Shadowrun Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut

[baturinsky]

A fun build in Dragonfall is katana-wielding Qi-casting fucker, able to sprint/haste around the map and buff people and himself.

The real MVP tip though is: be sure to talk to everyone because Dragonfall dialog is fucking great and it's one of the few RPGs in the last decade where you will look foward to clicking on an NPC instead of dreading the coming text dump! Even extremely minor throw-away NPCs that only appear once are memorable, which is something that can't be said for most other games (including DMS/HK).

But isn't Qi-caster more effective with fists, with his fist damage self-buff?

 

[GarfunkeL]

A.I. is handicapped, never doing more than moving and performing one action on their turn. Your characters have no such limitations and can attack multiple times on their turns. I don't think I need to explain how being to attack at least twice as often as the enemy by default affects the difficulty. But not only are enemies scripted to never attack twice, but they're scripted to attack once and move, no matter how little sense it makes. I lost track of how many times enemies would shoot and then move to a less advantageous position, often even out of cover, because they just have to move, I guess.

Only partially true and, to my understanding, was put into place after betatesting because casuals. True, enemies only ATTACK once but their second action can be healing, buffing or moving. Naturally enemies that only have a gun and nothing else will shoot and move (or move and punch you) but casters and riggers can and will do other things than just moving with their other AP. Also, the mod to remove that handicap was published here on Codex way before Director's Cut came out. Please don't tell me you've never played DC?

Companion inventories, which are filled with medkits, grenades and other useful items, are replenished between every mission. This makes the game's resource management almost non-existent. It means you always have a consequence-free bag of goodies to fall back on that can carry you through the entire game.

They use the money that you pay them for missions to replenish their inventories. As pointed out, the usually have 2 or 3 items only, with shamans and medics the only ones generally having more. On every run, probably on Hard and definitely on Very Hard, it is quite possible to run out of them unless you're replaying the run for the umpteenth time and know exactly what is going to happen AND the RNG never fucks you.

Cooldowns encourage rote tactics, e.g. spam all your abilities at the start of combat so that they cooldown as fast as possible and you can use them again

Not true. You throw a Stunball at the first turn to catch two enemies - nice. But on the next turn three of them group up together, making an even better target but oh no, it's on cooldown because YOU didn't bother to analyze the battlefield and just relied on rote. I agree that cooldowns are stupid but they do not inherently force players into being rote-robots that just repeat the same thing over and over again. Many players make this worse then by over-specializing.

Most combat takes place in very 'angular' areas like underground bases, office corridors and the like. Because of this, it's incredibly easy to move your characters behind a wall and out of sight, prompting enemies to spend all their AP's running to you, allowing you to blast them at point blank range with impunity. I didn't try it, but I imagine this tactic is viable for most of the game's encounters.

It actually isn't. You don't always have room where to run off to and even if you do have it, there might not be any cover. Overwatch is just one attack and only happens once, so unless every enemy uses up ALL their APs to run up to you, this tactic isn't fool-proof. Granted, it does work every now and then but it's stupid cheese. Whee, you intentionally broke the game, congratulations.

The nu-XCOM AP system where taking a single step costs the same as running to the other side of the room, combined with the fact that unlike nu-XCOM you can use your AP's to attack multiple times a turn, discourages movement and encourages staying behind cover and taking potshots at enemies. The end result is that despite the obvious care put into mission design, combat is a fairly mindless affair, even on the highest dfficulty. Combined with how streamlined and stripped down everything is, it doesn't make for a very engaging experience. It's better than the likes of PoE and WL2, but that isn't saying a whole lot.

I agree that the 2 AP system is bollocks. But I don't believe for a second that you actually played through Dragonfall on Very Hard. In fact, I don't believe you played it through even on Hard - because your complaints certainly make it sound like you played on Easy or Normal.

 

[baturinsky]

There indeed a lack of cover in many area. But I think even if you have no full-time Conjurer in team, you can fit enough Conjuring to cast Air Barrier in virtually any build.

 

[Lhynn]

First of all it's common knowledge that if you aren't an RPG novice, you should play Dragonfall with ungimped AI.

