bacon on 31/7/2007 at 21:30

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so are you saying that the level 2 mod for the assault rifle is +24% and not +25%? is that true for all weapons? 10% + 14%?

i was including the research bonus of 25%.

base 10 x research 25% x mod 24% x sharpshooter 35% x 400% armor penalty = 83.7

bacon on 31/7/2007 at 21:37

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besides the grenade launcher, i thought they were all 10% and 25%. do you know where information about each mod level is located?

bacon on 1/8/2007 at 00:34

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just to clarify exactly why this is so important to me, a lot of the enemies in system shock 2 have hit points that are in multiples of 12. for instance:

pipe hybrids = 12
shotgun hybrids = 24
red monkeys = 12
midwives = 36
red ninjas = 48
black ninjas = 60

thus, it makes a huge difference if you do 11.9 or 12.1 damage, because it means an extra hit. over time, an extra hit means less ammo, or more bruising melee fights because you cant kill pipe hybrids in one swing, etc. when making a character, i find it really helps to get your primary weapon damage to a multiple of 12 and then leave it alone, allowing you to build up your tech skills and stats. i always try in the early game toget my wrench attack up to 12 so that i can concentrate on other abilities after that.

bacon on 1/8/2007 at 01:26

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exploring and understanding the game mechanics is enjoyable, especially when it helps you tweak builds or make new builds that you can be confident will work based on planning beforehand. sometimes guns and items dont work as advertised, and it helps to understand how they work in order to have a more accurate expectation of function. for instance, the charge provided by portable batteries were a real mystery to me, and i found the thread in this forum about their item number very interesting.

i plan on playing cooperatively with a friend of mine for the first time soon. i think he wants to be a marine, and i will probably be a hacker. my goal is to reach the emp rifle as soon as possible since it is an excellent complimentary gun due to its friendly emp damage type. in order to do this, i need to make sure i can be helpful enough in the early game that i can crank maintenance and energy weapons high enough that i dont have to wait until pod 2 on the rickenbacher to use the emp rifle. it isnt fun when you "just play the game" and structure your build so poorly that you cant do the things you want to do until the very late game, or cant do them at all because you didnt have enough points set aside.

part of the early game is being able to wrench 12 damage, because of hybrids and monkeys. with understanding of game mechanics, i can plot out how much i need to hit 12 damage.

as it turns out, starting as a marine and getting the 2 strength training, maintenance training, and energy/cyber training allows me to hit 12 damage against a hybrid once i do research and get the brawnbooster item from the med bulkhead (i believe it is in the flooded floor section).

6 base x 1.25 research x 1.15 standard weapons + 3 damage from strength = 11.6 damage. is this enough to kill a 12 hp hybrid in one hit, or kill a shotgun zombie in 2 hits, or a midwife in 3 hits? depends on how the game rounds. i can tell you that every now and then, based on testing, the wrench would fail to kill in one hit against a hybrid, so it is possible that there is a tiny damage range, or that certain phases of the wrench swing do more damage than others, or that monsters have tiny hp ranges. or maybe the game randomly picks between integers when faced with a rounding situation, so some of the time it picks 11 damage and some of the time it picks 12.

games without transparent mechanics tend to fall victim to mystical explanations, like so many other things in life. "get the gold sword, its just so much better than the red sword. my friend said that he totally crushed the boss dragon with it because it has special powers." i despise heresay like these, because even if people dont want to admit it, all game elements are coded and have real numbers associated with them. games are not an open system where anything can happen. there is no mystery, or inexplicable event. rather than fall victim to superstition, i choose to investigate game mechanics instead of just believing the hype about certain guns or game elements. there arent enough controls to test everything myself, and so i need a certain amount of reliable data to start with if i want to work something out.

in the spirit of asking for reliable data, can anyone confirm these damages:

wrench = 6, 9 with smasher
pistol = 4
shotgun = 8, 1x6
AR = 10

grenade launcher = 20 frag, 10 emp/incendiary/prox, 35 disruption
fusion cannon = 20, 30

laser pistol = 2, 12
emp rifle = 10, 15
laser rapier = 11, 14 with smasher

crystal shard = 12, 27 with smasher
viral proliferator = 15
worm launcher = 25

ive noticed that the damage i do to spiders varies tremendously when using the viral proliferator against them. with grenades and droid explosions, it seems that as long as you are inside the radius, you take full damage, rather than having progressive radial damage found in most fps explosive weapons. does the viral proliferator have progressive damage? sometimes it takes 3 hits, sometimes i get them in one hit. at 15 damage, it should kill a 60 hp spider in one hit since its x4 damage, and this is a double modded viral proliferator and with level 5 exotic to boot. and yes it is on the annelid setting.

bacon on 1/8/2007 at 01:48

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no, but i have been known to play diablo 2 every now and then. simply blundering through games with carefully coded role playing elements is really an insult to the team that spent the time to implement all these ways to tweak a build. part of the fun of a game like system shock 2 is exploring that closed system and making interesting builds. for instance, i am sure a lot of casual players would say something like "oh, you can ignore psi, its totally useless," but many psi abilities such as adrenaline overproduction or the one that duplicates items (such as worms) can allow fringe builds to be created.

ive only played through a few times in the past week and i can tell you that there are only so many times i could play as a marine and just destroy everything with the assault rifle. it would be much more fun to scrape by using a weaker alternative build, but in order to do that effcetively, you need to have a reliable expectation of how you will perform against various monsters, much like a game such as diablo 2.

making new builds is frustrating when you cant understand exactly why you are ineffective against certain monsters or cant do this, or that. knowing game mechanics allows you to get a lot more out of a game than just sitting down and playing it like a 9 year old. the game is painfully easy on hard mode if you take the marine or hacker path, so i am looking to explore a world of fringe builds beyond those that are game-breakingly powerful.

i am not sure why this is considered so bizarre. perhaps you think that speedruns and things like that are bizarre also. its a way to play the game in a different way that relies largely on planning and an intricate understanding of game mechanics. "maximizing" can be its own reward just as being oblivious and trying to literally "role play" and feel scared in the SS2 universe can be its own reward.