Messages

181

Suggestions / Re: Transparent Cave walls

« on: May 29, 2015, 07:09:12 pm »

That button reveals enemies just alike but I agree it should work automatically. They can't hide behind a wall, however it doesn't work for doors and it's extremly annoying.
For some reason when it comes to targeting the game prefers doors instead of characters making it impossible to click on enemies which are completely obscured behind an opened door. In some cases you are lucky to be left with a few free pixels making the enemy clickable for a fraction of a second because of the character animation.

Targeting is generally horrible in Underrail because it's completely sprite instead of tile-based, meaning if you're just one pixel off the target you set the command to walk there instead of using the object or attacking. Opening a fence door is just a mild nuissance but losing all your MP+AP because you wanted to shoot but your character walks is a problem indeed, especially for someone like me who plays permadeath. Such little mistake is almost as bad as being stunned and can mean the end.

182

Suggestions / Re: Crossbows should be changed to be a good Main Weapon

« on: May 29, 2015, 06:52:43 pm »

I'm not sure if I can follow you here. The reason they have their own skill is so people don't use them as secondaries which would probably be the case if they were paired with other ranged weapons. From logical perspective it also makes sense to have them their own skill. Just because crossbows can be aimed as firearms it doesn't involve the same handling. A crossbow is simply a horizontally aligned bow with a trigger mechanism that holds the draw for the shooter. Projectiles fired from bow or xbow both have the same speed, energy and trajectory which declines faster than with firearms and therefore can't be shot as flatly.
The change I would make is have them penetrate thick vests by ignoring damage threshold. Despite being slow projectiles they are very sharp and don't deform like bullets on impact. Sledgehammers do the same now but for different logical reasons, they don't penetrate a vest but their weight transfers all the energy through. To compesate for this advantage I'd make crossbows generally a bit weaker.

They're still good right now. When it comes to balance compared to other weapons, think about it this way. What are usually the most annoying/dangerous enemies in the game? To me it's the crossbow and sledgehammer guys. Both hit hard, penetrate shields and can cause stun. If the AI can make a good use of them, you as a player are even more capable to do so.
There is no single weapon class in Underrail that I can say is absolutely inferior. Sure, balance wise the weapons are not 100% equal but this is not a MMO type of a game. The strength differences are never big.
This is also true for crossbows but they require a more effort and strategic approach then other weapons - crafting special arrows, traps and sneaking is a must. Quick tinkering and deadly snares is so good it's crazy.

183

Suggestions / Re: A Super Steel Addict's minor quibble.

« on: May 29, 2015, 05:06:29 pm »

I'd love to be able to use beds or portable sleeping rolls to advance time. Would be particularly useful in the Foundry but on the other side this would make merchant limits pointless as many players would simply camp the merchant shops until they sold all their junk.

184

Suggestions / Re: Transparent Cave walls

« on: May 29, 2015, 04:58:22 pm »

Are you talking about the "HIGHLIGHT" function which automatically forces transparency and reveals all objects/containers/charcters? I'm sure it works in all assets, including the caves. I use that button so often that I even have it remapped to the mouse.

185

General / Re: Playing an assault rifle combatant

« on: May 21, 2015, 07:09:47 pm »

I hope not. 
Last I remember Styg actually wanted to nerf heavy armor users who are pretty much invincible these days. I always make  sure to hoard Junkyard Suprise as much as I can. It can take alot of binge eating to actually get +2 int. I don't even try if I don't have 50+ hamstered in my shelf.

Btw. concerning the weapon skill and chance to hit. I did no tests myself but I guess you could simply use +1 perception goggles to check if the chance improves when you aim at any static character from far. You don't need to shoot, just check the numbers with burst. etc. If one has the nerves this test could be done at every level on the same character/gun and aiming from the very same tile and note the numbers. I'm pretty sure that once the NPCs are generated their skills stays the same on that playthrough.

Epeli wrote in the wiki but I don't know how he meant this exactly: "Precision is affected by many different modifiers, especially in ranged combat. Some precision penalties cannot be mitigated with weapon skill alone."

186

General / Re: Playing an assault rifle combatant

« on: May 21, 2015, 06:34:28 pm »

You get 8,5% skill bonus for every int point above 4, so with 5 you'd have a maximum of 147 points at level 25. If you can't meet the crafting skill requirements simply use slightly lower quality on additional plates, the loss won't be big. What matters is the quality of the vest and the basic plate you use for the first crafting slot. If armor penalty doesn't matter you can reach 95% mechanical resistance cap easily even without top quality plates with armor, boots and Conditioning alone. High crafting skill matter a lot more for light armored builds.

