Decline Nerd Commando Guide Channel (ex-funbuilding & stuff)

[roshan]

Well if someone can spend an hour going through that "review", they will probably also be very happy to spend an hour undergoing slow and painful genital mutilation.

 

[Johannes]

Well if someone can spend an hour going through that "review", they will probably also be very happy to spend an hour undergoing slow and painful genital mutilation.

Still better than SiTS combat I hear

 

[DeepOcean]

Complains about trash mobs.
Complains about lack of balance, where some spells are superpowerful while others are useless.
Complains you waste too much time on nothing.
Says that if you don't have money to make a long game don't fill it with trash mobs.
Says he likes old games but isn't nostalgic and likes good design.
Complains about kiting.
Complains about shitty, exploitable Ai.
Complains about stat balance.

 

[Shadenuat]

My main complaint is that game crashed repeatedly after I left first area

 

[Pope Amole II]

KK, take your butthurt somewhere else as now it's the time for some REAL open-world gaming, explorations and skill usage:



Dunno how long this project will take as I can be trying to bite more than I can chew (counting this & the other stuff), but it'll definitely end before the Nevada gets translated, lol.

 

[General Maxson]

Pope Amole II do you know if anyone is even talking about translating Fallout Nevada? Is there a good chance of it ever being translated to English?

Any other mods like this in development, but in English?

Thanks for the Let's play, I enjoy it very much!

 

[Baron Dupek]

Any other mods like this in development, but in English?
Thanks for the Let's play, I enjoy it very much!

There's also Olympus 2207, also no sign of any translation.
FFS, there's big group of translators for Stalker mods but not for Fallout.

EDIT: in development and English?
Van Burren by fellow codexer Hexer.
Or Last Hope by another codexer - Loon something.
Both abandoned.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Pope Amole II do you know if anyone is even talking about translating Fallout Nevada? Is there a good chance of it ever being translated to English?

Don't know about anyone and I wouldn't really count on it. Not in the next couple of years, at least. As you can see, the game is as text heavy as the original games. I'm not even mentioning every bit of fluff text you can see in the game log and such. There's just way too much work there.

 

[General Maxson]

Just my luck. Games I would really like to play, don't know the language, probably not gonna get a translation... I guess there isn't enough interested "westerners", they need to make house mods for Bethesda games. Oh well, back to endless replays of Fallout 1&2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. :russia:

 

[t]

So is funbuilding about AoD coming around thursday?

 

[Pope Amole II]

So is funbuilding about AoD coming around thursday?

Of course. Well, after I'm done with the russian Underrail LPs, maybe I'll do some AoD ones - AoD is better know here, though, probably 'cause good part of the team is russian. And the guide will be out once the release version is out and all the balance changes are done - after all, they're tweaking something from update to update.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Kinda late to the party with Neo Scavenger but, well, it's not like we have enough money to buy all this stuff as it comes out, some sacrifices have to be made. I've decided to pirate more from this point, though - morally questionable, ofc, but at least it promotes the whole indie rpg thing.



In other news, ended my russian Underrail LP cycle, started the Age of Decadence one. Trying to be rather positive about the game even if its mechanics as lolbroken as they were 3 years ago. Story is pretty good, though.

 

[visions]

Kinda late to the party with Neo Scavenger but, well, it's not like we have enough money to buy all this stuff as it comes out, some sacrifices have to be made. I've decided to pirate more from this point, though - morally questionable, ofc, but at least it promotes the whole indie rpg thing.



In other news, ended my russian Underrail LP cycle, started the Age of Decadence one. Trying to be rather positive about the game even if its mechanics as lolbroken as they were 3 years ago. Story is pretty good, though.

By lolbroken do you mean Underrail or AoD?

 

[Pope Amole II]

AoD, obviously.

 

[Vault Dweller]

More specifically?

 

[Pope Amole II]

More specifically?

Give me a bit more time with the current beta, I'll leave some detailed feedback. But, if we look on the surface, the easiest problems to see is that the armor balance looks broken - heavies are much more better than lights. It's not even about DR differense, it's about CS protection (even with the player losing stats on CS being removed, the crits still fuck you up easily) and hardiness. Though high DR really comes into play when you are kiting (and kiting is godlike in some of the early encounters, at the very least).

