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1

General / (Spoiler) Is killing everyone the normal pathway for DLC?

« on: September 22, 2019, 03:30:34 am »

When I arrived at the expeditionary base, I had to defend against a native attack. I then learned that these attacks came on a regular basis - that they weren't scripted events. And moreover...it seemed like there were limited numbers of sec-troopers. So rather than hope that enough survived to repel the attacks during the endgame of the DLC, I decided to do something about it.

Namely, I grabbed my shotgun, assault rifle, and sniper rifle, found out where those dirty natives lived, and mowed down those savages in their homes - killing men, women, and old people alike (I also killed their livestock heheh). There was some weird chieftain who turned into a ghost. He didn't last long against my superior firepower, as expected.

I also found a group of shamans, which I casually murdered. But at the end...I found they were praying to a weird totem that seemed to be a gateway to another dimension. I have seen this totem again during the endgame, so I have an idea of what it does and how it affected the natives, but aside from that piece of lore, I couldn't interact with it in any way. I also found a bunch of symbols, but I could only look at them.

On the north-eastern part of the map, I found more of those dirty subhuman primitives so I naturally killed all of them. But then I discovered some kind of evil graveyard, and I am utterly confused as to why this was there. It doesn't seem to do anything. It just has these weird pulleys that you can't operate. Has anyone figured out what these do?

Lastly there was this one savage in a cave. But he was aggressive the moment I came upon him. All I wanted to do was talk, but he started advancing on me with his spear. Being the dirty, violent primitive that he is I was forced to kill him too...but I can't help but feel there could have been more to the interaction.

Has anyone found a way to converse with the natives? Can the dark shrine they pray to be used in any way? What happens in the graveyard? And do you get anything out of talking to the ferryman? He had some weird philosophy that I couldn't understand. Not that I cared too much as it sounded like woo anyway. If he actually had a semi-intelligent philosophy I might have bothered ingesting cerebrix so my character could coax more out of him.

Also...once I found out the pirates kidnapped a member of our expedition, I killed all of them. Is there some alternative solution to this? Are you supposed to just murder all the pirates? Or can you join forces with them, work with them to attack the natives, etc.? I just feel like there were probably a number of diplomatic options that I missed (or maybe  not?). The one bright exception to my massacre was mutie island. They seemed like a harmless bunch so I left them alone. They were at least more civilized than the natives

Finally, as maybe a final note about the endgame of the original. I was thinking there should be rewards for taking on more significant tasks. I managed to wipe out all the protectorate forces from their main base in upper underrail (fort apogee), their lieutenant who was trying to break in at the tchortist base, all protectorate forces in junkyard, as well as their port base in core city and their other small outlying port bases near the rig.

Yet the endgame credits don't really mention anything about these events. In fact the endgame says they survived in south underrail. What it should have said, is that someone mysteriously killed every protectorate soldier, and that the united stations decided to leave that area for good - ceding control to the free drones and a loose alliance of station-states which eventually grew to rival the power of the united stations, but without the militaristic ambitions. It should have been an option with the free drones too. Like - you come back and shock everyone by telling them you single handedly killed all the protectorate forces. Them maybe they'd give you some awesome loot or something. Instead I come back and guy just repeats "we've got to lay low, we can't fight them head on and our numbers are too small blah blah". Of course I understand that devs can't do everything, its just a suggestion in case they do want to make some updates.

PS: Hope not too many Native American gamers read my post lol

2

Suggestions / Have intelligence affect number of skill points?

« on: September 04, 2013, 09:22:31 pm »

I was just trying out a tech-centric character, and maybe I missed something but it seems like intelligence doesn't really add that much value to a character.

It just seems like the trade-off of spending a precious stat point on intelligence is tied to very few feats (actually I don't think there are any), and the gains that you do make in advancing your tech skills a bit faster are limited by the fact that you get a significantly reduced number of skill points in total now, meaning that at most you can really only choose one or two tech skills (because you may need other more crucial skills for combat).

I was just thinking again about Fallout, and how the system they used made a good deal of sense. I think that as your intelligence increases there should be a small bonus to your starting skill points as well as the number of skill points you get per turn. Besides that there should be a few feats devoted to intelligence (if that's not enough).

