Underrail [PRE-RELEASE THREAD, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Styg]

EDIT: Hey, Styg is this:

Spoiler

a Breaking Bad reference/easter egg?

Yep.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Yep.

Awesome. I have that saved on my desktop right now.

P.S. Are character portraits going to eventually make it in?

 

[Styg]

Yep.

Awesome. I have that saved on my desktop right now.

P.S. Are character portraits going to eventually make it in?

Yeah, definitively.

 

[WhiteGuts]

I've been keeping an eye on this for a while now. I've fiddled with the early demo back in the day and the character build ddin't strike me as really intuitive, it was pretty clear that only some specific builds were viable.

Did the oddities system fix that part ?

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

He's (they) made a ton of balance tweaks since then, it's really like night and day. I'm currently testing out a new build which is based on knowing these tweaks have been made.

 

[cherry blossom]

Can I make a suggestion about oddities / progression, Styg?

I love the oddities, it does make me think more strategically and the frequency of my save/loads have literally gone down by at lest 50%. And it feels exciting whenever I find an oddity. Massive kudos. But at the same time...

Simplifies the game somewhat. Now, you "only" need to find oddities, roleplaying be damned. Not very involving.

How about putting the oddities in context; oddities that require you to use skills in order to gain an oddity point. For instance, you find a 21st-century-smartphone-looking electronic oddity. First you must break it down to components (I don't know how exactly) and then rebuild a "functioning" one (without any real use in the game, of course) to gain an oddity point, the catch being you need a minimum amount of Electronics skill for that. So there are all sorts of oddities in the game world and some require using your skills to gain anything from them.

And maybe also something like a permanent bonus to a skill for every so oddities of a certain kind related to a skill, eg. after finding and gaining five "electronic" oddities, you gain a permanent # points to your Electronics skills.

Just to make it so that your progress in the world isn't entirely coincidental to finding oddities indistinctively.

when you have found 5 electronic oddities and you have X level in electronics, you

 

[cherry blossom]

And a more general request: make it so that Enter key passes as ok/yes in the menus. Saving a game can sometimes be rather annoying while it would not be if Enter worked to that effect.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I love the oddities system - I think it's a vast improvement over the standard xp system - but I also agree with vots, to an extent. Not sure I like the "break it down into components" idea but still...

I've done two playthroughs, one as a shock sledgehammer-wielding machine of destruction and another as a really stealthy kind of gal, and currently some oddities are only discoverable if you can either 1. kill everything in your sight or 2. stealth your way through everything (with some oddities being exclusive to either of these paths). It'd be cool if other skills would factor in, somehow - like you could only get some oddities with demolitions, others with psi, etc.

(Naturally I've no idea how you could implement those )

Some types of oddities also repeat too often so I ended up finding too many similar ones in both of my playthroughs. If the player is doing a stealth-focused build for example, there's a tendency to only come across certain types of oddities, which gets kinda frustrating as the exp you get from them exhausts (too?) quickly - but that's just a balancing thing that I assume is going to be re-balanced anyway.

 

[Loriac]

Styg has said on the Steam forum that he doesn't want obtaining any specific types of oddities to be tied to specific skills, which seems fair enough considering the oddity system is intended to free players from arbitrary 'gaming' concerns like killing all mobs for their xp, doing all quests for xp etc.

I think the oddity system works well from what I've played so far, the only minor caveat being slower early levelling (but even this isn't a problem, we're talking about the first hour or two of gameplay here).

 

[eklektyk]

funny thing is that for some reason steam borked and failed to spy on me giving achiwumentz

other than that so far 2 hrs in and likin it

 

[Captain Crusade]

This game looks amazing. What is a the playtime for a first time play through?

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

This game looks amazing. What is a the playtime for a first time play through?

It's an unfinished alpha/beta right now and none of us really know how much larger it's going to be though Styg recently indicated that with this latest update the main story has just begun. As is, I clocked a shit-ton of time (20-30 hrs give or take, depending on how much of that was me leaving steam open with the game on pause) though I tend to be on the slow/takemysweetasstime end of the RPG spectrum.

 

[Styg]

Styg has said on the Steam forum that he doesn't want obtaining any specific types of oddities to be tied to specific skills, which seems fair enough considering the oddity system is intended to free players from arbitrary 'gaming' concerns like killing all mobs for their xp, doing all quests for xp etc.

I think the oddity system works well from what I've played so far, the only minor caveat being slower early levelling (but even this isn't a problem, we're talking about the first hour or two of gameplay here).

I'm just gonna paste what I said on the Steam forums because I'm lazy.

