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Bacarruda posted:Nazi dinosaurs. 
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Nov 30, 2014 14:18
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inscrutable horse posted:How the Nazis might react after this mission... That's a pure aryan skull right there.
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Nov 30, 2014 17:20
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drat it, I've never had that mission pop up either. I wonder what other crazy loot and xp I've missed out on in this game. Anyway, based on my own games and on one or two VLPs I've seen, Nessie is definitely a zombie/bullet-magnet. He gets shot all the time... but always seems to pull through.
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Nov 30, 2014 22:35
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I'm just glad you're using the hundred round tommy. That thing is awesome.
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Dec 1, 2014 07:58
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quote:The PIAT is kinda interesting because it used a giant spring to launch a grenade at the target. Did make the weapon good for ambushed because no muzzle flare or anything to reveal your position. The idea is sound in theory but in reality it wasn't all that great because it had a slew of issues with one of them being a lack of penetrative power against armour. Wales Grey posted:Another quirk from the PIAT's "interesting" design that made it useful in an ambush is, being basically a giant spring in a tube, it had no backblast. There's a very common misconception on how PIAT worked - the projectile wasn't spring powered, the spring 1) detonated the propellant and then 2) received the recoil energy, which cocked the spring back into position for next shot (except for those times when it didn't and had to be manually recocked). The spring was needed to deal with recoil which otherwise would have been unmanageable, this wasn't an issue with Bazooka type electrically fired recoilless weapons. Very broadly speaking it worked similarly to a blowback weapon, like Sten here:  What is true is that PIAT didn't have a backblast and could therefore be shot from indoors without risk. But there was a muzzle flash and some smoke and dust, yet quite likely the signature was smaller than with a Bazooka - backblast weapons kick up helluva lot of dust.
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Dec 1, 2014 22:08
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The floors are multilayered. Wow. I've never noticed that before. This destruction engine was lightyears ahead of its time, I do believe.
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Dec 2, 2014 02:36
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So I reinstalled and jeez I am bad at this game. I managed to get people killed multiple times in my first non-prologue mission. (to be fair, though, it's because the mission has an interrupting cutscene that kicked me out of my turn, making my door-opener eat an entire MP40 magazine without me being able to do anything about it  )
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Dec 2, 2014 04:44
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biosterous posted:So I reinstalled and jeez I am bad at this game. I managed to get people killed multiple times in my first non-prologue mission. It's like, a metaphor for life, man. E: was it the Sten that was designed to be built in basements and poo poo by freedom fighters?
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Dec 2, 2014 07:10
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I do believe it was. The Sten really is a very basic but also very effective weapon.
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Dec 2, 2014 07:32
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Pvt.Scott posted:It's like, a metaphor for life, man. The Sten was initially designed only with the British soldiers in question. After the disastrous Battle of Dunkirk, the British had left behind a lot of materiel and the existing Lanchester (a copy of the MP-28 with fine brass furnishings) was heavy and expensive to make; they also couldn't buy enough Thompsons from the US to make up the difference (especially after the US entered the war itself). The Sten is a bone simple submachine gun that's extremely easy and inexpensive to make. It even uses a copy of the MP 40 magazine. The qualities that made it cheap and easy to produce for a military coincidentally made it just as easy to make at home. Anyone who peruses gun building groups or looks up Philip Luty will realize how trivially easy it is to build an operational submachine gun from common household construction parts and tools (like pipes), and the Sten fits in that category. Using MP 40 magazines was an equal boon, as it let the partisans simply steal magazines and ammo from the Nazis.
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Dec 2, 2014 08:01
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Didn't the russians get the manufacturing process of their SMGs down to ludicrous levels of simplicity by the end of the war?
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Dec 2, 2014 09:28
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The Sten gun was the perfect weapon for mass producing for the war. It could cost as little as 2£ (10$) (about 80£ today) to make a Sten gun where as the American M1A1 Thompson cost about 200$ per gun if I remember correctly. Though the low price did mean that they were often of very low quality and prone to jamming, misfiring, firing single shots while on automatic and automatic fine while set to single shot and were notorious for accidentally firing when dropped or even put down in a few cases.
