Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[CHEMS]

I mean, requiring attrition mechanics to call a system "deep" sounds totally nitpicky, so I'm assuming that you're using this point cause of the current context - there probably are games that you would consider tactically deep that don't have attrition, right? Whatever genre.
So, this alone seems irrelevant to the definition of "tactics". Though, sure. It adds to the depth.

These screen pics from Rance X are NSFW so be warned ~

You have no idea how close this Kayblis fight was. Kayblis (this version) hits you harder than you can heal. This was a 42 round race to death. I could not have survived another attack. Every action, every AP, practically every last HP mattered to win this boss fight. Just like how I ended the Barbari fight with 3 hp.

Although, to your point, THE hardest, most tactically challenging fight in Rance X is not an attrition fight. Rather it is a timed fight winnable only by playing 8 perfect rounds.

And this was actually an incredibly great outcome for an 18 round complete grinder of a mission, 8 (4 controlled by the AI) v 16 mechs. Again, attrition added an entire dimension to tactics. Losing an arm or a leg is inevitable but you don't want to lose an irreplaceable laser or double heat sink. Very, very easy to fuck up on missions like this. You have to play with great discipline, be conservative, and grind it out.

But tactics is not PRS in Battletech. Its more like you are vastly outnumbered (4 v 8 or sometimes 4 v 12, plus turrets, vehicles, etc...). Which enemy lance do you engage first (after which the other enemy lances quickly converge on you), where on the map do you retreat to to make your stand and most importantly how do you split your lance up (3/1, 2/2) to draw off enough fire to not die. What's your strategy if one or more of the enemy lances is a fire support lance that's going to destroy you with LRMs off screen every turn? How do you adjust when one of your mechs gets their leg blown off or get their torso shredded by a PPC or an AC/10? What happens when you are about to run out of ammo? How much do you risk overheat shutdown (which is pretty much death)? Every turn, do you eject your pilots or risk their mechs getting cored (permanently trashed, dead pilot)? Can you manage to complete the mission, settle for a partial objective and then withdraw, or just get the fuck out at your own expense and no pay, just so your mechs don't get anymore fucked up?

Another way to answer the question is: choosing to do obvious things is shallow tactics.

Sure, this definition nicely covers the topic in its entirety.
At the same time, it's super imprecise and based on your personal feelings, likes and experiences.
Shit is not obvious, if you haven't done it. Thrice. Or a hundred times, depends.
Sorry that you had to copy-paste all that text, but I hoped for a more precise definition this time, as it's the point of contention.

I mean for example, in AoD, using barbed ammo when you are shooting someone where they are unarmored, using regular ammo when shooting someone with a shield, not using AP ammo at all (since AP is godawful) - all that is obvious, no? Like using EMP traps vs robots in UR. Its just basic common sense stuff - shallow tactics.

You keep bringing up games that are quite linear though. Including AoD (AoD appeared in my posts only because you started shitting on it).
Dragonfall and AoD are centered around set pieces, right? There isn't a shitload of encounters, but they are meant to be thought out and balanced, or whatever the term is more fitting. Both also share the fact that content is distributed to the player in batches. And harder content is gated, for the most part.

Balancing the difficulty out for you to have the desired challenge (at all times) is a lot simpler in those cases, than in Underrail's.
(Haven't played BT at all, but I assume that, because it's mission based, it has a more linear structure. Besides, I bet the power-curve there is a LOT more flat than in classical RPGs - BT has rock/paper/scissor kind of deal, no?)

Sure. The base game limits you to 1 lance (4 mechs), BEX lets you add a 2nd lance, and that limits how much fire power you can bring on any mission, in addition to missions that limit you to 1-2 mechs (duels and duo duels) or weight class. I also play with 0 character growth/ minimum skill (3/3/1/3) pilots so that flattens power too.

Again, I'm not saying that Underrail couldn't be harder, or have more refined set pieces.
I'm arguing that you clearly have unrealistic expectations here.

