Fallout: Tactics - Any tips from the pros?

[Dreaad]

It's possible but you need to have your teams set up outside of the base, well in front of the ghouls, and lay down some mines to knock down the mutants as they charge.. Reminded me of that deathclaw attack wave in an earlier mission. Where it was almost impossible to set up your guys with the ghouls in real time because once even one deathclaw got in the building your teams stray shots would kill half your allies in the room.

 

[the_shadow]

What I didn't like about the mission was that you aren't given enough time to prepare for the attack. After about 20 seconds the mutant ambush starts. That's hardly enough time to get all your soldiers behind barricades, let alone place mines.

 

[Dreaad]

Yeah, it's pretty bad. Luckily it doesn't start until you talk to the ghoul leader.

 

[the_shadow]

In my version of the game, the ambush begins about 20 seconds after arriving on the map. If I went to talk to the ghoul leader, I wouldn't have a chance to position my team members at all.

I've crushed the supermutants and arrived at Bunker Delta, and haven't turned the difficulty down from 'Hard'. So far my thoughts on the game are:

- As everyone has mentioned, melee weapons and unarmed *suck*.

- I have tried on numerous occasions to use the flamethrower, but I'm forced to conclude it is next to useless. The range is miniscule, there is a delay between the firing animation and when it deals damage (allowing the enemy to retaliate before they are hit), and it misses on many occasions, even when the chance to hit is 95%. Machine guns and shotgunsare a more reliable source of damage.

- Throwing sucks. Grenades do a lot of damage, but are too unpredictable to use effectively. It's almost impossible to thrown them into bunkers or over obstacles (which is when you would want to use grenades in real combat!) without them ricocheting back at you.

- For some reason, big guns are *way* more effective in the hands of supermutants than in the hands of my trained team members. For example, a supermutant with an M90 can shred my entire squad from a screen away, but my PC needs to fire an M90 right up in a supermutant's face to get its health down to severely wounded. Thankfully ammo for big guns is so plentiful I've need to dump 2000+ bullets at base.

- Once I got my hands on a few sniper rifles, the game became much easier, as I was able to outrange most supermutants. Small guns still have their place at the moment, including the aforementioned sniper rifle, FN FAL, and automatic shotguns.

- The rocket launcher looks interesting, although rockets are currently too expensive. I attempted to use it in a boss fight, but for some reason cover protects enemies from rockets *far* more than it does me. Go figure.

- I haven't used a mine yet.

- I've managed to get my hands on my first energy weapon (a laser pistol), and was underwhelmed. Apparently I'll be picking up some better energy weapons next mission.

- I've neglected stealth, and I regret it. If I were to redo the game, I'd invest heavily in big and small guns, and stealth. Having at least 4 PCs able to unload automatic fire point blank would have made my progress a lot smother.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Just speaking for myself here, but I'm one of those who NEVER even considered playing the game in real-time. The division between which players used which playstyle was obvious when the game was originally released: Those who had played Fallout used turn-based, and those that hadn't didn't.

The game is not just a bugged mess, but it also has some really messed up level design decisions. case in point is the early mission where you're tasked with recovering the fusion batteries.

There's a tribal village located on top of a pre-war installation. A ladder leads down into an ominous-looking hole, while some suspicious-looking manhole covers can also be seen on the surface near the village. Once your squad descends into the depths, it becomes quickly apparent that the power needs to be restored. The switch is found and thrown, and the rest of the installation can be accessed. EXCEPT...those non-functional turrets that the player spotted throughout the station are now active, and they'll make short work of your squad if you're careless, so they have to be dealt with. By this point almost every player forgets about those suspicious-looking manhole covers on the surface...which as someone can guess, are turret emplacements which proceed to butcher the villagers in relatively short time.

Unless the player has meta-knowledge and plans in advance.

The key to prevent the massacre is to position squadders lying on the ground RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE TURRETS, in their blind spots. The turrets will target the nearest hostile, which they'll then have a roughly 1% chance to hit. Note that turrets can still cause criticals, and one of those is more than enough to have your squaddie sent home in his helmet. Then it's just a matter of shooting the turrets until they blow up. If done right, none of the villagers will even have been hurt, and the village elder will reward the player with a fourth fusion battery.

