Underrail: The Incline Awakens

As powerful as Full-Auto, Concentrated Fire, Opportunist, Suppressive Fire, Commando, and a Rapid 8.6mm Hornet are (and they are very, VERY powerful), they all serve to highlight a key issue few other primary weapon styles suffer from, one I know others have noted: The feats are all passive. Your choice is between bursting with one of several ammo types, all but one of which you'll use only when forced due to their rarity, or single-fire to save ammo in easier fights.

Fortunately I anticipated this and have both Throwing and Traps, so there's some tactical leg room there.

Suppressive Fire could be its own action, perhaps, inflicting a more powerful debuff across a wider spray 'n' pray cone but dealing very little damage.

 

Yeah that's something I noticed with a few builds. I don't know if there are enough active skills for a lot of characters. Fists, for instance, really only has expose weakness. SMG/AR same thing.

 

Well, there's Crippling Strike, Dirty Kick, and Heavy Punch also, but Crippling Strike is (it seems to me) only particularly good against sledgehammer, AR, and/or heavy armor users whose Strength is no more than two points above their items' requirements, and Heavy Punch... is also essentially for heavily-armored targets.

There are a couple of feats that would logically work with ARs, like Kneecap Shot, except ARs are excluded. I'm also not sure if Point Shot allows bursting; if it does, it's pretty good for, otherwise very, very marginal. Rapid Fire is like a shit-tier burst that costs an extra feat, potentially useful for heavier-caliber, AP-heavy ARs to maybe squeeze a smaller mini-burst in, but again, it costs a feat. It's pretty clearly a "you can burst with your pistol" feat.

 

Yeah - I mean, I don't think "skills" are necessary for the combat to work well. Especially with stuff like grenades and stuff that add plenty of tactical variety.

For Underrail 2: Underrailer some more active skills would be nice, but it works well enough.

 

It's interesting that you used the ARs as the example of passive play when I think of unarmed as the ultra-passive and relatively boring playstyle of clickclickclickclick. With ARs there's at least a cool puzzle you can solve in most battles (how do I kill all three of these goons this turn?) finding optimal angles and trajectories and targets for bursts to "miss" enough to kill everyone. With Hammers there's lots of arithmetic and finger-crossing and WHOAH CRITICAL going on that just seems more exciting. With knives, there is an incredible amount of decisions to make starting long before the combat. But unarmed is just clickclickclickclick, generally speaking.

I actually really loved all of my AR playthroughs, though they were overshadowed by the ridiculous fun and brokenness of SMG playthroughs.

 

Yeah I brought that up - other than expose weakness (there are other skills but no one uses them), and you rely so much on stuff triggering.

It was kind of annoying in my playthrough. Especially with Blitz+Adrenaline Rush, I'd have to wait 10-15 seconds after my round of combat for the opponents turn to start with all of the passive stuff that hits (like electroshock, force emission, telekinetic proxy, opportunist, vile weaponry, taste for blood all ticking off over their heads).

 

I have rapid fire and point shot and use them with both my pistols and SMGs. Right now I can attack twice per round with my .44 hammerer, with those feats, I can attack four times, plus they count as special attacks and so benefit from smart modules. I guess one difference between rapid fire and bursting is that there's no spread - you're firing all your attacks at one opponent.

Although it really does feel really fucking stupid using rapid fire with my SMG when I should be using bursts with commando and spec ops. But unfortunately I get much better damage output using an SMG as a pistol than using an actual pistol.

 

Generally speaking, one AR burst is enough to shred most opponents, unless there's bad luck, their shield's still up for some bizarre reason, or they have stupid-high mech resistance and I'm not using asparagus bullets. If not, due to the Rapid 8.6mm Hornet I use I can still burst again after an Adrenaline Shot, which typically kills anything the first didn't, and then I get my free Commando burst.

Grenades alone generally decide the fight at this point because I haven't come up against any particularly nasty enemies yet. The AR is an unusually powerful mop/grenade-saver. Surrounded by little knife-wielding homos? Throw grenade at feet. All sorted. Crawlers are probably the most annoying, but frankly heavy armor has it the easiest of all against them.

Styg has made it far easier to get Hexogen and T.N.T. than it used to be during the beta. You should all count yourselves lucky.

Sadly, it takes so fucking long for gas and cryogas grenades to disperse that I haven't yet found a practical use for them. I was excited to try Cave Ear caltrops with toxic grenades, but then the fight was over without having seen so much as a puff of green. I'd gone to make coffee and then jerk off before the gas had actually managed to really cover a nice little area. Maybe that's a stab at realism, and Styg is certainly known to do that (it takes 2x as long to close a vent grille as it does to open one, for example; can't think of any practical reason for that other than mimicking reality), or perhaps they'd be too powerful if they dispersed fairly quickly.

