Underrail Forum
Underrail => Development Log => Topic started by: Styg on August 10, 2017, 12:30:02 pm
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Hi guys. I did some changes regarding veteran levels which I originally introduced back in October.
First of all, player will continue to receive the normal amount of skill points when leveling up even on veteran levels now. Also, dervied stats such as health, detection and such will scale normally on veteran levels as well. However, players will also gain a feat every even level instead of every level when leveling on veteran levels. So basically everything is going to work as with normal levels with the exception of the feat pool being expanded with veteran feats once you hit veteran levels.
Allowing of the further skill scaling beyond the 25th level, however, requires us to provide some use for such high skill levels, particularly in crafting. To address this, the end-game areas and stores will have some of its loot/stock scaled up if the Expedition DLC is installed, particularly when it comes to crafting components. In the future, we also intend to address the problem of other non-combat skill scaling (such as social skills and hacking/lockpicking) by adding high level encounters/opportunities, so while currently it might not make sense to max out these skills, in the future it will have benefits.
However, the second, and more important change, is that on veteran levels you'll also get three specialization points.
(http://underrail.com/images/DevLog/Specialization.gif)
You use these specialization points to further improve your non-veteran feats, often across specific dimension, as demonstrated in the GIF above. Your investment of points in any given specialization cannot exceed your veteran level (or the maximum allowed points for that specialization).
That's it for now. Let us know how you like these changes.
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Why is horizontal development gone?
I love the idea of Specialization.
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Why is horizontal development gone?
What are you referring to exactly?
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Why is horizontal development gone?
What are you referring to exactly?
This:
The reason I decided to prevent certain aspects of character from scaling beyond level 25 is to avoid having the character outscale the content at his current main storyline progression just by raw character power. Because we'll be expanding the game horizontally in this expansion (and probably in the future) we need to take special care to still provide adequate challenge to the player while also allowing them to improve some aspects of their character.
It's not just skills that keep growing, Specialization will ad to character power as well.
One more question: are we going to get another attribute point at lvl 28?
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Wow. You are certainly giving the player a lot more power with this change. I fear that these changes will trivialize the game in terms of combat, especially for players going the Classic XP route, but I suspect that you have plans to ensure things remain interesting and balanced. (e.g. stronger enemies, greater waves of enemies, less consumables, etc.)
These changes also seem to directly oppose your goal of making it so that no one player can become a perfect jack-of-all-trades and dominate every aspect of the game world (i.e. have a high amount of skill in combat, subterfuge, crafting, psi, and speechcraft). But, again, I imagine you have plans to get around this.
Regardless, this will certainly make things interesting! Keep up the good work, guys. :)
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Wow. You are certainly giving the player a lot more power with this change. I fear that these changes will trivialize the game in terms of combat, especially for players going the Classic XP route, but I suspect that you have plans to ensure things remain interesting and balanced. (e.g. stronger enemies, greater waves of enemies, less consumables, etc.)
These changes also seem to directly oppose your goal of making it so that no one player can become a perfect jack-of-all-trades and dominate every aspect of the game world (i.e. have a high amount of skill in combat, subterfuge, crafting, psi, and speechcraft). But, again, I imagine you have plans to get around this.
Regardless, this will certainly make things interesting! Keep up the good work, guys. :)
I really don't think that 5 levels worth of skill points would really allow for a character to become a perfect jack-of-all-trades. Especially when you throw psi skills in this.
But man, do i really like the specialization options. Already have plans for armor sloping (and possibly nimble) for my unarmed guy in metal armor.
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Styg, I really like the changes, in my opinion much better approach then previously announced veteran levels.
Could you give us some rough estimate regarding the testing/release? I do not need release day, rather update where we stand in terms of completion / what is left to do, etc....
All in all, great work guys!!!
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Why is horizontal development gone?
What are you referring to exactly?
This:
The reason I decided to prevent certain aspects of character from scaling beyond level 25 is to avoid having the character outscale the content at his current main storyline progression just by raw character power. Because we'll be expanding the game horizontally in this expansion (and probably in the future) we need to take special care to still provide adequate challenge to the player while also allowing them to improve some aspects of their character.
