Dense Blocks of HP

[Elhazzared]

I don't feel that is a problem however since there is a limit to how much materials you can get so there is a limit to how many you can craft so you can't go on a grenade throwing frenzy in which you throw one at the start of ever combat. Then there is the problem that it's the only CC available for non-psikers which means it has to be readly available. If you make it too hard to craft then you just get to a point where you are stuck cause you just don't have the CC to deal with the situation. Styg said it himself, the game is being balanced around the fact that you'll always have some form of CC.

[Elhazzared]

CC isn't necessarely a way to stop without killing a large group, Itt is a way to deal with a large, whatever that may be. So AoE damage that will instantly kill the group can be counted as CC though it's ok if we have different opinions there, it's a matter that there is no point in debating since we already have a pretty well formed opinion on it though from what I see Styg considers it to also be CC judging by a post he made earlier in a topic.

As for too easy to attain too early. This is my point of view of course but let's try to see what's balanced. You can easly buy grenades early in the game, from level 1 in fact and Ibelive you can craft them from level 1 as well... At least the mk1. This means that those grenades are balanced for level 1 gameplay. At those levels grenades easly kill anything they hit which means that the current grenade setup is supposed to kill anything in the area. Now if we are to assume that greandes are suppose to one shot everything or well, close enough to that anyway then it doesn't really matter how early you can get the higher grade versions because you'll use a mk1 when you have to, a mk3 when you have to or an mk5 when you have to. You are not going to waste a mk5 on low level mobs anyways but you'll still use the one which is lowest and will oneshot none the less.

It is also my opinion that crafting requires way too much skills as it is. Again it's my opinion and we all know what opinions are like but I'd like to see  lower values being given to craft stuff because currently it's a huge investment for a not so great bonus over what you can buy on the market. Lowering the skillset for everything from the begining would allow for players to get much better weapons than the market can offer and in turn make it worth the investment becuase right now the only investment I feel decent is indeed grenade crafting.

[Styg]

The problem is not having too many grenades, it's having too good grenades too early.
You probably shouldn't be able to craft Mk4/5 grenades this early. That's why they should be based on a higher level component that's not yet available. You know, just like Mk3 incendiary & shock bolts.

This. I definitively need to fine tune the skill requirements and/or component availablity. You shouldn't be able to get these end-game grenades this quickly.

[Elhazzared]

Really Styg? I mean even if you can get them early are you goona use them mid game over a MK3 which will still oneshot everything?

the reason to have those components available earlier on is only to be able to have a few extra so you don't run out as easly.

[Styg]

Really Styg? I mean even if you can get them early are you goona use them mid game over a MK3 which will still oneshot everything?

the reason to have those components available earlier on is only to be able to have a few extra so you don't run out as easly.

If a grenade can one-shot everything at certain point of the game and is readily available from crafting/merchants (at that pont) then I need to either need to reduce it's damage or the acquiring difficulty, regardless of which level grenade it is.

[Elhazzared]

Well, not everything. Mutants do survive even mk5 grenades but for the most part grenades are one shots, first mission they will oneshot any rathound or the guy guarding the top left house with his 2 rathounds. But's that's all they can do. The moment you head up towards GMS even the first 3 bandits only take about 50% health damage from it. A mk2 will probably kill them or severely wound (didn't really test this though) and anything in the GMS except for the bots.

On the junkyard a mk3 will heavly damage any humans or dogs on average, with luck it will kill but usually it doesn't. An mk4 will kill anything short of a mutant. An mk5 will heavly damage a mutant.

I dunno Styg, this feels pretty right to me.

[Elhazzared]

Well to be honest they can oneshot but it's not guaranteed. On the playthrough I did with my gunner/grenadier/trapper girl I made I used it once on 3 humans, 2 died, one was left alive with 1/5 of life. On the muties and dogs in depot A it almost always killed everything. On mutated dogs I had about a 50% kill ratio with every throw. What survived survived on very low health, never more than 30 but there seams to still be a decent survivabillity against it on mutated dogs.

