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 Latest update here:Allies #03 We left our I.D. in our other pants. Latest Axis Updates in the Second post!  Silent Storm (S²) is a Turn Based Tactical RPG by Nival Software back in 2003 thereabouts, in the vein of Jagged Alliance and the old XCOM games. The game boasts a robust engine, RPG mechanics, and both realistic and somewhat “sci-fi” weaponry. It also boasts all the quirks you'd come to expect from a Russian developed Tactics RPG, though those have largely been fixed by community and official patches now. Where can I get this game? You can find it on GOG, which comes with some community patching, and a few extras including the soundtrack. Doesn't include the editor though, since that doesn't work on modern systems. It's also up for voting on Steam Greenlight, if that's your thing. What's this game about? It's set in a sort of alternate history World War 2, where you play as your own created character, a promising member of the Allied/Axis military forces who has just been given command of a Special Forces Team to go figure out what kind of shady stuff is going on in the European theater. Turns out there's a whole web of people who are trying to use both sides of the war to fuel their own power play, and it's all on you to stop them.  What's so special about that engine? The engine was created specifically for S², and features good(for the time) graphics and advanced physics: Nearly all structures are destructible in some form, bullets/ricochets are mapped three-dimensionally, ragdoll physics, and penetration/stopping power for your guns, for starters. Destructible environments? You better believe it!   This isn't just for fun either, every caliber of ammo has different penetration values, so firing through walls/floors and making your own doors is not only viable, it's sometimes required (especially if you are dumb and blow up a staircase or something) (I am dumb) What kind of RPG mechanics? You have six character classes available: Soldier, Grenadier, Sniper, Engineer, Medic, and Scout. These classes are all good at different things, though there is a lot of overlap i.e. Scouts are the best at stealth but Snipers are well above average too. As you use your skills and kill enemies, you earn experience which can reward you with a level, giving you a point to spend on the characters personal skill tree. These Abilities can range from useless to brokenly amazing. LP Stuff S² has two campaigns, the Allied campaign will be shown off by Tyskil with the sci-fi elements turned down (Cookie's No-PK Mod), the Axis campaign will be done by Drizvolta with default settings. The two campaigns will go past many of the same locations, but at different times and angles and often with different objectives in mind. S² isn't exactly a dialogue heavy game(except for the start), but for the situations where people are talking:  :This will be dialogue said by a character.While plain text with no icons will be Lp'er commentary. We will also be playing with the tree crown off, it does make all the trees look dead, but on the other hand it makes the missions that have trees in them look like something other than the Adventures of Green Silhouette Man vs the Red Face Icon Army.  Mods This LP will be using the Skill Watchdog Mod by Chuck Chargin Jr, which makes sure that your soldiers will actually level up correctly. The base game of S² has a bit of a “bug”, in that when your characters on the field level they get no bonuses to their skills outside what they've earned through using the skill a bunch, meaning that the people you kept with you the whole game will have worse skills overall than the guys who have been bench-warming at base all game. This is especially terrible for Medics and Engineers, whose main skills only come up at very specific times, but whose equipment requires very high skill levels. The Watchdog fixes this by checking when your characters level, and if they are trailing too far in a skill it bumps them back up to the average. S² is infinitely more fun and worry free with this, it turns a decent game into a legitimately playable one. I will also be using the No-PK mod, which tones down the sci-fi elements. Saying much more would be a bit of a spoiler, but I can tell you the PK isn't referencing Earthbound. You can find both of the mods being used, along with others (whose quality I can't vouch for), on the Strategy Core Files section for S² here: http://www.strategycore.co.uk/files/silent-storm/mods/ So what's the “let's” in this Let's Play? Missions in S² tend to follow the format of shooting dudes who have/are guarding clues that will lead you to more places to investigate/shoot. Since the missions tend to give you multiple clues apiece (though there is overlap), you get to tell us which leads we should follow out of all the ones we have so far. Also you will vote to decide which characters we use out of the pool provided, their dossiers and stats will be linked in their own post. "Just in case" Thread Stuff Spoiler Policy: Silent Storm is pretty open with most of it's major twists and a cursory Google search will tell you pretty much everything that could be spoiled easily. TBTRPGs aren't exactly the most widespread genre though, so for the benefit of the goons who aren't familiar with S² please avoid spoiling later missions/twists/mechanics, even if the game is pretty flippant about doing it on it's own. On topic posting: Derails are fine as long as they are at least sort of related to the game, just don't go too overboard. Allied Campaign Allies #01: One Man Army Interlude #01:Allied Soldiers (and other cool classes) Allies #02 Big Joe is in the House Allies #03 We left our I.D. in our other pants. Cool guns megapost! Updated as I get new cool guns/Driz sends me pictures of cool guns Tyskil fucked around with this message at Jan 30, 2013 around 12:45 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 08:05 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 09:05 |
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Latest Update: Update #2: We're in the Warehouse I'm Drizvolta, and while Tyskil takes you through the Allied campaign, we'll explore the Axis one. While they will share some missions, the placement and even our objectives may not be the same and it should be interesting to see just how different they are. Axis Campaign: Update 1: The Pinstripe Bankjob Interlude #1: Axis Assemble! Update #2: We're in the Warehouse Our current team:  Hiro Miyamoto The Japanese Sniper Ahmad Namju The Iranian Soldier Carmelina Donati The Italian Scout Dani Kunstler The German Medic Reinhard Beyer The German Grenadier Colleen Cullen The Irish EngineerDrizvolta fucked around with this message at Feb 6, 2013 around 06:23 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 08:05 |