It's not just skills that keep growing, Specialization will ad to character power as well.
One more question: are we going to get another attribute point at lvl 28?
With the current linear scaling system it is not possible, in the long run, to expand the game horizontally and prevent player from increasing in power, while at the same time making the levelling experience satisfying. We still plan to work on the game horizontally in a lot of areas, but nothing of the scope as large as this DLC.
Specialization surely will add to character power, but the idea is that it adds it in particular aspects. We'll be closely monitoring how that affects the game's difficulty during the testing.
No additional base ability points.
Wow. You are certainly giving the player a lot more power with this change. I fear that these changes will trivialize the game in terms of combat, especially for players going the Classic XP route, but I suspect that you have plans to ensure things remain interesting and balanced. (e.g. stronger enemies, greater waves of enemies, less consumables, etc.)
These changes also seem to directly oppose your goal of making it so that no one player can become a perfect jack-of-all-trades and dominate every aspect of the game world (i.e. have a high amount of skill in combat, subterfuge, crafting, psi, and speechcraft). But, again, I imagine you have plans to get around this.
Regardless, this will certainly make things interesting! Keep up the good work, guys. :)
Does this address your concerns:
Allowing of the further skill scaling beyond the 25th level, however, requires us to provide some use for such high skill levels, particularly in crafting. To address this, the end-game areas and stores will have some of its loot/stock scaled up if the Expedition DLC is installed, particularly when it comes to crafting components. In the future, we also intend to address the problem of other non-combat skill scaling (such as social skills and hacking/lockpicking) by adding high level encounters/opportunities, so while currently it might not make sense to max out these skills, in the future it will have benefits.
Could you give us some rough estimate regarding the testing/release? I do not need release day, rather update where we stand in terms of completion / what is left to do, etc....
I did that in the last dev log. I really don't want to be any more specific than that at this point.
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It is insanely cool!
I love all this polishing and reiterating!
You are among the best!
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You certainly put thought into this.
Not sure how balanced it can really be with the ongoing potential scaling, but I'm willing to wait and see (not that I have much of a choice :P).
The specializations are a nice touch, for sure.
It allows a player to get stronger in very specific areas, which at the same time allows a notable and satisfying power increase, and doesn't scale as high or fast as a general increase in power.
Certainly a good idea, in my opinion at least.
Edit: Do we need to actually have the feats to use the specializations? I'm aware they don't make much sense, otherwise, but f.Ex. the armour sloping buff could work, theoretically, without the actual feat.
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I like the idea of specialization, I can't say I like the idea of getting skill points and derived stats after lvl 25.
The original approach allowed the player to still grow in power beyond lvl 25 but in a limited way, only by picking those unique and specific veteran feats. I liked this idea, it would prevent the player from becoming a jack-of-all-trades with too many skill points and wouldn't have much of an impact on the base game balance outside of late game encounters, while still being satisfying. The new approach makes the player grow in power even more after lvl 25 than before in all aspects. This will necessitate some serious re-working of the base game to accommodate this change, both combat encounters and skill checks outside of combat.
I have no problem with that if you guys can pull it off, but that will most likely take a lot of work. I guess I just don't want it to end up like Fallout:New Vegas where DLCs completly destroyed the base game balance by raising the level cap from 30 to 50, which in turn allowed the player to max almost all skills and pick way too many perks.
I really don't think that 5 levels worth of skill points would really allow for a character to become a perfect jack-of-all-trades. Especially when you throw psi skills in this.
It absolutely could if the base game is not adjusted properly. That's 200 bonus skill points. Even if you spend 5-15 of those every level to max your combat skills, it still leaves you with enough to completly max at least 1 skill or get 2 or even 3 high. Taking skills like persuasion/intimidation/mercantile or dodge/evasion would no longer be a true trade-off like it is now.
To give an example, most of my low armor penalty builds put so many points in crafting I rarely bother with dodge/evasion since they take a lot of investment and crafted shields/armor provides adequate protection already. I have moblity, I have stealth, I have good damage absorption, my only weakness is that I'm almost guranteed to get hit everytime and if my shield is gone or easily penetrated, I'm not going to last long.
