Some_twerp on 29/7/2007 at 13:20
Quote Posted by Hemebond
Because giving someone the chills is worse than several grams of lead travelling at hundreds of meters per second?
I suppose it hinges on how you think it works-If you think of it as a big ball of ice, then yeah, bullets should hurt more.
For me, I think it's a ball of cold, the visual effect of the projectile just condesation from water vapour in the air, so that when it hits the target's temperate drops, and the higher the psi, the more severe the drop-at psi 1, it's a chill, at psi 6 (or 7 with the psiboost) it's 'absolute zero' cold, so upon contact at the higher levels I'm imagining it's causing severe damage to any organic target-blood, muscles, nerves ect, freezing, and machinery also being effected, albiet a lesser degree-grease in the joins becoming solid, oil and cooling fluids freezing, ect.
I'm not saying it should rival the fusion cannon at 6 Psi; I'm just saying that it, along with other psi abilities, should be worth the investment. That was, after all, why the fusion cannon got such a buff in ADaOB, right?
RocketMan on 30/7/2007 at 16:40
matter doesn't exist at absolute zero
Some_twerp on 30/7/2007 at 18:53
Quote Posted by RocketMan
matter doesn't exist at absolute zero
Psh, this is a sci-fi game with laser pistols and emp rifles and fusion cannons, and pschyo-kentic powers, since when does realism come into it?
Or: you know what I mean-it makes the target really cold, causing sever damage to internal workings! :p
Anyways, I found some bugs with a playthrough, so here we are. I DID try and take screenshots (CTRL+F9 right?) but they're apparently not in my ss2 root directory, which is a cow.
The bugs:1. Rickenbacker laser turrets-if you kill them with an emp rifle they keep the stun effect around the dead turret and it never expires. Even re-entering the level doesn't remove the the stun graphic. Doesn't seem to be a game-breaking thing though, just a :weird: thing.
2. In Hydroponics, near the door to Hyroponics D there's a bench-in it, there's a cache of nanites, which is poking out the bottom-you can't select it though, just see it poking out at you.
(Alternate directions: turn right as you exit elevator, follow the corridor past Shotgun Sam and his broken door, and along the corridor to the door to hydroponics D. When you come to the door to Hydro D, turn left, you should see a window, smash it, walk to the edge and look down. You should see a bench, and that's said bench with said nanites inside it)
((Alternate alternate directions-coming from the bulkhead from Hydro D, it's the room that's your first on your right))
3. When you go into Hydroponics C (Where you get the first working assault rifle) there's a room next to the one with the charger that has a few crates and stuff in it. The point is, I remember a pipe hybrid coming in after you when you enter-if you exit, there's a pipe hybrid just standing there to your right, just standing there. I think a script's borked.
4. On a similar vein, if you go to the ops mess hall (with the dual slug turrets and ghosts showing Bronson and her men executing everyone) and into the men's toilets there's a shotgun hybrid with an egg. Two playthroughs he's been there, and twice he's just stood there like a lemon-even when I shoot him-he didn't even flinch this time!
5. In the chemical storeroom for the Body of the Many there's a security crate in the water on it's side-if you look at the bottom of it though, there's no triangles or faces there so you can see right through!
6. The 'DEATH' mode for the Fusion cannon (I can't remember if I mentioned this) can be hazardous to your health-if you're strafing with it and fire, and strafe in the opposite direction immediately after you fire it, due to the speed of the shot you more often than not walk into the energy ball with terminal consequences. I recommended you increase the projectile speed a bit.
7. The EMP rifle, while it's great at ripping anything with circuitry a new one, is a real bugger for skill points. A requirement of 6 is pretty harsh in itself compared to the assault rifle's new requirement of 3. (Damage decrease for it at standard 3 taken into account, a full auto assault rifle is still good at chewing pretty much anything up.)
The high requirement to weild it isn't really a big issue to me-it does at least as much damage to robots and cyborgs as the fusion cannon I find, which also requires a maxed out weapons skill-the real kick in the teeth I found was the requirement six for the maintenance as well. Even the assault rifle-very much more versatile and basically useful-doesn't need that, or the fusion cannon which is simply jaw droppingly powerful once you get it fully modified, doesn't need maint. six to keep it going.
8. Despite the buffs, the worm launcher is still pretty underwhelming-with only a standard of four, versus an exotic of 6, my shotgun with buckshot was taking out rumblers in 3-4 shots. The wormlauncher was firing off five shots (so that's 20 worms total) having to reload and the rumbler was often still in the yellow. Which raises another point-if possible, change the ammo modification from 22 to 24, or from 22 to 20. Or drop it's ammo consumption to 2 per shot. To me, the exotic weapons are for the annelids, what the EMP rifle is for the robotic enemies; a specialist weapon, but *really* good at what it does. Another thing I noticed was the Virus Launcher and Wormgun both seemed to degrade pretty fast.
