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[Sir Pseudonymous]

Or just run into the core of the city, or to anyport if that doesn't get them off your back... Or just run around the block if they don't tag you with a follow, though they might track you if they're particularly bored and have trained up track.

[Kagus]

Much as I would like to, I don't think I can quite muster the strength to read through the 2500+ posts in this thread, many of them from over a year ago...

I've seen this topic just sitting here for quite some time, but I never paid that much attention to it.  I just recently heard HellMOO referenced somewhere else, and decided it was about time to look at the thing.  So I checked out the wiki.


...and damn dude, this game is nasty!  I love it to bits, or rather, the possibilities it provides.  I'm sure I wouldn't be quite so enamored with it were I to actually enter into the game and get abused by the many, many legions of minmaxed hooligans that claim pointless loyalty to random affiliations for no reason other than cash.

I've already got 4+ character ideas running through my head, the most prominent being (without getting into the personality/backstory/so forth) a brains-heavy medic character.  From what little I've heard, support characters like medics and crafters are in some demand.

Of course, I don't actually know anything about the actual in-game numbers of playertypes.  I've always liked helping people, so support types are my kind of thing.  But if at all possible I'd like to fill in some under-represented position to better serve the greater good.  I'm not actually too sure I'll actually ever get into HellMOO however...  It may prove too intimidating or even undesirable for someone like me, and it's not like I haven't got other things in my life I should really be attending to (yeah, like that's ever stopped anyone).

I read a little bit about corporations and the contracts they use to rope together some cash...   Seems to me that, aside from the soda contracts, they're all geared towards combat-oriented characters.  Medical things don't really seem to benefit that hugely from more than one professional (aside from having advanced characters teach the new chaps), but is there any sense in a crafting-based organization?  Get together scavengers and workmen to, in essence, make a weapons company (or possibly "pharmaceuticals")?  Or has this already been done?


Of course, the way it sounds is that the game really is just run by the bruisers anyways.  Are there really that many people who would "lower" themselves to the position of a supporting role? 

And, more importantly, how many people opt to become pornstars?

[inaluct]

Astral, what corp/CEO do you have? He sounds fucking insane.

What for? He does tend to complain alot, and gets on me for trying to do something like hacking a cam or two from COPS. Though he saves my ass enough to be grateful for his almost obsessive playing of the game.

 I should just hack as many as I can and book it to the cube hotel and @quit as soon as I see someone coming after me.

Well, the "don't help anybody and don't get mutations" thing sounds like bad advice.

Also, support characters can be really fun. Twerp (now an admin) used to be a super powerful support dude. He ended up being the go-to guy for anyone who needed things crafted/medic'd/hacked. He was crazy rich and pretty much dominated the game.

There are some support roles aside from the whole medic-crafter thing that are in high demand, too. Lockpickers and mediums are useful, if you're in a corp that robs people. Medium is great even if you aren't; one of it's little perks is the ability to zoom around as a ghost and whisper dumb things at people.

A lot of people do the whole pornstar job thing, since it's easy money. Some weirdos seem to play entirely for that sort of thing. Coincidentally, these people are usually the funnest to mess with.

[Kagus]

I've pondered a couple times as to the humorous applications of A Certain Mutation, particularly when used in the throes of Something.  Could be quite the surprise if the commands are timed properly.


How popular are scavengers?  All these crafters, chemists and cannibals must be hankerin' for someone who can provide the necessary raw materials, yet something tells me that Junkratting may not be the most popular choice of lifestyle for the average player.

Also, reading around a bit on the wiki, it seems to me that inhuman players are a great big pile o' demand just waiting for a good supply.  I imagine that dealing drugs to abominations and selling heads to zombies might make for some fairly decent business relations.  Would I be wrong in assuming this?

[Sir Pseudonymous]

A) The wiki is incomplete and outdated in places. Just so you're aware. The editors either don't know enough to make it comprehensive, or don't care enough to write articles. There are also redundant articles, often with at least one version containing outdated information/generally horrible advice. But it is good for the basics, at least.

B) Unless you take certain mutations like nimble fingers, support builds don't sacrifice much, if any, combat ability, because whips is rape, and they have the advantage of being able to maintain their own equipment/administer medical attention to themselves. Even if you focus on non-combat skills, you'll probably still get your weapon (whips, unless you do something retarded AWESOME like I am and have a blade/gun wielding brains build) skill pretty high, which means you can kill mobs for contracts like anyone else. And you should be able to, because crafting components are often in dangerous areas.