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Allies Update #01: One Man Army We are going to be playing on the Hard difficulty. It strikes a nice balance between the hand holding of normal and the tedium of impossible.  The first thing we have to dive into is character creation. I'll be playing as a male American Soldier, though the gender and nationality are entirely cosmetic. The arrows next to your model let you cycle through different outfits for your character, but I decided to keep it simple and make that terrified looking fellow from the boxart. You can mess with your characters attributes to try to min max them, but that is rarely necessary and it's nice to have enough stats to pick up the slack for someone else in desperate situations. A more detailed bit on classes and skills will follow at the end of the update, for now know that soldiers are the good HP, low finesse, automatic weapons all day 24/7 class.  Next up is the characters face. Yes, the gender and mens/womens hair sliders are fully unlocked for both genders. Yes, you can finally play a game that lets you realize your dream of "Eddie Izzard saves the world from the Nazis". Most of the options are self explanatory, except for "face damage" which has scars but also face paint and such. The speaker icons across the bottom choose the various voice sets, which also aren't locked so you can be a British transvestite from Russia if you want to.  (We haven't missed anything, this is just where the game puts us in at as soon as we hit "play") You'll be fine, Colonel! I'll get us out of here. We're too far behind enemy lines... The Ger-mans are on top of us... The documents we acquired will never reach headquarters. Aah... We have all died in...vain. He wasn't kidding about those Germans, a squad runs in off the road, stopping just at the treeline. They're near! We have to get moving. No! I will only get you killed. Aaah... You have a better chance of returning with the documents alone... They are too important for heroics.I am not going to leave you to die here! I'll cover your retreat... Ugggh! Go now! That's an... The colonel slumps over unconscious, intending to cover our retreat by decomposing angrily at any pursuers or something.  Smiley gets in some  before we even get control, because Silent Storm is classy like that. So here's the situation we have. We are in the small clearing of trees, Smiley highlighted with a healthy green glow that will only go away if you switch to another character, which we can't. We saw enemies run in up the hill from us, but we can't see them now because nobody in our group has line of sight to them.  These are our mission objectives, or rather they are our mission objectives in the future when I remember I really should cap the mission objectives screen. So, um, spoiler we didn't lose the tutorial I guess.  The UI is a bit busy, but it's nowhere near as bad as most TBTRPGs. From the left we have: The currently selected (or currently speaking) characters face, then little boxes for their action points and injuries, the two weapon slots, the map layer elevation selector (lets you cut away roofs/go down to basements etc. if maps have them), and the action buttons. Clockwise from the top left they are: Attack, Move, Turn, Cancel, Hide, Toggle Strafe, Movement Mode, and Firing Mode. The icons change when you select a new mode, so the little man will start running on the movement icon, the firing mode changes from a tin can to a matchbook to a cigarette as you choose more accurate settings, etc.  Might as well get moving, so Smiley drops into a crouch and gets all shadowy, indicating he's hiding. As he moves, he hears something off to the left, represented by the ear.  As he turns the corner, Smiley is immediately spotted by an enemy rifleman, who gets an interrupt! Interrupts are based off the interrupt stat, and can trigger from things like a missed shot, being spotted out of hiding (what happened to Smiley here), etc. Interrupts allow the interrupter and only the interrupter to take a turn with all the AP's they had left over and do whatever they want. This soldier decided to swing around and miss entirely which I'm totally cool with.  Speaking of AP, since we are in combat now Smiley has an AP counter next to his name in everyone's favorite Impact font. Every action takes Action Points, and you can do any number or combination of actions as long as you have the AP for it. Once you run out though, you have to hit the end turn button and let the enemy spend theirs. Since they are going to use it to try to shoot you, it's usually a bad idea to just stand out in the open when you end your turn. Smiley has spent most of his to run up to this enemy and fire a long burst (indicated by the ammo belt firing icon), which would be a bad idea most of the time but the early game enemies are not exactly the cream of the crop.  See? He took down that soldier, and even though there is another one right over there he hasn't came over to check what all that was about, instead skipping his turn and throwing us back into real time mode (indicated by the lack of AP and the turn bar not specifying whose turn it is). In Real time mode none of your actions take AP, but any Aggressive actions throw you back into Combat Mode. You can also hit the "Start Combat" button, which can be useful if you are moving multiple characters in different parts of the map and don't want a patrol bumbling into someone who is just standing there.  I tried to hide Smiley again so he could flank a man, but Soldiers don't exactly have the best hide stat and he gets spotted and interrupted again. Thankfully, Tutorial enemies don't have the best shooting stat either-  -so this match up ends largely like the first. Notice the numbers popping out, every bullet coming out of the gun does different damage based on what kind of round it is, what your characters skills is, where on the enemy it hit them, and whether or not you crit. A full burst from an SMG isn't anything to sneeze at.  Skills can level up on their own through use, so there really isn't any reason NOT to hide every chance you get, especially against enemies as ineffective as these, since stealth is beneficial to every class and a few more points here and there certainly can't hurt.  Smiley actually manages to get the drop on this one, who doesn't even get a chance to think up a better dying line.  Welp, with that done, It's time to move up and clear that house-  Oh for fucks sake. I Don't think I've ever had a character that has been caught on this mission as many times as Smiley has, this doesn't exactly bode well. Well hell, I've got a grenade, lets show off those sweet 2003 destructible environments.   That's not all from one pineapple, mind you. The house has a bunch of explosive gas canisters against the back wall, but still. The destruction engine is pretty detailed, and I still can't tell you if I'm going to be using regular doors or making my own more often. Also, oh poo poo, enemy SMG guy! Could my zeal to show off the game engine doomed Smiley already?   Nope. I had Smiley throw a grenade at him, but he only had frags and largely whiffed with it. Grenades come in two types, fragmentation and HE (high explosive). HE grenades damage through the actual explosion, which gets less effective in a spherical radius from where it went off. Fragmentation grenades can deal damage like that too, but most of their damage comes from shrapnel that goes flying around when it blows up. Unfortunately, its possible for that shrapnel to miss, though that's rare.  His attempts at being a scout and grenadier having failed him, Smiley decided to just go back to the old standby of charging at the bad man and shooting a whole bunch.  Enemies that die will drop their inventories on the ground, hitting ALT will bring up tooltips about all the items on the ground you can/have seen.  We can even pick up and use enemy weapons! This is pretty much necessary for most of the game, as home base likes to be stingy more often than it doesn't. The stats are mostly self explanatory, except for handling and familiarity. Familiarity Gives you a bonus to hit with the weapon, since your character knows it better. It goes up as you use the same weapon, but goes down if you use another gun. Handling does gently caress knows what, it's not listed in any game documentation and Nival Interactive took down their forums sometime in the mid 2000's, coincidentally the only place on the internet any information on this game existed.  