9. This is a fairly minor issue, and it's more a presentation thing than a big issue with an enemy or weapon or bug... I think this image says it all:
Inline Image:
http://img102.imageshack.us/img102/1135/clipmaglv6.jpgCalling (just to cite two examples) the pistol and shotgun magazines 'clips' (and this game isn't the only one guilty of messing up the nomenclature) is like calling a pistol a sniper rifle-they're the same fundementally, in that they both fire bullets, but actually there's
quite a difference! :sweat:
These next few are just my own ideas and not bug reports; feel free to ignore these.10. I feel there should be more buckshot dropping than slugs; when you say 'shotgun' people tend to think of it firing buckshot over slugs, but that's purely my personal opinion.
11. I thought of a way to make repair more a bit more worthwhile-make more broken weapons modified, and a few in better condition-a flukey gun jam can potentially happen to even the best kept weapon, perhaps especially if it's heavily modified (read: at modification II). If a shotgun on engineering is already modified to level 2 for example, it would make it more worthwhile to go into repair instead of modify.
12. Perhaps make the laser rapier modifiable, if you have modify 6, to do more damage. Wouldn't really add anything, except bring nostalgia to those who used to scythe everything down in SS1 with it.
13. I feel that only three FEDs should be around in Normal, and 2 in hard, 1 in impossible-Easy is meant to be.... well. If the number was reduced to so few, it would make players stop and think very carefully about modifying a gun with a FED.
14. This is something that just occurred to me: a more wild approach to make modifying worthwhile would perhaps to be to eradicate most of the FEDs (Only have three, say at normal, 2 on hard, 1 on impossible), make the requirement for modifying higher, but intregrate the first and second bonus together (Excluding damage bonuses).
Eg:
The shotgun instead of a modify skill of 2 for the first modification requires a modification skill of 3, maybe even 4.
The first mod gets the usual damage bonus. However, it gets a reload and recoil decrease (Ie, the current level 1 and 2 bonuses. It doesn't get the second modification damage bonus too though).
The second modification requires a modification of 5 or 6, and gives a 'strong' bonus-something that isn't *too* game breaking, but very noticeable-a big recoil decrease, make triple shot do triple damage, even faster reload, alot more damage, double magazine capacity from 12 to 24, faster rate of fire, that sort of thing.
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Of course, I have no idea if that's actually doable. Straylight mentioned in his original post he couldn't seem to figure out how to tweak the modification scripts so he just made the descriptions more consistent. Don't know if you've managed to figure that out yet-just floating the idea, in case you have.
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15. Make psi powers a bit more powerful. I'm not saying make Pyro and Cryo kensis fusion cannon or assault rifle levels of powerful, or the duplication skill work 100% of the time for no cost other than psi points-I'm just saying, make it so that towards the end of the game Psi players aren't getting out a shotgun or pistol to deal with an enemy. Right now I feel like I'm getting a raw deal with PSI skills.
Nameless Voice on 30/7/2007 at 20:22
The weapon modification bonuses are scripted, and basically can't be changed without bringing custom scripts into the picture - which would mean writing a custom script module and loading it into every single mission file.
Some_twerp on 30/7/2007 at 21:28
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
The weapon modification bonuses are scripted, and basically can't be changed without bringing custom scripts into the picture - which would mean writing a custom script module and loading it into every single mission file.
Which even yours truely, a complete rank amateur at SS2 modding, can tell is at best going to 'just' take quite a bit of time to do.
Ultraviolet on 30/7/2007 at 22:54
Quote Posted by Some_twerp
The bugs:1. Rickenbacker laser turrets-if you kill them with an emp rifle they keep the stun effect around the dead turret and it never expires. Even re-entering the level doesn't remove the the stun graphic. Doesn't seem to be a game-breaking thing though, just a :weird: thing.
I think that's kinda cool, actually. We should do it with all bots and turrets. Let EMP freeze rather than explode them. Hmm, have to have some way to turn them into a corpse, though, so you can still loot them.
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2. In Hydroponics, near the door to Hyroponics D there's a bench-in it, there's a cache of nanites, which is poking out the bottom-you can't select it though, just see it poking out at you.
I think that I've been able to grab that before -- unless you're talking about one that just showed up since ADaOB.
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7. The EMP rifle (and then some stuff about balance against the assault rifle)
Possible solution: Make the energy weapons tree technical (non-weapon) requirements exactly the same as those for the standard weapons tree. That way, whichever way you choose to go in the game, you can do it. The only realistic point I can see on that is that the energy weapons would be a bitch to repair, as it would require some specific skills, but I should think, for gameplay reasons, they would only be slightly higher. Yeah, full requirement maintenance is suck.
