Some thoughts and suggestions after a long time playing.

[Kaerius]

First of all, I've been playing this game quite a lot, getting to the developmental dead end in the story several times with different builds, and it's far from my first time alpha/beta testing, and I've been playing these games since the early 90s.

I'll start with a topic that's dear to me: Crafting.

The crafting system in underrail is quite frankly somewhat annoying and could do with some improvement. It's often very hard to get the components you need to make what you want, and usually requires lots and lots of savescumming. This is caused by a combination of the item quality system, and limited, random vendor inventories. I've taken to doing lots of export/import when I start a new character to deal with this by stocking up from the start, to guarantee I can build the items I want... this process takes 2-3 hours. It's not ideal, and I'd rather not need to do this.

There's two ways to reduce the frustrations of the crafting system, one is quick and dirty, easy to implement, the other is more elegant but requires more work.

1) Increase vendor inventory sizes, and make them easy to refresh, such as by exit/re-enter the room/zone they are in. This at least speeds up the part scrounging process.
2) Instead of having different quality parts determine the quality of the resulting item, have all parts be fixed quality, but make the item quality depend on player skill(IE: automatically be the best quality you are able to craft). This is the more elegant solution.

Also it would be nice if the Galvanic Vest component were made available, and I'd really like a recepie for turning leather into carrier vests, especially since I'd like to have mutant dog leather carrier vests to make tactical/riot armor with acid protection.

I've also noticed that the new goggle lenses Ezra sell are all rock-bottom quality, leading to crappy crafted goggles, seems like you forgot to make them vary in quality, I did get some from Gort or Colton that scaled though.

EDIT: Also it bugs me a bit that there's no optional parts to put in the optional slots for energy/chemical pistols. At least allow lasert sight for the slot, please? I understand the game is far from finished, but hey.

Next up: Combat/Enemies

The most unfair enemy in the game is probably the bog standard Dog. Tackle stacking can get really out of hand very very quickly, effectively neutering your ability to do anything, especially when they come in packs. There's very little you can do about it if you're unable to kill them before they reach you(such as with a grenade, assuming you hit perfectly). I suggest a hardcap on Tackle stacking, preferably no higher than 2, or 3 at the outmost.

Second most unfair is anything that uses poison, again stacking is a problem, and of course the total armor ignore, and the cooldown on health hypos and antidote mean you can't keep up in an extended fight. Deadliest enemies by raw damage output, and often tricky to deal with(tough to kill burrowers, poison dart crossbow users with melee buddies, particularly sledgehammer guys that are a priority kill, giving the crossbow user more time to work you over). Poison attacks should probably not ignore armor, only the DoT effect should(and it shouldn't be applied if the damage was stoped by armor), and you may want to cap poison stacks as well.

Third: Travel

Backtracking manually through several empty screens is boring and a waste of the player's time, especially when it includes things like the infection scan at the cave entry/exit. Be nice to your players, don't waste their time with long boring walks, add a fast travel option.

Fourth, sidenote: Do you need some pixel art? I'm a pixelartist and I've among other things created mods for Dungeons of Dredmor(the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, hermetic gadgetry, circus freak, mutant, crafter's helper, and swedish food mods).

I'd certainly be able to whip up some item icons for you in short order, just give me a list(not too long, I have a full time job, but I could certainly provide a couple of dozen icons).

[Kaerius]

I'm complaining about crafting because I often go craft-heavy, and have enough projects going on that it's really difficult to have the vendors spawn them all, and a lot of what they spawn is useless dreck. At the minimum I'm looking at crafting 4 or more weapons and 2 or more suits of armor. First 2 weapons in the 35-50 skill range, then again in the 70+ skill range. Same with armor, except only one per range. That's not even counting all the little side projects like grenades, goggles, cloaking devices, etc. It's a real pain to coordinate getting all of the pieces of even one item in +/- 10 quality or so if there's multiple randomized quality components, particularly applies to armor(Oh I need 4 steel plates in the 50-60 quality range for this set of metal armor, time to savescum Gort and Collin for an hour or two).

For galvanic vests btw, to clarify, I'm speaking of the crafting component, not ready-made galvanic armor vests, the ready-made armor is sold by vendors, but the component as far as I'm aware have never been(I've played every update for most of the past year, possibly they were in before december 2012).

The thing about tackle is that it staks infinitely, reduces your accuracy, and your action points. You can quite literally be stoped from having any chance of doing anything useful for the rest of the combat. (Oh look this turn I have 20 AP and -50% accuracy, wee! It only takes 4 shots to kill one of these, so in about 8 turns I can take one of them out! Unless they stack more on me, oh crap).

Slightly facetious, I've never survived my AP being reduced further than to 25. Already screwed earlier. And in many cases it's enough for them to reduce it enough to stop you from bursting for them to win the war of attrition(I usually have an 8.6mm marauder to do that with, so that's by the time they reduce my AP by 9, 4 stacks or so, IIRC).

