inselaffe on 25/4/2008 at 22:20

---

For some reason my recycler has stopped working. Now whatever item you try to place it on top of it just switched with that item instead of trying to recycle it :S I did replace my .gam with the singing / glowing shard one though but then before that I replaced it with the bullet casings one and all was fine. I think it was fine even after the shard one but I can't remember so I thought i'd better say.

Warning - possible spoilers mixed with ramble ahead.

This is my first playthrough by the way - although I will probably stop in a bit and get my arse into gear and play ss1 first. SS1 seemed good, though I stopped because the button for the videomail thing near darcy's lab was broken on my play through for some unknown reason so I will have to start again.

I am playing on impossible as navy and have just got up to the start of deck 6. I have no idea how far through I am, but I would say near the end probably. Anyway, a good place to stop for playing ss1 properly i guess.

When I saw the first turrets, I had just picked up a gun and xerxes was on about not allowing any firearms on board. So i thought they were only shooting at me cos I had a gun and wasn't mean to. I thought "hmm I wonder if I don't pick up a gun before going to the turrets they will still shoot me" as the xerxes announcement thing was as you approached the first turrets. So i dropped all my items and set of to them to explore what was down there, hoping not to get shot at. Unfortunately, I was then made aware of his rather cynical nature while being shot to pieces hahaha.

I am only playing with SHTUP because I had rebirth complemented installed for the first bit of my playthrough but I did not really like it - especially the hybrids and even the monkey's looked odd. I remembered how to and uninstalled it just before I got to hydrophonics anyway. I reinstalled it later to see what the assassins were like but quickly got rid of it again - it's like transformers or something haha oh dear.

Unfortunately I don't think there are any mods other that shtup that stay true to it really. Some of the weapon ones almost do, like that shotgun and pistol one by tacticool but then it has those silly lights on the iron sights. Unfortunately, these are actually lights, and I can only edit textures and dunno anything about models so I just didn't use them in the end.

One thing I found that was good though was making the crystal shard "sing". That mod seems good :) Oh and the bullet casings one.

I heard that the crystal shard thing is bugged though and does super damage. Apparently it's fixed in some ADaoB thing.
Is this ADaoB okay to use on a first play through? It doesn't change the balance or anything does it?

I heard a lot of people complaining about the weapon degradation. I don't see a problem with it to be honest. It was only a problem for me in deck 1 in the storage bays, and I forced myself to learn repair then just to do it but haven't used it since - it's much better just to get your maintainance up a bit and then just use that. I had to by 3 or 4 repair tools at one stage but now I don't really even need to do that as I have enough of the things - If you just apply them to certain weapons that you keep using then you won't have a problem - i just am using the pistol really and occassionally the shotgun, though the shotgun seems to do bollocks all damage compared to it, even up close.

My standard weapons is only up to about whatever level you need for shotgun. I also got a energy weapons of about 1 or so just for the laser pistol, only to then find it was utterly shit. That said, you can take out one big robot with it before it runs out. Then you have to find a blumming recharge station, and I can never be bothered to to make use of it. Sometimes I had a portable battery actually so I could use that. From reading about these prisms I think they do the same trick but I might just recycle them cos I don't think I'll really use the laser gun, it's just sort of an "of shit i've run out of ammo" emergency weapon, or when you want to conserve ammo. That was the whole reason I picked it up, but then ammo itself started becoming more plentiful.

Why are there an abundance of rad hypos and like no toxin ones :'( I may be forced to use a replicator in the end, just because of those bloody spiders, esp since they keep respawning. They are like the scariest things in the game I swear - you can't even hit them at all unless you crouch - and there was me thinking the monkeys were bad - at least you can hit them standing up.

I should probly recycle these grenade rounds that I appear to be carrying round for no reason and I don't know why. Also these 21 or so psi hypos that I will never use. I thought there was no point even learning basic psi cos it seemed a bit of a thing to invest in if you were only going to learn 1 or 2 abilities.

