Vanguard

And another point about raw STR vs MA DC. MA DC isn’t supposed to be used to break things like say a bank vault door even if you have the DC to do so.

I'm glad you can see this. At some point a weapon just can't do more damage and still be considered a small HKA.  Sinking battleships with pocket knives just is within the scope of the game  but you should have to pay more than 5 points for the KA. Put the common sense back into the rules.
 
Some people would rather die on the RAW hill and will justify it as they can.  Doubling has been the rule for most of Hero's existence and I've never seen complaints about it but now that it's gone(even thought the decision maker left it as an option, the only such option in the 6th book) the game is now apparently closer to perfection.
 
I am going to agree to disagree and leave it here rather than rehash old arguments. It won't affect either of our games. But I'll leave with one question. How many times between 1st and 6th editions did you ever complain about not being able to have 60 STR penknife man be a thing?

In Supers, its generally not breakable unless targeted (i.e. normal use even by supers standards will not break the focus). 
 
Mostly, the reason its not been a problem is there is a damage cap  in all my Hero games, even Fantasy Hero.  A lot of the damage cap is controlled by me in Heroic games, but its still there.
 
The big note I wanted to make in this post is that Hero games now says whether to institute a double cap or not, is now up to the GM (i.e. a campaign trait).  Kind of like normal characteristic maxima.

I haven't found not having the doubling issue a problem in the supers genre or to say, it isn't any more troubling than before with the doubling.
 
As far as weapon breakage goes, I don't remember if it was a house rule or if it was in the pre-5th edition fantasy hero, but there was a rule about a weapon having def = 2 * DC or 3 * DC.  So a sword doing 2d6K would have either 12 def or 18 def.  If the sword did more than the def of the weapon, it would take body damage.

Yes, but what I was trying badly to say is more about younger people not picking up the paper & dice type of games to replace the “graying” of the marketplace.
   In other words us old f@rts are dying off and kids are more interested in on-line games.  Easy to learn, no heavy reading required either for rules and world books or to just understand where the concepts come from that make a future GM.  Most especially there’s no emotional content needed to push buttons the way there is for role play and no need to use an imagination grown stale from having every thought and dream blasted through in IMAX.
    Spence, I didn’t look up your Bio, but I’m willing to guess that you’re closer to 30 than 20.  And it’s those 15 and 16 year olds we need to keep these games alive.  
    Sorry folks, tonight I’m just a grumpy old guy who’s late for his dinner.

I have no proof, but I've never thought there was a strong connection, either.  At the end of the day, there are two totally different things going on:
 
Sitting on your butt, flattening a few brain waves, and being spoon fed a story-- every image, action, detail of that story---  and getting together with friends or at least like-minded people, and creating your own story.
 
There may be overlap in themes or genres of the story, but at the end of the day, they are two completely different activities.  There may be overlap in the two markets as well.  Ultimately, though, not everyone who likes one activity is going to like the other.

I guess that means that the nations supply of pale lonely virgins is in short supply.

Not even the return of Seven of Nine will do that.  If they had focused on Ryker commanding The Titan with a few characters from Deep Space Nine and Voyager it would have kept the franchise going, especially if they skipped Enterprise and Star Trek Nemesis.  What we get now it Zombie Entertainment.  The mindless body of our beloved Series and Movies hungering for rating or box office only to be shot in the head by the utter indifference of the audience.
 
 

Geeks had to end up somewhere now that Star Trek and Star Wars are no longer cool.
 
Thank you, Discovery.  Thank you Rey.

Oh easy, he just punched you in the gut and stole your lunch money, straight up.

The big advantage is that Fantasy Hero can offer all that with a far better game system than Palladium's 

I'm with you on that, Spence. I have never found watching others play an RPG to be anything but mind-numbingly boring. Yet somehow it has become a thing on the Internet. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I _love_ where you're going with this, but I am of two minds on your solutions:
 
Most of my says "No; I think I would simply say "no" and then explain both why it was too "cheesy" as well as the ramifications (as you just described above).  Mostly because I want to go ahead and have all the characters built and ready to play on game night, and not have to have a separate session of character gen again later for the one guy who decides "well that didn't work at all like I thought it would."  Though I confess, the idea of "throwing it back at him" in play is _so_ cathartic....  
 
