Is it better to use worker drone/scv/probe to activate a Xel'Naga Tower or an army unit?

Question

If you decide to activate a Xel'Naga Tower, is it better to use a single worker, or a single army unit?

Asked by chobok

Answer

A basic soldier unit is better than a worker, both for ramp scouting, tower holding, or simple patrolling. Early to midgame, you should be building workers as fast as you can, as they are the life-force of your army, and pretty much every strategy can be traced back to them (harass to decrease enemy workers, push to exploit an early expand lest the increase in enemy workers overwhelms you economically, etc). Army units are secondary and much more disposable, not to mention can defend the tower, as well as sneak a kill against unattended or weaker scouts (depends on the matchup). The listed cost of a worker is 50; unless you have maxed your minerals, which happens much after the struggle for towers, merely the time it takes for the worker to get to the tower would've netted you at around 50 more minerals if that worker had been mining instead. Add in the time spent there, and suddenly losing 2 or 3 50-mineral units to get a tower sounds like a trifle compared to losing a worker for the same purpose.

You need all the workers you can get. If your base isn't producing workers for even a second (time spent upgrading human bases excluded of course), or if you're sacrificing any of them before you have 30 on every base and 2-3 bases, you're probably doing something wrong. Even for the Zerg, who use the same queue for both warriors and workers, you're better off with the cheaper and more powerful zergling.

To illustrate, check this chart*, which states that a single worker earns you ~60 minerals per minute. Consider the average time spent on a tower, and remember that you'll have missed on enough money to expand as soon as your worker spends 5 minutes on the tower (travel time included):

*chart source is http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=321242

Answered by Fadeway

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How can I run away while engaged in a sword fight?

Question

I find myself getting locked in combat with a group of enemies and unable to run and hide easily or at all and end up button mashing my controller attempting to get my assassin to run away. It is incredibly frustrating since I have always been able to run away while engaging in combat in previous assassin's creed games.

Any advice on how to get my assassin to quickly remove himself from his combat stance and run away?

Asked by Paralytic

Answer

Depending on your system, press what ever button you use to lock on(LT/L1/F for 360/PS3/PC) to break the lock on, and sprint in the opposite direction of your enemy. Then it's just the standard run far enough away or hide so that you become anonymous again.

I have noticed that in this game it is harder than others to escape combat. I seem to remember just being able to press the buttons to sprint in the opposite direction to break combat and start running.

Answered by turboSwag

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Why do I get zero damage on enemies at the gates, but only sometimes?

Question

I am playing huntress, and probably like most I often camp one of the gates at the beginning of a wave. I've notices that I can shoot into the gate and hit enemies as the come out. Sometimes this does zero damage, and other times it does not. Why does this happen?

Asked by EBongo

Answer

There is a zone of invincibility around the spawning areas to prevent towers blocking spawns completely and killing them easily.

However, If the enemy is a ranged unit, then you can damage them even though they are in the zone of invincibility. This is to prevent ranged units from getting stuck inside and constantly trying to attack you through a wall and thus preventing the map from being finished.

Answered by yx.

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Does the Scorpion pistol work as expected with mods and ammo powers?

Question

I've spent a little time in the firing range trying out my collection of weapons, which I've mostly ignored so far, and have spotted the Scorpion pistol. Unlike most of the game's weapons it shoots little timed sticky grenades and is therefore my new favourite toy.

I'm wondering, does it work with the ammo powers (Cryo in particular)?
And if so are they triggered on impact or explosion (or both)?

What about the weapon mods, I suspect the 'piercing' mod in particular is a bit pointless here?

Asked by DMA57361

Answer

The Scorpion freezes enemies almost every time upon IMPACT with cryo rounds. Then the blobs blow up, shattering your enemy into a lot of pieces. Max out your Scorpion to reduce the weight penalty. I haven't tried the fire ammo, but who cares with results like this?

Answered by Marcus

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How can I know who is at war with whom?

Question

Is there a way to know which country is at war with another country? I know that there is the Diplomacy Panel, but it only tells my situation with other AI civilizations. What I want to know is : Is there a war between other civilizations (AI)?

Asked by Pierre

Answer

You can get a lot of information about other civilizations through the Diplomacy Overview screen. You can access this screen through the drop down menu in the top right corner. This menu is accessible by using the button next to the Social Policies button. Once you open up the Diplomacy Overview, click the tab labelled Global Politics. A screen like this should appear, which informs you of the relationships of each opponent:

Answered by bgalin

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What are the Key Gameplay Differences between Valve's DOTA 2 vs League of Legends?

Question

Valve's new game DotA 2 is a sequel to the popular Warcraft 3 map of the same name which is nearing release. The game follows the same paradigm of a similar game, League of Legends which was inspired from the original DotA map.

Both games follow the same idea of leveling of a character, gaining items and hunting down non-player controlled monsters and player-controlled heroes with the ultimate goal of destroying the opponent's base.

Outside of these core genre-specific concepts, what would a veteran League of Legends player find to be new gameplay concepts when transitioning into DotA 2 (excluding differences in Heros, Terrain and Items)?

Asked by Resorath

Answer

This question has been a long time coming. My answer will undoubtedly be Dota2 biased because after playing both I feel that it is by far the better competitive game. However, I also believe that everything I say will be accurate- if anything isn't, or you feel there's something I've missed or should clarify, please point it out and I'm happy to change it. Hopefully I've made this worth reading.

Within the games:

Metagame:

Dota2 has an incredibly versatile metagame. Junglers are optional, with dual or unorthodox junglers presenting themselves at times. Trilanes, where three allied heroes on the same team group remain in close proximity from the beginning of the game, as well as roamers, where one or more heroes has no set place on the map and moves about as needed, are both common. Lanes and roles are incredibly fluid to the point where attempting to define many heroes, or even predicting how a single 5-hero composition will lane, becomes difficult.

League of Legends has a relatively stable metagame. Convention dictates that an AD carry and a support go bottom, an AP carry goes mid, and a sustainer goes top, with the 5th man- an all but required jungler, left to his devices. These roles have not changed in at least a year of high level gameplay and across multiple tournaments.

League of Legends also introduced the concept of Summoner spells, which on the surface is an excellent addition to the depth of the genre. However, the power of "Flash," a short-distance blink spell, makes it all but required by every player, essentially just adding a high cooldown blink to every hero. The majority of Summoner spells are simply copies of items or abilities in Dota2. League of Legends also includes Runes and Masteries, advantages which players can take with them into the beginning of the game. In competitive play, these for the most part seem relatively static.

The Laning Phase:

As I've already mentioned, the lanes in LoL are very similar from game to game. This makes movement between them easily noticable; only the jungler can truly gank unpredictably. When coupled with the Flash ability, which grants every character a teleport from the start of the game, and towers which deal huge amounts of damage, action at low levels becomes incredibly rare. It is not uncommon for the first kill of a LoL match to happen 5-10 minutes into the game. In Dota2, this is nearly unheard of: first blood happening before the creeps even spawn is more common than a game going so long without a death.

A majority of spells in LoL are inherently spammable. They cost a low percentage of a character's mana pool, or none at all, and can be used extremely frequently to pressure a lane and test an opponent's ability to "sustain" themselves. Many of these abilities are skillshots which need to be landed as much as possible. The spells are for harass and are predictable, and dying to spells like this as a high level player simply doesn't happen: it's very clear what's coming.

Conversely, a key concept of laning in Dota2 is simply "... go." What I mean by this is that when two allies in a lane decide to make an attempt to kill an enemy, you will know it. Rarely seen spells with high mana costs and large impact come out and decide the fight based on the players' judgment of the situation and execution of their attempt. The availability of such abilities dictates how safely you can lane against opponents. In effect, it comes down to a simple challenge: I think I can stay alive if I stand here. If you don't think I can- prove it. A simple AoE stun on a hero such as Sven or Sand King can cost as much as 75% of the hero's base mana pool, and without the mana to use such a spell these heroes are just big creeps. Other spells can be somewhat spammed, but very few Heroes cast spells in lane half as much as Champions in LoL do: you simply don't have the mana for it. In the early laning phase, this mana is as valuable as health, the latter of which can be quickly restored with consumables. Mana potions are more difficult to use, as they last 30 seconds and are dispelled upon taking damage.