With 200 more skill points, I could put 100 in evasion/dodge and most likely get both of them to 200+ effective skill with infused siphoner tabis and other bonuses. Now my only weakness is gone. Even if I get hit by an EMP or are forced to take melee hits, I have enough dodge/evasion to easily survive regardless.
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I really like the way specialization was implemented, and I'm definitely looking forward to implementing them in my builds. However, I agree with Tygrende about the 200 extra skill points being too much. Maybe we could only get 20 skill points instead of 40 after level 25?
EDIT: Removed an unnecessary sentence.
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Will the max level cap stay the same with this changes?
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Will the max level cap stay the same with this changes?
Max level in the expansion will be 30.
However, I agree with Tygrende about the 200 extra skill points being too much.
The idea is that if you forgo further investment into your core skills that you've been developing so far and instead branch out into other skills, you will sacrifice your build focus. For example, if you stop investing points into crafting skills, it will mean that you now might not be able to access the high-end components anymore (which will now be tuned towards level 30 instead of level 25); or if you stop investing in hacking (as many do already, because the max required skill level is known), eventually you will be missing out.
I understand your concerns guys, and they are our concerns as well, so we'll be looking closely at how this develops in the end-game to make sure that the encounter difficulty is adequate (it has its problems already, but more on this some other time) and that the character development choices are meaningful and varied. We might not get this 100% right immediately (or ever), but we are committed to it.
We understand that for some of you pros the game gets a bit too easy at certain point and we have a lot of ideas of how we can provide you with a challenge and, eventually, we'll get around to it.
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Does this address your concerns:
Allowing of the further skill scaling beyond the 25th level, however, requires us to provide some use for such high skill levels, particularly in crafting. To address this, the end-game areas and stores will have some of its loot/stock scaled up if the Expedition DLC is installed, particularly when it comes to crafting components. In the future, we also intend to address the problem of other non-combat skill scaling (such as social skills and hacking/lockpicking) by adding high level encounters/opportunities, so while currently it might not make sense to max out these skills, in the future it will have benefits.
This statement mainly addresses non-combat aspects of the game, which I am not really concerned about. My concern is how the extra skill points and feats will affect the current balance of the game's combat encounters.
200 extra skill points, as Tygrende addressed, provide a lot of additional power if they are all used for combat purposes. Even if it just means that the player can now craft Super Steel armor or put some points into dodge/evasion, that still makes the player a lot more powerful than they would be otherwise, and some balancing should be done to account for that. Now, if said balancing is done, the problem disappears and I have no reason to complain. But, such extensive balancing of the game as a whole will probably be really, really difficult to do effectively unless you just make the Black Sea a post-DC area where you can keep all of the enemies designed to fight toe-to-toe with the veteran characters. (Perhaps you could put in another difficulty setting? Something that can be turned on when the player hits level 25, if they so choose?) Look to Tygrende's post, again, for his example of what ineffective balancing did to Fallout: New Vegas.
But I don't want to be the guy that ruins the fun for everyone just by pointing out the one potential issue, because on the other hand these additional skill points and feats could be the difference between someone rage-quitting their first playthrough or actually having fun with it. I think these changes can work, so long as you guys can balance out the combat effectively.
And I should add, my concerns are only for those players who go with the Classic XP system, since you can level so extraordinarily quickly with that system. Players who go for the (objectively better) Oddity route should have no balance problems to speak of, since oddities are so hard to come by.
Anyway, as I stated at the end of my last post, these changes should make the game a little more interesting whether things are balanced or not. I'm excited for what you guys have in store for us, and if you devs think that these changes are in the best interests of the game, then you should go for it. After all, you know this game a hell of a lot better than we do (except for Wildan and epeli, they know everything).
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Alright, let me try to address this as three seperate (altough possibly mutually-exacerbated) problems. These are not just things you mentioned in your post, but also what other people reported in the past regarding difficulty.
1. Characters hit level cap too soon.
This will in part be addressed by veteran levels. Once you hit level 25, the progress slows significantly and you are still able to increase the power, keeping the leveling process meaningful.
2. Game is generally not that challenging past the mid-point.
I understand this is often the case and we are considering how we can adjust certain encounters and areas to provide more challenging experience for players.