I purposefully didn't award oddities for skill usage because I want the system to award achieving goals, rather than how you get there.

Increasing player overall level based on specific skill usage is just messy once you get to implementing it in detail, as opposed to having a specific skill that can be increased separately and directly correlates to the triggering action.

If I do end up adding different ways to obtain oddities (not just finding them on corpses and containers), it will have to be in a way that would allow characters with all skill sets to reach it, rather than adding all the different ones for different skill sets and then trying to balance them out.

 

[SuicideBunny]

playing the new build makes me wish the game had some kind of map...

 

[eklektyk]

i like that feeling of gettin lost and not knowing wheter this will end in reload coz of untimely death ....

ps me got that fishing in junkyard crash thingie ....oh well will avoid it for now

 

[SuicideBunny]

is there some kind of shortcut for moving items from inventory to open container? if not there should be...

 

[Styg]

i like that feeling of gettin lost and not knowing wheter this will end in reload coz of untimely death ....

ps me got that fishing in junkyard crash thingie ....oh well will avoid it for now

What thingie is that again?

 

[eklektyk]

whole geme crashed after my interaction with fishing pole west of junkyard [need 5 fishies for quest] tried to setup fishing then interacted with it [ put it , pick it - several times in few places and then crash - went sleep afterwards as it was good breaking point ]
nothing drastic - still have to figure out good way to kill burrowers with my mad hammerwieldin psycho ...

 

[Styg]

whole geme crashed after my interaction with fishing pole west of junkyard [need 5 fishies for quest] tried to setup fishing then interacted with it [ put it , pick it - several times in few places and then crash - went sleep afterwards as it was good breaking point ]
nothing drastic - still have to figure out good way to kill burrowers with my mad hammerwieldin psycho ...

Ok, thanks, will check it out.

 

[Styg]

I can't seem to reproduce it. If you manage to find out what steps lead to it crashing, let me know.

 

[eklektyk]

I can't seem to reproduce it. If you manage to find out what steps lead to it crashing, let me know.

in a spare moment i will try to reproduce this [did not played beyond so have all relevant autosaves for it]
it was onetime thing so im not sure if it can be reproduced but i will give it a try and report back

 

[cherry blossom]

Styg, I have a new suggestion, this time about inventory filters. The drop down list is sort of cumbersome to use and I don't like it or use even though I feel the need to filter items every now and then. So, my version:



In the first frame, "Show all" icon on top left is selected, showing all items, obviously. The next four frames show Weapons, Ammo, Tools and Components filters, in that order.

Sixth frame shows all items again. Then the next four frames show multiple-selection filters for the same set of item groups, toggled on by clicking on the faint "+" icons on top of the filters buttons.

Would be massively useful, I think.

edit: Oh and, yes, I think merging a few item groups would be useful. Is there really a need for a separate group for Batteries and Utilities? My suggestion: merge Ammo + Batteries, Traps + Utilities or Armor + Belts.

 

[Styg]

That looks pretty cool, cherry blossom. I'm definitively going to do something like that, though I have to figure out how to fit it into the smaller windows. I might reduce the number of categories as you suggested.

 

[Styg]

Energy Shields

This has been long overdue but I finally got around to implementing energy shields. The main purpose of energy shields is to provide the player with kind of a health buffer, particularly against ranged opponents, so they can get into the fight and survive long enough to establish the control over the battlefield.

So the way the shields work is they block a certain amount of damage from each direct attack based on impact speed (very slow to very fast) rather than on damage type (mechanical, heat, etc). The amount of damage a shield can absorb in total is equal to its max energy times conversion rate. Shields also dissipate over time, so you won't want to keep them running unless they are needed to block damage. They cannot be recharged in combat.

The amount of damage blocked for each impact speed depends on the modulators used to craft/generate the shield emitter, but overall shield emitters are much more effective against higher impact speeds, so melee characters and, to a lesser extent crossbow users, will have an edge when fighting shielded enemies. Additionally, most types of melee weapons will ignore certain amount of shield (and some special attacks ignore it completely) so we can balance out their usefulness against the hard hitting sledgehammers - knives ignore 60% of energy shielding, fist weapons 80% and unarmed attacks 100%.