These consumables are noteworthy only because of another aspect unique to Dota2, the courier. Utilization of the courier to bring items to you makes being beaten down in your lane somewhat acceptable- as long as you don't actually die. After healing up, you're still at full mana and because your opponents probably took damage and used mana in the kill attempt, the balance of power in the lane may have swung the other way.

Denying:

For some reason, denying has become a crux of the argument between League of Legends and Dota2. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't really matter anywhere near as much as people pretend. The simplest way to explain the role of denying, to me, is to imagine a game of musical chairs. Dota2 gives two people one chair and has them fight over it every time there's a minion/creep to kill. League of Legends takes the same two people and gives them each their own chair: no one loses.

When you expand this concept to towers is when denying gains huge importance. In Dota2, if an enemy tower is below 10% HP it is capable of being denied and thus your team is on the verge of losing a lot of potential gold. If your team does not press the issue to force a conflict at the tower, you will lose out on that bonus. In League of Legends, you can just walk away if the other team wants to defend their tower. It's not going anywhere and you have nothing to lose by leaving. If the fight doesn't seem to be in your favor, there's no reason for it to happen.

It's also worth noting that denying minions/creeps allows a team to control lane equilibrium. If they've taken an enemy tower, a team with superior lane control can still keep creep clashes on their side of the map and force the enemy to make the moves. The actual power of a deny to limit experience and gold to an enemy isn't half as important as the overarching strategies it allows.

Ganking and Teamfights:

In high level League of Legends ganks are infrequent, and with good reason: a gank doesn't really set your opponent back very much. Because Champions don't lose gold when dying, even if a gank is successful its opportunity cost to the killer may be worth more potential gold and experience than what is negated to his opponent.

Because of this, action in League of Legends revolves around what conflicts of interest on the map there are: specifically Baron Nashor and the Dragon. These conflicts force only a few large scale teamfights that happen at predictable times and usually decide the match.

In Dota2, while fights at Roshan are frequent, they are only one of many reasons for fights to happen, with a simple gank capable of evolving in mere seconds to a large scale teamfight. We'll see the reason for this next.

Items:

The single item that Dota2 benefits from the most is the Town Portal or TP Scroll. While it exists in League of Legends in the form of the Teleport Summoner Spell, it's on a massive 5 minute cooldown and requires you to give up a valuable spell slot. In Dota2, for a small gold cost and an item slot, your hero is capable of being in a defensible position on your part of the map or at a tower in three seconds. You can assist an ally being ganked, stop a tower push, or even move across the map to catch an opponent by surprise. You're also capable of escaping to safety at your well in the same short span of time, but only if you can outsmart your opponents.

The mobility offered by the TP Scroll is absolutely crucial to the fluidity of the game; I cannot even imagine how different Dota2 would be without the item. The potential it offers is enormous, and it's why hero movement in the game is so difficult to keep track of. A hero can kill someone in bottom lane, immediately teleport to an allied tower top that's under attack, and win a teamfight there for his team. Heroes are constantly shifting around between lanes to gain advantages where they see fit: the ability to be aware of all five of them, often through pure intuition, is one of the biggest differences between a casual Dota2 player and a competitive one.

Items in Dota2 are very attention-demanding. It is not at all uncommon for a single hero to have four or five items that are activatable and time-sensitive at any given point in the game. Non-activatable items in Dota2 are very simplistic: if you want a critical strike, you must build Crystalis. If you want to boost your gold intake, you build Hand of Midas, an item that gives bonus gold with every use, on a cooldown. For silencing an opponent, spawning illusions, teleporting, granting your hero various immunities, etc., each item performs a very specific role and the choice of items is a monumental one for heroes and teams, nevermind the actual usage of such items.

Items in League of Legends are relatively interwoven. There are multiple different items with similar themes that have various flavors. There are four items, for instance, that all grant passive cooldown reduction and passive gold over time. Items in LoL are overwhelmingly passive- while there are some useful activatable items, the benefits they give are minor compared to the very powerful and situational abilities of items in Dota2, such as a BKB which can grant complete magical immunity for up to 10 seconds, or a Blink Dagger which conditionally allows a hero to teleport nearly a screen's width on a 14 second cooldown. Most of the activatable items in League of Legends deal with dealing/preventing damage or affecting movespeed. None grant any form of true disable.

Many consumables such as health potions and wards that grant vision in an area are shared between the games. League of Legends simplifies their usage: these consumables may not be shared and are not subject to enemy intervention. Use of potions in Dota2 requires care, since they can be interrupted by enemy damage, but also allows for hyped moments where a player makes a great play by juking enemy attacks while using a health potion to gain a quick burst of health and turn an otherwise decided fight.

Fog of War:

Fog of War in Dota2 is simple, but manipulative. If there is not a direct line of sight between an allied unit and an enemy, you are not seen. This allows players to hide behind treelines (trees are destructible by many heroes and various items) and make their presence known only at opportune times.

Fog in LoL is primarily due to "brush," a mechanic where units in brush locations can remain unseen despite being very near to enemies. These locations are static and are frequently warded or scouted with abilities, making their actual impact minimal and more a matter of "did you check that spot?" than anything else.

Runes versus Blue/Red Buffs:

In Dota2, there is a single powerup called a Rune which spawns every two minutes. This grants a hero double damage, huge health/mana regeneration, invisibility, maximum movement speed, or spawns two hallucinations of the hero that have various uses. Only one of the teams can get this powerup and a sizable percentage of early game kills are a direct result of one of these Runes.

In LoL, the Red/Blue buffs are spawned by neutral creeps in each team's jungle. As in the case of denies: both teams have the same thing, so there is no impetus to fight over it if the fight doesn't seem to be to your advantage. The buffs in LoL are no less impactful than those in Dota2, but the advantages they give don't help much when ganking. You can safely assume that an enemy jungler in LoL has a red buff- if you try to assume that a roaming ganker in Dota2 has an invisibility rune you will never be able to accomplish anything, and so you're forced to make calculated risks.

Gamechanging moments:

This is the section most deserving of expansion, but to anyone without a decent grasp of both games it's virtually impossible to explain. I've done my best.

Gamebreaking moments in Dota2 are frequent and essentially define the game. A commonly chosen hero, Enigma, has an ability called Black Hole which can render an entire opposing team useless for 4 seconds, an absurdly long time in games of this genre. See this teamfight. However, the difficulty in executing something like this is enormous and the penalty for misusing the spell, which can be interrupted easily and has a three minute cooldown, is enormous. In the same video that I linked to, the Enigma performs with textbook execution, even being creative by using another of his abilities to clear trees for positioning. However, his team still loses the fight: the opponents have reacted properly to his team's composition by buying items with significant effects (Mek and Pipe). When his teammates don't follow up on his initiation properly, it costs them the battle. Games of Dota2 can and have been won from the use of a single ability.

Conversely, in League of Legends, spells have become more standard and less dramatic. Their cooldowns have been reduced, their effects lessened, and their impact often unnoticeable. Teamfights in LoL are not so much about tactical selection of targets or timing as they are about casting all of your spells and hitting something with them. This is why the concept of a "tank" is able to exist in League of Legends but is completely foreign to Dota2: good players don't use spells on heroes simply because they're in front, but in LoL it's often the correct course of action.

Action:

Something a lot of people like to compare is the amount of action a single typical game will have. I took a look at 30 VOD's from the most recent LoL and Dota2 tournaments and compiled information in a public spreadsheet here. It's not a huge sample size, but it gives a pretty good picture of an average game, nonetheless. There are some outliers that probably slightly influence the results, specifically the longest Dota2 game I'm aware of at an absurd 86 minutes long.

• LoL: Games last about 38 minutes. A typical game averages about 29 total kills between the two teams. There are 0.78 kills per minute, or about 8 kills every 10 minutes, on average.

• Dota2: Games last about 44 minutes. A typical game averages about 56 kills between the two teams. There are 1.37 kills per minute, or about 14 kills every 10 minutes, on average.

