kasar and earth has around 7 or 8 continents depending on various viewpoints by various real world parties, but I've never heard someonein reality say we had 12 continents. In dreams I have heard people tell me we had 12 continents, thats a bit of a stretch for people to say about our planet. the people in that dream didn't know what a country, state/province was either.

and if I was going places, well.. then.. what I do in my dreams actually could be effecting people somewhere. So.. filling my head with images of violence (playing a superhero game where we use a variety of super lethal methods of taking down enemies in example, or violent behavior in anime etc.) could effect what happens in my dreams before I'm fully conscious there.. I know that sounds strange "being conscious in a dream".

So I was pretty distraught, kinda blew my top with lots of very negative excuses in PvP, before realizing what was really bothering me.


Well, I mostly have that under control. mostly.. my dreams are still super vivid and lucid, if anything they've gotten more vivid and more lucid.

For the dreams I am able to remember when I wake up, on days I'm not disturbed before the memory is fully written, I plan to describe the stranger things I've encountered here in this thread related to my dream time.. I do not plan to divulge full descriptions of entire dreams unless absolutely necessary for context (so there will be some full dream logs here).


Warning, there may be some religious contexts in here, read at your own discretion Or not.



Let me start with some very strange occurrences I had.

so, there's a state of mind between sleeping and being awake. this has been the basis of fairytales, such as neverland, which according to the fairytale exists "inbetwween dream and reality". So yes there is actually such a state of mind. Some people get stuck in this state, it can lead to whats called "sleep paralysis" where you wake up and cannot move no matter how you try.

I have encountered sleep paralysis multiple times. people hear strange things when in this state. and after experiencing it many times I can say why, when you are in that state for some reason your brain makes your sense of hearing Super Powered. you can hear minute details of sounds that normally you could not hear. I think this is actually a defense mechanism of the body to allow a sleeping person to hear potential dangers to a exponentially greater effect than when awake because you are practically denied of every other real world sense.

However, things got even stranger.

Multiple times I have woken up and could still hear the people in my dreams talking to me. only for a few seconds. like half a minute tops, usually. and yes I knew they were dream characters so I'm not lacking the ability to disassociate real things from dream things. I don't hear voices at any other time, just in this waking gap. Normally this state of mind only lasts a split second, but for me it can last for minutes sometimes.

Q: can you talk to the dream characters and get responses in this state?
A: Yes. - this makes it super strange. almost ethereal.

now for a long time that has been the limit. and it fades as I become more conscious/aware here in the real world. However things have gotten even stranger.

One time (during a summer holiday in a rented house) I woke up and had my right hand behind me where the edge of the bed should be while sleeping on my side (for bloodflow reasons), and I had this strange sensation in my hand; I was touching skin. and I thought for a moment "is it really skin? or is it just my brain tricking me and really it's the sheets?" so I gavee it a good light grab, then rubbed it, and yep, it was still the texture of skin and had the shape of a thigh. so my next investigation was to rub it and pay attention to if I felt anything on my own body (because that would indicate I had my arm at some odd angle and was actually touching my own thigh) so I rubbed it some more. and no. I did not feel anything rubbing any part of me.

At that point I got a bit spooked and did not want to turn around. so I decided to use my hand to detect if indeed this was a thigh and not the edge of a pillow or bed etc. by shape, you know, if it's a thigh it should be connected to things in a structure that the edge of a pillow or bed will not be. so I went further and found the thigh was indeed connected to hips, adn the hips connected to a waist, and the wasit connected to a chest, and a chest connected to shoulders and arms, and a neck and head. I gave it a little back of neck massage with one hand so as to act innocent and then put my hand back to myself and turned around and no one was there.

sounds like a ghost story huh?

so, in that state of being inbetween dream and reality yet fully aware of real world surroundings, I could not just hear people from my dreams speak, but actually touch them as if they had real-world tangible volume and texture.

but then when I got back from vacation something I'd never had happen in a long time happened.

(in a full dream state): I was in a dream, I ended the dream by going to my bedroom and laying down in my real world bed to go to sleep. but I had left the door to my room open. and outside my room, rather than the hallway in my IRL house, was the kitchen of the mess-hall of a factory from my dream.

then I woke up IRL
(now awake in reality): the hallway was still the kitchen for the messhall of the factory. my door was still open. and lo and behold the lady that was helping me in the kitchen comes to my doorway and says "would you like me to close your door?" and I said "no, leave it open please", and she said "alright" and she left to go back to the kitchen. and then I just stared at the doorway while sitting up and watched as the open door faded away and a closed door replaced it. - great so now in that mental state between dream and reality I can still see things and hear things that are happening in my dream as if overlayed over reality.



it's not all pleasant though. I began to be concerned about what would happen if I died in my dreams. and even more concerned about what happens to dream characters. (a bit loopy for sure) but didn't let it effect reality other than feeling bad for dreamworld characters in certain situations.


Then sometime later, I had a nightmare, and in the dream near the end,

(fully in dream): context, I was assigned to be part of a 3 man team of monster hunters, it was super strange because we had the ability to pull up a hud display over the top of the dream like a banner and grab equipment from the hud to use in the dream. we were sent to get rid of strange dragon like creatures whose bodies had thick plates of what I'd say was pure white rock in rounded but square plates (lookign somewhat like an armadillo, but with solid black between the plates and the plates protruded from their bodies in a square fashion. at first all was well, I took out 3 weapons, one of which could suck up the monsters like a vaccuum, and another was a pair of lightsaber like things. and so I dove down into the monster nest and a big one materialized out of ash, and I used the vaccum thing to suck some of it up, but the tank got full, so we retreated. my allies went deeper in looking for places to hide while I flew out and distracted the large monster and got away from it by getting between a broken roof and floor ont he side of the area. but there were more of the monsters on that level of the building, small ones and they backed me into a corner. so I grabbed the lightsaber things I had put in my back pocket and began fighting, they were super effective, until they ran out of power and disappeared leaving me defenseless and cornered lol.

then they bit me. and OW!!!! that hurt!!! it hurt so bad I woke up.

