My list of things

[Idioticus]

I will be adding things to this list, hopefully I'll bring something new to the table.

1. You should get a starting weapon based on your stats.
Instead of always starting with a pistol, you get a starting weapon for the highest offensive skill.
Should also apply to grenades, mines and such, as long as you have enough points invested in them.

2. Repair kits (should be affected by mechanics/electronics skill and indirectly by mercantile).
Instead of repairing a fixed amount of durability, it should repair based on the value of the item.
For example, let's say a weapon has 300 max durability, and when fully repaired is valued at 10000 credits. If the gun is at 30 durability, and is valued at 200 credits, the basic repair kit will repair 1000 credits worth of durability when used on it, bringing it to 70 durability and value to 1200 credits (numbers are made up).

What will this do?
It makes cheap starter weapons cheap to repair, high-end stronger expensive weapons very expensive to repair, mechanics/electronics to affect repair kits (e.g. 1 point in the skill increases the value which a repair kit repairs by 1%) and mercantile will reduce the cost of the repair kits indirectly increasing the repair/cost ratio.
Last but not least, it'll make "found a gun in low durability, sells for 200 -> buy a repair kit for 900 -> repair gun making it worth 3000 credits" available only to those with high mech/elec/merc skill.

3. More secret areas.
I've been running around with 10 perception (7 + 3 from trait) and I've only come across 1 hidden door after the initial trap doors in the outposts quest area.

4. V.A.T.S. style targeting.
I will refrain from using sexual innuendos in describing how awesome it would be.
Practical reasons:
Means that Psi is no longer just another gun and psi boosters the ammo, if you can aim where you shoot and not where you Psi.

5. Allow the player to beat Ezra in a contest of the mind.
Not necessarily becoming more powerful than him, but with enough will and thought control, one should be able to capitalize on the moment of surprise Ezra had, and beat him.

6. Different beginning.
You should never separate the player from his avatar, the discussion in the room at the start makes no sense, I shouldn't know what they're talking.
New start:
they haul your ass to their base from some place you've never left, which would explain why you're absolutely oblivious of the world outside.

Earthquake hits, damages your original home's defenses and riles up some mutants who migrate and destroy everything in their path. Everybody's dying and you escape with whoever's left, blow up some tunnels behind you, trapping the mutants there, at least for now. Thanks to being ambushed by rathounds and other beasts you're left as the sole survivor (point is you have to be the sole survivor because you can't have any past connections anymore). You get found by Gorsky's team and they bring you to SGS, and eventually you go through Tanner's tests and are accepted as a member.

Could also be that a diplomatic team from SGS was already at your old home when the earthquake hit, explaining how you escaped to SGS and not having the need to explain anything.

Or you emerge from your growth tank and go from there.

7. Unique weapons.
go through the toughest monsters just to get that Billy-Bob's 5mm pew pew or Bruno's electric crowbar.

[Idioticus]

2. As far as I know, Styg intentionally made the repair kits work the way they currently are (common & cheap to buy, no skill requirements) because everyone needs them, not just crafters. As a side effect, you can make some extra buck by repairing valuable gear yourself before selling them off. There might be some room for economy tweaks here, but nothing too drastic. Personally, I'd rather have repair kits restore n durability rather than n value.

Problem is, the kits are not cheap early and later in the game you will have more money than you need and using a kit on a weak gun is relatively much more expensive than using it on a stronger one.


Basically, you have 2 things screwing over new characters, while you also have no real currency sink for the later stages of the game.

Having the repair kits work on value would help early game, while also providing a currency sink for later game.

[Idioticus]

bump

[Elhazzared]

Actually no. Repair kits are worth their value on almost every game since early game. They are not worth on hammers or knives but on guns they are. I will repair nearly everything that will turn into a profit for me to repair. I may not be able to aford a ton of repair kits at the start but that's alright, I will probably not need more than 3 or 4 in me to repair, sell and restock with some gain... It's really just a case of save and load to test where is it worth to spend a repair kit.

As for starting weapon. I kinda agree and don't. The starting pistol I had no clue it needed no skills but yeah, I should cause no matter what skill I take it always seams to give me decent hitting chances up close. Still when I put points into guns the chances do go up a bit so yeah. You got a gun, then you get a crossbow for free from the quest of quinton. Basicly you lack a mellee weapon but punches are actually pretty damn decent. They don't hit as hard as a knife but you make 5 attacks so it isn't so bad though yeah, maybe a knife to start. I also always defended to start with a 20/4 armor rather than the extra crapy one we get at the very beggining. The one thing I will not agree with is starting with grenades. That early on even the weakest grenade one shots everything and grenades are pretty cheap as they are and if you have the skills to craft them. They are so dirty cheap that's laughable. At best some caltrops to throw.

I agree on the mine detection and also, disarming traps feels plain wrong to me. Sure it gives XP but quite frankly, if I managed to disarm the trap I should get it so I am able to use it where I want or sell it.

I'm not sure there should be too many secret areas. I doubt it would make sense there was secret areas at every corner and it would also be unfair to people who don't go heavy on perception to be missing a shit ton of stuff. they'll miss a few things but overall not too much that it can't be overlooked.

[Kaerius]

wiki traps page - You get the trap item if your traps skill is 20 points greater than the minimum skill to disarm it.

