Infusion suggestions

[harperfan7]

A reason to have a con score between 3 and 9:  you can have 1 active drug status (jumping bean, adrenaline, morphine, etc) for each point of con, more than that and you suffer a debuff of some sort (sick, over-medicated, etc) or maybe you just can't take more drugs
if you want to be harsh, make it 1 status per 2 points of con
Also, you could increase benefical drug durations for higher con characters and increase drug cool-downs for lower con characters (and lengthen debuffs, like adrenaline fatigue).

It bugs me that you can't jump down to or up from rails to the platforms on either side.  Could be an agility check, but everywhere along the platforms. 

I think it would be fitting if strength lowered your effective armor penalty a teeny bit.  People might take higher strength to reach certain thresholds (like 15% for nimble) with a given component combination.  It also gives people more reason to increase strength besides melee damage and metal armor (and countering crippling strike in metal armor).  Carry weight is there, but I don't think anybody is increasing strength to increase carry capacity.

Kevlar (as it is) and antithermic should have their armor penalties switched.  Antithermic is VERY good for just +5% assuming you aren't a stealth build or aren't currently concerned with stealth, whereas kevlar is awful on leather armor and decent on tacvests, being "good" only on very heavy tacvests.  This also kinda makes blast more appealing since if you're going 10% for heat protection you might instead go 15% for explosion protection in general.

I think it would be fitting if tungsten knives required 4 strength, and .44 hammerers require 4 or 5.  For the knives I just think it makes sense; there's no real balance concern considering that tichrome knives are probably superior (however there is the crippling strike problem; it would be fair to require 3 str for regular knives).  For pistols, there's little reason to use anything but a .44 at the moment; requiring 4-5 str might motivate people to use lighter calibers on their gunslingers, and for those who do take 5 to use hammerers, well now they qualify for steadfast aim at least. 

I think it would be interesting if robots came in different metal types and had their stats change to reflect it (and their appearance would indicate what metal they're made from).  Steel would be the most common, but tungsten robots would be slower and better-armored, whereas tichrome robots would be faster and less-armored (but have better heat/energy resist).  Likewise, robots ought to sometimes drop corresponding metal plates when they "die", with stronger robots dropping better qualities. 

You've said before that you want to do something about energy shields; what if they affected the outgoing damage on your ranged (including psi) attacks? and maybe lowered your throwing accuracy?  You can still just wait until the end of your turn to activate your shield, but you can't do that on subsequent turns. 
Maybe active energy shields just lower your effective guns/xbow/throwing/psi skills based on how much they protect.

A big change that would help balance the game (and give it much more tactical depth) is an overwatch/readied-actions system.  It would certainly help close the gap between fast builds and tanky builds. 

Tying in to that suggestion:  what if grenades could be bounced off walls/around corners? perhaps with a fuse delay?  This would help deal with overwatching enemies and give characters some more area denial options (at least against intelligent enemies), and of course it would be used against the player as well.  It would also give you a way of "nerfing" grenades by making it much harder to bounce/time grenades with lower throwing skill, in addition to general placement accuracy.  As it stands, you throw grenades at clumped enemies almost like a mage fireball instead of something resembling their real-life use; irl you don't see a group of enemies in the open and throw a nade, you shoot them; grenades are mostly for enemies around corners or behind walls.  Also, if you "cook" a grenade by activating it with the intention of throwing it on your next turn, but you get stunned or incap'd before then...

I think item qualities should be lowered across the board by about a third, at all stages of the game.  q160 should be max-tier end-game quality. 

TM needs the nerfbat and everybody knows it.  Really it's just LTI, contraction, and stasis.  LTI could be a simple fix, like increasing it's duration cooldown by 1 or 2.  Contraction is just too good, even with it's occasional drawback; I made a thread a long time ago about how I think it should be a feat that lets you cast dilation on yourself for the opposite effect and requires 7 will; if not that then do something more than it's current drawback at least (perhaps it's drawback always occurs, but is weaker with higher skill).  Stasis is strong, but what makes it OP is it extends beneficial durations by another round (on top of basically letting you have two turns in a row and wasting enemy buff durations); if it just didn't do that, if your buff durations didn't extend into your free turn, it would be noticeably weaker (but still very strong). 
However, people also say that you can handle anything in the game with distortion/ripple.  I don't have any ideas on what to do about that, if anything.

Lastly, and this isn't a suggestion, it's just an idea:  I drive forklifts at my job, and seeing all the unusable forklifts in the game has always kinda bothered me.  What if there was a spot in a dungeon that is blocked by big heavy stuff (like stacked crates) that could be moved with a high strength check, or you could repair a nearby broken-down forklift with a mechanics/electronics check and operate it to get rid of the obstruction?  I know the crane in the waterway facility is like this, but still I'd like to see it. 