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Dec 2, 2014 11:12
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I always wondered how ejection systems worked and how the firing pin activates the charge in blowback operated guns. Also can't you basically stamp thompson recievers out of poo poo steel?
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Dec 2, 2014 13:55
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That mission is absolutely great. I'm not sure why the enemies are rated about level 20, but they sure will carve you up with rocket launchers if you're not careful. I think the idea is they're supposed to flee - they tend to move towards one end of the map - but it never really seems to stick.
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Dec 2, 2014 15:04
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quote:Didn't the russians get the manufacturing process of their SMGs down to ludicrous levels of simplicity by the end of the war? Yes, with the PPS-43. The PPSh-41 was still too expensive and complex to manufacture when the Soviets were at their most pressed for time, so they made their own design for a simple stamped steel SMG. I think during the siege of Stalingrad, they even made the guns in the city and shipped them straight to the front lines of the battle. You can still buy semi-auto clones or conversions of the PPS-43 today for a very low price, either with the folding stock intact and a 16 inch barrel or the original barrel intact and the stock welded closed. quote:The Sten gun was the perfect weapon for mass producing for the war. It could cost as little as 2£ (10$) (about 80£ today) to make a Sten gun where as the American M1A1 Thompson cost about 200$ per gun if I remember correctly. Though the low price did mean that they were often of very low quality and prone to jamming, misfiring, firing single shots while on automatic and automatic fine while set to single shot and were notorious for accidentally firing when dropped or even put down in a few cases. I haven't heard any stories of the Sten going off when put down too hard, though any open bolt submachine gun is capable of going off if dropped because the firing pin is fixed to the bolt and it simply has to go forward hard enough to detonate the primer. That said, most of the problems with the Sten came from the MP 40 magazine it copied: they had a double-column staggered stack for the rounds in the magazine, but forced them to converge into a single column to feed at the top. This was much easier to jam up with dirt or slight damage to the magazine than one that feeds alternately from each side. quote:I always wondered how ejection systems worked and how the firing pin activates the charge in blowback operated guns. I'll give a full description here about closed vs. open bolt as well, just in case someone doesn't understand the difference here. Closed bolt guns are how most firearms you see operate. When you pull the trigger and activate the trigger sear, a spring-loaded hammer strikes the firing pin (or a spring-loaded striker containing the firing pin is released to shoot forward) and the firing pin hits the primer at the back of the cartridge. The primer is a little cylinder full of shock-sensitive explosive, the detonation of which ignites the gunpowder in the cartridge. As we all know from Newton's Laws, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This means that when the gunpowder combusts into high-pressure hot gas that pushes the bullet out of the barrel, it also pushes backwards on the now empty cartridge casing. The casing thus pushes back on the bolt (compressing a recoil spring), eventually pushing it back far enough to open the ejection port. At this point an optional extractor pulls the casing out and an ejector hits the back and flips it out of the gun. When the recoil spring is totally compressed, it uncompresses and pushes the bolt back forward while the striker or hammer remain cocked back and locked by the trigger sear. As it moves forward it strips a new cartridge out of the magazine and pushes it into the chamber. To clarify any confusion, the slide you see on many semi-automatic pistols is basically the bolt; it just wraps around the top of the frame instead of being a block inside it. An open bolt gun is a simpler design commonly used for larger machine guns and simple submachine guns. In an open bolt design, the bolt stays locked back after firing. When you pull the trigger it sets the whole bolt moving forward, which has the firing pin fixed to the front. So pulling the trigger has the bolt go forward, strip a cartridge out, shove it into the breech and fire it immediately, then go backwards and lock again. Open bolt guns are simpler to make because you only need a big hunk of metal with a point on the end, rather than a separate bolt, firing pin, and potentially a hammer to strike it. It also leaves the breech open to let air circulate, which improves cooling (and if the gun does overheat enough that a cartridge could spontaneously ignite, there's no round in the chamber to go off in the first place). The downsides are that the open breech also leaves a big opening for dirt and other foreign bullshit to get in and gum things up, and the weight of the entire bolt flying forward jerks the gun slightly and decreases long range accuracy; I've dry fired an Uzi before after firing it (brilliant gun, by the way) and the gun actually shakes slightly from the weight of the bolt slamming closed. But the simplicity means that most homemade submachine guns or other very simple ones like the Sten use it. Now, you may ask