Underrail's DOMINATING difficulty should force you to challenge yourself to get better at playing

Agreed, I'm not contending that. My point was about challenge being evenly distributed.

Again, why does DOMINATING need to be anywhere near "fair"?
After I cleared Lunatic Mall, I was *so* excited about Underrail. I thought, "Oh! This is why everyone is praising the game! That was so fun and hardcore!" The rest of the game never came close to replicating that feeling. Looking back, Enrage (which I see you get at level 10) was probably what broke the camel's back.

And what's wrong with scaling? Rance X does scaling beautifully. That's why no matter how good you are, Kayblis, the final boss, is an amazing fight. The game has spent the whole game calibrating itself to your skill level, and you end up fighting a Kayblis just a little too hard for you to beat without getting better.



This is a Kayblis fight played by someone far lower in skill than me, and not even the hard version of Kayblis (he has a cheat character, Shariela, that refreshes AP every turn, so its the easy version Alicesoft put in so anyone can get an ending). Even then, Kayblis is just difficult enough to push him to his limit. Search Kayblis fights on Youtube, they are almost always down to the last action. That's brilliance.

This game looks fun.

 

[Zeem]

And what's wrong with scaling?

The fact that it invalidates leveling, for one.
Seems like you want to just play a tactics game where strategic choices are not present, irrelevant or have to be made perfectly to give you even a tiniest chance of succeeding in the tactical layer.

 

[Jason Liang]

And what's wrong with scaling?

The fact that it invalidates leveling, for one.
Seems like you want to just play a tactics game where strategic choices are not present, irrelevant or have to be made perfectly to give you even a tiniest chance of succeeding in the tactical layer.

Well, no. I want a game that becomes progressively more difficult as the game progresses. My character becoming more powerful is great, but that shouldn't make the game easier and easier. It should mean I have more ability to take on more and more difficult challenges. The problem with Underrail is that past level 10, your character growth far outstrips the challenging content remaining in the game. Underrail's first 6 levels of character progression matches fine with the increase in challenging content up to Depot A. It's after Depot A, when your character abruptly leaps in power from level 6 to level 10, that the game's challenge falls right off a cliff. Lunatic Mall is the correct challenge level that I find fun for a level 8 character.

Age of Decadence's character system invalidates itself. There is no character level progression. There is only skills progression. But the problem is that combat skills in Age of Decadence don't matter at all if you understand the game's combat mechanics. The only real effect of combat skill is to increase your hit accuracy. But your gear also increases your hit accuracy. Not only that, you have 100% accuracy vs. prone and choking enemies, so the best strategy of all in combat doesn't even care about how you've "built" your character.

Rance X scales the difficulty by your achievement progression, not your "character" or power progression. The game becomes harder if you succeed your objectives, and easier if you fail. In fact the game has an early boss fight that if its your first time playing, you think the fight is a scripted impossible fight. But if you are already good at the game, you can figure out how to defeat the boss and now you play the rest of the game at +1 difficulty. What's the benefit? Well, the enemies are stronger at higher difficulties but they also give more experience, so you become powerful faster, and unlock the best abilities earlier (in the form of more advanced characters for your army/ party) but the game will always be more challenging at a higher difficulty. So you will eventually hit a difficulty where your current play skill and "strategic planning" does not allow you to succeed the more difficult objectives each mission. The point is that the scaling means the game, especially the awesome boss fights, always maintains its challenge.