If you find that too easy or repetitive, you can always increase the challenge by taking less party members on the runs, or even trying the game solo. I guarantee that will push you to develop a variety of tactics. Even playing the game without poor Dietrich, who basically is a buff/ heal bot the whole game, really changes your tactics.

I'm not sure which "three way" fight you're talking about in Dragonfall ~ you seem to be confusing this with Hong Kong. There are plenty of interesting encounters in Dragonfall. Without spoiling too much, both Glory and Blitz's personal missions have good, nasty fights. The Blitz fight probably has my vote for the hardest fight the whole game, especially if you get caught off-guard.

Not speaking about dragonfall exclusively and challenge doesnt matter, the optinal way to do things never changes. You build towards one thing and do that thing over and over again.
A lot of rpgs tend to this, the problem with shadowrun games particularly is that cooldowns make this extremely noticeable.

 

[Cross]

I agree that the 2 AP system is bollocks. But I don't believe for a second that you actually played through Dragonfall on Very Hard. In fact, I don't believe you played it through even on Hard - because your complaints certainly make it sound like you played on Easy or Normal.

When in doubt, imply the other person is bad at playing games?

I played and finished the game on Very Hard. Due to my natural RPG hoarding instincts, I actually made it quite far through the game before I even realized companion inventories renew between missions (and apparently they even renew during some missions). Jagged Alliance, this isn't.

But difficulty is only half the equation. Even if Dragonfall had been challenging, I still wouldn't think highly of it, because like its inspiration nu-XCOM, it's mechanically boring.

It actually isn't. You don't always have room where to run off to and even if you do have it, there might not be any cover. Overwatch is just one attack and only happens once, so unless every enemy uses up ALL their APs to run up to you, this tactic isn't fool-proof.

I'm not talking about overwatch. Combat typically starts with some distance between you and the enemy, so by simply moving back behind a corner, the enemy will have to spend all their AP to reach you, after which it's your turn and you have 4 party members to take care of the enemy who is now at point blank range, so your accuracy will be optimal.

They use the money that you pay them for missions to replenish their inventories.

How is that relevant? You don't get any say in it, it happens automatically.

As pointed out, the usually have 2 or 3 items only, with shamans and medics the only ones generally having more.

I couldn't remember from my own playthrough but from looking online Dietrich seems to get 3 items, Eiger 4, Blitz 5 and Glory 6.

Not true. You throw a Stunball at the first turn to catch two enemies - nice. But on the next turn three of them group up together, making an even better target but oh no, it's on cooldown because YOU didn't bother to analyze the battlefield and just relied on rote.

Except by the second turn, you're still reaping the benefits of that first Stunball, which wouldn't be the case of you had delayed casting it. Yes, there will be instances where it might be optimal to save a certain ability for a later turn, but even if you were to use that ability prematurely, it would hardly be game over or even all that detrimental.

In any game you generally want to kill/disable enemies as fast as possible. In a game with resource management, there is some tension between that goal and the desire to save abilities for later encounters. But in a game with cooldowns, you are rewarded for using your abilities immediately, because the sooner the cooldown expires, the sooner you can use those abilities again, so that tension is lost.

 

[Jason Liang]

Combat typically starts with some distance between you and the enemy, so by simply moving back behind a corner, the enemy will have to spend all their AP to reach you, after which it's your turn and you have 4 party members to take care of the enemy who is now at point blank range, so your accuracy will be optimal.

You've clearly never played Dragonfall.

 

[zool]

Full use of them? You're talking about a game where enemy AI was deliberately gimped to never use their full AP's for attacking.

If only there was a mod that removed this limitation.

And let me take that occasion to thank you very much for that mod of yours : after a super-easy - and consequently very boring - playthrough of DMS before I heard about your mod, I just finished a playthrough of DF: DC on Very Hard with your mod installed and I finally got to enjoy the combat. It's no JA2 for sure but it was still much more satisfying than breezing through every fight like in my DMS playthrough.

Hardest fight for me was the final fight of that "kill the rigger" run - it came after a series of already difficult fights against Knight Errants teams and when I got to the last one, my medkits were all spent and my team's health pretty low. Also, I couldn't lock out the Knight Errants reinforcement squad. Actually had to restart the whole level in order to get to the last fight in better shape - and still only won it with my character and Eiger still alive.