One of the main issue here, we think is the absence of high end non-human enemies. Most of these types of enemies appear in the late-early game and mid-game and are carried over to near-endgame where they are simply not that challenging anymore.
In addition to this there is a rollercoaster difficulty ride with the late-midgame to endgame encounters where some are too hard even on the easiest difficulty, while a lot of them are too easy even on the hardest difficulty. In the future, we will be looking at those encounters separately and work on tweaking them for various difficulties.
Which leads me to the next point.
3. The game needs another difficulty setting.
Some of you RPG veterans just need a space of your own when it comes to difficulty.
4. Energy shields.
I don't want to get into this right now, but personally I am not content with how the shields work at the moment, both in the terms of crafting (where there's effectively one way to go about things) and with the amount of defense they provide with practically no active tactical or strategic engagement from the player and virtually no downsides.
Expect this to change at some point (prior to the end of the world).
5. Expedition DLC will increase your power before a portion of original campaign and thus make you out-scale the content.
The content of the DLC occupies the are from the mid-game to late-game which means that the leveling advantage it provides need only be accounted for in the late-late-game and the endgame itself and this it will be doing.
There is no point attempting to adjust the mid-game content towards it as we do not do this for other horizontal mid-game stuff - Foundry, Rail Crossing, Core City, Drones/Protectorate, etc.
6. The problem of classic XP.
While it will take a lot of experience to gain veteran levels in classic XP mode, I don't really have a good way to control the levelling curve here due to the non-linear nature of the large portion of the game.
Actually, I did think of a good way of controlling it and I implemented it in the form of oddities. If it was up to me, I would just do away with the classic experience, but I am obliged to keep it due to the late date in which the oddity addition was made.
I have no good solution to this right now, I'll have to think about it.
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Will info about all Specializations be optionally available at char creation just like it is for feats?
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Will info about all Specializations be optionally available at char creation just like it is for feats?
Of course not, that would ruin the surprise of finding out that the feats you picked have useless specializations.
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4. Energy shields.
I don't want to get into this right now, but personally I am not content with how the shields work at the moment, both in the terms of crafting (where there's effectively one way to go about things) and with the amount of defense they provide with practically no active tactical or strategic engagement from the player and virtually no downsides.
Expect this to change at some point (prior to the end of the world).
I think the main issue with shields (other than High Efficiency Energy Converters being hands down the best mod to use) is that enemies using EMP grenades are too few and almost (if not all of them) are optional. The only enemies that use them that I remember right now are warehouse mercs, Protectorate Shock Troopers, Oculite Runners and Faceless Commander. Depending on your choices, you may not fight a single one of those.
EMP grenades/mines are a very hard counter to shields- not only do they render shields completly useless, they actually punish you for using them by dealing damage equal to half the capacity drained. So it's not like the counter doesn't exist, it's just that it's heavily underused. I think the best solution would be to let more common enemies throw EMP grenades and maybe add more EMP mines in the world (like the one in front of a door in Lunatics hideout in Upper Underrail, that got me good). It can't be overdone though- if every enemy suddenly started throwing EMPs then shields would become useless instead.
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EMP grenades/mines are a very hard counter to shields- not only do they render shields completly useless, they actually punish you for using them by dealing damage equal to half the capacity drained. So it's not like the counter doesn't exist, it's just that it's heavily underused. I think the best solution would be to let more common enemies throw EMP grenades and maybe add more EMP mines in the world
Poor energy pistols, electroshock weapons and Power Management :(
PM at least can be reverted to its former glory and avoid collateral damage but i don't see how weapons can be protected.
Still, it would be cool to see EMP nades on enemies that player can fight regardless of his choices.
Maybe we need something new like Pulse Gun/Pulse Ammo/Pulse Bolts that only work vs shields. Perhaps only vs activated shields.
The problem with both approaches is that they may simply not fit certain enemy types. But i'm sure Styg will find a proper solution!
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I'm not primarily bothered by the lack of counters to energy shields, but by their simplistic non-engaging one-size-fits-all mechanics. Giving enemies more EMPs might make the combat more difficult, but not necessarily all that more interesting.