 

To me fancy footwork, combo and cheap shots ad plenty of depth to unarmed without needing active skills. More feats along those lines, that are about creating special circumstances or by proccing enabling a different approach in the current turn and the one to come are fantastic.
Playing around with the proxy and the imprint was also fun.

 

You know what, go kill yourself Blaine. I haven't seen such pathetic retarded apologism in a long time.
Oh my god, Underrail, it's like sucking from the tits of the gods, don't you dare say anything wrong! You just don't get it! You are decline! Durrrr

 

Funny that might be, I would say quest progression can quite problematic in Underrail, if you decide to steer from the predetermined route. E.g. failing the interview at the institute didn't fail the interview quest (even though it is one of the possible options offered through dialogue) and attacking the protectorate after joining didn't fail the last quest (said quest was actually the reason my character attacked them), which resulted in a mess of ending slides that didn't even make sense.

 

Active skills are lots of fun. Would like to see more of 'em.

I knew that might be a problem, that's why I made a SMG-Psi hybrid. You get the best of both worlds!

 

After playing a hammerer/grenadier and full out psi I'm kinda enjoying my new Cyber "1 Button" Army SMG burster a lot.
I just stay behind and feed my enemies lead. I'm just pressing burst and shield buttons. Active skills can wait a bit.

 

I've learned to appreciate the joys of luring enemies into minefields with flashbangs at the Lurker base, since the little shits all have knives and stuns out the wazoo.

BANG!



...Snap, BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT BRRRRRRRRRRT

 

So, probably a stupid question: is focusing on both snipers and ARs at the same time feasible?

I've done a quick feat check via the wiki and it seems like I'd have enough but, always better to hear from the veterans.

 

The glorious sounds of twiddling your thumbs while combat auto-resolves

Traps take a lot of goddamn time, but properly used they give that warm, fuzzy feeling of accomplishment.

There is also imbalance between quest XP gains at XP and oddity. XP: talking to doc about psionic - get exp. Jonas Watch quest - get exp. Oddity system - get shit. In general it feels when oddity was added non-item XP gains are not in all the same places classical system gives them.

Add to that the fact you can still go oddity hunting with XP system and there is a clear winner from powergaming standpoint (aside maybe for some stealthy builds).

 

I used traps usually to start combat
1. Put explosive traps while in stealth next to group of enemies.
2. Move away and press Enter to start combat.
3. Activate all shit I need to activate, then use Snipe and free shock bolt on two enemies.
4. Throw a grenade at group of enemies that I placed traps near. Grenade sets off traps as well, group dies instantly

This tactic usually killed or took out of the fight 4-5 enemies in round 1. Then on round 2 I still got shock bolts and Aimed shot with my 250+ bonus critical damage weapon for the rest and one free placing of bear trap for melee enemy I ignore so the trap can take care off

 

Not sure how successful his build is.

 

ArchAngel
Yeah, well, I'm playing a man in a can with a loud game plan, so squirreling around everywhere to set up isn't an option.

I'll tell you, tanky builds can really pay off. I'd just got done fighting most of the main Lurker room, beginning with a few of them bumbling into my traps. I was coming down off adrenaline, had barely managed to heal and recharge shields, when yet another Murderer came around the corner. Crippling Striked me, flailed around, the usual. On my turn, burst didn't quite kill him, single shot missed, and my adrenaline and grenades were still on cooldown. He naturally healed up and then continued Crippling Strike and wrecking me up and down with his little homo knife.

Didn't matter, just soaked all that damage and blew his ass away. On many builds, if I were to get caught by a Murderer after a hard fight, that would be the end.

 

You should really have a Taser for these situations, it does not miss.

 

Well, which hand am I supposed to carry the Jackknife in? That's just inconvenient!

 

Taser is an utility item.

 

Do you ever get more than just 1 round of stun out of a taser, e.g. with high quality parts?

 

Hmm, food for thought.

Thanks for the info!

 

I'd recommend AR feats in higher priority, in cramped tunnels wasting enemies with bursts and just shooting trash mobs is easier without 40% penalty to accuracy every time you move.
Take shared feats, then AR feats (Commando is really the only crucial one), then can grab Sharpshooter - it becomes relevant mostly late game against heavy armored enemies (then again - crafted rifle and green bullets solve lot of problems).

Not sure why you'd want that feat, your critical damage bonus can exceed 350% easily so Aim Shot does the same.