Have to disagree with Cross' complaints about companion inventories replenishing betwen missions making the game's ressource management almost non-existent. On the contrary, I found the game's economy hard and for 90% of the game, I was far from swimming in money. The tough economy was actually really cool precisely because it made resource management relevant for once in an RPG.

 

[Cross]

Combat typically starts with some distance between you and the enemy, so by simply moving back behind a corner, the enemy will have to spend all their AP to reach you, after which it's your turn and you have 4 party members to take care of the enemy who is now at point blank range, so your accuracy will be optimal.

You've clearly never played Dragonfall.

So distance doesn't affect your chance-to-hit at all in Dragonfall? I suspected as much, but if it's really true, Dragonfall is an even worse game than I thought.

But I was more referring to things like shotguns, which are the optimal weapon for close ranges.

 

[Infinitron]

So distance doesn't affect your chance-to-hit at all in Dragonfall? I suspected as much, but if it's really true, Dragonfall is an even worse game than I thought.

No no no. But I believe it degrades if you're too close, at least with some weapons (sniper rifles).

 

[Lacrymas]

I think only shotguns don't have a minimum range penalty, but I'm not sure.

 

[agris]

Full use of them? You're talking about a game where enemy AI was deliberately gimped to never use their full AP's for attacking.

If only there was a mod that removed this limitation.

And let me take that occasion to thank you very much for that mod of yours : after a super-easy - and consequently very boring - playthrough of DMS before I heard about your mod, I just finished a playthrough of DF: DC on Very Hard with your mod installed and I finally got to enjoy the combat. It's no JA2 for sure but it was still much more satisfying than breezing through every fight like in my DMS playthrough.

Hardest fight for me was the final fight of that "kill the rigger" run - it came after a series of already difficult fights against Knight Errants teams and when I got to the last one, my medkits were all spent and my team's health pretty low. Also, I couldn't lock out the Knight Errants reinforcement squad. Actually had to restart the whole level in order to get to the last fight in better shape - and still only won it with my character and Eiger still alive.

Have to disagree with Cross' complaints about companion inventories replenishing betwen missions making the game's ressource management almost non-existent. On the contrary, I found the game's economy hard and for 90% of the game, I was far from swimming in money. The tough economy was actually really cool precisely because it made resource management relevant for once in an RPG.

I'm glad that you liked it, and your experience closely mirrors my own. When using the mod, consumables became important, and I had to actually think about how to load out myself and my companions, and replenishing consumables also became important. I was buying a lot more of them than without the mod, and thus more cash-constrained while playing which impacted how I developed my mage / rigger thing. All in all, I enjoyed it a lot more, and yes, had to restart missions occasionally. It also changed how I approached fights, as a good enemy position could result in you being two-shotted. All in all, it made combat more tactical and consumable load-out more strategic.

If I had more free time, I would like to implement the AI change to DMS too, but I don't know how. I would also love to shake-up the item progression in all three games. With rare exceptions, the more expensive a weapon or piece of armor it is, the better it is in HBS's SR games. Coming from the IE games, where multiple items for a given category could be considered equal in how good they were but offered trade-offs and changed how you played, I always thought the combat and character building of the SR games would have benefited from a more complex itemization. More found items, more items of roughly equal power but offering trade-offs, and more opportunities to upgrade items. Something like the BG2 model (pre-ToB), including upgrades via NPC interaction and rare found items.

 

[Lacrymas]

More in-depth itemization would require a more sprawling campaign, tbh. It would also require accuracy to not be the be-all end-all of stats. I always, always opened up the fights in DF with Dietrich buffing Haste and Aim on Glory, then having Blitz Mark the target she was going after. That improved her hit chance to acceptable levels, having only 50% hit chance and missing 5 times in a row is not fun, let me tell you. After having Aim on everyone who can do damage, it's just a matter of choosing which weapon gives you the most hit chance at that distance.

 

[agris]

More in-depth itemization would require a more sprawling campaign, tbh. It would also require accuracy to not be the be-all end-all of stats. I always, always opened up the fights in DF with Dietrich buffing Haste and Aim on Glory, then having Blitz Mark the target she was going after. That improved her hit chance to acceptable levels, having only 50% hit chance and missing 5 times in a row is not fun, let me tell you. After having Aim on everyone who can do damage, it's just a matter of choosing which weapon gives you the most hit chance at that distance.