(fully awake state in reality): but the pain was still there.. I could feel their bite marks. as if they were down to the bone. (and for the rest of the day the pain would flare up here and there) but there was no actual damage that I could see. but despite the pain, I somehow got back into the same dream while awake and in pain.

(back into the dream), I got to my feet, threw the monsters off me and ran back to HQ to get help. I made it. and in HQ I asked some people for help and they agreed and said "this is gonna cost you, you know" and so I was like "yeah, I'll owe you one." and we went back to go take care of the monsters together. when we got there, my partners who had stayed behind used my distraction to get the jump on the monsters so there was nothing much to do. but in pretense I emptied my vaccum thing at headquarters into a containment mechanism just to be sure, when I got there they told me they took care of it. but there was one tiny monster sleeping on top of a mailbox. so I used the vaccuum to suck it up because we wouldn't want it to wake up again.

They fed me.I had pancakes and sausage and eggs.

When I woke up again,

(fully awake again) the pain from the bites was still there. pulsating here and there. but I was very full.

This is not the first time I had such strange things happen with Food. I have been fed in dreams before and woke up full and not hungry for like 3 or 4 hours. in the dream of Co-kasar (city name) they fed me sandwiches, and a cup full of brown sugar, that dream was Very Long. I woke up not hungry didn't need breakfast that day.

Then there's the thiong that happens when you eat, you know, after a while everyone has to do it. I've done that in dreams. #1 and #2. (now.. you know when we were babies if we did that in a dream, we'd for sure mess ourselves in reality), but in reality there was no mess.. and I was empty. I did not have to use the restroom that day.


Now lets talk about Very Long dreams and what I mean by Very Long. I mean there was a string of events that was for a period of 48 hours. you know, 2 full days. I slept in the dream, I ate int he dream I lived and worked in the dream and slept again got fully rested and woke up again and you get the idea. and it was definitely full rested sleep, I even dreamed in the dream.

but get this, that day before this happened I actually had had trouble sleeping, I ened up going to sleep at like 7 AM and waking up at 11 AM. only 4 Hours. but I was gone for 48 in the dream filled with 48 hours worth of events. but I returned well rested.


over time I just kinda accepted that my dreams cannot be fully understood by me. and that I should just be careful and caring to everyone in my dreams.

but being a pascifist ended up getting me beheaded. that was a shock. it hurt really bad. my head rolled to the ground, and a short while later I woke up. when i woke up (middle of the night), no matter how I relaxed myself I could not get back to sleep. the best way I can describe it was like I was Blocked "connection refused", "the phone number you have dialed is offline, please try again later".


this is not the only time I have died in dreams since then. the last time was a few nights ago, on the planet with 12 continents.

(there was a dream before this next segment that leads into it, I remember it but it's not relavant to the main dream that day outside of these brackets below, it was about me being led by this lady aroudn this kinda overgrown area with dirt paths between vegetation, she pointed out some stonework in the path and under the vegeetation and said "that used to be where the kitchen table was", then I saw a dog running around (which looked exactly like my old dog from when I was a kid) and found some intact houses, but then went calling for my old dog and went accross a small brook and on the shore of a pond  as the slope of the shore got slightly raised I fell down and passed out)

I ended up in a cafe, on the upper floor, I was trying to talk to people there to ascertain whether they knew anything about our world and find out more about theirs. I asked what state/province we were in they had no idea what states or provinces are, I asked what country we were in, they said "whats a country?", I asked how many continents they have on their world, they counted for a moment and said "twelve" and I said "thats alot more than back in my world, what's your world called?" they replied "Earth" and I said "Strange seems a very common name for planets then, mine is also called earth" I then said "in my world we have video game companies called Nintendo and Sony, Sega as well" they laughed and said the names sounded funny, especially Sony they got a kick out of it and I couldn't understand why. I told them about the NES, but I couldn't remember what the Sony systems were called. they were a bit shocked at this course of conversation and One of them decided to lead me out of that cafe to show me more of their world.

About this time I got that feeling, you know the one "you are about to wake up, because you knew this was a dream and are becoming too conscious." but then it was like the back of my brain clamped down on the dream and there was this energy flow like I've never experienced before. I had Complete control over how long I could stay in this dream, absolutely complete control, I could have lived there, everything became super vivid and super lucid (and thats saying something because normally my dreams are super vivid and lucid). so this was like Hyper level integration... it was like I felt I was disconnecting for my body here in our reality and establishing my presence there.

then they took me to an arcade, we played games then went to a cinema and watched a movie.

Mid movie I remember the name of the Playstation. so I told the one that was with me "I'm going back to the cafe I remembered the name of the other game system for Sony, the Playstation, I want to know if they've ever heard of it" they were like "Ok".

so I went back to the cafe, and the guy I wanted to see that I had been talking to previously was there, but he was smoking, inside the building. so I guess that isn't illegal there, I got a bit irked, but figured I should respect their laws. so I decided I would just go over quickly and tell him then walk away. I mean he was smoking something with a lot of smoke coming from it. but when I got close, gah... the smoke was so strong... it gave me that feeling of chemically burning my eyes and then I started to have trouble breathing and was coughing pretty bad. it was a chemical burn in my lungs. so I told him quickly "I remembered the sony system was called the playstation" and then passed out keeled over the table he was sitting at unable to breathe.

but the dream didn't end there, see, I was fully latched onto it, I had full control over starting and stopping the dream, so not even a reflex like choking or dieing would trigger me to wake up, I'd have to consciously stop the dream myself, but being passed out I could not do that.