As for what lies ahead - once the Super-Mutant missions are over, the difficulty slides down a little, but once you start encountering the endgame critters pretty much every fight will turn into a slogfest. In every mission. Right up until the end. Have fun.

 

[Xathrodox86]

From my personal experience: two snipers are a must. Also invest in heavy weaponry. Browning M2 and Gauss Minigun are your friends.

 

[baturinsky]

I remember playing it in realtime mode pretty much like this

It worked, but I got bored quite fast.

 

[Gozma]

The most important thing to know in the game is that there's a bug/bad feature with burst fire: If an enemy burst fires at a guy that he has like a 1% chance to hit at long range, it will 99% of the time miss the guy - except everyone standing around him will get turned to hamburger by a dozen hits. It seems like every missed bullet gets turned into an automatic hit on anyone in a large "scatter" field around the target. So this leads to a dumb strategy: Have one guy take a bunch of drugs to get his damage resist % maxed and Rambo through the entire map by himself. Anyone standing near him would instantly die from that scatter bug/feature. If you don't want to cheese it with drugs at least keep everyone very spread out.

Second most important thing is that the game graduates from small arms -> big guns -> energy weapons. A small gun is nearly useless in the big gun stage of the game, and the same for both small/big in the energy stage. Only the Browning M2 heavy will still be worth a shit in the energy weapon stage of the game (against robots), and only a shotgun loaded with various special ammo is decent during the big gun/energy weapon stages of the game. The easiest way to do it is use the people that have small guns/energy or small guns/big guns tagged and then take the tag perk to give them the skill they don't have when you hit that stage of the game.

 

[naossano]

I remember playing it in realtime mode pretty much like this

It worked, but I got bored quite fast.

How can this thing look more gorgeous than WL2 ?

 

[Dr Skeleton]

In my version of the game, the ambush begins about 20 seconds after arriving on the map. If I went to talk to the ghoul leader, I wouldn't have a chance to position my team members at all.

- Throwing sucks. Grenades do a lot of damage, but are too unpredictable to use effectively. It's almost impossible to thrown them into bunkers or over obstacles (which is when you would want to use grenades in real combat!) without them ricocheting back at you.

Grenades are hard to use, but very good when used properly, especially in the first part of the game, especially with stealth. You can take out 3-4 raiders with one grenade. Then again, I'd say that the game is unplayable in real time, so I don't know how they work outside of TB.

- I've managed to get my hands on my first energy weapon (a laser pistol), and was underwhelmed. Apparently I'll be picking up some better energy weapons next mission.

Robots have VERY high resistance to most damage types, so EWs are a must for late game. Other than M2, gauss, missiles and shotguns with EMP shells, regular weapons can't really hurt robots if you don't crit.

- I've neglected stealth, and I regret it. If I were to redo the game, I'd invest heavily in big and small guns, and stealth. Having at least 4 PCs able to unload automatic fire point blank would have made my progress a lot smother.

I can't imagine playing Tactics without stealth. You don't get any good armor until very late in the game, so fighting raiders and such usually comes down to who can shoot first.

 

[Khorne]

Just speaking for myself here, but I'm one of those who NEVER even considered playing the game in real-time. The division between which players used which playstyle was obvious when the game was originally released: Those who had played Fallout used turn-based, and those that hadn't didn't.

The game is not just a bugged mess, but it also has some really messed up level design decisions. case in point is the early mission where you're tasked with recovering the fusion batteries.

There's a tribal village located on top of a pre-war installation. A ladder leads down into an ominous-looking hole, while some suspicious-looking manhole covers can also be seen on the surface near the village. Once your squad descends into the depths, it becomes quickly apparent that the power needs to be restored. The switch is found and thrown, and the rest of the installation can be accessed. EXCEPT...those non-functional turrets that the player spotted throughout the station are now active, and they'll make short work of your squad if you're careless, so they have to be dealt with. By this point almost every player forgets about those suspicious-looking manhole covers on the surface...which as someone can guess, are turret emplacements which proceed to butcher the villagers in relatively short time.

Unless the player has meta-knowledge and plans in advance.