Outside the games:

eSports Features:

Dota2 has an incredible replay and spectator system. Not only can players tune into essentially any game on a two minute delay, they can hear commentary by anyone in broadcasting slots choosing to utilize the feature. They can choose to operate their own camera, follow a commentator's, follow a single player's perspective, or even allow the very adept computer to automatically decide the most action-intensive location; never missing a kill. Any public or matchmaking game has replays which are freely downloadable by upcoming players. Valve has also announced that Dota2 will have LAN support, putting it even a step above competing games like StarCraft 2. Teammates can both voice chat with each other and strategize by drawing on the minimap.

League of Legends has a replay system created by a third party developer that is very quirky and comparatively unusable. There is no voice chat in the game. League of Legends has the advantage of a team matchmaking system which allows up and coming teams to scrimmage against each other easily. I do not know if this is actually utilized as advertised or if Dota2 plans to emulate the feature.

Player Base:

While LoL constantly heralds the amount of "active players" it maintains, it neither specifies what constitutes "active" nor how many concurrent players the game has at any given time. Dota2 is currently peaking at slightly over 30,000 concurrent players, but at least five times that number are playing the original DotA on GArena at any given time, in addition to uncountable players on other DotA clients, including the now antiquated Battle.net. As the availability of invites to the closed beta of Dota2 increases, the number of players will surely grow. Attempting to say whether it will end up bigger that LoL is difficult if not impossible due to LoL's information hiding.

Competitive Community:

Na'Vi is absolutely crushing Dota2 right now- anyone who contests this is not watching much competitive gameplay. There are various other highly successful teams, the majority of them Eurasian, with only a few North American teams distinguishing themselves. The most well known of these North American teams is FIRE, now coL., who came essentially out of nowhere to secure themselves both a sponsorship and a respected international presence. Most of the sponsored Asian teams have to this point stuck with the original DotA. This is largely due to a televised DotA league in the country called the G-League. This is expected to change in the near future, however, as some of the bigger names still playing Chinese DotA have already announced their switch to Dota2.

League of Legends on the other hand has a relatively international competitive scene, with multiple top teams from all areas of the world. Worth mentioning is the Korean television channel known for its StarCraft content, OGN, which recently announced that it will be hosting shows for League of Legends.

Both games have teams supported by huge sponsors, with multiple of the biggest names like CLG, Na'Vi, Dignitas, mTw, and plenty of others sponsoring both Dota2 and LoL teams. Other well-known gaming organizations like Complexity, SK, and Fnatic are undecided, having sponsored and dropped teams from both games at times. Finally, teams like EG and TSM have apparently settled into one game or the other, though if one game comes to dominate the scene I wouldn't doubt that either would ignore it, with the popularity organizations like those two can both swing.

Important Figures:

In this genre, there are several key people who stand apart from others in terms of developing the scene surrounding the games:

• Eul: As the first serious developer of DotA for WarCraft3, Eul's contributions include core mechanics of the genre that at this point we take for granted. He now works at Valve contributing to the development of Dota2.
• Guinsoo: As the creator of DotA All-Stars, Guinsoo combined popular aspects from various versions of the game that had sprung up around the original, acting as a filter for innovation. Guinsoo now works with Riot Games in helping to develop League of Legends.
• Pendragon: Pendragon began hosting a DotA-related website in 2004. The website, http://dota-allstars.com/, acted as the foundation for the community around the game to grow and only came to an end when he announced that he was moving to work with League of Legends and archiving the site.
• Icefrog: The developer who pushed DotA to new heights with his focuses on balance and competitive play is frequently deified by his fans. IceFrog was the primary developer of DotA throughout its competitive explosion and the arrival of its legitimacy as an eSport. He formerly (and secretly) worked for S2 Games in the development of Heroes of Newerth and left under equally unclear terms, likely after finding the environment at S2 unsuited to the degree of creative control he wanted. Shortly after that departure, he announced his involvement with Valve as the head of a team bringing us what we now know as Dota2.

Developer Support:

League of Legends has a competitive scene that is largely subsidized by Riot Games. The developer sponsors tournaments, funds prize pools, and organizes competitive environments. Dota2 awarded the biggest prize pool ever at the $1.6 million "International" run by Valve. However, it also has multiple high quality events like The Defense and The Premier League with well known industry sponsors like Twitch.tv and Razer that are completely unaffiliated with Valve. I am not aware of any such competitions for League of Legends.

The different ways that Dota2 and LoL update their games is also something worth covering:

The developers of League of Legends nerf a lot of powerful things, see their most recent patch here for details. What this does is push everything to the middle in terms of balance, where it's more simple to tweak anything that gets too weak or too strong.

Alternatively, here is Dota2's most recent patch. Exactly three things were seriously weakened, all of which were regarded by many as broken mechanics. (Dark Seer's Agh's Wall, Invoker Tornado/EMP, and Puck's Phase Shift autocast). Each of those heroes that was nerfed was also significantly improved in other ways, to maintain their power. Outside of that, something like 40 heroes that were considered underused were buffed- many of them quite significantly.

Dota2 maintains power by making everyone powerful, LoL keeps everyone approximately in the middle and tweaks the ends. Attempting to say which approach provides an overall better game balance is largely a subjective argument, so I won't make it.

In Closing:

I feel that despite the absurd length of this message I've still failed to cover so much, but that's part of the reason these games are so popular: there is an enormous amount to learn and improve upon and attempting to write a guide for even a single aspect of either game would be a monumental task. In a single sentence, the major difference is that the games are not built for the same purpose.

Dota2 is constructed with the mindset that competitive players have the utmost priority. If this means that the average player is neglected, it doesn't matter to the game: it is not being developed for players who are not at the highest level. If a new hero is added, it's because the competitive metagame would benefit from such a hero, not because Valve needs to earn money. If a hero is made weaker, it's not because he's strong in public games, it's because he's strong when the two best teams in the world square off.

League of Legends is built with a model that requires an influx of "new" to create revenue. Whether that's new customers, new characters, or new skins, it doesn't matter: the game is developed to bring in constant money. In order to continue that, Riot Games needs to ease entry into League of Legends for new players and then convince them to stick around. It doesn't matter if the competitive players think Flash is a stupid mechanic or if top commentators want an improved replay system- the game isn't being prioritized for them.

To be perfectly frank, Dota2 is incredibly hard. When you start to play the game, you will play your first hundred games and still feel like you have no grasp whatsoever of what you're doing. You will get frustrated with the game and at times you'll probably have to step away. But if you love the thrill of the razor's edge scenario, you'll be back. League of Legends tones that down at both extremes. When you're learning the game, you won't become anywhere near as frustrated because mistakes aren't punished as heavily. For example: the more you die, the less each successive death rewards the enemy team- a design decision clearly made with public play in mind. When you make gameplay decisions with such priorities, the peak gameplay suffers as a result.

The cutthroat style of Dota2 is simply not something that everyone will appreciate- ignoring that concept is asinine. The argument can definitely be made that Valve is overdoing it- their lack of accommodation for players looking to learn the game is noteworthy and I feel that it holds back an otherwise extraordinary game. In the end, however, Dota2's focus on high level play makes the game incredible to watch once you begin to understand its nuances, and the depth and replayability of it as an eSport is unmatched both within the genre and across all others. In time, I fully expect others to come to appreciate that.

Answered by Decency

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What causes experience discrepency between members of the same party in Dungeon Defenders?

Question

I have started a new hero in the Ranked mode of Dungeon Defenders, along with my brother. Both heroes have started at 0 XP, and have only been played at the same time. Yet up until level 20, I was 5k XP behind, and since then, my character has been steadily going ahead, to the point that I am now 20K XP ahead.

Since we've only compared experience every few level ups, we can't tell which match these differences occured in.

According to this question and the wiki, experience should be shared evenly among all party members, so I don't know what has caused this.

If it helps, his character is a squire, and mine is an apprentice.

Asked by Macha

Answer

There are various Awards that you can earn at the end of a map which can cause this discrepancy. Some of them are flat bonuses, like Knight and Lord, but others, like Invincible (for not taking any damage after the first wave) and Gunslinger (only using weapons and abilities after the first wave) are multipliers (1.2x for those 2 in particular, last time I knew).

For instance, as I was leveling my DPS Huntress, I was able to keep up in experience levels (and sometimes, even outlevel) my other 3 companions because I consistently received the Gunslinger award, giving me 1.2x to my score.