I am not against build. But build should matter more than choosing different cheat buttons. A build is a set of tools - tools that you learn to use better as you grow as a player. My build when I played Underrail was a PSI dex melee character with Versatility. I had TK Punch, Force Field and Eletrokinesis from almost the beginning all the way through Depot A. I used them, but I didn't use them well because the game wasn't challenging me to. To clear Lunatic Mall, I was forced by the difficulty to learn to use each of those abilities, as well as Imprint, to their absolute maximum potential. I *mastered* the use of Elektrokinesis and Force Field, in conjunction with knife, pistol and machine gun. That's how builds should be - a different build should be about mastering different gear and abilities, discovering new things about them and ways to use them, up until the endgame. But Underrail doesn't have the challenging content to sustain that. Too many abilities and gear are absurd cheat buttons. Tactics is 20% "how do I kill the enemy?" and 80% "How do I not die?" Underrail fails to have deep tactics because it only asks the first question. Past level 8, enemies don't have the ability to overcome your defensive preparations and kill you unless you fuck up. Defensive preparation is shallow, not deep. Deep tactics exist during a fight, not before.

 

[Zeem]

Rance X scales the difficulty by your achievement progression, not your "character" or power progression. The game becomes harder if you succeed your objectives, and easier if you fail.

So it rewards you for failure and punishes you for success.

Tactics is 20% "how do I kill the enemy?" and 80% "How do I not die?" Underrail fails to have deep tactics because it only asks the first question.

That's because you were playing a glass cannon and taking on the exact enemies that exist to counter tanks with damage that completely bypasses armor.

 

[CHEMS]

And what's wrong with scaling?

The fact that it invalidates leveling, for one.
Seems like you want to just play a tactics game where strategic choices are not present, irrelevant or have to be made perfectly to give you even a tiniest chance of succeeding in the tactical layer.

Level scaling if well done does not invalidates leveling. Getting too overpowered mid game makes me lose interest in the game. If i was a game developer, i'd make my game scale with your level BUT, with a small variance. Let's say you're level 10: the mobs you'd face will be level 8~11.

 

[Jason Liang]

Rance X scales the difficulty by your achievement progression, not your "character" or power progression. The game becomes harder if you succeed your objectives, and easier if you fail.

So it rewards you for failure and punishes you for success.

... there are serious consequences for failure.

You know it's an eroge, yes?

NSFW

Spoiler

43% of humanity is dead... next threshold is at 50%.

It doesn't punish you for success. It rewards you for getting better with more challenge and better less awful endings.

 

[NooneHere]

After a messy fight, slaughtered Tchort and his tentacles, skipped the mutagen puzzle but blew up the tanks with tnt stealth...except the last one which I had to fist and kill some tentacles too. Leper poison on the ripper, taste for blood, and vile weapon and a lot of pneumatic fisting did in the eye.

Also drugs

Glorious

EDIT: Dominating run over with, I'm donezo with the game properly now. So much fucking stealthing around in DC, pain. Just didn't have the drive to spend more time skulking about for the puzzle, fuck it, just went for full difficulty boss fight.

 

[CHEMS]

Rance X scales the difficulty by your achievement progression, not your "character" or power progression. The game becomes harder if you succeed your objectives, and easier if you fail.

So it rewards you for failure and punishes you for success.

... there are serious consequences for failure.

You know it's an eroge, yes?

NSFW

Spoiler

43% of humanity is dead... next threshold is at 50%.

It doesn't punish you for success. It rewards you for getting better with more challenge and better less awful endings.

Noooo Underrail is a cozy game that does not even have swearing, don't post coomer stuff here, this is a christian forum

 

[Jason Liang]

Rance X scales the difficulty by your achievement progression, not your "character" or power progression. The game becomes harder if you succeed your objectives, and easier if you fail.

So it rewards you for failure and punishes you for success.

... there are serious consequences for failure.

You know it's an eroge, yes?

NSFW

Spoiler

43% of humanity is dead... next threshold is at 50%.

It doesn't punish you for success. It rewards you for getting better with more challenge and better less awful endings.

Noooo Underrail is a cozy game that does not even have swearing, don't post coomer stuff here, this is a christian forum

kekekekeke

 

[CHEMS]

6:19:38

Bro...

 

[Sykar]

Rance X scales the difficulty by your achievement progression, not your "character" or power progression. The game becomes harder if you succeed your objectives, and easier if you fail.

So it rewards you for failure and punishes you for success.

... there are serious consequences for failure.