So I ended up coming-to in this place.. it was a tall building arrayed with windows between white pillars. light shone in through the windows. and there were people sitting around on stone seats built into the walls. then some sort of administrator came and said "you can't be here, you don't have a towel" and pointed to everyone else and they all had these white towels on their shoulders. So I asked "where do I get a towel?" and he pointed down a hallway that went past changing rooms on every side.

I went through and on the other side was an archway that openned up to the sky, outside there was an orange sky like sunset, but darker and more deep in color, there were buildings to the right each one had these small abodes in them, just big enough for a bed and maybe some shelving, maybe a TV. some were bigger than others, but there were no doors on any, more like shower curtains. there were LOTS of them. all jam-packed together. multiple floors going way way up. the buildings were made of red brick and were very square. the buildings were arranged parallel to what I thought was a body of water like a lake but it was very hot when I would get near it to go to these houses. I asked the first person in the first one where I could get a towel, he pointed behind me and said "that guy is the only one handing out towels any more."

I looked back to where I had came from near the archway, and there was a table set-up next to it on it's right (from my perspective) up against the wall of the building. I went over and there was a tiny man as small as a baby with two short pointy horns and red skin and he was flying. and I said "I was sent here from in that building to get a towel", and he said "the judgement has already come down, you get one of these towels" and he handed me a thin almost threadbare blood red cloth, you know with unhemmed edges so it will fall appart. and I know that given we had just started this conversation, that theres no way, he contacted anyone to figure out any unique judgement to me, he had a table full of these red threadbare things, and I could tell he was just handing them out to everyone. so knowing this was the only place to get a towel, I put it on but was not pleased, I had a feeling this was a bad connotation. So I grabbed him by the collar knowing he was trying to trick me and said "I adjure you in the name of [spoiler]yahweha yeshu[/spoiler] to tell me only the truth" then his face looked very shocked and scared and he pointed at my shoulders and I looked down and the towel had turned pure white and was no longer threadbare it was thick, and well woven. so I released him, and said "listen, I don't actually mean to hurt you I just want to make sure you're giving me the correct information" and he just backed away and shrunk and when he got to a wall he went down into the gap between the square grey stone flooring and the red brick wall and shrunk until I couldnt see him.

Having no one to talk to, and realizing I had a towel as I was told to go get, and it was white like the people inside the archway building past the changing rooms, not red like the people in the small abodes. I took a look back and realized it wasn't water reflecting the orange sky, but the liquid was bubling and actually emiting orange light not reflecting it.. then I noticed there were fires.

Needless to say I decided "I got a white towel, I better not stick around and accidentally get lost while looking around here, I can see the gate after all(the archway, but there was no actual gate). I get the sense that not many people get a white towel these days, and probably not so fast as this.. I mean I practically walked in here and after two convos got it." So I went straight past the changing rooms. and people in the changing rooms were handing me clothes now, socks mostly, and other garments too. then I went back into the place where white light shone through the windows, found an empty seat and asked if It was ok to sit down. and they said "yes, it wont be long now though" and there was this other door the other side of the room from the hallway which led to the changing rooms, and I noticed that it had some sort of circular blue energy that almost rippled and was clear like water. then a white light came out of it and I woke up.

(now fully awake) back in reality I had a really bad heartbeat that morning, I get them sometimes(irregular heartbeats), it feel very stressful like I'm trying to pump glue through a thin tube and I had no energy, lots of stress chemicals...


so as far as I figure it. because I couldn't get out of the dream and died in the dream... (I mean it really shocked me when I finally woke up). I just wonder, did I die or was I inhabiting someone else and got them killed by someone's second-hand smoke? that bothers me a bit. but if it is just a dream.. still. I was so glad when my towel turned white in that dream.. lol.. I had been pretty worried and forlorn when I kinda put 2 and 2 together and realized that was at least a mental image of hell, and trickery of devils to condemn people... What I learned from that is, my towel turned white of NOTHING to do with me, that was not my doing. if it didn't happen.. I kinda shudder to think, this extrememly long 3 part dream, I wonder if I'd ever have woken up lol...


well.. it's that time again.. off to see what my dreams have in store for me tonight. will things get even weirder? will I ever get enough evidence to satisfy myself that these are just dreams? or will I have more strangities to share? will I come back at all? will I fall into a coma? will I actually die?

only one thing I've never been able to do with my dreams yet. and thats to bring something physical from the dream back to this reality. it does however make me wonder about that time with the open door into the dream world that I could see when I was awake.. what would have happened if I went through that door? could I even go through? or was it just an illusion?

I don't expect to be able to remember tonight's dream. because I have to get up early tomorrow. but, I've been surprised before.

___

I was able to remember last night's dream, it was still on the lucid and vivid side, they fed me some cake, it was tasty. they were running some sort of podcast and each of us spoke after we ate some cake, taking turns. it was definitely not on earth because we flew there in a spaceship, and I could see the lights of the cities on the dark side of the planet as we approached. other than that, there was little to no "inbetween dream and reality" event today. so not much to report.

Code Select Expand

<div class="board_icon">
                       
    <a href="https://forum.cityofheroesrebirth.com/index.php/board,42.0.html" class="board_redirect" title="Redirect Board">
    </a>
    Before::
</div>
there's no Icon image url. same with all the thread images and the images next to Home, Search, Calendar and Members and here in the new topic field page next to Other Options. there's no images.

I had cloudflare other than this webpage blocked. the Icons show when I unblock it. but still. thats kinda strange that theres no image urls.

[Partially Active]

This thread is for notifying that you are to be absent for a prolonged period of time. you can leave reasons dates or other info about potential return dates.