If your Apprentice is using only towers, whereas he is using a mix of towers and character DPS, you may be getting the Master Strategist (used only defenses to harm all enemies after the first wave), which is another 1.2x multiplier.

Answered by FAE

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When should I invest in boosts?

Question

My DragonVale park has stabled out a bit.. I am growing in number of dragons, coins and food at reasonably sustainable rates. I now have a few boosts that are available for purchase but they are a bit expensive for me (100,000 I can do ok, but 250,000 sets me back for a while).

Are boosts even worth getting until I have dragons specifically for making money or an island specifically for making money as opposed to breeding for goal achievement?

Asked by James

Answer

Buy boosts when you have the cash to burn (you WILL have cash to burn). If you're "saving up" for anything under 1 million, it's way too early to think about boosts.

Boosts are of very limited use and force your play in a very uncomfortable way; suddenly to max your coin earnings you have to segregate your dragons onto islands based on type. It's just not fun, and the 20% boost is pretty dubious.

Also remember these boosts negatively impact the opposing element. You'll need multiple islands to shuffle dragons around so that you don't significantly limit some dragon types.

The actual benefit is often invisible unless you play extremely actively; you're probably often coming to the game with your coin reserves full/close to full for many habitats already, the boost really only helps if you collect coins so fast your habitats never hit cap.

Generally, Boosts suck. Don't buy them unless you have cash to burn and you're really hardcore about getting the most money. If you do get boosts, get Earth and Cold, and segregate your Earth and Cold dragons habitats onto the same island. With large Cold and Large Earth habitats you can see a real return on your investment. The other elements, not so much.

Answered by Ben Brocka

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Is there an HD addon for Rayman Forever? [closed]

Question

I bought Rayman Forever from Gog.com.

I wonder if there is a HD addon for this game?

Thanks.

Asked by Leadri

Answer

No, there does not appear to be any mods that give graphical upgrades to the game.

Remember, this game was originally designed to work well in DOS, and technically the GOG version is just bundling the game with DOSBox in order to get it running on your system. That it looks old and pixelated is to be expected.

However, since it is a DOSBox application, you can change the way in which the graphics are scaled up to your monitor's resolution by editing the config files. According to the GoG forums, the config file is in the same folder as the game itself. You can read up on the configuration file syntax on the DOSBox wiki. I'd suggest trying different values for the "scaler" entry under the "render" category.

Answered by agent86

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Do items despawn?

Question

I just found a heart! Unfortunately, I don't need this heart, but I am 100% sure I will need it later. If I leave the heart alone long enough, will it disappear? What about coins and other items?

Asked by OrigamiRobot

Answer

No, items on the ground never despawn as long as you are on the same floor (and once you leave it doesn't matter since you can never come back anyway).

Answered by murgatroid99

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How are all diminishing returns calculated in League of Legends?

Question

It was brought up in another question about how two slows would stack.

I am wondering how do diminishing returns work and are calculated.

For instance, if I would stack dodge on a Jax if I was able to get 100% would I actually always dodge?

Slows, dodge, and also ignite, if someone gets double ignited does it stack?

Asked by Delphy

Answer

Dodge now been removed from the game.

Dodge items do not stack additively. For example, Jax, with level 5 counterstrike, has 18% dodge chance. If he then picks up ninja tabi (+12% dodge) his total dodge chance is 28% (and not 30%).

It's easiest to simply calculate the highest %dodge first (as they stack multiplicatively, order is actually irrelevant): In our case, the 18% dodge chance from counterstrike is simply added (18% of 100% hit chance is 18%) so Jax's dodge chance is 18%, and his "be hit" chance is 82%. Next, the doge chance from ninja tabi is added. 12% of 82% "be hit" chance is 9.8%, which then gets added to the previous 18%, for a grand total of ~28% dodge chance.

If there were another dodge item (say, an identical version of Ninja Tabi that stacked with itself), the +12% dodge would be 12% of 72%, or 8.6% increase.

The reason dodge is handled this way is such that the mitigation of dodge as a stat scales linearly; were dodge strictly additive, the more dodge% you had, the more damage further dodge% would reduce.

Ignite

Casting ignite on an already ignited target will reset the duration of the DoT, losing any remaining damage the original ignite would have done.

Speed

I'm just going to quote from the "mechanics FAQ" from the official LoL forum.

Q: How do movement modifiers work? (Credit to Larias)

A: First, you have your base movement of say 300. You add boots first, always boots first, so if you have boots added.

Let's say you get boots 2. That's 370 movement. Then, you get 35% movement speed buff from items or runes or masteries or buffs: that 370 is multiplied by 1.35, or 499.5 movement speed. If this is the only thing affecting your movement speed, the diminishing returns formula kicks in.

Now, let's say you get slowed by 38% (ashe arrows). What happens is the ORIGINAL 499.5 is multiplied by .62, and you get 309.69 movement speed. Because 309 is not above or below diminishing returns, you stay at that speed.

Q: What are these diminishing movement returns? (Credit to Guinsoo)

A: For each point of movement you would have above 490, that amount is reduced by 50%. So if your final movement speed was 748, it would be reduced to 490 + (748-490)*0.5 = 604. For each point of movement you would have above 415, it is reduced by 20%. So if your speed after all mods was 445, you would end with 415 + 30 * 0.8 = 439.

Q: Do slows stack?

A: Yes and no. Slows from items do not stack among themselves (Phage, Frozen Mallet, Rylai's Crystal Scepter). However, all other slows stack.

Just like the diminishing returns for bonus movement speed, being slowed has diminishing returns starting at and below 210.

And one addendum: The strongest slow/speed boost is always applied first.

Lifesteal

Lifesteal has no diminishing returns. If you hit an opponent for 20 damage, and manage 200% lifesteal, you will regain 40 health.

Attackspeed

+Attackspeed from items is additive and references the base attack speed of the champion. Buying two phantom dancers, for example, gives you 110% additional attacks per second, but because they are additive, the effect doesn't increase due to any other items you may have.

Attack speed has a hard cap of 2.5 attacks per second.

Armor and Magic Resistance

The effectiveness of Armor and Magic Resistance do not suffer from diminishing returns.

Please see this answer for a fully detailed explanation of why.

Answered by Raven Dreamer

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Call of Juarez: everytime stutter when loading something

Question

I'm still at the start of the game but one thing is annoying as hell: whenever I'm maneuvering around in the map and the game needs to load something (e.g. a sound or such a thing), there's a stutter or a short pause so to say.

E.g. I climb up something it's clear that the game suddenly pauses for the sound load (at least that's my impression) the first thing it needs to play it. I've also saw this the first time the wolf came at me right in the tutorial: a short stop and then the sound played.

What's also really annoying about this is that it almost always breaks the tension because I already can expect something to happen the next moment.

I'm on a W7Pro 64 with 12GB RAM, i980EE@3.3Ghz with Intel 160GB SSD and a HD 5970 so I hardly think it's the spec not being enough and thus all my searching with Google and friends turning nothing up (they usually expect hardware not sufficient problems).

I also notice some weird stop, albeit less annoying, when calling up the Objective or Log screens (I expect the game to pause in this case, so no problem).

Asked by Turrican

Answer

Changing affinity as suggested by CJM made things just worse as long as less then four CPUs where selected. But it didn't improve anything at all.

I didn't bother with the disk performance tools, wouldn't believe I'm in trouble with the SSD as I know (and have measured in the past) my throughput is around 200MB reading.

I've no such hogging background processes, I don't run antivirus (exactly because of this). Checked with msconfig.exe, all automatically started services looked normal and tools started on system startup looked good as well.

Finally I tried to play around with compatibility setting when I found a CoJ_DX10.exe in the game directory. It never occurred to me this file exists as typing Juarez in the W7 start menu only provides my on links which starts up CoJ.exe it seems.

After starting CoJ_DX10.exe and configuring my settings (everything maxed out at 1600x1200) and played again from the start -> there was no stutter at all anymore. Besides, it looks better still at 85 FPS ...

So simple I can't believe it.

Answered by Turrican

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Skyrim updated to 1.5 but no 'cinematic killcam'

Question

One thing I loved about Fallout 3 was the slow motion cinematic killcams. So when I heard they were coming to Skyrim I was made up.

