Messages

481

General / Re: Tchort - Investigation or Preservation?

« on: March 21, 2019, 11:30:05 am »

AFAICT there's no reason not to do all the quests from each branch.  When they tell you to go talk to Boss Lady, just go do the other quests you haven't finished yet.  Then mosey on upstairs whenever you feel like it and pick one.  It's just flavor at that point.

482

General / Re: Help me appreciate chemical pistols

« on: March 19, 2019, 07:35:05 am »

Oh, and I know this is situational but I just want to add, my favorite use of pyro gun (not its best use, mind, just my favorite) is in the Arena fighting gladiators on Dominating.  If you can keep refreshing the DoT, keep them on fire so their panic debuff never drops and gets replaced with Aphobia, you can set those 2000+ health enemies on fire and chase them around the arena for ten turns, relighting them again and again as they flail and eventually burn to death.

Turn off game sounds, tab out, and play The Prodigy's Firestarter in the background, for maximum effect.

483

General / Re: Help me appreciate chemical pistols

« on: March 17, 2019, 12:17:30 pm »

Acid gives you roots, pyro gives you a good CC+DoT on living targets. Cryo is a little lackluster.  A pyro chem pistol is a nice supplement for those incendiary grenades.  Even if you get your throwing high enough to reliably put them where you want, you can't be certain that the targets will catch fire, so it sort of doubles up those chances for you.  If you've got a lot of movement points for some reason, cryo guns can be quite helpful with kiting strong melee enemies.

484

General / Re: Suppose I killed off an entire Oligarch family.....

« on: March 16, 2019, 06:55:30 pm »

Oh? Mind explaining?

Explain? Sure.  ThermoD.

Walkthrough?

When you enter the map, the  pillars will give you helpful LOS breaks.  If you want, you can chuck out some caltrops.  Aggro the zone & stun the patroller with a flashbang.  When the first decent-sized group comes around the corner, Premed + LoC + Mental Breakdown so they all pile up.  When the Dreadnoughts start showing up, back yourself into a corner and raise a 4-turn Force Field.  When the force field drops, ThermoD + TK Punch will clear most of the soldiers (may need to proxy it if you're playing Dominating because of the HP bloat; also, you'll want Pyromaniac to get that DoT from the ThermoD explosion so it can finish off the heavily armored troops who may survive the blast because of their high physical resist).  Apogee is one of the few places where there are actually too many enemies to clear in a single ThermoD blast so you'd need to either zone out and let your abilities cool down, or run past the survivors and break LOS in the S-curve there past the entrance to Frasier's shop. Repeat the Force Field so they all agther up, and the ThermoD + TK Punch to clear the group.

485

General / Re: Suppose I killed off an entire Oligarch family.....

« on: March 16, 2019, 07:33:23 am »

You should definitely try an home invasion at fort apogee as well... Maybe it will prove intresting as well.

If you cheese it hard enough, a psi build can clear the main Fort Apogee map with two TK Punches.

486

General / Re: Suppose I killed off an entire Oligarch family.....

« on: March 15, 2019, 12:44:08 pm »

UnderRail is an unapologetic Murder Hobo Simulator.  Soon as you get what you need from someone, feel free to shank 'em in the kidneys and see what's in their pockets.

It's like pickpocketing for low-Dex characters.

The game starts and ends in SGS so don't go cleaning the place out as soon as you're done in Junkyard unless you don't care about story. And, you know, be prepared to live with yourself after becoming Death, Destroyer of Worlds and basically genociding civilization.

487

Bugs / Re: [1.0.4.17] [minor] Jitter in Hopper Caves

« on: March 11, 2019, 04:08:06 am »

Was just there and noticed the same thing, like the frames weren't synced properly (and I have VSync set globally from the NVidia panel so it *should* in theory work in-game).  Titan X GPU.

488

Suggestions / Re: Feats and items improvements

« on: March 11, 2019, 02:36:15 am »

I believe that niche feats (eg, Practical Physicist)

Why would you consider it to be a niche feat?  It applies 100% of the time that you crit when using a crafted energy weapon - and if you're using energy weapons, one would assume you're making your own.  That seems the opposite of niche - if you're playing that kind of character, it applies every time you pull the trigger.  And since it's reliable, it stacks reliably with any other passive feats you have, like Critical Power; and since it's passive, it also stacks with active feats, like Execute.

489

General / Re: Snipe feat, how does it work?

« on: March 10, 2019, 12:11:05 am »

Notice that it says that the bonus damage from stealth is "per skill point" not based on effective skill.  That may help make it clearer for you. (epeli corrects this, below)

edit: oops, sorry, first part of your question, too.  326% is the correct number for your bonus damage.  The "bonus damage" is what's on top of 225% from your stealth.

You can probably test this out on the target dummies in SGS lvl2 and see the numbers for yourself. Save, fire off a dozen rounds or so, and you should see you're doing (base damage * skill damage modifier * 3.26) - give or take a little for additional modifiers.

490

Bugs / Re: [1.0.4.17] [Burrower Emergency] Burrowers move to different room

« on: March 09, 2019, 03:09:50 pm »

The burrowers have been able to leave the spawn pool for a while, now.  As long as they can hear you, they can come investigate.

491

General / Re: Why exactly 95% accuracy cap is a thing?

« on: March 05, 2019, 07:45:18 pm »

Again, I agree with all that, but why exactly there needs to be a CAP on accuracy?