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Poor energy pistols, electroshock weapons and Power Management :(
I'm perfectly aware enemies using EMP grenades would also hurt energy weapon users. It would hurt all builds that rely on electronic gear.
As a matter of fact I think it wouldn't be that bad for energy pistols compared to other electronic gadgets. If your pistol gets drained you just need to spend 10 AP to start shooting again, not a big deal. If your shield is drained, you are left defenseless for the entire fight. If your night vision goggles are drained, you are effectively suffering a huge precision penalty for the entire fight. If your taser gets drained, you lose a reliable way to stun for the entire fight. So on and so on.
As for Power Managment, you could still get use out of it. You can use lower quality cores for gadgets that don't necessarily need to have high capacity, that way your shield/energy pistol can have more capacity while total stays the same, it's a cool concept. I'm usually aiming to have around 200 total capacity on my ranged builds- 60 for goggles, 20 for taser and around 120 for energy shield. It's pretty hard to reach 120 capacity until DC without Power Mangement.
I'm not primarily bothered by the lack of counters to energy shields, but by their simplistic non-engaging one-size-fits-all mechanics. Giving enemies more EMPs might make the combat more difficult, but not necessarily all that more interesting.
Energy converter is definitely the biggest issue, I think the conversion rate bonus should be lower. The conversion rate penalty on amplifiers is what makes them unusable, I would get rid of it completly. Perhaps the base dissipation rate should be a bit higher to make capacitors a better option.
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Some of you RPG veterans just need a space of your own when it comes to difficulty.
Can you really blame us? :)
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3. The game needs another difficulty setting.
Some of you RPG veterans just need a space of your own when it comes to difficulty.
Why not throw the ball to the players? Custom difficulty. Let us tweak all the factors tied to difficulty and various extra settings like weight and merchant limits (I haven't forgotten Elhazzared! ;))
I did consider something similar in the past - allowing the player to enable certain pre-programmed "mods" for his playthrough, such as: enemies always/never crit, humans come back to life as mutants, no healing, and other various reasonable and insane options. I'll probably never implement this, though it would be funny...
Some of you RPG veterans just need a space of your own when it comes to difficulty.
Can you really blame us? :)
No, you are my favorites, but you kill my precious NPCs in a way that makes me want to nerf things.
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no healing, and other various reasonable and insane options
If healing was buffered up on item use and couldn't exceed some trickle rate that was too slow to really help much in combat, that would be a pretty nice additional difficulty, but no healing at all would be just spiteful*. A less-trivial version of Pillars of Eternity's injury system might be nice too and presumably wouldn't be *that* hard to introduce since it would just require timerless debuffs. Plus then poor lonely Pasquale might actually get visitors from time to time, and we could have a medbay to sink charons and fill that weird dead space in the house basement.
Well, just chiming in to say you made a really great game with UnderRail and I'm looking forward to spending some time and money on the expansion.
*by which I do not mean unfair or unwanted :P
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Will info about all Specializations be optionally available at char creation just like it is for feats?
Of course not, that would ruin the surprise of finding out that the feats you picked have useless specializations.
:P
I did consider something similar in the past - allowing the player to enable certain pre-programmed "mods" for his playthrough, such as: enemies always/never crit, humans come back to life as mutants, no healing, and other various reasonable and insane options. I'll probably never implement this, though it would be funny...
I love this idea. The X-COM reboots have their own version of this system, and that's basically the only reason why I keep replaying them. Another way you could get around the difficulty issue would be to make Underrail more accessible to modders... somehow. (Don't ask me; I'm a biologist not a programmer. :P) Naturally, this would be something to implement well after the expansion is released (if you were to do it at all).
No, you are my favorites, but you kill my precious NPCs in a way that makes me want to nerf things.
Hey, Rude Rob had it coming! He made fun of my mother! ;)
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Alright, let me try to address this as three seperate (altough possibly mutually-exacerbated) problems.
Great post. Lot of info for those who fall in love with game, so to say. Thanks, I'l copypaste it all around.
Will info about all Specializations be optionally available at char creation just like it is for feats?
Of course not, that would ruin the surprise of finding out that the feats you picked have useless specializations.
