Messages

16

General / Re: Mutagen puzzle help

« on: February 23, 2019, 08:04:08 pm »

Oh I see what you mean.  I did not write a general purpose solver.  It is hard coded just for the puzzle given by the OP.  And I was only checking to see if adding and subtracting could give the right set of atoms.   I gave no concern for order.  Since if there is no solution when just considering the required atoms, then obviously there is also no solution that also includes the correct order.

17

General / Re: Mutagen puzzle help

« on: February 23, 2019, 05:06:54 pm »

With no pruning it would be: 15^11 + 15^10 + .... + 15^2 + 15 = 9,267,595,563,615

I added in just 1 check and that is to ignore using the same mutagen twice in a row, reducing the branching to 14 instead of 15 nodes.  So not quite that many, but still a lot: 14^11 + 14^10 + ... +14^2 + 15 = 4,361,070,182,715

It took 3 hours 44 minutes to run on an i7700k @ 4.8 GHZ.  No multi-threading or anything fancy.  In fact task manager showed it was only using 15% of 1 core.

Seeing there were 20 different elements to the mutagens I encoded them as bit positions in an unsigned long.  This way each mutagen is represented as 2 numbers.  Mutagen.positive has a 1 in each bit position for what it adds, while Mutagen.negative has a 1 in each position for what it removes.

Adding a mutagen to the current batch, which is also just a single unsigned long, involves just 3 bit-wise operations:

NewBatch = (Current OR Mutagen.positive) XOR (Current AND Mutagen.negative)

Now this value is just compared with the solution, which is also just an unsigned long.

18

General / Re: System Tweaks to improve save time?

« on: February 22, 2019, 03:48:09 pm »

I don't see any difference between saves and loads on my system.  Both take 2 seconds.

19

General / Re: Mutagen puzzle help

« on: February 22, 2019, 03:42:48 pm »

Underrail cannot generate unsolvable puzzles, unless something has gone very, very wrong. My site can have dumb moments, but since hilf also checked it over I'm leaning towards some kind of mistake here.

If you want more help, please post your save as hilf suggested. Preferably near powered mutagen scanner. I have high hopes that your puzzle is solvable.

How deep does your tool search?

The OP first posted this on Steam and I wrote a program that did a full breadth search of all sequences up to length 11 and found no solutions.

20

General / Re: Crawlers / Death Stalkers

« on: February 06, 2019, 05:40:54 pm »

Dunno.
I did recently Protectorate Warehouse mission - 3-4 DS, 3 Con, no problem.
I even didn't use Uncanny Dodge in some cases.
You just need to intuitively wait-move to bump into DS after he bite you.
Then tazer, incapacitate or stun.
At least for melee.

Ok I did not see this last year and just recently played through the Protectorate Warehouse mission again on a stealth PSI/Sniper level 11 so I feel I can address this even a year later on the newest beta build. My Sniper had 7 agi, 10 per, maxed stealth with ninja tabi boots and stealth overcoat plus Paranoia plus 60% +/- plus cave hopper steak plus stealth generator. I did not even have 1! second before a Derp Stalker initiated combat regardless which vent I went through. I cannot initiate combat since it is on a CD when you move through the vent. There is not even time to place a single trap or throw a single flare. There was absolutely nothing I could do besides having 70 Persuasion and go through the front door.
Having now a dozen of mostly unfinished playthroughs on Autistic difficulty, I more than ever think that Derp Stalkers are shitty grossly inflated enemies, worse than any of the other newly introduced ones, and for some idiotic reason Derp Stalkers got the most powerful gamebreaking debuff, denying you the ability to recover in any fashion from their initial attack, while dishing out high damage. Even if you break the following stun with stuff like LoC you still have to wait 10 turns until the debuff is gone, during that time you can basically heal yourself only via regenerative vest. However at higher levels, 18+ they become manageable even for low con stealth characters though still very dangerous and painful to deal with. In fact so much that I try my best to avoid them completely on all of my characters, because they are simply no fun to deal with, period. At least the other new enemy types have some weakness I can deal with. Derp Stalkers? Not so much.
It is possible to completely avoid them until high level but requires quite a bit of meta knowledge. Now the problem is that for some retarded reason Styg thought he should throw Derp Stalkers as early as level 10 at characters, one when you go to seek out the Rathound King and four down the aforementioned Protectorate Warehouse. One already is enough to give you a world of hurt, and that is putting it mildly. Four on the other hand at that level is, for most builds, essentially suicide.
Furthermore this is completely moronic considering until that time YOU DO NOT SEE THE FUCKING BASE VERSION unlike any other critter. I see absolutely no reason whatsoever to have Derp Stalkers down in the Protectorate Warehouse cellar except to spite players. For a normal natural playthrough having 4 of them down there is basically playing Russian roulette unless you made your build specifically to counter them.

I did these two areas a couple days ago on a crossbow build that had not yet invested much in stealth.  I stopped putting points in at 40 for Ambush.

For the warehouse basement I enter stealth before dropping out of the vent.  This way you are already still in stealth in the room and it takes a bit for the death stalkers to spot you.   Run immediately straight down and through the double doors, and close them behind you.  This almost always works allowing me to completely avoid them on the way in.  If not I reload and try again.

On the way out, they always agro on me because they are near the double door.  I throw an incendiary at my feet to get them to back off and run to the bottom right room.  I already opened that vent on the way in.   To get out, while in combat I flashbang the DS, restealth then exit via the vent on my next turn.

Worse case scenario, going in and out takes 2 or 3 reloads.     Last character before this run, I instead just dropped down from the North room again, and quick tinkered a bear trap in front of me and then set another before the DS showed up.  It was an AR build and he dropped an incendiary at his feet and was able to burst them down and keep them either burning or stuck in a bear trap.

21

General / Re: Steam Score Woes

« on: December 01, 2018, 07:25:59 am »

It is not even the area itself and its difficulty.  It is the fact that so much of what you did dozens of hours earlier has a drastic effect on what it is like down there.  And you have zero indication that this is coming.  Being told that you can't go back when you are at the elevator is meaningless because you have no idea of how much gameplay is left or what will be available to you down there, or which decisions you've made up until then will have what kind of effects.

It requires prior knowledge, or multiple runs, or looking up guides.   And for a lot of rpg players that is unforgivable.

22

General / Re: Steam Score Woes

« on: November 26, 2018, 12:23:02 am »

I gave it a positive review in 2015

But, you can count 3 of my family members among the recent negative reviews.  Both of my brothers, and a nephew, were describing it as one of the best RPGs they ever played.  Then they reached the Deep Caverns...

No matter how much advice I have given them, they absolutely refuse to even install the game again.  They hate how it changed.  They hated how much your experiences there were affected by things they didn't know would matter (access to vendors).

Unfortunately all three prefer to play RPGs just once.   Most people like that are going to be left with a very bad impression upon reaching the end game.

Even I agree that it is a serious flaw with the game that has yet to be fixed.

23

General / Re: Expedition alpha testing

« on: November 26, 2018, 12:11:22 am »

I would be interested in testing.

578 Hours played.   Love to create new builds on my own.  I lean towards a completionist play style.

I have 35 years of programming experience in 28 languages.  I also worked for 6 years as the Technical Services Manager for a custom business software developer.  One of my primary responsibilities was taking user bug reports, confirming and reproducing them.  Then writing them up for the developers.  I would then test any patches before they were deployed.

Currently retired with a lot of time to spare.