Messages

1

General / Re: Protectorate vs Free Drones from RP perspective? (Spoilers)

« on: July 13, 2020, 12:19:51 am »

I think it's a fair assessment to make that the CAU are dangerous psychopaths, but they're dangerous psychopaths that serve a specific purpose to the leadership of the Protectorate. Shock troopers, terror troopers, whatever term you might like in regards to them. They exist in the same way that WMDs might, but also in the same vein as something far more expendable, and far more easily laden with blame.

From the general backgrounds you have of them, none of them are mentally stable individuals. One of them is even a murderer, and it can be healthily assumed from the rather lawful structure of the Protectorate that their assignment to the CAU was intended as a punishment that would benefit the state and ensure that their life wouldn't go to waste. In this general vernacular, you could even argue that Captain Mareth is little more than a tard wrangler whose gotten too involved with his subjects.

2

Suggestions / Re: Mutagen puzzle -allow placing all mutagens for scan

« on: July 13, 2020, 12:15:56 am »

I've never done the mutagen puzzle because I'm absolutely horrible at puzzles, but I don't honestly know why this shouldn't be implemented. Maybe there's a technical limitation, perhaps? Something we don't know about that makes it harder to implement than we might know?

3

Suggestions / Re: Alternatives to Lockpicking/Hacking

« on: July 09, 2020, 08:39:27 pm »

I have also thought about this, and it's an easy rabbit hole to fall into. I'm all for more variety, but you have to cut it off somewhere. You also have to be careful to not trivialize existing skills in the process.

Without going down an endless rabbit hole, there are two new methods I would be in favor of. One, as you mention, could be a strength check. This could scale with the required lockpick / hack to open.

Another one might be sacrificing a grenade to try and blow the container open as sort of a last ditch effort. Though something like this is prone to abuse by save-scumming.

Someone, and I apologize for not remembering, in the discord suggested the query of what if there were explosives in the container? I argued, why not, part of the benefit of having something like lockpicking or hacking can be that you don't have that kind of a risk. A major benefit of taking them as skills is that they're not only stealthy, but far, far safer than their alternative options. An explosive entry could detonate something and blow up in your face, an electric one could fry you alive like a downed power cable, chemical could destroy the container and leave it as a giant sputtering puddle of acid.

There's a lot of ways you could theoretically balance the alternatives to make them not so clear-cut appealing. They exist in my hypothetical mind more as ways to diversify builds and allow more interesting interactions with the world than they do to remove the power or validity of lockpicking/hacking.

4

Suggestions / Re: Out-of-game warning about the point of no return

« on: July 09, 2020, 08:34:07 pm »

Callous as it is to say, the Deep Caverns are consistently built up in the game as being a place where the most dangerous wildlife and factions go to have their big fights. It's the home of the Faceless and even the Tchortists themselves tell you that, only the very best of the Rassophores are sent down there to guard Tchort, and it's influence is the only thing that even allows them to hold onto their territory. Every time dialogue comes up about the DC, it's laden with synonyms for deadly, lethal, and for turning your life span into the measure of minutes.

Therefore, by the time you get to the DC, you should be in the habit of making many, many hard saves. Especially in regards to this near game-length slew of warnings you've been given. The sheer scale of events surrounding the Institute of Tchort should be a good enough sign that some major shit is going to go down, and you should be very well prepared before you make further moves.

5

Suggestions / Re: Alternatives to Lockpicking/Hacking

« on: July 05, 2020, 03:23:48 pm »

Honestly, this just sounds like complexity for complexity's sake.  Not a big fan.  No builds are so starved for skill points that they can't get some Lockpicking and Hacking.  Even if you are a 3 Dex, 3 Int build, 50 points in each plus buffs will get you 80-90% of all unlocks in the game, and every build has 100 points to spare.  As it is, anything locked that blocks quest progression can be circumvented in a variety of ways - keys, alternate routes, that sort of thing.  There's nothing anywhere in the game that you have to have, which can only be accessed by hacking or picking something. 

If you make it so X can stand in for Y, then there's no longer a need to have Y.  Without Lockpicking-only interactions, there's no point in having Lockpicking.

I can't dismiss that it's another layer of complexity that could easily become somewhat tedious, but the point in where it comes in is less about builds being starved for points and more that Lockpicking and Hacking are the only methods of opening large numbers of containers and shortcuts. They're excessively good skills, to the point that I believe that without alternative options to do the same thing or something similar, they sit in a niche of being de facto mandatory in the face of how singularly useful they are in comparison to the vast majority of other skills. Nothing else does what they do, and even with this suggestion you could argue nothing will do what they do quite as well.

6

Suggestions / Alternatives to Lockpicking/Hacking

« on: July 05, 2020, 03:34:08 am »

I recently finished a playthrough of the game and pondered something that I felt might be worth consideration for future updates. Namely, the idea of alternative options for opening containers and doorways becoming available to the player character through items that can be found or created within the game world under the idea of allowing for greater utility for non-stealth invested characters, or for a greater diversity in builds to not have to take these two skills which provide the only means of opening containers or locked doors.

One of the primary manifestations of this idea was having a sort of power saw, or welder, that can be used to "cut" the locks off of doors or lockpicking containers. A heavy, intensively energy-consuming tool that is very loud and can only open things up to a certain level. Perhaps even having a strength, electronics, or mechanics check involved so as to make it even less of an appealing of an option in regards to lockpicking. Something similar for hacking as well, a pre-made script loaded haxxor the size of a PC tower or even just a heavy soddering iron that scans the container and tells you where to cut, with it's own form of electronic or attribute skill check.  Alternative ideas I had but were more fleeting than these two would be something like using biology or chemistry to create specific acid-base combinations to open containers through a more scientific brute-force option, but on those I am not sure how you might make a skill requirement outside the initial crafting or application to prevent it from destroying an item or items within the container.