Any one can use it for that purpose.

if you become active regularly in game, you can edit your post leaving the date you returned.


I am currently Partially Active here on rebirth. I have been starting to play again. gotta figure out where I left off lol. I still have some things I do during the day though, mostly gamedev stuff, I may make another offtopic thread with things I'm doing I learned alot;

[spoiler]I've mastered Sphere-mapping because I learned why seams and creases exist, even with normal maps. and of course I figured out ways to negate the seams and creases.

I also figured out how to use particle effects to create clouds, yeah, particle effects don't render in-game, but I can map a render of them from several angles to something.

along with seams and creases I learned how to get rid of visible object borders, so that they are essentially invisible (handy for when you are making hidden passages behind destructibles etc.)

I've been working on my female base model, I finished the hands entirely. (those that know what happened know I got stuck on them because of forgetting the math behind them. now I've perfected that.) - now I'm stuck redoing the hips and figuring out how to make a model that can be animated to both do the toe-touch and shake it's butt to dance, that.. that is my main stuck point right now. @_@.

the game I was working on (a puzzle game, not project bane) is on hold til I feel like going to fix the color input window. it needs some major reworking not only did I use way too many logic bricks to do it (and I planned to break it up and recode it) but I also perfected using the built-in bitmap font system, so I probably should just replace the digits and such with bitmap font text objects.

I also took some time to perfect my dynamic object track following methods.

we'll see where that takes me. still have a few things to perfect.[/spoiler]

They are a US company, they host their data in the US. Yet users in the US are being told discord is now following european commission regulations on behalf of all users regardless of your locale. Not only that they say they have a right to sublicense and modify anything you upload even if you don't own rights to do so yourself.

for example, if someones uploads a game you made without your permission when you licensed your game to forbid modifications, discord is saying they have a right to modify it. This is inherently illegal because they are gaining their permissions from a third party that does not have the legal or documented authority to grant them the permissions they are demanding, and with their intent to bypass the rights of the legitimate owner. Further more if you or someone on behalf of your company does agree to the ToS whom has the authority regarding something your company has made and uploaded, then discord gains all rights to use distribute and modify and redistribute whatever it is as if they own it, even for profit.


I do not agree.

I will not be using discord any more.

they've proclaimed themselves under the law of the EU even though they are a US company. - this has got to be illegal where there are conflicts of law between the US and EU.
and they say they have rights to sublicense and modify your uploads, even games you don't own the rights to yourself. this is a big legal no.
also you cannot opt out of the arbitration clause any more.

It's all a contract under duress, a forced contract.

It's actually violating multple consumer and product protection laws in the usa, no wonder they'd rather say they are following eu law. eww. insert meme "this is illegal you know"

do not agree. if you agree as a developer, close that account, it's not worth it as a developer "but I'm not releasing anything via discord" that doesn't matter any more, if you agree to this ToS they have a right to use distribute and modify your content that's uploaded by others!. oh and they claim the right to profit from your stuff by using it in advertisements and sharing it with partners. they name google as a partner.

discord has breached law of it's governing country and it's really, really bad for you if you are a content creator or developer.

They will arbitrate for their company's benefit in case of a legal problem where they have wrongfully modified and used something for profit that they got from your uploads and someone sues them,
They WILL blame YOU! and likely continue using it.

For me this new ToS visibly violates multiple product and consumer protection laws. It's illegal. it's not something I want to get wrapped up in. again when they get caught because of their illegal ToS they will blame the user, as you've agreed to let them arbitrate you have no way to defend yourself from this gross abuse of a use agreement and companies that come suing because of it. Get out while you can.

lets say in example you upload or link CoH sourcecode docs to discord, and Discord uses them for profit by selling them to google for $1.5 million, and NCSoft finds out. NCSoft will sue discord and Discord will arbitrate for you and say you the user should have known they would sell it, and so discord waives all liability. now NCSoft comes to you demanding $1.5 million you did not make and may not have.
Unless of course NCSoft themselves have an official discord account which has agreed to this new ToS. then they lose all right to sue and would legally lose ownership of the game according to EU law (and whoever discord sells it to would be the new owner. the ToS is a nightmare for developers.

Now lets say you as a developer make a game. through hard work blood sweat, tears and headaches. and you do not upload it to discord, but you agree to the terms of this ToS so you can use discord, and then some other user uploads your game, possibly in source because some games are in source. Discord sells it to google, and you try to sell your game and find out it and many other copy cats are on the google play store without your permission and google is profiting from it. you can do nothing because thats what you agreed to in this ToS. Now google is suing YOU for selling a game you made, that they bought from discord because it was uploaded by another user!

It's not safe for developers, your only safe bet is to not accept their ToS (meaning you cannot use discord), if you already accepted it, you'll need to close that account to nullify it. or disconnect your discord use from your development projects (meaning you can't share nor admit affiliation with the dev of such a project). For me that's already too late so I am hitting the red X reject button in the browser tab. good, I don't like keeping a modern browser open all day anyways, good riddance I'll go back to my flash enabled browser. again they do all sorts of tracking now too, it's in their ToS, they'll track you by device, so if they can link you to a dev project that way, then they'll assume you've accepted their right to steal your work.

so that's my reasons for not using discord now. this is a protection for if someone other than me uploads my game in the future, then having not agreed to this I can sue discord if they try to use, modify, profit from or sell it without my permission.

maybe this is a bit over the top for some people, but I do not want to have to spend time arguing against this ToS in court later.

now if you are not a developer and do not plan to even have your own company or your own products, then you can just be careful to not share things you don't own. and yes that can mean not sharing videos or images others own by legal registration. for example you cannot use any images containing trademarked characters or otherwise intellectually protected, otherwise if Discord does an advert and uses that image in the background "All rights reserved" the owning company will be told by discord to sue you.

for me, even as a user, that severely limits me from sharing content and engaging in a social way. so at that point it makes no sense to continue to use discord.

oh by the way, their ToS covers anything in "private" messages too. which means they are not private and anything uploaded there is now able to be used, distributed and modified by discord and their partners for profit.

it's a shame that we can't have anything nice, that a bad ToS will always kill it.