C) For all the talk, the game isn't that brutal, though if you have a thin skin then it's not for you. The hardest part is the starting grind, because you make basically no money and can barely afford the bare minimum in equipment, making any loss potentially devastating. Once you've gotten past that part, though, money will come pouring in, and you won't really care about dying unless you were doing something stupid that lost massive amounts of money as a result. I crashed my plane at least once with a fairly low-level support build, and just laughed off the $20K loss (actually, much less than that, because lol insurance) (well, I did lose some implants, which probably brought the overall loss up to $15K or so, but I had $300K in the bank, so I still just laughed about it).

D) Support builds tend to be more respected, because it requires actually knowing what you're doing instead of just running around hitting things with point sticks in between blowing yourself up. People who can defib others, treat diseases/rad poisoning, repair weapons and install mods, or craft weapons for their corp/random people who ask for their help are comparatively rare.

How popular are scavengers?  All these crafters, chemists and cannibals must be hankerin' for someone who can provide the necessary raw materials, yet something tells me that Junkratting may not be the most popular choice of lifestyle for the average player.

Most crafters are also scavengers, due to the stat overlap. Really, your role choices mostly boil down to brains build (who will be at least somewhat competent in medic, repair, craft, hack/locksmith, etc) who probably uses whips, and combat builds, which include most abhuman players and often focus mutations due to stat overlap with some weapons. Freaks can be medics, and provide support for aboms.

Also, reading around a bit on the wiki, it seems to me that inhuman players are a great big pile o' demand just waiting for a good supply.  I imagine that dealing drugs to abominations and selling heads to zombies might make for some fairly decent business relations.  Would I be wrong in assuming this?

Half. I've heard buying equipment for freaks and aboms in your corp can be fairly lucrative, but you probably wouldn't be in contact with them if you're not in a corp with them, and most of them tend to join the higher end dicking around corps, from what (admittedly little) I've seen. Zombies can just kill someone and eat their brain, so I don't think they'd pay for severed heads, which are quite heavy to carry around in the first place.

[Astral]

D) Support builds tend to be more respected, because it requires actually knowing what you're doing instead of just running around hitting things with point sticks in between blowing yourself up. People who can defib others, treat diseases/rad poisoning, repair weapons and install mods, or craft weapons for their corp/random people who ask for their help are comparatively rare.

Yeah, I find that (despite my corpmate's paranoid outlook in HellMOO) I tend to make friends more easily on my current 'main' character than I did on my combat oriented ones, with no loss in the amount of actual combat potential other than early game (mostly due to low Reflex). And I didn't really know what I was doing from the start, though I'm starting to figure out aliases and plugins in MUSHclient, and I'm slightly annoyed that they moved rad detox kits to Botany Bay (a pain in the ass to get to on my own, though dinaxio,  a relatively well known player, was nice enough to show me there once. Again, despite my corpmate's paranoid outlook, after telling me to avoid people like dinaxio, GOKU, and various others who seem nice enough).

How popular are scavengers?  All these crafters, chemists and cannibals must be hankerin' for someone who can provide the necessary raw materials, yet something tells me that Junkratting may not be the most popular choice of lifestyle for the average player.

Scavving's easy money, and great for getting crafting parts for yourself or your corp. Its also (in my opinion) one of the easiest skills to grind up to 6. With a support build that focuses on stats like brain and senses, it makes up for a slight lack in combat for a good amount of supportive skills (I'm at about 20 total medic, 20 tracking [Bloodhound is easy Sense] and 16 various other skills, although I'm focusing on getting XP for whips so I can use my blacklash to its full potential.) It isn't for everyone, no, but it's good if you're into it.

Also, reading around a bit on the wiki, it seems to me that inhuman players are a great big pile o' demand just waiting for a good supply.  I imagine that dealing drugs to abominations and selling heads to zombies might make for some fairly decent business relations.  Would I be wrong in assuming this?

I've made a friend or two in abominations who need a weapon repaired or some obscure disease cured; although at first I didn't know what was wrong with them (and wondered why I was getting radiation afterwards)

[Sir Pseudonymous]

D) Support builds tend to be more respected, because it requires actually knowing what you're doing instead of just running around hitting things with point sticks in between blowing yourself up. People who can defib others, treat diseases/rad poisoning, repair weapons and install mods, or craft weapons for their corp/random people who ask for their help are comparatively rare.

