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Slarti

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Posts posted by Slarti

  1. In honor of Geneforge 4, and to comfort Delicious Vlish in his hour of agentless need, my PDN will be cycling through candied creations until the game's release.

     

    If it takes too long to get released, I might run out of creations to use, and have to do something drastic. So, chop chop!

     

    -- Cake Glaahk

  2. Interesting topic. Wikipedia says:

     

    "In the later years of the crossbow it had enough kinetic energy to penetrate any chainmail and most plate armor hit squarely: some reached a draw force of nearly 350 lbf (1600 N), compared to the 60-180lbf (300-900 N) draw force for a longbow. Moreover, crossbows could be kept cocked and ready to shoot for some time with little effort, allowing crossbowmen to aim better and lessen the reaction time to fire compared to a bowman. Because archers could not keep their powerful bows pulled for long periods of time they aimed by pulling their bows a bit to put the bow in a strung stance, and they pulled the bow to the full pull length just right before they wanted to release the arrow."

     

    "They almost completely superseded hand bows in many European armies in the twelfth century for a number of reasons. Although an expertly handled longbow had greater range, equal accuracy and faster rate of fire than an average crossbow, the value of the crossbow came in its simplicity: it could be used effectively after a week of training, while a comparable single-shot skill with a longbow could take years of practice. The invention of pushlever and ratchet drawing mechanisms enabled the use of crossbows on horseback."

     

    And this sounds neat:

     

    "Crossbowmen among the Flemish citizens in the army of Richard Lionheart, and others, had two servants, two crossbows and a pavise shield to protect the men. One of the servants had the task of reloading the weapons, while the second subordinate would carry and hold the pavise (the archer himself also wore protective armor). Such a three-man team could fire 8 shots per minute, compared to a single crossbowman's 3 shots per minute."

     

    This is also cool: Cho-Ko-Nu

  3. I wonder if it involves being able to switch places with an ally, as you could do back in Exile? That would eliminate half the trouble involved with engine-assigned click-movement, and it would give the enemies new options as Randomizer said. I'm doubtful, but hey.

  4. Remember that, because of the way registration is handled, Jeff has a fairly decent idea how many of the people who buy his games are returning customers, or new ones. I suspect that the commercial success of A4 really was due to higher numbers of new customers.

  5. Quote:
    Originally written by Delicious Vlish:
    Who you calling old sonny?

    Back in my day, we stared at @ all day. And we liked it.
    I was going to say "what do you mean back in your day, don't you still stare at @ all day?" But it seems @ gets the respect it deserves around here. Very nice. It makes me feel very xyzzy.
  6. It warms my heart to hear you say that, SoT.

     

    It also makes me a little jealous of the beta testers.

     

    How much longer are we likely to wait? "Before the end of the year" isn't too encouraging.

     

    Of course, I'd also rather more time get put into the game than less.

  7. Quote:
    Originally written by Hypertoroid:
    Dark Waters never actually involves starvation. In E2 you can just cast Manna over and over and rest in between.
    Nope. Manna isn't available until Mancuso, after Dark Waters, and Minor Manna -- which is tucked away in the Aranea cave, so many players miss it -- isn't much better than Light Heal All at stopping starvation, IIRC.
  8. Yes, E2 makes a big deal out of taking away all your food... and then goes out of its way to provide opportunities to pick up hydra burgers and the like.

     

    The Tomb of Delrin-Bok (Dahris? I always mix them up) can be a little scary. Also the optional Resting dungeon, if you aren't at a relatively high level. Even the Ruined River Fort has Quickghasts that used to do a number on me.

     

    I love Dark Waters, probably because your inability to access anything outside of NE Exile means that intelligent players won't automatically outclass every encounter by having sought out useful stuff all over.

  9. Even under that system (which I haven't used, because every time I try to play A2 I end up replaying E2 instead) I imagine that a penalty of, say, 50%, would be unlikely to put you more than a few levels behind, and could easily be worthwhile depending on how advantages work in A2. And smaller penalties are almost identical under both systems: a -10% gained penalty is roughly equivalent to a +11% needed penalty, a -25% gained to a +33%, etc.

  10. Disposable creations work less well in G2+ because levels from shaping skill only give half a point in each stat per level, just like regular levels. In G1 those bonus levels gave a full point per level. Combine that with the prohibitively high cost of raising your base shaping skill bonus too high above +10, and you will end up with creations that are SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful, by ten or thirty (!) levels depending on the creation, if you keep them around and let them gain experience.

     

    Meanwhile, because all characters gain xp relative to your PC's level only, no matter how much xp drain you have from companions, you will never be more than a small handful of levels behind a permasolo PC, about 1-4 levels. (The xp penalties for advantages in Avernum work the same way. They are hugely less significant than the bonuses of the advantage/creation.)

  11. Yeah, G1 was very unbalanced with regard to creation strength and how your stats impacted that. The levels creations gained from experience gave them, essentially, half as much power as the levels they gained from your shaping skill when you created them.

     

    The nice thing about that is that it made this kind of "disposable creations" model worthwhile to play.

  12. You can actually continue to change your mind up until practically the end of the third (and biggest) island, so don't worry about it yet.

     

    In G1, it is generally agreed the Awakened were presented as the most rational and humane (though there are plenty of reasons to choose the other sects). G3 on the other hand is clearly intended to force a choice between two bad options. More people seem to side with the Shapers, probably because some of them, like Khyryk, seem a little more reasonable and less crazed.

  13. The longer you keep a creation with you, the stronger it will end up being. In G2 and G3, the intensity of this effect outweighs having a very high shaping skill. The result is that it's usually beneficial to create the creations you want as soon as you have the essence and skill. You can pump their INT later, when you have extra essence, but spending a few levels on perm AI is a small price to pay for having your creations be at a permanently higher level, by those several levels.

     

    As for make inactive: I use it whenever I have creations in tow and enter one of the damaging atmosphere zones (at least, the ones where the entrance is a safe area).

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