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Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Manager Hoyden posted:

PSA: You can press | and choose to wait until you catch your breath. I've been holding tab until my stamina meter is full like a buffoon all this time.
Game keeps on giving even after all this time :v:

Thanks for the info! The debug boat is exactly what I had in mind tbh. I'm still on 0.E so I have to check if I can boat through bridges. Would be cool because my map keeps on being made of river networks


So I have a few more thoughts on the small lab type after clearing three of them and seeing a different "theme" each time. They all have the same enemies, the same chem loot, and mostly the same layout. Also only one turret(past the metal doors next to the elevator) as it seems. They only differ in some very minor changes to the sealed loot rooms you will find. So you really can't tell what type you're dealing with before you kill a ton of enemies and find one of the real loot rooms. There are also small side rooms that you need to bust open but those usually just have more chem loot. It's all about the bigger sealed rooms.

1. Mutagen lab
Found one sealed loot chamber(fairly central) that had several mutagens and serums on shelves. Nice find if you're into that since serums are what you really want to lock your mutation path iirc

2. Utility lab
This one sucks because it just has electrical supplies, parts, and tools. I mean yes they have value but you're usually past needing an arc welder at this stage of the game. And you can get your electrical parts/tools a lot easier than in this manner. Real bummer when you bust open the loot room tbh. The one I found had no surface access and was part of the subway network between some labs. So I guess it could be meant as a sort of support/utility facility? Obviously you don't want to spend your time with this type but there's no good way to identify it aside from the main loot room. A lot of electrical loot in the open is a hint but not a clear sign since you'll also find that in another type of lab

3. CBM lab
This one is the best I found so far. Two sealed loot rooms with multiple experimental cyborgs and several stacks of mid to high-grade CBMs. Pretty solid haul to set you on your path to cyber-god. The barracks type rooms in this lab can also have a small stack of low to mid-grade CMBs on the floor and an experimental cyborg. Found two such rooms in my lab. There's also electrical loot around just like in the utility labs so that's why I said that it's not a good way to identify the type

No idea if there are more types but yeah that's what I know so far. Are they worth the effort? If you just want to explore then heck no. But if you're looking for specific things and know that you can get them there, then yeah mostly. I mean type 2 is straight trash but the other types can set you up nicely for mutations or CBMs. It's just a question of if you're willing to deal with all the crap down there. There are tons of zombies, small blobs, security bots, and some mutants/cyborgs. And due to the cramped layout they will easily funnel towards you in clumps if they don't get caught by in-fighting. It's no joke that you have to fight through like 30 enemies before you can even move on from the elevator. It's messy and also it's real easy to get trapped because 15 zombies suddenly spill out into the corridor behind you. So yeah come prepared and don't take risks once you move into the lab proper. Getting cut-off from the elevator sucks real bad

It's not all bad though because the fighting between bots and everything else will take down a lot of zombies. I mean the zombies will eventually win but if you spend a few hours on the surface after you've poked the nest then you'll be rewarded with a lot of easy pulping. The bots aren't that dangerous for you btw. An M4 can take them down with a couple shots if you have some skills. The manhack swarms do suck but at least they're just melee and not explosive. There's usually a small and sorta fixed number of security/military type zombies around. You'll always see security guards and usually two bio operators. I think those are a fixed spawn in one of the security closets. Then there are a small number of advanced military zombies that you can run into. Not sure how much evolution comes into play here but I've seen like 2-5 of them per lab. For me those could be kevlar zombies/hulks, black-ops, or grenadiers/elite-grenadiers. So the threat here is sorta predictable and not bad outside of hulks/elites. The experimental mutants/prototype cyborgs aren't that dangerous either but can take down a surprisingly large number of zombies. However an evolved mutant just dunks on zombies/bots and yeah you should full-auto him right away no questions asked. So the threat in these labs doesn't really come from quality but from the sheer quantity of enemies.

