I agree, it's all about what you want to do with a character. It's very easy to follow the frameworks exactly and end up with a Blaster/Scrapper/Tank and all the normal archetypes, but once you start playing around and choosing other powers from other frameworks, you start to get a unique chararcter that has a distinctive play style. That is where Champions stands out. I developed a regular Sorcery blaster/summoner with debuffs and all the normal things, and while it was *very* powerful through the early teens, it really wasn't very entertaining or fun. I also made a very successful mixed range and powerful charge melee character from the Supernatural pool. For my third attempt, I started with Sorcery, and started pulling in the Supernatural pool powers. What I ended up with is a ranged character that creates a sort of Zone of Destruction. I can snipe enemies from afar, but the real damage starts when they get into melee range. A quick charge brings up a circle of lightning turrets, and my other powers are used to pull back those who try to flee and root them in area, ensuring their quick defeat. It is a lot more entertaining to see a henchmen or villain enemy try to flee outside the area, only to have a ghostly chain (thanks to the power color customization) wrapped around their throat, tossing them back into the circle. While I can provide plenty of direct damage, zone control is a lot more fun, and only comes from mixing the two frameworks.

If I remember correctly, they have taken issue with turtles or tortoises in the southwestern United States (the most ideal place for solar power plants). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123810805612252481.html

To be honest, I thought SiN: Episodes accomplished this the best. (Not that anyone but me apparently played it...) The game would automatically ramp up or ramp down the difficulty depending on how well you were doing. You take down a lot of soldiers efficiently and quickly, around the next corner there would be a dozen instead of three. If those dozen killed you a few times, the next reload, there would be only eight. If you still couldn't get past it, they would roll it back down. You set an initial difficultly, and how responsive you wanted the system to be. Would you start out on easy and have it ramp up and down quickly, or would you start out on medium/hard and have it move slowly back and forth? The gradual scale never made it seem like you were giving up, or surrendering and if you could accomplish it, it wouldn't baby you. Once you got used to it, you didn't even realize the system was there. It adjusted very quickly to your skill level, while tossing in the occasional challenge to keep you interested. It made the game incredibly enjoyable.

I think you are missing a key point about bending strength. There is a reason that traditional buildings and the famous form of a pagoda are used in earthquake-plagued Japan. Wood bends and warps under stresses like this, but rarely does it break under the forces involved in a quake. Stone may be "stronger," but it is also more brittle.

The Open Source flashlight: Luminescent Lurefish.