Messages

616

General / Re: [Spoilers for potentially everything] Minimum Level To Complete Dominating?

« on: March 21, 2018, 10:12:30 am »

How long can such a vest heal for?

enough damage at Level 8 or below to kill Tchort that could also survive long enough to deal that damage, so the question is whether ThermoD can accomplish this

Ten ticks.  Regen vest takes 10% of its energy to do a heal; that never changes so it can't benefit from Power Management.  Vest quality only increases DR/DT and amount healed.

The key ultimately is if you think you're going to be able to drag a tentacle or a Devourer/Sower to stand near Tchort.  With 49 effective skill, if you put a ThermoD on something and kill it, you'll do 99% of its health at the time you put the debuff on it as AoE damage, split between fire and mechanical.  That's sort of why the TK Proxy + Implode combo is so effective on that fight - you pull a tentacle over, it has 1k, you pop it and with max Will and skill, you then deal 3.5k in AoE which on Hard one-shots the Eye and obviously everyone else nearby.  So can you pull a relatively high-health mob near the minefield by the Eye so you can kill it and use it to blow up the Eye?  That's your test case for a ThermoD build.

EDIT: This is better than you'll be able to make at level 8 but to give you an idea, this is with no crafting feats (and since as Psi you don't need weapons/ammo, if you swap out P.R. for Nimble at lvl1 you have effectively 0 armor penalty):

617

General / Re: [Spoilers for potentially everything] Minimum Level To Complete Dominating?

« on: March 20, 2018, 11:33:21 am »

- I killed The Beast and unlocked SuperSteel but wasn't sure what to do and didn't want to spend time investigating unless I was sure it was needed.

In fact, based on my experience, I doubt a Level 6 mine-based approach makes sense (I could be wrong of course, but Quick Tinker would have to be SUPER Quick, much faster than I am imagining, to outpace the tremor damage).

I suppose I should look into that Level 8 Thermodynamic Destabilization suggestion...because if that's actually viable at Level 8 I can see it blowing ARs out of the water.

Anyway, thanks again for reading and suggestions! 

You are borderline certifiable but I 'm enjoying reading your writeups so thanks for sharing - it would be a shame if you'd done this quietly and we hadn't had the chance to hear about this craziness.

Super Steel thread making infused cave hopper leather armor and infused pig leather boots are probably worth contemplation for your play style.  Possibly even infused siphoner leather tabis if slows are ever a problem for you but you don't sound like they are.  Also, I would *heartily* encourage you to experiment with a maximum-quality (for your skill level) Regenerative Vest for when you're out of LOS in the Tchort fight.  On Dominating, stim healing is gimped badly enough that Regen Vest is basically god-tier.  It ticks every five seconds as long as it has power (and you're under 70% of max health, obviously), and batteries aren't really all that heavy.  If you don't plate it, the armor penalty isn't crippling so you may even be able to use it while you're laying traps.

EDIT: If you're pretty comfortable with your health pool from that AR run, my previous ThermoD build suggestion might be better with 6 CON and 10 INT, which both frees up ~20 skill points and also ensures that crafted Infused Cave Hopper leather armor can be superior to Rathound Regalia for stealthing.

618

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: March 19, 2018, 07:11:15 am »

Then remove hostile triggering part of pickpocketing too.

Remove the hostility of stealing?  That's ridiculous.  If you do that you may as well remove all sense of ownership for everything in the game, which is also ridiculous but not worse than removing the inherent hostility of stealing - which is what pickpocketing is.  Stealing.  Unlike opening locks which aren't owned.

And no, you've again completely misunderstood what I'm saying, and cumulatively so, to boot.  You're intentionally ignoring the simple points i'm making, presumably because you so desperately want pickpocketing to be more simple a tool.  Your suggestions just don't make any sense in a game designed to be fun or internally consistent.  You would neuter a skill (pickpocketing) and make the entire game slower and more boring (increased delay in lock skills) just so...what? You wouldn't have to think about pickpocketing and it would just be an inventory for characters who bought into the skill?  Ridiculous.

By your suggestion, pickpocketing would no longer benefit from skill investment beyond threshold clearance.  That would have the advantage of making it more like other non-combat skills in the game, but it would also have the disadvantage of making it more like other non-combat skills in the game.  You would just have an NPC inventory to choose from, and a set value of what could be taken.  This deprives the player of agency by removing their ability to improve the amount of items stealable (the effect of the skill, and thus the effect of the build).  It also would put a fairly large burden on the devs to rebalance the inventory and/or pickpocketing threshold of every pickpocketable NPC.  No, it appears that what you want is to prevent players from being allowed to make good pickpockets, so that everyone who is a pickpocket is instead an utterly average one.  That's terrible design.

