Messages

166

General / Re: Preparing for Deep Caverns

« on: February 07, 2016, 08:46:40 am »

Was never a problem for me, but I was playing a sneak heavy character. There are so many batteries to burn through in DC that you hardly have to worry about saving your shields though.

Galvanic armour helps against psionics? Are you sure? Far as I was aware it only helps versus electrokinetic attacks, as shields do - nothing mitigates damage from neural overload or bilocation AFAIK.

167

General / Re: Preparing for Deep Caverns

« on: February 07, 2016, 08:25:22 am »

Don't know why you'd need galvanic or thermic armour if you have a halfway decent shield emitter, turning it on completely nullified any damage from industrial bot flamethrowers/coil spider electrokinesis for me. And my shield wasn't crafted, just bought. My character had no crafting skills.

The only armour I found a use for other than CAU was the biohazard suit, whilst plinking away at the root in the mushroom forest.

168

Suggestions / Re: Let's have a chat about the Deep Caverns. (wall of text, and OBVIOUS SPOILERS)

« on: February 06, 2016, 09:37:23 pm »

I actually ended up kind of liking some parts of DC taken independently; I think the changes made to it in the past few hotfixes made a big difference. Even having to deal with Eye of Tchort wasn't too bad, I never had to fight more than a single Scanner or Devourer because of it.

I'm not a huge fan of the Tchort gate fetch quest, and I really think the final boss fight could benefit from some kind of alternate solution to a straight-up slugfest - even giving the player the option to fight Tchort with a few Faceless allies would help mitigate the "oops, my character that had no issues all the way up to this point has suddenly reached an impasse" problem.

169

General / Re: Modding Support - When?

« on: February 06, 2016, 11:40:55 am »

I've used MichaelBurge's unpacker to take a look at a few of the loose game files out of curiosity and they're hard to make sense of. Do NPCs even have levels?

Edit: nevermind, I got it. Incidentally, Carnifex is level 20 and has 16 strength and constitution, 12 dexterity and agility, 10 perception and intelligence, and 14 will.

In fact almost all of the NPCs in this game have crazy high stats, geez!

170

Bugs / Re: Player environmental damage not yielding experience

« on: February 05, 2016, 07:47:58 am »

As far as I can tell they yield experience if they die from a DOT effect you apply to them (i.e. if your molotov sets them on fire and the damage tick kills them), but not if they die from damage inflicted by simply walking over fire. Presumably applies to acid etc too.

171

General / Moddability?

« on: February 05, 2016, 07:40:48 am »

Recently finished playing through the game and now I'm pretty interested in modding it. However at a glance it doesn't look at all moddable at the moment, everything appears to be binary and the graphics are all packed in XNB.  Just curious whether there are any plans to change this? I remember reading something a while back indicating that mod support may happen after release.

172

Suggestions / Goggles

« on: February 04, 2016, 04:35:29 pm »

Couple quick usability/interface suggestions for goggles:

- add unique graphics for each goggle variant with an intensifier tube attached (three purple lenses for NVG smart goggles, three red lenses for NVG seeker goggles etc), so that players can tell at a glance what they're looking at when looting or switching their goggles
- add ability to adjust function of goggles button on quick bar via right click to create a separate hotkey for recharging goggles with batteries, a la shield emitters

173

General / Repairing the gate in DC (endgame spoilers!)

« on: February 04, 2016, 06:59:05 am »

I'm really at my wit's end with this puzzle. I couldn't find a manual for repairing the gate, but I managed to find a hydraulic control valve in Tithonus, a hydro-pneumatic accumulator and a couple cans of hydraulic fluid in Warehouse Block 2, another can of hydraulic fluid in the elevator cavern past the burrowers down south, and about a hundred different hydraulic pump drive shafts, including what I believe to be the correct one, the HS-89 model, which I found past the worm labyrinth. I've got 5 psimorphic biocide grenades processed from the heart of that stupid root thing that took about 50 turns to kill, I've got Maria's keycard from Caerus Residential, and I've got a red AI core from Arke. As far as I can tell this is everything I need to open the gate.

But I can't figure out how to do it. Clicking on the panel tells me to get a manual that I don't know the location of. Installing the core in the bot prompts it to call me an imbecile a bunch of times and asking it to fix the machine tells me it needs components, and that they should be placed close to the machine. What am I meant to do? I've tried dumping them on the ground in front of the panel, stashing them in the empty canister... am I being incredibly dense or is the mechanism for doing this seriously obtuse? Or am I missing something?

