KickStarter ATOM RPG - Wasteland Soviet style! - now with Dead City update

[Deleted Member 22431]

Combat is sometimes triggered by the monsters that are not in the line of sight of the party (they are behind closed doors or hard barriers). I had to fight through half of the laboratory section in a Mountain pass bunker in a single try. Even moving the party all the way to another part of the map does not work. Ability to manually end combat is necessary.

Aren't you sure you didn't shoot them behind the green barrier? I had this problem once.

Ability that tells the followers to stay put until told otherwise in combat is necessary. It is annoying to reissue the position order each turn, although the follower is in a defensive stance.

One more reason to play solo. Fuck this chore.

 

[janjetina]

I found some issues:

1. Combat is sometimes triggered by the monsters that are not in the line of sight of the party (they are behind closed doors or hard barriers). I had to fight through half of the laboratory section in a Mountain pass bunker in a single try. Even moving the party all the way to another part of the map does not work. Ability to manually end combat is necessary.

2. Follower pathfinding outside of combat in the same section is bad. Instead of following the PC using the shortest route through an open and unblocked door, followers go around the corner into a monster swarm, triggering combat and dying. Follower pathfinding scoring function should penalize entering unexplored areas hard.

3. Ability that tells the followers to stay put until told otherwise in combat is necessary. It is annoying to reissue the position order each turn, although the follower is in a defensive stance.

4. What's the point in rolls on lockpick checks outside of combat? It only adds tedium. Just "take 20".

Let's add another pathfinding pearl. In the middle of the combat I have noticed that one of my followers was missing. It turned out he was stuck at another end of the map. He got stuck behind a booby trapped door, although there was another free path available (duh).

 

[Grotesque]

Companions use stims during combat?
I gave them some but they do not heal themselves in combat.

Also, companions use aimed shots? I've red somewhere that they don't!?
I leveled up a companion to be a sniper with the perks that increase critical chance for aimed shots and double damage for criticals...

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Fallout was released in 1997...

Oh durrr my memory was off by a year, you fuckin' got me dude! I never really played game before I go git gud now!

By the way you fucking knuckle-dragging retards, I don't find the game "hard". I find it unbalanced in certain areas. I'm progressing through the game perfectly well. But as I do for every goddamned game I play, I offer feedback and criticism where I see fit instead of slobbering sycophancy like you all seem to want from me...especially because, as Vince and Styg can attest to, some people have found it actually helpful in the past.

Eat every dick and choke on it, all of you.

 

[RK47]

Companions use stims during combat?
I gave them some but they do not heal themselves in combat.

Also, companions use aimed shots? I've red somewhere that they don't!?
I leveled up a companion to be a sniper with the perks that increase critical chance for aimed shots and double damage for criticals...

They do heal themselves if they're less than 50% HP.
Aimed shot seems very random.
Just give them the scoped SKS and enjoy their increased critical chance.

 

[Atomboy]

Btw Atomboy there's a bug with skill points per level - they're based on CURRENT INT, eg. if you have 10 INT but hit the xp level threshold while debuffed to say 8 INT you get 21 skill points instead of 25, and no the remaining points are not regained after the debuff ends.

Oh boy. We're gonna hotfix this in a few days. Thanks for noticing!

I found some issues:

1. Combat is sometimes triggered by the monsters that are not in the line of sight of the party (they are behind closed doors or hard barriers). I had to fight through half of the laboratory section in a Mountain pass bunker in a single try. Even moving the party all the way to another part of the map does not work. Ability to manually end combat is necessary.

2. Follower pathfinding outside of combat in the same section is bad. Instead of following the PC using the shortest route through an open and unblocked door, followers go around the corner into a monster swarm, triggering combat and dying. Follower pathfinding scoring function should penalize entering unexplored areas hard.

3. Ability that tells the followers to stay put until told otherwise in combat is necessary. It is annoying to reissue the position order each turn, although the follower is in a defensive stance.