why all of our guns aren't blowback-operated. The simple answer is that you need to keep the breech closed for a short time after the gunpowder goes off, to make sure that the pressure isn't too high when it opens; having excess pressure as you open the breech can have all sorts of problems, from the cartridge warping oddly (brass expands and contracts during firing to seal the breech against any gases trying to go any way but forwards and to let it be easily extracted from the chamber) to hot gas flying out the breech and burning your eyeballs out. Simple blowback operation uses nothing but the weight of the bolt and strength of the recoil spring to keep the bolt moving slowly enough that it only opens the breech when the pressure is low. This is why you generally only see blowback operation in guns like SMGs, where you can have such a heavy bolt in a large gun. The Makarov PM pistol (the standard Soviet sidearm during the Cold War and still in heavy use today) is widely regarded as the smallest you can make a decently powered blowback pistol without having an excessively heavy slide and recoil spring. Hi-Point makes blowback firearms in 9x19mm, .40 S&W, and .45 ACP to cut costs, but the downside is that they use comically massive slides made from cheap zinc alloy to do it. So once you leave the realm of 9x18mm Makarov and similar cartridges, most pistols have some means of locking the breech. John Browning's widely copied design from the M1911 just has the barrel and slide connected by some lugs, with the barrel and slide recoiling together to keep the breech locked; after a short distance the barrel tilts down and unlocks so the slide can keep going back. Assault rifles and battle rifles typically go for gas operation, where some of the firing gases are tapped off by a port near the end of the barrel (that's the tube you see above the barrel of an AK, for example) that pushes back on a piston or directly on the bolt carrier itself to cycle it. Heckler & Koch has a patented mechanism that requires the bolt to force its way past rollers as a means of slowing it down. There's a ton of different designs. quote:Also can't you basically stamp thompson recievers out of poo poo steel? A lot of guns can be stamped from lovely steel, Thompson clones included. That said, the design remained fairly heavy and expensive to manufacture by virtue of its design characteristics. This is why the US made themselves the M3 Grease Gun, as their own entry into the "cheap stamped steel SMG" competition. You start to see those guns appearing during World War II and continuing thereafter. First generation SMGs like the original Bergmann MP-18 had heavy wooden rifle stocks, a closed bolt, and were well-made room sweepers. The economic harshness of World War II led almost everyone (first the Germans with the MP 38 and MP 40) to make simple, inexpensive guns from stamped steel with open bolts to cheaply arm millions of soldiers. This trend continued for a long time, with only HK's MP5 actually being an accurate, closed bolt gun. Right now we're in what you could call the third generation of submachine guns, where we've returned to making them just as well as our assault rifles. So closed bolt is in and there's an emphasis on using fine materials and maximizing accuracy and power while minimizing recoil. This gets you stuff like the P90, MP7, and CZ Scorpion Evo III. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 18:34
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Closed bolt seems like a lot of trouble to go through for something you won't be firing at long range. -Signed; partizan's and resistance fighters. Who doesn't want the benefit of making guns in their backyard?
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Dec 2, 2014 19:04
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Samuel posted:Closed bolt seems like a lot of trouble to go through for something you won't be firing at long range. Like chitoryu12 mentioned, there's also the problem of more dirt getting into your gun. For resistance fighters who live for months in caves and half-broken houses, its a bigger problem than troops who might get to take transport or R&R in forward bases and such. Hell, even finding a clean piece of cloth to pull through the barrel might be a problem for the resistance. 
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Dec 2, 2014 19:27
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Both systems have their advantages. Closed bolt is more complex and expensive to make and won't cool as easily during heavy full auto fire, but it's generally safer, more reliable, and increases accuracy. Open bolt weapons, on the other hand, are very cheap to make and you can spray full auto until the barrel melts. That said, overheating isn't as big of a problem for SMGs as its designers assumed. Unless you're using it in a siege situation dumping magazine after magazine, you generally won't put out enough rounds to start the gun cooking off.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:56
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Samuel posted:I always wondered how ejection systems worked and how the firing pin activates the charge in blowback operated guns. Have I got the game for you! http://store.steampowered.com/app/262410
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Dec 2, 2014 20:20
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As I understand it, smg design during ww2 had the philosophy of "We want lots of bullets going in the general direction of the enemy, and we want it right now." Accuracy was a very distant consideration.