So I'll start this by saying in my experience so far, it's not possible to make an internet enabled device truely safe while you are doing anything online. Obviously some sites (like this one) are trustworthy-ish.

But today I want to teach you how to know if your device is safe. (this advice is not fool-proof mindyou). but it's good to at least know who is spying on you and on what sites and what sort of information they are gathering. it may leave a bad taste in your mouth and make you move away from certain sites and banks etc. but. meh I'll leave that call upto how much you can stand of the spies.

Why should you care? well if you trust employees at google, facebook and microsoft with your bank login info and password reset questions, and info about all your finances in your account then you don't need to read any further, you are as safe as you want to be, but all it takes is one bad employee and LEAK. your personal info was sold to someone in another country and now your bank account has mysterious charges or the password has been changed. now this doesn't happen very often. but when it does happen, it happens Enmass you will not be the only one effected. but it's a huge oops that can be avoided.

OR EVEN MORE IMPORTANT YOUR DEVICE MAY BE SLOW BECAUSE TOO MANY SPYWARE COMPANIES ARE ALL FIGHTING OVER YOUR DATA AND DESTROYING YOUR HARDWARE IN THE PROCESS.

that deserved capslocks. you onboard mi hearty? cool lets sail this vessel off into the high seas and figure out how to stop it.

the following contains advice to use windows. Linux is also cool but haven't used it in years, it's also high maintenance and with the rate software advances you'll need to pull off your files once a year and install a new kernel before you can install any other dependencies to install the software you actually want to run.
I would never mac'ncrash though. if you need to know what a macn'crash or iCrash is you obviously didn't know crapple in the 90s. "mr librarian sir I need to use a computer for my school assignment but there are no computers available" librarian "what are you talking about there are plenty of macs avaialble right in front of the counter here, no one is using them" me "yeah but everytime I write a paragraph I get the spinning wheel of death and have to unplug it and start over".

remember kids in the beginning real people used IBMs, they were expensive and ran windows, and then a guy started a company called Macintosh and used old thirdrate hardware and only 1 option and made an os catered to that exact cheap hardware and called it macintosh (no drivers for other hardware so if you wanted a better CPU or grraphics card or memory sticks, tough apples.). be we called it crashintosh, because the operating system wasn't written well either.

if you are on a chromebook, you are already infested with malware. I suggest pulling your files off, transferring all your logins and such to a new non google machine, deleting all passwords and such on your google book, and selling it to some schlup, or selling it for scrap. if you are advanced enough you could try formatting the hardisk and installing another OS, but I've heard many google BIOS actually are spyware ridden and may prevent other OSes from being installed (which is actually illegal, as Dell was found guilty of that with windows in the 90s, bricking machines so you couldn't install anything else, but google gets treated special.)

If you are using windows, some tools that come with windows are very helpful.

Task Manager, we all know this, or at least you should, you can open it by holding ctrl+alt+delete and selecting task manager. you could also open a run dialogue with the "windows key and r" and type taskmgr.exe and hit enter, or search for and use cmd.exe and type taskmgr.exe and enter.

task manager is useful for seeing what programs and services are running. if you don't want Microsoft spying on everything you do (what you type, and using your camera and mic to record you without your knowledge (*cough*windows 8 and 10 *cough* no idea what I'm coming down with I hope it's not microsoftie) you should immediately go to the Services tab of task manager and disable BITS (Background Intelligent Transefer Service) the internet works fine without it, it's just for ONLINE BACKUPS (that you usually can't access, for microsoftie's eyes only). You may need to run taskmanager as administrator to disable this, in the Services tab you'll want to click BITS and then the Services button with the admin symbol on it, then use the dropdown menu to set it to "Disabled" and click the Stop button and you can watch it enjoy it's ban. If your copy of windows does not allow you to disable this, I truely am sorry. there's not much you can do, but I'll tell you anyways later in the post (it has to do with blocking ranges of IP addresses belonging to microsoft in your router). Naturally if you disable BITS or block microsoft you will not be able to update (if successful, if not successful everything you do is not secure, you are essentially spied on by microsoft and at their mercy hoping a bad employee with access doesn't sell private info) and will not be able to use microsft online backups! (seriously, get a usb thumb drive and back things up manually there). You can always reenable it if you really want to.

BITS may try to start itself back up (in example on login, at which point you may have to remove it from starup in msconfig.exe), if you notice this you may need admin priviledges by openning task manager as an admin to truely disable it. If you want to update you can always reenable it temporarily.

Resource Monitor: this is a critical tool to know whats going on over the web. You can find it Inside Task Manager in the Performance tab, merely click the button and it'll open. alternatively you can run it with a run dialogue as resmon.exe or in a cmd.exe prompt.

The network tab in resource monitor is great to see whats really going on when you do things(when you are connected to the internet, or open your browser, or load a certain website etc, or run software). (though you cannot see what the data actually is, but it's probably encrypted anyways, you probably already saw it and google wants their copy secret so you don't know what they re taking, you'd need to be a higher level keyjocky to even listen what the bytes say)

just because something shows up in the network list doesn't mean theres a problem. it depends on WHAT is showing up and WHEN. if you are just openning your browser with no site, just a blank page and google pops up or psychz.net etc., then yeah thats a problem and you'll want to block that. If you visit a website that's not google and you get lots of 1e100.net addresses showing up or googleusercontent.com or edgestarmini facebook.com addresses, than yeah your ISP or DNS server has sold you out to their monitoring, and you will want to block those.

in my experience actually blocking things like 1e100.net is practically impossible because they do not publish their entire IP ranges and do not resolve to all their IPs when requested by a user (they have outgoing-only IP addresses, which they ensure are sent to you as a URL so you cannot see the IP address) but you want to try to block them anyways, because google is one of the nastiest of all spies. facebook, cloudflare, cloudfront and amazon, even akamai are pretty bad too. you will want to keep toggleable firewall rules for them so you can block them when you want to. we'll get in to that soon.