4. What's the point in rolls on lockpick checks outside of combat? It only adds tedium. Just "take 20".

Let's add another pathfinding pearl. In the middle of the combat I have noticed that one of my followers was missing. It turned out he was stuck at another end of the map. He got stuck behind a booby trapped door, although there was another free path available (duh).

Pathing should be much better after today's update!

I found some issues:

1. Combat is sometimes triggered by the monsters that are not in the line of sight of the party (they are behind closed doors or hard barriers). I had to fight through half of the laboratory section in a Mountain pass bunker in a single try. Even moving the party all the way to another part of the map does not work. Ability to manually end combat is necessary.

2. Follower pathfinding outside of combat in the same section is bad. Instead of following the PC using the shortest route through an open and unblocked door, followers go around the corner into a monster swarm, triggering combat and dying. Follower pathfinding scoring function should penalize entering unexplored areas hard.

3. Ability that tells the followers to stay put until told otherwise in combat is necessary. It is annoying to reissue the position order each turn, although the follower is in a defensive stance.

4. What's the point in rolls on lockpick checks outside of combat? It only adds tedium. Just "take 20".

The first two should improve after today's update, and I'll transfer the third issue to the Follower guy. On 4 though - with rolling how it is now, you can sometimes open a door that you don't have the skill to open. For example if you have 50 skill and the door has 60 lock strength, you might just eventually roll a critical lockpicking chance and open it. Otherwise you'll need the exact amount of skill to open the door, which is sometimes like 150!

 

[Atomboy]

Now, continuing our melee, fist and pistol discussion:

I have introduced three changes to the melee, pistol and shield balance based on what was recommended in the last 30 pages of this thread and was realistic enough to pull off. I sent those changes to the balance guy. But then one of our testers came over. He said that melee and pistols are the most overpowered thing in the game and begged me not to go through with the changes. Here is what he wrote and I translated:

If you do that, everyone else will suck - like users of machine guns and ARs. Imagine that a melee character with skills "think like the enemy", "praetorian" who also has a shield and good armor, gets ANY MORE defense boosts. He will become invincible.
Also, you are wrong about pistoleers sucking. We always abuse the pistol with 2 AP per shot. If you take the pistol perks, you will fire 10 times per round +20% damage to each. Add these 20% to its 5-16 damage and you will get a weapon to surpass an LMG.
P.S. the chainsaw crits for 300 damage, you're invincible if your shield is good and you took the shield perk "Shield Master" and have good Endurance. In a tight spot, you can use morphine and BSF12 which gives +1 AP and stacks 2 times making you the embodiment of the emperor's wrath (sic!).

Edit: Also, I was like not everyone has a chainsaw boi, and he was like "The machete kills anyone in two swings max, and you even have spare AP to run". I also asked him if he was meleeing in a team like I do, and he said he was solo meleeing through the whole game, including the VIL-a shell.
Edit 2: Also, I said to the guy - hey, if you're against changing skills so much, maybe you'll like my new idea of adding like a chainsaw anime scythe and big daddy knuckles from bioshock with top damage and low AP so everyone is happy? And he was like - there are tons of OP melee and knuckle weapons in the game, what are you, blind?

Sooo... Are you sure he is wrong, guyz? He IS a tester with 1000 hours clocked in the game. Then again I already whined the balance guy to death, so he is certain to change some of the more useless perks like the +2hp regenerating one. Any thoughts?

 

[Atomboy]

Also, changelog for 1.07 is here! Expect the update in a few hours.


Hello, friends!


Tonight, we offer you our newest patch, numbered 1.07.

We worked on it for quite a while, so we really hope you will like what it brings to the game.

Here is the log of the main changes:

1. Reworked random encounters, changed fight balance. WIP.
2. Added new map - ATOM base - and tutorial.
3. Fixed car bugs.
4. Stock renew on save-load fixed.
5. Il-62 location bugs fixed, now quests are correctly given out and failed.
6. VIL-A fixed.
7. Xander P-603 fixed.
8. Informator fixed.
9. Castle leader’s quest line fixed, consequences added to different approaches.
10. Peregon’s government quest fixed, now you can correctly dispose of every leader.
11. You can now get to the ship in Krasnoznamenny while playing the Chaos route.
12. Minor bug fixes in all major settlements.
13. Typos and weird phrasing fixed in parts of the translation. WIP.