Mines are in my current opinion not worth it as they are. They take double the resources, they take a lot of time to place down, most of the times even on max skills the enemies can see them anyway. they are just less useful and more resource consuming. The only way that I found out mines to be worth it is whenever you don't have the firepower to deal with a certain number of enemies. You put a mine in a predictable path where it will blow up on everyone's face (especially easier with savescuming) and then agro them into the proximity of the mine, throw a grenade and have 2 simultaneous explosions dealing damage... However that is something that is incredibly rare to need doing and not very viable in many situations.

[Elhazzared]

The XP is nice, but I don't care that much for those extra bits of XP if I have to waste a lot of skill points I need elsewhere just to gain the XP. I don't find it that much of a tactical option because while I recognise the potential, I have not seen a situation where I wouldn't best deal with it in some other way and even though stealth helps, the arming time is long and enemies getting close might notice you due to the long waiting time. As for the feat... It lowers a bit and a bit helps but ultimatly it's still a long time. Anything longer than 2 seconds is an incredibly long time in which you can very easly be pulled out of stealth.

As for enemies not seeying the traps. It is weird because traps that are part of the map already are never seen by the enemy and they trip on it, but I've found out that whenever I put a mine in the path of the enemy, 9 out of 10 times he just goes around it as if he knew it was there... Again it's not completly useless cause again you can make a chain reaction of explosions but if anything mines should take less materials because they are much more limited in use when compared to a grenade. Even when the enemy trips on the mine. Grats, a whole mine with a big blast radius for one enemy only... Meh. Caltrops make much better use of an area denial weapon, the only real disadvantage is that you can't remove them to pass through... There should be a way to be able to pass through them or to remove them from your path, even if you had to say, spend a little bit of time, like disarming a mine only that the difference is picking 'em up or pushing them aside. So it wouldn't be viable in combat but out of combat it's ok.

[Styg]

I think the grenade damage values are good. Especially the first two tiers. (Higher level frags might be too powerful compared to HE grenades, but I won't judge before I see actual higher level content. Either way, that would be easy to rebalance by increasing shrapnel amount and decreasing shrapnel damage.)


Hmm. You could change grenade crafting to something like this:

Old progression
Mk1 grenades - 1x TNT (15)
Mk2 grenades - 1x RDX (22)
Mk3 grenades - 2x TNT (30)
Mk4 grenades - RXD+TNT(37)
Mk5 grenades - 2x RDX (44)

New progression
Mk1 grenades - 1x TNT (15)
Mk2 grenades - 2x TNT (19)
Mk3 grenades - 1x RDX (30)
Mk4 grenades - 2x RDX (38)
Mk5 grenades - 1x HMX (44)
Mk6 grenade? - 2x HMX (55) - optionally

- Secondary explosive has 25% difficulty modifier. RDX has 30 skillreq instead of 22. Tier 3 explosive would have 44 skillreq.
- The low skill requirements of the blueprint would be retained with similar skill progression.
- Grenade acquiring would be easy to control by modifying the rarity of explosives.
- Crafting Mk2 grenades would now be viable, which really isn't the case with the old progression. Mk3 is better, same component price, more common components.

Vendors:
The amount of TNT currently available in shops is good (making it even more common wouldn't hurt though), but RDX might be a little bit too common. Lucas always has one, Gort always has 2 and you can randomly find plenty more in shops (Len, Johan, Colton, Blaine?). Maybe change that a little.


This way grenade crafting would still be a nice boon, you could craft a few Mk3s or even Mk4 with it early on, but it wouldn't be something you could completely rely on.


PS. give us a blueprint for flashbangs!
PPS. Question! Grenades don't have impact speed listed, how will they work with energy shields? I'm going to assume their impact speed would be at least high or very high.

That's not even close to ok. The way the grenades were balanced was that you should encounter new grenade level about every 5 character levels (earlier if you have high intelligence to craft them), this is why you can't find/buy mark 5s in the current content.