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Dec 3, 2014 09:35
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Fangz posted:Have I got the game for you! I have the free version and I don't want to spend 36 bucks to go on the NSA watchlist  The Lone Badger posted:As I understand it, smg design during ww2 had the philosophy of "We want lots of bullets going in the general direction of the enemy, and we want it right now." Accuracy was a very distant consideration. People were finding themselves in dense european towns (blown half to poo poo) where you'd sometimes stumble onto the enemy without even knowing it, hence retard firing it in the general direction of the enemy would be a good move. Plus Rifleman had all that "accuracy" poo poo down.
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Dec 3, 2014 09:46
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started playing again with watchdog drat it makes such a difference. I had forgotten that mission progression isn't linear, straight after the old manor it has sent me to Hannover German Intelligence HQ. Did I do something wrong like miss a clue or is it just RNG?
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Dec 3, 2014 12:51
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It's random.
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Dec 3, 2014 12:58
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The Lone Badger posted:As I understand it, smg design during ww2 had the philosophy of "We want lots of bullets going in the general direction of the enemy, and we want it right now." Accuracy was a very distant consideration. There were different philosophies. Eg. Suomi SMG was designed to be highly accurate to 200m and more, as Finnish landscape favours such weapons - they could be used as LMG substitutes, which is good because the Finnish Lahti-Saloranta LMG sucked rear end and there weren't enough of them (fortunately Red Army handed over enough of the excellent Degtyarevs in Winter War to equip the whole army). But Suomi SMG with carefully tested barrels and a wooden stock was expensive and heavy. If you just wanted to equip home defense, partisans, drivers and whatnot quickly and efficiently you didn't give them such a delicate piece, you gave them a Sten or PPS - chances are a truck driver or artilleryman will never have to fire his personal firearm, and at that point it doesn't matter if it's accurate further than you can throw it. Even Germany had to resort to toy guns to arm Prussian veterans and school kids in 1945 - but it was too late. 
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Dec 3, 2014 15:40
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Stelas posted:That mission is absolutely great. I'm not sure why the enemies are rated about level 20, but they sure will carve you up with rocket launchers if you're not careful. I think the idea is they're supposed to flee - they tend to move towards one end of the map - but it never really seems to stick. Antistar01 posted:drat it, I've never had that mission pop up either. I wonder what other crazy loot and xp I've missed out on in this game. Kangra posted:I never really had a good handle on how wounds work, particularly what counts as critical, and what doctors can or can't heal with their skills. I know sometimes they say, "this is beyond my abilities" but there are a lot of bits of information that seem scattered in various places about how to fix yourself & others. I get the sense the game is tons easier on the second playthrough when you know how to handle it. Bacarruda posted:Nazi dinosaurs.  You know, eventually we would have the means to kill something like that  Fangz posted:Have I got the game for you! Also, loving all the gun chat even if I currently can't add to it!
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Dec 3, 2014 17:04
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Tin Tim posted:Now I want a mod Me to, but just a little different.  
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Dec 3, 2014 17:08
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Can you miss out on missions? Or will they just pop up later? Just wondering if I should do a few random encounters for some xp before jumping into this mission in Hannover.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:34
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You can miss missions, but sometimes they'll show up - and they're not region-scaled: England, for example, has a couple lategame maps that are a complete bitch if you get them before their time. But you won't always get all the missions.
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Dec 3, 2014 21:46
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Hoboskins posted:Can you miss out on missions? Or will they just pop up later? Just wondering if I should do a few random encounters for some xp before jumping into this mission in Hannover. I think it is also difficulty based. So if you pick the lowest difficulty you will get MORE missions, if you pick a higher level you will get less? That game was weird in that regard.
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Dec 4, 2014 04:02
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Re: the gun-chat - especially the close-quarters urban fighting in parts of WWII - it seems like it was an interesting time for that stuff. I remember a mention in Tales of the Gun somewhere about how German soldiers (I think it was) supposedly experimented with basically sticking a pipe, curved at 90 degrees, onto the end of their SMGs (or it might have been their StG 44s, specifically), so that they could literally shoot around corners while staying in cover. Apparently it even worked, to some extent. 
