Alpha 0.1.9.1 Feedback

[Railas]

First I want to say that I had a great time playing the alpha.
Fallout 3 became Skyrim with guns so I am very glad to see that somebody is saving the spirit of the original fallout. And he does a really good job with that.

criticism helps more than some nice words, so lets get started

I have played a melee/crafter/thrower character with high strength, metal armor and a hammer as main weapon.

- crafting a metal armor was a pain because there were no carrier vests available on any vendor and I had to wait for the stocks to reset two times untill I was able to buy one. Vendors should have this item more often.

- grenades may need a nerf. The best grenade (frag grenade V) one shots everything in the alpha

- Hammers with an energy consuming modification were very expensive to use and rapair a reduction in energy consumption could help. Maybe it would be also could if they could also be repaired with mechanical and electrical repair kits. Splitting the durability for eletronic parts of the hammer and the hammer itself would be another option. So I could use the hammer without energy if i want to so that only the mechanical durability deteriorates. An on-and-off switch would be nice, too ^^

- the skill biology needs a buff. it was barely usable and creating only 2 health hypos costs so many ressources that you could nearly buy 2 health hypos for the ingredients. Also extraction of reagents from organs did not really increase the value of the generated item. Overall this skill feld pointless. Maybe it would be interesting to connect loot from animals with this skill so that you could use it to get better value items from animals?

- killing animals is a losing business. The drops do not have enough value to pay for repairs of your equipment. this also means that there is no option to farm money in case you invested in the wrong equipment and do not have the money to buy other stuff. How about more respawning bandits or an equivalent to the caravans from fallout?

- borrowers were nearly unkillable with my class without using grenades. I had no movement points due to the armor and borrowers are really fast. The ran away, shot me and when I ran after them I have not had enough AP to swing with the hammer. They are immune to getting cought in a net, too. without the grenades one shotting them I would have not been able to kill them. Also their loot was worth very little. Can you make them slower or give a player an option to increase movement points somehow? Springs in boots did not work because the bonus was reduced to 0 by the heavy armour.
Also the area with borrowers where you have to save Jenny (I think) had dissapointing loot in the environment.

- disassembling items was a bit odd since leather armors gave about 15 pieces of fabric so you were never short in of fabric repair kits. because of all the rathound leather. However I kind of liked that. might not need fixing though it would be great if you could change the max stacks of parts for repair kits to 20 so that you do not need to split them into packs of 20 manually.

- The character Quinton wanted me to get him poison glands but this did not show up as a quest and I could not give the glands to him

- melee combat is a little bit buggy. Sometimes my character was standing right next to somebody but wanted to walk around him to hit him. this was reproducable with the respawning stalkers in the underground. They needed to stand close to a pillar in a narrow hallway for this to occur. I also had a bug when I was surrounded by burrower spawns. I could not use my melee attack on them any more when I was in a corner. Sometimes I could only attack one of the spawns around me, sometimes even none of them.

- I found stun-locking to be annoying, especially with the robots because each robot stuns you for at least two turns if you go in melee. Maybe some drug would be good that reduces the chance of getting stun-locked.

Alright, this was my criticism. I am aware thar this is an alpha and some rough edges are to be exptected. The game was great fun anyway I Loved the crafting system and the whole feeling of the game. Also the damage thresholds was one of the lost mechanics I really missed. They make a character feel badass.

May I ask when we can expect the next content update? What will it include?

BTW, the captcha here is extremely annoying -.-

[Elhazzared]

Burrowers are indeed disapoint, the quest to save jenny is ok though, you can get some loot out of it, the burrowers in GMS are incredibly disapoint and it's utherly useless to go there. the only thing you'll find in that place is a lot of pain. Ok so the XP is okish but if you're not a psi-user the waste of ammo/grenades is not going to be worth it. Even as a psi-user it's probably for the better if you level up quite a bit before doing that just for the sake of doing that. I feel it is rather disapointing that you were searching what was behind that door for something that would probably be very valuable and what's there is a dead body with not much to salvage. It does makes a player feel cheated of his time to go inside the burrower's chamber in GMS.