Edit: Can't figure out why this was left out, but here it is: 14. Exciting new books for everyone to read!

"- Aniskin, we thought you fell into atomic goo! - Cried Vanya, squeezing the old man's leg.
- This is true, little comrade. But the only thing that mutated in me after my exposure to the radioactive chemicals, were my combat skills. You knew me as Aniskin the local militia chief. Now I am Aniskin the KGB operative! - Whispered the hero reborn, all the while looking to the horizon, where the ugly grey fog was already dispersing, to make way for the glorious sunrise."

--

- Are you so dumb you cannot see through such thin disguise? - The beautiful woman ran to the hulking brute and hugged him. - This man is no dog of the Empire! This is the fabled Kogan the Savage, who sworn revenge on my slavemaster of a husband, and his wretched cronies! Please, mighty one, let me help you in your quest for blood and glory!.. - She pleaded.

Kogan said nothing. Silently, as a jungle cat, he pounced, with the lady still clinging to his wide chest, and knocked out the pilot with a single blow, produced by the fist irons he was equipped with. What an instrument of pain that was! Crafted from a simple pair of fist irons, made heavier with some scrap, made sharper with the addition of two boxes worth of nails. Seeing the terrible display of force and stealth, Zinaidia fell to the ground, and hugged the barbarian's thick thigh.

- Only a fool trusts a beautiful woman. Leave me be, wench. Or suffer like your servant. - The savage finally uttered.

 

[razvedchiki]

The melee changes are not in 1.7?
Melee is viable only on easy/normal simply because you can take many perks,on expert you are pretty much confined to one perk tree.
Thats why i ask to change the interlinked perks to per lvl.

 

[Atomboy]

The melee changes are not in 1.7?
Melee is viable only on easy/normal simply because you can take many perks,on expert you are pretty much confined to one perk tree.
Thats why i ask to change the interlinked perks to per lvl.

This update has global combat changes, helping with issues like enemies never missing, dodge poorly working. Crippling does more crippling, blinding actually blinding, NPC pathing, NPC killing their own kind instead of enemies, which can help a melee char, but no changes to melee itself, yet. I'm gonna write the re-scpecking NPC in a day or so, we're gonna put him somewhere, and then experiment with the perks and expert skill point balance.

 

[razvedchiki]

i think people need melee to be as viable as an automatics/rifles build,having more options than just one combat build is good in my book (of course with the according investement in perks/equipment).
those beta testers of yours are a weird bunch,from all the unbalanced stuff they find those changes to melee to pick out....

 

[krilcebre]

I don't think you have enough perk points to make those builds on expert/survival. It would work like a charm on easy tho, maybe even on normal. Easiest way to do it then is just to increase perk points per level on expert/survival to 2, just like normal, while also balancing it around percentage to meet tougher enemies and caravans, less ammo and money, worse prices, and so on.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Sooo... Are you sure he is wrong, guyz? He IS a tester with 1000 hours clocked in the game.

Upload a LP or it didn't happen.

 

[Fenix]

postmodernist writers (direct citations from Vladimir Sorokin, Ilya Masodov, Venedikt Erofeyev)

Damn, Masodov... now I fantasize a rpg based on his novels, now that would be something terrific.

It's that supposedly fictional writer right? Presumably a Sorokin or/and someone else?

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

I would prefer if the bandit encounters were somewhat non random. Recall Mount and Blade encounters where you can see other parties wandering around the world map - could we have something similar to that?

 

[Lhynn]

If you do that, everyone else will suck - like users of machine guns and ARs. Imagine that a melee character with skills "think like the enemy", "praetorian" who also has a shield and good armor, gets ANY MORE defense boosts. He will become invincible.