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Dec 4, 2014 08:23
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Antistar01 posted:Re: the gun-chat - especially the close-quarters urban fighting in parts of WWII - it seems like it was an interesting time for that stuff. I remember a mention in Tales of the Gun somewhere about how German soldiers (I think it was) supposedly experimented with basically sticking a pipe, curved at 90 degrees, onto the end of their SMGs (or it might have been their StG 44s, specifically), so that they could literally shoot around corners while staying in cover. It does! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73FFitene58 Also, a glock on a stick! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brWwHKcN2kc Samuel fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 10:23
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Antistar01 posted:Re: the gun-chat - especially the close-quarters urban fighting in parts of WWII - it seems like it was an interesting time for that stuff. I remember a mention in Tales of the Gun somewhere about how German soldiers (I think it was) supposedly experimented with basically sticking a pipe, curved at 90 degrees, onto the end of their SMGs (or it might have been their StG 44s, specifically), so that they could literally shoot around corners while staying in cover. It was designed to let soldiers shoot out of trenches without exposing themselves. Basically it was a more mobile-ish version of the Australian periscope rifles from the Great War, but nobody used it because it was a mess of glass and metal frame that would break drat fast, plus the small issues of stovepipe blockages leading to a kablam failure (where the weapon slightly explodes)  StG-44 Krummlauf- 
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Dec 4, 2014 12:10
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I believe the Krummlauf specifically was meant for urban combat and tank crews who could stick their guns through the top hatches. They even made it in a variety of curves for different levels of wrapping the bullet around cover. The problem is that bullets aren't really supposed to be fired through curved barrels; the added centrifugal stress on the barrel from the bullet gave it a very short service life and the bullets came out fairly slow and lacking power. It was one of many Nazi wonder weapons that ultimately failed to make an impact on the war.
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Dec 4, 2014 14:43
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lol yeah, the Krummlauf always comes up at some point. The initial idea behind it, was to "improve" the German Ferdinand/Elefant tanks. Combat on the eastern front had shown that this tank model could be easily approached and destroyed by infantry, because it had no small arms in the beginning. An MG 34 was then fitted into the front when the model was redesigned and changed its name. The Krummlauf was supposedly a crutch solution before the change.  I'm not really sure if it saw use in other tank models, but there are pictures of German soldiers using Stg 44s with a Krummlauf on foot so 
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Dec 4, 2014 14:55
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Tin Tim posted:lol yeah, the Krummlauf always comes up at some point. Ferdinand wasn't a tank, it was a tank destroyer. Earlier German tank destroyers had been open topped like self-propelled guns in general, which left them vulnerable to artillery, which was still better than horse or truck towed guns as it could relocate before enemy forward observers could call a fire mission on them. Ferdinand was based on a Tiger proposal and basically was a pillbox on tracks - but it was still supposed to be a tank destroyer that could engage enemies beyond ranges where defence against enemy infantry was needed. Therefore the original Ferdinand design was no more flawed than Panzerjäger I or Marders which also didn't have machineguns. But those were lightly armoured and open topped. When you have a tank destroyer that can withstand enemy fire and carries a gun that can take out enemy bunkers, and not enough tanks or assault guns to serve your needs, your heavy tank destroyer will soon become a tank or assault gun replacement out of necessity.
