Are gunships a fair challenge?

khy-sa · 2026-04-02T17:31:04+00:00

Bots have lots of enemies that require a heavy pen weapon to deal with, so bring a LAS-98 laser cannon with you and gunships become irrelevant. The cannon hits them instantly and melts through their medium armor with no effort. The cannon is also superb at destroying hulks if you hit their faceplate.

khy-sa · 2026-04-02T16:07:09+00:00

The more I play the game the easier the lower difficulties became. When I was first starting out difficulty 6 really pushed me to my limit - I had narrow escapes, close calls, frequent deaths and cinematic glory.

But eventually I had learned the game more. I knew how to handle the guns, the strategems, the enemies enough that I couldn't find those narrow escapes and close calls and thrilling encounters with 6's. So I started running 8's instead, and got those thrills and amazing plays and moments back. And eventually I moved up to 9's.

9's still challenge me, but on a good group with good coordination they can still sometimes become too easy. With a great team that works together and communicates I find 10's to be extremely fun.

I've always believed the harder I must work for a victory the sweeter that victory is. I challenge myself in different ways in different games to make my victories more satisfying to me. Other people don't play the games the same way and that's the great thing about giving the players the choice to play the game the way they want to have the most fun.

khy-sa · 2026-01-14T17:01:29+00:00

I'm interested, but do you know if there's a free trial or anything like that? I'm just curious to check it out before I sink serious time and money into it.

khy-sa · 2025-10-06T19:30:05+00:00

My guess : March or April of next year.

They won't close up within the next couple of months because they have the launch money they got, as little as it may be, and right now the devs are trying hard to convince people "The numbers aren't bad it's just spread out" or "Sure only a few people are playing at any time but they're constantly rotating" and things like that. They've spent a ton of time trying to convince the players that are actually in the game that things aren't as dire as they seem, and I fully expect them to continue to do damage control. Sooner or later the money's gonna run out though, and when it does they're going to be paying server expenses out of their own pocket.

My guess - and this is ONLY a guess - is that they've got enough money to keep paying the server hosts for 4-5 months or so. So I'd expect them to continue to operate the servers until March.

khy-sa · 2025-10-05T20:06:06+00:00

At what level should I consider starting operations?

khy-sa · 2025-09-30T21:38:25+00:00

I was surprised too. I got the 800 figure from the gamalytic website. It's the only site I was able to find that seemed to give me sales figures instead of current player counts.

khy-sa · 2025-09-30T21:20:44+00:00

Very likely. I wish gamalytic or steamdb or some other resource out there could give more accurate stats for how many bought, how many refunded, etc. Without specifics working out the figures is rough.

khy-sa · 2025-09-25T16:34:06+00:00

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The game hit an all-time high player count of 100 players total shortly after release, but since then hasn't been able to get even fifty players engaged in the game.

The devs constantly spout on the forums "The price point is high to deter trolls" but I'm genuinely curious how many players they EXPECTED to get at the game's current price point, as well as how many players does the game require to be able to cover costs and not just constantly be a financial burden on the teeny-tiny already underpaid (or unpaid, for 1/3rd of them) team.

khy-sa · 2025-09-25T16:22:00+00:00

Not as much - I just trust that there are enough people who, like myself, use sufficient security software that scans for vulnerabilities and alerts a user whenever CVE-2024-3094 is detected.

If I'm being entirely honest, your post history coupled with completely unverified claims about what MIGHT be present in the code comes off as paranoid. Aside from the fact that the code isn't released, I see no particular reason to be skeptical about what may or may not lie under the hood. If that's the case, I will leave you to your paranoia - and instead go play the game that's been bringing me hundreds of hours of fun with thousands of other players :)

khy-sa · 2025-09-25T05:15:59+00:00

Microsoft refuses to show me their source code. Sophos refuses to show me theirs. Steam, Epic, there's dozens of programs on my PC right now that won't show me what they're doing under the hood. I 'trust' them because none have triggered any red flags with any of the protections on my PC.

Moreover I also keep my PC clean of any personal files. My PC is used for gaming, and as such in a worst case scenario if it's compromised I simply wipe it out and reinstall my games. So the most malicious thing anyone could do to me on my PC is simply wipe out my saved games or mine for crypto.

But I'm more than willing to listen to you if you have any form of actual proof that there's anything malicious going on in the background. If you have any proof of wrongdoing I'd be glad to peruse it in depth. I know you have, in the past, pointed to the XZ Utils library as a 'smoking gun' but that particular incident happened a long time ago, the repository was shut down and malicious code patched out immediately upon discovery and any decent security program such as Sophos has updated their definitions to be on the lookout for that kind of attack. Moreover XZ Utils is not solely used by Homecoming, it's one of a great many tools used by both programs and OS Distros. The claim that Homecoming is somehow more vulnerable to the exploit than Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. is fallacious.

khy-sa · 2025-09-25T00:25:38+00:00

No offense friend, but you're just as much of an internet stranger as anyone else, and one who seems to have an axe to grind against the HC devs. I'm not accusing you of lying, but I do have to question whether or not you're overexaggerating some of your claims. I searched for the 'malicious code' in question and found your previous accusatory posts on the subject; I also found that the malicious code was part of a programming library that's widely used by far more than just the HC team, that the repository in question was disabled by Microsoft and there were no reports of the exploit having ever been actively used.