First you'll want to know how to Check what something is in resource monitor. if it's a url a "something.someplace.com" kinda thing then you'll need to find it's Ip address to fully block it. if it's an IP address such as "0.0.0.0" to "255.255.255.255"  then you'll want to find out who it belongs to before considering banning it (you'll also want to make sure it isn't an alternate IP address for the site you are visiting in your browser).

heres some tools:

cmd.exe in windows windowskey + r and run cmd.exe
type:
ping website.com

inexample: ping google.com
it will then send 4 pings to the site and tell you the Ip address it recieved from and the speed of the data and packet size. this can be used to determine if you are not correctly online. if every website fails ping, you are doing something wrong in your net settings, or somethign got corrupted and you should probably do a malware scan with malwarebytes. but we just want the IP address from here. some websites have multiple IP addresses, so you can keep pinging them and get different IPs. but some URLs don;t have an IP and if you ping them you'll get a "general failure" these are really bad spy servers. for example best-offers-usa.space I caught them snooping once. as robotnik would say "Snoopingas Usual I see?!" Ping As. Keep in mind "General Failure" could mean you are blocking that IP in your firewall or hosts file too!

domaintoipconverter.com/
(This is a place where you can put in a .com address and get it's IP address (sometimes it resolves names to IPs that ping wont. it's a service hosted on cloudflare, lets be fair it's either them or google, and google lies about IPs and said "not found" a lot more than cloudflare does in my experience). so if you have a cloudflare blocking firewall rule you'll disable it to use this site then reenable it after. and make sure you are not doing anything private nor sensitive when doing this.)
To use it plop in the URLs on one line each in the box and hit the button, the page will reload and tell you the Ip addresses for what you entered.
Keep in mind many places have more than 1 IP address, google admits to having 25 million IP addresses, but in reality they have a lot more.

db-ip.com
(This is a Database of Ip Addresses and who owns them.  it's a service hosted on cloudflare as well. using this service you can type db-ip.com/all/the.ip.address (in example like this: db-ip.com/all/34.0.0 ) and hit enter. this nasty IP range 34.0.0.0 belongs to google llc they use it primarily for spying on people, but sadly some sites are hosted on it
[spoiler](I really need to move my money out of that bank... completely untrustworthy google analytics on the banking login page? are they mad? loaded with amazon spyware too and naturally they admit and say thats just what they are doing now, k, I'll take my money elsewhere.)[/spoiler].

on that site you'll see they give you the entire range of addresses in that range. you'll also see that you can click on in example "google llc" under "Search the IP Address Locator for All Details" and it'll take you to a page and show you all their other registered google services' IP addresses in that category, and under the other ASN numbers it lists out as links (again this is not all of them, but it's a good start for your google blocker firewall rule).
[spoiler]google owns WAAAAY too many IP addresses, it should be illegal (they make new ones roughly every month) and probably is illegal, I can think of multiple federal laws they are breaking, from monopolization of the internet and webbrowser market, and unlawful searches and seizures (selling information obtained without a warrant to federal agents who come with a warrant), to the espionage act (selling the same info and government info to other countries governments and private organizations), but I guess no one cares, gee I wonder why.[/spoiler].

ok so now you know how to identify things you see in resource monitor. and from the information given to you, you can guess whether or not you requested a connection to them. if not, then they are spying.

Data Flow Consideration:

you also want to look at the data flow here, 1 letter is 8 bits(1byte), if every time you type something it's sending 1 byte somewhere that means theres spyware we call a "keylogger" being used, probably in the scripts of the website you are on or even worse embedded in the softare you are using. if it's sending 300,000 kb/sec thats a screenrecording or video, 4,000 might be audio, you get the idea. now data coming IN might be warranted! do not block your video hosts for watching your stuff, done that way too many times, easily rectified by unblocking them at least. but I don't watch things on Youtube, that's google [spoiler](even though they are under federal court order (because of monopolization) to split the company because it became too big, all they did was change the CEOs and swear up and down they have no coordination with youtube (but they coordinate with spying on all the same servers, funny that, and they share the data they collect so google makes money from youtube and youtube makes money from google yeah no coordination going on there).
[/spoiler]

but outgoing data to somewhere, especially google analytics or any analytics is going to destroy your hardware and overclock your CPU. all it takes is 2 of them fighting for whose spyware should get the video screengrab first, and your fan turns on and your CPU struggles, and things like webpages and browsers freeze and stop responding (sound familiar) until they are satisfied they got the uptodate info on you. they also monitor mousepointer locations and clicks. and you're sitting there going "gee it's really taking my computer awhile to struggle to load one shimmering table on this webpage". (it's time to check resource monitor when you hear the fan)



So now you know What they are trying to get by the data flow and the fact they are unrequested connections. and you may get the basic idea of why they want it and why it's valuable. [spoiler]the government considers the collection of your data by private companies ready and waiting for their warrant to collect it a national security issue of the highest level. because they need a FISA court warrant to spy on an american citizen, at which point they need to prove to the court why you are a target of interest and supply considerable evidence of wrong doing before they get the warrant to go spy on you, but they don't need to get such a warrant when they collect data from a company about you, they can write that warrant themselves. Convenient. Naturally the US gov isn't the only one interested in and buying this data (espionage). spyware companies are evil, like james bond villain evil.[/spoiler]



How do they sort through it? they have massive massive spy servers the size of entire multi floor football stadium sized buildings, and these machines sift through collected data based on set rules input by the masters, these rules tell it to look for interesting or senisitive information and categorize it as "hey human this needs looking at", or for junk info like gamers talking about enhancements "categorize as 'unvaluable information', save in folder 'delete me' for the human janitors to go through with additional search queries before dumping the lot of it."