Anyway, you might remember this from when I was hiding next to it trying to kill a man. Heavy weapons platforms are more than scenery in this game, and you can mount most of them you see.  Too bad we killed all the bad men and there's nobody left to shoot.  Oh hey, the game helpfully spawned in new bad mens for us to shoot, that's great!  They also immediately get a free turn. That's less great.  They proceed to miss every possible shot they had, and Smiley proves he doesn't need the keys to kill a man with a motorcycle. Anyway, now that we've had out fun, lets check out that house we exploded.  Yeah, that's pretty exploded alright, the black charring is the epicenter of the explosion. The officer has a Nagant revolver on him, which would be great if it wasn't one of (if not the) worst and most common pistols in the game. The back room had a crate in it, but the explosion sorta took care of that, leaving it's contents dropped on the ground.  The loot isn't great either, but it's the tutorial man, what do you expect. I stuff it in Smileys backpack anyway, since base usually decides to give you basically nothing at the start anyway.  When I pick up the commanders body, my objectives update. This would be less of a problem if the animation for carrying bodies wasn't one of the slowest in the game, and the motorcycle is on the other end of the map from the commander.  Upon reaching the motorcycle, the game fades out and places us here, in the base. There's a lot that goes unexplained here, but basically you proved yourself to be so hardcore you are going to be given command of a special operations squad, SE2. Time to say hi to all the base personnel!  Thank you Colonel Whitmore. I am glad to be here, as well.My entire base is at your disposal. Your mission has been designated a high priority. I will do my best to ensure that everything goes as smoothly as possibleMuch appreciated, ColonelAs long as you are here, feel free to call me Terrance.As you wish Terrance. I'll do my best. Do you have anything for me, something to start with?Yes, I was just getting to that. I'm proud to say, the mission specialists you'll have at your disposal are some of the most elite personnel in this war.Much appreciated, Terrance! I will be assembling small squads. No more than five additional soldiers will accompany me. As you wish! You can come to me at any time and I'll provide you with soldier's dossiers.Again, my gratitude.Well, he seems friendly enough, though we did save his life, so that's one thing. Let's meet the quartermaster next.  Good to meet you, Ozwell. I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty of each other. You must be heading up something really big?Could be?Woah, Ozwell seems really impressed with all the hardware we have available to us, I bet friendly 'ol Terrance got us cleared for all kinds of cutting edge weaponry!  Man, gently caress you Terrance. To the left is the bases inventory, to the right is the currently selected character's inventory. The icons across the left let you access different panels, going from top to bottom we have Pistols, Rifles/Snipers, SMGs, Heavy Ordinance, Melee weapons, Grenades, Misc. Equipment, and a big goddamn Spoiler. It's not as bad as it looks in this screen though, we also have a couple of rifles, a SMG, some grenades, and a single thing of gauze wrap. All of it at the lowest possible quality, of course. I know you cant give guys the good poo poo right off the bat, but how about enough to actually equip the whole squad? What you get here is actually sort of random, It's possible to start the game and have a HMG sitting here, though it's usually a really bad one. Since Smiley is unlucky, his favorite category, Heavy Ordinance, is totally barren. Maybe we should go to the sickbay and ask for some of those cool 1940's drugs.   Actually, I'd prefer to be called Susan.Okay, Susan! I'm the squad leader of Special Operations-Se2. And, though I never expected to me saying such a thing, I hope we won't be seeing too much of each other over the coming weeks.Stay Classy, Smiley.  I'll keep that in mind, Captain Susan.However, if you are in need of my care, just give me a word, and I will attend to you personally.I'll keep that in mind, as well.Now that we are done with the meet and greet, the only thing left to do is get ready to head out.  At the moment, this is our only clue to chase. Next time on Silent Storm: Goons vote on the team! Tyskil fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2013 around 08:38 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 08:05 |
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You need the Indian kid, Abala or whatever it was. Its like having Apus stoner cousin on your team. Second favorite TBT game after JA2, looking forward to seeing how low you can drop property values.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 08:57 |
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Always been interested in this game but never actually chased down a copy of it. Seconding the eagerness towards damaging all the houses ever.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 09:11 |
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I love this game, but once I got the spoilers and the other spoiler (And the Sea Devil), I basically said gently caress the story and took on the entire German war effort with six dudes.  And yes, you need Abala. Are you using any mods? I know there's one that updates your squad's skill levels whenever they level up to keep it on par with the skill growth of the enemies and the soldiers you've got in reserve. That would be my main choice, plus maybe increased throwing range so grenadiers stop throwing like girls.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 09:34 |
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This game is basically the best X-COM clone that no-one knows about. It's tremendously fun to gently caress around with grenades, killing people by collapsing walls on them. Just when that starts to get dull, your sniper has just levelled up enough that he can peg explosive barrels and enemy heads from across the entire map, complete with slomo ragdolling. The base inventory system always seemed like they'd intended to flesh it out a little more. It's kind of weird that you can just cycle through pages back and forth to get an unlimited amount of ammo for the vast majority of guns, but to actually get more decent guns you have to go through the rather fiddly process of comparing stats mid-mission.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 09:38 |
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I recently started replaying this due to the LP of Man of Prey so I'll be playing along. One thing to mention is that the GOG version includes the 4GB RAM fix so you don't have to HEX edit stuff to get it running (or crack and then use a third party patch). Without the fix the game won't run if you have 4gb or more RAM, just a thing to mention for those that haven't played it before.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 09:41 |
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Oh cool a Silent Storm LP. Are you going to play through the other 2 games in the series, Sentinels and Hammer & Sickle ? Never played the last one but Sentinels bring in a few improvements. I have been trying to do a rerun a Silent Storm a few months back, buying it on GOG, but the resolution didn't fit in well with a 16:10 monitor. Is there any fix for that ?