The big reason for why I think that it can be worth all the trouble isn't really the loot room but the loot tables of bots and scientists. Scientists can drop a lot of nifty items. Pretty much all types of CBMs, autoclaves, high-grade drugs/meds, adrenalin shots, teleporters, lab journals, ID cards, and more stuff. If you're looking for these things then it's worth the risk. The loot quality of scientists isn't that obvious in the old lab types due to the smaller numbers but if you get 50+ rolls on their loot table then you're going to be seeing some nice drops. Me praising the bot loot table is something I also have to explain further. The brunt of drops is trash outside of maybe kevlar/ceramic plates if you want to make certain armors. But there is a rare chance for lab bots, skitters, and manhacks to drop a stack of five plutonium fuel cells! With the number of bots around it's almost sure that you'll walk out with at least five cells and maybe more. That's a pretty compelling reason to go there depending on your character. You can even disassemble some of the bots for another chance of one cell per wreck.

So yeah as said you pretty much have to know what you're doing and what you want to pick up. Otherwise it's probably best to give these labs a pass

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 21:08 on May 17, 2021

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Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

I get that this is pretty much a sandbox game, but is there anything to actually do once you're an unstoppable mutant cyborg wizard dual-wielding .50 cal machine guns?

Manager Hoyden
Mar 5, 2020

Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:

I get that this is pretty much a sandbox game, but is there anything to actually do once you're an unstoppable mutant cyborg wizard dual-wielding .50 cal machine guns?

Not really. There challenge scenarios, of course, but other than those you kind of need to make your own goals. Stuff like surviving until year 10, make a camp with 10 NPC recruits and wander spawns on, clear a mi-go encampment, clear a central lab as a caveman, clear an evacuation shelter as a bad guy, etc.

Bright Nights does in fact have a win condition though.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Manager Hoyden posted:

Not really. There challenge scenarios, of course, but other than those you kind of need to make your own goals. Stuff like surviving until year 10, make a camp with 10 NPC recruits and wander spawns on, clear a mi-go encampment, clear a central lab as a caveman, clear an evacuation shelter as a bad guy, etc.

Bright Nights does in fact have a win condition though.

I think theres also a specific artifact type that closes portals so you could make it your goal to get that and close say 10 portals.

Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

What, in vague less-spoilery terms, is the win condition in BN?

Manager Hoyden
Mar 5, 2020

Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:

What, in vague less-spoilery terms, is the win condition in BN?

You know that lab finale that seems like it should do something but doesn't? It does do something in BN.

edit: too spoilery

Manager Hoyden fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 17, 2021

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Hot drat CBM lab didn't disapoint



I mean some of them came from scientist loot but each of the sealed rooms had several CBMs in the open and a vault locked with a terminal. You also find an autodoc and a kit in each room so you could instal two of them right away. You can get more if you spend time dissecting cyborgs and scientists but I'm good. Yeah this lab is very much worth the hassle but good luck finding it :v:

RazzleDazzleHour
Mar 31, 2016

Lmao I made a new character for a twitch stream today and the first house I walked into had a full toolbox and the biodiesel book. Time to enter the midgame on day one

Manager Hoyden
Mar 5, 2020

I don't suppose there's an easy way to remove all of a certain entity type from the game, is there?

I have a chick/snake apocalypse going on

cis_eraser_420
Mar 1, 2013

Oh man I've been playing the Bright Nights fork for the last week or so. Thought I was just tired of the game for a while now - turns out they actually just hosed it up and now I'm having fun again! Who'd have thought an actually working hunger meter and un-tediousing the game a bit would help? Started out on an island prison, exploited z-levels to beat down the hulk with a pipe from above while dodging crumbling floor tiles, built a boat, escaped, turned a sports car into a murdervan and now I'm rolling around collecting NPCs for my settlement, chugging atomic coffee and pulverizing zombie kids with a fire axe just like old times.

Question: how do I bust open the resin walls in mi-go camps? I tried dynamite and a LAW and they just bounced off, couldn't mine my way inside either, eventually I just shrugged and used the map editor to open the cells because that's bullshit imo, but it'd be nice to know how to do it properly in the future.