 
Then there's the little bit of me that's saying "I'd mandate a blind teleport as response to a Flash, just as a panicked "I am about to be attacked!" reaction.  
 
 

 
 

You can pay more for the advantage to have it reset automatically.

Spotlight - Whenever the character make a soliloquy or dramatic speech, the area they are standing in gets just a little brighter than everyone else's.  If no one is listening to the speech or they  failed to even get the target's attention in a presence attack, the sound of crickets can be heard as well.

Now I'm imagining a superhero movie spoof where some pedestrian rests their umbrella and groceries on combatants in bullet time so they can get a phone out of their purse/pocket and take pictures of the fight.

You can buy it down to automatically resetting.  Resets automatically immediately after activating adds +1/2.

And I’d suggest this is why certain rules where changed over the editions. The biggest probably is in 4th Endurance went from ACT/5 to ACT/10. Also the base assumption for Characters in fourth is now 250 Points. I believe this move (which is continued through 5th/6th) is so you can create characters with more of an eye to create character concept than point efficiency.

I'll fess up on a cheesy-munchkin build on an NPC - although he was mainly an ally of the PCs.
 
Many campaigns ago ( in 4th edition rules / Champions Universe), the heroes rescued a man from Malachite's clutches.  This NPC was seemingly completely normal, albeit with normal maxima (20 STR, 20 DEX, etc.), eidetic memory... and amnesia.  The man they dubbed John Doe also could use any weapon (had every Weapon Familiarity), and had Find Weakness, AOE (cone), for any attack, with a good enough roll that he could generally get 2-3 successes on most people.  Thus, he could pick up a normal pistol and find / target that one chink in a foe's defenses that allowed him to hurt even superpowered foes.  The heroes adopted John Doe as an associate member, with one of the players generally running that character in combat, although since he didn't have major defenses he tried to avoid combat situations.
 
All of the heroes efforts to find out who John Doe was failed completely.
 
Toward the end of the campaign, the heroes went to the Malachite Islands and faced off against Malachite himself.  During the fight, Malachite revealed that he had created John Doe - he was a test-tube baby, genetically engineered and rapid-aged to adulthood, hypnotically implanted with certain knowledge / skills - as well as a Berserk condition.  And his "rescue" was planned, since Malachite wanted John Doe to spend plenty of time with the heroes, learning all their vulnerabilities, susceptibilities, and weaknesses.  Malachite's spoken command word activated John Doe's Berserk , causing him to attack the heroes.
 
And the heroes, any one of whom could have fairly easily put John Doe down for the count, instead opted to restrain him and talk him down, because to their minds he was one of them.  It took some doing, but they succeeded.  Incredible role-playing on their part.  I was very proud of my players and how they handled it.

Ah thanks!
 
Still, I would allow IR but not UV to see in a cave, no matter what sense organ you're using to pick up those wavelengths. No starshine down there but bodies radiate  heat and rocks reflect it just fine.

Immediately, I'd suggest a sense, any sense, that doesn't rely on light visible to the naked (normal) human eye.  Attach it to your sight group.
 
Baring that, go with a Steve Long-inspired model:  Images: only to see what's in front of me.
 
Less immediate:
 
One of the goals of this entire exercise, as I understand it, is to figure out how to do the very thing you're asking about.

Given this is what we have from the limited current rules, I think that makes the best starting point.  I don't see how we get darker than the description given for "a dark night" and still have any light to make sight useful.  As well, any further penalty makes Darkvision more expensive, which just starts "point inflation".  "A complete absence of light" is as dark as it can reasonably get.
 
 
This is my basis for the determination - 6e refers to Darkvision being constructed as "+4 PSLs to counter darkness penalties".  If it could be dark enough to impose -5, that construction fails.
 