Edit: Nevermind. Needed the manual, as I'd suspected I might. This damn fetch quest.

174

General / Re: Quick post-game question

« on: February 03, 2016, 05:18:03 pm »

Cool, thanks.

175

Bugs / Maura in Gas the Drones

« on: February 03, 2016, 04:51:17 pm »

If you do Abram's quests and free Maura, then later do the Protectorate quests, you encounter Maura in the Free Drones cell after gassing it. But she's not hostile. I was skirting around the mutagen clouds after clearing out all of the hostiles and found her standing around, oblivious to what was happening. I spoke to her and we shared an interesting conversation about her past and the Free Drones before I left her standing next to a mutagen cloud and exited the base. Bug, I assume?

176

General / Quick post-game question

« on: February 03, 2016, 04:12:18 pm »

Am I going to be able to return to DC after I leave?

177

General / Re: Deep Cavens Map

« on: February 03, 2016, 04:10:53 pm »

Oh my God, thank you.

178

General / Lora Baker (endgame spoilers!)

« on: February 03, 2016, 03:09:18 pm »

Currently slogging through DC. Not as bad as I'd initially suspected it would be, probably in large part thanks to changes made within the last month. I've chosen all of the options to befriend the Faceless, went directly over to their camp and got mindread after descending to DC. They greeted me as an ally, gave me some supplies and allowed me to see Lora. Now, the game is hinting that Lora will maybe be sent back to SGS post-game.

My question is, will the Faceless get stroppy and refuse to let her go if I go and say hi to the Tchortists, as well? Or is her survival locked in at this point, assuming I can actually kill Tchort? I kind of need access to a trader pretty badly (Leo notwithstanding) but I don't want to screw this quest up, and I'm doing so much backtracking and scouring the galaxy for trinkets and gewgaws that if I get to the end and Lora gets shot in the head or something for my sins, I'm probably just going to say screw it and be done with the game.

179

General / Re: Mixed psi build

« on: January 29, 2016, 12:33:42 am »

I think you need a minimum of 7 strength for most assault rifles (but not all?) and high perception, so a mixed psi/AR could work, since you can dump dexterity, unlike with pistols. Thought control with a splash of psychokinesis is probably best; even with 10 will a combination locus of control followed by an offensive ability like bilocation is nasty. The only real downside I can see is that with both low dexterity and agility, your character would loose initiative rolls most of the time. And with the psi hit point penalty, I'd suggest not lowering your constitution too low.

Maybe something like this?
strength 7 (add 1-2 points to get 8-9 and wear the best armor)
both dexterity and agility at 3 (oh well)
constitution 5
perception 8 (add 2, not sure abut what perception feats ARs use)
will 8 (add 2 for locus of control, but this can wait, because you also need high thought control)
6 intelligence (for premeditation)
If you leave your strength at 8, you can add 1 point to intelligence and get some crafting feats, which is probably better. I don't know how well the heavy armors compare, but my mage managed just fine with a tactical vest and a crafted shield. The only notable exception were enemy snipers, because they seemed to have infinite range (e.g. she would get shot by an enemy outside of her sight range).

Keep in mind that I've never tried a guns character, so I might get some things wrong. 
edit: I also had a look at the possible AR feats and wiki indicates you need 7 strength for full-auto.

This looks decent. I was actually thinking about sniper rifles, not assault rifles But the same idea can be easily adapted for either. Snipers have a lower base ability demand than assault rifles, which would let me go heavier on psi and use guns as secondary (hopefully). I had the same experience with you regarding metathermics - it does make the early game much, much easier in my experience, but it loses a lot of power quickly later on. And I never found much of a use for psychokinetic punch due to its enormous psi cost. I do kind of like psychokinesis though... I never bothered using it enough previously to invest in proxy; perhaps that would be worthwhile if I can find the skill points to max two psi skills.

180

General / Re: Mixed psi build

« on: January 27, 2016, 11:13:57 pm »

Yeah, I think you're right. Looks like pistols just demand way too much specialisation to synergise in any way with anything that doesn't also use dexterity or perception

I saw someone suggest that you could build a character that could benefit from a psi skill and rifles simultaneously, would this be more feasible? Only need 5 strength and max perception for those, right?