I agree, to a point. In a way, that's exactly what I'm talking about though - items that offered higher damage but at a penalty to hit, perhaps a higher potential max damage but also a lower min such that the average were close to a similar weapon with the same +/- on ACC but with a tighter min-max spread. Fallout 1 and 2 did this as well with some of the earlier Small Guns, as well as Underrail.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think there's ever a reason to have more damage, but less hit chance. Sure, the damages will average out at the end, but killing people more reliably is more important than tunneling damage. Glory doesn't really do all that much damage with her claws if she doesn't crit, but you still don't want her to miss and she still can use her special abilities that lower armor and do AP damage. Mobs don't have ridiculous amounts of health either way. Maybe if there were more enemy types, ones that are easier to hit but are damage sponges. It all boils down to having a more sprawling campaign, though, as it stands now it's kind of pointless to have a more elaborate itemization. Eiger has 3 weapons at her disposal - a sniper rifle, an assault rifle and a shotgun, all of which see regular play because of the difference in distance, so I think they did enough in the limited scope of the nu-Shadowruns to make you want to switch weapons and use different types on missions. I think that's more important that simply picking up which one you like the flavor of the most and sticking with it through the whole thing.

 

[agris]

I don't think there's ever a reason to have more damage, but less hit chance.

Conversely, this is the case for offering weapons of lower damage but higher accuracy. Your play style would prefer them, while other (riskier) players might prefer the opposite of high damage potentially, lower accuracy. Your insights and preferences aren't everyones, remember.

I agree re: campaign size though, and in reality there wouldn't need to be much more (or any more?) items available, just a tweaking of the stats so the progression is less linear.

 

[Lacrymas]

The more difficult it is the more you require things to hit accurately to control the battlefield, I honestly never ever thought that that was a personal preference. Weird. More people should chime in on this.

 

[aweigh]

i was just about to ask about whether that AP mod was available for DMS or HK so might as well ask are there any other mods for the campaigns i been itching to replay DMS and if there are mods like that AP mod for HK that make the shits harder id be willin to play again maybe finish it i dunno

also are theres like fan made campaigns that are good??

 

[Jason Liang]

I don't see why it wouldn't work for DMS. All you need to do is change the AI files' "maximum actions" to a number > 1. That affects all the modules, not just one module. So if you run DMS in Dragonfall: DC, it should work correctly. The only difference is that DMS AI uses a different AI file so you have to modify those instead.

 

[GarfunkeL]

When in doubt, imply the other person is bad at playing games?

Quite the contrary actually. You're the first one to claim to have finished DF on VH without any issues and not having to use consumables or at least never running out of them. You must be really lucky with the RNG, always getting crits and your enemies always missing. Or you're a TB savant.

I'm not talking about overwatch. Combat typically starts with some distance between you and the enemy, so by simply moving back behind a corner, the enemy will have to spend all their AP to reach you, after which it's your turn and you have 4 party members to take care of the enemy who is now at point blank range, so your accuracy will be optimal.

Rifles get a malus if the enemy is too close. You cannot use grenades or AOE spells if the enemy is right up on your face unless you get really lucky with positioning. Enemies do not always follow you around the corners either. Claiming that you can run behind a corner and then curb-stomp all enemies at every fight is a gross over-exaggeration.

How is that relevant? You don't get any say in it, it happens automatically.

Now you're shifting goal posts. You originally complained that the other runners get free items and I pointed out that they are not free as you are paying for them via the hiring fee. Now you're complaining that you don't get to equip your team. Well that feature is indeed missing from DF, luckily HK added it.

I couldn't remember from my own playthrough but from looking online Dietrich seems to get 3 items, Eiger 4, Blitz 5 and Glory 6.

I guess I'll have to fire up DF and double-check because I certainly don't remember them having that many items until the ver last missions.

Except by the second turn, you're still reaping the benefits of that first Stunball, which wouldn't be the case of you had delayed casting it. Yes, there will be instances where it might be optimal to save a certain ability for a later turn, but even if you were to use that ability prematurely, it would hardly be game over or even all that detrimental.