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Dec 4, 2014 21:33
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Oh hey, pictures and everything; nice. Tales of the Gun is the only place I'd ever heard about it, and putting a curved pipe on the end of a gun seemed so much like something out of a Looney Tunes cartoon that I'd wondered if it was apocryphal.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:26
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If there is a way to kill people from the safety of cover, we will find it.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:50
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Secrets Part 1 Sorry for the delay! But I had some poo poo to do, and also fought a cold. So, today we'll take a look at the two secret encounters that you can find in North Britain. South Britain has none, as far as I know.  This encounter came up a few times in the thread already, and it has a reputation for being hilariously deadly for low level squads. Though, we already had one poster say that they just stumbled into it early on, and cleared it without much trouble. So I guess you have to take what I say with a grain of salt, because I'm mostly going by my own experience. Also, your mileage on how long it takes until the encounter appears may vary. It took me like ten minutes to get it this time, but it can also show up almost instantly. That's just RNG poo poo.  Right, before I tell you what's up with this encounter, I have to mention a few other things. First, we kinda lucked out that we got this encounter at night. Our two soldiers with night vision will have a good advantage here, and the enemies will have a harder time spotting us. Though, that goes both ways, and our soldiers without night vision will also have a harder time detecting enemies. And that can be kinda bad, because the enemies in this encounter can be pretty hard to spot even at daytime. And secondly, we also lucked out and immediately detected the enemy to our left. This guy can be particularly nasty, because he starts right in grenade range and is usually hidden. But I guess our high level gave us a break here, and we spotted him from the start. Okay, let's break this down.  If you don't come here with a capable party, chances are that you can only see this guy standing alone on the road. He's a Japanese officer, and has a very nice treasure on his hip. This has "TRAP" written all over it in big glowing letters, and you better realize that. If not, you may be inclined to stay on the road and will then die in short order. Why? Because this guy has a bunch of ninja friends with him! They sit on both sides of the road, and have huge spot and hide skills. I'm not kidding when I say that it's possible to get wiped here without ever seeing one of the ninjas. In the days before the Watchdog it certainly happened! But now you may ask yourself why the ninjas are such a big deal? Being stealthy is good and all, but what can they actually do? Well, each of them has light grenades and several throwing weapons, and enough AP to use their whole supply in a single turn if they get close enough to you. Like, that first guy is really deadly because he is almost guaranteed to kill or severely wound at least one of your guys when you don't detect him right away. And when you then fumble around in panic and try to salvage the mess he just made, his pals will show up on the next turn and keep owning you. What I'm saying is that it's real easy to go into a death spiral here, if you don't know what you're doing. But hey, I know what I'm doing and also have a beefy squad at my disposal, so this shouldn't be too tough.  L.A starts us off by blowing that fucker out of his cover.  I'm not totally sure if the ninja skin is unique to this encounter in the first game, but it shows up again in Sentinels.  After fanning out a bit, my night vision guys spotted more ninjas hiding behind the bend ahead of us. The fences in this mission are huge LOS problems, because most of them have bushes on them which further enhance the already high stealth skills of the ninjas. But those ninjas are also neatly lined up...  Gator only managed to kill one of them though. His talent to stop a long burst after killing his target was actually detrimental here. If he would have used his last AP to squeeze out another shot or two, both of them would probably have died. Oh well, it's not like I don't have more solutions at hand.  And when I send Elf up to scout more...  ...she finds that there were actually three guys hidden there. So yeah, can you now see why this encounter can be deadly? Not only do you start with a guy right next to you, three more are just a few feet away!  Nessie sends him flying and we're off to a good start.  It's easy to forget about the officer, but you really shouldn't! He also is good at stealth, but usually not that keen on hiding. What he is keen on though, is making a beeline to his dead pals to get their throwing weapons. He also has a ton of AP, so he can unleash a shower of metal on an unsuspecting squad member if you don't keep tabs on him.  Nessie also gets dinged by a light grenade, and further cements his reputation as the hurt magnet  See that marker on the right? This guy came out of the trees at the right edge, and is usually a huge dick. Like, it's a coin flip between if he wants to come for you, or just hugs his cover forever until he can jump one your guys. The dense trees also make him very hard to spot, and I normally just throw a huge grenade into the trees because gently caress that guy.  But this time he came to us, and I'm not complaining.  