Couple of suggestions

[Crekoo]

My 2 cents thrown into the pool

- Powered metal armor to negate the armor penalty and/or provide strength bonus (similar to Power Armor in Fallout)
- Differentiate between cooking ingredients (like cave hopper meat) and foods (cave hopper steak)
- Generic cooking recipe: require combustible material like can of gasoline and some foodstuff like cave mushrooms or cave hopper meat to create a stew or something with small stat bonus
- Vincente mentioned shotguns. Shotguns imho doesn't need a new artwork: generic  smg graphic works well (think about automatic shotguns like Saiga-12)
- This might be already a planned feature: crafting flashbangs from thin metal case and magnesium
- Head of the beast might be a special helmet instead of a worthless heavy misc. item
- Following that train of thought some critter's skulls might be used as helmet material
- Some new drugs for combat boost might be nice (ie. improve your combat initiative for one combat, etc.)
- Ability to place a beacon item in the map: i lost count how many times i got lost in the game by not finding that specific spot (like the hijacked train quest in rail crossing) or not being able to navigate back. Some kind of homing beacon (like in the locate the missing scientist quest) will be nice
- High quality materials for crafting! Took me ages to find a suitable 100+ quality vest to match my 103 quality tichrome bars for my lovely metal armor (actually it took me 5 restarts to find one)

[starfish]

I'll put my remarks here if the topic starter doesnt mind (its a lot of topics here already).
1. Shield emitters for low and middle speed are almost useless - the most of the enemies are equiped with guns and energy pistols . Only a couple of guys with a sledgehummers were met who could hit me seriously.
2. All staff from the stores\looted are better than those you can craft. Only at the end of the game I have created one good shield emitter. All crafted staff should be RARE(components) but BETTER than staff from stores\looted.
3. The bullets should be rare. I would cut the qty in the stores in 10 times minimum.
4. Import character feature should be deleted - a lot of people just killing a couple of guys at SGS and play new game.
5. I would make a calibers of guns more close to reality. Leave 0.44, 9mm to pistols, 7.62 to rifles and sniper rifles (+12.7), 5.56 to rifles and smg (for smg - 9mm as well)
6. Pistols should eat less AP. For example - I can shoot 4 times (12 ap each) from 9mm rifle or 1 time from 0.44 pistol (or 2 with all the perks). More damage from rifle. And in the case of the pistol use - I could not shoot a burst.
7. Unique weapons should be good. And it should be more of them. H&K and Dragunov are beautifull but I allready had much better weapons when I have found them.
8. Money should be a problem - the offered prices for player's loot should be \10.
9. The use of the food is also almost useless. Hunger implementation should solve this problem.
10. Burrowers should not hit with the poison every time. Its a nightmare to fight them without a shield emitter.
11. An in-game MAP is needed also - all times is a head ache when you are looking how to get somewhere.
12. Physical damage is the most popular - so the metal armor is the best. The rest of the armors are useless. The problem could be solved with -1 STR -1 AGI - 2 DEX for all metal armors.
13. Less EXP for killing mobs and quests. The game is not completed but the lvl cap is already early achievable.
And many thanks for the game!

[UnLimiTeD]

Some sensible points @OP, though I think many have already been mentioned. Powered Armour was already ruled out f.Ex.

@starfish: I'd like to put up some counterpoints. Sometimes personal option, sometimes devils advocate. This is not meant to sound condescending, though I believe people should play as they wish, within the confines Styg allows. I'm only mentioning the points that I frankly disagree with.

3. The bullets should be rare. I would cut the qty in the stores in 10 times minimum.

Why? So SMGs are completely useless? Honest question.

4. Import character feature should be deleted - a lot of people just killing a couple of guys at SGS and play new game.

And? A lot of people bring the right equipment for an area even though their character could not realistically know what he'd encounter there. Metagaming is a thing. I mean, a lot of people use the classic XP mode...

5. I would make a calibers of guns more close to reality. Leave 0.44, 9mm to pistols, 7.62 to rifles and sniper rifles (+12.7), 5.56 to rifles and smg (for smg - 9mm as well)

You mean like the De Lisle Carbine, UMP .45 ACP, or 5.7mm small arms like the Five-Seven and P90? Admittedly the game simplifies the ammunition system, there's no Projectile length factored in, but that might result in a bit too much complexity.
I wouldn't be averse to those weapons having different armour penetration, though, I just believe it won't happen.

7. Unique weapons should be good. And it should be more of them. H&K and Dragunov are beautifull but I allready had much better weapons when I have found them.

Unique weapons should not be any better than crafted weapons, or sometimes even bought weapons; They should be unique. That is, for example, the Dragunovs low AP cost, but it isn't necessarily the best if you encounter heavily armoured enemies later in the game, or so I expect.

9. The use of the food is also almost useless. Hunger implementation should solve this problem.

And that would do what? Foods here are essentially used as combat drugs, and do have a notable effect. Forcing players to regularly eat is nice for a survival simulator, but while Underrail invokes that atmosphere, it isn't that kind of game.

10. Burrowers should not hit with the poison every time. Its a nightmare to fight them without a shield emitter.

Finally, a strong, annoying enemy. Also see point 12.

12. Physical damage is the most popular - so the metal armor is the best. The rest of the armors are useless. The problem could be solved with -1 STR -1 AGI - 2 DEX for all metal armors.

