Anyone want to share tips and tricks for builds?

Started by seraglio, July 18, 2019, 10:53:39 PM

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seraglio

I thought I'd start a thread about some unusual uses of powers, attributes, meshes and keyframes etc that maybe not everyone knows. I've grown a bit jaded with FF and am running dry on ideas for creative new builds and maybe someone can help me get some fresh ideas. I'll offer a few of my own here to get a flavor of what I'm hoping people will share.

the Secondary Swap - everyone knows (or should) that FFX power swaps/carriers don't work with area powers and direct attacks. There is a way to use this to your advantage sometimes. Imagine a ninja character. He throws down a smoke bomb in a crowd of baddies(either an area Blank attack or a explosive projectile). Everyone is now blanked and ignoring the ninja. However, if you set Blank to say mentaldamage in FFXEdit, you can get a different result. The opponents will be blanked, not mentaldamaged, because it doesn't work for area or explosive projectiles. But if you then attacked the blanked characters, one by one, the power swap WILL happen then. The blanked targets will take mental damage each time YOU attack them. You can picture this like a sneak attack or backstab, that the unaware opponents take additional damage from. If anyone else who doesn't have the swap set up attacks, it does not happen, only when the toon that has the correct power swap. I use this a ton with blind, blank, hypnosis...there are a lot of imaginative uses for this. Works well with a host of other ninja attributes, light control, prowler, nocturnal.

the Double Swap - want to do a stun to mentaldamage swap, but the damage is too low with stun? You can do a Stun to Hypnosis swap instead, and then set a second slot for Hypnosis to Mentaldamage. Most of the time, if you do this, both swaps will happen instantly and your "stun" swap will do damage of a much more powerful hypnosis swap (.5 vs. 3 intensity). Has some uses.

Fun with Density max - two things I love doing....Density Knockbacks - set something like Alchemiss Aloft attack to do density rather than physical damage. Or a punch or whatever. If the character was light enough when the contact hit, they will not only be thrown far but take extreme damage when they land due to their increased weight. Another, if you use the Untouchable Aura attribute, and set the area effect to a density max power with "LOW" knockback, you get a surprising effect. Basically everyone that comes into range of your aura has a seizure! They get knocked down (but not away, due to increased weight). As they try to get back up, they fall again, and again, and again. They get locked in a constant "get back up animation" that makes it look like they are having a siezure. Hillarious.


spydermann93

wow, very interesting finds.

I noticed the first one you mentioned when I tried to give Martian Manhunter a Blank->Mental Damage Beam Attack and a Blank Area attack would cause mental damage when MM hit his foe. Thought that was super weird, but didn't really do anything else with it, lol

Very cool info, though. Never thought to try the double swap. That's a pretty good work around. lol at the knockdown loop one, haha

BentonGrey

Howdy Seraglio, this is some really cool stuff!  Great finds, and very clever uses of the programs!

I don't have too much to share that folks probably don't know about.  I love creating mutli-attributes to properly capture characters, and I recently discovered how useful the concrete material type is, since it is resistant to all physical damage.  I wish I had realized that years ago, ha!
God Bless
"If God came down upon me and gave me a wish again, I'd wish to be like Aquaman, 'cause Aquaman can take the pain..." -Ballad of Aquaman
Check out mymods and blog!
https://bentongrey.wordpress.com/

Cyber Burn

#3
I don't know where I got this from, but I found it on a (.txt) file a while back mixed in with my Resources Files.

Quote

I'm sure that we are all aware of combining "symbiote" with "clone self", but what happens when we add "group teleport" into the mix?

We end up with a Hero who can go anywhere, then form an assault force, or he can make the assault force and then take them anywhere.

He won't even have energy problems, as he is boosted by his clones.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's an interesting hero:

Take your Hero and give him 2 attributes:

1) Ephemeral
2) Battery-powered

Then give him 3 powers:

1) A low energy cost Microwave Clone Self called "Spawn".
2) A max cost Explosion called "Die".
3) A Passive Defense that blocks whatever damage is dealt with by "Die".

Ephemeral will cause his health to lower as his energy is used.

The high cost "Die" will be a suicide explosion, ala "Annihilation".

Your Hero will reproduce, and then his clone will blow himself up, hurting everyone but your hero, who has the Passive Defense to protect himself.