 
This bonus is very easy to achieve - a SuperScientist will often have a 15- PER roll from INT alone.  Such a character can effectively navigate in anything less than total darkness just as effectively as we navigate in ordinary light.  Of course, that -4 penalty remains meaningful if there is some other penalty to overcome, and that character's visual acuity is still reduced - it simply started out far better.
 
 
Again taking my cues from what we find in the rules, there are no bonuses for  better lighting, so the base must be as good as it can get.
 
 
That would be the default, and another reason for using CE - that power does not simulate a Dispel or Suppress.  Darkness typically affects the entire Sight Group, and is by definition impenetrable.  It also makes 20 points of Darkness (5 for Sight Group + 15 for extending the radius 3 meters to 4 meters) better than 4 meters of CE "complete darkness".
 
 
"Twice as dark" seems inconsistent with your premise that "dark is the default".
 
If we start from -5 is a complete absence of light (i.e. it is no longer a penalty - normal sight has nothing to see), then:
 
-4 is "black as a dark night"
 
-3 is probably "a moonless night"
 
-2 is "night in the city
 
and -1 is "dimly lit/twilight".
 
 
Perhaps the better phrasing would have been "dark is not the in-game default - the in-game default is ordinary lighting such that there are no penalties to sight rolls".

The GM also begins with the Hero rules and defines how their game world differs, if at all.  The GM can also make a game world where there is no gravity, but that is a departure from the Falling and Flying rules we currently have.  He can change how fire works - perhaps it, too, is intelligent, and can choose what to burn and what not to burn.
 
I think what many on this thread are suggesting is to define natural light and darkness, and how they are manipulated, for the default Hero System world.  To me, the official rules do something in every world, subject to the ability of the GM to alter any and every rule.
 
 
Why don't I just buy two skills - "know stuff" and "do stuff", write them on my character sheet and let the GM decide what they do, and how effective they are?  One of Hero's hallmarks has been defining the rules - summarized as "you get what you pay for and you pay for what you get".  This comments, from that perspectivem is "AntiHeroic".
 
To me, the answer starts with defining how light works in general (we have some of that) and then defining how we can manipulate it.  As a natural environmental element, such manipulation sounds a lot like Change Environment to me.
 
 
It depends - over how large an area, is it ranged, etc.  Change Environment sets the cost of a -1 penalty to PER rolls for one Sense Group is 3 points, so I will start with 9 points.  Let's make it a 4 meter radius (+1/4 under Hero 1e) and No Range (-1/2).  That's 11 AP, 7 real points. 
 
 
All of these natural traits of light are poorly simulated by the Images power, agreed.  So I also agree that "you can't use CE and you have to us Images" is a poor rule decision, and should be changed.  So how do we change it?
 
To me, we already know how to price reduced light levels - we can do that easily with Change Environment.  So let's base the pricing of enhancing the light level on that knowledge.  We're  not "using CE to provide bonuses".  Rather, we are creating a new "noncombat effect of equal magnitude listed on the accompanying table, or which the GM permits" (6e v1 p 175) and determining its exact effects, as indicated on that page.  We know that "The GM may limit how much of a negative modifier or other effect characters can create with Change Environment.", so let's limit the negative modifier which can be applied by Change Environment (suppress light).
 
It costs 5 points to make a 1 meter radius impervious to the sight group using the Darkness power, and another 5 points for each +1 meter radius.  That means a 4 meter radius would cost 20 points.  A -4 penalty to Sight rolls costs 8 (note that this is one sense, not the sense group which includes Nightvision) and adding a 4 meter radius boosts that to 10.  This seems like a reasonable cost - significantly less effective than the Darkness power, but also only half the price.  It is eliminated by Nightvision.  Since a -4 penalty still allows PER rolls, we need a greater "penalty" to eliminate all light so sight is useless.  So what if we simply said "hey, that's awfully close to Darkness" and priced it at a 10 point base CE cost.  Darkness would get the whole Sight Group, and this only gets Normal Sight, and needs AoE to affect an area, where Darkness starts with a 1 meter radius.  It is cheaper to make our CE cover areas exceeding 4 meters radius, though.
 