You know it's an eroge, yes?

NSFW

Spoiler

43% of humanity is dead... next threshold is at 50%.

It doesn't punish you for success. It rewards you for getting better with more challenge and better less awful endings.

Noooo Underrail is a cozy game that does not even have swearing, don't post coomer stuff here, this is a christian forum

wants a word with you.

 

[CHEMS]

I hate Gorsky so much its unreal

 

[notpl]

I hate Gorsky so much its unreal

Same, and yet I love Dan. It's puzzling.

 

[Jason Liang]

6:19:38

Bro...

It's actually closer to 40 hours (there's 8 parts) but for anyone that's played Sengoku Rance, it's 40 hours of pure comedic gold.

 

[Sykar]

I hate Gorsky so much its unreal

Same, and yet I love Dan. It's puzzling.

I love both!

 

[roshan]

Hi guys - what's the best enhancement for an energy shield for a stealth, dodge/evasion knifer? I plan to make a dual low energy shield and a dual high one. I have circular wave amplifier, high efficiency energy converter and shield capacitor.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Hi guys - what's the best enhancement for an energy shield for a stealth, dodge/evasion knifer? I plan to make a dual low energy shield and a dual high one. I have circular wave amplifier, high efficiency energy converter and shield capacitor.

Always converter.
Amplifier lowers your shield's max hp, so it's worse than nothing in most circumstances. So the choice is between capacitor and converter, and converter is much better. Increasing shield max hp is much more useful than lowering the natural drain rate. The only time capacitor is good is when you're playing ironman and scared of having some freak accident so you want to leave your shield on in between fights. If you're playing normally it's safe to only turn it on when fights start, and if you're doing that converter is far and away the best option.

 

[lukaszek]

Hi guys - what's the best enhancement for an energy shield for a stealth, dodge/evasion knifer? I plan to make a dual low energy shield and a dual high one. I have circular wave amplifier, high efficiency energy converter and shield capacitor.

you want dual low as it got enough stopping power for high and very high ranged attacks..
Take enhancement that increases max damage stopped, or was it max shield meter? something like that

 

[BlizzardStockholmSyndrome]

Hi guys! I finally managed to complete all the expedition content after a week or so (I have to burn my vacation days anyways so I had some time to play) and I wanted to share my thoughts.

First of all, there is only one single instance where Spider enemies are a mandatory fight and if you're lucky you won't even have to fight them.

-In the Horticulture center, once you descend to the Warehouse floor do NOT enter the western room (spider nest). Instead, go south to the cryo chambers and fight the strongmen. Inside you will find 1 herbicide gas grenade that will be enough to clear the vines in the upper floor and progress with the quest.
-When accessing the Nexus of Technology. Do NOT go thrugh the spider caves. Instead dock your ship in J6, then move 2 squares east through the marsh to L6 and in the eastern most section there is a dynamite wall that can be broken which will act as a shortcut to L7, the entrance to the NOT.
-In the Nexus, there is one unavoidable spider fight in security, lvl 7 (or 6, I don't remember). If you have the security keycard from the higher levels you can open the eastern and western doors to the spiders. This will trigger the strongmen to activate and they will kill ost of the insects. The biggest lair is to the south but I just mashed the space bar until combat ended. I felt sad that I had to put the handmaiden down but c'est la vie.
-In the JSHQ it depends on your build. Once I was naked, I stealthed until I found the Haxorr and then picked the lock on the door where my equipment was stored. I didn't have to go east to the spider lair for TNT. I guess I lucked there.
-To get to the Northern manufacturing facility, where the sub is located I parked the boat in Geyser Village and genocided the natives. Then went east and only fought the crabs and strongmen (individually, because I'm fucking stupid).
-Finally, I NOPED out of the LEMCO facilities, just sailed along the edge to L2 where the sub was parked.

-It also goes without saying that you should never go into any vent since it's a coinflips chance there will be spiders inside.