The fact that you can craft the highest level grenade with 44 chemistry (which a level 7 character can pull off with no intelligence bonus) is insane.

Here's how I'm changing it:
Mk2 and Mk3 grenade recipes are swapped. Hexogen requirement is increased to 50. Secondary explosives diff mod increased to 125%.

This will result in:
Mk1 grenades - 1x TNT (15)
Mk2 grenades - 2x TNT (33)
Mk3 grenades - 1x RDX (50)
Mk4 grenades - RXD+TNT (68)
Mk5 grenades - 2x RDX (112)

Much closer to what was intended. You will be able to craft mark 5s approx on level 20, earlier if you have high intelligence.

Btw, impact speed of the fire damage of grenades is high, while shrapnel impact speed is medium.

[Elhazzared]

Then it would also be good to perhaps change the cooldowns of grenades so that each type has it's own cooldown. So you throw an HE, all other types are still available to throw. The thing about grenades is. I feel (and this is just my opinion) they are adequate to the current content. If I was to throw mark 2 at the depot A I'd just straight give up a non psiker character. I need something to give me the control of what is happening. Be it through long mass stun, fear or just straight mass damage that will outright kill mostly anything. Flashbangs are short lasting. mk2 will not save you in the depot A (bear in mind depot A is about level 8. GMS is finished around level 6, you do a few more side quests enough for a couple levels and then you start depot A). Sniper kills one guy or heavly damages it and then you get mobbed down. Assault rifles can again kill or severely wound one enemy, but that's about it... Non psiker characters have no alternatives to CC and insta-kill nades is what makes them viable, if you remove that possibillity then something else must be done in order to restore balance.

[Elhazzared]

Cooldown is shared between grenades. While each grenade type has it's own cooldown time, throw one greandes and all grenades enter in cooldown which will become a problem when decent grenades become unatainable when they are needed.

Flashbangs alone are not enough, it's a mass stun for an incredible small duration. Shockbolts it's 1 target and puts everything every special bolt in cooldown. Incendiary bolts are just bolts with extra damage, they don't provide any extra CC, better to just use a sniper and just kill a full life enemy. Acid blob traps. Not sure they are even craftable at this point but they are traps, they require set up, enemy not seeying you do it, enemy triping on it, overall not that useful. Pneumatic gloves. you must be in mellee range and it's single target short duration, same for the hammer... Caltrops are nice yes but they deny your own movement over the said area or just hurt you in returns which is a pain in the ass to kill corpses that are lootable there... Not to mention even a psiker can still use it easly. knnecapshot is hardly effective especially against multiple oponents but even single is still meh. Cheap shots is a 15% chance to even stun. Dirty kick is again single target and then cooldown. Cut-throat works only against humans though it is effectively a one shot kill, this does not differs from a snipe however... I'd also like to add that feats shouldn't even count. Psikers don't even rely on skills for their CC, they are just abillities which are much like actual weapons. You have a lot of CCs, you can actually throw multiple single targeted CC's. You have different types of CC's like for example, fear in case the enemy is on second wind. The only true CC a non psiker has is high damage dealing CC. That removed all the CC left is highly unreliable.

[Elhazzared]

I dunno for your facts, I'll try and record a vid with multiple grenade types to show you but round 1 I throw a grenade. All of the grenades initiate their full cooldown timer, so that means at least not grenades for 4 rounds.

Yes, seting people on fire can put them into fear. Can is not a guarantee and the damage the incendiary bolts do is not that high anyway.

Indeed there is an incredibly small AoE capabillity But it's AoE incredibly low damage anyway.

Special bolts I was always under the impression they did, I might be wrong however as I never needed to use more than one per round or even per combat.

Alright I wasn't sure they were craftable as I said but even being they again suffer from all the drawbacks of traps.

I don't think I understand your mellee range unless you mean the psi-power but that's still incredibly limited range even if better, this also requires investment into the skill and skill selection is highly limited in my opinion.

I didn't knew caltrops disapeared after a while. But the fact is that it takes a really long while. I can use caltrops in the first battle in depot A, and by the time I finish depot A they still aren't gone.

