Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Black Angel]

It would be cool if aiming at body parts would affect your enemy in tangible ways, like shooting at a leg to compromise their mobility, I don't remember any game other than Jagged Alliance 2 that took that into account, in JA2 enemies who were hit in the leg would sometimes collapse to the ground, if they were shot in the arm they would lose their weapon, etc. also headshots at ploint blank range were pretty...satisfactory.
But if game allows you to hit different body parts without acknowledging the physical implications and having animations for them then it's kinda lame, in AoD you can hit different body parts but that only affects some stats of your enemy (hitting legs lowers their dodge if I remember correctly, while hitting their arms lowers their accuracy? something like that), not really how they behave.

To be fair, the 'aimed shots/attacks' in Underrail does that, kinda. Like I said, Aimed Shots (and also Snipe/Execute) are basically head shots, Crippling Strikes are attacks aimed at arms/torso (kinda), Dirty Kick is a groin shot, Kneecap Shot is a leg shot, etc etc and the effects are very clear (instant crits, -2 STR, male opponents are stunned, movement points lost).

Also, in AoD, aimed attacks DO make the enemies lose mobility/disarmed/knocked down when hit by aimed attacks, but only if you score crits during said attacks.

I think it was a fine decision by Styg to make the aimed shots into feats.

What he did there was making the effects reliable (they always have the same intended effect, it's not based on crit tables/chance) and then balancing this strong reliability with some penalties like a turn-based cooldown or a very low maximum range (see Kneecap Shot) which would be very strange if they were just attached to your normal attack depending on what body part you're targetting.. but as special abilities that put all the good and the bad in one package they work alright.

The only critical aspect could be that you waste too many feat points getting all of the aimed shot types, to fix that some of the weaker ones could be combined so you get 2 abilities for 1 feat, but I never felt this would be necessary while playing the game.

Yeah, but doesn't that makes you wonder; if Styg implemented aimed shots/special attacks as something you can attempt from the get go instead of requiring feat points, what kind of feat he would come up with to replace those aimed shots/special attacks that now no longer require feats?

 

[Blaine]

From now on, whenever any of you uses a called shot in an RPG, you will see my Psygnosis avatar staring into your soul. You'll be reminded of that annoying bastard rampaging around your Internet home away from home, shitposting gleefully without any regard for the consequences.

You almost certainly won't even be conscious of it, yet the eye will bore right through you, judging you, silently mocking you, relaying news of your poor decisionmaking, shallow tastes, and manure-packed cranium directly to my id. I won't be aware of it, either, but my ego will inflate just a little bit every time you use an aimed shot.

When my power level rises high enough, I'll remove RTwP from existence through an act of sheer will.

 

[ciox]

Yeah, but doesn't that makes you wonder; if Styg implemented aimed shots/special attacks as something you can attempt from the get go instead of requiring feat points, what kind of feat he would come up with to replace those aimed shots/special attacks that now no longer require feats?

There is that aspect, but it seems like there's plenty of feats already, with lots of kooky proc-based feats too which are usually what you put in when the basic stuff has been exhausted. The expansion doesn't seem to be adding conventional low-level feats either even though there would be an opportunity for that, it's mostly stuff for when you're heading towards the new level cap.

 

[Lhynn]

Yes, they do.
Aimed shots are you, know, a thing.
Especially in a RPG where at some point people get magic spells or power armor - shooting at the super-resistant chest plate over and over seems kinda stupid then.

No, they don't.

Perhaps someone should make you a mod in which you get a realistic 4% hit chance to shoot someone in the eye, but somehow I don't think you'll be happy.

So a trained marksman and someone that never held a gun would have about the same chance. Not to mention that it would basically make the whole feature irrelevant.
And here you go with the "realistic" bullshit again.

 

[Blaine]

No, the 4% chance is for a trained marksman. For the untrained, it's probably more like 0%.

"You shouldn't base game mechanics on realism!" is a common argument, yet the reality of ballistics, armor hardness, human hand-eye coordination, etc. are factors here, ones to which you yourself have referred when making your arguments. Furthermore, Underrail is a relatively gritty game, so it's safe to say there should be a balance between realism and rubber-science fantastic goofiness. Or do you believe that full bore rubber-science fantastic goofiness is the only correct doctrine of game mechanics design?

Forget realism for a moment. If you want eye shots, how much additional damage should they do? If they outright kill most opponents, then what hit percentage do you believe would be appropriate? Did you expect to just min-max until you have a 75%+ chance to to bypass all armor and insta-kill opponents with eye shots? If so, sounds to me like you just want an "I win" button. Characters already need a high skill at ideal range just to get a hit rate of 90% in Underrail, on body shots.

You don't really need to be a hardcore realismfag to argue that eye shots should be orders of magnitude harder to pull off than aiming for center of mass.

 

[Lhynn]

You don't really need to be a hardcore realismfag to argue that eye shots should be orders of magnitude harder to pull off than aiming for center of mass.

Sure they should, and you are that much better than people that have to aim for center of mass to hit anything.

 

[Blaine]

In essence, you want to shoot people in the eye with high accuracy and insta-kill them—presumably a talent no enemy will possess, since the ramifications are obvious.