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 09:48 |
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Now I want you to play Eddie Izzard Kills Nazis.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 10:09 |
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Quickly looking up the No-PK mod earns Tyskil a big, hearty 'boooooooo'.  Then again, saving the more sci-fi playthrough for the Axis might be more appropriate... They were rumoured to have all sorts of crazy magic mumbo-jumbo going on.Seriously though, this actually looks pretty good for the genre. Certainly better than The Fall.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 10:17 |
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There is a lot to say about Scifi elements in tactics games but let's wait until they are properly introduced. The biggest reason for why I think S2 is a better game than JA2 is the destruction, it means a lot more freedom especially if you get the engineer skill that doubles damage to buildings tunnelling through wall and floors with a machine gone is actually a legitimate tactic as is dumping buildings on people, the only problem is that the pathfinding calculations take ages afterwards.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 11:04 |
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Paingod556 posted:You need the Indian kid, Abala or whatever it was. Its like having Apus stoner cousin on your team. Hell Yeah, Abala's a baller. Gonna have to leave it up the the thread whether or not they would prefer Yves though. TheLastRoboKy posted:Always been interested in this game but never actually chased down a copy of it. Seconding the eagerness towards damaging all the houses ever. The Gold Edition is actually available at Good Old Games for $10 USD, which has Silent Storm, and Sentinels, the expansion/sequel. It was also up for consideration on Steam Greenlight at some point, but I don't keep up with that all that much. Dareon posted:Are you using any mods? I know there's one that updates your squad's skill levels whenever they level up to keep it on par with the skill growth of the enemies and the soldiers you've got in reserve. That would be my main choice, plus maybe increased throwing range so grenadiers stop throwing like girls. We are using the Skill Watchdog, actually! It's pretty much The Required Mod, in that it lets Engineers and Medics actually work as advertised. I mentioned and linked to it (and the other one only I'm using) in the Mods section of the OP. Stelas posted:This game is basically the best X-COM clone that no-one knows about. Yeah, This may be one of my favorite games of all time and with it being not impossible to find anymore I figured now would be a good time to try to show it off. If I remember correctly, the base inventory had a kind of random upgrade system where completing missions lets better equipment roll in. At least I think so, I remember doing random encounters for forever on one file trying to get good stuff early on but the base never got new stuff until I actually went out and did my job. Hel posted:One thing to mention is that the GOG version includes the 4GB RAM fix so you don't have to HEX edit stuff to get it running (or crack and then use a third party patch). Without the fix the game won't run if you have 4gb or more RAM, just a thing to mention for those that haven't played it before. Nice, I didn't know about that. I guess I never had enough RAM for it to be a problem until the GOG version came out mmtt posted:Oh cool a Silent Storm LP. I don't actually have Hammer & Sickle, It's not available digitally anywhere I could find, and I've heard the copy protection on the disc versions is the "fucks stuff up real bad" kind, so I probably won't be playing it, even though from what I've heard I'd like to try it. Sentinels is a "maybe" right now, I've never actually beaten it (UN mission  ) and I'd like to at least have one full run through under my belt before I try to LP it.Deadmeat5150 posted:Now I want you to play Eddie Izzard Kills Nazis. I don't think I could keep that entertaining through the entire LP, unfortunately. Yapping Eevee posted:Quickly looking up the No-PK mod earns Tyskil a big, hearty 'boooooooo'. I know this is going to sound unbelievable if you haven't played the game, but the things that mod takes out only make the game about being WW2 Secret Special A-Team worse. Hopefully we are going to show that off adequately. The game is probably my favorite in the genre though, so that's something. It knows just about the right time to throw realism out the window to let awesome things happen. Hel posted:There is a lot to say about Scifi elements in tactics games but let's wait until they are properly introduced. Hell, you don't even need that skill, that's a pretty legitimate (though more costly) tactic through out the entire game. I'll talk about the fun of path finding calculations and civilian turns when they come up though, don't worry. Tyskil fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 08:39 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 11:35 |
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Hel posted:The biggest reason for why I think S2 is a better game than JA2 is the destruction, it means a lot more freedom especially if you get the engineer skill that doubles damage to buildings tunnelling through wall and floors with a machine gone is actually a legitimate tactic as is dumping buildings on people, the only problem is that the pathfinding calculations take ages afterwards. I love the pathfinding. Throwing a grenade inside a multi-story house, and suddenly you have to drop through the hole all the way to the basement just to move 2 metres ahead. I hate the pathfinding. In one house you can't skirt around a table, but have to get down on the floor and crawl under it. I love the destruction. Setting up a few well-placed mines for a chain reaction can take down half a multi-story house when the first mine is stepped on. But I hate the pathfinding. In one house it's impossible to reach the attic because the roof over the stair is too low. Also, about JA2: I loved hearing some of the good old voice actors again in a new setting. Like Doc Susan there, who doubles as (I think it was) Italian scout Carm, but was also lovable manhating psycho Buzz Garneau over in Arulco. The dialogue is sadly more "normal", but there are still lines that make me laugh even when the enemy is shooting all my people to pieces. e: oh sorry Tyskil, I missed your bit about pathfinding talk at the end there -- want me to cut this out?