Yesterday my copy of Skyrim (PC) updated itself in Steam. I loaded it. I see that the version is 1.5 (1.5 and then some more numbers). No killcams whatsoever. I've killed about 10 enemies without getting a killcam. Is it something you have to turn on? I couldn't see a setting anywhere. It is supposed to work for projectile weapons and magic. I'm using a bow and arrow which in my book is a projectile weapon!

Asked by MrVimes

Answer

They are in there, the new ones have made me laugh (especially the two-hander head banging)... But they are random. Getting them to show up is not a guaranteed thing. All I can suggest is keep playing.. I often work my combats to be 1 on 1 or 1 on 2 and such and I get the kill cam slo-mo quite often.

Answered by James

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What happens if you knockback Warwick while he ults?

Question

If you knockback an ulting Warwick, does it cancel the ult or does he just stand where he lands clawing the air?

Asked by Trueflight

Answer

Anything that interrupts the channel of a suppression ult will end the ultimate prematurely. This applies to Warwick, Malzahar, and Urgot, and any method that breaks a channel will likewise interrupt the ultimate, primarily: knockback/up, silence, and stun.

Originally, when warwick's ult was broken prematurely, he did continue clawing the air, but that behavior was patched out some time ago.

Answered by Raven Dreamer

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Does dragon maturity (past juvenile) have any effect on breeding?

Question

As I level my dragons, I've ended up with multiple individuals of different levels. Past juvenile I can use any of them to breed. Does a different level have any effect on breeding?

Asked by EBongo

Answer

From what I have read/been told/seen with my own eyes, the dragon order and level has no bearing on the type of dragon you will get. There is the proposal that the traits of the first and higher leveled dragon will be dominant, but no substantial information to back that up.

You can check out my question and its answers for more information on breeding chances here: What are the chances of breeding a type of dragon?

Answered by James

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Is there a HD addon for Rayman Forever?

Question

I bought Rayman Forever from Gog.com.

I wonder if there is a HD addon for this game?

Thanks.

Asked by Leadri

Answer

No, there does not appear to be any mods that give graphical upgrades to the game.

Remember, this game was originally designed to work well in DOS, and technically the GOG version is just bundling the game with DOSBox in order to get it running on your system. That it looks old and pixelated is to be expected.

However, since it is a DOSBox application, you can change the way in which the graphics are scaled up to your monitor's resolution by editing the config files. According to the GoG forums, the config file is in the same folder as the game itself. You can read up on the configuration file syntax on the DOSBox wiki. I'd suggest trying different values for the "scaler" entry under the "render" category.

Answered by agent86

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Minecraft moon changes?

Question

So i was playing on a server of my on when i noticed one night a moon with a square in the middle of it appeared for some reason. I know in Terraria they had different Moon Phases that would cause different events. also note that any other night on my server and i get a normal moon.

Does this type of moon mean anything? or do anything to the gameplay?

Asked by Paralytic

Answer

There have been moon phases in Minecraft since release, I believe. You are looking at the new moon.

This has no affect on gameplay as it currently stands, however. There is no 'moon shine' so to speak.

Answered by James

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When is it better to build new towers rather than upgrade?

Question

I'm playing the Apprentice, and I often am unsure how I should invest my mana during the build phase. The cost of creating new towers (40 mana in the case of Magic Missile) seems to be significantly less than the cost of upgrading an existing one (100 for the first level, and 200 for the second, for instance)

Should I focus on building new towers until I've maxed out my total Defense Units? Would 2 towers in close proximity do more damage than one upgraded tower in a single area?

Or will my towers grow significantly more powerful if I upgrade them to the second level at a cost of 100 Mana?

Asked by agent86

Answer

In general you will want to max out your Defense Units. This will actually lead to a pretty good award boosting your XP gains by quite a bit if you can keep the Defense Units maxed out for the entire round with out losing one.

Once that has been taken care of you can start to upgrade. Focus on key choke points and consider upgrading vs repair when appropriate (remember you will suck in any size mana gem around you for being even 1 point below max so that repair can end up being very costly). Also of note, is that while the damage bonus to upgraded turrets is nice you will often find yourself upgrading them more because of their durability. Do not get me wrong, the damage increase is very nice, but knight's defense having more health, the monk auras longer life and the huntress traps more trigger counts are also very key reasons to upgrade them, so they can last with out you being there.

Lastly, as yx. mentions is the blocking of enemies. Some turrets (ie knights) do this better than others (monks/huntress). Controlling the flow of the enemies is also often very key so the quantity of the towers can be more important than the damage they do as well.

Answered by James

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What is the best opening strategy in Age of Mythology?

Question

My brother and I are getting back into playing the original Age of Mythology together, with our favorite map being Jotunheim.

He always kicks my butt though, and I think part of it has to do with him being the first to build walls and gates at the holes. I've tried rushing to build the walls, matching his player, or just saving up gold and food for a big army, but he always destroys my weak walls to build his own and seems to have the upper hand from the very beginning.

I'm wondering, whats the best opening strategy for this game? How is he always able to build his walls so quickly?

Asked by John

Answer

You didn't mention what race you play or he plays when you select Jotunheim, but I'm going to guess Norse based on the theme of the board.

This is a choke point board and controlling the pass certainly affects the outcome, however, you also need to play the strengths of your race.

For the Norse, their strengths are quick, powerful rushes early in the game. If you're spending time building up reserves or defences you aren't playing into their strength. If you can develop a quick offence, you can prevent the walls from going up and start removing his economic base, crippling him.

Maximizing your returns involves using your god powers effectively as well, because you mention your opponent making a defensive stand, a rush seems the best response.

Hersir Rush using Loki

Loki specialises in his heroes, the Hersirs. A typical Loki strategy is called the Hersir Rush. You use a fair number of Hersirs and the myth units they summon to overwhelm your opponent's early defences. Once the Hersirs start spawning myth units it often turns the tide.

To make this strategy work you must aggressively collect food. If your main food sources are berry bushes, then immediately start harvesting them. Train and add at least 4 more Gatherers to the mix. Once this is going you can explore the immediate vicinity of your base, looking for additional food sources.

If your main initial food source was hunted animals you should invest in the Hunting Dogs ability and start gathering from the wild life in the area. Try to avoid harvesting your cows or sheep until they've fattened. As you're able, add the 4 Gatherers to the hunting party.

Once your food production is moving along nicely, build a house near your base and also add an Ox Cart and 2 Gatherers to harvest wood from a nearby grove (don't chase down single trees yet). As you're able add an Ox Cart and 2 more Gatherers to harvest gold from the closest gold mine.

At this point your berry bushes should be nearly or totally depleted and you should move on to animal food sources if you haven't already. Adding 2 more food gatherers at this point will help keep things moving.

This is a good time to get your Ulfsark to build a Temple. You can keep it close to your base if you're being at all pressured, or you can set it towards the pass if your opponent is playing defensively.

Now add in 2 more gatherers on wood and 2-3 dwarves on gold.

When you're able, upgrade to the next age.

From this point on you're looking to generate your Hersir army. They are vulnerable to infantry but the myth units they spawn aren't, so you want to have enough Hersirs to withstand an initial counter attack.

If he has already built the wall you might want some raiders or other units to back you up, but if he hasn't built the wall then you should be able to do a lot of damage to him quickly.

Answered by Stephen

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When is it appropriate to farm in the mid-late game?

Question

I've been having a lot of difficulty lately when playing a carry with being caught out of position when the opposing team goes for Baron, especially when we're behind and I'm trying to either shove a pushed lane, most notably bot, or get the money for an item so I'm actually ready to fight.

Ideally I know I want to be close to Baron's pit when farming, either taking jungle creeps or sticking to mid. But what if such an opportunity doesn't present itself?

So what situation is the ideal time to farm at the point in the game when Baron becomes the focal point?

Am I completely wrong in all of my assumptions so far?

Asked by KaliFear

Answer

Usually during the Mid/Late game both teams are roaming/securing objectives so the only times you really should go for Farm or "Cs" would be when there are no objectives or when there is a large enemy creep wave pushing against your inner towers. If your trying to attain important items before a big fight and the lanes are pushed out, jungle camps are gone or the fight is about to start i recommend just buying wards or potting up (buying the red/blue/green/oracle elixers).