The tactical flexibility of various special attacks is somewhat destroyed by them being reliant on different stats. I.e., I want to use a precision fighter who is slim and, instead of relying on brute damage, targets the enemies arms & legs with knife criticals. Since each critical takes away 1 point of stats and zero stat means certain auto-death, that means even the toughest foes will die in 10 crits. Now, that sounds like a lot but since each crit disables them further and further, it's rather easy to drag such combats. Besides, since you don't neet pure damage, you don't need strength, right? So you can spend more on defensive stats. Only, since both those attacks success chance is tied to the Strength, you need to have at least 8 of it to have it as a reliable tool. 10 is even better. And, well, once you have 10 strength, why do you even need this death of a thousand cuts crap? Take the hammer and rock on.

And that goes for many special attacks. The AP cost increase (it's generic for all the weapons and that's actually bad) and the tied-in stats make them mostly unusable so, instead of tactical flexibility, you mostly spam one or two things that your build can do. It's a bit better for the alchemist as bombs provide some tactical edge, but for crafters it can become rather popamole.

And it also goes for the character building - the combat stats are rather strongly tied into the character stats and that also makes the build variance not as great as it could've been (and that's before we count out the gating issues).

 

[Vault Dweller]

But, if we look on the surface, the easiest problems to see is that the armor balance looks broken - heavies are much more better than lights.

Matter of opinion. At the moment, many people are convinced that Dodge is better and often fight wearing nothing but tunics or silk/leather. Of course every now and then someone claims that heavy armor/block is obviously superior, which I take as a sign that both heavies and lights are equally viable yet distinctive.

It's not even about DR differense, it's about CS protection (even with the player losing stats on CS being removed, the crits still fuck you up easily) and hardiness.

Duh. If you're planning on being hit a lot and often, you better have good armor. If not...

The tactical flexibility of various special attacks is somewhat destroyed by them being reliant on different stats. I.e., I want to use a precision fighter who is slim and, instead of relying on brute damage, targets the enemies arms & legs with knife criticals. Since each critical takes away 1 point of stats and zero stat means certain auto-death, that means even the toughest foes will die in 10 crits. Now, that sounds like a lot but since each crit disables them further and further, it's rather easy to drag such combats.

And the problem is? Not arguing with you, just curious. You say you want to play a precision, low STR fighter. You can. You want to rely on Crits. You can.

Besides, since you don't neet pure damage, you don't need strength, right? So you can spend more on defensive stats. Only, since both those attacks success chance is tied to the Strength, you need to have at least 8 of it to have it as a reliable tool. 10 is even better. And, well, once you have 10 strength, why do you even need this death of a thousand cuts crap? Take the hammer and rock on.

You lost me there. Low STR builds have been viable from day one. From the Steam forums:

Spoiler

^ Dagger 5, Dodge 8, Str 7 (ok, not that low but still...), bodycount 145 - vicious bastard

As for attacks, some factor in STR, others PER, but the stats provide bonuses, they don't determine whether you succeed or fail. Basically, the chance of getting a critical effect on the aimed strike is mainly based on your CS rating vs the enemy vsCS, modified by your stat, the enemy CON and weapon size (for AP balance).

With daggers and high CS you'll be doing criticals left and right.

For example, I have an assassin with STR6 at the end of Maadoran. He has a 59% chance of critical effect on aimed: arms against a legionary wearing segmenta and infantry shield. It's pretty fucking high. Sure, it could be even higher with STR10 (79%) but you'd suffer in other areas (lower THC, less AP, etc).

As for spamming the same attacks, I use legs attack against dodgers to lower their defense, then go for the artery if I need damage and chance is high. Or power attack if the artery chance is low. Or fast/flurry for low armor opponents, arms if I'm low on health and I need to disarm the guy to move away.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Matter of opinion. At the moment, many people are convinced that Dodge is better and often fight wearing nothing but tunics or silk/leather. Of course every now and then someone claims that heavy armor/block is obviously superior, which I take as a sign that both heavies and lights are equally viable yet distinctive.

You shouldn't take at a sign, you should actually know. The thing is, why are you talking like dodge and heavy armor are mutually exclusive? They work excellent together and all that silk stuff is the matter of metagaming. Let's take that first char, 10 dex, 7 con, 8 dodge. With 5 unoccupied spaces, he'll give 124% penalty to the enemy attack. That's without counting training - that assassin has 12 points of it so that's 136% actually (and he should've taken some beatings at raider camp - would've been good for his health).

Then let's take an average enemy. Well, I'm not a hardcore fan so I don't know the enemy stats, but something like 8 Str, 8 Per and 6 skill should be fine, right? With the basic 50% chance, that's 150%. So the to hit chance would range from 26% (with no training or, more likely, no free spaces) to 14% to 9%. Give or take bonuses from their weapons and fast attacks and the penalties from your aimed arms attacks (which you're pretty inclined to do when fighting in silk).