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 12:06 |
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^Nah, don't worry, when it comes up I'm sure I'm going to have comments about it anyway Allied Soldiers (and other cool classes) Smiley needs a team of cool dudes/dudettes to come with him and investigate/demolish the Axis intelligence network, and here's what we have to work with. Click the cool faces and read their bio, which is exactly not game play relevant at all but I spent hours cutting these up and some of these guys are pretty neat, so check them out. Soldiers are strong people who like automatic weapons. They shoot people, and they do it well. High HP, good combat skills, and a variety of useful traits make soldiers a valuable addition for the team. Unfortunately for these guys, Smiley is a soldier and we can't exactly bench the squad leader.     Snipers are the long range guys, they have the best skill with scoped rifles, and with the correct trait selection they basically become "every turn, someone somewhere on the map will die" machines. The downside is they take hits like wet tissue, so if you forget to keep them back you can find yourself down a man pretty easily.    Scouts are your sneaky type, think Solid Snake or what have you. Scouts start out pretty poor due to the unreliability of low skill stealth, but with some levels and the right equipment they can solo entire missions themselves without being caught.     Grenadiers are the biggest of the big guys, which means they are good at sports, which means they are good at throwing grenades. Grenadiers are decent with automatic weapons, but they really shine throwing entire backpacks worth of grenades at every enemy, house, wall, and staircase you would like to go away. These guys aren't exactly great at stealth, obviously.     Engineers are the smart ones. They have great engineering skill, but they are actually above average ( but not very much) in everything but Snipe, which makes them useful as backup to pretty much any other character. Plus, they can throw Lyddite charges at people, which will never get old. The downside is, they have pretty much the lowest AP out of all the classes.    Medics are the guys who make the boo boo's all better. They are also super loving important, because you will get shot a lot and injury debuffs can really mess you up. There are also only two of them, so don't lose them both or you are pretty much going to have to rely on plaster bandages and aspirin. Strangely, they are above average at sniping, so most people make them backup snipers. .png)  Vote for one person of each class, barring Soldier, because that would hurt poor Smileys feelings.
Tyskil fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 08:45 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 12:30 |
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Well in that case-- Sni: Zinaida Sco: Kate Gre: Nessie Eng: LA Med: Abala Multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-talented -- a statement about the world united against Adolf. How can this go wrong? 
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 12:42 |
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Sniper: Viper Scout: Kate Grenadier: Bob Engineer: Doug is absolutely key for being a crotchety old man. Medic: Abala
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 12:48 |
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All right, let me see here... Sniper: Zinaida, for sounding pretty hardcore (and not being the sort of person who would give themselves a nickname.  )Scout: Sook, by virtue of not being nicknamed Elf. Because gently caress Elves. Grenadier: Rowdy, because he's a bar-owning Scotsman. Engineer: Doug, so he has more stories to tell his grandchild.  Medic: Abala, because apparently people-in-the-know like him.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 13:15 |
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I picked this up at GOG in the summer and now I want to boot the thing up and give it a run through myself. Looking forward to seeing the explosive A-Team Antics.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 13:19 |
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Yapping Eevee posted:All right, let me see here... Sook is a cool dude, but Elfs nickname isn't based off the Tolkien/DnD elves, it's based off the old school elves of Germanic/Norse mythology. Plus she earned all of her promotions by throwing everyone else who was eligible out of planes. Girl is crazy. Spec-Ops crazy. Tyskil fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2013 around 13:29 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 13:25 |
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I'll talk a little about my standard choices, and then mostly ignore them, underlining my choices for this LP. Sniper: My main character is usually a sniper, just to keep him mostly out of harm's way, so I haven't really looked closely at the others... Zinaida. Scout: I didn't run with a Scout last time, so let's go with Sook. Grenadier: Rowdy was goddamn brilliant whenever I wanted to point at something and say "Make the bad thing go away." But a few of his lines started to grate on me, so let's pull Bob out of retirement.  Engineer: Doug should bring the perfect tally-ho attitude to this team of murderhobos. Medic: Abala. No question. It's worth noting that all the soldiers have a secondary specialty. Like you mentioned, medics can make good snipers, but Yves is also a half-decent engineer. LA makes a decent medic, Ramos does okay as a scout, etc. They naturally won't be as good as the dedicated specialists, but if Abala is on the other side of the map, it can be helpful to know who can at least use a pair of forceps. There's hints to this in most of their bios, but otherwise it's mostly learned by stat comparison. Incidentally, if you want a heavy weapon for Smiley, check the other Soldiers. I used Gator and Oz last time, and stole an HMG from one of the other two so they could both be toting man-portable implements of property damage. If I'm being too  , let me know, I just love this game.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 13:35 |
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Sniper: Zinaida Scoute: Kate Grenadier: Nessie Engineer: Doug Medic: Abala, shine on you crazy indian
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 13:36 |
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Sniper: Vasilia Zaisteva I mean Zinaida Scout: the Korean Ninja dude or the Native American woman Grenadier : The Scot Engineer: British aristocrat Medic: Abala, the Indian that should have been a Gurkha, mmtt fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2013 around 14:02 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 13:47 |
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I hope you people are ready for things to come. Sniper: Zinaida Scout: Matt Grenadier: Bob Engineer: Doug Medic: Abala
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 14:10 |
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Sniper: Zinaida Scout: Elf Grenadier: Rowdy Engineer: Oleg Medic: Ababla Glad to this. Only played a bit of it myself back when it came out but I just couldn't get into it.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 14:12 |
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Oh hey, way to steal my next Lp! But since you're doing it as in-depth as I had planned, I'm not bummed at all.  Anyway: Sniper: Zinaida Scout: Elf Grenadier: Nessie Engineer: L.A Medic: Abala Those are the best picks, imho. I usually play with a sniper and take Gator as my soldier though. And: Make sure to steal all the gear from the benchwarmers! e: Handling: While I'm not 100% sure, I dimly remember that it influences your CTH after fast moves. If you sprint you have worse CTH then after walking. Base Inventory: It will only improve after real missions, randoms don't influence it. And not every real mission will change it noticeably, it's kind of dumb. At least it will have unlimited ammo for your side, while you have to scavenge enemy things. I suppose you know about the secret encounters and how to get them? And that you can use any magazine as long as it has the right ammo? Feeding a Kar-98 from a Mg 42 box, that's the spirit! I can try to weigh in along the way, when I have something worthwhile.