I know I've read that poison ignores armor completely, but it appears you are correct. I seem to remember poison crossbow darts completely ignoring armor though, often dealing 30+ damage, when the regular bolts had trouble getting more than 5-10 through(especially since crossbows incur 125% mechanical threshold). Burrowers of course never run out of ammo, and give you two stacks of it per turn, per adult burrower, also they hit hard enough to go through most/all armor on every hit(I went in with some skill 76 metal armor, fully reinforced, 59%/18 mechanical, just now, didn't stop any attack, maybe fully reinforced tungsten armor can stop the occasional one), sidenote: I don't think they incur the 200% bonus vs ranged attacks that ceramic plated tactical vests provide.

Travel often means walking through 5+ rooms, for example to restock on ammo, repair kits, lockpicks, etc. Or just returning to SGS/Junkyard after a successful mission. It's disrespectful of the player's time, to borrow a phrase from TotalBiscuit(he recently lambasted Alien Rage for this sort of time wasting, though admitedly it was more extreme there).

[Kaerius]

Actually I think I mixed up the TB first impression videos, I was thinking of Lost Planet 3.

[Hety]

The biggest problem of crafting is the fact, that you dont have skillpoints for it. Hacking/Lockpicking are a must and you just cant live w/o them (no, really, who would leave all this stuff to rot in closed boxes?). After that comes stealth. Its not mandatory, but required to use the two above to their full potential. Thats 3. Then weapon skill. You need at least one, or you are screwed. Its not Fallout for ya, more like IWD. We age going down to four skills. And if you are willing to sacrifice ability to use Psi-stuff, all social skills and such you can get 4 skills left. Biology is a must (or you will waste all yer money on potions, which will cost helluvalot w/o social skills). Then pick 3 out of 4. Still not covering it in full.

Last nail to this coffin - level cap. Sorry, i'm not wasting my limited points on something, that will give me gear, that i can obtain by other means. I mean you can't use crafting instead of Psi abilities, but you can find the loot you need w/o crafting (and without wasting money on recipes and materials).

GG

[Kaerius]

That too, I'm perpetually running into the "not enough points for concept" when I'm character building, and indeed required skills and crafting is a major reason for that.

There would be a lot more freedom to build with enough points for just one more skill as well.

Even something simple as "Stealth+Crossbows" or "Melee+Metathermics" gets me pulling hair trying to fit what I need.

Required skills:
Lockpick, hacking, traps, 1 weapon skill.

That leaves you with 4 more skills to pick. Which can either be crafting, or something like stealth, psionics, a social skill, etc.

Stealth has the additional problem that you need to pick up evade and dodge(why are these separate skills? Ugh! Skill tax!) since you need to restrict yourself to some fairly weak armors, to avoid encumberance.

[UnLimiTeD]

Honestly, I did a Heavy Armour melee user with some PSI and social skills, and I did just fine.
Yeah, no lockpicking past the first hour, but I wasn't really short on money.
Without crafting, getting decent melee gear just... wasn't.
Back then there were no combat gloves or the like, though.

[Elhazzared]

Crafting probably needs another approuh no doubt. I'd see parts quallity gone myself, quallity depends on how well you can put things together, it makes more sense and it provides for less headaches for everyone, otherwise I can just completly ignore crafting, it's not like you really need it anyway.

The lack of points is something we all feel although I understand the need for specialisation, the problem with lacks of point often derive from a few things. Dodge and evade. Makes no sense to have it separated. Just as it makes no sense to have hacking and lockpick separated. Similarly it makes no sense for crafting to ask for 2 types of crafting to build items. And of course, 3 different areas for psi abillities to invest. At the end of the day all of this stops the player from really having even the slightest diversity.The best way I found to do the game was to get crossbows, the 3 psi skills, hacking, lockpicking and stealth and then you have 1 left which you normally want to be persuasion in order to get all quests and most options available. Even then you only need persuasion so far, after a certain point like 45 or 50 you can just invest into something else, but that's now, who knows with further development you might need higher persuasion for new situations.

I find it that for a crafter there is too much pain coming on for the lack of options.

[Hety]

The main problem is that game heavily relies on a few skills and you just cant live without them. On top of that a total skill points pool is limited which doesnt allow you to machi a char of ye dream if you wish to grind alot (like in F2, for example).

P.S.: is there a total skillpoints cap fro a skingle skills? Like 100 or smth like that?

[UnLimiTeD]

There always needs to be a reason to not skill into crafting, lockpicking, hacking, psi, etc.
You can do just fine without lockpicking or hacking, though you need one of them.
A single PSI ability is also really all you need for some utility and using those PSI points you have.
I haven't finished the game once with stealth yet.
Maybe crafting could just have a bit more synergy between disciplines.

[Elhazzared]

I'm sorry but I don't agree with you there. You cannot play without locking and hacking. In a game where loot is important you just cannot say no to loot. this is a very basic principle for me.

As for stealth... I feel the problem with the stealth system currently is the over reliance the game gives it. Ranged attacks (except psionics) are incredibly hard to hit with just a little bit of distance no matter what weapon or lighting conditions. So you can only shot very close up. this is not logical, especially when the sniper is not really that good at range. the sniper is best used about 1 square away, much like all other guns. Since getting into mid ranges always aggros the enemy, you need stealth to start a combat optimaly or at least without disadvantage. It's not that stealth is awesome, it's just that you really don't have a viable alternative to stealth if you want to start combat, especially against tough opponents.

