Messages

16

General / Re: Sniper sidearm (why pistols are underrated)

« on: May 14, 2020, 07:23:11 pm »

As for our rifle, the approach is the exact opposite. We can ditch the Spearhead for a Rapid Smart Corsair 12.7mm with AA scope

Sorry, but that's a terrible idea, unless you are trying to handicap yourself to make the game A LOT harder. The ability to shoot twice with spearhead with base 50 AP and 3 or even 4 times with bonus AP is an overwhelming advantage compared to just once or twice with other sniper rifles. Especially on DOMINATING, which throws really big swarms of enemies at you. Smart A-A spearhead can easily 1-shot almost everything in the game, with the exception of only a few boss enemies on DOMINATING, so you will be essentialy cutting the amount of enemies killed each turn in half. And there will be a lot of them on DOMINATING. Really, a lot.

and boost the whole thing with Gun Nut (which benefits Corsairs the most).

Gun Nut is a pretty bad feat in general. The DPS increase is minimal and unreliable due to only increasing the upper damage range. It's an especially bad feat for sniper rifles, since they are not about sustained DPS, they are about reliable 1-shots. Increasing the upper damage range won't make them more reliable in any meaningful way since the lowest possible damage will stay the same.

With it's much higher move and shoot penalty, Strafe would no longer make a difference and can be switched for further damage overkill with Blindsiding.

But why would you want even more overkill? That's investing into wasted damage that doesn't benefit you at all. The only way it could benefit you is if you wanted to kill all DOMINATING bosses in 1 shot, but that's hardly worth giving up the ability to shoot twice which is much more important 99% of the time. Or if you wanted to see big numbers jst for the sake of it, I guess, but it won't make the actual game any easier.

Contaminated rounds seem so good, although I never used them yet.

They're rather bad, actually. 20-60 bonus damage is nothing for a weapon that reaches into thousands and only shoots once per turn. The cloud of toxic gas is also not much help, since you will 1-shoting everything anyways. Contaminated rounds would work much better with any gun OTHER than sniper rifles.

17

General / Re: Sniper sidearm (why pistols are underrated)

« on: May 14, 2020, 04:14:55 pm »

Why overinvest so much in Hacking, Lockpicking, and Persuasion?  Just for ease of play so you don't have to gear swap to hit the thresholds?

Persuasion is just for fun, I like having it and wasn't sure what the highest check in Expedition was at the time. Both hacking and lockpicking are high enough to open absolutely everything in the game and hack IRIS. I may have forgotten to include the huxkey/jackknife in the builder. The build is not starved for points at all, it's not that important. Those skills are anything but set in stone, it all depends on whether I find some really high quality components that would require more investment in a particular crafting skill, if I want open a particular thing at the time, etc.

I'll see if I'll end up missing Blindsiding as much or not.

Snipers really don't need it. Snipe doesn't need a 15% damage increase, the Aimed Shot you will use right after coming out of stealth doesn't need it either, both are overwhelmingly likely to overkill anyways or just not make a difference. It's almost a wasted feat.

I'm also interested in seeing how much difference Mercantile makes.

It's a nice thing to have, can potentially get you best quality components towards the end of the game. That and nice jet skis, some drugs, etc.

Also, what was your armor of choice?

Tac vest until you get an energy shield. Maybe siphoner/mutant dog leather just for Depot A. After you get an energy shield, either keep using a tac vest with a laminated panel and regen vest, or a sturdy riot gear with reinforced panel if you want better anti-melee protection, especially if you want to have a chance of not being killed by a death stalker in 1 turn. After you do the Beast and get high quality supersteel, upgrade to infused leather pig armor with high density padding. Crazy good mech DR, especially vs. melee, with crazy high HP bonus for sufficently light armor penalty.

18

General / Re: Sniper sidearm (why pistols are underrated)

« on: May 14, 2020, 03:04:44 pm »

Strafe is extremaly good for sniper rifles, I wouldn't make a sniper build without it. I'd pick it earlier if I was to play again, like in this non-psi version:

19

General / Re: Sniper sidearm (why pistols are underrated)

« on: May 14, 2020, 02:28:53 pm »

It's a waste to use it against random critters, it's not made to fire regular shots like a Falchion. But performs best when doing special attacks.

That's actually a bad thing in the context of being a sidearm for a sniper build. Hammerers, especially .44 ones, perform the best when using Aimed Shot to capitalize on the crit damage. Thing is, Aimed Shot is the bread and butter ability of sniper rifles already, so now you have two weapons competing for being used with it. It's better to save your Aimed Shots for the rifle and go with a secondary that doesn't need it that much. That said, later on, when you start stacking your crit chance, hammerers can still be a decent choice. I beat the game on DOMINATING with the build harperfan posted, by the way.

20

General / Re: Sniper sidearm (why pistols are underrated)

« on: May 14, 2020, 12:28:48 pm »

I've been saying that pistols are underrated as a sniper's sidearm since forever, but for somewhat different reasons.

The way I play my sniper builds, the sidearm is only ever used to provide utility and when the sniper rifle cannot be used effectively. The biggest and argueably only selling point of SMGs and shotguns over pistols is the pure DPS advantage, which I do not much care for, since it's the rifle that is supposed to be the actual damage dealer 99% of the time. Pistols on the other hand provide +7 initiative with Gunslinger, which is great for me because I like stacking high initiative on not-so-tanky builds in case the stealth approach failed or isn't possible (arena fights, fights started via dialog, etc.). Both SMGs and pistols can use Kneecap Shot, which is a great ability for snipers to have, but pistols have better range with less precision drop over distance and a Neo Luger frame which has an inherent 5% precision bonus. I only care about Kneecap Shot hitting to slow the enemy down, which pistols will do much more reliably than SMGs will thanks to that precision advantage, especially against high evasion enemies like, say, death stalkers. This is why you will see me recommending a laser sight Neo Luger in the picture above, to maximize that precision bonus. Even the DPS gap between SMGs/Shotguns is smaller than it may look, thanks to Sharpshooter benefiting the latter but not the former. Add rapid fire and you get adequate DPS from pistols, the increase from other options really doesn't make up for initiative loss and less reliable/no kneecap shot for me.