But you stunned 2 enemies for 1 or 2 turns (latter only if the spell critted on all of them) leaving other enemies free to act. If you had waited, you might have been able to catch more of them. Again, on Easy and Normal the rote-thing works well enough, which is why I suspect that you didn't play it on Hard or VH. Casting Haste and Aim on Glory or yourself on Turn 1 is almost always the best action for Dietrich but for the others it depends on the encounter. You were exaggerating.

 

[Cross]

When in doubt, imply the other person is bad at playing games?

Quite the contrary actually. You're the first one to claim to have finished DF on VH without any issues and not having to use consumables or at least never running out of them.

Like I said, I did eventually figure out that companion items refreshed, so I did start using them at some point.

By the way, I forgot to mention another thing that makes Dragonfall's combat such a disappointment. You know how most RPG's suffer from an inverse difficulty curse where the game becomes very easy towards the end. So what does Dragonfall do? It exacerbates that issue by increasing your AP pool towards the end, making you even more overpowered, while still keeping the aforementioned enemy limitation. So later on you can potentially attack three (!) times as often as the enemy.

Rifles get a malus if the enemy is too close. You cannot use grenades or AOE spells if the enemy is right up on your face unless you get really lucky with positioning.

So? You still have more than enough different weapon and types and spells that don't suffer a malus to take care of an enemy at close range. And why wouldn't you be able to use grenades and AoE spells? Even if the enemy is standing right in front of you, you can also position the AoE so that the radius only hits them.

Enemies do not always follow you around the corners either. Claiming that you can run behind a corner and then curb-stomp all enemies at every fight is a gross over-exaggeration.

Well, I think I only tried this particular tactic once or twice, but it worked fine and allowed me to finish those encounters without taking any damage.

Now you're shifting goal posts. You originally complained that the other runners get free items and I pointed out that they are not free as you are paying for them via the hiring fee. Now you're complaining that you don't get to equip your team.

I'm not complaining about not being able to equip your team (although that is another downside of the game). How is this such a difficult concept to grasp? You're not actually paying your allies to restock their items, that's just how the game presents it. You can't choose not to pay them to restock their items, and those expenses are incurred even if you don't use their items or even if you don't use companions at all. It's just fluff.

If you had waited, you might have been able to catch more of them.

And if you had waited, it would have also taken longer before you'd be able to use that ability again. The sooner you use an ability, the sooner the cooldown wears off and the sooner you can use that ability again, effectively improving your action economy. Your argument would have merit if combat was highly lethal and because of that, you'd regret using abilities prematurely. But Dragonfall combat obviously isn't like that all.

As I said, in any game you generally want to kill/disable enemies as fast as possible. In a game with resource management, there is some tension between that goal and the desire to save abilities for later encounters. But in a game with cooldowns, you are rewarded for using your abilities immediately, because the sooner the cooldown expires, the sooner you can use those abilities again, so that tension is lost.

 

[thesheeep]

The more difficult it is the more you require things to hit accurately to control the battlefield, I honestly never ever thought that that was a personal preference. Weird. More people should chime in on this.

Yeah, same here.
In the end, a lower chance to hit just means you have to reload more often (or even worse stuff happens in ironman mode/games).

Of course, if we're talking about something like 10% less chance to hit for 50% damage bonus, I might be tempted.
But -10% to hit for just 10-20% more damage? No way.
In the end the average damage/hit chance ratio has to improve noticeably to even consider it.
And even then I'd probably only consider it in a situation like "I could kill this enemy in just one turn if I use this item".

 

[hello friend]

Someone was talking a few pages back about selling items from chargen. Uh... how do you sell shit? I finished the game and I never noticed any way to do so. Then again, I was already close to the endgame before I realised you could upgrade your companions, that really helped.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Any vendor. They all have a Sell Gear / Stash button.

 

[hello friend]

Haha, wow. What do you know.

 

[Lady_Error]

Finally got around to finishing this one and Shadowrun Returns. Conclusion: Great, but I wish it was longer with many more missions.

The dialogue was indeed superb in this one - and it was the first game in a long time where I did not turn off the music. Some tracks I absolutely loved:



Are there any mod campaigns out there that you would recommend?