Finally I have time to respond.
The Brazilian Slaughter said:
What kind of number of NPCs are you thinking? Fallout had 4 CNPCs with a optional CNPC. Fallout 2 had 14 companions, 3 of which were loads (the two siblings and Pariah Dog), three of which were dogs (K9, Cyberdog and Dogmeat).
At the moment there are 4 companions directly integrated into the story, 3 rather loose ones and 2 "easter egg" companions. There'll be more who join you temporarily at small occasions. If I feel fancy, I'll make more, but this will have to wait since it's a nother truckload of work. I wouldn't mind some suggestions for animal followers though, I have none at the moment and feel that some animal sidekick is what people would want (but want to avoid the Dogmeat cliché).
The Brazilian Slaughter said:
Are you going to go by Sawyer's maxim that all CNPCs should be found in the early game, because otherwise nobody is gonna be interested in end-game CNPCs whose utility and effectiveness is unknown? I remember I never used Goris (Foolishness, because he would'be been totally fitting with my badass melee party!) and Skynet I only used once in a evil game, and I never used the dogs at all. Myron or Marcus were probrably the last NPCs most people got into their parties.
That is an interesting question.. Did Sawyer post that on Formspring, or where have you got this from? I personally always took Goris, regardless if he appears rather late in the game. What Remains' followers are rather cluttered throughout the gameworld, the latest appears at the later mid-game. Do you think this should be changed? It makes kinda sense, you feel more attached to such followers if they... follow you from the very start. Hm, need to think about that.
The Brazilian Slaughter said:
Also, how will karma and reputation affect NPCs and their recruiting? I remember playing Fallout 2 with a evil character and being very chaffed in CNPC options. Essentially, the only NPCs you could recruit and keep with a evil character were Vic, Myron, Skynet (hard to get), the useless Modoc siblings, Cyberdog and Dogmeat. The best NPCs (Sulik, Cassidy, Marcus) eventually abandoned you or even turned against you if you went evil, and even attacked you if you did certain things, like fighting their faction.
There'll be no Karma function, as I hate some "All seeing deity judging your actions" - it doesn't make sense, especially not in a setting like this where there is questionable moral, not everything you are doing can be judged by "good" or "bad" and so on. There is the reputation however, but even having disastrous reputation doesn't neccesarily mean that NPC XY won't join you, you could intimidate/threaten him to follow you (slavery) and so on. It's kinda hard to describe without showing actual dialogs (spoilers), but there'll be less restrictions in if you can have followers or not, they are rather limited in the number of followers you can have, not the "good/bad/good reputation/bad reputation" way. There'll be NPC reactions to what you do when they are in the party, though.
The Brazilian Slaughter said:
What is the range of combat in What Remains?
I'm asking this because I'm, as you know, a ooooooold player of FOnline, and I've noticed that Fallout ranged combat is too short-ranged, especially after you play games like Jagged Alliance 2. Even a sharpshooter with a sniper rifle at maximum range ins't actually very afar. I've seen you saying that you desire to make the combat more tactical, and I think this is a key component.
Personally, I would double or triple weapon range, except in obvious cases. I never felt "sniped" in a Fallout game. It would be interesting to enter somewhere forbidden and get shot by hidden snipers.
This would be useful because people hit too easily in Fallout combat. Just pump your weapon skills to 150% and you barely miss unless you got a crippled eye, no matter ilumination and distance. Making it harder to hit might also give melee fighters a advantage.
The to-hit-chance is overall lowered and it's harder to aquire skillpoints to raise your gun accuracy. If you pump all your points in combat stats exclusively you'll have a hard time during the game. The combat range gets higher the wider you progress through the game, so the start of the game will have low range combat, midgame uses the default fallout range and endgame has very big ranges, enemies using terrain (PE modifiers) and so on. Doubling or tripling the range is a bit too much I think, but overall it's definitely raised.
kaizoku said:
About karma and reputation I would prefer to have an ego and reputations system.
The ego would just act as a type of trophy/achievement, like "child killer", "grave robber", etc.
The reputation would be NPC, city, faction dependent and should not react directly to the ego tags you have gained, but instead of what they have seen you do. What I mean is if you robbed some graves in town A, then the people at town D shouldn't magically know that you're a grave robber.
Yup, it's exactly like that.
DraQ said:
I think one of the problems here is isometric perspective. Long range combat = a lot of scrolling around.
This can be solved by a button to switch between targets (left arrow on keyboard=next enemy for example) like it was suggested in this thread.
DraQ said:
Also, another proposition - reload cost in AP should be much higher than the cost of shooting. Especially on repeated shots, those should require only about 1-2AP.
Agreed, there was some engine limitation (or the devs didn't bother simply?) in FO1/2 for those reloading costs, in the FOnline engine I can set different costs for different weapons. I haven't tweaked the vanilla Fallout items this way (yet), but the new weapons I brought in have varying reload costs.
Major_Blackheart said:
For me, one thing that could be re-worked I guess is the benefit of a high strength character in hand to hand combat, bare fisted beat em up style and what not.[...]
Johannes said:
And how elaborate sneaking system are you planning to implement?
I like this! Although I am not sure about the stamina bar though. I admit, I haven't done anything with Close Combat and Sneaking for now (other than nerfing the damage output in the very early game a bit) but these ideas will come in handy!
The Brazilian Slaughter said:
Problem is, Fallout AI can't cope with characters seeking cover. They just march like lemmings toward the covering character, no matter what, then start shooting once they get into range. Since they take the nearest, fastest route, it means they all come from the same diferection, making them super-vulnerable, especially against burst shots and grenades. The player can also find another place to cover and run there, which will force the enemies to follow him again. This can be especially cheesy with two levels of bonus move. Since FO's scenario is not destructible, they can't simply blow the cover away and fire all guns.
AI needs to learn overwatching and to attack from all directions, and also needs to learn cover.
I tweaked the AI a bit, also some NPC will never chase the player down and rather hold their positions (snipers), use different stances (stand/prone/crouch), use hotspots to gather and use first aid if neccesary etc. They won't be super duper intelligent, but better than the normal Fallout AI (which isn't very hard in the first place...)
I would love to have destructible terrain, but I lack the skills in art to do all the rubble/damaged terrain (scripting these things isn't the problem). :<
Awor Szurkraz said:
Changing weapons should cost AP too.
It does now (switching hands/item slots). Also using items in the inventory costs AP aswell now (no longer taking infinite stimpaks per turn in inventory)
DraQ said:
It might be interesting to have separate aim and fire actions. It would take care of subsequent shots at the same target using only 1-2AP, and might be part of an interesting semi-combat mechanics allowing persuasion via pointing a gun at someone's face.
I really like the persuasion thing! (same could be done for melee/unarmed with a high strength for intimidation for example as Johannes mentionend).
What ideas for different aim/fire actions would you have?