Also this place is a loving hellhole, even with thermal dissipation and climate control turned on the game was still showing my temps as 200-300 :stonk: Weirdly enough none of the guards managed to hurt me so I just got hopped up on tramadol and shot them with a SIG.

cis_eraser_420 fucked around with this message at 11:40 on May 19, 2021

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
A lot of timescales have been adjusted in BN in ways I approve of, like dissections being quick and some simple disassemblies, crafts, and activities taking less time.
Probably my favorite minor change so far is that memory tiles don't decay so you'll never come back to your base and forget what the layout was. It also means you can use the look command and fast-scroll through almost the entire map. Good way to look all over town for some feature without having to revisit it physically.

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Is Bright Nights still able to port in new changes from the main fork that they approve of, or have the codebases diverged too far for that to be possible without a lot of work?

cis_eraser_420
Mar 1, 2013

The Lone Badger posted:

Is Bright Nights still able to port in new changes from the main fork that they approve of, or have the codebases diverged too far for that to be possible without a lot of work?

Gotta say I don't really know a lot about programming, but it looks like it's diverged pretty far - for example, the new pocket-based inventory system isn't in (and will never be, from what they've said) and that on its own changes a whole bunch of poo poo from what I've read.

On the other hand, looking through closed pull requests on their github page I'm seeing a bunch of "ported x from main DDA branch" so hey

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Can you find anything besides scrap when you dig through wreckage on chopper crash sites?

Manager Hoyden
Mar 5, 2020

Tin Tim posted:

Can you find anything besides scrap when you dig through wreckage on chopper crash sites?

Nope, there's never anything under there.

Speaking of digging though, is there ever anything in the hundred thousand derelict sheds inexplicably littering the game?

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Not to my knowledge. The only time I ever found something under shed-rubble was when I killed a bandit and its corpse dropped on the rubble tile so I had to dig it away to get the loot :v:

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
I understand that more dangerous places don't necessarily have better loot, and the game leans towards the realistic/sim side of things, but then I play 7 Days to Die where you systematically clear a large factory or whatever and there's a ton of enemies guarding a final cache, and I just find myself wishing CDDA used treasure and "finales" in places other than labs. I know it would make the game more "game-y" but I think there's places it could benefit from that.

Leal
Oct 2, 2009
There are finales in ancient ruins or w/e they're called. You can get a useless rear end artifact :haw:

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
I've cleared a ton of wizard towers (the simple round ones with plastic golem armies) and only like 25% of the time is there even any treasure. They really need to fix the loot pool or odds or whatever. Last time, I got a flask of quicksilver, which is basically worthless. Before that, I got a hammer token, which as far as I can tell is just a hammer you have to unpack first. And before that, nothing. Just books. Never a magic item or spellbook or even scroll. You'd think with the challenge and circumstance you'd be guaranteed something good, but nope. Here's a drama novel on this grand workbench.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Tin Tim posted:

Can you find anything besides scrap when you dig through wreckage on chopper crash sites?

Yes, but it is entirely random and a result of a dead body or chopper parts being placed on the same tiles as the scrap. The scrap then acts as a "cover" for it. Similar stuff happens when a zed dies on a pile.

Slaapaav
Mar 3, 2006

by Azathoth

Vib Rib posted:

I understand that more dangerous places don't necessarily have better loot, and the game leans towards the realistic/sim side of things, but then I play 7 Days to Die where you systematically clear a large factory or whatever and there's a ton of enemies guarding a final cache, and I just find myself wishing CDDA used treasure and "finales" in places other than labs. I know it would make the game more "game-y" but I think there's places it could benefit from that.

it kinda does this. places that can spawn the better loot have more enemies spawn near them.

Manager Hoyden
Mar 5, 2020

Vib Rib posted:

I've cleared a ton of wizard towers (the simple round ones with plastic golem armies) and only like 25% of the time is there even any treasure. They really need to fix the loot pool or odds or whatever. Last time, I got a flask of quicksilver, which is basically worthless. Before that, I got a hammer token, which as far as I can tell is just a hammer you have to unpack first. And before that, nothing. Just books. Never a magic item or spellbook or even scroll. You'd think with the challenge and circumstance you'd be guaranteed something good, but nope. Here's a drama novel on this grand workbench.

