Shadowrun Shadowrun Returns - Dead Man's Switch Original Campaign

[Grunker]

On very hard difficulty? Dodger's hit chance was usually around 50-55%, his ESPs weren't much better.

Yep, that's about right AFAIR as well.

Enemy ICE did 75-100 damage per shot iirc

No. 50 for non-attack programs, 75 for attack programs. With support program shield, that's a max of fifty. You can heal 75 on your turn. Enemies have about 60% THC, less if you're in cover.

I had zero issues with this run, and like I said, I didn't even play it that careful. Only two careful things I did was focus-fire Black IC as soon as they spawned, and kept reducing alarm level.

 

[Loriac]

Noticed another bug, a no class character that comes with a datalink has 5 essence, bit crappy since if you start with mage or shaman you could install A class eyes and a datalink and still have 5 essesnce.

This is a display bug in the cyberware screen. Even though it shows that you'll end up with 4 essence, you actually have 5 when you carry out the operation. I think it must be doing the calculation correctly in the background, but not showing it properly when you go to the fitting screen.

Edit: if you really want to, you can also hack the byte file directly using a hex editor to drop the essence cost to 0. I understand in the pnp version the datajack has a cost of 0.1, and essence is not rounded all the way down to 5 like in SR:R if you want to justify this to yourself. Details can be found on the game forums, and its fairly straightforward.

 

[Excidium]

Why are people talking as if difficulty makes any difference? At best it gives enemy a little better stats that translates into a ~5% chance in accuracy

 

[Loriac]

On very hard difficulty? Dodger's hit chance was usually around 50-55%, his ESPs weren't much better.

Yep, that's about right AFAIR as well.

Enemy ICE did 75-100 damage per shot iirc

No. 50 for non-attack programs, 75 for attack programs. With support program shield, that's a max of fifty. You can heal 75 on your turn. Enemies have about 60% THC, less if you're in cover.

I had zero issues with this run, and like I said, I didn't even play it that careful. Only two careful things I did was focus-fire Black IC as soon as they spawned, and kept reducing alarm level.

Enemy ICE also buff each other, so they can end up hitting you harder - I definitely saw 90pt hits on my ESPs when they weren't shielded (edit: I think this was enemy ICE debuffing my guys with degrade). The shield ESP can be two shotted quite easily if its not shielded, and the cooldown means you can only shield one of Dodger, the attacker ESP or the shield ESP. It was possible to complete it, but I thought that very hard difficulty was well balanced on that run. Maybe you got luckier with the RNG, but I definitely didn't find it a walk in the park (and I was doing all the other things mentioned such as alarm suppression on cool down etc).

Why are people talking as if difficulty makes any difference? At best it gives enemy a little better stats that translates into a ~5% chance in accuracy

Your own accuracy also drops quite a bit ime. Its not noticeable with your own character, as you tend to build your own guy correctly, but when you're using the npcs they definitely don't have the same ability in very hard.

This doesn't make the game overly difficult however, as it seems to be balanced around your guy being able to solo if you build that way. Where it does affect things is where you're forced to use another character for a protracted period, the best example being matrix runs with idiots like Dodger.

 

[Name]

Try playing Mage/Shaman instead of pure shaman, pump these: Will, Spellcasting, CHA, Spirit Summon, Spirit Control. And at least 3 points in body. You'll have fun time summoning, blasting, buffing and controlling monsters (mind wipe, blind) all in one. I liked that build, played on Very Hard till endgame.

Today I found out that peaceful resolutions in SR, with CHA checks and all that, aren't useless. They can actually be harmful So here's the story, there is a troll with one eye guarding door in the mission when you help Coyote to find her bro, you can go around him multiple ways, by bribing or passing CHA check, or buying keycard from a dwarf. Well guess what, if you hit him in his blind eye instead and then kill him, you'll get a notebook with contracts from his body, which you can then sell to Van Graaf for ~1000 credits. I just hate this game sometimes.
Also, I found out what's behind that vending machine in temple. You need 5 STR to move it, and 5 Decking to unlock door behind it. It leads right to the corridor with a body of Cherry Bomb's friend, and then right into the final stage of that level with ms. Watts and her bug-friends. Who would in their right mind play a melee decker I don't even...

I'm a Decker with STR 2, I moved the vending machine.

Spoiler

You found a huge pile of lard in the kitchen, which can't fit in your pocket and have to be carried around. Put that under the vending machine and you can move that with ease.

 

[tuluse]

Just finished off the Ripper story line. The final mission is so lulzy.