Correcting original game text as far as terminological accuracy goes might be outside the scope of this mod. I remember that some spelling mistakes were fixed, but that's kind of a more obvious thing. Honestly, the magazines in the game look like boxes to me, and those might actually have either magazines or clips in them. :P
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Calling (just to cite two examples) the pistol and shotgun magazines 'clips' (and this game isn't the only one guilty of messing up the nomenclature) is like calling a pistol a sniper rifle-they're the same fundementally, in that they both fire bullets, but actually there's
quite a difference! :sweat:
If the game gets the terms backward, then the mod also, even in the case of new text strings, should just for the sake of consistency. Though, if you wanna open up the strings files for ADaOB and for SS2 as well and make a drop-in file replacement, I'd probably use it. Personally, I think there are some objects in the game that have some texts for them that are just lacking as well, but we're talking about new content here rather than balanced/corrected original content. So ADaOB probably won't handle it.
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10. I feel there should be more buckshot dropping than slugs; when you say 'shotgun' people tend to think of it firing buckshot over slugs, but that's purely my personal opinion.
Well, I think buckshot would have to be much more useful against organics before it would have any real place in the game. Versus, say, a rumbler, I think it takes fewer slugs to do the job. Then again, you don't really use a shotgun to kill a bear... anyway, with the game's damage type system as mixed up as it is, this is of little consequence. Slugs would have to be made less effective against organics and more effective against machines before pellets would really have a place.
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11. I thought of a way to make repair more a bit more worthwhile-make more broken weapons modified, and a few in better condition-a flukey gun jam can potentially happen to even the best kept weapon, perhaps especially if it's heavily modified (read: at modification II). If a shotgun on engineering is already modified to level 2 for example, it would make it more worthwhile to go into repair instead of modify.
I agree that fortune should occasionally smile upon the player in the form of a weapon that only requires a bit of repair skill to get it up into good condition.
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12. Perhaps make the laser rapier modifiable, if you have modify 6, to do more damage. Wouldn't really add anything, except bring nostalgia to those who used to scythe everything down in SS1 with it.
I wouldn't mind knowing if this is technically possible. Personally, and not for game balance reasons but for fun, I'd mod it to do additional damage types. Starts off doing just energy damage, if I recall correctly. At mod 1, I'd have it do as much energy as incendiary, and at mod 2, I'd have it do some bash. I'd explain it in the game ext as "overloaded output capacitor" and "repulsor-reinforced mass field" or something. Great thing about science fiction, see...
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13. I feel that only three FEDs should be around in Normal, and 2 in hard, 1 in impossible-Easy is meant to be.... well. If the number was reduced to so few, it would make players stop and think very carefully about modifying a gun with a FED.
NEIN! I think all the same stuff should be available, if not more, but that the game should make you work a lot harder for it. There should be whole exploratory stretches where the map takes you off of the plot-path and you can get items that the finish-the-game player would never find. Of course, new maps are NOT in the scope of this, but that's just how I feel it should be done.
Martek on 30/7/2007 at 23:37
Quote Posted by Some_twerp
15. Make psi powers a bit more powerful. I'm not saying make Pyro and Cryo kensis fusion cannon or assault rifle levels of powerful, or the duplication skill work 100% of the time for no cost other than psi points-I'm just saying, make it so that towards the end of the game Psi players aren't getting out a shotgun or pistol to deal with an enemy. Right now I feel like I'm getting a raw deal with PSI skills.
Not sure on that one.
I just finished my first PSI game (no weapons skills - but heavy use of the wrench), on Normal (and I just started another PSI playthrough on Hard ((I'm still on Deck 2; just heading down to Engineering)) ).
At least on Normal, you have other PSI skills that make up for both Cyro and Pyro:
Photonic Redirection gets you: in close, past, at the distance you want, etc.
Electron Suppression + Adrenaline Overproduction let's you kill any bot in just a few hits of the wrench. Bots stay mezzed while you kill them. How sweet is that!
Psionic Hypnogenesis gets you in position to kill; or ability to pass by non-bots. Again add in Adrenaline Overproduction and they go down very fast (even though they don't stay mezzed as do bots with Electron Suppression).
Cerebro-energetic Extension is a very powerful alternative to the wrench for harder foes (and kills SHODAN too). Again, add in Adrenaline Overproduction to really soup it up.
Soma Transference is the BOTM god-mode-weapon. I was very surprised to find I could
take out the Brain in two "hits" from it without clearing any of the other enemies first, including the "stars"!. Takes out Rumblers pretty fast too.
Imposed Neural Restructuring is an excellent "distraction" to give you an assist against multiple mobs; and it's a lot of fun to use too. :thumb:
Psycho-reflective Aura + Heavy or Power Armor give you all the combat protection you need to the hardest situations.