And the actual differences here are huge. 26% means 1 hit every 4 attacks - you get slaughtered in silk. 14% is better, but still 1 hit every 6 attacks - depends on the amount of foes. 9% means 1 hit every 11 attacks - yeah, that beating at the raider camp has suddenly doubled your effective health pool. And at 5% (he should've probably went for 10 dodge instead of 10 crafting) it's once in 20 hits, with 7 con, that's nigh immortality. Unless you have bad luck, but that's nothing that reload doesn't solve - dodge is reload-prone anyways.

So yeah, silk is pretty cool when you overlevel your foes. But, to be honest, wearing silk is pretty much the same as being naked - it's not like that 1 DR does much for you as the whole idea is that it doesn't come into play often. Anyhow, against tough foes, those crazy 5-10% percentages should be hard to achieve (especially when you're surrounded). And that's when heavy armor and dodge combine splendidly. If you have 45 hp and 24% hit chance of the foes, you probably die in 4 hits. Depends on the source of the hits, of, but, as the crit for the foes will be rather high, that should be about it. So it's, like, 16 attacks and you're toast. On the other hand, against the weapons of the same material, imperial armor seems to provide at least 66% overall damage reduction. I'm speaking extremely roughly, mind you. And it's also a huge critical hit reduction - loss of 50% is no joke. So, even with enemy hit chance becoming 54%, they'll need much more hits to kill us. At least a dozen, I'd wager, so that's 24 attacks minimum. I mean, even 10 strength two-handers do about 5 dmg on the average vs the imperial armor, so that's 9 hits at best - weaker weapons/foes will have more issues. So probably more like 30. And keep in mind that less criticals means not having to suffer their debilitating effects - for the dodge guy, for example, getting hit by the hammer knockdown (which rolls against CS, right?) pretty much means insta-death. Sure, you're attacking slower in the imperial, but not twice as slow - it's 50% attack speed loss for double the survivability, that's a net gain.

Another thing is that imperial armor is actually the so-so choice and the top-dog is the Lamellar Ordu - the character in question would've been able to craft a meteorite one with 12 AP limit and, like, 10% penalties? So for him (in tough conditions) it's either 1 DR, 24% enemy hit chance and 12 AP or 13 DR, 34% enemy hit chance, 12 AP and 65 vs CS. But those are the joys of crafting of course.

Also, we're talking about the ideal conditions for the silk guy here as that build is all about fighting underleveled foes - when fighting your equals, those sweet 5-10% are nigh unreachable because of the basic 50% to hit chance. Heavy Armor scales much better because the damage your foes do doesn't change as wildly as their hit chance.

And, well, returning to the light armors after a, erm, short derail - the problem of manica, lorica segmentata and such is that they really fall out of place in-between these two. No strong points to play on, just mediocrity. Well, with high crafting they become strictly better versions of silk armor but then, well, with high crafting Ordu Lamellar is a strictly better version of silk armor. Light armors actually suck with crafting as they can't really exploit its bonuses well.

TL;DR version: just play through the Teron as the honest dodger in silk and as the dodger in the imperial armor.

And the problem is? Not arguing with you, just curious. You say you want to play a precision, low STR fighter. You can. You want to rely on Crits. You can.

Not really. Even between 6 and 10 Strength, it's a 20% critical chance difference. That's huge. If we kill foes via crits only, that will mean, say, 30% vs resistant foe and 50% vs resistant foe. That's either 3 hits for crit or 2 hits for crit. That means I need more than a half of extra attacks (assuming the perfect accuracy) to achieve the same effect. Even 70 vs 90 is 28% extra attacks - very considerable.

It's not even about mine ultra-low build - the very point of the daggers atm is that they are tied to the aimed attacks. And while daggers are Dex based, 2 aimed attacks (legs and arms) use STR and 1 (torso) uses Per. And mind you, Torso attack is kinda so-so because of its cost. And Arterial Strike isn't even counted as an aimed attack, it seems(which makes it a rather bad option once you find something like an Arbiter). So, answering the:

As for spamming the same attacks, I use legs attack against dodgers to lower their defense, then go for the artery if I need damage and chance is high. Or power attack if the artery chance is low. Or fast/flurry for low armor opponents, arms if I'm low on health and I need to disarm the guy to move away.

