Very impressed with the game, even in alpha state. I played with the most recent version available on steam.
I tried this approach: crossbow, melee, dodge, evade, hack, lockpick, stealth, 20 biology for doctor and then mechanic
Some things that were annoying or seemed out of whack:
1) Crossbow degradation. I've read the dev logs on why the degradation was implemented, so I understand that. But the rate is just too high per shot, at least for crossbow (haven't played with other weapons enough to tell). Occasional maintenance and repair would be fine, but it's really annoying as is. And economically I was already paying quite a bit to maintain some specialty bolts for the tougher battles (becomes more and more necessary as you play), with the constant repairs as well it seemed too much. Overall this made it less fun to play.
2) Recycle balance. Some tweaking is needed to make recycle effective I think. For one thing, the required skill levels to recycle something starts to inflate way too much as you continue to play, probably connected to item quality. Seriously, one 5mm Hawker might require 25 mech, and another might require 40 or more... and there's almost no difference between them except a point or two extra damage. I suggest there should be a threshold to allow recycling and then just allow it. If you like you could provide a chance at bonus stuff as your skill level increases above the threshold.
3) Explosives. I didn't see what they were like before the nerf, but the damage is pretty wimpy now. Or to be more accurate, they are useful for very early game, and then become weaker and weaker as you play, even switching to level 2 explosives (I never saw level 3). That's for grenades (I didn't try mines much), but TNT was even more disappointing. For example, in the jail break quest there was a certain sledgehammer guard that I found very difficult to eliminate. Nothing seemed to do much damage to him. So I figured - time to break out the TNT! I planted it outside the door of the guard's room, and then ran down the hall and stood in front of a camera. Timing was perfect, the two guards from that room were right by the TNT when it went off. But it didn't do much damage to them! That just seems... wrong.
4) Dodge and Evade. I kept these maxed, and am wondering if I would do that again. Dodge seemed to help a bit against weaker enemies, but I didn't notice more dangerous melee attacks missing much at all. Evade is harder to pin down, because distance probably comes into play with ranged attack misses too. But again, the things you really don't want to hit you still seem to always hit you. With one notable exception - burrowers did miss sometimes.
That's it for now - will continue to try things out a bit, especially as new content gets added. I stopped just before finding allies for the eels - I'm leveling up trying to figure out how much persuasion is needed to convince SGS (apparently more than 43...)