You would also want to push waves out when objectives on the map are coming up like blue/red buffs. Keeping track of their timers would be very useful. For example: You have timed when dragon spawns at 17:58. Your team then pushed out some waves at top/bot/mid at 17:30 and forces one of the enemy team members to defend. You can then easily secure the objective. If the enemy does decide though to confront you it will be a 4v5 situation and you should always mainly come out on top of the situation. If it this is done to your team you would want to send your most mobile/easy wave clear champions to defend these

Timers for objectives: Starting timers (when they spawn for the first time in the game) blue/red buffs - 1:50 wolf/wraiths/double golems - 1:40 Baron buff - 15:00

After death timers (time till they spawn again after deaths) blue/red buffs - 5:00 mins after death wolf/wraiths/double golems - 50 seconds Dragon camp - 6mins after death Baron - 7 mins after death

I hope this was helpful for you.

Answered by Chocolatemonster

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What does “forged by” or “raised by” mean?

Question

On all of the items I've found, there's a blank marked "Forged By" which is filled with "Unknown." I've noticed pets for sale from the tavern owner, and these have a similar "Raised By" attribute, which is so far "Unknown" on every pet I've seen.

What does it matter who forged/raised this item? Can I forge/raise items myself?

Asked by agent86

Answer

When you raise an item's or pet's level up to the maximum, you get your name tagged onto the item, marking that you made the choices in leveling its attributes. It's blank until you max level the item or pet.

Answered by James

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What do I do with ship gummies?

Question

I have gotten ship gummies from various things (mostly while flying the Gummi Ship). They appear to do various things for my ship (health, shields, and so on).

What do I do with them? I assume they are to upgrade my ship. Does it matter how many I use, or in what configuration? Or can I just pile them all on, and have a crazy awesome ship of awesome?

Mot importantly - how do I go about actually adding them to my ship? Is there a menu somewhere, or a certain person I need to talk to?

Asked by Ashley Nunn

Answer

The Gummi ship creation system is complex and deep, (more the former than the latter, sadly), so I can't really do it complete justice in this space. Suffice it to say that you can pretty much just get by with the blueprints and blocks you find over the course of a normal playthrough. I found it to be moderately entertaining to customize my ship, but it has very little impact on gameplay except for making the Gummi ship flying sections easier. There's a FAQ over on GameFAQs you might want to read, although the data there is more about the blocks and some general advice than any sort of tutorial.

To access the Gummi ship interface, you can either press Square on the "universe map" screen, or you can talk to Cid in Traverse town:

From what I recall, he's usually in the Accessory Shop once you have access to this feature. He'll eventually sell gummi blocks, in case the sets you find over the course of the game are not adequate to satisfy your creative urges.

The editor itself is a tangled mess. Expect a high learning curve. There's a tutorial that is terribly inadequate, and you can pull up the controls, for what that helps. The problems with it boil down to trying to navigate an editing reticule in 3D space with a bunch of 2D controls and a 2D display. Sometimes you'll think you're right on top of a block, and you're not - you're on a different block, or you're off the ship altogether.

When it comes to ship building, you're generally trying to optimize across several axes:

• The armor of your ship, which increases its ability to take damage and survive
• The speed of your ship, which is a combination of engine power and wing maneuverability, and helps you avoid enemies and enemy fire
• The firepower of your ship, which is controlled by its guns

There are also a few special items which have special powers, such as the cockpit's ability to heal damage, or the Haste gummi's ability to give you an afterburner power. The blocks themselves are all named after Final Fantasy series spells.

When it comes to building ships, the only requirements are:

• One cockpit
• Engine (or engines) pointing towards the rear of the design

This makes a ship blueprint "flyable." Connectedness of the blocks is largely irrelevant, from what I recall. You can build and find non-flyable ships, but you won't be able to use them to play the rail shooter Gummi ship minigame.

There is also a constraint on the number of blocks in the design and the overall size of the build area, but there are upgrades Cid sells at certain plot milestones which can help you grow these limits.

I generally just built a giant flying brick with wings on the side and a metric ton of guns and other useful bits hanging off of it. Sure, it wasn't ascetically pleasing, but nothing really survived long enough to complain about it.

Answered by agent86

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Dwarf Fortress Abandons Shops Everywhere

Question

I've generated 5 worlds with histories spanning from 1000,1500,2000,2500, and 3000 years. When I get onto adventure mode and find the capitals, all of them, have 80% abandoned shops. Is this normal, and is there a way to change this?

Asked by Russell

Answer

It is normal, and it result from the very long world history you have. The older your world is, the bigger the cities get, but there may still be wars or attack that will reduce the population, thus making the shops abandoned. It seems like people prefers to create new shops that take over older one, thus the abundance of abandoned shops.

Keep in mind that DF is far from being finished, so, in the future, the situation will likely change, and cities will contain more interesting buildings.

Answered by Jupotter

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What item's effects or heroes' skills goes through Black King Bar?

Question

Someone told me that Bane's ulti goes through Black King Bar. Are there other item effects or hero skills that goes thorough it and that can be use to counter heroes that heavily relies on this item?

Asked by Drake

Answer

Noteworthy disables and interrupts that go through magic immunity from various heroes (all ultimates):

• Bane
• Beastmaster
• Batrider
• Pudge
• Silencer
• Clockwerk
• Faceless Void
• Enigma
• Vengeful Spirit

Other ultimates that are primarily used for their damage still stun or ministun (but won't damage) magic immune opponents, useful for enemies who are trying to BKB and use a TP Scroll to escape.

• Necrolyte
• Anti-Mage
• Lich
• Juggernaut (Will still damage, as it deals physical damage.)
• Sniper's Assassinate

The only non-ultimate I can recall that disables through a BKB is Axe's Call.

Answered by Decency

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Do Co-op vs AI bots scale?

Question

When playing Co-op vs AI do the bots scale in anyway depending on the level of the human summoner or will they just get easier to beat as your level goes up and gain more runes and masteries?

Asked by Blem

Answer

Bots are available in two flavors: beginner and intermediate. This is the only thing that affects the difficulty of the bots in game.

Bots do not scale vs summoner level, though rewards for beating them do.

Answered by Toast

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Killing the High Dragon after the Urn of Sacred Ashes

Question

So I've got my pinch of ashes, and I've got the "I'd like to meet an angry dragon now, please" horn. Having been grilled a couple of times now, I'm curious:

a) Do I have to kill the High Dragon?

b) If I opt not to do so, can I do it later, once I've found some Tier 10 Asbestos Underpants of Well-Placed Drainage?

Asked by Stuart Pegg

Answer

You don't have to kill it at all. There is good loot available, and the scales of the dragon can be made into exceptional armor by the armorsmith (Master Wade in Denerim). If you so choose, you can definitely come back and try it. The best armor against it, however, is the armor you make from its scales. =P

Assuming you're a decent level, with good gear, the fight isn't too hard. Quaff some warmth potions, and beat the crap out of it. It's basically the same fight as the archdemon (so a good practice run) except not as tough, and without all the jumping around that the archdemon does.

Healing is critically important, so you know, make sure you've got Wynne, and that she doesn't get eaten early.

Answered by Satanicpuppy

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Can the Paragon choice at the end of Thane's prayer differ based on certain factors?

Question

Note: Here be spoilers. I couldn't really figure out a way to ask this without them.

My Shepard is a female who plays (mostly) Renegade and also romanced Thane in Mass Effect 2. I have no idea if this plays out differently depending on whether or not you gained Thane's loyalty in 2, but for the record, I did.

After the attack on the Citadel and Thane becomes hospitalized, you can go see him. Depending on the option when Kolyat asks if you want to join him in prayer or not, the lines of the prayer Kolyat says change.

Renegade choice (declining):

Kolyat: Kalahira, this one's heart is pure, but beset by wickedness and contention. Guide him to where all hunters return, where all storms become still, where all stars show the path. Guide him, Kalahira, and he will be a companion to you as he was a father to me.

This version is obviously from Kolyat's point of view.

Paragon choice (joining):

Kolyat: Kalahira, this one's heart is pure, but beset by wickedness and contention.