Ask them if they are stupid. Melee gets no real boost to defense just for being melee. They have the exact same as any other character.

 

[razvedchiki]

this bandit argument is getting out of proportions,early bandits spawn with zip guns and pipe rifles that jam half the time they fire,you can easily dispatch them with a knife because they have low health.
if you put endurance to 1 live with it and dont cry murder in the forums.

 

[Fenix]

I have heard some funny stuff, about what happen if you rise you Luck to 12. Weird shit, try it out guys.

Also, about melee - I have seen screenshot form twich stream, where someone was in some bunker, around a pile of bodies with something like kitchen cleaver or somehting, definitely melee is possible.

Also Atomboy someone posted this about scrap guns, is it true or he doesn't understand something?

Spoiler

Посоны, сколько ни высчитывал, 4-ствольный апгрейдженый самопал наносит меньше урона, чем 3-ствольный. Разница в урона пара единиц, но но трехствольный выплевывает по 3 пули, а 4 ствольный по 2. Казалось бы, последний можно реже перезаряжать, но в итоге все равно на 3 пули из 3-ствола уходил 10 од, а на 4 пули из 4-ствола уходит 15 од. Даже без калькулятора разница в уроне - четверть, а разница в од - на треть. Так в чем смысл апгрейдить оружие?

Как разрабы могли так объебаться? Они что, значения стволов от фонаря выставляли?

 

[RK47]

If you do that, everyone else will suck - like users of machine guns and ARs. Imagine that a melee character with skills "think like the enemy", "praetorian" who also has a shield and good armor, gets ANY MORE defense boosts. He will become invincible.

Ask them if they are stupid. Melee gets no real boost to defense just for being melee. They have the exact same as any other character.

Don't be silly, it's obvious automatic users don't have good armor or shield equipped because the bullets are so expensive.



And yes, I too stood in bunker 317 around a pile of bugs and rats.

Let's not kid ourselves here.
Yes, you can go melee but it forces you to take defensive ability because you need it to survive movement phase.

In open world map battle the problem becomes more pronounced. At point blank automatic burst is a threat. At range Rifleman is incredibly accurate.

Already said by Lhynn. If you think melee specialist is doable or OP because of defensive perk, ask ourselves what happens if a sniper is given defensive perks with full suite of rifle abilities to go along with it.

Then it boils down to Chad Rifle vs Virgin Melee again where you pit dodge points vs ability to see enemy HP.
10% stun chance vs double damage vs monsters.
50% critical rate at long range vs 50% damage boost at point blank range.
And double critical aimed shot damage vs humans that works with ANY weapon is certainly something melee user has nothing to compare to.

 

[SniperHF]

RELEASE
THE
GOG VERSION

Corrected.

 

[Risewild]

Oh durrr my memory was off by a year, you fuckin' got me dude! I never really played game before I go git gud now!

Maybe this shows your memory is not to be trusted.
If you're making a point, at least make an effort of using the real dates, so you get more credibility.

Eat every dick and choke on it, all of you.

Oof, now you totally got me.

You need to relax and calm down. Getting so stressed about a videogame that has 5% of sending a OP encounter while traveling on the world map... Hobbies are to be fun, but it seems you are getting angry instead... Maybe you should get a different hobby.

Have you tried crochet?

 

[razvedchiki]

PATCH IS DOWNLOADING!I REPEAT PATCH IS DOWNLOADING!THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

 

[Technomancer]

I'm gonna write the re-scpecking NPC in a day or so

There is already a rumor about memory altering water source, can't you use it as a medium for this mechanic? Or does this NPC actually has some water stored from that place?

I have heard some funny stuff, about what happen if you rise you Luck to 12. Weird shit, try it out guys.

Intriguing, do tell more.

 

[RK47]

Location: Australia

Not everyone grows up in end-game environment where most animals are near instant kill.
Some people are normies.