What can you do about it?

there are 3 key tools you'll need to use, 4 if you count your internet router. (don't use your phone for internet stuff, it's not safe there are no user security controls and the operating system comes preinstalled with unremovable spyware that bypasses the firewall for vendor requests. so kind of them to include that, just what I wanted. not..)

the Hosts file,
found in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/
open it with notepad or wordpad openned as an administrator (because only an admin can modify this file) it has no extension (no .something, it's just "Hosts") so you may need to tell the folder to show extensions(in windows file explorer, you go to tools>folder options>view tab>hidden files and folders>show hidden files, and unclick "hide extensions for known file types" , windows usually comes with this disabled to stop you from messing with things. the hosts document is just a simple .txt file with no extension(do not rename it to .txt, leave it as Hosts).
this is essentially a document of IP addresses and websites filled out by you manually, it has the same function as a DNS server, it can be used for more than blocking URLs, such as cleverly to avoid your internet service provider throttling (slowing) your connection to videos and other things by supplying the website and video hosts IP address and their url you can guarantee your connection without having to go through the internet to find the IP address.

normally thats what happens, you go to website.com, but that means nothing, so your computer contacts the DNS server you set (and if you didn't set one, it contacts your internet service provider's server) and Asks "what does website.com mean, where is it?" and during that DNS request even if it's to your specified DNS server, your ISP can hijack the request and say "I'm cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 and I don't feel like telling you what website.com's IP address is, you know what, I don't feel like giving you an IP address either" = "the connection is limited - no internet access". you cannot get online without an IP address because sites need to know where to send data back to. sometimes your internet service provider will Proxy the video and site to you, meaning they impersonate the website and forward it to you, this slows things waaaay down. if it gets really bad you can go to a search engine like duckduckgo.com and search for somethign simple like "blue" in images and it will say "no results" this is a fast way to know if you are beign proxied to fake sites. if this happens it can be extremely dangerous, log-in to NOWHERE and close your browser disconnect from the internet and restart your router and reconnect manually.

so in hosts you do:
ipaddress url.com

in example
3.218.0.127 www.nintendo.com # this is one of nintendo's IP addresses. they have awful routing, they fluctuate between 2 Ip addresses while you are loading causing the site to not load some times, but meh they'll lose what business they want to lose and I can't stop them.

# is used to comment so if you have an old Ip address for a site that isn;t current you can #comment it. or just leave 2 of them active it doesn't matter your computer will try them all.



Lets learn basic blocking: Hey look real spyservers pa!!
#block spyservers
127.0.0.1 508282028.hou.cdn77.com
127.0.0.1 cdn77.com
127.0.0.1 atl.cdn77.com
127.0.0.1 851154692.atl.cdn77.com
127.0.0.1 hou.cdn77.com
127.0.0.1 hwcdn.net
127.0.0.1 unassigned.psychz.net
127.0.0.1 psychz.net
127.0.0.1 ddos-guard.net
127.0.0.1 best-offers-usa.space
127.0.0.1 disuanqi.dadongeng.cn
127.0.0.1 dadongeng.cn
127.0.0.1 wordpress.com
127.0.0.1 mia.cdn77.com
127.0.0.1 1e100.net
127.0.0.1 *.1e100.net
127.0.0.1 .1e100.net
127.0.0.1 yb-in-f95.1e100.net
127.0.0.1 yq-in-f95.1e100.net
127.0.0.1 ec2-50-16-33-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com
127.0.0.1 *.amazonaws.com
127.0.0.1 .amazonaws.com
127.0.0.1 amazonaws.com
127.0.0.1 ya-in-f127.1e100.net
127.0.0.1 ym-in-f127.1e100.net
127.0.0.1 ec2-44-218-88-39.compute-1.amazonaws.com
127.0.0.1 yq-in-f127.1e100.net
127.0.0.1 ec2-52-24-144-241.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com
127.0.0.1 81.33.190.35.bc.googleusercontent.com

this is just a selection of really nasty ones that as I said earlier do not say what their real IP address is when coming to your computer and tell you a different Ip address when you ask them what it is. for nasty sites like that, you set them to 127.0.0.1 which is the local host and will not leave your computer "enjoy your ban google". they snoop in the background and you'll never know they are there unless you are watching resource monitor periodically.

but banning them all one by one is never going to work. spy servers can get around the hosts file by supplying their IP address hidden in your software or in a hidden .js script on a website (probably/usually hosted on google, and made by google) or making an agreement with your ISP or DNS server.

lets talk about stopping scripts, it can be done realitively easily, it is annoying to have to figure out what scripts are needed to make a website run by toggling them on and off, but the alternative is computer grape and stolen information, don't let computer-chan get graped, it's not a pleasant flavour she doesn't like it, consent was not given..

you can install the addon NoScript into your browser. it's a legitimate and official addon supported by all trustworthy browsers. it's simple to use, with a single click on it's icon on the browser or a rightclick on any page, you can access it's menu and see what URLs scripts are trying to run from.

hmm bank.com/login.html yep I'm on bank.com and I'm trying to login sounds like a script I want to run.
cdn.bank.com hmm whats cdn mean? oh "content developer network" and it's hosted on that actual site, should be safe.

analytics.google.com

googleanalytics.com

googletagmanager.com

... um, yeah... no.

it takes a bit of trial and error but you'll get it. it beats the alternative "man this page is really workin my machine hard and it's so slow.." computerchan: "help..... me! .... please helpme!"

but things like ajax.googleapis.com yeah sadly too many sites use google video players and such. you'll start to learn just how many tentacles this hydra has. sadly some parts of it are necessary if only because everyone killed the old .js players and flash based video players, at googles advice because "they were unsecure". that bit abotu google advising people to kill their competition based on fake "security" reasons probably sounds worse than it actually is... I hope..