As for the Quarry and the Citadel of Life I have no idea. I sided with the Expedition instead of the Pirates so I had no reason to go there.

I also want to say that the sub section freaked me more than it should but I fucking loved the Abyssal station fights. When the shit hits the fan it's absolutely wonderful. For some reason when the spawn started falling out of the holes in reality I wasted too much ammo trying to fight them (I just could not hit them) until I started chucking incendiary grenades. Suddenly I could hurt them and my monkey brain went, "shadow creatures are damaged by light!" - so I died when I tried throwing flares at them.
The second time I though that the gates were there to stop the endless spawn so I rushed back criss-cross, locking the gates behind me. I was legit tense during the whole fight because I thought the station would collapse on me.

I accidentlly overlevelled on shadowspawn because I forgot the way back once I had the Torch. I kept shooting at the shadowspawn while trying to figure out where the hell the gate switches were located.

Finally, I gave the ACORN to the Occulus since the Protectorate is a no-no, Aran is a weeb, the doctor wouldn't know his asshole from a hole on the ground and I don't even know what SGS would use it for. I kept the Torch because it's mine and worth far more than the 6K charons Aziz would give me for it.

 

[notpl]

I really love this idea most players seem to have that Oculus isn't the most evil organization in the entire underrail.

 

[BlizzardStockholmSyndrome]

I really love this idea most players seem to have that Oculus isn't the most evil organization in the entire underrail.

Wait, what? I haven't been to the Deep Caverns yet, did I fuck up?

 

[Spark Mandriller]

As for the Quarry and the Citadel of Life I have no idea. I sided with the Expedition instead of the Pirates so I had no reason to go there.

Quarry has no spiders. Does have an excessive amount of all three types of serpents though, and then locusts on top of that. And it connects directly to LEMCO so once you get there it's back to spiderland.
There's no way into the Citadel of Life so that's not relevant. It's wrecked.

 

[notpl]

I really love this idea most players seem to have that Oculus isn't the most evil organization in the entire underrail.

Wait, what? I haven't been to the Deep Caverns yet, did I fuck up?

There's no new information about Oculus down there, if that's what you're asking. All you know about Oculus so far is that: they used you as bait - for some cheap thugs jack quicksilver could have easily annihilated himself, he simply didn't feel like it - the very first time you interacted with them, and your survival was simple coincidence. They perform murders for hire, and then subvert the only real old-world justice system that still functions as it should in the entire setting. They claim to be a preservationist organization devoted to information-gathering, but their membership is almost entirely composed of lethal psionic assassins. Their de facto leader is a cultist in thrall to an alien artifact. They cooperate with mysterious immortal non- or perhaps super-humans that murder casually. They possess the most advanced technology in the underrail but offer nothing whatsoever to society at large. You dismissed the protectorate and the expedition forces out of hand in favor of Oculus; why? The protectorate shelters, feeds, and provides medical treatment wherever they establish themselves. The expedition forces work for the university of Dis, the only functioning educational institution in the entire underrail that the game makes us aware of. Where are Oculus's hospitals? Its universities? Other than unsolved murders, what does Oculus contribute to anyone's lives in the course of the game?

 

[Sykar]

Oh please, the "benevolence" of the Protectorate is just a front just like with Tchortists. All they care about is domination and they are not above literally pulling a holocaust on their opponents. No actually worse, at least the victims of the holocaust died fairly quickly, while the Protectorate condemns its gassed victims to eternal torment since mutants are basically immortal. All in all though there really isn't any "good" organization in this dog eats dog world.

 

[Mauman]

Oh please, the "benevolence" of the Protectorate is just a front just like with Tchortists. All they care about is domination and they are not above literally pulling a holocaust on their opponents. No actually worse, at least the victims of the holocaust died fairly quickly, while the Protectorate condemns its gassed victims to eternal torment since mutants are basically immortal. All in all though there really isn't any "good" organization in this dog eats dog world.

And yet I'd sooner side with them than the Free Drones.

Go figure.