Shepard: Guide this one to where the traveler never tires, the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve.

Kolyat:Guide this one, Kalahira, and she will be a companion to you as she was to me.

After this version, Shepard asks Kolyat why the end of the prayer used "she," and he responded:

The prayer was not for him, Commander. He has already asked forgiveness for the lives he has taken. His wish was for you.

How does the Paragon version of the prayer differ? I suspect that the line "Kalahira, this one's heart is pure, but beset by wickedness and contention" may differ based on whether or not your Shepard is Paragon or Renegade. In addition, how does the ending of this prayer change if you were either a female who did not romance him or were male?

_{Having to replay this scene over and over to screencap the dialogue for transcription may or may not have resulted in teary-eyed sniffles.}

Asked by FAE

Answer

The non-romantic paragon version of the prayer is (differences in bold)

Kolyat: Kalahira, this one's heart is pure, but beset by wickedness and contention.

Shepard: Guide this one to where the traveler never tires, the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve.

Shepard:Guide this one, Kalahira, and he will be a companion to you as she was to me.

The dialogue at the ending of the prayer is the same as you noted;

The prayer was not for him, Commander. He has already asked forgiveness for the lives he has taken. His wish was for you.

As indicated in comments the final line of the scene is different, with Shepard saying Good bye Thane, you won't be alone long. instead of Goodbye, Thane. Meet you across the sea.

You can view it at this link

Answered by Stephen

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Spectre intel terminal authorizations from ambient conversations

Question

There are several conversations between NPCs on the Citadel that result in an authorization on the Spectre intel terminal. Some examples are the Asari commando and the nurse in the Hospital, Private Talavi and the sergeant in Normandy's Dock, and the C-Sec officers outside Purgatory.

I would like a complete list of all such conversations, where/when they take place, and the result of activating the authorization.

Asked by Ampersand

Answer

4 total:

Partner Benefits
Departing Soldier / Wife
Normandy Dock: Bay D24 Viewing Deck
Unlocked after Priority: Mars
Citadel Defense Force +8

Weapon Authorization
PTSD Soldier / Psych Consultant
Herta Memorial Hospital Patient Lounge
Unlocked after Priority: Mars
Citadel Defense Force -4

Con Artist Deportation
Citadel Guards
Purgatory VIP Entrance
Unlocked after Priority: Palaven
Alliance 3rd Fleet +7

Transfer Request
Private Talavi / Sergeant
Normandy Dock: Bay D24 Passenger Lounge
Unlocked after Priority: The Citadel (Cerberus Attack)
Alliance 3rd Fleet -4

Answered by Infamy

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How do I get the Score Addict achievement in Angry Birds?

Question

I recently finished getting three stars in all stages across all three worlds of Episode 1 in Angry Birds. I have approximately 3 800 000 points. I need 4 000 000 points to get the Episode 1 - Score Addict achievment. (Or maybe I need an intervention?) There are 63 stages, which means I need to score an average of 3,000 more points per stage to get this achievment.

This doesn't seem possible.

Are there things I can do to get higher scores besides smashing more blocks? Multipliers? Smashing certain items?

Asked by splattered bits

Answer

There are a number of stages where you can exceed the three stars score by a healthy margin. Most of the time, if you used all of your available birds and still got three stars, you can improve your score by completing the level with fewer birds. Obviously, it's going to be difficult to improve some of your scores, but even adding 10 or 20 points to some of the levels will help.

Answered by MBraedley

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Can mana be recovered into your personal pool, once its in the bank?

Question

I can see when I enter the bank that I can press right trigger to add mana in my personal supply to the bank, and I can then later use it on weapons. I have plenty of banked mana now, is there any way to pull it back into my personal supply (for building towers during a wave when I run out?)

Asked by EBongo

Answer

No, once the mana has been stored it can't be pulled out to be used as building.

Answered by yx.

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How do I remove 'heal scars'?

Question

I accidentally enabled the 'heal scars' power which removed my scars.

How can I remove this and get my scars back?

Asked by Zeno

Answer

You can't. The only way to reverse this is to load an old save.

Answered by LessPop_MoreFizz

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In Aliens Vs Predator, how can you play as an Alien or Predator in Multiplayer?

Question

I got Aliens vs Predator last night and played single player for a while and nearly had a heart attack, so I moved to multiplayer. I was disappointed to find that I could only play as human. Is there something that I have to do in order to unlock either Alien or Predator teams or will it unlock automatically after a while.

Asked by Mechko

Answer

The races you get to play are determined by the game-mode. If you've only played human so far, I think you either played Infestation or Predator Hunt, in both of which you start as a human. You might have also got unlucky and be placed in the human team every time.

In the other game-modes it's Aliens vs. Predators vs. Humans, so you'll have to be lucky and end up on the right team, or you can play Mixed Deathmatch, which has teams with mixed species.

Answered by Arda Xi

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What is the money bag icon in Tropico 3?

Question

What does the black money bag icon that rotates over buildings in Tropico 3 mean?

Asked by C. Ross

Answer

"It means that teamsters haven't been moving goods into/out of the building. For basic industry, this means that output goods aren't being removed, for second tier industry it can mean the same or that it isn't having input goods moved to it. Generally the cause of this is because you don't have enough teamsters, they aren't spending enough time on the job as opposed to fulfilling their needs, or that they can't reach the building efficiently."

Credit to - http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/46864?page=3 User Tannhauser

Answered by Adam Caverhill

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What happens if I find all the lost Dalmatians?

Question

So Pongo and Perdita are missing their puppies, and I sometimes find some of them in various chests I come across.

Is there any point to this side-mission? What do I get for returning the puppies?

Asked by Ashley Nunn

Answer

For roughly every 12 dalmatians you find, you get a prize from Pongo and Perdita. These prizes range from ship gummies, to accessories and synthesis materials.

Additionally, finding all 99 Dalmatians awards you with an upgrade to the Aero spell, and access to the "Secret Ending" at the end of the game.

Answered by Tristan

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Can I play across platforms?

Question

I got Tiny Tower for Android thinking I'd be able to continue my tower I started in iOS. But I don't see any option and I don't think I have an online account linked to my tower.

Is there any way to play my tower cross-platform or can I not do that?

Asked by Ben Brocka

Answer

Unfortunately, the game does not run cross-platform.

On iOS, if you have a Game Center account, your game is tied to it, which is why you can get your Tiny Tower game on multiple iOS devices. Obviously, you do not have Game Center on an Android device, so you won't have access to your game.

Answered by Ashley Nunn

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Is there any reason to keep basic dragons around?

Question

Do I need to keep the basic, single element dragons around?

I'm particularly looking at the earth dragons here, who have small habitats and slow earning potential. Do I need them to breed other dragons, or do the become quickly obsolete. Is there any other reason to keep them, other than looks?

Asked by EBongo

Answer

I believe there is a trophy for having all dragons at once, and they are more likely to make the breeding combo you want. Other than that, they are there for whatever tiny amount of money they give.

Answered by Zeff520

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How can I be effective with Krobelus the Death Prophet?

Question

There seems to be a lot of consensus that Korbelus is a really good (high tier) unit to pick in Dota 2, but what makes her so good? All I know is she's rather tanky for an int hero, but other than that her skills seems to be so so, if she doesn't have her ult she can't solo any hero (and her only other contribution to a team fight at that point is a silence with a so-so radius), and if she does have her ult all they have to do is run away for a while.

Asked by yx.

Answer

Death Prophet is a very strong midgame carry with great pushing, which fits her nicely into the current metagame. Her ultimate does absurd amounts of damage, the problem is that she's naturally a rather squishy hero and thus can't effectively stay alive long enough for it to deal damage. She's also rather level dependent and has no escape mechanism, making her in a solo mid role extremely vulnerable to ganks, especially in high tier play. I almost exclusively take her solo mid despite this, however, as she needs the levels and gains a lot of effectiveness from rune control. She's also not great in 1v2 lanes, even the safe lane.

Starting items: 3 branches, +3 INT, +2 all, and Tangos. Rush yourself a bottle and then Arcane Boots as soon as possible, finishing the Talisman and Magic Wand when available. An alternative start is 3 iron branches, 2x +3 STR, and Tangos, which will let you get a quick Urn. Usually there's a better wielder on your team as she's not a great ganker, but this item is stupidly powerful and every team should have one, so pick one up if you don't expect anyone else to.