As for balances of crafters and gun users and psikers. Well I've learned that grenades are incredibly powerful, I don't feel they are OP because even if they can be very good, you'll always be limited in how many you'll have anyway. So gunners which will go for grenades, machinegun and sniper will spend a lot of money, by end content of the alpha you'll probably still have a stack of coins and that's it. Mellee I'm not sure but they will probably have a bit more since they don't spend pornographic values on ammo. Psikers (which normally acompany with crossbow) are increadibly cheap to maintain, they don't really have a big alpha damage, but they have utillity in return. You'll be swimming in money with them.

[Kaerius]

- Quinton - not sure what you mean? He gives you a task to get some rathound tissue samples, but that's it.

I think he means when you've done GMS and don't have enough persuasion to get Gorky to give you the key, you can talk to Quinton who'll rave about how he needs burrower venom glands for his research, chews Gorky out, and Gorky will then give you the key.

[Railas]

@ Elhazzared:
I forgot about the burrowers in the GMS. There was basicly no loot worth mentioning :/ How about making burrowers drop chitin plates that can be used as component? ^^
I could not finish the quest about Jenny because I have not had persuation or intimidation. It was quite costly to kill the borrowers there and getting very little loot for it.
I see your point about the grenades. I guess they may not necessarily need a nerf. lets how the game evolves when the next content is released.


@ epeli:
- Thanks about the captcha info
- happy to hear that something about component vests will change
- I found crafting health boosters not exactly cheap because of the value of the materials you need to craft them and you often have to buy some components because they drop rarely, too.
3x times blood, value 195
1x saliva 85
1x anticoagulant 50
2x syringe, bought : 210
5x ampule, bought: 175

overall you have to spend 715 to produce 2 health hypos.

2 health hypis have a value of 240, if you buy them without mercantile you pay 840

- I think there was something missunderstood about my biology suggestion. I would like to see biology give you a higher chance to receive items from animals. Or better quality leather or something.

- You ware right about the generic humans respawning, but these are low level. Would have loved to see some of the higher ones ^^

- Yea, maybe grenades are ok for borrowers. However i thought it was not the optimal solution to stand there for 4 rounds waiting for your grenade to cool down if there is a second borrower. It would help a lot if the net would work.

- you are right about killing weak creeps cheaply ^^ I used a leather glove because it could be repaired from the fabric craps of rathound leatherarmor. This was actually cost efficient against animals. However your other equipment got damaged, too.

- about the quinton-quest, Kaerius already explained what I meant.

@ Kaerius: Thanks

[Elhazzared]

Fortunatly for me. I really like psikers even though they don't kill enemies as quickly as say, people with good grenades, sniper and assualt rifles. However if you want cheap killing, there is no mistake there. Psi can be refilled by standing next to mushrooms, bolts are cheap and the low usage of a crossbow will mean the durabillity of it will always last very long.

by end game my first psiker had like 6 full stacks of coins and a 7th nearly full lol.

[Styg]

I will take a look at the animal component prices and the like to make sure that crafting health hypos is more economical. Also you will be able to craft some very high level meds in the future (such as morphine shots) which will definitively pay off.

Burrowers are meant to be hard, but they are also optional in the current content and should only be engaged if you want a challenge. You get plenty of in-game warnings that you should stay away from them otherwise. Chitin armor is something that I've considered in the past, but I'm not sold on it. If I'm to implement it I need to find a way to make it fit the setting and not just look like the out of place fantasy armor.

You can use Sprint feat to augment your movement if you're low on movement points in your build.

You don't need to separate stacks of scrap when crafting, it will automatically use only 20 for each repair kit.

The wheeled bots are the only enemy in the game capable of stun-locking (because only 'incapacitated' effect doesn't apply temporary immunity) so I don't think it's that much of an issue.

On/off switch on powered weapons is something I've considered in the past. It might be added at one point.