Yeah I agree it's weird to have areas in a game that are basically dungeons, but the best move is to pass them by because you know there's nothing worth looting in there.

It's kind of a weird loot pool to adjust, though. I mean yeah they could give out a gun or something, but for my runs the most valuable loot is things like internal combustion fundamentals, zui quan and you, a hacksaw, a compound bow, and a vehicle welding rig.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Had my first encounter with the leech plant monsters in a small lab and yikes they spawn chaff creatures like crazy. Had to retreat and dug up 8 grenades from the loot piles in my car. Not sure if throwing nades at the plutonium based generators in the lab is a good idea but hey you never know until you try!

This encounter also got me thinking that there might not be that many ways of aoe-killing? Like wielding an LMG is cool at first but then you realize that it's not much better against hordes than an m4 because you still pump your bursts into single targets instead of spraying rounds over an area to hit multiple targets. What weapons actually do aoe damage outside of explosives and flamers/launchers?

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 14:15 on May 22, 2021

Caidin
Oct 29, 2011
Unless your allergic to Magicylsm, probably fireballs or lightning bolts.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
It's a shame labs have the best loot because they're always so loving boring. Whether you're weak or strong, they're boring, just in slightly different ways, and in the speed you can move through them. I don't know why. In many open world games, the dungeons can be some of the most fun parts of the games, but in CDDA it's gotten to the point where I just don't enjoy 'em at all. I'd rather loot my 5 millionth random house with zero interesting loot than do one more lab.
I guess the ideal strat is to just beeline for the finale on account of they're so huge, but that's a crapshoot anyway.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

So if you ever encounter the leech plant monsters just gtfo because the place is a total loss. I flipped on debug god and threw around 8 grenades until I had cleared the central infestation around the generators. The insane amount of spawned critters and the grenade blasts would have killed me ten times over before I cleared the core of this mess. And of course that accomplished basically nothing because as long as a single stalk is alive it will quickly transform into a new blossom and keep spawning new stuff. They also handily beat zombies and lab defenses so it's basically impossible to clear them out without massive cheating. Interesting enemy concept tbh but completely unbalanced and not worth your time or efforts

Vib Rib posted:

It's a shame labs have the best loot because they're always so loving boring. Whether you're weak or strong, they're boring, just in slightly different ways, and in the speed you can move through them.
Yeah both types of labs are in dire need of a major overhaul to be enjoyable gameplay. Also my stance on the small labs has worsened since I've found another type with absolutely zero loot outside of the chem stuff

E: Make that two. Central room with two winches for shutters that had crates and each one was empty...

So aside from going for the scientist loot drops it seems that the best way to get something from the small labs is to bust through the metal door at the subway entrance security station because the three lockers there have high chances for advanced ammo/weapons. Found small amounts of special ammo (caseless, H&K12mm, etc) very reliably there and even a pristine minigun but that was probably an outlier. I mean you can try and hunt for a loot room but it's tedious and your chances are bad as it seems

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 18:24 on May 22, 2021

Morbid Fiesta
Dec 20, 2008

Tin Tim posted:

So if you ever encounter the leech plant monsters just gtfo because the place is a total loss. I flipped on debug god and threw around 8 grenades until I had cleared the central infestation around the generators. The insane amount of spawned critters and the grenade blasts would have killed me ten times over before I cleared the core of this mess. And of course that accomplished basically nothing because as long as a single stalk is alive it will quickly transform into a new blossom and keep spawning new stuff. They also handily beat zombies and lab defenses so it's basically impossible to clear them out without massive cheating. Interesting enemy concept tbh but completely unbalanced and not worth your time or efforts

Yeah both types of labs are in dire need of a major overhaul to be enjoyable gameplay. Also my stance on the small labs has worsened since I've found another type with absolutely zero loot outside of the chem stuff

E: Make that two. Central room with two winches for shutters that had crates and each one was empty...