619

General / Re: Hard Mode - Pistol / Sniper build help

« on: March 19, 2018, 06:45:37 am »

People who know more about the game than I do say pistols are weak.  You'd be better off going with SMGs, even if you didn't plan to take many feats to support them.  And, yeah, the Hammerer has a very wide damage range which can come back to bite you.  SO if it's not too late, you may want to consider using SMGs as your sidearm when you become a sneaky sniper.  A good, custom crafted SMG can do a lot of damage with a single burst, and if you've not got Gunslinger plus very high Dex, it won't be much slower than firing a single shot from a pistol.

As for the Psi Beetles, you mean when you're rescuing Newton?  Yeah, use grenades like molotovs and be sure to abuse the fact that bugs can't open doors.  Psi Beetles also have poor detection so if you've got stealth, you should be able to sneak around and get perfect positioning to get the drop on the bugs.

620

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: March 18, 2018, 07:25:54 pm »

Do you think people will care if Styg patched pickpocketing to remove this inherit hostility?(Just make it so you can't steal anymore if it will trigger hostility) I think what you are advocating is to nitpick on the situation that no pickpocket thieves wants to happen and use it to punish them for suspension system that does not exist. Or worse, punish players for the mandatory system that is "inherit hostility" which only serves to hinder pickpockets. No pickpocket wants to start their battle with AP spent and hands in someone's pocket.
How can you justify punishing(cooldown) players for punishment(inherit hostility/allowing users to trigger hostility via pickpocket) already given?

I feel like the language barrier is hurting us here. I wish I spoke...German, is it? But I don't, so thanks for doing this in English.  Alright, I'll try to be super clear.

Theses:
1) Pickpocketing is always a hostile action.  Proof: If an NPC will see you do it, they will try to stop you.
2) Hostile actions may require game response.  Proof: NPCs who were previously not hostile, become hostile, when player is noticed doing a hostile action.
3) Pickpocketing provides value in exchange for skill investment.  Proof: Items which can only be obtained by killing & looting are available without the consequences of killing.
4) Skills which provide value have costs, and should have them.  Proof: Hacking requires a special tool, plus consumable batteries; lockpicking requires consumable lockpicks.  Pickpocketing requires time.
5) Skills in UnderRail have success thresholds.  Proof: locks have difficulty rating.  Picking pockets can fail to begin if skill is too low.

Conclusions: Pickpocketing has a special cost of time that lockpicking and hacking do not have.  Pickpocketing and lockpicking have special costs of tools and consumables that pickpocketing does not have.  Pickpocketing is a more hostile action, overall, than hacking or lockpicking.  So it is not wise to hold pickpocketing to the same standard as lockpicking/hacking.  Suspicion is not a punishment to pickpockets - it is the essential limiting mechanic.  Suspicion is not a punishment but actually a reward mechanic for the skill because additional investment reduces suspicion per item.

Additional assumptions: Just because you are not caught, that does not mean your action was not hostile.  Hostility =/= combat although it may lead to it.

And to be clear, if you just can't pick the pocket any more, that in no way changes the inherent hostility of picking pockets.  It just makes it impossible to be caught, which would be removing consequences from skill use.  I have no idea if people would like that.

621

General / Re: Crafting endgame question

« on: March 18, 2018, 03:44:47 pm »

No.  If a component is quality 100, you just need the skill to make a quality 100 item, but you get the benefits of having used a quality 120 item component (typo, sorry).  Similarly, if a feat reduces some part of the result (like Armor Sloping) that doesn't reduce your skill requirement either.  Crafting feats change the output of a recipe, not the input or requirements.

622

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: March 18, 2018, 02:16:23 pm »

But let's get back to the main issue and agree to disagree. So, inherit hostility. That is the crux of the issue, yes?

So why do we not have a cooldown for looting(taking items in/out of) other people's property? If they can catch you do it, You get shot in the face. Therefore it is inherently hostile to them. I think you should support having cooldown for hostile looting, yes? (Or cooldown for all looting, if you prefer that)

Well, I don't think inherent hostility is the crux of the issue.  I believe the issue is, "why is pickpocketing treated differently than hacking or lockpicking".  I think inherent hostility is the reason why you can't apply the same standards to pickpocketing that you can to hack/lock.