Mind you I haven't been upgrading much recently so I have like 180 odd cybermodules or something silly. Well the main thing I did was research since shodan was going on about how brilliant the crystal shard was I thought I might as well get it. To not put all that to waste at least I got that implant that lets you heal yourself from those worms too.

Do protocol droids get stronger cos I used to be able to kill them in 1 shot with armour piercing but now it has heightened to too - or does strength affect it, as i used to have brawnboost equipped.

I assume when power armour's charge runs out it doesn't add any protection at all?

I already sadly knew somehow about polito from hearing before i played although I wasn't quite sure on it if I remembered correctly. The game confirmed it though when xerses decided to say "why to you work with her, don't you know she once tried to destroy your entire species" and also from polito's log you find in crew of med sci, the voice is distinctly different and much more human.

One thing I don't understand is that of logs. At first I thought that they were on the person that sent them at the time they sent them, but now it seems actually they are in random places just their to help slowly "unravel the story" . So yer I don't really understand why they are where they are and why they are even on cd in the first place - do they carry round personal cd writers and compulisively "print off" any email? :P

Like watt's email about meeting someone for a drink on rec after his autopsy is sent AFTER the autopsy log... erm okay. Or are the logs just stored in the order that you pick them up?

Midwifes were proper hard and scary when I first encountered them - they take quite a few shots to bring down, but then I got the crystal shard and tried that on them and wondered what they hell I had been worrying about - only takes like 2 or 3 hits!

The most annoying research I did was the annelid egg organs that took loads of chemicals and gave me sod all info except to "search the eggs before they break" Well I've been doing that and I've never found anything in all the bloody eggs that I've been searching. I found an organ in one once as a fluke and just this very minute I actually found another of the healing things that you find dissected in med sci in it. So that's 2 things about of about 100 odd eggs or so that I've had to destroy. I hate those things too. Bloody have to waste ammo on them as you dunno if they gunna blow up kindly or not and you can easily get toxinated :-/ In fact I think I might swap my medium armour for a hazard suit now, cos the spiders and those egss are starting to get annoying and I am all out of toxin hypos (of which I had about 1 anyway and yet I had so many rad ones....). Mind you, I just recently got my first strength hypo which was somewhat of a surprise, not realising there was such a thing before hand.

Anyway sorry for all of that, just thought I'd share incase anyone is interested. I dunno why people made such a big deal over "don't start on impossible" Mind you, I am doing hacking which apparently makes the game a lot easier - although I didn't realise until getting bronson's log that you could hack the turrets - and when I got it, from the sound of the log it tells you you can sneak up on the things, which is rather sadistic cos you bloody well can't :P They have a sixth sense. The security crates are definately handy though.

flexbuster on 26/4/2008 at 00:00

---

SS2 doesn't always make much sense; just look at the "laser pistol" for proof.

inselaffe on 27/4/2008 at 21:06

---

Hmm what about the laser pistol?

I assume that shard's laser sounds are from the laser rapier? But I haven't ever had the skills to use it - i just went straight from wrench to shard so I can't tell you. But I would guess that.

Also I found out why the recyler stopped working - it was indeed because I copied a .gam file in to get the "singing" crystal shard. Oh well, looks like I won't be able to have that lol.

Is there any way to easily make your own .gam file? or do you need dromed and suchlike?

Also I doubt anyone will bother to read my monster post but that is my own fault really for making it so long. Although I will never get those questions answered, lol.

Does ADaoB change the game balancing in anyway, or is it okay for a first playthrough? Cos i heard the crystal shard is bugged anyway, and i don't want to "cheat" through the game.

inselaffe on 27/4/2008 at 23:05

---

Ah yes, it's always the obvious that you miss haha it certainly doesn't look like laser beams.

Hmm sadly I do have the smasher upgrade - is there anything I can do to fix it manually? Although if i have to mess around a lot to do it I might as well leave it until I play shock 1 first.

Does anyone know the answer to these problems btw? just they are starting to get on my nerves a bit (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=120981)

steo on 28/4/2008 at 22:31

---

Insta-hit laser turrets/midwives...