:P
Yep, that's the Styg we love. :D
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Poor energy pistols, electroshock weapons and Power Management :(
I'm perfectly aware enemies using EMP grenades would also hurt energy weapon users. It would hurt all builds that rely on electronic gear.
As a matter of fact I think it wouldn't be that bad for energy pistols compared to other electronic gadgets. If your pistol gets drained you just need to spend 10 AP to start shooting again, not a big deal. If your shield is drained, you are left defenseless for the entire fight. If your night vision goggles are drained, you are effectively suffering a huge precision penalty for the entire fight. If your taser gets drained, you lose a reliable way to stun for the entire fight. So on and so on.
As for Power Managment, you could still get use out of it. You can use lower quality cores for gadgets that don't necessarily need to have high capacity, that way your shield/energy pistol can have more capacity while total stays the same, it's a cool concept. I'm usually aiming to have around 200 total capacity on my ranged builds- 60 for goggles, 20 for taser and around 120 for energy shield. It's pretty hard to reach 120 capacity until DC without Power Mangement.
*snip
Problem is energy users usually have a CON of 3, one EMP vs PM(shield + dual energy weapons + goggles + Regen vest + taser) = a world of hurt. Perhaps we can get an anti-EMP utility with a super high electronic requirement?
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Problem is energy users usually have a CON of 3, one EMP vs PM(shield + dual energy weapons + goggles + Regen vest + taser) = a world of hurt. Perhaps we can get an anti-EMP utility with a super high electronic requirement?
You don't necesarily need to have 3 CON, that's a choice and like any other choice, it has its downsides. As a matter of fact plasma pistols can benefit quite a bit from 9 CON to pick Survival Instincts.
In your example you are using as much electronic gear as possible, so naturally EMP-throwing enemies will be your worst enemy and should be prioritized. Again, choosing to use all that gear and letting your total capacity reach crazy high numbers has obvious benefits, but there should be downsides as well.
I don't think a hard counter to a hard counter is a good idea, it would trivialize the entire mechanic.
As I said, I don't think every enemy should start throwing EMPs, but I think they should be more common than they are now.
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Not necessarily a hard counter, but perhaps some sort of crafting component that you can use in place of components like amplifier or converter. And it will make energy shield loose less power from being exposed to emp burst depending on the quality. It will not completely negate the usefulness of EMP grenades and mines, but also it would have cost of not using different component. With increasing the use of emp stuff, component like this would have it's use, but wouldn't be overpowered
No, you are my favorites, but you kill my precious NPCs in a way that makes me want to nerf things.
Awww, you say such sweet things, Styg :)
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Regarding high Crafting Skills; rather than just adding the occasional higher quality component, you could also feature more Mod Slots unlocked at high veterancy crafting levels.
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Not necessarily a hard counter, but perhaps some sort of crafting component that you can use in place of components like amplifier or converter. And it will make energy shield loose less power from being exposed to emp burst depending on the quality. It will not completely negate the usefulness of EMP grenades and mines, but also it would have cost of not using different component. With increasing the use of emp stuff, component like this would have it's use, but wouldn't be overpowered
I like this idea. It maintains the give-and-take of the crafting system while allowing for a defensive advantage in very specific, deadly scenarios.
Regarding high Crafting Skills; rather than just adding the occasional higher quality component, you could also feature more Mod Slots unlocked at high veterancy crafting levels.
I feel like, if I am understanding you correctly, this idea could cause problems if it was implemented. Many crafting components for items like weapons, shields, psi headgear, and armor have effects that would defeat each other if placed on the same item. (Like Energy Converters and Amplifiers, to use the example of shields). Not to mention that some combinations would be downright ridiculous (like wearing two overcoats on a vest, or two sets of lenses in a pair of NV goggles). If such an option was to be provided at veteran levels, it would necessitate the creation of a whole new series of crafting components.
Plus, if the Specialization system was to be maintained with this implemented, there would have to be a feat that related to it.
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Regarding high Crafting Skills; rather than just adding the occasional higher quality component, you could also feature more Mod Slots unlocked at high veterancy crafting levels.