Nessie gets some revenge on the guy that naded him, but fails to kill. That's not too bad though, because I would have thrown a second nade anyway. This bend is also a popular ninja spot, so I want it gone.   Huh, he was alone after all. But you can't be too careful in this encounter, so whatever. Gator rips into the officer...   ...and since he's a special character, he can almost tank the whole salvo. Got him with a random headshot at the end though  And here you get a little peek at the reason why we're doing this encounter. My precious.  At this point, most of the foes are down, but the ones in hiding are still deadly. I let Abala and L.A creep up the left side of the map, and they briefly got vision on a ninja.  And then another one just appears out of thin air, and lays the hurt on Abala   As you can see, Abala isn't wounded that hard, but almost incapacitated by critical effects! Now would be a good time to talk about the throwing weapons that the ninjas use; good drat Shurikens. They don't do too much damage, but have a huge crit bonus and are hella cheap to throw. They are in fact the cheapest throwing weapons in the game! The ninja managed to still hurl five Shurikens at Abala, despite having crouch-moved up to him. He only hit with four, but I think you can get why a shower of Shurikens puts you in a really bad spot. Having one hosed up soldier isn't too bad, getting half your squad crippled in a single turn is another matter.  Get wrecked m8te While Abala starts to fix himself, I have the rest of the crew carefully creep around. The other ninja I saw last round has gone into hiding again, so I can't move around too much.   Well, this is weird. Cross still has stealth, so the enemy shouldn't be able to know that he's there. But here the game mechanics may come into play, because I think it's possible that the ninja heard Cross sneak, and just threw a nade at the noise source. I've never seen anything like this, but guess that it's possible? I know for a fact that enemies hear and react to your noise markers, but never saw them throw a grenade on a hunch. The other explanation would be that he wanted to throw at L.A, but spectacularly fumbled his throw and hit Cross right in the kisser  Though, I'm real lucky that the second ninja didn't break Cross' stealth and killed him. God drat, that's like the third or fourth close call in the Lp so far? But then again, those two fuckers present their dumb faces really clear now...  ...and get gunned down in short order. Okay, at this point I'm kinda sure that there's like one ninja left, or two at most. So I put my people into hiding, and carefully scout around.   Hmm, this area seems empty.  wat   Motherfucker!  If that display wasn't a good proof for their ninja skills, then I don't know what is!  Get owned And as it turns out, this was actually the last ninja! So we got through this encounter pretty fine, I'd say.  Well, almost fine Okay, let's look at our loot.  Every ninja has six Shuriken in his pocket, so this encounter sets you up for life. As said, they don't do that much damage(though more than our throwing knives), but that +30 crit bonus is awesome and the cheap throwing costs can't be beaten. With the talent for cheaper throws, Elf can hurl those babies at four AP each. Pretty good, right? Things like Chakrams or later throwing knives do more damage per throw, but that doesn't matter if you can throw Shurikens all day long. And even if you can't kill an enemy for some reason, you could still peg him with a critical wound or two and take him out of the game for a turn. I love Shurikens, and will use them forever. Oh, and the red things at the top are light German grenades. Slightly weaker than ours, but with a little more AOE range. Well, time for the big shiny treasure of this encounter. Please imagine a drum roll before looking at the next screen.  My hanzo steel  This is the best melee weapon in the game, no competition whatsoever! Even without Always Melee Crit, that damage and +50 crit will almost always insta-kill any normal enemy. Especially since Elf is currently skilled enough to chop heads at 100% chance to hit. And since Elf has the talent for cheaper melee strikes too, she can use that thing for eight AP per swing. So, if you ever had the dream of killing a room full of soldiers in a whirl of sword strikes, get your scout some hanzo steel! Also, this weapon has one hidden quality that we'll get to see when the big secret of the game gets revealed.  Oh, you also get a sweet sheath when you carry the sword in your inventory. Right, with that encounter cleared, let's head straight into the next one.  This encounter has a secret weapon that's well known in the SS community, but getting it is still kinda tricky.  When you enter it, you will usually see this map. But this is not the one you want, because this encounter actually has a secret alternative map! It has pretty low chances to spawn, so I made a save before entering the encounter and scummed hard.  This is the one you want. Notice a difference? This version has a truck on it, and that's your tell. Though, the weapon is still very well hidden, but we'll see that later. Since this is basically just a normal random encounter, I initially wanted to keep it brief, but then decided to have some fun. The house next to our spawn usually has the most soldiers, so I sent Elf out to get their attention.  He was probably peeling potatoes, because he had a knife in hand as I spotted him  The ruckus makes the soldiers gather in the living room.  I would have liked to sword this bunch, but Elf does not have enough AP for that. Also, there are probably more dudes upstairs who then could kill her.  