I'm here to service justice!

But first, I'm gonna slaughter half a dozen mental patients.

 

[Jackalope]

Just finished off the Ripper story line. The final mission is so lulzy.

I'm here to service justice!

But first, I'm gonna slaughter half a dozen mental patients.

The twist in the Berlin DLC is that all the mental patients had dead men's switches, so your characters has to avoid dozens of angry relatives and greedy shadowrunners.

 

[Ninjerk]

I just got to the "library" and the plot has taken a turn for the worse, it seems.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Darth Roxor Your opinion of the gameplay changes?

Hardly any difference except for kneecap shot and black ICE, which are still pretty minor anyway.

 

[crawlkill]

But first, I'm gonna slaughter half a dozen mental patients.

I was thinking about trying to spare them like the chipheads in the rescue mission earlier on but decided the game probably wouldn't notice and I couldn't be fucked.

 

[Mortmal]

Holy shit, I can't beat Shadowrun Returns

Brotherhood quest didn't reward me with any nuyen, so I had no money left to hire a team for Renraku side mission ( Fuck that bitch Coyote for charging 1,5k to team with me, after all I've done to her). Anyway. Easy enough, I'll just do it solo, I thought to myself. Ho boy was I in for surprise. With proper use of barriers and hit-and-run tactics I managed to get past all the guards with no problems, but then was promptly raped by basilisks and that asshole mage that heals everyone. What's worse is that even top level spirits are useless as they get petrified, gang-raped by overwatching guards or breaking loose (even with a measly 10% chance, of course, because fuck you, dibens). Another thing that really grinds my penis is that pistol's Double Attack special takes 2AP to execute. What's the fucking point, then, especially since it doesn't work with revolvers. Tried the mission several times with varying degrees of success, even killed few basilisks, but no dice.

I had the same problem , only solution was to reload before buying my shaman spells , those are far too expensive for the few nuyen you get . If you want to get all of them you cant hire shadowrunners. I dont think the shaman is realy viable, in fact theres not many viable builds, adept isnt worth it ,melee sucks ,decker completely useless going gunnery and cybernetic is the thing to do . A luck there's an editor cause its really shallow right now, the core gameplay is really flawed.

 

[DeepOcean]

At this point, I'm only interested in updates related to the editor.

 

[Roguey]

Pleased to see Harebrained balanced kneecap with cooldowns.

 

[Kem0sabe]

The UI "smoothness" is much improved, especially transferring items to and from your inventory, nice update overall.

 

[aris]

New patch is out, lots of balance changes:

New Features, Improvements
- SMG: Aimed Shot now uses 4 bullets, down from 6.
- SMG: Spray and Pray now uses 6 bullets, down from 8.
- SMG: the Beretta, Uzi, Colt, and HK are slightly more accurate.
- Shotgun: Kneecap now has a HP DMG penalty of -6, up from -3. It now has a -5% accuracy penalty, and a cooldown of 3.
- Shotgun: All shotguns have had their accuracy falloff increased slightly, lowering hit chance at long ranges.
- Rifle: Full Auto's accuracy penalty was not being applied properly at high skill levels. It should now always be 15% lower than a single shot's percentage to hit.
- Rifle: Smartlinked rifles were less accurate at very long ranges instead of more accurate. This has been resolved.
- Rifle: The FN HAR and HK G12 were very similar in every aspect except price. The FN HAR is now more accurate and holds more ammunition than the HK G12.
- Rifle: Ammo capacity of the HK G12, Colt M23, and Ares Alpha have been reduced to 32, 34, and 38 respectively.
- Rifle: The Colt M23's damage is now 15, down from 16. The Ares Alpha's damage is now 16, down from 18.
- Grenades: Reduced store prices of all grenades.
- Grenades: HE Phosphorus grenades were not showing up in the store. They should now be purchasable along with the other Tier 3 weapons.
- Cyberware purchase screen is now more user friendly.
- Vendors will now sell more things in various places throughout DMS campaign (such as more med-kits).
- Visual improvements to the summoning grid.
- General UI Improvements.
- Added additional debugging for finding walkable tiles in debug mode.
- Added messaging to alert user when last auto-save occurred.
- Black IC is now less lethal.
- Added an explanation of how Leylines work in the world of SR:R.
- Added a definition of SIN in glossary.