So aside from going for the scientist loot drops it seems that the best way to get something from the small labs is to bust through the metal door at the subway entrance security station because the three lockers there have high chances for advanced ammo/weapons. Found small amounts of special ammo (caseless, H&K12mm, etc) very reliably there and even a pristine minigun but that was probably an outlier. I mean you can try and hunt for a loot room but it's tedious and your chances are bad as it seems

I cleared one with a few molotov's and some creative redecorating. You can drag shelves/furniture to set up choke points and shoot them from behind it at your leisure. They can't destroy obstacles as far as I know. Closing them off behind doors helps while you set up a barricade. Just deal with the undead first.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

What was your location? Mine was a small lab where you can't really do that because most rooms have several entrances where the spawns can spill out of. And I'm not kidding when I say that the spawn rate easily produced between 10-20 in a couple of rounds. They just kept spawning faster than I could kill them without grenades. The real problem were the stalks and infested bodies in the nooks and crannies around the central infestation though. I walked around a little after dealing with the central clump and picked off stalks that turned into a new blossom and suddenly a fresh wave of critters came rolling towards me. Killed them, found the blossom and killed it and was greeted by a new wave from a different direction a few turns later. I guess fire helps more than plain grenades but I still think that it's a huge waste of time to try and deal with this

E: I used debug to teleport back to the place and take some screens since I feel like my words don't really convey what's going on in that lab


I approached the generators from the east. You can already see tons of critter corpses on the ground from my first contact and infested pod corpses in the side rooms


Here's where the central infestation was. Most of the corpse piles are 10+ deep and I had to throw grenades at my feet to even be able to move a tile after a few rounds of relentless spawning happened


Here's a zoomed out shot of the generator room showing that your blocking strat(which is clever btw) wouldn't really have worked. Two tile exits in all four directions. The north and east are clean but south and west have stalks, blossoms, and corpse pods scattered about which keep spawning


Walked a bit towards the south and yep another blossom that spawns. These guys also tend to overwhelm you faster than you can shoot the blossom btw because for some reason they are fairly hard to hit at range even for an endgame char with a 5.56 SCAR rifle


Moved back towards the generator room and yeah there's another wave coming from the west.


Walked a bit towards the wave and sure enough there is another blossom and I got boxed-in pretty much right away

Not gonna believe that you can deal with this without cheating, sorry. Eventually you get boxed-in by the critter spawns and run out of stam/ammo. The lab area just makes this more difficult than it should be I guess. The infighting happens from the moment you get the lab in your bubble so the plants have an easy time to make tons of corpse pods and spread stalks into the nooks around the generator room. And while you try to clear the remnants in one of the nooks the blossoms in other areas keep spawning. Like you fight through one of the critter waves, take a few steps, and bam they're replaced with a fresh batch :shrug:

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 16:32 on May 23, 2021

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
I think part of my growing frustration with this game, regardless of bells and whistles, is that even just moving around and exploring is so tedious. Every city street has dozens of zombies in it. This means gradually kiting them off and luring them through obstacles or taking potshots, moving only a few tiles at a time through dense areas (and god forbid you find a park loaded with 80+ zombie children) until you're strong enough to just run into an open area and hold tab until all the zombies charging you are dead. Neither of these are particularly fun, but at least the latter is much quicker. Any time I want to reach a point of interest in a city, I have to wade through dozens of zombies on the way there. Then the place itself is usually empty and I can just browse through it at my leisure.
I guess, ultimately, all that's only really a problem because the combat isn't that interesting. In a shooter, or any number of action oriented games, combat can be a lot more fun and engaging, but In a tile-based roguelike you can only really work on variations of bumping into another tile.
I tried new variations on this, like having much stronger zombies but in much smaller number, but it really fucks with the balance of certain weapons and abilities, you can't mulch certain problem enemies before they can get off special attacks, and worst of all, plenty of instances are hardcoded and not affected by spawn rate, so finding a group if mi-gos will still have just as many of them, but now they're tougher too.

I guess I'm just thinking out loud here, because there's not really any way to "fix" how a game is built at so fundamental a level, but at this point just moving through an area always takes such a long slog of zombie fighting, and after playing as much as I have it's become really boring. Of course, that's not unreasonable, since no game can be entertaining forever, so maybe I've just had my fill.