Either you didn't read that paragraph or you're ignoring what it says, because I answered that question in the bit you quoted.  It's the differentiator.

Normal attacks have to manage risk, because their attacks can miss.  Thus you need to have "one more trick" ready when you take your shot because you might miss.  That's the risk management.

Psi has to manage a resource, because the psi pool can empty quite quickly and your "reload" is on a cooldown.  So you need to ration your consumption or be ready to manage actionless turns while your pool refills.  That's the resource management.

That distinguishes the play types.  If your character doesn't have to manage something, then the gameplay loses a lot of complexity.  If it were difficult for non-psi to beat the game on Dominating, I'd be less sympathetic to the miss chance but UR is mechanically easy enough that almost any build played well can win; and because it's not based on random maps and spawns like many Roguelikes, the variety has to come from how you approach the problems (encounters) instead of what/where the problems are.  Distinguishing the major combat solution types is a big part of why there's so much variety and replay potential.  Most of the combat options are for the old-school gamer used to and fond of chance-based outcomes.  Psi exists for the player who prefers deterministic outcomes.

492

General / Re: Why exactly 95% accuracy cap is a thing?

« on: March 05, 2019, 02:45:03 am »

Well, psions don't burst single-target damage like sledges or snipers. Sure, a crit Cryo Orb is sweet but you won't see a psion landing a 7k Psionic Execute crit on someone.  And even with 16 Will, the spammable psi attacks do roughly single-shot gun damage (and cost more AP, too; especially if you aren't using Tranquility).  So that part is sort of apples and oranges; psi is just different.

Of course, all told, psi is really very strong, but that's not to do with hit chances so much as an excessive synergy in psi abilities that other attack mechanics can't match, plus the incomparable OP-ness of Premeditation and LoC.  Though you could of course just let that sniper pick up Temporal Manipulation, ambush snipe or aimed shot crit, Entropic Recurrence, and skedaddle - nothing's coming back from that precipice.

I've played most every high-level build possible in UnderRail (which is an embarrassing admission to how many hours I've put into this game) and the miss chance doesn't feel unfair to me.  The miss chance for normal weapons is part of what differentiates characters.  Normal weapons have a greater risk management requirement because of that miss chance, but pay off in higher single-target damage, higher frequency of attack, lower cost for individual attack failure, greater variety without cost to build (for example, there's no opportunity cost to your build for using W2C or incendiary rounds or a shock sledge - it's just part of the variety built into your weapon of choice), and greater base survivability because of the higher health and the lack of need to dump precious stat points into a "dead" stat like Will - you're putting points into Perception and not getting ambushed so much, or Strength and carrying more and wearing better armor, or Dexterity and getting better initiative.

I might also suggest that putting bars on 10 and 95 lets the underlying math be more favorable to the player.  You can smooth the probability distribution without having to account for extremes, and the player gets good feedback in when they've invested enough into their primary stat.

Plus, hey, misfire a few fireballs and kill yourself because the throw error was 4 tiles and you caught yourself in your own attack, and you'll look wistfully on that 1-in-20 miss from a bullet while you wait to reload

493

General / Re: Expedition release date.

« on: March 02, 2019, 11:43:05 pm »

Only question I have left is when you say "compatible" does that mean you can you access all expansion areas and content with an excisting save from base game or is it like a Civ thing where the game works but the "ruleset" is different depending on whether you started the save before or after the installation of the expansion?

You should go read the Devlogs.  Styg answers that in Devlog 47:

b. You will be able to use the new mechanics while doing the old content, yes. The DLC will be a seamless part of the existing world. You can also do the new DLC content after finishing the original campaign, as long as you don't trigger the actual end-game sequence.

494

General / Re: Expedition release date.

« on: March 01, 2019, 03:46:14 pm »

Styg has made a few DevLog posts about that.  To sum up what has been posted here already: testing is going well, the testers have been helpful in identifying problems, the problems have been or are being fixed, and Styg will not guarantee a release date for the expansion.

That said, it looks like (from the outside, as a tester with no special privileges or information) it's getting fairly close.  There's a page for it on Steam now; that's a good sign.

495

General / Re: Advice on the Tchortist initiation mission (shopping mall fight)

« on: February 26, 2019, 05:34:38 pm »

Well, on Hard, you should be able to beat the instant detection threshold with just cave hopper stealth overcoat, balaclava, ninja tabis, cloaking device, and a food buff.  So you should be able to mine the floor in the southern part of the upstairs map like it's a wartime DMZ.  If you don't have all that gear yet, you may even pick up a level while you go get it - if your build can afford to put a few points in stealth, all the better.  Once you're all mined up, bring a bunch of grenades and leverage the "sufficient quantities of fire solve all problems" approach.  If you have Grenadier, it'll really shine here.

If you're having trouble on the lower level, all you need are a few gas grenades, a few frags, some adrenaline, and three bear traps, then you'll be clear to get to the tougher upstairs bit.  Your double LOS break at the entry to the mall gives you enormous situational advantage. edit: sorry, somehow missed the very clear part where you said you were having trouble up top

Like you, I've never found a purpose for that jackhammer in the Mall.  Perhaps it's just there in case you didn't take one of the free ones from Foundry, so you don't have to backtrack?  There are a couple uses for jackhammer/TNT in Upper UnderRail.