Next lets get to the Firewall. it's actually simple to use. you go to the start menu, you type in the search field Firewall, and "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" shows up. thats the one we want. it's one of the second things I open when I start my computer. resource monitor is one of the first.

you'll see Inbound and Outbound rules, google blocking requires both, blocking the outgoing stuff just isn't enough. but for most spyware outgoing blocks are enough. "hmm I don't hear anything from frank... frank must be offline.. yeah definitely offline, that's frank for you.... frank hasn't been online for months... I think franks dead... but I'm a machine and have no sympathy." frank unblocks them outgoing with a new Ip address and different browsing habbits and user names, server "huh new user, I'll name you dave, hi dave, you don't know it but I'm watching you"

ok so outbound is where to start, this prevents software which comes with spyware in it from phoning home. you'll collect the IP addresses and ranges like we saw above in db-ip and do "new rule> Custom> all programs> leave protocols and ports at default>

under scope this is where the action happens, under "which Remote Ip Addresses does this rule apply to?" > These Ip Addresses> Add> this IP address range.

to know what to enter in here takes a bit of half-assed experience, google may own the entire 34.0.0.0 to 35.255.255.255 range, but.. you never know for sure, there might be one legitimate Ip in there somewhere that google sold to some legitimate site. so lets not ban the whole range. maybe lets say 34.0.0.0 to 34.190.33.80, but this is a rough example, you'll determine this based on what you see showing up in resource monitor, for example I know 34.190.33.81 and a good portion of the rest of the way to 35.255.255.255 IS still in fact a google spy server address, but it also happens to host other websites. so, figure it out as you go and block what you know is bad.
New Site? New Firewall rule. make it easy on yourself! especailly if a site you want to go to shares the same IP as a spyserver, best separate that out as it's own rule so you can turn it off independently.
you can add many Ip ranges to a rule and you can easily right click the rule in Outgoing once you've made it and edit more IPs in under "Scope" later, so don't worry about getting them all right now.

next Action > Block the connection

"Enjoy your Ban google"

don't modify profile not really necessary

finally lets name this character and add a description

"Goorble outgoing BAN-HAMMA"
description: "The Name Of The Evil One is so corrupt it shall not be mentioned. Gorble. like a garbled website that they made with a single javascript under the html header, in disarray and broken."


Remember you can always turn rules off if in example you want to watch some youtube or need to load those awful recaptchas, or upload an image to discord. some websites are entirely hosted on google, like nearly ALL the comic book viewing sites. "but joshex those images are hosted on some sort of blogspot page, thats not google." me "check the Ip range, take the IP of such a site, put it in yourbrowser's URL field and hit enter. huh google.com.. howd that happen." at least cloudflare tries to hide theirs by saying "this Ip address cannot be visited directly, only by url name, this Ip address is part of the cloudflare network". wait, so you're saying google is responsible for hosting pirated scans of new comicbooks? yes, and they are unashamed. perhaps it's the one good thing they do those surley old dogs. if you can call it good.

Congrats, you are a level 1 keyjocky. google hates you even more. they've gone mad bro.

time for level 2~!

lets talk about that internet router, the wifi thing that supplies your net, did you know you can log-in to it via wifi or wire so long as you use the admin password printed on it's side and visit it's IP address in your browser? usually it's a 168. something IP address, check online abotu the unique login method for your router.

most have an "Advanced" tab or page, and here somewhere there will be an option to block access to certain IP addresses and ranges just like in firewall, because it is a firewall. this is necessary if like on windows 10+ blocking microsoft's IPs means nothing because that rule will get ignored by microsoft's software. well, now you have an exterior option to block them with.

Welcome to Level 2 Keyjockeydom j0053 73# 31337 #4x0r! (not really you probably just feel like it, this is only level 2)


these are the basics, I'm thinking of teaching a class on this and getting more people familiar with monitoring and blocking offending spyservers.

sorry no pictures, I'm lazy.

This one is simple

1: Proc: Chance for Anti-detoggle: Mez Protection Mag 6 (to prevent effects from detoggling this power), this applies to Hold, Immobilize, Sleep, Stun, Fear, Choke, Mez etc. and Incarnate enemy/AV auto-detoggling powers. Having insfficient Endurance at the time of the toggle's next tick will still disable this power. UNIQUE.

2: Universal Toggle, Enhance Primary Effect
3: Universal Toggle, Enhance Primary effect, Secondary effects
4: Universal Toggle, Enhance Primary effect, Secondary effects, Accuracy
5: Universal Toggle, Enhance Primary effect, Secondary effects, Accuracy, Endurance
6: Universal Toggle, Enhance Primary effect, Secondary effects, Endurance, Recharge

here primary effect is the main thing the power does, it might be PBAoE damage, it might be Status protection, or resistance, or defense, or confuse, or repel, or regeneration etc. and may be scaled based on the number of enemies in a given range. Secondary effects might be +special, a debuff of some sort, -end, self heal, +end, +hp etc. whatever they are on that power, this enhances them, but enhances the primary effect the most.

suggested bonuses(up for revision):
12% regen, Mez Protection
3% defense (something, energy, negative?), AoE, Mez Protection
3% damage bonus, Mez Protection
6% Resistance Psionic, Mez Protection
15% accuracy bonus, Mez Protection