The key to prevent the massacre is to position squadders lying on the ground RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE TURRETS, in their blind spots. The turrets will target the nearest hostile, which they'll then have a roughly 1% chance to hit. Note that turrets can still cause criticals, and one of those is more than enough to have your squaddie sent home in his helmet. Then it's just a matter of shooting the turrets until they blow up. If done right, none of the villagers will even have been hurt, and the village elder will reward the player with a fourth fusion battery.

As for what lies ahead - once the Super-Mutant missions are over, the difficulty slides down a little, but once you start encountering the endgame critters pretty much every fight will turn into a slogfest. In every mission. Right up until the end. Have fun.

That mission requires some careful planning.
Luckily, there's a short delay between the power switch and the topside turret activator.
I figured out that I only need power to open the doors, so I flip the switch with a scout.
When the rest of the squad moves through the door, just flip back the switch and close the door behind them.
Then you can use the scout to pack stuff into lockers or whatever, while the gunners clear the place.
You will need power to let them out when done, but the delay is long enough and the top turrets will not activate.

Additional note, Rippers work on turrets since they won't hit you point blank.
And yes, the realtime mode is only useful for random encounters, wouldn't use it in a mission.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I have no blood for you, so have a brofist instead.

 

[Tristan]

I played it RT - I find the Turn-based too slow for tough guy. Vehicles were buggy on TB as well. Of course, the problem with RT is that due to lack of pause, you need to make liberal use of the aggro setting and sometimes you forget that you have a shotty set to burst mode =/

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

The most important thing to know in the game is that there's a bug/bad feature with burst fire: If an enemy burst fires at a guy that he has like a 1% chance to hit at long range, it will 99% of the time miss the guy - except everyone standing around him will get turned to hamburger by a dozen hits.

This.

Fortunately it works for you too, so when weilding a big gun, firing at one supermutant in a group with only 5 % chance to hit is still totally worth it. You'll miss him but kill the others. The cathedral assault map, for instance, is one good place to do just that.

 

[Goral]

I played it RT - I find the Turn-based too slow for tough guy. Vehicles were buggy on TB as well. Of course, the problem with RT is that due to lack of pause, you need to make liberal use of the aggro setting and sometimes you forget that you have a shotty set to burst mode =/

Same here, even though I've played Fallouts many times before. There are just too many fights in Tactics with tons of opponents. I've tried playing turn-based once (for a couple of missions I think, it was advantageous to use when fighting turrets) but eventually switched to RT, didn't have the patience to continue. If I didn't have any companions it would be less tedious but with 6 people it was annoying. And while playing solo could solve my problem it would introduce a new one - I would have problems with carrying right weapons and ammo that would suffice for a longer mission. I might try doing that someday but since I've played F:T about 2 years ago I won't repeat it any time soon.

 

[Kuurth]

Fast Shot is king in this game. At least in real-time.
Just carry some shotguns and long range rifles, then change to energy weapons. Also there's ammo for all kinds of armor.

 

[Gozma]

One suggestion: it is harder to be a crit-snipers in FOT than in Fallout 2. The old "aim for eyes" thing doesn't work as well as it used to (dunno why), so you either go full-crit sniper or just take Fast Shot, max out your AP and ventilate the bad guys.

They nerfed the shit out of crits. In FO1/2 crits can have effects like, "Bypass all DR and DT and then do 3x damage" which I think happens more often with eyeshots because they increase the severity of crits (you can even roll a crit that can just be a flat instant death regardless of health). There is very little or no DR/DT bypass in FOT, so even the worst crits won't scratch someone with a 90% DR and high DT unless the base damage was huge. Combining DR with DT systems, especially when DR works before DT in the calculation, always leads to weaker shit getting completely obsolete - except in FO crits are so nuts it doesn't matter because the starting 10mm can blow through power armor with eye shots.

 

[laclongquan]

One short phrase: Trooper management.

Details: patch 1.27 (of course).

Thing is, FT is planned in phases, small gun, big gun, and energy gun (with the return of best small guns).

You DONT use your recruit for the whole campaign. You use 5 guys for the initial small gun phase. When supermutant appear, signal the Big Gun phase, you replace them with Big Gun specialists. Ditto with Robot phase and Energy gun specialist.

The pool auto level recruits but you can notice the specialists of each phase. A special encounter can get you Grimm Brothers who are hell on wheel with that skill.

