Wasteland Wasteland 3 + Battle of Steeltown and Cult of the Holy Detonation Expansions Thread

[cvv]

Why heavy gunner? Seems to me there's not a whole lot of incentive to raise explosives on heavy gunner. Fire/Weird Science/Toasters seem like a better compliment.

Well you need Big Guns for flamethrowers anyway so your fire guy IS a heavy gunner.

But Explosive is a separate damage type

I know, I just thought they would be a good fit for my Fire/Heavy char.

Weird Science could be a good fit since a lot of those gizmos are short ranged, just like flamethrowers.

Didn't think of combining it with Toasters tho, I completely forgot there's a bonus fire damage perk coz I kept a mule for toaster repair.

 

[user]

Omg guys this sequel is actually good.

does it have more coherent storyline(s) compared to wl2

Definitely, some may be a little cliche but that doesn't matter because they are well-executed, choices are interesting overall, skills checks are plenty and nicely distributed for the most part, character development is satisfying, doesn't shy away from gore, its locations are decent, and I found its humor to be in good taste. A very worthy rpg indeed.

 

[jf8350143]

When you trade with a random encounter on world map, you can still click the radio in the up middle of your screen despite not being able to see it.

So if you click it accidentally, you get pull to the dialogue UI and the random merchant is gone. Lost my chance of buying a unique weapon because of this.

Also is heavy machine gun complete useless in the game? it cost more ap to attack but didn't really do much more damage.

 

[jf8350143]

Ok, done and done. Ranger diff., did everything I could find. Almost exactly 50 hours.

Structurally it's p. much the same game as W2 and overall both are equally fun. This is exactly the kind of game I've always loved - a big, epic, turn-based, party-based RPG. There's just nothing better for a real gamer to play. It's the ultimate genre/subgenre.

Pros and cons:
- together with Mankind Divided it's the best writing coming from a Western developer in the last 5 years. Which again raises the question, what the fuck happened with Numanuma. Same dev, almost the same writing team. Wtf.
- audio is stellar, not just the music but I felt like the sound design (gunshots, splosions) are often better than in FP shooters
- combat is a lot of fun but the difficulty is not tuned well, on Ranger the second half was mostly a cakewalk and the final boss fight was an absolute joke, especially if you equip your Kodiak with the cluster bomb mod. It was over in two turns. TWO. TURNS.
- the only difficulty bump was the general squishiness of my toons but that might've something to do with me treating Strength as a dump stat. Ten again my melee dude with maxed Str, clad in the best armor, was more resilient but not by much so not sure if it's a good idea to waste so many points on Str with relatively small benefits
- the economy is handled very well. One of the rare games where halfway through you aren't so rich you could buy the entire world twice over.
- very good itemization, again very rare for a developer to nail this so well, or at all.
- game is incredibly stable, considering the genre and the developer. Wasteland 2 was one of the most broken RPGs in history on launch. There are some glitches in W3 but nothing terrible.
- visually the game doesn't look great. Personally I don't give a shit but it needs to be said. Wasteland 2 looks comparable and it's 5 years older.
- I hated the overland travel with Kodiak. The world is mostly empty and boring and the movement is slow. A pointless feature that only manages to waste your time.
- the fame and reputation system is nice for RP but gameplay-wise completely pointless. Too bad, a good idea but utterly wasted.
- the UI is consolitized decline. A shamefur dispray.
- animal pets are a bit overboosted. An angry chicken can solo an entire commando squad in power armor. Wtf.
- instead of respec the game let's you create infinite new toons. Bad solution. Respec, albeit reasonably limited, would be vastly preferable. This is not fucking XCOM, inXile, snap out of it.

Anyway, it's inXile so in a year or so we'll get a Director's Cut with better tuning and hopefully some additional content.

High armour is useful in early game. My melee character has 39 armour when I first get to the world map, and she was quite tanky at that moment. But the pen of enemies out grows the armour.

In the late game armor is pretty much useless except for the bonus they have.

 

[vmar]

When you trade with a random encounter on world map, you can still click the radio in the up middle of your screen despite not being able to see it.

So if you click it accidentally, you get pull to the dialogue UI and the random merchant is gone. Lost my chance of buying a unique weapon because of this.

Same thing happened to me, luckily I found the weapon I wanted to buy about an hour later.

 

[DeepOcean]

Also is heavy machine gun complete useless in the game? it cost more ap to attack but didn't really do much more damage.

Heavy machineguns have really low base accuracy, if you dont get some to hit bonuses, you will easily miss half the bullets if not more, doing really mediocre damage, they do more base damage than any multi shot gun if most bullets hit but snipers do way more damage on crits. If you get a machine gun with a decent crit chance and mod it to do fire damage, go for toasters/weird science, it can melt enemies on single target damage while flamethrowers are still better for area damage, also, if I'm not mistaken, sniper rifles cant be modded to do fire damage.

I have yet to test a luck build with machineguns as it is unclear how much extra damage mega crits do, in theory, every time a heavy machinegun shoots, there are nine chances for megacrits. I dunno if that odd megacrit is worthy not going for intelligence instead. I really hate this tendency of developers hiding numbers to not make normies despair, supposedly.