As for the incapacitation. yeah i didn't really diferentiate. I also don't really know fully how pneumatic gloves work, if it's a guaranteed incapacitation or percentual based, if it's percentual however it's not that reliable and again, mellee problem when fighting ranged opponents.

Well it is your opinion that PSI is OP. I certainly thought the same when I first made a focused Psiker. Thing is. I rapidly discovered it wasn't. Sure you can do a lot of stuff that seams so BS but in reality all you really have is control. You have multiple ways to keep enemies from getting at you within a limited Psipower management, your damage while at the time seamed so high to me was in fact so very low. I only discovered how low damage a psiker is when I made my first non psiker. Everything throws a shit ton more damage than it does and that is why it needs all those looking BS abillities. They are it's life line and they are just barely enough in depot A.

[Styg]

To clear some stuff up:
- HE and frag grenades do share a cooldown
- I don't know why I kept the 1 turn (2 sec) global cooldown on grenades, but removing it now (it's a remnant of the old days and not really necessary in the current combat mechanics)
- Caltrops do not go away by themselves
- Special bolts have no CDs (except tranquilizing bolt)

Elhazzared, I can't even tell what exactly you're complaining about anymore. In your eyes everything seems ineffective and if something is chance based it's immediately dismissed. Also, some of your complaints are based on false propositions which makes me believe you haven't actually attempted that play-style.

If you're saying PSI doesn't deal enough damage and is all about control, I think you're doing something wrong. Psi scales very well with skill (which you have a number of ways to increase as well) and is pretty much the only thing in the game currently that can dish out continuous high AoE damage.

You can fire three special bolts (there are no CDs) as an opener with a crossbow oriented build using Special Tactics feat. It's a lot of damage, and while it might not be comparable with rifle snipes, it can apply one or more additional effects like stun or burning. You can nuke one target, you can stun 3 targets, you can set targets on fire if they are aligned, you can scare off rathounds with incendiary bolts as a part of your normal attack, etc.

You don't seem to like any CC outside psi abilities pointing out how by themselves they are not amazing. But they are not meant to be and nothing is stopping you from combining more than one to get some battlefield control. Btw, I think that 2 turn AoE cc that allows you to restealth is quite good (flashbangs).

You complain that Cheap Shots is only 15%, but you fail to realize it's a passive chance with every melee attacks. Which you will be doing plenty of anyway if you're melee, it doesn't require any special action to take place. Same with pneumatic gloves. You need to put things in perspective and not just watch the raw numbers.

I don't even know what you mean by Psikers not relying on their skills to apply CC? With exception of Forcefield, they very much do. Try not increasing your psi skill levels and see how effective your abilities will be (including chance to stun/feat/etc).

I could go on, but the point is you need to give a certain build a fair chance at playing it, and playing to its strengths, not just brute-forcing it to expose its weaknesses, before you can really tell if it's viable or not. I'm not saying everything is balanced and well, and there's definitively problems with being melee in some fights in the current state of the game among other things, but it's not as black and white as you make it seem either.

[Elhazzared]

I've actually atempted most playstyles Styg. I only haven't tried mellee nor pure tanking. I don't like mellee because it predispositions me to take a lot of damage and I haven't tried pure tanking because getting a really good armor will take a while and if I'm tanking the damage, then I'm not going to invest into stealth as it will become nullified so it's hurting a lot at the beggining. It's not saying it's impossible of course, I just don't like things that are not as effective as others from the beggining.

Psi does scales well and possibly in the final build it will scale even above weapons with enough levels but it doesn't deals a big amount of damage. Yes it's AoE damage compensates for that along with it's CC capabillities. But it lacks in damage in general and my Psikers start at 10 will and get +1 every 4 levels as well as getting the psi-skills pumped up to the max every single level. They are no mk5 grenades levels of damage, they are no snipers or even assault guns in auto levels of damage. Again this is no complain because the level of utillity Psi has more than covers for it. What I said about it is. It's balanced, it's by no means OP.