Yeah, I find that (despite my corpmate's paranoid outlook in HellMOO) I tend to make friends more easily on my current 'main' character than I did on my combat oriented ones, with no loss in the amount of actual combat potential other than early game (mostly due to low Reflex). And I didn't really know what I was doing from the start, though I'm starting to figure out aliases and plugins in MUSHclient, and I'm slightly annoyed that they moved rad detox kits to Botany Bay (a pain in the ass to get to on my own, though dinaxio,  a relatively well known player, was nice enough to show me there once. Again, despite my corpmate's paranoid outlook, after telling me to avoid people like dinaxio, GOKU, and various others who seem nice enough).

Normal detox kits apparently work for removing rads too. I learned this after being irradiated by a passing abom, and a corpmate came to help me. Sadly, he arrived mere seconds too late to stop me from getting cancer. So we embarked upon a quest to cure it. And by quest I mean walked down to the maintenance tunnel under gangland so he could get swollen brain, and then he went and crafted the cure for me.


I've been contemplating making an abom alt, to see what that's like.

[Kagus]

Well, y'all can read the "Clan Gaming" thread to see my opinion on clans, guilds, corps and all other similar titles for essentially the same thing...  Just to summarize, I don't mind a good group that I feel a connection to, but I won't join any old gang just for the tax breaks.  So, basically, I want to be independently supportive if at all possible.  Call it "freelancing" (or "having it both ways", should you wish to be less politically correct).


So, scavvies are more just crafters who take a sideline in looting, eh?  Not much call for a dedicated, specifically good Senses/JunkRat king-of-the-scrapheap build that breezes through the scavenging and then offers up the scrap for other players to barter for?  Ah well, there goes that.  Shame.  He would have been really a rather interesting personality...

And again we come around to Crafters, Locksmiths, and Brawlers.  Hmm.  I'll have to think about this for a bit.



I'm trying to figure out this thing about the Empath/Freak combo (yes, I know it's detrimental).  From what I've gathered so far, the wiki claims that due to the switch, Hideous Empaths will chill out when they're around people who are stressed out.

In a sense, this could play out to something quite interesting.  You could roleplay some sadistic bastard with a penchant for torture who has to nab people and freak them out a bit in order to blow off steam.  I don't remember what it said about actually killing someone though.

I'd say it's a shame that torture hasn't been officially implemented yet, but considering the stuff that can be done unofficially, I don't really know what else can be accomplished.  Can you tie people up?


Oh, and about the brain thing, is it possible to surgically remove brains?  They might be a bit lighter that way.  And yeah, sure, zombies could just chase down a brain or two...  But normal folks still buy jerky, so why shouldn't zeds be interested in a nice bulk purchase of Morbid Waves of Brain?  Yes, I do realize that this really isn't much of a cash cow in any case, but I never said it was a good idea...  Just an interesting one.

Very important distinction.

[inaluct]

Freak/empath has been done already, I've heard it's very good, unless it's been nerfed recently.

Very few people actually roleplay, so you should be aware that if you come off as a creepy roleplayer person, someone will probably kill you.

There's a mailing list for ideas like that (type 'help mail' to get basic info on those, I think), and removing/drying brains might actually get accepted. I hear zombie was nerfed pretty recently, so you might be able to suggest that as a thing to make zombie more appealing. I haven't been on recently, though, so I don't know if the popular perception is that zombie is now a bad mutation, or what. If everyone seems to think that it's very bad, that might work in the idea's favor. I think it's pretty likely that the inconvenience of eating branes was intentional, though, so you also might want to suggest something that'll keep them slightly inconvenient. Maybe you could need a special machine to make brain jerky, and it could be expensive and only available in some distant location, or something like that. I don't know what the more competent admins would think of the idea, but they might like it!

Also, there have been a few cool changes to how scavenging works, so I think it would actually be possible to make a pretty good amount of money by scavenging. If you had the right build for it and the right information, you could probably make decent helle bux straight out of chargen.

Torture has also been implemented. It gives bonuses to ~elemental damage~ with weapons that do fire/electric/whatever damage, or something.

[Kagus]

According to the wiki article on the subject, Freakpath has some nasty quirks.  Primarily just the bit about how they become stressed out around chill people, and how they can't relieve stress in the standard ways of sitting down or pulling out a spliff.  Apparently, Vampaths are all the rage (or rather, all the chill).

This is the wiki however, and I wouldn't know anything beyond that to confirm or deny. 


