Messages

1

General / "Tchort" ...Random Opinion/Analysis...

« on: September 30, 2016, 04:33:24 am »

Ok so I this contains no spoilers as I have not yet got inside the institute, only attended the lecture in core city...

But it seems to me that the writer/designer was trying to make a point about academic science and secular educational institutes. Specifically, that if you open your perceptions a little, it really does appear that science = its own religion; and one that worships humanity, biological life and the knowledge that these reveal.

I am a Scientist and have come to this conclusion many times myself (that my own field can be quite cultish, in its own strange way).
I particularly liked the analogy, of having street missionaries and free lectures, but then having to "line up" to get inside and become admitted. That's Science/Academia all right 

Anyway.... just my thoughts.   

2

General / Re: How do you guys beat the Warehouse?

« on: September 30, 2016, 04:03:44 am »

After all this commotion about the difficulty of the mission, I was terrified when I finally got to it (earlier this morning). Was a piece of cake though!!

All I had to do was put crawler poison caltrops everywhere and a few bear traps right near the funnel points. Then enter stealth and basically wait. Pop out when everyone on the screen was looking stunned/incapacitated for some crossbow action. Then back around the corner, rinse, repeat.

I think this mission is interesting. Forces players to diversify their combat strategies/character builds somewhat.

3

General / Re: Do you have any hints to defeat the last opponent in the arena?

« on: August 17, 2016, 03:59:42 am »

I'm fairly sure movement speed stacks too... at least it seemed that way when I was testing it earlier in the game.
By that I mean "real world" out of combat movement speed. Not sure about tiles/action point or anything like that.

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General / Re: Do you have any hints to defeat the last opponent in the arena?

« on: August 14, 2016, 02:06:41 pm »

Also the movement speed increase doesn't stack with tabbis, making that armor completely pointless except maybe for a max STR melee evasion build.

Just confirmed now... it certainly DOES stack!!

Naked: 39 movement points
Just 'Tabi': 61 movement points
Just 'Rathound Regalia': 49 points

Rathound + Tabi: 71 points!!!

71 points gets me so much travel, great for LOS abuse and all the rest. I also use this armor for the +25 stealth, which is a big help... immunity to fear has saved me more than once, and the fact that rathounds don't attack me has really helped with exploring and made things much easier in early/mid game. Best of all, the +10% movement speed stacks with the tabi boots, which stacks with the interloper feat and means I can practically run while stealth, makes a huge difference!!

I intend to upgrade to padded infused cave hopper leather armour at some point, and hoping the bonuses scale with quality. Would love to have more than +10% speed  +10 movement points but we will just have to see 

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General / Re: Do you have any hints to defeat the last opponent in the arena?

« on: August 13, 2016, 11:12:11 am »

I just defeated him, at level 14...

stealth/traps/crossbow character with low strength and con, rathound king armor...

Actually I beat him twice, once winning the initiative roll and one loosing it. Did take me about 10 reloads in a row each time though

How? Lots of serrated bolts + "vile weaponry" feat, essentially.

Stunned him, then hit him with tonnes of serrated bolts. Walked him into a bear trap, then with "deadly snares" just did round after round with more serrated bolts, which all crit, got +30% damage from the infected wounds, +25% damage from opportunist and +19% damage from smart goggles.

He kept healing, but at -75% effectiveness, and was suffering from about 5 or 6 bleeding wounds, each doing 7- 25 damage... By the time he got out of the bear trap I had quick tinkered one more in between us and that finished him off (good thing, caus I was netted lol).

Time when I lost the initiative roll was much harder. Had to survive the first onslaught, then set him on fire, heal while he was running off, and lead him into a trap when he came running back, then pretty much repeated the above tactic.

Hope that helps!

6

General / Re: Observation: vile weapons is a actually *really* good

« on: August 10, 2016, 04:54:38 am »

Interesting... I suppose this does change things somewhat?

For now, serrated bolts are certainly my best friend. I will let you know if that comes back to bite me at any point 

7

General / Re: Weird RNG

« on: August 08, 2016, 03:08:42 am »

I'm curiously about this too...

Particularly when it comes to crossbows, something feels *really* off about the stated percentage and actual hit chances...

Mind you I have played numerous isometric games with RNG implementation and never really felt this before, even my previous psi build on underrail felt pretty good, in that the probability felt quite fair.

just this crossbow build... making me feel like I'm going insane. Night vision seems to fix this, but I seriously wonder if their isn't a bug somewhere in how the % is being calculated?

Just going on my gut instincts....

So far without night vision on, most 95% shots have felt a lot more like 70% shots, while most 70% shots have felt like 50% shots. And yes, the brain can detect this and yet it can also factor in confirmation bias and *still* notice this 

I'm wondering if dodge and evasion aren't being double counted or something... Only seems to happen on human targets.

8

General / Re: Observation: vile weapons is a actually *really* good

« on: August 08, 2016, 02:10:30 am »

Aaaaah, see I actually thought about this:

Bleeding wounds deal the exact amount of damage over the following 3 turns.... Even if that strike was a critical, and subject to other damage buffs. You mention "deadly snares" and "critical power", but infected wounds caused by vile weaponry synergises really effectively into these two.

Take a standard bolt, again say dealing 20 damage against an incapacitated target...


Standard: Damage = 20

Fully maxed critical = (1.25 x 4.62 x 20) = 115
...this assumes 'opportunist' and 'sharpshooter' on a modified Zephyr. However any LOS abuse will cause character to loose focus, and damage will drop to 97.