My take (again, on Normal), is there is plenty of power in PSI. One just needs to try other things than the old stalwarts Cyro and Pyro.
Since I had no weapon skills I would not be able to use the shotgun or pistol to augment my damage. It wasn't necessary anyways as the PSI was very strong at end-game.
We'll see how it is on Hard.
Martek
heywood on 31/7/2007 at 02:20
Quote Posted by Some_twerp
15. Make psi powers a bit more powerful. I'm not saying make Pyro and Cryo kensis fusion cannon or assault rifle levels of powerful, or the duplication skill work 100% of the time for no cost other than psi points-I'm just saying, make it so that towards the end of the game Psi players aren't getting out a shotgun or pistol to deal with an enemy. Right now I feel like I'm getting a raw deal with PSI skills.
Two points:
1. There's nothing wrong with using a pistol every once in a while as an OSA character. There are Psi powers specifically intended to complement weapon use on those occasions where a projectile weapon is necessary. Similarly, an OSA character still has to hack occasionally, so there are Psi powers designed to help you do it with a low Cyb stat.
2. If you're using Psi powers effectively, you shouldn't need a powerful projectile weapon. The point is to use Psi powers to manipulate the situation so that poweful weapons are not necessary.
I think some of you are forgetting that different character classes are supposed to require different playing styles. Being an OSA character is not about using the Psi amp exclusively, and if you go around blasting everything with cryo and pyro attacks, you're missing the point. Being an OSA character is about using Psi powers for creative problem solving.
Some_twerp on 31/7/2007 at 10:28
Quote Posted by Ultraviolet
I think that's kinda cool, actually. We should do it with all bots and turrets. Let EMP freeze rather than explode them. Hmm, have to have some way to turn them into a corpse, though, so you can still loot them
I think you misunderstand my bug report-when you kill a rickenbacker laser turret, it explodes, it dies, it leaves it's corpse behind, but the blue dots still swirl around the wreckage-it's the only enemy that does it when killed by the emp rifle-none of the other turrets, or robots or cyborgs in the game do it (and believe me, I tested it on them all. :sly: )
Quote Posted by Ultraviolet
Possible solution: Make the energy weapons tree technical (non-weapon) requirements exactly the same as those for the standard weapons tree. That way, whichever way you choose to go in the game, you can do it. The only realistic point I can see on that is that the energy weapons would be a bitch to repair, as it would require some specific skills, but I should think, for gameplay reasons, they would only be slightly higher. Yeah, full requirement maintenance is suck.
I'm not saying drop it's requirement to weild-it takes out robots at least as fast as the fusion cannon, which is now eyebrow-raisingly powerful- I'm only saying that a max maintence skill
as well as a max energy reqirement is pretty harsh for something that's useless against a large chunk of the enemies you'll be fighting; especially when you put it next to the assault rifle, which is great against everything due to ammo, but even limited to standard ammo is still pretty respectable, and the fusion cannon, which also requires a maxed weapon skill and can demolish anything, neither of which require maint. 6 as well.
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2. If you're using Psi powers effectively, you shouldn't need a powerful projectile weapon. The point is to use Psi powers to manipulate the situation so that poweful weapons are not necessary.
I think some of you are forgetting that different character classes are supposed to require different playing styles. Being an OSA character is not about using the Psi amp exclusively, and if you go around blasting everything with cryo and pyro attacks, you're missing the point. Being an OSA character is about using Psi powers for creative problem solving.
I'm sorry, I'm not doing a good job of this, am I... I'm not trying to suggest make OSA a more exotic style of marine, I'm just saying that even at around a third of the way through the game, the directly offensive OSA skills aren't much use other than egg smashing/camera bashing. (Edit: Barring Some Transferrence-not got to put that to use yet, lack the cyber modules for it)
heywood on 31/7/2007 at 17:04
Quote Posted by Some_twerp
I'm sorry, I'm not doing a good job of this, am I... I'm not trying to suggest make OSA a more exotic style of marine, I'm just saying that even at around a third of the way through the game, the directly offensive OSA skills aren't much use other than egg smashing/camera bashing.
Exactly. That's sort of the point. Cryo is good for camera plinking. It's also good for finishing off those pesky protocol droids in Engineering from a safe distance after bashing them with the wrench. Projected pyro is good for taking out eggs and monkeys. But these aren't intended to be strong weapons.
In the later stages of the game where you meet stronger enemies and enemies in groups, you should be using other Psi powers creatively to find a solution, like sneaking around them undetected, or immobilizing them and going on your way, or immobilizing them so you can get up close and use a strong melee attack, or sneaking up invisibly and using a localized pyro attack, or force walling them off and getting by, or soma transferring their health through a force wall for protection, or planting mines, or turning enemies against one another, etc., etc. You get the picture.