Another thing the wiki states is that, although the torture skill is in the game (along with insanely snazzy Brass Zippo Lighter associated dream item), it doesn't actually have an in-game purpose and is thus pointless.  Which is a shame, because Zippos are awesome.


Shame to hear about the roleplay though.  This thing provides the ridiculously huge kind of freedom that roleplaying thrives off of.  Damn waste to just have a bunch of powergamers lording it over the mess.


I think the main difficulty for zombie brain-eating is that they don't have very good access to the prime hunting grounds.  Most of the high-density areas will shoot at zeds on sight, whereas a sneaky doctor can cause all sorts of havoc without getting on nasty terms with the local authorities (due to being sneakier than Mr. BLAARGH).  All in all though, I don't think the zeds really are considered to be that shiny of a choice, particularly when you've got the Freaks/Abominations sitting around anyways.  Still though, not having to worry about rebirth cost is a nice plus, not to mention the damn near invulnerability towards bullets.

[MagmaDeath]

Its not really power gaming, its non-serious, non-role playing, nonsense.

[Astral]

Torture is alive and well; it gives +crit to whips, as well as elemental damage. As was said before, the wikis aren't always kept up to date (and the main one still has some seriously wrong information).

Freelancing isn't recommended. You're much more likely to be fucked with, and with no backup from your corp, it can continue indefinitely, more or less. (a recent example of someone named Aiko comes to mind. Corpless, and trying to make money in the hospital, she was knocked out and taken to a corp's broadcasting station where she was tortured for a while until someone from an equally powerful corp broke in and killed her. She was a medic, and said something once 'provoked,' but people have a twisted sense of humor when it comes to these things and being in a position of power).

[Josephus]

Actually, she was with ENEMA. NDY killed her and she started whining about it. It was... apocalyptic.

[inaluct]

Hahaha, NDY fucking rules.

Also, the freak-empath thing is mostly a popular choice because empath goes great with focus, and focus goes great with freak. When you use a focus power, it normally gives you some stress. Some of them, like screech, give you pretty large amounts. With freak, the stress is reversed, so you can destress by screeching/spewing/whatever. Also, since you're an empath, being insulted stresses you out. Since you're a freak, this stress is reversed. Because of this, you can also insult yourself to destress. At least, I think that's how it all still is.

Zombies aren't hunted in freedom city, either, unless that was changed recently. And they still need to reclone and pay money if their body gets destroyed or irreparably damaged. Irreparable damage basically meaning fatalities and having some jerk waddle up on your dead corpse and cut off your head/skin/whatever.

[Kagus]

Freelancing isn't recommended. You're much more likely to be fucked with, and with no backup from your corp, it can continue indefinitely, more or less.

So, in essence, you either get your gang sign on or you become a grief cushion.

Yeah, that doesn't jive particularly well with me.  I don't really mind having to watch my back due to the world being goddamn insane, and there's not much wrong with the occasional death/rape/burglary, but repeated griefing just because you don't have other brainwashed thugs standing behind you doesn't sound too great to me.  Joining a group has to mean something for me, not just be the communal equivalent of putting on a +5 Leather Codpiece of Griefer Repellent.

If there's a Bay12 group out there, I might be persuaded to join up (depends on 'what kind' of Bay12 it is), but that's just because I have something in common with the fellas.  In general, I tend to avoid binding myself to tribes.


Interesting to hear about how torture is implemented.  Shame, I was kinda hoping for some interactive commands...  This sounds entirely too useful.

I was wondering what exactly would be required for making an interesting and unusual zombie character, but this recent burst of non-wiki knowledge has made me alter my opinions somewhat.



EDIT:  Damn wiki, just found some other source of info that hints at actual, direct torture.  I wonder if you can torture someone with a spoon... 

As another question that doesn't particularly need asking, I wonder how Bleeder does with Freak...  Do you wind up burning yourself with your own acidic blood?  Could be fun.

Also, Zombie plus Solar Sponge.  And while we're at it, Flight with Yeti Fur.  I'm assuming the cold up there is significant enough to provide the boost?  Better yet, flying abominations.  That'd be grand, swooping down on unsuspecting individuals and causing extreme nastiness and maybe a chestburster or two before flitting away again.


In somewhat more sober matters, another grand opportunity for roleplay would be to have a couple playing together (ingame couple, mind).  While the personal interaction abilities allow for a great deal of intimacy and thematic-ness, they could also work together to be a support/combat team right there and then.  One of them provides protection, the other does the patching up afterwards.

Can you cook human flesh?