There's a trick to develop yourself a reserve group of 5 chars, who will behind your initial group 1-2 level but customizable as you want. The trick, in nutshell, is that before two time you access your recruit master, there must be at least 1 levelup.
+ When you talk to RM the first time, some recruits has additional Xp, right? Kick your squad out, pick any great potential recruits, quit. In game screen go to chracter screen and level up them as you wish. If you want to shelve them for later developing (I left Brian until level 15 then develop him into a 200% HW specialist) remember to spend at least 1 skill points before send them back to RM. After that the game consider them the reserve of my squad and left them alone (not change their Xp to default). Now you must earn a large chunk of Xp before you can repeat this. Each time you can only mod 5 recruits, so choose carefully.

Your recruits' availability depend on three factor: after a certain period, after certain rank, and meet some extra requirement. Example is the Grimm Brother, you must meet their SE AND pass their rank or you cant have them in the pool.
+ Luckily you can manipulate your rank by drug your char into high CHA before talking to Questgiver to report success of the mission. Drug your char, talking quickly, run to recruit master to open the pool screen.

 

[Gozma]

Eh, you can use early guys the whole game. Because of how FOT works, basically the longer you have someone under your control so you can min/max their perks and skills the better off they are. There are only a tiny % of higher level recruits that don't have a bunch of weak perk choices that make them mediocre, and non-humans (most of the late chars that are decently set up) can't wear power armor.

 

[Fowyr]

Re-played FT month or two ago, finished Kansas. There is indeed almost no delay before deployment and mutant attack. Hired Mother, Max (HV specialist) and his sister. Used Mother mostly to defend that lone ghoul behind south gate when useless Stitch (shotgun) and Farsight (sniper rifle) defended north gate, Max and his siter defended west and my character with SAW took the bulk of south gate attack. It was a lot of reloading...

 

[laclongquan]

No you are not. Your initial chars are invested quite a lot in Small Gun skill already. You dont have enough level (at least 4 levels) to invest in Big Gun.

Using my method, you exchange a SG char with a BG char of 2-3 level lower. as in, 150 BG with some point to spare~.

You can keep using some of the initial char if you invest in other skills, but your firepower is lower. You need one or two best shooters (150-200) to serve as your shocktroop, which mean you are going to change them.

You initial char will keep using SG and start gradually invested in energy weapon. when third stage come, they will be enough to be deployed then.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Re-played FT month or two ago, finished Kansas. There is indeed almost no delay before deployment and mutant attack. Hired Mother, Max (HV specialist) and his sister. Used Mother mostly to defend that lone ghoul behind south gate when useless Stitch (shotgun) and Farsight (sniper rifle) defended north gate, Max and his siter defended west and my character with SAW took the bulk of south gate attack. It was a lot of reloading...

You pretty much described my last attempt at Kansas City, except I left Stitch at the south gate and I did not hire Mother, but someone else I can't remember right now.

Yes, "useless" Stitch was in my squad right up 'till the end.

 

[Fowyr]

Yes, "useless" Stitch was in my squad right up 'till the end.

Always kept him too, but he is mostly good in close quarters only because of low perception. He shines as medic, of course.

 

[Khorne]

I've dropped Stitch after first mission because of perception, not really good material for sharpshooter squad.
I did recruit him again each time I return to the bunker so he keeps up with the level, sinked all his points into barter and got him the salesman and negotiator perk so I don't have to steal.
Also figured out that you can fill one immobile soldier right at the exit grid so you don't have to return to mission area for loot. Just park one of them outside the grid and use others to dump all the gear in his inventory before moving out.
Somewhere around level 10 I filled the hummer with so much stuff, I've had more ammo than all the traders combined.
Many hidden features in this game, I still remember how it took me 3 or 4 completions to figure out that I can, in fact, lock certain doors and unlock them again.

 

[the_shadow]

So I'm finally up to the missions with the Humanoid Robots, and all I have to say is... holy shit, my guns are fucking useless. Even my mini-guns and machine guns only do 6 damage when I unload them right up in an enemy's face. I know everyone warned me that small arms and most big guns would drop in effectiveness, but I didn't think that enemies would have 99.999999% damage resistance to bullets. Oh well, time to get a party who is loaded up on energy weapons.