And here's what normies have to go through to survive:

Part 1

Spoiler

Can't kill the traitor myself, had to let the town guard do it. Accepted the job to spy on the bandits. On my way to the Abandoned Factory, I ran across three dudes discussing about skin worms and other bullshit. One of them has a hand grenade, the other carries a hunting rifle in good condition.

This is gonna be worth it.
The throw did not go as planned, none of the victims got knocked down but the rifleman was near death. But this is ok since the other two are practically unarmed. And the objective is the rifle itself.

Twinkie quickly shivved the poor guy and snatched his rifle and ammo.

This is worth the pain.

5.45mm ammo is not that rare. I got 10 rounds off the dead man and 4 rounds in the rifle.
This is a good start on my way to survive the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Part 2

Spoiler

Dan's Factory is a pretty straightforward affair. The guard lets Twinkie in. After passing the test, Dan asks Twinkie to find his three missing men.

I'm glad I improved speechcraft. It lets me avoid some hostile encounters on the road. Although I'm really itching to master the Hunting Rifle quickly, I have to be patient.

And some dangers just cannot be talked to. Despite years of human refinement and post-modernism, rat diplomacy is still an impossible task.

In this encounter, Twinkie broke two of his shivs in a row. A retreat is the only option at that point.
I bought a wooden club off a scavenger and had the bright idea to add nails to it to make a spiked club. But the stars were not aligned that night.

So, armed with just a pair of stimpacks, Twinkie makes his way to the farm. But luck finally smiles and a trucker caravan met him along the way.

They're on their way to Krasno! A good place to meet with the ATOM contact and perhaps to resupply.
What's more, they have the 5.45mm ammunition for sale!

That's a lot of money spent, but that's good value. Things are looking up.

Part 3

Spoiler

Hi this is Twinkie, we're not in Krasno anymore. The guard wants 1000 rubles for entry. After spending so much money on grenade and ammunition, I have no money to spare. I did get Fidel to join.

He recommends we investigate Bunker 317. A good idea. But first, let's find Dan's missing men.
We arrive at the farm at night. The family seems to be on the edge. The head of the family is exceptionally strong. Sure, Fidel has a hunting rifle, but I doubt we can down him before his son butchers us with his rifle.

Luckily, Twinkie's Speechcraft is sufficient to negotiate a non-violent solution with the man.

I will say nothing more. A tragedy has occurred, let us just pass along the information to Dan. And we also meet a crazy dude on our way back to the factory.

Twinkie talked him out of shooting, but noticed the rusty AK. That might be valuable. But the man isn't willing to trade. He rummages through his bag and procures two hand made grenades.

He gestured at Fidel to get ready with the Hunting rifle and lit the fuse, giving Fidel no time to debate. The reasoning is this: if the man came upon a less eloquent traveler, he might claim an innocent's life. He has to be put down.

The first throw did not knock the man down, the AK roars in respond, two rounds caught Twinkie before it jams. Realizing that one cannot unmash a potato, Fidel opened fire.

The second grenade is more profitable, sending the tinfoil-hat-wearing sod onto the ground. He cursed loudly at the Illuminati in the clouds as he lands with a loud thump.

"I-it's a conspiracy," he groaned, struggling to get up.
Twinkie isn't gonna wait. He walked up to the fallen man and smashes the man's head with a Serbian Sidewinder.

"Conspire THIS!" the man's body rocked in pain, but he's still alive.

Fidel's final shot made the night a less violent one.

At first glance, the rusty assault rifle may not seem much, but the precious 27 rounds are definitely worth the trouble. Twinkie places it in his pack and starts roasting some canned food. He's made a profit. Things are looking good.

 

[Risewild]

Not everyone grows up in end-game environment where most animals are near instant kill.
Some people are normies.

Damn, I thought the Codex didn't have normies.
I thought it was a place for weathered, grizzly, hardcore RPG players. Where normies only scrub the toilets or something.

By the way, nice post. Hope you don't break more clubs and that your rifle will not fail you.