[Barry]

Contraction is just too good, even with it's occasional drawback; I made a thread a long time ago about how I think it should be a feat that lets you cast dilation on yourself for the opposite effect and requires 7 will; if not that then do something more than it's current drawback at least (perhaps it's drawback always occurs, but is weaker with higher skill).

I really just wish there was a better reason to increase TM other than to reduce the chance for a drawback. I support the idea of having it always give a drawback, but I also think the effects it gives should increase with TM, starting at 10AP and ending at 25AP at like, 300 effective TM, and instead of a feat that increases the action points granted it's a feat that drastically reduces the drawback and requires Will/Intelligence. It would tie really well into the "to manipulate time, one has to let time manipulate it" thematic, because you'll need a very big investment of points to make it good, and when you do make it good it becomes very strong.
I agree with some of the changes in the list, although...

Kevlar (as it is) and antithermic should have their armor penalties switched.  Antithermic is VERY good for just +5% assuming you aren't a stealth build or aren't currently concerned with stealth, whereas kevlar is awful on leather armor and decent on tacvests, being "good" only on very heavy tacvests.  This also kinda makes blast more appealing since if you're going 10% for heat protection you might instead go 15% for explosion protection in general.

It doesn't make any sense, Kevlar is meant to be a very heavy material while the Antithermic one is mostly rather thin sheets of heat-blocking material. Explosion resistance is very good for avoiding one-shots, but it gets underused because both Evasion and shields can avoid/block the bulk of the damage.

I think item qualities should be lowered across the board by about a third, at all stages of the game.  q160 should be max-tier end-game quality.

I think the quality system used is shoddy, I'd rather have a tier system going from 1 to 10-20, and maybe extremely rare tier (max + 1) components with extra effects, found usually through bosses but also sometimes through other means like deconstructing high-end weapons, rather than the current RNG-heavy system. Hell, one of the big reasons I heard people use Cheat Engine for is so that they can refresh the merchants until they sell max-quality components.

Tying in to that suggestion:  what if grenades could be bounced off walls/around corners? perhaps with a fuse delay?  This would help deal with overwatching enemies and give characters some more area denial options (at least against intelligent enemies), and of course it would be used against the player as well.  It would also give you a way of "nerfing" grenades by making it much harder to bounce/time grenades with lower throwing skill, in addition to general placement accuracy.  As it stands, you throw grenades at clumped enemies almost like a mage fireball instead of something resembling their real-life use; irl you don't see a group of enemies in the open and throw a nade, you shoot them; grenades are mostly for enemies around corners or behind walls.  Also, if you "cook" a grenade by activating it with the intention of throwing it on your next turn, but you get stunned or incap'd before then...

The way grenades are implemented is very weird, they should be overhauled altogether. Yours is not a bad idea but I don't think it would be feasible if the current combat approach of "kill your enemies as fast as possible before they kill you" will still happen in the game, it would only help in the few scenarios where the enemy AI is going behind a corner after firing at you. If an overhaul is not going to happen, then I think the best solution to reconcile the two would be to have a new component to grenades that determines whether it's going to explode on impact (think contact fuzes) or if it's going to wait a turn or two before doing so, after all there is a Digital Timer in the game.

[Tytyger]

4 str tungsten knife is good idea since its best dagger, nerf it a bit.About shields i think they just need to improve other qualities and nerf a converter a bit, make shield worth toggle off in midst of the fight, dissipation should be 25 percent or more for turn and make amplifier like stasis for one turn, it should grant ultimate protection nothing can beat beside melee or emp.Vest balance really not bothers me so i dont see why should stay as it is.There is already reactive mechanics like traps, caltrops, gas grenades so i dont see need in those new fancy shmancy overwatch mechanics.Item quality changed for tiers would make it better, finding final tier of stuff will be much more exciting compared wow 137 padding in trash bin.

[ItsChon]

A reason to have a con score between 3 and 9:  you can have 1 active drug status (jumping bean, adrenaline, morphine, etc) for each point of con, more than that and you suffer a debuff of some sort (sick, over-medicated, etc) or maybe you just can't take more drugs
if you want to be harsh, make it 1 status per 2 points of con
Also, you could increase benefical drug durations for higher con characters and increase drug cool-downs for lower con characters (and lengthen debuffs, like adrenaline fatigue).

I like the sentiment behind making Constitution a stat with more nuance than just 9 or 3 but I don't think too much needs to be done outside of lengthening debuffs for low con people and perhaps making buffs last longer at like 7 constitution to incentivize some build hybridization. If you give the benefit at 7 Con, then there are multiple tank feats already (Juggernaut, Conditioning, Fast Metabolism, Stoicism) to make that Con checkpoint make sense. If you make the debuffs too harsh for low Con people I think that'll fuck up some of the more suboptimal builds and will pigeon hole people into using certain builds.