Shotguns are immediately disqualified from being a good sniper sidearm if you ask me, because they have a STR requirement, the same goes for ARs. The main point of a sidearm for a sniper is to have something that can be used when the sniper rifle can't. One of the most common situations where the sniper rifle cannot be used is getting hit with crippling strike, which reduces STR by 2 per stack. Having your STR 2 points below the weapon requirement will completly cripple your precision, usually all the way to the minimum 10% chance to hit. There's no shortage of enemies that use this ability, from various knife-wielding enemies through crabs to Carnifex. One stack you can somewhat deal with by using adrenaline to gain that 2 STR back for 3 turns, but that's only if you can end the fight in those 3 turns. If you can't, or you have 2 or more stacks, having 2 weapons that you pretty much cannot hit anything with is typically a death sentence. The fact that neither shotguns nor ARs can use Kneecap Shot doesn't help, either.

21

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #65: Codename Infusion

« on: March 19, 2020, 08:29:59 pm »

went with low expectations (because of an RPS review I had read)

At least now you know better than to trust RPS reviews.

22

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #65: Codename Infusion

« on: March 11, 2020, 09:04:47 pm »

Looking good.

23

Suggestions / Re: New Feat: Gunsmith

« on: September 08, 2019, 07:51:01 pm »

Without any kind of penalty it would so ridiculously overpowered that it would be a must-have feat for all gun builds

Not really. There's been some talk in the past to change Gun Nut to give an additional mod slot instead of the underwhelming damage increase. A good change, if you ask me. It would be mostly on par with other weapon-specific crafting feats, just more versatile. Keep in mind the best mods sometimes conflict with each other (like muzzle brake and compensator or various scopes), so your options would still be limited.

It would probably be the most benefical for ARs. I don't know how meta changed since the smart bonus nerf, but I assume it's muzzle brake and either rapid reloader depending on the frame and caliber, A-A/digital scope or smart module for the few special attacks ARs can have. If we assume someone goes with the brake/rapid reloader, that gives him a choice of additional 35% crit damage, 7% crit chance or +/- 50% more damage on Rapid Fire, Point Shot and such. I could see the crit damage/chance being attractive for crit builds, but it's on par with Bowyer and Weaponsmith. On SMGs it would most likely boil down to 10% precision form laser sight/forward grip instead of scopes. Same for pistols. Decent bonus, but not necessarily worth a feat and possibly investing more points in INT. It would actually be hardly worth the effort for sniper rifles (at least smart, rapid A-A spearheads) since your only options would be an extended magazine and barrel retractor. Extended magazine would give you whole 3 more rounds while barrel retractor is mostly irrelevant now thanks to Strafe.

24

Bugs / Expedition endings

« on: August 04, 2019, 08:34:59 pm »

1.  "After its acquistion" - the expedition never acquired the Acorn. My PC did, yes, but as far as they are concerned, it wasn't found.


2. I never gave any medical supplies to muties, but I did fix their lights.

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Bugs / Re: Report spelling/grammar errors

« on: August 04, 2019, 08:31:57 pm »

It is rumored*

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Bugs / Re: Report spelling/grammar errors

« on: August 04, 2019, 08:31:21 pm »

Mislead is actually the correct spelling Harperfan7

It is not, as the past participle (which should have been used in that context) of "mislead" is "misled".

27

Bugs / Ezra and Acorn

« on: August 04, 2019, 07:12:49 pm »

When talking to Ezra about the Acorn, choosing the "Let's talk about something else" option sends me to the dialog about Beast and bladelings. Specifically, the "what about plasma weapons", "how come you know so much", "you mentioned something about adapatations" and "I'll get going".

28

Bugs / Re: Six and the torch

« on: August 01, 2019, 06:29:28 pm »

I did speak with Azif about it, yes. Which is still a bug of course, as I'm not talking about it with Six "again" and I do miss out on his explanation.

29

Bugs / Six and the torch

« on: August 01, 2019, 05:56:41 pm »

When talking to Six for the first time in Deep Caverns, there's a "let's talk about the torch again" option, despite the fact that we never talked about it yet. I'm pretty sure I actually missed out on him explaining what it is.

30

Suggestions / Re: Respec option for DLC

« on: July 30, 2019, 11:04:30 am »

New players are bound to make mistakes in Underrail, and instead of showing them a big middle finger, give them an option to save their IRL time and adjust their build on the fly

Making mistakes and dealing with them is a core part of any good RPG. Choices and consequences apply to character building, too.

no starting from scratch bullshit.

Starting from scratch should not be necessary unless you intentionally gimped your build. It's your own personal choice. I never did that, ever.

"The player will abuse the game" who cares? Those who want to play "fair and square" and those who want to cheat, it's their moral choice, give them an option to do both.

Sure, it's your right to cheat to your heart's content. It's also the developer's right to not make cheating any easier. If respec was implemented, it wouldn't be cheating anymore. It would be using a legitimate tool the game offers.

I'm yet to hear anyone to complain about respec options in any video game and Underrail isn't an exception, it will only benefit from it.

You haven't heard that many people then. Anyways, neither of us has any say in the matter, really. Styg made it known that he's against respec a long time ago.