Usually, depending on your stats, you'll have one or two super-efficient attacks. And it seems that spamming them from the beginning of the combat leads to much better results than using the "correct" choices. I.e., if 10 STR dagger master starts using aimed arms from the get go (or legs& kiting against dexterity armed guys - thankfully, they both use STR), he doesn't even need flurry or power or anything else. He'll just drain them down eventually. It's gonna be slower but much more safer. Or, if you have 10 PER dagger master, aimed torso becomes your go-to option (especially if you're a crafter and have fast access to the 10 AP Llamelar Ordu) - better than the arterial strike because bleeding doesn't stack and -1 con does.

And, when it comes to the flurry/fast, aimed legs is also generally better - with the Arbiter in picture, the doubling of critical chance really makes the difference here. Couple of legs crits and their dodging goes out of the window, pretty much. Well, you can use flurry after that, of course.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Matter of opinion. At the moment, many people are convinced that Dodge is better and often fight wearing nothing but tunics or silk/leather. Of course every now and then someone claims that heavy armor/block is obviously superior, which I take as a sign that both heavies and lights are equally viable yet distinctive.

You shouldn't take at a sign, you should actually know.

What the developer believes to be true and what players believe are often two different things. Naturally, we did our best to balance heavy and light armor. Naturally, I believe it works well otherwise we'd still be tweaking it.

The thing is, why are you talking like dodge and heavy armor are mutually exclusive? They work excellent together...

They do, which is part of the design. Naked dodger is an extreme. Heavy blocker tank is another extreme. You can easily find a subjectively sweet spot somewhere in the middle.

TL;DR version: just play through the Teron as the honest dodger in silk and as the dodger in the imperial armor.

I did and so did many other people. Low armored or even unarmored dodger is a very viable build and many people are convinced that it's the best build. And no, I don't think it's because they reload like crazy.

Not really. Even between 6 and 10 Strength, it's a 20% critical chance difference. That's huge. If we kill foes via crits only, that will mean, say, 30% vs resistant foe and 50% vs resistant foe. That's either 3 hits for crit or 2 hits for crit. That means I need more than a half of extra attacks (assuming the perfect accuracy) to achieve the same effect. Even 70 vs 90 is 28% extra attacks - very considerable.

It is considerable if you want to get every point. Unless you're convinced that 70% chance to score a critical is too low.

So, again, yes, STR is a factor in some attacks but not all. There are attacks that favor PER which is a good stat for fast, low STR fighters.

It's not even about mine ultra-low build - the very point of the daggers atm is that they are tied to the aimed attacks. And while daggers are Dex based, 2 aimed attacks (legs and arms) use STR and 1 (torso) uses Per.

And? Would it better if you needed a single stat to do everything you wanted?

 

[Elhoim]

It's not even about mine ultra-low build - the very point of the daggers atm is that they are tied to the aimed attacks. And while daggers are Dex based, 2 aimed attacks (legs and arms) use STR and 1 (torso) uses Per.

That's wrong. There are two and two. Legs and arms use STR, torso and artery strike use PER. And artery strike is extremely powerful for low damage builds. The damage is power, head usually has less DR, and if you score the critical you bypass the armor, do critical damage and cause bleeding. Add poison to that and it's brutal.

You are focusing your WHOLE strategy on trying to get stat damage, and while it's a nice bonus you are completely leaving the arterial strike on the side which should be your main damage dealer if you are using a low strength build, not trying to kill them by lowering their stats to 1. Disable with legs and arms attacks, and finish with artery strikes. As a matter of fact, it's a good idea to use a small and a big dagger, to take advantage of the better chance and higher penalty the bigger one offers on legs and arms.

I played through the whole game with this assassin:

STR 6
DEX 10
CON 6
PER 9
INT 5
CHA 4

Equipment: Crafted Studded leather armor, 4 DR, 2 points penalty, made with crafting two (invested a single point to use sharpenning stones). The Arbiter dagger, hand crossbow, nets, and poison. Alchemy 6 to poison dagger and crossbow. Crossbow works great with poison as you can poison blockers if they can't fully block the attack. Some points in sneak, and the rest evenly on dagger, dodge and CS. Didn't powergame, just did all Teron quests, then just the map and main Maadoran and Ganezzar missions. Killed Hamza in the last fight without reloading, surviving barely.

 

[Pope Amole II]

And? Would it better if you needed a single stat to do everything you wanted?