Panther_Gunn

And here I thought having nested Summoners was an interesting hack.  I'm not even in the same ballpark as some of these.
The Best There Is At What I Do......when I have the time.

seraglio

I remember the first time I tried "nested summoners"...a summons with a private army that summons more of themselves. I did not make another copy without private army....as you can imagine...crashed my game as my necromancer summoned hundreds of zombies. Was hillariously fun though! Zombie Apocalypse!

spydermann93

Lol! I did that same thing before with Moloids! :lol:

Spawned Mole Man who spawned some Moloids with Spears who each spawned a bunch of Moloids. The results are pretty much what you'd expect :P

Not really a hack, but I also found that with the actual Weaken attack effectively being a death touch in FFX3 (it constantly drains your health when you're hit by it), the only thing that can overcome it is Defense Mechanism with Adrenaline Surge as the perk. Everybody but my Hulk died to a freakin Shurale roar, lol

seraglio

Speaking of summons, its probably the most versatile FFX attribute (or power swap, if you have one) there is. There are so many things you can do with it.

I have a Magnetic Controller named the Magnate. His summons (and Private army) are copies of Thug with Gun or Soldier with the body(Bip01 or whatever) hidden, so it appears he surrounded by floating guns he magnetically controls. Further I give the guns there own magnetic powers so they can assist in throwing metal things around. I even make them metal material so that, if the situation warrants, I can magnetically repel them into a foe, or use magnetise on them or enemies! Give them limited energy, so when they run out of bullets, they're just more metal debris to toss around.

My weather controller Stormfront summons living storms. Its an expanded orrerry cloud with other wind FX on it on a tiggot. It has a permanent short circuit, and a lightning attack that looks like a bolt of lightning from the sky. Stormfront Absorbs all electrical attacks, so when running out of energy he just stands next to his summoned storm and absorbs the short circuit. He also has a Living Tornado summons as well, set up with an untouchable aura. It has weather summoning separately so I can multitask with Stormfront or they can both summon storms independently.

Tired of setting up Super TK throws and having the target move or get behind a light post? I tend to set up powerful Telekinetics with Invisible "thrower" minions. Simply go into FFEdit and find Ice Queen Thrower. Change the name to something like TK thrower. Remove the one attack, increase the speed, keep the AI. For the template, use a tiggot ( a tiggot is a non-physical invisible person...several are on every map for functions like Telekinesis). Its ususally the first object named ---------- or some other(not sure in FFvTR). Just rename the tiggot into tkthrower. Your Private army or summoners will spawn with invisible servants that can only throw things. Within seconds of spawning, anyone flying is going to take a boulder or a tree to the face, while your main TK guy can do other things. You haven't laughed until you've seen Alchemiss hit simultaneously from two directions by two different boulders!

You can use summons as just pure weapons you don't want to pay the prestige cost for. I have a Mummy "swarmshifter" guy. He summons a swarm of undead death scarabs(took egypt scarabs effect and modified it and attached to human torch plasmawisp, so it looks like a vaguely human shaped swarm). It has a very powerful chained , homing, egypt swarm attack. because of its high cost, the summons disappears almost immediately after its summoned, it only gets one or two swarms off before it poofs, which is as intended. You're just "summoning" an attack, so to speak. Just as an aside, I coded a crazy power swap called "disintegrate". Basically its a damage power like mentaldamage but does damage based on a percentage of maxhealth. If the damage done exceeds currenthealth, the power "cloaks" and then destroys the target. It works quite well, targets that would be killed instead disappear, leaving no body. This simulates a powerful acid attack, a disintegration attack, or a swarm of scarabs that devours everything in its path, as the chain continues on, things just "disappear", completely consumed.

You can simulate most anything you can imagine with summoner/private army. If you want to be really crazy, just dont change the AI on your summons to minion, leave it object hero, and you can control it. Good for Cloning heroes who start with a set number of clones, but you want them controlled , for instance. Or my necromancer character summons "ghosts", whose only power is possession. The ghosts spawn as controlable members of his team, so when the ghosts make their possession attacks, the possessed is on the Necros team as well. I could go on forever....I'll post some of what I do with plasma sculptor (hint, dummy powers arent all that dumb) later. Eventually Ill get to all the varoius morph powers like shapeshifter, accidental change and russian doll. Boy the stuff you can dream up with those.

spydermann93

oh, that's super clever!

I love the floating gun idea of yours. That's great!