Tin Tim fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2013 around 22:25 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 16:16 |
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Tin Tim posted:And that you can use any magazine as long as it has the right ammo? Feeding a Kar-98 from a Mg 42 box, that's the spirit! My snipers tended to carry a 50-round MG drum, yeah. My pistols were less ostentatious, tending to carry a 32-round SMG magazine. For the uninformed, most rifles (of this era and in this game) use five-round "stripper clips", just a bit of metal holding the bullets together. Stuff the bullets into the internal magazine on your gun, throw the clip away. However, the game tracks ammo by the bullet, not the clip. As long as it finds the right bullets, it doesn't care what box they're in. Where this comes into play is that it uses a space-filling inventory, rather than weight-based. So a five-round rifle clip takes up one space, while the 50-round drum takes up a 2x2 square. So the drum gives you 250% of the ammo capacity you would otherwise have in that 2x2 space. ...I, too, have considered an LP of this game.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 17:13 |
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Tin Tim posted:Base Inventory: It will only improve after real missions, randoms don't influence it. And not every real mission will change it noticeably, it's kind of dumb. At least it will have unlimited ammo for your side, while you have to scavenge enemy things. Inventory has never really been a problem for me. The intro mission I just return with the backpack filled with loot, and the same for the next 2-3 missions/encounters. It gives me the (fake but morale boosting!) impression that I actually have stuff when the drawers are full of captured junk, plus there is really such enormous amount of loot from each and every battle that I never felt that I lacked anything. Really, I sometimes just take a break after a victory and use the spoils to tear down whatever place we visited. I think of it as leaving a lasting legacy in the area of urban improvement.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 17:39 |
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Perfidia posted:Inventory has never really been a problem for me. If it's okay with Tyskil, I could write a short blurb about an easy way to grind a lot of skills, that's overlooked by most players. Back to inventory though. Some story missions will give out a good deal of stuff, while others will only add an Smg or a pistol. You don't really notice the small rewards, and they're also not that great. You should do some randoms, for Xp and for the loot. Those lovely nades are wonderful for training, as are some of the German Smg's. And having more powder/gauze never hurts, and is also great for training. I find the majority of allied gear to be trash. Honestly, if you're not playing the German campaign loot all the Mauser ammo, get Mp 40's(especially that double clip variant), one or two Mg 34/42 and some rifles till you see the kind that can take ten rounds. The name escapes me right now, but use them! Though the British 308. rifles are also decent and have ten rounds, so they're fine till you see the good German rifles. The only really good allied rifles are the Russian ones you get pretty late in the game. Also, having a scoped rifle on normal dudes is totally okay. When they have some xp under their belt, the scope can sometimes work wonders(Abala always turns out as a great semi-sniper, for me). And it doesn't hinder the normal shots. And for pistols, well it's hard to beat that 45. Colt. Some players say that the familiarity bonus is worth taking weaker weapons from the start, but I disagree. I have never noticed it so much that it actually outweighs the increased damage/penetration. Tin Tim fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2013 around 18:31 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2013 18:02 |
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Sniper: Zinaida (she seems the coolest of the snipers) Scout: Elf (she's nuts like a previous poster said and we want nuts) Grenadier: Bob (dude lost his family during WWI, and is hungry for revenge) Engineer: L.A (it's good to have a fellow American on the squad) Medic: Abala (his bio says he got picked several times for special ops missions so he could be a Gurkha or even a commando!) I got this game a while ago on GOG and I'm a bit unsure how to level the medicine, engineer and throwing skills to higher levels. I haven't found a use for my engineer aside from an extra gun while my grenadier is my grenade chucker and the best method I could think to level up medicine would to have the squad take turns punching each other's lights out while the medic patches the boo-boos up. I give everyone a rifle( each guy gets a rifle based on their nationality and the M1 carbine works well for the scout) mainly because well, starting off my guys aren't the greatest shots and a rifle will help them improve their accuracy.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 21:45 |
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I may have to replay this. It always amazes me how great the engine was, and how little was done with it. Arcanum, Jagged Alliance 3, Fallout 3, etc, all could have been pushed out on this engine. edit: This was one of the first games that taught me inventory management. You can't carry every single pistol round you come across.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 22:54 |
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particle409 posted:I may have to replay this. It always amazes me how great the engine was, and how little was done with it. Arcanum, Jagged Alliance 3, Fallout 3, etc, all could have been pushed out on this engine. There was an attempt to make JA3 on this engine. Nothing came of it, however... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEGxb1JYdFc
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 23:27 |