I don't even know how is it possible to fire 3 specials bolts in one round of combat with the crossbow. Psikers is what I've used most extensively and I always use a crossbow to complement them. Now most crossbows cost 25 points per shot, with special tactics which I do tend to pick up they don't go higher than that. Still all characters have 50 action points so at best you fire 2 special bolts. Now I've seen crossbows which actually cost 21 AP to fire, they deal less damage in return which balances it out. Still to fire 3 special bolts per round or indeed to simply fire the crossbow 3 times in a round you'd need a crossbow that cost at best 16 AP to fire... This if I'm not missing anything, but I don't think I am. Now I never noticed whether or not they have a cooldown because it's incredibly rare for me to have to resort to special bolts. I never used more than one per round, In fact I don't think I ever needed to fire more than once per combat and it's rare the combat where I even need to use them. They would be there more for the lack of psi energy or for some reason inabillity to use Psi abillities and need to either stun or just pump electrical damage.

I don't like any CC outside Psi abillities because it's either extremelly limited in comparison or unreliable... I never said flashbangs were bad, all that I said is that by themselfs alone I don't consider good enough. Sure you can re-stealth and give them time to cooldown but that just seams a way to actually cheat the system by continuously enter and leave combat (provided you have enough grenades to do it, but as they will surelly become craftable in the future, it is something that will happen).

I always deal with raw numbers, I don't like unreliabillity. If you tell me that every attack has 80% chance to imcapacitate someone. Yeah I like it. If you tell me 15%... Meh. The approuch to combat in Underrail as I belive you have done is that you need to plan very carefully your approuch and then excute it in order to succeed. It becomes hard to plan an approuch if what you can do is unreliable at best.

There is a difference between investing into a skill that is required for you to use in combat and a skill in which you invest some point with the only purpose to get a psi abillity and then stop, especially if you don't intend to use psi-abillities at all except for that... It's kinda like, waste 30 or 35 (not sure the right value right now) skillpoints just to get 3 range to your mellee. But that is the way this feels to me because skill points are really about just enough to specialise, they don't allow for much diversity in my opinion. As for not increasing Psi abillities to see how effective my Psi abillities are... Well I know that they will start failing the CC not to mention they start losing the capacity to keep up with the damage you have to pump out. But a dedicated Psiker has no reason to do that and the thing is. So long as you keep your combat skills high, as you should, everything is close to 100% reliable.

I have given a lot of things in the game a fair chance, not everything as I said, I don't like mellee and tanking in this game because I feel that it the most unbalanced thing that needs work before it becomes enjoyable for me. But all non Psiker builds I've made I will tell that would have been a complete pain in the ass to play without mk5 and mk3. If I didn't had those I'd seriously reconsider plaing them. It's not that they wouldn't be able to still do things, but it would become so imbalanced to me that it would remove all the joy of playing them. Every fight would be a torment to find a way to kill everything without dying in the process.

I do know perfect balance is impossible, but at the end of the day so long as one build doesn't has it harder than other then that is balance. Obviously certain builds will struggle more against certain enemy types which is to be expected but that is ok. Obviously I don't mean to say all builds should be acceptable, of course not, bad builds should have it hard and people should learn to make builds in order to have a fair degree of success. That said mellee should not be weaker than anything else and so on.

[Elhazzared]

I confused marksman with special tactics, my bad there. Yeah thefirst round you can toss 3 special bolts which can give a good damage to a single target, expensive as it is but it's in no way better than just a sniper shot anyway. Though you can beggin the combat with 3 stuns just on bolts which isn't bad, just expensive... As for the pneumatic mod. Yes, the mod itself doesn't does that but go buy crossbows to the sellers and pneumatic crossbows are always weaker on damage than any other crossbows. I don't craft them myself because. Well I belive I already made my point on the crafting system elsewhere.

I do suffer a lot from tunnel vision, but it's more like. What is the best I can get? Are there other options as good and if not, yes, I tunnel vision towards it.