Cyber Burn

That floating gun would actually make for an interesting Skope.  :P

seraglio

I'd LOVE for someone to skope that! Especially for FF for us holdouts. One visual thing with this magnetic guns is that I wish you could summon different soldiers with different guns, instead of all the same ones. I think it would have a better visual impact for the guns to be random. With FF , probably only could do this with alphas, and those clip too much. Oh, and one thing I forgot, if you want to do this, swap the Run and Hover anims. If you leave it as run, the guns will bounce all over the place, try to find a steadier animation to use for run.

oktokels

#11
that's really amazing !! and a great collaboration to the board  :thumbup:

I dont usually go to far on the ffx hacks and mods, more than the usual beam swap mental dmg, heal, and few others...
Im really messing around right now with the M25 AI,and have found some really insteresting results. For example i have managed to make characters do some type of basic "combos". Say, scarecrow has metal eater attribute, that will give him increased str and def once he finds a panicked character within medium range, so i wrote on the m25 ai  file, that scarecrow focus first and only on the panicked characters that he finds in a medium range distance, and attack them with a melee attack. Once the enemy stops being panicked, scarecrow will go back to long range and throw gas bombs, etc....This REALLY helps balance the fight between stronger and weaker chars

p.s. i rarely play the game, i mostly watch as this characters beat the dirt out of each other lol

oktokels

Quote from: seraglio on July 18, 2019, 10:53:39 PM
the Secondary Swap - Imagine a ninja character. He throws down a smoke bomb in a crowd of baddies(either an area Blank attack or a explosive projectile). Everyone is now blanked and ignoring the ninja. However, if you set Blank to say mentaldamage in FFXEdit, you can get a different result. The opponents will be blanked, not mentaldamaged, because it doesn't work for area or explosive projectiles. But if you then attacked the blanked characters, one by one, the power swap WILL happen then. The blanked targets will take mental damage each time YOU attack them....Works well with a host of other ninja attributes, light control, prowler, nocturnal.
Do you have to attack the characters with a melee attack? When you attack them they stop being blanked?...You could give the ninja metal eater=blanked, to boost his strength or speed, to make an extra deadly attack...

Quote from: seraglio on July 18, 2019, 10:53:39 PM
the Double Swap - want to do a stun to mentaldamage swap, but the damage is too low with stun? You can do a Stun to Hypnosis swap instead, and then set a second slot for Hypnosis to Mentaldamage. Most of the time, if you do this, both swaps will happen instantly and your "stun" swap will do damage of a much more powerful hypnosis swap (.5 vs. 3 intensity). Has some uses.
Good for powerfull mental characters

Quote from: seraglio on July 18, 2019, 10:53:39 PMF Another, if you use the Untouchable Aura attribute, and set the area effect to a density max power with "LOW" knockback, you get a surprising effect. Basically everyone that comes into range of your aura has a seizure! They get knocked down (but not away, due to increased weight). As they try to get back up, they fall again, and again, and again. They get locked in a constant "get back up animation" that makes it look like they are having a siezure. Hillarious.
This would be great for count vertigo, can it be activated with an area power of some kind?

oktokels

Quote from: spydermann93 on July 19, 2019, 10:06:18 PM
Not really a hack, but I also found that with the actual Weaken attack effectively being a death touch in FFX3 (it constantly drains your health when you're hit by it), the only thing that can overcome it is Defense Mechanism with Adrenaline Surge as the perk. Everybody but my Hulk died to a freakin Shurale roar, lol

YES, i did have a lot of trouble with that, until i found the ffx_weaken, that is the real power. The "Death touch" weaken is great for some characters though, like Hela, Thanos, Ghost rider penance stare...had to give it a high energy cost though, otherwise the character would be too OP, and use it only on some situations.

seraglio

Quote from: oktokels on July 21, 2019, 06:25:10 PM
Quote from: seraglio on July 18, 2019, 10:53:39 PM
the Secondary Swap - Imagine a ninja character. He throws down a smoke bomb in a crowd of baddies(either an area Blank attack or a explosive projectile). Everyone is now blanked and ignoring the ninja. However, if you set Blank to say mentaldamage in FFXEdit, you can get a different result. The opponents will be blanked, not mentaldamaged, because it doesn't work for area or explosive projectiles. But if you then attacked the blanked characters, one by one, the power swap WILL happen then. The blanked targets will take mental damage each time YOU attack them....Works well with a host of other ninja attributes, light control, prowler, nocturnal.
Do you have to attack the characters with a melee attack? When you attack them they stop being blanked?...You could give the ninja metal eater=blanked, to boost his strength or speed, to make an extra deadly attack...