My first post about this was that removing the cooldown on hack/lock was correct.  It was correct because the waiting period forced on the player by the game was undesirable, but that argument was only valid because in many - perhaps most - cases, the hack/lock action didn't produce any need for the game world to react.  The cooldown provides time for the game to respond to player action. 

So, again, I'm not sure I can find your reasoning sound.  I'm not in favor of a cooldown on looting in general, because forcing a player to wait for what will usually look like no good reason isn't fun at all, and good game design should worry a lot about what's fun, a lot about what's practical, and less about what's realistic.  That said, I could certainly imagine situations where a cooldown period could be implemented and wouldn't be terribly harmful - for example, if the take all action worked and provided the same short cooldown (5s perhaps, like pickpocketing does?), it would rarely be a bother.  Your cooldown is target to target, anyway, not item to item so there's not so much difference there.  And, much like I said in my earlier post, you're comparing very different things here so applying a similar standard is a bad idea - looting is not an action comparable to hack/lock or pickpocket, which are skills.

Like I suggested, in an ideal world perhaps popping a lock, picking a pocket, or (adding to my previous musing based on your suggestion) taking an owned item would put a debuff of some sort on the play which would prevent further such action and give the game world time to react.  But those sounds like they would be pretty substantial changes to the game code, and I also was just musing on potential alternatives and haven't really thought if that would be in practice any use.

623

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: March 18, 2018, 09:25:43 am »

All pickpocketing that does not make you directly hostile to the NPC is non-hostile pickpocketing.

There are lots of non-hostile pickpocketing.

Your argument is invalid.

If you disagree, please provide reason *why* (sensible non NPC aggro) pickpocketing is any different than a neutral locked chest in the middle of the city.

<laugh>  No.  Your definition is ridiculous.  By that tortured logic, if nobody sees you commit murder, it's not really murder because nobody is mad at you for it.

When you pickpocket, you build up suspicion.  Suspicion is the threshold where you can safely pick pockets, but even somewhere relatively safe and friendly like SGS, if you are caught pickpocketing (by exceeding the suspicion threshold), you're getting shot in the face.  Out in the wilderness of the UnderRail tunnels, you even need to be stealthed to get that far.  If your pickpocketing is generating suspicion, then it's hostile pickpocketing, since once you're caught, the NPC will try to make you stop.

Now, I'm certainly no Pickpocketing expert.  Maybe there are places where you can pick pockets, exceed the suspicion threshold, and nobody cares.  THAT - and only that - would be non-hostile pickpocketing because the target genuinely doesn't care that you've taken something from them.  So in those cases, you'd be doing non-hostile pickpocketing.  If such cases exist.

So pickpocketing is different than a locked neutral chest in the middle of the city because people can "catch" you opening the chest and they don't care, but if they catch you stealing from them, they do.  One is inherently hostile to them, the other not.  And because there are many (perhaps even a majority - I haven't counted but almost none of the locks outside population centers are owned, and many within are still not owned) situations where a lock is non-aggro-generating, but few situations where pickpocketing is non-aggro-generating, the skills and use cases are different enough that applying the same standard is disingenuous.

624

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: March 18, 2018, 06:28:04 am »

All those activities trigger hostilities from other faction when get caught. Why should we have cooldown removed from those?

As a side effect of making the right choice about all non-hostility-provoking hacking and lockpicking.  There are *a lot* of locks to crack and when you're exploring the world it's often the case you get several very close to each other.  In a perfect world, maybe you'd get a debuff after doing potentially hostility-provoking lockpicking/hacking/pickpocketing that would prevent you from doing those things again to give the game time to "catch up" and make allowances for what you've done.  But there is no non-hostile pickpocketing, right?  Everyone hates it.  There's a lot of non-hostile lock cracking.  So that's the reasonable cause, I think.

625

Suggestions / Re: Cloaking Device affected by armor penalty?

« on: March 17, 2018, 04:02:24 am »

Seems reasonable to me.  If your armor makes you clumsy and loud, then you're still clumsy and loud even if you're blurry.

Besides, the real benefit to Cloaking Device is that it lets someone with no investment in stealth get above the instant detection thresholds.  You carry around a stealth set, because it's light, and switch into it for when you need to be all sneeki breeki.  You can get at least 130-140 points of stealth from tabis, armor, and a cloaking device.  If you want to be sneaky, carry six pounds of stealth gear.  Rathound Regalia, early on; infused cave hopper leather later.  It won't break your back, especially if it's your 7STR character.