Just one psi abillity isn't viable either and this is my reasoning. You don't have much starting points to distribute. So either you go full blown psionic and get 10 there, probably this means strength 3. Or you're not going into psionics at all and you get your will at 3 in order to make stats for more important stuff.

As for crafting the problem is not sinergy, it's that there is a lot of skills which are needed as well, crafting components can be better or worse and require more or less skill and worst, you need at least 2 crafting skills if not 3.

Also there is persuasion. While not a requirement I consider that being able to get all quests is necessary for me so persuasion is necessary for me.

[Elhazzared]

Well, there is pick-pocketing too but quite frankly it's not something I like. I don't really like to play thief so yeah. Besides while pickpocket can be good and at least as far as the alpha can carry you, the best stuff can be aquired from shops or crafted. i'm sure that further ahead the best stuff is either dropped or crafted and not sold at all. But again, I don't like playing thief and hacking/lockpicking is a requirement for loot which is a very important part of the game. Stealing is just stealing but to each their own I guess.

While you feel the current skills points are nice and that there isn't a need to max out any skills and that after a while you can just delve into other stuff, I cannot agree with you there. Some skills are not really meant to work like that in my opinion and while some may work like that. How exactly do we know when enough is enough? How do we know what is the max persuasion we'll ever need and stuff like that? At the end of the day just maxing a preset at least guarantess that you won't fail within it.

Again for the shooting bit. I've had targets at 7 square aways and even further too. I have all the requirements for the sniper rifle. I have at level 8 my guns maxed out and with the target under lights (and by under I mean standing right next to them) I don't get 95% ever. the best I got was a 78% at some 9 squares. I don't have night vision googles and I despise them. So much energy wasted for the bonus they give is ridiculous. where in the hell do night vision googles actually drain any bateries at all? They operate in a very small batery which lasts days of continuous use! It isn't even a point of balance on the googles and then again. Even perfect lighting conditions won't do for you to have any real range advantage in battles because again, even in optimal conditions, range still severely hampers your hitting chances... this is the reason I don't like using guns in this game. Psi abillities are really strong, they don't miss even if they can sometimes have a limited range but then again you are limited by weapon's effective range anyway, at least I can still do 12 squares or 15 without having a chance to miss. I have loads of damage into it if I fully spec towards psionics. I have tons of utillity in stuns, fears, multi target hit or area effect, I can have a nearly endless supply of "ammo" thanks to shroomhead but then again after the junkyard I can buy any quantity of psi-boosters anyway, I don't even need to craft them. When I finished the available content with my psiker I was sitting in 6 full stacks of coins and oe more nearly full... And let me add I did wasted a lot of money towards the end cause I was like... Well I got so much now that i don't really need to give a crap about spending.

Let me add that it's not psionics that are OP. They aren't. They still are just about enough to beat the available content cause I had to sweat blood to get through the junkyard, often having to spend 3 hours doing a single encounter until I managed though, it didn't helped it bugging out and through 2/3 of it they could just see me like I wasn't in stealth. It wasn't even a case of my stealth being low, it just doesn't goes from not having the eye on them to just completly red and besides after respawns it was working properly. The problem lies in weapon not being nearly good enough. About one of the few things that can really carry you through is crafting grenades becaue mark 3 can almost take out mutant dogs and mark 5 can almost take out mutants... If you don't rely on crafted grenades... Well quite frankly I don't see anyone not being a spiker really being able to do the junkyard. oh and let's not go over the GMS burrowers. You are barelly able to do it with a psiker and that is burning a ton of hypos and spending hours, going in and out and actually having to fight by the entrance. If after you completled the regular part of GMS you try to go fight the burrowers, forget it. It is impossible with guns and grenades.

Weapon need to be more efficient, you need to have better range on them. You need a sort of a learned special abillities list, much like the psiker has to go get some utillity out of weapons. Ammo needs to be cheaper. Durabillity needs to be improved more. Crafting needs to be more viable through losing the material quallity and instead quallity depends on the skill of the crafter. Also crafting needs to be more focused. Only one skill ever needed. one skill for all types of bombs and mines. One skill for all types of guns. One skill for all drgus and healing and so on.

This of course it's only my opinion so take it with a grain of salt.

[Styg]

Crafting is meant to include a bit of a luck factor when trying to acquire the right components and I think that makes it more interesting than just having everything available all the time. That said, it might be a bit easier to get a hold of the components in the future when more merchants are added. I'm also considering increasing the frequency merchant inventory refreshing.

All stacking effects are cap. This includes tackle as well (max 5 stacks if I remember correctly). Arguably it's still a bit too powerful, but I might tweak that in the future. Poison works exactly as you described, that is, the attack can be stopped with armor and if it's completely mitigated the DoT is not applied. Poision DoT stacks are also limited.

Fast travel won't be implemented. There will be means to move around the work such as boats, trains, etc.