Quote from: seraglio on July 18, 2019, 10:53:39 PM
the Double Swap - want to do a stun to mentaldamage swap, but the damage is too low with stun? You can do a Stun to Hypnosis swap instead, and then set a second slot for Hypnosis to Mentaldamage. Most of the time, if you do this, both swaps will happen instantly and your "stun" swap will do damage of a much more powerful hypnosis swap (.5 vs. 3 intensity). Has some uses.
Good for powerfull mental characters

Quote from: seraglio on July 18, 2019, 10:53:39 PMF Another, if you use the Untouchable Aura attribute, and set the area effect to a density max power with "LOW" knockback, you get a surprising effect. Basically everyone that comes into range of your aura has a seizure! They get knocked down (but not away, due to increased weight). As they try to get back up, they fall again, and again, and again. They get locked in a constant "get back up animation" that makes it look like they are having a siezure. Hillarious.
This would be great for count vertigo, can it be activated with an area power of some kind?

For the density knockdown it has to be one of those rapidly pulsing area attributes. Untouchable and maybe blazing glory will trigger explosions fast enough to keep the opponent from ever completing the "get back up" animation before being knocked down again. Can't think or any other powers that trigger that fast. Doubt the overheated/short circuited family of area auras will trigger often enough. However if you don't want it to be so munchkin op, more like vertigo, then one of the other area aura's is better. Its just a mechanics thing, a low knockback on a heavy character makes it fall over but not get knocked away.

You probably know this but you can power swap empathy/cloak/displace for area vertigo. But yeah, the density trick does the same thing more often and faster. Lot of options. Options are good!

thanks for contributing!

seraglio

I was running through some of my old characters and ran into a few tidbits I thought I'd mention, in case newcomers aren't aware.

There are 3 external hero file editors. AlexFF, Mr Brdo, and Mic'sHero Editor. They all let you do things you can't do in the interface, especially the last 2.

One of those things is make multiple passive defenses. If you have a character that say, is completely immune to fire, but blocks 50% of other attacks, you can make one passive defense with 50% fire resist only. Then a second with 50% resistance to everything. The character will be 100% imune to fire. You can also block water attacks.

You can make the range of speeding bullet and electrify infinite. The number of "pulses" you get with electrify depends on how far you travel with it. If you travel all the way across a large map, I've gotten like 16 pulses.

BentonGrey

God Bless
"If God came down upon me and gave me a wish again, I'd wish to be like Aquaman, 'cause Aquaman can take the pain..." -Ballad of Aquaman
Check out mymods and blog!
https://bentongrey.wordpress.com/

daglob

Just looking at this. I once had Green Lantern set up to summon a green Superman and created a Hulk, Dejavu raygun, an a green Human Torch that I intended him to summon eventually. I did a skin for an old Green Lantern villain named The Aerialist, and he came with a skin for an enslaved Green Lantern for the Male Basic Mesh. I had the idea that I'd fix Starro up to summon starfish-faced heroes, so I scoped the fish on Male Cape and at least one other (Male Alpha?).

BentonGrey

If there were world enough and time, I'd do a whole Starro arc in the DCUG.....ahh well.

One thing I'd like to do is customize more of the GLs' summons.  Hal summons planes and John Stewart summons marines, but the others are all pretty generic.
God Bless
"If God came down upon me and gave me a wish again, I'd wish to be like Aquaman, 'cause Aquaman can take the pain..." -Ballad of Aquaman
Check out mymods and blog!
https://bentongrey.wordpress.com/

X-Man

Haha This is my kinda thread. FFX is quite neat in what you can do.  State swaps are always cool, My Iceman stun now encases enemies in Ice, as well as Magneto can magnetize  an enemy by swapping stasis for magnetize. Summoner/inner being is extremely versatile. use it just about everyone, Give Thor summoner to summon storms  (you can make them invisible by using a blank mesh and giving them solar powered/nocturnal to always have the assigned  fx you want to your weather effect, i even add hatemonger set to enemies so fx never goes away) However if you give them borrowed time attribute with desperate mechanism set to thunderstorm in ffx, your summons can rain down thunderstorms and control the weather on it's own. Magneto Can summon Sentinels, magnetizing orbs, drops downs cars etc..