187

General / Re: Lunatic Gunners - not human?

« on: May 21, 2015, 06:17:41 pm »

Did you check right afterwards if you were able to hit the enemy by normal means with a melee weapon?

There is one issue with melee fighting in general: The melee range is very limited, it's less then 1 tile actually but no two characters can stand on a same tile. This has the consequence that a NPC (or the player) can stands between two or more tiles when the turn based mode was initiated while he was moving or when he didn't have enough MP to complete his movement to the desired tile. If there are enough "free" tiles around him your character will move to the tile he can attack from and strike, but if there is only one tile next to the enemy and he's blocking it partially you won't be able to hit him with melee, or in your case with Cut-Throat which is melee range.

Edit: This can be tested easily with any melee enemy and a door, for example rathounds in the underground outposts with the fence doors. Spend all your MP with only 1 or 2 left and move to the last tile between you and the enemy. He won't be able to hit you because you're "barely" standing on a tile he would have to walk on but he can't because it counts as occupied. Like I said, the same applies to the enemy placing so I bet this happened to you. In my last melee game I had this situation only maybe 3 or 4 times but it does happen. The solution would be to increase the melee range just below 1 tile so you can't hit enemies across 1 whole tile but can hit those that partially stand on it.

Edit 2: lol Niven I didn't even notice that you resurrected a 1 1/2 years old thread. Why would you do that in an unfinished fast changing game? Still, the issue I described is yet present.

188

General / Re: Why you did this location?

« on: May 19, 2015, 12:50:59 pm »

I'm not sure if I agree with that to be honest. making a player waste his time and his resources on something that cannot be done seems a lot worse to me than just making the area unreachable.

It's the players own fault if he doesn't use common sense here. After a few faceless waves any sane Underrail dweller would take one step back (in this case quite literally) and get the hell out of there. I'd certainly have nothing against it if the game would punish "I'm the hero" mentality more harshly. Take the game The Age of Decandece for example, playing an all slaying hero usually gets you killed, in some cases the game doesn't even give you the opportunity to raise your weapon but kills you trough one, two text-lines.

189

General / Re: Why you did this location?

« on: May 18, 2015, 11:00:30 pm »

Scenes like this make me wish that enemies could switch areas just like the player.

190

General / Re: Playing an assault rifle combatant

« on: May 14, 2015, 05:40:41 pm »

Yes, first slot for high precission and low AP cost: 7.62 Hornet with a scope and rapid reloader. If I have a bad/mediocre chance to hit then I use single shots. If I can burst realiably then it's the second slot Chimera with a smart module, high resolution digital scope (+10% critical chance) until I get the Critical Power feat, then it's an anatomically-aware scope (+50% critical damage bonus).

When there are many melee guys I might put a SMG in the first slot. Having 8 str is not much actually and NPCs love the Crippling Strike which has 1 round cooldown and can stack up to 3 times. 1 cripple stack does a -2 str debuff which gives you 13 AP penalty becase you can't meet the str requrement for the metal armor anymore. 2 stacks and you get AP AND precission penalty because ARs need min 6 str for propper use. As we discussed before, debuffs can't lower your AP below 35 but the aiming penalty seems severe enough even with high weapon skill and point blank range.

2+ stacks will give you a -15 AP penalty because of the armor alone. SMGs have no str requirement so you at least won't get any aim penalty when crippled. A 7.62 mm steelcat SMG with a rapid reloader can burst once despite the 2x crippled debuff, a 8.6 mm can't unless it's only 1 stack.

191

General / Re: Playing an assault rifle combatant

« on: May 14, 2015, 02:02:42 am »

I suppose you could do with 10 points of Perception just fine.

It's not only about damage. If you're using a build focused on mostly single shots or special attacks with no/little aim penalty, then yes - 10 perception will do. If you plan doing a lot of burst attacks and actually hit your target, then you'll want every bit of weapon skill you can possibly grab at any given level. Each stat point above 4 gives you 8,5% bonus to the corresponding skill. Endgame at level 25 when you max your weapon skill (135) you'll have 272 effective points. With 10 perception you'll have only 203 which is about 25% less. At lower levels that difference is smaller and matters less ofcourse, but that's true for every combat stat.