Use your Wave at x:50 or so to push the lane and control runes- this makes your opponent have to choose between experience from your now advancing creep wave or contesting the rune. If it's invisibility or haste consider ganking; if it's regeneration or illusion use it to gain an advantage in your lane, and if it's DD you can do either. In lane, try to use her Wave to pick up multiple last hits and harass at the same time- the range is enormous but it must be cast carefully. Be very wary of missing opponents and ask for wards if you don't have them, her early game needs to be strong or you'll have a weak midgame.

From there you'll be working towards a Bloodstone, typically picking up the Point Booster and Vitality Booster first and disassembling your Arcane Boots to complete the Soul Booster, which gives great regeneration in and of itself. (I just learned this last trick recently so you won't see it in the replays below.) If you're farming extremely well and don't feel that you need the extra HP, you can pick up the Perseverance pieces first to improve your farming even more. Turn your now plain boots into Phase Boots at some point during this time, or if your team really needs it get another set of Arcane Boots.

When you've finished Bloodstone, you want other stuff that's going to keep you alive. Against heavy physical damage opponents go Blademail, Shivas, or Assault Curiass. Against a singular hard carry go Sheepstick, Cyclone, or Ghost Scepter. Against heavy magic damage opposition go Hood, Pipe, or Heart. Extremely rarely you can consider a BKB, but since her ultimate isn't too affected by disables unless it remains uncast you usually shouldn't worry about it.

Typical skillbuild: QEQWQRQEEERWWW+R ... this rarely changes, the only possible difference might be swapping Silence and E at level 2/4.

In teamfights, her ultimate needs to be used aggressively, because as you pointed out, they can just run away from it. If they chose to run away, you should be getting a free tower, so only ultimate when you need to- if the threat of your ultimate is making the team wary of defending the tower, take the tower for free and keep going. You should be coordinating with your team during midgame to push as soon as possible, usually taking all Tier 1 towers before 15 minutes. The range on her ultimate is huge, you need to be focusing your spirits to deal damage to buildings from afar. If they want to initiate on you, they should have to go through your team to do it. Choose a key target and right click them: your spirits will attack whatever you do. Don't undervalue her silence, at 6 seconds and with an extremely large AoE she's formidable as hell in teamfights. The later the game goes, however, the weaker she becomes. Like most midgame carries, her effectiveness compared to other heroes peaks at level 16, and so if the game lasts more than 40-45 minutes you had best not be the only carry on your team.

I'm 10-2 with this hero, here are some example MatchID's of my play:

• 9235655: A 1v2 safe lane for a change: 5 minute Arcane Boots, 18 minute Bloodstone, 27 minute Heart.
• 8749900: a coordinated push team with friends after we saw our opponents take far too many carries.
• 8366759: rather typical game showing how strong she is in lane, even against the highly-valued Rhasta.
• 3391570: just a complete stomp.
• 3053432: a game against a lot of good counters of Krobelus that borders on going too long.

Answered by Decency

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How should I be using the semi-automatic Sniper Rifles?

Question

Mass Effect 3 has two main types of Sniper Rifle, the 1-shot clip heavy damage (Ala Mantis, Widow, Javelin), and then the Semi-Automatic multi-shot clip where each individual shot does much less damage (Viper, Incisor, Raptor).

I know how to use the 1-shot sniper rifles (Find head in crosshair, shoot, rinse, repeat), but what's the ideal way to use the faster rifles?

Honestly, I'm not seeing a huge difference between them and the Mattock, a non-automatic assault rifle.

Is there any way to get comparable DPS to the slower rifles? Maybe I'm just bad at sniping with them, but I can't ever seem to land consecutive headshots with the fast rifles.

Asked by Raven Dreamer

Answer

Honestly, I'm not seeing a huge difference between them and the Mattock, a non-automatic assault rifle.

Is there any way to get comparable DPS to the slower rifles? Maybe I'm just bad at sniping with them, but I can't ever seem to land consecutive headshots with the fast rifles.

You don't. There's a reason why they are semi automatic and not 1 shot. Whenever you land the first shot, you will cause the target to stagger, not only that you'll get a little kick back so there's no way you can consistently land head shots in smaller targets. The whole point of those babies is the fact that they have a built in scope. This frees up your two mod slots for something nicer, such as damage and piercing. Or in the case of single player, the time slowdown and damage mods.

The M-13 Raptor is what I like to use when going semi automatic, it has a huge ammo capacity and a decent clip size. Use this to unload on big targets with no shields (brutes, atlas with shields stripped, etc) and watch them die really really fast. Also, with the infiltrator, you can get off several shots with this before your cloak wears off, getting the sniper rifle bonus for all the shots. Generally though, I still prefer the 1 shot 1 kill rifles such as the M98 Widow for the infiltrator.

One last tip, you can do a 'speed reload' for the 1 shot 1 kill rifles like mantis and m-98 widow by using a skill about half a second after you chamber the round. This way you don't have to wait for the entire pull back motion to complete before you can fire. This works great when teamed up with a spammy engineer as a fully upgraded Mantis is actually quite light (Salarian engineers get an awesome -30% sniper rifle weight to boot). This improves their DPS just a tad to bring them more even with the 3 clip Black Widow.

Answered by yx.

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How do I unlock officer cards in Dynasty Warriors Next?

Question

I've recently picked up a PS Vita along with the game Dynasty Warriors Next. In DWN, there is a campaign mode that unlocks officer cards to make your officers playable. However, there are quite a few other cards that can be unlocked, but I don't know how.

Can anybody tell me how to unlock those?

Note: I looked on google, but my answer was not there.

Asked by Stefto

Answer

There is only one practical way to unlock characters, and that is Conquest mode.

E.g. Your group say Wei vs Other, and you notice there is a number #/14. The # represents the amount of characters you have already unlocked. If you go to battle over a territory and you end up fighting a character you don't have, you have a chance to unlock them. For all groups, Shu, Wu and Wei, you unlock 16 in the campaign. I think 2 for Jin and 2 for Other. There are 2 sets to every character, the 1st of which is normal and a 2nd which has different clothes, stats, abilities and units.

Good Luck with the card collecting

Answered by Zer0

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What's the exact population limit at which demand for agriculture disappears?

Question

In SimCity 4, I'm trying to set up a large city with lots of farmland. I've read on several sites (and experienced first-hand) that at a certain growth level demand for agriculture drops entirely, but I can't find any exact information.

Does anyone know how large I can make my city before no new farms will be built?

Asked by oKtosiTe

Answer

A city has a maximum number of residents or jobs that it can support for each type of zone (broken down by wealth level). For example, a new city can support 20,000 R§ sims, 2,000 R§§, 1,000 R§§§, 3,000 CO§§ jobs, and so on. These are referred to as "demand caps". Once the demand cap is reached for a given category, no more buildings of that type will be built. Certain buildings provide demand cap relief, increasing the demand cap by a certain amount for one or more categories (e.g. a City Zoo provides 8,000 R§ and 16,000 R§§ demand cap relief, increasing the maximum population your city can support).

There are only a few buildings that provide Industrial demand cap relief, and none that provide IA (agricultural) relief. However, Industrial relief is provided by freight connections. Several times a month, industrial buildings sent out freight shipments, and each one that successfully reaches either a neighbor connection or a seaport provides 20 demand cap relief for each industrial type.

Agricultural demand cap is a special case. For every other demand type, the demand cap is simply compared to sims or jobs of that type. The agricultural demand cap, however, is reduced by all other jobs. The starting agricultural demand cap is 30,000, so if you have a city with, say, 2,000 CO jobs and 3,000 ID jobs, that would only allow 25,000 IA jobs, and as the rest of your city grows the limit would keep decreasing. Once the total number of jobs in your city (both agricultural and otherwise) reaches the IA demand cap, no new farms will be built. There's no way in-game to see what the current demand caps are, but the starting value should give you an idea.

(Source of this information is the Prima strategy guide; I can't guarantee that these numbers are still accurate, but they should be close.)

Answered by mkarasek

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