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ex post slarto

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Posts posted by ex post slarto

  1. 10 hours ago, Genernumlover said:

    The thing I like about Battle Alphas is that they can completely freeze a line of turrets, shrubs, or spinecores, by hitting them with a charge that stuns them. Just one move on their part and they can reach and stop enemy acid or AoE emplacements from attacking. It also gets them closer to the spinecore itself and makes those battles quicker and easier.

    Yeah, this does not really seem like a scenario that speaks in favor of Battle Alphas, since other creation types can deal with it better.  If anything this is a scenario where needing to leap rather than breathe is a disadvantage, since often turrets or spinecores (especially spinecores) are spread out over a wide area, and leaping means you will be attacked that round by other spinecores further away, where your ranged attackers would not be in their range yet.

  2. 6 hours ago, Genernumlover said:

    That is probably why people on Normal were getting the impression that Agents were too powerful

    I have to echo the "who thinks this?" question, because this isn't the first time you've made a leap from 1 or 2 people saying "X seems really strong" to making superlative statements about game balance.

     

    The fact is that these games are balanced primarily for Normal... but they are also not intended to be particularly challenging on Normal.  Every class is designed to be capable of becoming incredibly powerful with good investments, and every class certainly can be played in a way where you slice through enemy encounters like butter.  So having that experience doesn't really speak to one class or skill or whatever being too powerful.

     

  3. Not mechanics.  Probably just bad luck.

     

    The other possibility though is that something correlated with it, in your game, for whatever reason.  Maybe melee distance targets tended to be higher level, and therefore have higher evasion, because you tended to kill the lower level targets before they got into melee distance -- for example.

  4. You can access every creation sooner than the Loyalist Encampment.  That's only a perk if you are playing Taker, Barzite, or Non-Aligned and you refuse to temporarily join Zakary or the Awakened.

     

    I would like to emphasize, again, that the analysis in the OP is a relative comparison.  Any creation of high enough level (okay, not ornks) can shred turrets and spinecores (which have practically no defenses anyway).  Any creation, with high enough shaping skill, can be strong.  But some will still be stronger than others.

  5. 1 hour ago, Magenta said:

    Maybe. But you can probably do better than 2. I've had Spell Mastery kick in 2-3 times in a row after already getting two with essence lash followed by EP. It doesn't happen often enough to bring the average to 3 but it's probably above 2.

     

    The math disagrees with you.  Think about it logically:

     

    You only get 1 cast (and no more) if nothing triggers on your first cast.  That's haste (35%), stats (in this case, 61% - I think charm haste is additive with Spellcraft, haven't tested; it's worse it's a separate check), and Spell Mastery (20%).  In this case that comes out to 20% for 1 cast only.

     

    Assuming your turn doesn't end, you now have either 3 AP or 1 AP, depending on what triggered.  Either way, Spell Mastery is now the only thing that can keep your turn from ending.  So you have a 20% chance (times the 80% that you make it here at all) of getting 3+ casts, which is 16%.

     

    A 4th cast just means rolling another 20%, and so on.  So if you really want to do that out we get (with some rounding):

     

    1 cast - 20%

    2 casts - 64%

    3 casts - 13%

    4 casts - 2.5%

    5 casts - 0.4%

    6 casts - 0.1%

     

    This comes out to about 1.99 casts on average if you do the math.

     

    In theory, yes, you could pump Spellcraft higher than 17.  You'll start eating an obscene number of skill points, but let's imagine we put nearly everything into it and spec equipment for it, and have Spellcraft of 25.  Then the math is (again with some rounding):

     

    haste (35%), stats + gruesome charm (85%), SM (20%)

     

    1 cast - 8%

    2 casts - 74%

    3 casts - 14.5%

    4 casts - 2.8%

    5 casts - 0.5%

    6 casts - 0.1%

     

    This comes out to about 2.14 casts on average.  So in theory this is possible, but the skill point cost is insane.

     

    If you somehow got Spellcraft to 34 -- thus guaranteeing that 1st cast would get the AP reduction -- you'd have exactly 2.25 casts on average.  I don't think this is possible, but that's the theoretical maximum average casts per turn.

  6. Well put about the damage comparison.  You can't average 3+ attacks per round, though.  Setting aside the Drakon Skin Cloak (which is essentially a superboss drop), with your stats (and the Gruesome Charm, and Gloves of Spell Mastery of course, and haste active), you have roughly a 20% chance of getting 1 cast, a 64% chance of getting 2 casts, and a 16% chance of 3+ casts.  This is fairly close to 2 attacks per round on average.

     

  7. 9 minutes ago, Hyperion703 said:

    I expected the base damage to be greater with the GoG, but it isn't. Is that supposed to happen?

    As confirmed by Jeff on Steam, the +X% damage bonus is calculated in two chunks which are multiplied together:

    1. Sum of all bonuses from stats, extra spell training, etc.  In this case that's points in Intelligence, Battle Magic, Spellcraft, and Essence Purge.

    2. Sum of all "+X% to magical/melee/missile damage" equipment/charm bonuses.

     

    Normally you wouldn't see much difference, but given how huge #1 is for this character, it's enough to make adding +.05 to #2 more helpful than adding +.10 to #1.