Bug Fixes
- Player can no longer sell a currently equipped outfit.
- Swapping outfits will now correctly give the correct enhancements.
- Player can now equip an outfit if they do not currently have one equipped.
- Drones will now retain their Rigging bonus between levels.
- Wired reflexes no longer dodge friendly effects.
- Spirit death from overwatch no longer causes occasional hardlock
- Reduced load times when loading new assets after version update.
- First time OSX play will start in windowed mode to work around a crash issue for some users.
- Move marker will now be visible over walls.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when transitioning characters one-by-one out of the scene and into the next.
- Fixed issue with equip screen item filtering.
- Fixed issue with installing upgraded cyberware on individual locations of a pair.
- Fixed issue with hiring screen adding incorrect selected runner.
- Fixed a slew of typos.
- Fixed cases in conversation where attribute or skill checks were applied incorrectly.
- Fixed character preview not showing 3D Character in some cases.
- Fixed bug where user could enter missions that require a decker without having any runners with a Cyberdeck.
- Fixed various issues with hiring Coyote.
- Work around some Steam Workshop upload timeout issues
- Editor: Changes to scene or story variables will refresh that variable in the scratchpad.

Known Issues
- We are investigating reports that some users are encountering problems downloading subscribed stories from Steam Workshop.

What the fuck is up with kneecap shot for shotgun? It was overpowered, but nerfing it to hell, making it completely useless?

-6 damage would be more than enough, -5 accuracy is stretching it. 3 round cooldown

 

[Sensuki]

That's generally what happens when devs try to 'balance stuff'. If it's really good they make it terrible.

FixT guise

 

[Dickie]

I was thinking a one turn cooldown would be reasonable. I'm fine with the bigger damage penalty and accuracy penalty. A three-turn cooldown makes shotguns pretty lame. It seems like rifles deal more damage per action point already once you get full auto.

 

[Morkar Left]

But first, I'm gonna slaughter half a dozen mental patients.

I was thinking about trying to spare them like the chipheads in the rescue mission earlier on but decided the game probably wouldn't notice and I couldn't be fucked.

Dunno, they attacked and their lives were a nightmare anyway.

 

[Castanova]

Pretty fun little game but I did get tired of it toward the end once the bugs appeared. I didn't even bother accepting the side missions. Played a Mage and had basically maxed stats way before the end. I was dumping points into Dodge just for the hell of it. Spells are all really underwhelming. None with any real tactical possibilities. Just nukes, AoE nukes, nukes with minor debuffs, and boring/useless buffs. I'd give the game a C. I think if they had 3-6 months more to work on it, we'd be looking at a really solid RPG. Right now it feels almost like a polished proof of concept.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Its not like SRR is exactly bursting with tactical opportunities and challenges... Now just waiting for custom modules

 

[tuluse]

The more I think about this game, the more I wish they hadn't gone with such a simplistic action point system. It's a huge improvement on XCOM's retarded move'n'shoot or shoot'n'shoot, but if they expanded it to even Fallout level of action points per turn they could tweak AP cost of different attacks and wouldn't have to use as many stupid cool downs.

 

[Tigranes]

So what you're saying is after my Rigger/Mage VH run, I should do a hyper-cyberwared Adept VH for a fun romp? Definitely looks like avoiding shotguns is the house rule.

 

[Bizarro Jimmy Olsen]

Messing around with this to test different builds. Adepts just suck. Even made one with 400 karma (I think you get about 200 in the campaign) and he still sucked. Dodge seems almost useless. Maxed about the same as no points in Dodge. You still get hit a lot. When you consider the fact that Charisma, Intelligence and various skill checks matter very little in terms of getting through missions, your best bet is probably just to max assault rifles, ranged combat and quickness. Left over points go in Body and you're blasting your way through with ease, even on Very Hard. Only reason to make a gimped hybrid character is for the challenge.

 

[dibens]

The more I think about this game, the more I wish they hadn't gone with such a simplistic action point system. It's a huge improvement on XCOM's retarded move'n'shoot or shoot'n'shoot, but if they expanded it to even Fallout level of action points per turn they could tweak AP cost of different attacks and wouldn't have to use as many stupid cool downs.

Don't really agree with this, especially if you consider melee combat. In Fallout you would spend most of your points moving about, here you can run up to an enemy and kick him in the balls in the same action. Some special attacks and spells already use more than one action point, so even if Fallout point system were to be implemented, most of the stuff would still be way too powerful for every turn use.

It's also kinda funny to call Shadowrun's system simplistic and then wish it was more like that of Fallout's, which itself is as bare-bones as it gets.

 

[tuluse]

1 movement point doesn't have to be 1 action point, just like it is now. I just meant a fallout sized pool of action points not any thing else.