Concerning what attack has which impact speed - it's displayed for the weapons, but most other stuff (psi, grenades, etc) don't list it. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this, because I don't want to clutter the descriptions so maybe a better solution would be to list it somewhere else or have an NPC educate the player about it. We'll see, I haven't made up my mind yet. But until the, here's how it works basically:

• Very low impact speed - Melee attacks
• Low impact speed - "slow" projectile attacks, that is projectiles considerably slower than bullets, such as crossbow bolts and cryokinesis
• Medium impact speed - bullets, shrapnel (from frag grenades)
• Fast impact speed - super fast projectiles, such as those fired from sniper rifles
• Very fast impact speed - lasers, plasma, electrical attacks

We still haven't done much balance testing regarding how effective shields are right now. I did some number crunching, but until we put it to test in a real playthrough and also have you the players have a go at it, it's hard to balance it out properly.

Also, characters skilled in electronics will be able to craft shield emitters and, with enough skill, they will be able to attach secondary modulators (which run at 50% efficiency) giving them a bit of an edge against character who have to purchase or find their own since those very rarely have the said secondary modulator.

* * * * *

In other news, here's the other stuff I've been working on:

• Tweaks
  • Increased the block chance of riot gear shields to 30% (up from 20%)
  • Firearm ammo weight now varies depending on caliber
  • Indirect damage no longer removes incapacitation (e.g. poison)
  • Electroshock primary target damage, pneumatic hit damage and force emission hit damage no longer remove incapacitation in order to better synergies with Cheap Shot feat
  • Minimal hit chance for melee and ranged attacks is now 10% (down from 20%)
  • Increased the amount of item categories most merchants will buy per reset, included the missing categories and also changed certain categories to always be included for specialized merchants (not in the unlimited amount though)
  • Added more psi boosters to early areas to ease up the early game for psi characters who need those rather than bullets
  • Telekinetic Punch, tazing and pneumatic strike are now resisted through fortitude, instead of resolve
  • Melee skill now scales up with either Strength or Dexterity, whichever is higher
  • Boot springs now reduce stealth (will add stealth speedy boots later)
  • Aluminized cloth heat resistance increased and crafting requirements changed to 1 per quality (down from 1.5)
• Bugs
  • Doppelgangers should now properly ignore target's resistances with their attacks
  • Fixed a very serious bug that caused ranged attacks to mostly ignore evasion rating of the target. Evasion should have much the same effect in avoiding ranged attack as dodge has for melee attacks. This will definitively affect the game's balance, both by increasing the difficulty of high evasion enemies and by buffing agility based player characters, so I'll be keeping an eye on it.
• Items
  • Advanced Health Hypo added
  • Balaclava added (+10% cold resist, +5 intimidate, +stealth when crafted out of black cloth or +hear resist when crafted out of aluminized cloth)

Also, I re-balanced bunch of feats, mostly buffing those who were in need of a buff and maybe nerfing one or two overpowered ones. I tried to hit all the feats that needed love, but there are still a couple I'm not sure how to fix or just don't have the mechanics in place to do so yet. Anyway, here's the list of changes:

• Dirty Kick - now works regardless of the current weapon, the damage is equal to 200% of unarmed damage
• Premeditation - now also reduces AP cost of the next psi ability buy 100%
• Psychosis - psi cost increment changed to 20% (up from 10%)
• Tranquility - reworked: now reduces AP cost of all psi abilities by 10 while the invoker is at full health
• Cerebral Trauma - reworked: now increases Neural Overload damage by 25% (up from 20%) and burns 15% of the target's max psi points when Neural Overload lands
• Force User - now increases Telekinetic Punch damage by 100% (up from 20%) and Force Field duration by 2 turns (up from 1)
• Lightning Punches - now works with fist weapons as well
• Pyromaniac - doubled the chance it will trigger across the board and the exact chance is now shown for each individual psi ability; also the bonus damage has been increased to 100% (up from 80%)
• Crippling Strike - damage increased to 150% (up from 125%) and it no longer costs additional action points, but has 1 turn cooldown
• Grenadier - now reduces standard grenade cooldown by 2 turns (up from 1) and special grenade cooldown by 3 turns (up from 2)
• Hypothermia - now reduces constitution by 1 (down from 2) and stacks up to 5 times (up from 3)
• Thermodinamicity - instead of psi cost, now reduces action point cost by 50%
• Evasive Maneuvers - now grants evasion equal to three times your movement points (up from x2)
• Uncanny Dodge - now allows you to dodge next three melee attacks instead of just one, but cooldown is increased to 3 turns (up from 2)

* * * * *

As far the content is concerned, we're working on new areas, quests and creatures. One of the goals is to add more side quests to SGS (and surrounding areas) and Rail Crossing which we feel are most in need of those. We'll also be adding a major new station with the next update, but more on that in some future dev log (won't be Core City just yet, though).

 

[Surf Solar]

This is getting better and better!