Manager Hoyden
Mar 5, 2020

Yeah I think there's a lot of frustration with Cataclysm because of how close it is to a game people want it to be. It seems like an open-world apocalypse survival game, but at its heart it will always be an unfinished, run-based, traditional roguelike. The locations function more like rooms in Nethack, not dungeons in something like Fallout.

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖
I guess that's why people are so desperate to fall over the next open world zombie survival game that never comes out, or willing to settle for some really janky half-assed approach that gets even a fraction of the concept right.

Morbid Fiesta
Dec 20, 2008

Tin Tim posted:


Not gonna believe that you can deal with this without cheating, sorry. Eventually you get boxed-in by the critter spawns and run out of stam/ammo. The lab area just makes this more difficult than it should be I guess. The infighting happens from the moment you get the lab in your bubble so the plants have an easy time to make tons of corpse pods and spread stalks into the nooks around the generator room. And while you try to clear the remnants in one of the nooks the blossoms in other areas keep spawning. Like you fight through one of the critter waves, take a few steps, and bam they're replaced with a fresh batch :shrug:

Grab and drag metal shelves into the 2 tile wide hallways to block them off after throwing a few molotov's to keep them from rushing you. You can shoot through the shelves and they can't rush you. It's very tedious but effective. Just keep moving the shelves up until you've cleared the lab. I think I burned through 2-3k rounds of 5.56 with my m4a1 when it was all said and done.

Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

My biggest problem is that there's just nothing to do in this game after a certain point. Like, I can keep looting labs and getting progressively more badass, but to what end? Once I can loot one lab I can more or less loot them all already, becoming a cyber mutant wizard god isn't going to do much. I've tried most of the challenge starts but they're pretty much just "leave this dangerous place without dying" and then you're just playing the regular game with more points.

This game would benefit a lot from some Terreria style boss fights and some dynamic changes in the world, like if you clear a whole city NPCs start showing up there and rebuilding, letting you gradually restore power and water to the area if you clear a public works, stuff like that. Have wandering hordes move through the world so you can build and fortify a base and have something to defend it from, and a reason to recruit NPCs would be good too. It's just so close to being something really incredible but the focus is on realistically stimulating how much pocket lint a zombie generates per turn. It's very frustrating.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Morbid Fiesta posted:

I think I burned through 2-3k rounds of 5.56 with my m4a1 when it was all said and done.
This puts a lot more perspective on what you're saying :v: I still bet that it was a massive waste of time but yeah I get it how you managed it

Vib Rib
Jul 23, 2007

God damn this shit is
fuckin' re-dic-a-liss

🍖🍖😛🍖🍖

Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:

My biggest problem is that there's just nothing to do in this game after a certain point. Like, I can keep looting labs and getting progressively more badass, but to what end? Once I can loot one lab I can more or less loot them all already, becoming a cyber mutant wizard god isn't going to do much. I've tried most of the challenge starts but they're pretty much just "leave this dangerous place without dying" and then you're just playing the regular game with more points.

This game would benefit a lot from some Terreria style boss fights and some dynamic changes in the world, like if you clear a whole city NPCs start showing up there and rebuilding, letting you gradually restore power and water to the area if you clear a public works, stuff like that. Have wandering hordes move through the world so you can build and fortify a base and have something to defend it from, and a reason to recruit NPCs would be good too. It's just so close to being something really incredible but the focus is on realistically stimulating how much pocket lint a zombie generates per turn. It's very frustrating.
A lot of the fun stuff tends to be way at the back, while the actual challenge gets frontloaded. For example, I've never gotten bionics until well after they were really valuable, unless I started with them, on account of you need very high skill in electronics and first aid to reliably install them, plus some semi-rare materials and the bionics themselves. At best, I got immunity to shockers, who I'd be shooting before they reached me anyway. Mutations are the same, found almost exclusively in late/endgame labs and changing stuff like "you can eat rotten food, but you still get a morale debuff" or "you need slightly less water". I can't imagine a scenario where I'm dying of thirst, let alone doing so while able to raid labs.