That works too. Also, it always amuses me that some props explode with a delay for some reason. Well, two guys are still up though. I didn't load Elf with Shurikens, because I wanted to use the Chakram at least once.  lmao, what a lucky hit! But I guess Chakrams are still a good alternative when you don't have a sack full of Shurikens. Elf didn't manage to hit the other guy though.  But if you flex your eyes, you can see a Chakram sticking to the armchair in the room. That's a nice little detail, because throwing weapons will stick to surfaces that are soft enough for them to penetrate. Okay, time to deal with that guy proper.   Oh hey, turns out he wasn't alone. Good thing I didn't let Elf run in there!  Nessie sorta fumbled his throw, and the nade exploded at the ceiling. Still squashed the head of the first guy, but the other is unscathed.  And he retaliates with his LMG.  Funny that for once, Nessie wasn't the first target Our sniper hits a lone German across half the map, and then I end my turn.  Some movement in the second floor, and a group of soldiers spills out of the other house.  God dammit, Nessie! I swear there should be a secret medal for "Gets shot on every mission but never dies" Oh well, our squad picks off a few soldiers in the open, and then turns their attention to the second floor.   I'm going kinda wild with the engiee explosives because of the Lp. On my own, I'd never bother to use them in an encounter like this. With that said though, I'll probably not burn them so much in the future, because we now move to the higher tiers. And while those are really nice exploding tools, their supply is very limited. Well, at least Nessie will not run out of boom anytime soon.  But I guess loving up this house was still worth it Right, let's gloss over me picking off a few more stragglers, and let's get to the showdown.  Elf kinda stumbled over that guy, and normally it would be a problem. 15 AP is not very much, but we have hanzo steel.  Action cam robbed you of the animation, but that's almost 300 damage on a strike to the head. Yup, life is good for Elf. Also, don't worry, I'll show the sword animations later.  It's probably real hard to see, but there is a throwing knife sticking in the fence right in front of Elf. I'm saying this to show that obstacles in your throwing path are an issue. Elf had to move real close to the fence to actually throw over it.  There we go.  This guy heard Elf creep on him, and is prepared for an interrupt. This means that I can't let her stand up, so she has to crawl to him, and then sword him while crouching.  It's kinda weird that he dies before the animation is over, but at least there is a unique animation for swording dudes while crouched. Also, I now see that there is a little stutter at the end of the animation. That's not the game's fault, FRAPS probably acted up that one time without me spotting it. Okay, time for the real sword animation.  I lured this guy into a position from where you have a good view.  I love this animation so much Well, with the soldiers dead, let's get that weapon.  I said that it's pretty well hidden, and you really have to be a nosey player to find it on your own. If you don't set the height slider all the way up, you can look into the closed off attics on this map. And this house has a sneaky chest up there! I can't show it to you because I accidentally blew it up, but trust me that it's normally there.  Gator makes us an entrance... ...and grabs the goods.  I'm not going to tell you right away what this weapon does, because I want you to guess for a moment. It's a 1911 with a big dart on it, and crappy damage. Not that cool, right? Welp, I hope you made your guesses because now we'll test fire it.  Yup, it's a god drat grenade pistol   This gun is honestly pretty broken, because the grenade darts do a ton of damage to any soft target. They have no AOE, but they kinda don't need it anyway. I'll probably not use it, because we already have so many good tools in our hands, and I don't want to break the game harder than I need to. But hey, if you really want me to use this, say so! Also, as the Allies you get unlimited ammo for it, but the Axis have to find another kinda special encounter if you want more ammo. A random encounter in Germany has a few bolts in a chest hidden under a staircase iirc. Can't recall if they are always there though. It's possible that you also have to get an alternate map version for them to be there. E: Bacarruda posted:The OSS modified a 1911 pistol into a low-noise dart gun called the "Bigot." It outwardly resembles the Silent Storm weapon, although it didn't use an explosive projectile. Well, that's it for today, so let's get home.   I can get behind this "Give everyone medals all the time" policy
Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 21:37
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Now what I really want to know is whether the Big Joe is a real gun or a reference to JA2's rocket rifles. Still, while it is pretty powerful, the real treat is that you can use it surgically take out strategic parts of walls. And then you put real explosives through the holes. edit: I mean, sure, it doesn't look like a real gun and doesn't even seem plausible, but there was some really weird poo poo in WW2.
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Dec 12, 2014 21:50
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You found yourself a goddamn Bolt Pistol and you're not going to use it? I'm disappointed. Turn in your Hanzo Steel. 
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Dec 12, 2014 21:59
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