Increasing crafting material quality lets you scale the power of crafted items very predictably. Adding a new space for a mod would be enormously more complex to implement and balance. Much as I enjoy crafting in Underrail I think that would be either an underwhelming change, or else it would make crafted items so much more powerful that there would be no strong argument for not playing a crafter.
Imagine stacking a second HEC on a shield gen, or adding a plasma chamber to an incendiary pistol. That would be briefly amusing but boy would it be exceedingly powerful.
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*snip
Allowing of the further skill scaling beyond the 25th level, however, requires us to provide some use for such high skill levels, particularly in crafting. To address this, the end-game areas and stores will have some of its loot/stock scaled up if the Expedition DLC is installed, particularly when it comes to crafting components.
*snip
So will existing saves have their loot/stock reset as well or will this only applies to new saves?
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*snip
Allowing of the further skill scaling beyond the 25th level, however, requires us to provide some use for such high skill levels, particularly in crafting. To address this, the end-game areas and stores will have some of its loot/stock scaled up if the Expedition DLC is installed, particularly when it comes to crafting components.
*snip
So will existing saves have their loot/stock reset as well or will this only applies to new saves?
Regarding loot, it will apply but only to areas that you haven't visited yet. Merchant inventory will be updated with the first regular periodic restock.
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Thanks, looks like I need to stop my test chars right before entering DC.
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Hmm, I just wondered:
Newer PnP games, or those with flat calculation mechanics for health, have a lot less problem with power creep.
Maybe balance problems in fights could be averted by slightly reducing the impact of leveling on the characters durability (potentially more at the start to balance it, of course)?
@Styg
So, given that "not enough hardcounters" is not the problem with energy shields, what would you try to change? Barring making all components useful, of course.
Directional shields? Timed fluctuations? Stronger shields that also reduce the wearers damage output? Bots that target based on EM emissions?
For all I can think of, I'm not quite sure I know what you actually think is the prime problem. I mean, body armour doesn't offer a lot of "tactical" choices, either, once you decide which one to wear.
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Shields should not be as passive as body armors, in my opinion. As usual, I'm not going to discuss implementation before I actually implement it, but yeah timing, directionality, mobility and that sort of stuff could come into play.
Anyway, I'm not sure when I'll have time to address the shields. I suspect it won't be anytime soon.
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A weird idea about shields would be to make them work more like in other games where shields are a thing that's not very strong but quickly regenerates, so you still have to use terrain and crowd control as your shield can't absorb a whole mob's turn of attacks at once, however this might create more "popamole" gameplay where you duck in and out of easy cover.
Direction-based sounds pretty damn interesting too though, Agility builds would have an advantage against some shield users since they could afford to move and shoot at them from the side or back more frequently than other builds.
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Passive and active modes?
Shilds that acts as player - I mean had active abilities with cooldown?
Like you can activate mode for 3-6 turns then wait for recharge or something?
Interesting.
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I heard the voice of Tchort today... It said, "Christmas 2017".
But what does Styg say? ;)
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I heard the voice of Tchort today... It said, "Christmas 2017".
But what does Styg say? ;)
I'll remain quiet until the hour has come, this time. ;)
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Ah well, it was a good try.
A question I may actually get an answer for: is there going to be new unique weapons for the base game weapon classes?
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Ah well, it was a good try.
A question I may actually get an answer for: is there going to be new unique weapons for the base game weapon classes?
There are a few thematic ones, but we're mostly focusing on new weapon types.
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When is the new content being released? I feel like it's been forever and people are losing interest.
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When is the new content being released? I feel like it's been forever and people are losing interest.
It's likely to come out on public test branch at some point before release, but I cannot say exactly when. I don't like this long time between updates either so this is something we'll be avoiding in the future. It's just that we touched so many parts of the game with this update so far that it will require a good amount of testing before it's safe to release it in full.
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For making energy shields more interacting, they could be dropped as barriers that you can circumnavigate around to shoot, something that you drop on ground and use as cover/barrier against others. They could be squares or triangle or dome shaped or just a big line that slowly deteriorate when it is being shot until it is gone. Using it, could eat a chunk of your energy making another barrier pop, they would also be pass through by anything that walks over them.