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Dareon posted:It's worth noting that all the soldiers have a secondary specialty. Like you mentioned, medics can make good snipers, but Yves is also a half-decent engineer. LA makes a decent medic, Ramos does okay as a scout, etc. They naturally won't be as good as the dedicated specialists, but if Abala is on the other side of the map, it can be helpful to know who can at least use a pair of forceps. There's hints to this in most of their bios, but otherwise it's mostly learned by stat comparison. Nah, I'm totally cool with people spergin' about Silent Storm, because they can remind me of/let me know of things I maybe didn't know. I knew about both of those things though, but I haven't mentioned them yet because with the small skill boosts and certain people having better starting inventories, there's some min-maxy choices. Ultimately though, all the equipment is low tier-ish, and the skill boosts don't put people very far above their class, so I didn't want goons to vote based off of that. I plan to cover it in more detail once the voting's done. Tin Tim posted:Oh hey, way to steal my next Lp! Ha, sorry about snatching up the LP dude I'll try to do the game justice.quote:e: Oh, is that what if effects? So I assume easier handling means less of an accuracy drop? I was planning to cover hit% modifiers and such in an "underlying game mechanics interlude" later, but I didn't want to just throw all of the mechanics out there at once, in case that would be too much. I know about a few secret encounters Big Joe, Ninja Road, and the Sea Devil house, and the XCOM reference but I've never been able to find a good guide on how to actually reach these/if there are any more. I intend to show them off if I can though. Perfidia posted:Really, I sometimes just take a break after a victory and use the spoils to tear down whatever place we visited. I think of it as leaving a lasting legacy in the area of urban improvement. Yes, this is the correct thing to do. Can't leave all those enemy munitions lying around, someone could get hurt!  Tin Tim posted:It's not on the gun side, but it's very stingy with supplies for your engi, and a little less stingy with medical items. With the Watchdog, you don't need to grind that much but I still say that you need to put a little work in, to have your team in a good shape. While the mod will raise your med/engi skill according to level, the game advances a bit faster and grinding those skills can help a lot in some missions. Also you want to be able to use the better items ASAP. If only for better use of inventory space. Sure, I wouldn't mind. I usually never grind anyway so you probably know something more than the old standbys of "camp, shoot all your dudes, bandage all your dudes, go surprise Captain Susan Norris Nurse, repeat" and "camp, place and disarm the same mine over and over until you want to die." quote:Some players say that the familiarity bonus is worth taking weaker weapons from the start, but I disagree. I have never noticed it so much that it actually outweighs the increased damage/penetration. Familiarity bonuses are largely only noticeable on snipers, since everyone else is going to keep getting better weapons at a much faster rate. You can get some really nice accuracy bonuses though, if you let it get high enough. (The increased familiarity trait is still never worth it) Mushball posted:I got this game a while ago on GOG and I'm a bit unsure how to level the medicine, engineer and throwing skills to higher levels. I haven't found a use for my engineer aside from an extra gun while my grenadier is my grenade chucker and the best method I could think to level up medicine would to have the squad take turns punching each other's lights out while the medic patches the boo-boos up. Think of engineers as your "jack of all trades" class, let them come in and pick up any slack another class has. Do not discount throwing explosives though! Those do more damage to buildings than they do people if I remember correctly, so it's great for making doors. Also, setting up a line of dynamite going all through a level and setting it off is a very nice way to end a mission. Be careful of giving everyone rifles, though. It's kind of the "newbie trap" of the game, since everyone with rifles using careful shot means you get essentially only 6 actions a turn, or even less if you are doing literally nothing else but shooting. particle409 posted:This was one of the first games that taught me inventory management. You can't carry every single pistol round you come across. Hoo boy, if you thought you didn't have enough carrying space in S², S³ would not be very fun. Do you want to throw away your guns, or a piece of the Amber Room? Choose wisely
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| # ? Jan 17, 2013 23:48 |
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Tyskil posted:I don't actually have Hammer & Sickle, It's not available digitally anywhere I could find, and I've heard the copy protection on the disc versions is the "fucks stuff up real bad" kind, so I probably won't be playing it, even though from what I've heard I'd like to try it. I was a big fan of Silent Storm when it was new, and managed to get a copy of Hammer & Sickle after it came out. It built upon some of the good stuff in S², but it added a weird real-time element for investigating information and travel. It avoids the PK weirdness of S², but has its own oddball stuff with secret cabals operating after the end of WWII and Soviet spies and whatnot. Overall I found it a pretty fun sequel to Silent Storm but it felt different in several respects.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 07:27 |
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I am super dumb and tried to edit a post and posted one instead, look at how dumb I am. Arschlochkind posted:Yeah, every time I hear about H&S I think "man I really need to try that" but I never wind up grabbing it. Tyskil fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 07:50 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 07:47 |
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I got this game a while back and had a blast. Late in the game however I decided to look up some of the people I never took out at all because I stuck with the same six guys and holy poo poo, people who you benchwarm gain skills at a significantly larger rate over an active team in the field. Needless to say I pretty much replaced my entire team with my apparent super-trained team of benchwarmers. Also it BLOWS that wounds permanently lower your stats, essentially crippling you pretty badly if you let it. It was amusing when some medic who was bench sitting all game was a near perfect shot compared to my main character sniper.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 08:00 |