I think it also makes sense for intelligence to have positive affects on persuasion and dialogue options.  I'm not actually sure if dialogue options are added for increased intelligence or not, it would be quite time consuming to go through the game (and very difficult) without any of the feats you can gain with the other character stats. Thinking more broadly, it may be a major change but if it seems like a good idea, I feel like it could allow someone to specialize as a pacifist-type, and maybe earn experience by persuading enemies to do certain things that could lead to quest completion.

Perhaps in the GMS compound you could persuade your enemies to go to the top level through some 'intellectual trickery', and maybe have a trap set up beforehand by talking to Gorsky about it. And for completing the task this way there should be some experience bonus so that this play style is feasible long-term. Just throwing ideas out there!

- - -

Incidentally for the first time in a video game I feel like I'm really missing out based on my character build; you're really squeezing my choices with the limited number of stat points . Its good because I like the challenge, but I had to skip persuasion in order to get another crucial tech skill and now I can't gain access to the secret area in Omega's GMS compound - plus I'm worried a future quest may be impossible without persuasion.  Its just so frustrating to know I'm never going to get in there! I hope you didn't add anything major to that area.

I'm always used to finding a way to make it work somehow. I guess this time it just isn't going to work.  On the plus side I've crafted a nice gun and some armor, so I feel a little better. Prices are still hard to deal with at the start, but 5 levels from now I might finally reach the point where I can buy components, fabricate something, and sell for a profit. Then I'll probably become outrageously wealthy as usual

3

General / Good ways to make money?

« on: April 02, 2013, 02:13:41 pm »

Hey everyone.

I was wondering what people have found the best ways of making money are? First of all I'd recommend putting points into barter, as money can save you from needing to specialize in a discipline to say, create explosives to set traps with and the like (although you might be missing out on some specialized traps).

I found a few things that might be helpful for new players:

Collecting mushrooms (very tedious lol)
Collecting mindshrooms every hour or so (after clearing out the areas).
You can also buy hopper cages from the guy across the hall from the biology lab in your base, and use them to catch hoppers and resell those cages for a higher value.  The easiest way to catch hoppers is by standing outside one of the crevices they come out of, turn on combat mode, then catch them using a hopper cage dragged onto your quickbar. You can buy 15 cages at once.

I found (stole) a fishing rod, but I haven't managed to use it yet so I'm not sure how valuable eels might be.

Most lucrative so far:
Repairing energy weapons to max, then buying a bunch of electronic repair kits to make up for the kits you lost in repairing it, plus any number of other items you need (I have found that an energy pistol sells for 15,000 stygian coins (just realized this was named after the creator ), which is an incredible sum of money.

Repairing mechanical weapons to max (or near max), then buying mechanical repair kits to make up for those lost in repairing, plus any other items like ammo.

At level 8 barter skill the mechanical repair kits have a value of 800, and the electronic kits have a value of 1,000. So just ensure your repair increases the value of your weapon (or armor) by more than those amounts, and you can sell for a profit.

To maximize the amount of money I make, I also went into stealth and pickpocket. Adding a piece of leather armor that adds to stealth, and getting the relevant perks (make sure you get nimble if you go this route), I've managed to steal some nice items off of people, and its one of the most exciting parts of the game .

Anyway, was just curious if anyone has found other ways? With mechanical repair kits being so expensive, its good to find ways to earn cash. Of course you might not use weapons altogether or those that degrade slowly, but still. I'm now at the point where I have 30 mechanical repair kits and 8 electronic ones (the latter purely reserved for the cash cow energy weapons) for use. Its *SUCH* a relief to not have to worry about repair now .

4

Suggestions / Allowing traders to get new stock?

« on: December 16, 2012, 02:37:39 am »

Hello,

I was just playing the alpha a bit, and I guess I noticed an issue that was a bit vexing.

Basically I have nothing to buy or spend my money on that's useful to me. When I was playing the demo, there were sniper rifles, advanced armors, and things that I could save up for. But it *seems* like (I'm not sure if the inventory gets randomly refreshed if I play longer), what the trader starts with is what he has forever. So if he has a set amount of bullets, that's all you're ever going to get, so make sure you use your bullets wisely; but after that your guns for that caliber are kind of useless unless you hope to find more bullets later.

More generally, if you don't happen to find really useful armor or weapons in your travels, then you kind of have no recourse, and I can imagine that making the game unnecessarily hard for particularly unlucky players.