I don't need realism arguments or anything else to point out why this is gay and stupid (and inappropriate for Underrail). You did all the work for me.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

So, the expansion is a mid game expansion right? Are you guys planning on making new chars for it and going through the game again? I'm kind of torn on it, cause I finished a long time ago with my PSI char and I'm pretty sure I'm a bit burned out on it. Then again, new skills and feats.

 

[Blaine]

So, the expansion is a mid game expansion right? Are you guys planning on making new chars for it and going through the game again? I'm kind of torn on it, cause I finished a long time ago with my PSI char and I'm pretty sure I'm a bit burned out on it. Then again, new skills and feats.

Yes, I plan to turn 800 hours into 1,000 hours, just as soon as I figure out how to revert that retarded, shitty, ugly, crappy text font.

 

[Black Angel]

Has anyone ever tried doing Motion?

Spoiler

This is probably only available if the Faceless blockade to Core City is still there. There's a chance that when you take a Motion, your character would end up right in front of the Praetorian frontline, and the Faceless from the other side would be shooting at you with lasers and plasma, but none hit you at all. Your character would walk around that area, mumbling how the Faceless 'can't touch this' and how you're 'too important to die'. The Praetorian's reaction to you were hilarious, too. They're going from, 'she's derailed' to 'holy shit she's lucky!'

Edit: whoops, apparently this is already stated in the wiki. My goddamn reading comprehension, I thought there were more and what I've experienced was something new.

 

[PlanHex]

There's just a few different scenes it cycles between as I recall.
Though I do wonder if anything new happens if you get in motion after DC, haven't tried it out. Anyone know?

 

[Black Angel]

There's just a few different scenes it cycles between as I recall.
Though I do wonder if anything new happens if you get in motion after DC, haven't tried it out. Anyone know?

Seems like there's really only 5 scenes as the wiki stated, and it all happened at random. I'm about to go down to DC with my 2nd character, so I'll be posting here when I start post-DC interaction with everything the Southern Underrail has to offer (if there's any left).

Now that I think about it, the way we went around after taking the Motion kind of similar to when we breath all of those damn shrooms in DC. Maybe Sergio the Wizard actually made the drugs using those shrooms from DC?

 

[oneself]

So, the expansion is a mid game expansion right? Are you guys planning on making new chars for it and going through the game again? I'm kind of torn on it, cause I finished a long time ago with my PSI char and I'm pretty sure I'm a bit burned out on it. Then again, new skills and feats.

Yes, I plan to turn 800 hours into 1,000 hours, just as soon as I figure out how to revert that retarded, shitty, ugly, crappy text font.

The font that was deemed to be more legible than the old one but much uglier?

Yeah the old one was better.

 

[Blaine]

I have fucking keratoconus (causes "halos" around bright light sources in my dominant eye; suppressed but not entirely eliminated by wearing contacts) and I could still see that text just fine. There must be some legally blind literal mole people playing the game on cash register displays if they had trouble reading it.

 

[Excidium II]

Try it on a 120+ PPI screen

 

[Lhynn]

In essence, you want to shoot people in the eye with high accuracy and insta-kill them—presumably a talent no enemy will possess, since the ramifications are obvious.

I don't need realism arguments or anything else to point out why this is gay and stupid (and inappropriate for Underrail). You did all the work for me.

Nope, it counts towards an abstracted thing called HP, your aim may be true, but tons of factors can keep you from hitting your target where you want. Just make it a low hit chance, high crit chance, high AP consumption attack that bypasses some armor. A nice tool against slow heavily armored enemies.

 

[t]

Styg just posted an interview with polish IGN on Twitter. Notably, says that they bit more than they can chew and that the release date for the first half of 2017 shouldn't be taken seriously anymore.

 

[Blaine]

Welp, 2018 it is.

Realistically, the longer the wait between playthroughs the better, because the game will seem that much fresher.

Let's just hope the fonts don't get any uglier and the skills and feats don't get any nerfier in the meantime.

 

[Doktor Best]

He should take his time. No reason to rush things. Is there any word from Styg wether or not he will improve the faction questlines a bit with the upcoming addon?

 

[oneself]

Welp, 2018 it is.

Realistically, the longer the wait between playthroughs the better, because the game will seem that much fresher.

Let's just hope the fonts don't get any uglier and the skills and feats don't get any nerfier in the meantime.

Yeah he is far too nerf happy for my taste. A lot of design flavor is lost between nerfs.

 

[Junmarko]

 

[t]

Yeah, Styg probably got ripped off regardless...

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

So when is the expansion coming?

 

[t]

Probably not this year.

Styg just posted an interview with polish IGN on Twitter. Notably, says that they bit more than they can chew and that the release date for the first half of 2017 shouldn't be taken seriously anymore.

 

[Styg]

There's still a lot of content to be added, quests to be implemented and that sort of stuff. But the good news is that we're pretty close to wrapping up all the major new features that will be added in the expansion.

We did make the expansion a bit too ambitious, but hopefully it will pay off. But even if it doesn't, you guys will ultimately still profit from it with the only cost being your patience.