626

General / Re: Iron Man / Permadeath runs on Dominating difficulty

« on: March 15, 2018, 10:47:03 pm »

Restarted a psi character and got to the Lunatic Mall before its first death.  I don't play Ironman so didn't restart, but that's probably as far as I could go without stealth.  Died again in Harpocrates, so clearly I suck at handling Lunatics.

Stealth is ridiculously OP, moreso I think than anything else.  There's another poster who beat Dominating with ARs at level 14, but they did save/load a lot.  If you pick your fights carefully you should be able to get to at least 22 before you absolutely have to do the really hard fights (like Emporion...), and by that point you should be able to sneak past the worst of it. 

Regardless, you may want to ask SubterminalOptimization for tips.  Though you've both got very different goals, you both are doing challenging Dominating runs with ARs, so you may find some useful knowledge there.  The thread is http://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=3388.0

627

General / Re: Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

« on: March 15, 2018, 11:34:30 am »

This forces you into building up Chemistry to make gas grenades since to my knowledge they are not sold by anyone

Yeah, fair point.  They only take effective 20 Bio, 20 Chem, and 5 Mech and I always on every character have at least that much so I do assume that, and I shouldn't.  Fair point.

Bear traps and HE mines, then.  With just the Jackknife you'll get the 5 you need to place HE.  That has no skill or stat requirements, and though you'd need to lay traps all the way along the fenceline back to where Dan and Saban stand, you could probably do it.

628

General / Re: Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

« on: March 15, 2018, 09:59:31 am »

Another example are Dan and Saban during the Beast quest. Due to the insane amount of extra spawns they will run out of ammo and run into the Bladelings in melee.

If you'll make a stack of gas grenades and just cover the ground with bear traps or acid traps before you activate the doohickey, then you can lay down a horrifying miasma of death and your allies will do so much extra damage that they won't run out of ammo, even if you do very little actual killing yourself.  That fight is basically the most perfect setpiece for using gas grenades and immobility that I can imagine.

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General / Re: Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

« on: March 12, 2018, 02:52:32 am »

Sorry, I obviously missed the part where a PSI user must use more grenades than PSI abilities and trick even more the bad IA/design oversights

No, the part you seem to have missed was that Dominating isn't meant to be "facetank, I win" every fight.  I was just giving you the way that requires no luck, and the fewest special abilities so it doesn't much require you have a certain build.  Want a way to handle that with mostly psi?  No problem.

When you pop the kamikaze bot, throw caltrops so you can see the Death Stalkers coming. One EMP for the plasma sentry because you don't want to have to fight through those shields with raw damage. When the stalkers get close to the robots, Premeditate, Psionic Mania, Cryokinetic Orb.  That'll probably kill the Death Stalkers, but if not, follow up with either a Pyrokinesis (if you have Pyromaniac and/or Thermodynamicity) or Electrokinesis (especially if you have Electrokinetic Induction).  Put a ThermoD on the plasma sentry if you feel like it, or Implode the Industrial Bot, but heat and mechanical aren't much help against Industrial Bots on Dominating.  Cryo spam with electro as possible until the bot gets close, Cryo stasis, run to the other side of the hallway, cryo spam + electro.  Eventually it'll die.

Don't want to run back and forth?  Bring a bunch of HE mines, one EMP, and four frags.  Don't want to do any of that?  Figure something else out.  There are lots of ways to win that fight, but if you think you can just run through Dominating relying on raw damage, then the failure really isn't the game.

630

General / Re: Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

« on: March 11, 2018, 10:12:19 pm »

Industrial bot + triple 40 hp regenerating Death Stalker . . . Thanks, door that let me close/open thee for 30 min to regen my Premeditation ! What an interesting fight !

The archetype of badly done """"""hardcore""""""" difficulty.

Oh, that little fight?  Why wouldn't you just lay down molotovs, and keep the Death Stalkers incapacitated so they stay stuck in the fire?  DoTs don't break incapacitation.

You know, your complaints are more and more showing that you don't understand how to play the game, not that the game is bad. You're obviously playing Psi, so here's how to do that fight.

Sneak/walk to near door and open it.  Cryo on kamikaze bot.  Noise pulls Death Stalkers and industrial bot+plasma sentries.  EMP to stun the bots while the stalkers get closer.  Molotov.  Force Field to protect you when the EMP wears off so that all the enemies end up standing close around you. Premeditate.  Force field drops - molotov, EMP, flashbang.  TK Punch if a death stalker resists.  Skip a turn.  Molotov, Locus of Control, Mental Breakdown.  Step inside room, close door.  Open+close on your turn. When Breakdown wears off, open, adrenaline, molotov, EMP, flashbang.

Fight's over but the cleanup.