I feel like there should be some kind of refreshing of their inventory after a certain amount of in-game time has passed. How much I'm not sure...and whether a waiting system should be implemented I guess is up to Stygian to decide.

Also as another suggestion, it might be nice if you could allow for an easier way to reload the weapon rather than going in the inventory and manually reloading? It should be possible to just right click on the gun, or maybe double-click it, and then the character would load it with the appropriate caliber.

Beyond that thanks for the updates! I'm going to keep playing in hopes I find a sniper rifle (and some ammo) .

5

Suggestions / Death animations on critical hit? And modifying the feat system.

« on: November 01, 2012, 01:51:12 am »

Hi.

This ties into another post I made. I know this turns your game into a variant of Fallout 2...but why fix/change what isn't broken and worked amazingly? .

I feel like currently the system for dealing damage revolves around using feats to deal damage, including specific damage. So surprise stealth damage is dealt by a feat, crippling leg damage is dealt by a feat, critical hit damage is dealt by a feat...and more to come. All of these actions requiring using that feat by clicking it.

I just feel like it would be more efficient to roll all of those ideas into one.  So if you attack someone from stealth, there's automatically a higher critical hit percent chance and perhaps a multiplier to the critical hit damage (not sure whether this is feasible balance wise).  It shouldn't require you to click "stealth attack" explicitly, because it is implied when you attack someone from stealth. This could work for back stabs as well as rifles.

Similarly, instead of dedicating one feat to kneecap shot (also I feel like this should be expanded to other weapons besides smgs/pistols, I'm not sure why it needs to be restricted as it worked fine in fallout for all weapons, assuming they weren't burst only), I feel like it would be more efficient to have one targeted shot feat, which would then allow you to choose a body part.  The AP costs would increase, and the percent chance of hitting could be shown next to each body part, but upon a successful *critical* hit, you could have a number of crippling effects (including knee shot) that would eliminate the need for (otherwise) storing five or six feats in your "quick feat" tab to perform each of these critical strikes. Also if players just wanted a generic critical hit (i.e. the current aimed shot) there could be a minor check box that allows the system to default towards torso shots without having to go into the body part menu every time.

Without this it would just be cumbersome and tiring to have to select the certain shot you want, and also because that quick feat tab seems to fill up fairly quickly and we're only in the demo phase, so I'm sure later on I'll have to be very judicious in what I want to be in there.

- - - - -

Finally, it would be nice to add some more interesting death animations.  I will always miss the awesome text that accompanies critical strikes to various body parts from Fallout, but it would go a long way to making combat more exciting to have a number of death animations associated with certain kills.  It just makes the game more fun . If you can add in some text too that would be awesome (I'm sure someone would volunteer to help if its a lot of work...)!! . So for example death by burst fire would involve being knocked backwards while being riddled by gunfire, head shots might blow out a portion of their head, torso shots a piece of their torso, arm shots their arm just flies off...you get the picture.

I don't want to make this a copy of Fallout 1/2, its just that those features really did work quite well and I see no reason why they can't be used again. Other than that this game looks really great so far, I've already played it a few times which is more than I can say for most games.

6

Bugs / Inventory Glitch...and a few other things.

« on: November 01, 2012, 01:16:32 am »

Hi,

I noticed that when I had an inventory filled with items, to the point where a slider appears, if I dragged something from the *bottom* of my inventory to the top, I would basically create a copy of the item at the top, while leaving the original item at the bottom. I used this on stacks of health hypos and ammunition, and I found that I could duplicate these stacks five or six times (not sure how much longer it could have gone on for).

Additionally, as my inventory was being moved around to accommodate for these new items, some of my items (I remember special weapons I had) were lost (as if they were deleted).  I no longer have the save game, but I just wanted to inform you anyway so that you can experiment on your own to see whats going on. 

As much as it is a relief to have what seems to be a limitless inventory, just wanted to suggest that I feel there should be some limitations, just because it can become a bit unrealistic to have access to so many items without having to worry about encumbrance etc.

Oh yes, and one more thing. I know you're aware of the 12.7 mm sniper rifle requiring more action points than the player has available or can earn (looks like agility doesn't increase action points? At least not in this current build), I found that you can actually snipe in real time with that anyway, and then it puts you into combat mode. It just seems a bit contradictory that you can do it in real time, but not when you have a full bar of action points as they seem like they should be the same thing...in theory.

Well that's all. Really great game so far! You've done a fallout fan proud