You know, I don't have a single idea why am I talking to you. All you're capable of is rather contemptious "2deep4u" and "learn2play" demagoguery. FYI, in your game there are Hammer and Axes weapon schools. They are STR based. They have the access to 4 special attacks: aimed arms (governed by STR), aimed legs (governed by STR), aimed head (governed by STR) and Knockdown (governed by guess what - STR). Now, I'm rather sure in your abilities to rationalize that too, it's just that I couldn't care less about that.

That's wrong. There are two and two. Legs and arms use STR, torso and artery strike use PER. And artery strike is extremely powerful for low damage builds. The damage is power, head usually has less DR, and if you score the critical you bypass the armor, do critical damage and cause bleeding. Add poison to that and it's brutal.

And here's more "learn2play". First, add poison to anything and its brutal - in my lp my main char is 4-10-8-4-10-4 poisoner assassin. She's already terminator (using her own poison - master Coltan's one makes the outpost too easy) and in the next update (or the one after that, depending on the length of the fights) she will become arena champion and that will be the first thing she'll do in Maadoran. With alchemy, it doesn't really matter which build you use.

Second, aimed: torso is just better than the arterial strike. Especially if you build your character around it. Sure, the arterial does higher base damage. But torso generally has a significantly higher CS rate - most enemies has at least some sort of helmet and that easily creates a gap of 20-30-40% in between those two (that's the source of my mistake - I've though that arterial doesn't count as an aimed and is the source of this gap).

Next, torso crits actually stack with each other. You land two crits per turn - victim gets -2 to constitution. Whereas there can be only one bleeding, period. Which also lasts 2 turns so, ideally, that can be 1 bleeding stack vs 4 constitution loss. That negates the damage output difference altogether.

Finally, each torso crit gives 10% better chance to all other crits. So you start with 30%, you land 2 crits and now that's a much more delicious 50%. You even have 2% of extra to-hit chance per CON lost, I guess.

There can be opponents where arterial is better (the ones in any kind of metal armor and with no helmet on), but those are not exactly common.

You are focusing your WHOLE strategy on trying to get stat damage, and while it's a nice bonus you are completely leaving the arterial strike on the side which should be your main damage dealer if you are using a low strength build, not trying to kill them by lowering their stats to 1. Disable with legs and arms attacks, and finish with artery strikes. As a matter of fact, it's a good idea to use a small and a big dagger, to take advantage of the better chance and higher penalty the bigger one offers on legs and arms.

Well, if you're not supposed to kill foes by stat damage, why can you kill them that way? And, once again, stop acting as if I go 'boo-hoo, the game is too hard" - it's rather easy, actually. We're talking about build & tactics variety here, not about difficulty. Besides, disable & kill sounds like a nice plan, but many dangerous foes have so much stats that you need to make 2 or 3 aimed arms to actually disable them. And, at that point, with 2-3 stat point loss already in place, there isn't that much difference between finishing them via stat damage or common damage.

And I think I know how to go with the aimed: arms&legs build through the game now, it's just that you need 10 STR for that and it's totally wasted on that char (apart from acting as extra 3 cs).

 

[Vault Dweller]

And? Would it better if you needed a single stat to do everything you wanted?

You know, I don't have a single idea why am I talking to you. All you're capable of is rather contemptious "2deep4u" and "learn2play" demagoguery.

Let's not get all worked up.

You said that AoD mechanics are "as lolbroken as they were 3 years ago". I asked to clarify, you said that "heavies are much more better than lights", which is incorrect to say the least. Unarmored or low armored dodger has been the most viable build since day one and that's what most people who are familiar with the game agree on (i.e. it's the feedback we've been getting consistently over the years, backed my screens of naked dodgers standing over piles of bodies).

Then you complained about aimed attacks. Oscar and I pointed out some flaws in your arguments, which was a mean thing to do, apparently. Mea culpa, bro.

 

[t]

Pope Amole II been watching your last LP and enjoying it despite the fact that I don't understand anything of what you're saying (well some words sound a bit similar to potato but not many)

 

[Pope Amole II]

Pope Amole II been watching your last LP and enjoying it despite the fact that I don't understand anything of what you're saying (well some words sound a bit similar to potato but not many)

Well, as a codexian I think you'll approve of the ending of the today's issue. I can try to speak ukranian (it's half-polish anyways), but then my russian viewers won't understand me right. Well, not in the meaning of language but more in political sense.

 

[Athelas]

In other news, ended my russian Underrail LP cycle, started the Age of Decadence one. Trying to be rather positive about the game even if its mechanics as lolbroken as they were 3 years ago.

It really is shaping up to be a worthy Fallout successor, isn't it?