The AI would need some tinkering around, but i'm sure it shouldn't be hard to tell them to hide behind the shields after shooting at the player or between picking the priority of shooting the energy shield down or go around for the player.
I'm really looking forward the expansion, always liked water themes and pirates, and we are heading exactly for that type of content. I can't believe we got jet skis but not full operational mechas from the protectorate :D, come onnnnnnnn....Also would love to have the idea of dropping mini turrets or small plasma walkers. Sometimes i feel completely overwhelmed by being swarmed, and wouldn't hurt to have something to take the fire for me.
On a side of bit offtopic, this game is one of the best rpg i played in decades(and i played hundreds of them)and i'm really amazed by the quality of love the devs have put on this. I felt the need to make an account to just say that, because it is so rare to see games nowadays that is a work of love over money first.
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On a side of bit offtopic, this game is one of the best rpg i played in decades(and i played hundreds of them)and i'm really amazed by the quality of love the devs have put on this. I felt the need to make an account to just say that, because it is so rare to see games nowadays that is a work of love over money first.
I would like to emphasize this.
As life goes on, one have less time for games, I have always liked RPGs and turn-based strategy. Now I am 38 years with wife, kids and serious job, but I find time for this gem, because it is damn good.
I really take my hat off for the developer(s).
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Thanks, guys, it's always good to hear from people who are as enthusiastic about the game as we are.
For making energy shields more interacting, they could be dropped as barriers that you can circumnavigate around to shoot, something that you drop on ground and use as cover/barrier against others. They could be squares or triangle or dome shaped or just a big line that slowly deteriorate when it is being shot until it is gone. Using it, could eat a chunk of your energy making another barrier pop, they would also be pass through by anything that walks over them.
The AI would need some tinkering around, but i'm sure it shouldn't be hard to tell them to hide behind the shields after shooting at the player or between picking the priority of shooting the energy shield down or go around for the player.
I'm not looking to do such a radical change, they will still remain attached to the player.
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On a side of bit offtopic, this game is one of the best rpg i played in decades(and i played hundreds of them)and i'm really amazed by the quality of love the devs have put on this. I felt the need to make an account to just say that, because it is so rare to see games nowadays that is a work of love over money first.
I would like to emphasize this.
As life goes on, one have less time for games, I have always liked RPGs and turn-based strategy. Now I am 38 years with wife, kids and serious job, but I find time for this gem, because it is damn good.
I really take my hat off for the developer(s).
Amen to that! You guys have really crafted an absolute masterpiece of a game. I just wish more people knew about Underrail; you guys don't get anywhere near the amount of credit and support you deserve, and that's a real shame. Hopefully the upcoming expansion will catch the world's attention, but if it doesn't, at least you guys already have a dedicated fanbase of zoners willing to support your endeavors, emotionally and financially, until the end of days (or the end of the Internet; whichever comes first ;) ).
Keep up the excellent work, StygSoft. :)
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Thanks, guys, it's always good to hear from people who are as enthusiastic about the game as we are.
For making energy shields more interacting, they could be dropped as barriers that you can circumnavigate around to shoot, something that you drop on ground and use as cover/barrier against others. They could be squares or triangle or dome shaped or just a big line that slowly deteriorate when it is being shot until it is gone. Using it, could eat a chunk of your energy making another barrier pop, they would also be pass through by anything that walks over them.
The AI would need some tinkering around, but i'm sure it shouldn't be hard to tell them to hide behind the shields after shooting at the player or between picking the priority of shooting the energy shield down or go around for the player.
I'm not looking to do such a radical change, they will still remain attached to the player.
Instead of dropping it you could make the shield directional. Let's say that the most basic ones can only protect from hits which come from the way you are facing but cannot protect from the sides or from behind. Later shields might give you more all around protection but at the expense of higher energy consumption and/or reduced absorption. You could even make it so that you can adjust the shield's coverage depending on the situation.
Illustration:
C= character looking to the right
X= protected
O= not protected
Basic, 100% absorb, normal energy usage:
OOX
OCX
OOX
Flank, 75% absorb, 25% higher energy usage:
OXX
OCX
OXX
Full coverage, 50% absorb, 50% higher energy usage:
XXX
XCX
XXX