OK, so far we have not done much to create light, have we?  Digging down further into CE, I note that, right after telling us you cannot use CE to create bonuses (yeah, it also says you can't create light, use images, but we've* already decided that's getting crossed out).  It even goes on to say that (emphasis added) "GMs may wish to require characters to use Images instead of Change Environment to negate PER Roll penalties based on darkness, shadow, gloom, or the like, since Change Environment cannot be used to
create light."  I think that we have decided that we do not wish to require characters to use Images instead.  So we will not.  So that gives us a CE power that reduces these PER penalties.
 
* "we", for this purpose, is defined as "those of us who have decided Images is irreparably flawed as a means of creating light".  Unless otherwise stated, or context requires otherwise, this definition applies to the entire discussion.   If you are not one of "we", consider yourself one of "them" instead.
 
Well, if the creation of natural darkness costs 10 points as a base CE effect, then let's price the removal of natural darkness at the same 10 points.  This creates enough ambient light for just the one character targeted by CE can see in a small area.  It's an Attack Power, so it is perceivable by two senses, including sight.  So what do we have?  Maybe a tiny penlight flashlight, a small candle or those head-worn reading lights.  But now we have something we can add Area of Effect to.  If it's a four meter radius of natural light, then it illuminates an area in that 4 meter radius.  People outside can see in, with no PER roll penalties other than range.  They can see that there IS a light from a pretty fair distance - that's part of SFX.
 
We can use AoE to give it a bigger radius, a line area or a cone if we want. 
 
Now, how do we get that Light that fades over a larger area? Well, there I like KS' Explosion.  Normally an explosion loses 5 AP per two meters away from the source, but the possibility of buying a larger or smaller area and having it diminish slower or faster is in the RAW.  So maybe our Light is purchased with a 16m Radius, Explosive (+1/4 net advantage).  It needs to fade from full  normal sight at the center to a -4 penalty at the fringe (a dark night rather than a complete absence of light), so five gradations.  With that in mind, perhaps we simply rule that there is a 3 meter radius where there are no sight penalties, each further 3 meters imposes a -1 penalty, except the last two meters where a -4 penalty applies.  That totals 16m radius.
 
Thoughts?
 
 
 OK, that's a Line with a +1 advantage, and I assume 0 END, so 10 x 2.5 = 25 AP, with No Range since it always starts at the headlight, so  real points.  The cost should further be reduced by its limited arc, and any vehicle-specific rules.
 
 
 

It will completely and utterly destroy any chance of accomplishing a difficult task, because an Nd6 pool scales very differently from a 3d6 roll under.  https://anydice.com/program/1958f.  I can't see any way of making difficulty not a "Do you have at least 45 in your characteristic?  Oh, don't bother trying then." in the same way everyone knows a 6d6 Blast is useless in a 12d6 game.  Right now if 12- Tim, 14- Frank, and 17- Sam walk into a difficulty -6 roll, Tim and Frank get to try with a low but meaningful chance of success, but under a dice pool model if Sam has a credible chance of failure then Tim and Frank have no credible chance of success. 
 
Also, using both STUN and BODY to generate results will not be particularly interesting, since STUN correlates so heavily with BODY.  Low BODY high STUN and vice versa are very uncommon rolls. 

From my understanding, the delinking of figured stats had/has nothing to with getting rid of maths . . . 
 
The probably that 6th has is that ALL of the supplemental material is just cut and pasted from previous editions instead of being rewritten.  So while there are no more figured stats in 6th and CV has been decoupled from DEX, all the pregened characters still use the old rules because they've just be copied from one book and pasted into the next.
 
It's real hard for a player (new or old) to get used to the changes when everything they look at for ideas are still using the old systems.