As the game progresses enemies generally brach out in two ways: Those with heavy armor and others with high dodge/evade skill. Chance to hit is calculated with your attack skill vs their defense skill (in case of ranged weapons - evade), but it doesn't stop here. The distance between you and the target gives you a penalty to hit for each tile and on top of that using burst fire significally lowers your chances as well. This is the main reason why I recommend Premeditation paired with Electrokinesis. Free stun in the first round can make a difference between hitting and missing most of the 7-9 burst shots. Stunned enemies have their whatever evade skill reduced to 0 - one major factor canceled out. You kill the enemy with the help of opportunist damage bonus, yay -> free commando burst. Another Electrokinesis for 30 AP --> stun, kill with the free burst, freeze another enemy for 10 AP, reload your gun.

Next round if there are more enemies around they usually try to get closer to hit. There is no need to waste AP for movement (unless one has to deal with psionics). Not only there are no MP but there is also to hit penalty in the same round if the character moves. As a heavy armor combatant you have no evade skill and want to be as far as possible from the enemy, just more the reason to bump up perception as high as possible.
Ofcourse one could take a whole different approach and make a mobile, sneaking, light armored character with both dodge/evade who relies less on perception but that's a completely different build which is better suited for SMGs.

It's actually possible to have an effective mediocre perception ranged character. My favorite pistol build right now uses 7 perception but can only get away with that because of good CC (Electroshock pistol + Electrokinesis/Cryostasis/Tranqility/Premeditation and high mobility.

192

General / Re: Custom Portraits

« on: May 12, 2015, 02:42:32 pm »

As far as I know you can only change the portrait of a character that already uses a custom portrait by putting a different png file with the same name previously used. For default portraits I guess we need a savegame editor. I tried opening savegames with a hex editor but I couldn't make sense out of any of the strings as the data is compiled.

193

General / Re: Permadeath

« on: May 11, 2015, 04:31:04 am »

My philosophy is: If you can't lose, you can't win either. If I wouldn't play this way I wouldn't play at all, but probably sit around a campfire and sing Kumbaya instead. 
Just like in the real world - Life is meaningless without death.

That being said I totally understand that most people don't like to lose their progress each and every time they die, and I certainly don't mind that a big deal of games are actually designed with savescumming in mind. To each his own. It's for the player to decide how to play a game.

194

General / Re: Playing an assault rifle combatant

« on: May 11, 2015, 03:41:29 am »

How is the armor and ar penalty calculated?

I did some testing with a 8 str character and used Junkyard Surprise as a way to apply the strength debuf. I made sure that the character was not encumbered (which adds AP penalty on it's own).

8 str + tsten armor (9 str min) = 44 AP
7 str + steel  armor (8 str min) = 43 AP
7 str + tsten armor (9 str min) = 38 AP
6 str + steel  armor (8 str min) = 37 AP
6 str + tsten armor (9 str min) = 35 AP

So we can conclude that the AP penalty equals the same decrease of str exactly, in percent ofcourse. (all values are rounded down):
9 str - 12% = 8 str. ---> 50 AP - 12% = 44 AP
8 str - 13% = 7 str. ---> 50 AP - 13% = 43 AP
9 str - 22% = 7 str. ---> 50 AP - 22% = 38 AP (its actually 22,2222... that's why the penalty is 12 and not 11)
8 str - 25% = 6 str. ---> 50 AP - 25% = 37 AP
9 str - 33% = 6 str. -->  50 AP - 33% = 33 AP (debuff cap reached so it stays at 35)

No matter how low your str is compared to the armor you always retain a minumum of 35 AP, not even when heavily encumbered. It's till a hefty penalty for a single Crippling Strike, very effective against characters with no additional strength buffer, especially when combined with Wrestling. Yes, NPCs use the same dirty little feats like the player does. Armored AR gunners should never underestimate melee opponents and always carry a few adrenaline shots as a "cure".

Oh, I almost forgot: One awesome thing about Junkyard Surprise and crafting. It gives +1/2 and -1/2 to random base abilities, so by eating it you have  about 7% chance to increase your intelligence by 2. If it gives you wrong stats just eat another one. It's temporarly ofcourse but thats all we need as a crafting buff. This way a 3 int character who previously had -10% in crafting skills now has +8,5%. Pretty neat for a bit of a food abuse. Just don't throw it up. 

195

General / Re: Stats and Skills calculator

« on: May 10, 2015, 02:37:19 pm »

Epeli are the exact formulas known in the way how component quality affects weapon damage, armor resistances etc? I planed to make an item crafting chart in Excel (I suck at Java) in a similar way like I did for the game "Dead State".
Look here: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,6338.0.html Unlike in Underrail the weapon values are fixed though so it would get way more complicated.
I attached the .xlsx file here in the case it won't display for unregistered users.

Btw. I recommend that game strongly for anyone enjoying Underrail. The game developer is a small team and just like here they interact alot with the community for feedback.