No, you do not. Wiki is wrong. Perhaps it's a bug, but you never get any trap regardless of how high your trap skill is(possible exception if you planted it yourself).

[Idioticus]

edit: I didn't notice the OP had new points in it.

3. wiki traps page - There are two formulas for trap detection value, the greater of the two is used:
"Pure detection" equals 75% of your regular detection value.
"Hybrid detection" equals 50% of your regular detection value plus 75% of your effective trap skill.

Detection from 10 perception should be plenty for the traps currently in-game. Still, it may take a few seconds to detect traps, so you might accidentally run into some before noticing them.

4. there are plenty of secret areas, some are listed in the wiki

disarming traps feels plain wrong to me. Sure it gives XP but quite frankly, if I managed to disarm the trap I should get it so I am able to use it where I want or sell it.

wiki traps page - You get the trap item if your traps skill is 20 points greater than the minimum skill to disarm it.

This was in the house where the weird disc is.
I stepped on a mine -> died -> loaded game -> stood next to the trap for a minute -> didn't detect it.

Either perception doesn't work or the mines have insane detection requirements, in which case I'd still need to pump stats into traps to see them.

[Elhazzared]

No, any traps in play from he game are never returned to you. I've tried this multiple times and it never gives you the trap. Maybe it's just the ones you place as Kaerius said.

Also yeah, it's a weird thing with pure detection too. i've passed traps by, even stood close to them for a very long time and never detected them only to detect them at a later time when I passed by the location again but without raising my perception or trap skills.

[Elhazzared]

For the trap detection I cannot reliably reproduce it, it seams entirelly random when it wants to show and when it doesn't so yeah The problem is maybe because there is a hybrid detection system and is messing something somewhere but I really haven't noticd a patern as to it.

As for the traps... Well, I haven't tried exactly like that, but i'd imagine a fairly high level of traps would very easly get me the traps north east of GMS and it doesn't. Note that with a fairly low skill I can disarm them already. Idealistly it wouldn't need 20 more points. Really if you disarm a trap you should just be able to take it, even if you just have barelly enough skill. the trap is already disarmed so it shouldn't just disapear in thin air.

[Elhazzared]

Maybe, but when I finished the game for the first time it went like this. Entry through the wormhole. Any traps in the lower part were impossible to see with perception 7 (effective 10 if snooper helps with that too and I feel it should judging by the description). One I got into the upper part, i couldn't see traps in a part of the map and in another part I could again (even if I leveled up, the traps in the upper part are much higher level than the ones in the lower. I had returned to the main junkyard a few times to sell stuff and recover psi energy and never noticed it. I think that only after I managed to clear the whole depot A was I able to see all traps.

[Idioticus]

Hmm... Snooping: "Increases perception by 3 for the purpose of detecting hidden passages and other secrets."
Pretty sure that's only for finding secrets. Compare and contrast with Paranoia's "Detection increased by 20%"
I'm not sure about this, but I think finding secrets is based directly on perception rather than detection.

Detection from 7 perception alone probably won't be enough to detect all traps, unless you're a bit overleveled for the area.

7 perception is still pretty high though, unless detection grows exponentially with it.
Either way, detecting traps shouldn't have anything to do with traps skill. A blind man cannot see a mine no matter how skilled he is at placing them.

Also, new thing on the list.

[Elhazzared]

I'd call a trap in the ground a secret. It's secretly waiting to blow up your face lol. But yeah it might not work for it.

EDIT: Targetable spots would be a bit dirty in this game. Just look at psionics. You have 0 miss chances, do you really want to say psikers can't miss and even target their attacks? Talk about OP lol.

[Idioticus]

EDIT: Targetable spots would be a bit dirty in this game. Just look at psionics. You have 0 miss chances, do you really want to say psikers can't miss and even target their attacks? Talk about OP lol.

I specifically pointed out how Psi abilities wouldn't be able to target anything.

you can aim where you shoot and not where you Psi.

Either way, detecting traps shouldn't have anything to do with traps skill.

Also, new thing on the list.

Trivia: trap detection used to be based only on perception. It was changed a few versions ago. I can see good in both systems, but I think the current is better. It makes perception less of a mandatory attribute and also makes traps skill more useful.

Trap detection is more of a convenience than a necessity.
Perhaps this system would be the best:
Perceptions allows you to detect traps.
Trap skill increases the time it takes for a trap to explode and allows you to disarm them.

This way you can have high perception and avoid traps by not going near them, or have high trap skill and not need any perception, because you can walk on top of a trap and have enough time to run away or disarm it.

I don't think V.A.T.S. style targeting would work very well for Underrail, since it has many feats that sort of replace it (kneecap shot, dirty kick, execute, aimed shot, snipe, etc)

This can easily be remedied.
kneecap shot: if it hits, double the crippling effect. No need to target.
Dirty kick: stays the same, no need to target.
Execute: extra damage and no accuracy penalty proportional to the amount gained/loss by having to target a head.
Aimed shot: stays the same.

Really, it's not an impossible task. And I'd consider it an immense increase in the value of the game.

[Elhazzared]

But if you add it and say, screw Psi because it never misses, then Psi falls out of balance.

[Idioticus]

bump for list update