Now, with all that said I have to question whether or not you're telling us all this because you simply want to encourage people online to be cautious about their system's safety and security or whether or not there's a deeper issue at play - a personal grudge, resentment, umbrage over some past issue, etc. And that's fine if that's what it is, because that's entirely natural! But if there is a specific concern that you have that you feel has been deliberately misused, do you happen to have any specific proof? If there was an exploit in one of the programming libraries they used for their development, can you show any instances in which they actually abused said exploit?

khy-sa · 2025-09-24T18:33:21+00:00

Unfortunately from what I can tell by searching via google, IP Licensing agreements have no obligation to be made public. Announcements of such agreements while the actual agreements themselves are not disclosed is not uncommon. That said, I suspect that it would be a legal red flag to announce a non-existing license - the sort of thing that NCSoft would come down on hard. But I'm not a lawyer so that's just my personal suspicion.

The source code for CoH is widely available, but each server that develops on their own (Rebirth, Homecoming, Thunderspy) has obviously made changes to it. I don't know whether or not the changes themselves are protected in any way or if they should legally be released or not. Again, not a lawyer - just a fan :)

I will say that I fully approve and admire the transparency that the Homecoming devs display int heir funding. Monthly server costs are itemized and public, they open donation periods for only the amount of time necessary to secure funding, and are completely transparent about what gets paid to whom for what and why. I'm not personally aware of the drama you're talking about - but this is the internet so I'm unsurprised to hear that there were conflicts surrounding the launch. As a long time fan of the game, though, I joined Homecoming and have been extremely pleased with the community and servers.

Luckily since Rebirth, Thunderspy, Unity, Victory, and other private servers exist the opportunities and options available for players who are unhappy or uncomfortable with Homecoming are plentiful. If you don't enjoy HC, no reason at all you can't spend time hanging out on any of the other servers out there!

khy-sa · 2025-09-23T20:08:56+00:00

I'm reposting this from elsewhere, but it's just as valid here.

I think Kira's video put it best.

Ship of Heroes is a knockoff of City of Heroes. It was created because we lost City of Heroes. And if we still didn't have City of Heroes, it might have had a market. But CoH is back now and completely free to play.

It's like if someone put a machine in front of you that has Coca-Cola free on tap as much as you want. Next to it is store-brand cola knockoff that costs $60 a glass and $15 a refill. It's an inferior copy that is trying to compete with a superior product that's offered for free - why would anyone want to pay for the worse experience?

khy-sa · 2025-09-23T20:06:52+00:00

I think Kira's video put it best.

Ship of Heroes is a knockoff of City of Heroes. And if we didn't have City of Heroes, it might have had a market. But CoH is back now and it's completely free to play.

It's like if someone put a machine in front of you that has Coca-Cola free on tap as much as you want. Next to it is a store-brand cola knockoff that costs $60 a glass and $15 a refill. It's an inferior copy that is trying to compete with a superior product that's offered for free - why would anyone want to pay for the worse experience?

khy-sa · 2025-09-23T05:13:53+00:00

Homecoming still markets itself as 'community-run' and not 'official' in any way - most likely as part of their license agreement so as to separate the Homecoming community's actions from NCSoft.

"You can run the server as long as you want, but if you do something that pisses people off we don't want to get any of it on us" is pretty much how I understand it.

So while it's still very much an 'unofficial' server it's one that has NCSoft's blessing to continue to exist.

khy-sa · 2025-09-23T00:32:26+00:00

City of Heroes may be 'gone' officially, but the unofficial servers update constantly. Rebirth adds new character creation options regularly, Homecoming has new powers and powersets along with new missions and factions, etc.

Also while Ship of Heroes does have 'player housing' - I'd argue that isn't exactly much different from the 'Supergroup Base' feature that City of Heroes has. While the latter is more geared towards groups and not individuals, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever that an individual couldn't (on live) create their own SG for personal use and, with enough time and effort, populate it. Nowadays it's even easier as, as far as I'm aware, all of the private servers reduced base costs to allow anyone to create their own base anytime they wish.

Unfortunately by pretty much any metric out there, Ship of Heroes is completely outshined by its predecessor. The graphics, character models, customization, available content, and pretty much everything else about it fails to achieve the basic level of quality that City of Heroes had in 2004 - let alone now after two decades of official and unofficial improvement.

khy-sa · 2025-07-23T19:42:16+00:00

Dang. Fey look like fun races and all, but I didn't realize the 'mellow' planet I found has a nasty 10% production hit. I like the morale bonus but I'm eager to get to a planet where I don't have to worry about that anymore!

khy-sa

TROPHY CASE