A big change that would help balance the game (and give it much more tactical depth) is an overwatch/readied-actions system.  It would certainly help close the gap between fast builds and tanky builds.

It sounds like a nice idea and gives the game tactical depth but I don't see how this would work with how the engine currently is. IK Infusion is getting a major engine overhaul but I feel like this kind of brings the game closer towards a XCOM type game versus a turn based RPG. I can see it really slowing some things done and turning a lot of encounters into major slogs. as well as just changing the overall feel of the game.

Only real points I thought worth making as the rest of the suggestions are great.

[ShoggothWhisperer]

I’d think con would be more valuable if there were con requirements to use certain drugs/consumables, where a 3 con individual would be so sickly that their body couldn’t handle the drugs. Stuff like adrenaline requiring 4 con, morphine requiring 5 con, junkyard surprise requiring 6 con, ect. Make planning builds a lot more interesting.

[ItsChon]

Yeah but think of how many builds there are that are stat hungry as is and barely viable for dominating without using any cheese tactics. Think of glass cannon Hammer Builds that rely on Adrenaline to properly use Balor's Hammer in the earlier levels or even more niche builds that try to combine two less meta concepts.

As someone who has experimented a lot with making purposefully sub optimal builds that have a very specific style of play or fill some sort of arbitrary role playing purpose decided before the play through, it's already difficult to make certain things work with other things, and adding further restrictions will only make creative build crafting harder.

Instead of slapping on more restrictions to make things interesting, why not slap on some further benefits. If you're worried about those benefits making the game easier, try to make niche concepts work on Dominating.

[ShoggothWhisperer]

Yeah but think of how many builds there are that are stat hungry as is and barely viable for dominating without using any cheese tactics. Think of glass cannon Hammer Builds that rely on Adrenaline to properly use Balor's Hammer in the earlier levels or even more niche builds that try to combine two less meta concepts.

As someone who has experimented a lot with making purposefully sub optimal builds that have a very specific style of play or fill some sort of arbitrary role playing purpose decided before the play through, it's already difficult to make certain things work with other things, and adding further restrictions will only make creative build crafting harder.

Instead of slapping on more restrictions to make things interesting, why not slap on some further benefits. If you're worried about those benefits making the game easier, try to make niche concepts work on Dominating.

Balor’s hammer builds are a bad example to use, since there are so many ways to boost str (vit powder, regalia, food, ect) that you need a max of 15 base str to use effectively. Right now Underrail heavily rewards killing enemies as fast as possible, so most people either run 3 con or 9 con for SI. Styg has already talked about nerfing crits in infusion, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the glass cannon play style also gets nerfed. Con doesn’t effect skills or damage most of the time, so adding in con requirements for certain consumables gives a real downside for conlets.

[ShoggothWhisperer]

Yeah but think of how many builds there are that are stat hungry as is and barely viable for dominating without using any cheese tactics. Think of glass cannon Hammer Builds that rely on Adrenaline to properly use Balor's Hammer in the earlier levels or even more niche builds that try to combine two less meta concepts.

As someone who has experimented a lot with making purposefully sub optimal builds that have a very specific style of play or fill some sort of arbitrary role playing purpose decided before the play through, it's already difficult to make certain things work with other things, and adding further restrictions will only make creative build crafting harder.

Instead of slapping on more restrictions to make things interesting, why not slap on some further benefits. If you're worried about those benefits making the game easier, try to make niche concepts work on Dominating.

Balor’s hammer builds are a bad example to use, since there are so many ways to boost str (vit powder, regalia, food, ect) that you only need a max of 15 base str to use Balor’s consistently. Right now Underrail heavily rewards killing enemies as fast as possible, so most people either run 3 con or 9 con for SI. Styg has already talked about nerfing crits in infusion, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the glass cannon play style also gets nerfed. Con doesn’t effect skills or damage most of the time, so adding in con requirements for certain consumables gives a real downside for conlets.

[Tytyger]

a reason to go con over 10 is main issue, for now con have almost zero scaling

[harperfan7]

I think bodybuilding is alright, and tempered electricity is great for tanks
plus you get better conditioning and stoicism

[ItsChon]

Yeah but think of how many builds there are that are stat hungry as is and barely viable for dominating without using any cheese tactics. Think of glass cannon Hammer Builds that rely on Adrenaline to properly use Balor's Hammer in the earlier levels or even more niche builds that try to combine two less meta concepts.

As someone who has experimented a lot with making purposefully sub optimal builds that have a very specific style of play or fill some sort of arbitrary role playing purpose decided before the play through, it's already difficult to make certain things work with other things, and adding further restrictions will only make creative build crafting harder.

Instead of slapping on more restrictions to make things interesting, why not slap on some further benefits. If you're worried about those benefits making the game easier, try to make niche concepts work on Dominating.