Hell, even spellbooks tend to work this way. There's a few fairly low-level utility spells that are nice to have (like phase door) but with as rare as spellbooks are, even in wizard towers, as weak as offensive spells start, and as long as it takes to level up even one spell, plus the fact you have to level them all individually... I want to make a magic-focused character but it takes an enormous time investment just to get a good zap spell, and then your mana's run out five zombies in. In every scenario you're better served making a bow, finding a gun, or putting one more point into dodge and taking it via melee. With how many enemies are around, even really good spells would have to be saved for tough encounters, and you'd still just hold tab to clear crowds or clear them with rifle-fire. The most esoteric builds can't sustain themselves and inevitably fall back to the most common practices. And that's not even counting that you have to have both hands free to cast a spell, until you get some (again, pretty late-game) magic weapons, at which point it won't really matter much anyway.

Vib Rib fucked around with this message at 03:12 on May 24, 2021

kerrhyphen
Jul 19, 2010

Disaster Ace

The thing that had me ragequit the other day, and has also screwed me in the past when I've tried playing, is having no sense of when I'll get to act versus enemies near me. My character is carrying a lot of crap, fairly encumbered, but not over my weight limit. I'm at 97 speed from a little bit of pain. Zombie Scientist wanders around a corner next to me, and I'm debating dropping the gun and pulling a knife, or just trying to shoot. Checking Fire says "Moves to fire: 21", which has me thinking I can fire before my turn is up (21 being less that 97? Is that how speed works?) but when I try to shoot I get the "stop aiming? Yes/No/Ignore and finish", and I never got the shot off if I choose No, and just got wrecked if I tried Ignore distractions.

I did a test with a single small slime and Ignoring distractions had my character stand there aiming for 54 seconds before it actually fired, during which the small slime attacked me twice every two seconds. A second test had me waiting 28 seconds, and a third only gave the slime one chance to hit me before I shot it. I thought maybe moving made it worse so I walked around a bit before walking up next to the slime and firing, and this time I shot it before it could do anything...

I would believe that firing a gun with a zombie next to me leaves me open to getting bitten or grabbed or whatever, but is it just suicide to use a gun with something standing next to you? Does having speed below 100 just mean everything else just gets to act first?

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Ranged weapons are a special case. You spend time 'aiming' before firing in order to improve your chance of a hit. I can't remember the exact key commands any more but there are several shortcuts for how much to aim before firing. Critically, they are for 'how Stable to get before firing' not 'how many seconds to spend aiming'.
Being attacked in melee reduces your Stability.
So your character was attempting a sisyphean task of carefully drawing a bead on an enemy that was actively fighting them.
Again I can't remember the exact key commands, but if shooting at something in melee range you need to use the command that makes you fire immediately without aiming. Terrible accuracy, but it's the only way to successfully get a shot off.

tl;dr don't use a rifle against someone in melee with you

RabidWeasel
Aug 4, 2007

Cultures thrive on their myths and legends...and snuggles!
You can almost always just go into sprint mode, leg it away from the enemy a dozen tiles or so, and make enough space for 2-3 well aimed shots. Being winded doesn't make you aim worse IIRC

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

The Lone Badger posted:

tl;dr don't use a rifle against someone in melee with you
I think you can by just pressing F as your fire-mode which will fire without aiming. It's wildly inacurrate of course and I think you need a bit of skill to have it hit basic sized targets

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reignofevil
Nov 7, 2008
I just had a game end because I was already underweight when I caught a common cold and then experienced bloodloss shock and it meant even though I was shoveling oatmeal and sugar into my body I was in a state of permanently being too dehydrated, starved and exhausted to do anything. Eventually after several attempts to break into a butcher's shop (so I can get a full portion of meat from the various critters running around that I was now scheming to hunt in late summer) I stumbled across some cows and butchered them, went home to cook the meat and then in the course of making meals late at night by flashlight and then actually eating half an entire cow my mouth snapped off and my head snapped off and I died of misery. Or tiredness. Or something. Probably not cold.

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