Well, that is just, like, your opinion, man. ~Dude
Metal Armour slows you down to no end while making Dodge and Evasion almost useless. Fast melee characters aren't possible with Metal Armour, Sneaky characters don't use it because it kills their primary defense, and Pionicists prefer vests. Using Metal Armour is a choice of being slow and easily hitable, but tough. With high speed and Evasion, Burrowers might not be as daunting. Not that I ever thought they were when I OHK them with a Plasma Pistol. (Yeah, I had a melee metal armour char way back, Burrowers were horrible. Choices)

13. Less EXP for killing mobs and quests. The game is not completed but the lvl cap is already early achievable.

Killing Mobs doesn't give any XP in oddity mode (The Way it's meant to be played ^TM), and the game isn't really balanced around that, as far as I can judge.
Regards

[hilf]

1. Shield emitters for low and middle speed are almost useless - the most of the enemies are equiped with guns and energy pistols . Only a couple of guys with a sledgehummers were met who could hit me seriously.

Medium freq emitters can block a good portion of damage from guns/energy guns. Blocking full damage is not necessarily good because it does not let you use your DT. As long as your HP drops down slower that energy shield you'll be fine.

And medium/low freq emitters are good vs burrowers because they can block all their damage and save you from poison.

2. All staff from the stores\looted are better than those you can craft. Only at the end of the game I have created one good shield emitter. All crafted staff should be RARE(components) but BETTER than staff from stores\looted.

Shield emitters are probably the worst example of 'crafting is bad' in this game. Crafted emitters are WAY better that non crafted ones. And you can craft something decent as soon as you complete Junkyard and train becomes operational. Well, you can probably craft it sooner but access to much more shops helps a lot and Underrail is rather rich in electronics shops.

Energy guns also benefit much from crafting.

How good your crafted item will be depends on how will you craft it. Crossbows for example can benefit a lot from their attachments and they have 2 slots for them. Getting xbow of specific model with good quality and 2 attachments of your choice from shops is very unlikely unless you save scum heavily.

And since we're at save scumming, i must say crafting kinda encourages it - quality of components in shops varies, availability varies as well and you need several components to craft an item. Before you get all of what you need there will be better items in shops available. I'm not defending crafting here as save scumming should not be necessary in game.

[hilf]

@hilf:
First you say crafting is good, because you need savescumming to buy stuff.

I said crafting is good if you choose to save scum for components. Not because.

Then you say crafing is bad... because you need savescumming to buy stuff.

That's about true. Of course it depends on item - some are less vulnerable to randomness than others.


There's one more thing about crafting. Because of randomness in item quality and attachments raising total crafting requirements it's pretty hard to tell how much crafting skills you're gonna need. That's why it is good to not level up immediately but keep one level up in reserve. I always play crafters and it helped me many times.

[UnLimiTeD]

Maybe item quality should be normalized?
As in, have a base seed on character creation that fixes half the item types, so every kind of item will eventually show up somewhere, and have quality vary according to a curve or buffer:
If you get a lot of low quality ones, the chances for a high quality one rise.

[AW8]

Hello, I have a couple of minor suggestions that didn't warrant creating a new thread.

1) Having walls become transparent when you're behind them would be nice, for those times when you're placing traps and need a good view of the tiles, or attempting to open a container covered by a wall.

Example from Fallout:



Now obviously, me being a complete and utter moron regarding the subject of game development, I have no idea whether this is a simple tweak or not within the scope of development at all.

2) Quest rewards should be displayed in the dialogue window, as in "[You receive 200 Charons.]", instead of having you keep track of how much money you had before and after receiving the reward.
Obviously an incredibly minor "issue", but it would be nice to see this.

Looking forward to the full release. Cheers!

[Mac Orion]

1. That's really hard to achieve because our engine is custom build with XNA, a rather dead technology, making that circle would need to set our sprite engine to a manual handled sorting and extend it to use multiple render targets and custom build shaders, and that is really hard at the point where the game is. For some future project we will think a bit smarter considering our technologies. (Who would think Microsoft would scrap something )
But if you press TAB you can see stuff behind walls, so containers and traps should be easy to detect on the screen.

2. I think that's already in the game. Don't remember exactly, gona check tomorrow.

[UnLimiTeD]

I'm pretty certain it's logged somewhere if and how much money you get. 
I certainly never missed it, and that'd be a really odd thing to not miss.

[Elhazzared]

I'm pretty sure it tracks. I remember that I always paid atention to the infowindow to see how much money I got on the very first missions to make sure I didn't made any mistake of leaving one of the outposts with the lights off.

[AW8]

Thanks for the replies!

1. That's really hard to achieve because our engine is custom build with XNA, a rather dead technology, making that circle would need to set our sprite engine to a manual handled sorting and extend it to use multiple render targets and custom build shaders, and that is really hard at the point where the game is. For some future project we will think a bit smarter considering our technologies. (Who would think Microsoft would scrap something )
But if you press TAB you can see stuff behind walls, so containers and traps should be easy to detect on the screen.

That's interesting information! I'll stick to highlighting/reverse highlighting and moving really careful when placing traps behind walls, then. 

I'm pretty certain it's logged somewhere if and how much money you get. 
I certainly never missed it, and that'd be a really odd thing to not miss.

I'm pretty sure it tracks. I remember that I always paid atention to the infowindow to see how much money I got on the very first missions to make sure I didn't made any mistake of leaving one of the outposts with the lights off.

You're right, I just checked this. I usually play with the feed off and expected this information to be shown in the dialogue window itself, that's why I missed this.

It's tracked in both the Dialogue Feed and the Combat Feed, and much easier to find in the latter due to the lack of quest dialogue cluttering it up.

Thanks for making me aware of this!