Considering the future updates and content, you'll have to wait for a dev log. I'm currently in the process of expanding my business a bit so my development time will be quite limited for the next couple of weeks.

[Elhazzared]

I managed to do the GMS with my psiker right after I finished the GMs compound. Granted this was not weasy, I fought near exit so I could go in and out, heal and have the mushrooms of the nearby cave in GMS recover my psi passively.  Still the beef I have with it is not that I don't like a challenge or that there isn't enough warnings. It's that there is supposed to be valuable stuff down there and in reallity all there is, is a whole bunch of nothing. Rewards should be adjusted to difficulty I belive. Something that hard should be well rewarding.

As for chitin armor. You don't really need to make a chtin armor, but you could say, have chitin plates to be added to armor. Much like placing ceramic plates inside a kevlar to add layers of protection.

[Kaerius]

Chitin armor is something that I've considered in the past, but I'm not sold on it. If I'm to implement it I need to find a way to make it fit the setting and not just look like the out of place fantasy armor.

How about making it an alternative to ceramic plates on tactical vests? Less encumberance, less mechanical bonus, but perhaps a bonus(+25/50%) against melee?

[Railas]

I will take a look at the animal component prices and the like to make sure that crafting health hypos is more economical. Also you will be able to craft some very high level meds in the future (such as morphine shots) which will definitively pay off.

Burrowers are meant to be hard, but they are also optional in the current content and should only be engaged if you want a challenge. You get plenty of in-game warnings that you should stay away from them otherwise. Chitin armor is something that I've considered in the past, but I'm not sold on it. If I'm to implement it I need to find a way to make it fit the setting and not just look like the out of place fantasy armor.

You can use Sprint feat to augment your movement if you're low on movement points in your build.

You don't need to separate stacks of scrap when crafting, it will automatically use only 20 for each repair kit.

The wheeled bots are the only enemy in the game capable of stun-locking (because only 'incapacitated' effect doesn't apply temporary immunity) so I don't think it's that much of an issue.

On/off switch on powered weapons is something I've considered in the past. It might be added at one point.

Considering the future updates and content, you'll have to wait for a dev log. I'm currently in the process of expanding my business a bit so my development time will be quite limited for the next couple of weeks.

Cheers for taking my feedback into account

i just had an odd but interesting idea about drops from borrowers. How about using the carpace and a poison gland together with some explosives to make a poisoning grenade? Something similar could be done with acid monsters later in the game, too. These items could be crafted as a hybrid of the biology and chemistry skill...
Also, you could use rathound teeth as shrapnel for good measure

about the sprint skill, I think this only applies for two rounds when you start the battle from stealth. Trying to be stealthy with a metal armour does not work well and two rounds are usually not enough to kill a burrower.

Glad to hear that you are having a business. Time to sell it and start working full time on this little gem of a game You may actually make quite some money with the game. I already know a bunch of people who have an eye on it and I am positive that reviewers could give high scores.

[Styg]

Heh, this game IS the business I'm expanding.

[Railas]

Heh, this game IS the business I'm expanding.

Wonderful. This makes me change my mind. Please don't sell it
BTW if you ever want to do a translation into German I may be able to help.

[Styg]

For now I'm letting Sprint be unaffected by encumbrance modifier. I believe even slow armor character should have some gap closer available to them.

[Styg]

- I found crafting health boosters not exactly cheap because of the value of the materials you need to craft them and you often have to buy some components because they drop rarely, too.
3x times blood, value 195
1x saliva 85
1x anticoagulant 50
2x syringe, bought : 210
5x ampule, bought: 175

overall you have to spend 715 to produce 2 health hypos.

2 health hypis have a value of 240, if you buy them without mercantile you pay 840

Reduced the base price of syringe from 30 to 10.
Reduced the base price of ampule from 10 to 5.
Upped the max stack size of both that can be found as loot (indirectly reducing their rarity).

[UnLimiTeD]

That's some good news. 

[Railas]

Thanks for implementing that And for the hint about "sprint"