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Blackray Jack posted:I got this game a while back and had a blast. Late in the game however I decided to look up some of the people I never took out at all because I stuck with the same six guys and holy poo poo, people who you benchwarm gain skills at a significantly larger rate over an active team in the field. Needless to say I pretty much replaced my entire team with my apparent super-trained team of benchwarmers. Actually, that's sort of a bug! The game gives your bench guys skill boosts when you level up, but it either doesn't or gives severely reduced boosts to your main team. The skill watchdog mod linked in the OP fixes that by making sure none of your characters have seriously fallen behind, and boosts their base skill level up to what it should be if it has. You even get to keep points they've earned through skill use, so the B-Team suck like they are supposed to! quote:Also it BLOWS that wounds permanently lower your stats, essentially crippling you pretty badly if you let it. It was amusing when some medic who was bench sitting all game was a near perfect shot compared to my main character sniper. This though, isn't how wounds work, if I remember correctly. You have "temporary" and "permanent" wounds, but that only means the temp wounds effects go away after a few turns, but the permanent ones require medical attention of some kind, going back to the sickbay at base ought to fix any injury conditions on all your characters. I was gonna discuss wounds once one of our characters actually got hit. Sounds like your Sniper just didn't accrue Snipe Skill at the same rate as the big boosts that medic at base got. Skill Watchdog mod is pretty much the pro choice "makes S2 better in every way" mod.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 08:10 |
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Are we still voting? Sol: , obviouslySni: Zinaida Sco: Matko Gre: Taras Eng: Doris Med: Abala Basically a combination of being badass, Eastern-European, or both
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 14:09 |
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 Tyskil posted:Oh, is that what if effects? So I assume easier handling means less of an accuracy drop? I was planning to cover hit% modifiers and such in an "underlying game mechanics interlude" later, but I didn't want to just throw all of the mechanics out there at once, in case that would be too much. Tyskil posted:I know about a few secret encounters Big Joe, Ninja Road, and the Sea Devil house, and the XCOM reference but I've never been able to find a good guide on how to actually reach these/if there are any more. I intend to show them off if I can though. The ninja road is in North Britain, near the giant 6 on the right side of the map. It will only spawn if one of your guys has reached lv 5. But that is way too low for that fight, imo. You'll get slaughtered without decent spotting/camo skills. On the other hand, the melee weapon is wonderfull on any scout, as are the throwing weapons. The Big Joe is very hard to get, and while neat, not that awesome. It's also in North Britian, look near the main North/South road just North of the center fold in the Map. The encounter should have a chest in an attic, which you can't reach. So you'll have to blow through the ceiling. But there is a problem, the encounter is very rare and you're likely to get the wrong map. It's the one with a big house and a shed next to it, and some powerlines and another building. The wrong map is very common, but you'll know when you have the right map if there is a truck next to the house and shed. I forgot where exactly, but you can also find Little Joe ammo in North Britain. I have never found the weapon to it, but someone cheated it in and reported that it's just a dart pistol without stun. The Sea devil can be found in Switzerland, near the 6 on the right side of the map. It should be a large mansion staffed by a bunch of soldiers. The rifle is in the house and some ammo is in the garage. Though your base will also spawn it. But the thing is that encounters in Switzerland are very rare, so be patient. The gun itself is more of a gimmick, as there are way better sniper rifles. Yeah it's powerful, but has a small mag and is loud as hell. Don't read this last part, if you don't know about the late game! Seriously. The 8M1 prototype is also in Switzerland, and easily the most game breaking thing. The ammo clips will be spawned by your base and can also be used for other beam guns, even on PK's. It should pop up near the 5 on the left side of the map. But again, encounters are loving rare in Switzerland. This encounter can be pretty tough, due to the beam Pk's. You either have to grenade them, use rockets or grind them down with sniper headshots. If you don't have your own Pk's that is. If you're ballsy, have a scout sneak past them and pick up the rifle, then go to town. The Katana can also cut them up, but that's rather risky. I captured all the Pk's in that encounter with a single sniper, the silenced Kar and a fuckton of ammo. Tedious and hard, but possible. Now, there is still one odd thing left. There is a special Pk in the game, but I'm not 100% sure if it's in this game or Sentinels. I wanted to power through the campaign and check, but I'm unsure what you need to do to unlock Switzerland. I'll see to it eventually though. Okay, that special PK is a medic model which will heal the pilot and stops bleeding, I think. This makes it very hard to kill the pilot, but it's possible and I remember that the medic feature also works for your guys. I wanna say that he's also in the Prototype encounter, but I'm really not sure. I remember it this way, but really have to check it myself. However I know that he exists and only shows up in one encounter in the whole game. And as a closing word, these encounters are repeatable. Tyskil posted:Actually, that's sort of a bug! The game gives your bench guys skill boosts when you level up, but it either doesn't or gives severely reduced boosts to your main team. The skill watchdog mod linked in the OP fixes that by making sure none of your characters have seriously fallen behind, and boosts their base skill level up to what it should be if it has. You even get to keep points they've earned through skill use, so the B-Team suck like they are supposed to! Tyskil posted:Sure, I wouldn't mind. I usually never grind anyway so you probably know something more than the old standbys of "camp, shoot all your dudes, bandage all your dudes, go surprise Captain Susan Norris Nurse, repeat" and "camp, place and disarm the same mine over and over until you want to die." A thing that may be useful for the Lp: You can alter the angles of the camera, if you have trouble capturing what's going on with the default angles. Tin Tim fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2013 around 19:05 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2013 16:08 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 09:05 |
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If we're still voting: Sniper: Zinaida (Most Badass) Scout: Elf (Most Stereotypical Accent) Grenadier: Rowdy (Most Drunken) Engineer: LA (Most Inappropriate Look for Combat) Medic: Abala (Most Stereotypical Accent, Runnerup) Soldier: Gator (Most Canadian)
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| # ? Jan 18, 2013 17:04 |
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