     

    EDIT: Also, bonuses from statuses like War Blessing, Enrage, and Overload go into this number.  I'm pretty sure Overload is additive as part of #1, so I'd guess the others are as well.

  8. 16 minutes ago, Lorn said:

    I thought the way I played was supposed to be the best shaper possible. I'm kinda thinking that I even pumped the stats for mechanic and leadership too much, considering that I've got the passive mod from you. So I guess that if I power played correctly the fire shaping would be a couple points higher.

     

    What are the spells I'm supposed to be using? Really curious.

     

    Shaping skill is the central stat for a Shaper.  It's not the only stat.  "Best shaper possible" is always going to be a little subjective, but I've never seen "don't invest in spell skills at all" as advice, so it's interesting that you got that idea.  FWIW, here's the advice from my guide on steam:

     

    Even as a Shaper, you don't need to invest every last skill point into shaping, but on higher difficulties, you'll want to be judicious. Shaping skill is your default target. Mechanics and Leadership can be done at 6 (you'll get more points from equipment later), and magic skills can be ignored except when you're ready to unlock a key spell (Group Heal, Mass Restore; Speed; Dominate; Airshock). Increase Essence Mastery as needed, but don't go crazy -- your PC level multiplies your total essence, rather than just adding to it, so it's OK to be patient there.
     

    21 minutes ago, Lorn said:

    When I played Geneforge 1 remastered, I found all spell sucked for my summons. If I pump fire that much, blessings or haste are left behind.

     

    In g1 I used war blessing and it gave +10% to hit chance and damage. If my creations do, as they do, around 200 dmg, it's useless. 20 more does nothing when you got 4 creations at most. 

     

    Speed is a flat 35% increase in average damage output for your creations.  (Even for creations with the v1.0.2 haste augment, it's still a 23% increase.)

    Dominate removes an enemy and gives you a bonus ally.  It's temporary, but that can really turn the tides in the first few rounds of battle, when it matters most.

    Airshock can potentially stun multiple enemies (in addition to damaging them).

    War Blessing and Protection aren't massive effects, but you can cast them before combat begins, so there is no real drawback to using them.  10% is nothing to sneeze at -- Spiderweb games tend to involve stacking up lots of little bonuses until you find that you're very strong.  Do you also ignore charms and pieces of equipment that provide +10% damage bonuses?

     

    Now it may be that playing on Normal, with very strong creations, you don't need these effects.  If you're steamrolling most enemies anyway, sure, no reason to bother casting these spells.  That doesn't mean the spells suck.  That means you're playing with a party that's stronger than your selected difficulty level, and as a result you've trivialized combat.

     

    30 minutes ago, Lorn said:

    By the way, the games I've played and finished and enjoy very much

    Planescape torment
    BG1 and 2
    NWN 2: MoTB
    Morrowind (if Rpg can be called)
    Arcanum

     

    Huh.  Spiderweb games certainly seem on-target then!  I dunno, you really feel like none of your complaints in this review apply to the above games?

  9. The enemy is not actually higher level.  Older SW games worked that way -- original Geneforge might have, I think, and Avernum Second Trilogy.

     

    The increased damage taken, and reduced damage dealt, are percentage-based effects which are much stronger than what you'd get from an extra level or two.

     

    EDIT: Oh, also, it affects Control Level for your creations very mildly.  You already knew that though.

  10. Besides the things you mentioned, difficulty affects:

    - % penalty to damage dealt

    - % increase to damage received

    - increased chance/quantity of augments possessed by enemy creations (this includes activated abilities and passives, not sure if it also includes the +stat/level augments)

    - additional scripted actions (generally on top of their regular actions, i.e., they don't use up turns or AP) for bosses and other special enemies

     

    I don't have (and haven't seen) specific numbers on any of these.

     

    There are also a (very) tiny number of cases where difficulty adds/subtracts from the reputation, leadership, or mechanics need to deal with a situation.  It doesn't have a really significant impact in any of these AFAIK.

  11. Critical hits deal 1.5x damage in GF2 (and most Spiderweb games going back a long time now), so if you crit 30% of the time, your damage is 15% higher on average versus never critting.

     

    And yup, QA now adds 1 die per point to sword attacks.  I'd have preferred more crit and less of that, but I wasn't able to find a reasonable way around the die increase, so I kept crit low instead.

  12. 11 minutes ago, earanhart said:

    Not a nerf, a bug fix. You reintroduced a bug to raise their power.

     

    That's a pretty disingenuous assertion, thanks.  Jeff says his change is a bugfix.  The change back and forth is just changing one value to another.  I thought that was an unfortunate change (whether a bugfix or not) and that the original value was better, so I reverted the value.  That's not "reintroducing a bug."  That's deliberately changing the value.  Based on this, I can't quite tell if I should take your other feedback seriously or not.

  13. You got the "left too soon" ending.  This happens when you don't complete the requirements for any of the main endings.  You can get a main ending by either

     

    1) Being a member of a faction, and completing their whole quest chain

     

    or

     

    2) Having no faction membership, and killing all of Barzhal, Akkat, Rhakkus, and Easss.

     

    It sounds like you were going for #2, but may have missed one of the Taker leaders.

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