Balor’s hammer builds are a bad example to use, since there are so many ways to boost str (vit powder, regalia, food, ect) that you need a max of 15 base str to use effectively. Right now Underrail heavily rewards killing enemies as fast as possible, so most people either run 3 con or 9 con for SI. Styg has already talked about nerfing crits in infusion, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the glass cannon play style also gets nerfed. Con doesn’t effect skills or damage most of the time, so adding in con requirements for certain consumables gives a real downside for conlets.

If you can't use Adrenaline with 3 Constitution than you probably can't use the even harsher Vitality Powder. Regardless, I just threw out a random build. There are plenty of other less optimized builds that need every statpoint if they want to deal enough damage to make do in Dominating.

[RewRatt]

A reason to have a con score between 3 and 9:  you can have 1 active drug status (jumping bean, adrenaline, morphine, etc) for each point of con, more than that and you suffer a debuff of some sort (sick, over-medicated, etc) or maybe you just can't take more drugs
if you want to be harsh, make it 1 status per 2 points of con
Also, you could increase benefical drug durations for higher con characters and increase drug cool-downs for lower con characters (and lengthen debuffs, like adrenaline fatigue).

You ever saw Junkies? Do they look healthy to you? They have so much drugs in their system, that you could probably get high on their sweat  😆🤣🤣
This is a crack-head simulator after all. More so, with Oddity XP 🤣🤣

[Tytyger]

80 hp is nice for dom but nothing on normal, also feat very uninspired, about other they scale a bit but its not worth it to pump your con to 20, at least with agility you can jump around fetid marsh

I think bodybuilding is alright, and tempered electricity is great for tanks
plus you get better conditioning and stoicism

[Tytyger]

make more attachments for gear, like built-in gas masks with megaphones for helmets, it will make harder to make non-crafting gear unique but i believe in your creativity.Proper loading for crossbows, not being able aim shot with not-normal bolts is outrageous

[dddmemaybe]

Before I start replying, I have to mention that the thread title sounds like leather armor infusions, so it's a bit misleading. Maybe change to "Assorted gameplay suggestions?"

Paragraph 2(op): Agi 7(imo) check to universal go up and down the Railway Ledges makes sense but awkward to implement the specific squares you can do it on unless it's smeared across all of Underrail (which just might be ok.. I'm not sure.)

Paragraph 3(op): Strength reduction on armor penalty sounds fantastic. Few builds that use Metal Armor S7-8+ are very amazing overall right now, especially when considering scary ranged psionic threats. I think this is a fantastic buff that helps especially the beefy sledgehammer builds(which are in a weak spot overrall for offensive attack-viable capabilities) the most. Strength as an attribute overall only has 2 related skills so far and I think it overall has great room for a specified buff here. I would implement it as a feat, similar to feats like High-Technicalities but implemented for heavy armor builds. Maybe requires Str 7, "Walking Fortress"?, and reduces armor penalty by 5% per point of strength above 4, occurs after other reductions and is multiplicative? It makes a lot of sense from a logical stand point of a beef-man charging in full-plate or something like that. (specialization should multiply off the the multiplication so you don't reach 100% penalty reduction. maybe every spec point separately multiplies armor penalty by 0.9 again each time, for a total of 41% reduced again multiplier after 5 max specialization points?)


Paragraph 9, 4th from bottom(op): A feat for throwing grenades and/or other aoe combat utilities around corners, off walls or just curved throws like in baseball sounds like a great idea. It sounds really hard to mechanically implement in my personal opinion though.

Paragraph 11, 2nd from bottom(op): Temporal Manipulation, you say it needs a nerf and I can see why in some areas. In my personal opinion, I think you could make Psycho-Temporal Contraction lower all of your offensive skills(other than Temporal Manipulation itself) by like 7% multiplicative during the duration. It should always be allowed as a fun I go do more button for any build willing to take the hp-psi penalty. It's not fair to psi builds to make it cost more psi points. It's typically strongest in the hands of a physical attacker like smg or unarmed imho, as they never need to spend those psi points lost and the movement point bonus for those 2 builds is irreplaceably potent. (they also can end combat in 1-2 turns the easiest other than maybe chem-elec-metathermic blaster, but that guy expends useful psi points and slot on casting). Lowering offensive skills is universally diminishing and allows for the core idea and allure of the time manipulator attack guy to still work right.

Also some people in this thread talking about Con being made stronger via medicines and stuff becoming stronger from a high Con stat and stuff? I could personally see something like a "Sequel Feat" to Fast Metabolism that increases the drug duration and decreases drug penalty durations/effects. Maybe requires Con 8; Fast Metabolism, "Grand Metabolism"?, and makes all drug benefits last an additional (player)turn and all drug and poison penalties last one fewer (enemy)turns. Maybe also increases all healing by an additional 10% multiplicative(137.5% healing total including the prereq feat)?