Now, applying the same single shot to an incapacitated target, by initiating combat by applying two bleeding wounds with serrated bolts, then allowing the bear trap (beer trap ) to create the third...


Fully maxed critical = (1.3 x 1.25 x 4.62 x 20) = 149 + 149 over 3 turns
Or if focus is not achieved, 125 + 125 over 3 turns


So not only is the damage much higher on the initial hit, it deals effectively double the damage with patience. Note that it does not matter how 'hard' the target is, and how much they resist the initial 2 serrated bolts, so long as *some* damage is achieved. They are simply preparatory. All the damage gets done after they walk into the trap.

This has become my favoured strategy... Surprising tough enemies with a few serrated bolts, running off to lure them into a trap, then popping out and finishing them off when I hear the trap activate.

I have tried similar tactics using poison traps, hyper toxicity and preparing the enemy with cave ear poison bolts (these two synergising to deliver 3x bio damage) and sadly still not as good as bleeding wounds!!

Just food for thought.

9

General / Re: Ideas for how to improve the game

« on: August 04, 2016, 01:20:12 pm »

Custom order ability....

Sick of doing endless vendor refreshes just to get that one bolt of cloth that is *exactly* of a certain quality (but not so high that it exceeds crafting skill cap)?

Would be nice to be able to tell a vendor that you want something... and so on next refresh they restock with a higher chance of having at least a few of that item.
Could even attach a small fee to it, something small like 5 coins or whatnot. Order carries over until next visit, with  "we got that item you requested" message or something.

10

General / Observation: vile weapons is a actually *really* good

« on: August 02, 2016, 05:31:00 am »

Hello everyone...

Let me first start by stating that this game, Underrail, is probably the best game I have played in the last 5 years. All the best aspects and themes of Fallout 2 updated for contemporary UI standards without loosing that retro isometric feel. Very happy!!

I'm playing a crossbow/traps/stealth character and currently hovering around level 10, doing quests in camp Hathor. On a random save game at level up I tried experimenting with various different feats, just for fun, and found myself extremely surprised: Vile Weaponry was by far the best, beating Ambush, Sharpshooter and even Hypertoxicity for sheer combat value. I had originally started playing on this experimental save to work out which of those three I would pick.

My rationale:

Where most debuffs in this game work in an additive way, vile weaponry actually has a distinctly non-linear aspect to it, in the sense that the gradually improving damage bonus pays two dividends. Since the % damage increase comes from "all sources" and since bleeding wounds are calculated based on actual damage done from first strike, this feat actually stacks on top of itself, initially giving a bonus to the causative bleeding wound and then a second time to the actually bleeding.

By my calculations, assuming one was to consistently use serrated bolts at a target... Work out very nicely: Let's assume a 15 damage constant for a serrated bolt...

(Without feat)

Damage = 15 + (3 x 5) = 30

And so on for as many arrows as you shoot...

Now, with the feat...


Arrow 1: Damage = 15 + (3 x 5 x 1.1) = 31.5 ..... assuming no further shots

Arrow 2: Damage = 16.5 + (3 x 5.5 x 1.2) = 36.3

Arrow 3: Damage = 18 + (3 x 6 x 1.3) = 41.4

Arrow 4: Damage = 19.5 + (3 x 6.5 x 1.3) 44.85

...

So even in that sense there is almost a 50% damage increase after the third arrow, once you factor in how bleeding wounds start to syngergise with themselves.

When taking into account an initial bleeding wound presumably caused by a carefully placed beer trap, and the "special tactics" feat which would allow you to lay down 3 serrated arrows within a single turn, you can actually jump right up to this +50% damage increase within the first round of combat, doing enormous damage because now there are 4 cumulative bleeding wounds and one stack of ongoing mechanical damage, all getting +30% too.

It looks small but it stacks up quite significantly, and again, much to my surprise: getting through the burrower section was made easiest not by choosing sharpshooter or ambush or even snipe, but by picking this feat. I had to sit down with a calculator and work this all out simply because I did not believe it myself, and wanted to get to the bottom of why this average looking feat was making life so simple in a practical play through.

And of course, there is also the fact that healing will also be reduced by 75% after the kind of ambush I described, getting to 3 stacks of infected wounds with 4 bleeding wounds within the first round. Which in many ways is just icing on the cake!!

Thoughts and feelings?

11

Bugs / Re: combat hangup after killing enemy

« on: July 20, 2016, 02:01:29 pm »

Ok sorry to be a pain - nothing at all to do with fear

The last one to die crashes it. I've killed them all in different orders using different combinations of magic and unarmed combat at that seems to be the only common factor.

At this point... its game breaking. I don't know what to do 

12

Bugs / Re: combat hangup after killing enemy

« on: July 20, 2016, 01:50:56 pm »

Ok.... forget that...

I've played it out other ways. It seems no matter who I kill or in what order, even ending combat and restarting it... if the person who I kill has at some point been under the "fear" spell it crashes the game when they finally die.

Makes no difference if they have recovered or not... killing them crashes the game.

Tried it several times now in different combinations

13

Bugs / Re: combat hangup after killing enemy

« on: July 20, 2016, 01:36:13 pm »

So far I have replicated the bug about 5 times in a row... always following the same sequence.

Worst part is... I am not even intending to replicate it!!! I am just fighting a really hard battle and it keeps playing out the exact same way D:

Omega basement... 3 thugs in the bar with the 3 civilians...

Every time I kill the one with the SMG (not the leader, the one standing in the top right) using ice bolt to end the battle it crashes.
When I kill him other ways or in another order it seems fine.