 

[Haplo]

Why heavy gunner? Seems to me there's not a whole lot of incentive to raise explosives on heavy gunner. Fire/Weird Science/Toasters seem like a better compliment.

Well you need Big Guns for flamethrowers anyway so your fire guy IS a heavy gunner.

But Explosive is a separate damage type

I know, I just thought they would be a good fit for my Fire/Heavy char.

Weird Science could be a good fit since a lot of those gizmos are short ranged, just like flamethrowers.

Didn't think of combining it with Toasters tho, I completely forgot there's a bonus fire damage perk coz I kept a mule for toaster repair.

Such non-obvious combos, synergies across attributes and different abilities, active skill/ailment combo between different weapon types are the reason I'm really liking the mechanics of this game so far. And for me enjoying the mechanics is already like 50% of the success.

Of course, I wish there was less stat bloat. But oh well. Its pretty good for what it is. Amazing how insanely better for me this feels - compared with W2. Don't think I've ever seen a sequel improve so much. Well, maybe BG2.

 

[Haplo]

Also is heavy machine gun complete useless in the game? it cost more ap to attack but didn't really do much more damage.

Heavy machineguns have really low base accuracy, if you dont get some to hit bonuses, you will easily miss half the bullets if not more, doing really mediocre damage, they do more base damage than any multi shot gun if most bullets hit but snipers do way more damage on crits. If you get a machine gun with a decent crit chance and mod it to do fire damage, go for toasters/weird science, it can melt enemies on single target damage while flamethrowers are still better for area damage, also, if I'm not mistaken, sniper rifles cant be modded to do fire damage.

I have yet to test a luck build with machineguns as it is unclear how much extra damage mega crits do, in theory, every time a heavy machinegun shoots, there are nine chances for megacrits. I dunno if that odd megacrit is worthy not going for intelligence instead. I really hate this tendency of developers hiding numbers to not make normies despair, supposedly.

Lets not forget the Suppress Fire special. Covers a huge area and mightily debuffs enemies within. Even more crippling for enemy melees, as they are slowed and have trouble even reaching your squad. Does paltry damage but... if you have a Leader who can Demoralize enemies, it can actually do good aoe damage.

IMO HMG is one of the very best weapon types. Has pretty long range too. You just need to work on your accuracy a little.

The combo DeepOcean advised: Fire underbarrel + Weird Science+Heating Element(Toasters)+Pyromaniac+Disciple of Metal is really good too. Just started it with Light Squad HMG - best I could buy at Bizzare and it is quite destructive. Even though my Weird Science is at 2, I think, and I don't have the Heating Element perk yet.

 

[Haplo]

High armour is useful in early game. My melee character has 39 armour when I first get to the world map, and she was quite tanky at that moment. But the pen of enemies out grows the armour.

In the late game armor is pretty much useless except for the bonus they have.

As I understand, Evasion can be really good - if you invest in it. Mopey Poet Background, max Speed, Evasion perk, Parrot animal, lots of +Evasion armor mods. Maybe some Luck too. Plus crouching, ending turn in defensive mode, with some APs left (particularly if you charge head-first to grab enemy attention).

 

[cvv]

I had a high Luck heavy gunner, he was a beast. Machine guns are grate for the special AoE attack that utterly destroys everything, altho you do have to have a few points in CHA. Also his non-crit damage was higher than my snipers did.

The only problem is he's p. high maintenance. He needs some investment in ALL the attributes, including STR and CHA. I treated those two as dump stats and he was extremely squishy plus I waited forever for his special attack to build up.

 

[vmar]

Has anyone tried running 2 snipers on SJ? Wondering if ammo would be an issue, I never had any problems with ammo for a single sniper on Ranger, but I did prioritize buying sniper ammo over other types early game.

 

[Hellraiser]

Is there some summary on what changed for the better and what for the worst compared to Wasteland 2 in terms of gameplay/game mechanics?

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, on topic of HMGs being bad, I just saw this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wasteland/comments/inzksa/hmmm_i_decided_that_i_like_big_guns/

 

[DeepOcean]

Is there some summary on what changed for the better and what for the worst compared to Wasteland 2 in terms of gameplay/game mechanics?

It is the game Wasteland 2 should had been if they focused more on quality than quantity. Imagine if they took the second half of Wasteland 2, actually written a real story this time that isnt chasing radio towers and decided to expand and properly develop it as a solid RPG .

 

[cvv]

Has anyone tried running 2 snipers on SJ? Wondering if ammo would be an issue, I never had any problems with ammo for a single sniper on Ranger, but I did prioritize buying sniper ammo over other types early game.

I ran 2 snipers on Ranger, only had one issue in the early game coz I relied on finding ammo. Once I started buying it, no problems at all.

Is there some summary on what changed for the better and what for the worst compared to Wasteland 2 in terms of gameplay/game mechanics?

It was already hinted ITT. The changes aren't earth shattering, the gameplay is p. much the same. Combat has the special attack added in W3 which is good. The overland travel is very different, you're manualy driving your squad car around, RTS style. I hated it coz it's pointless and boring but different strokes for different folks. Attributes do slightly different things and skills have been streamlined (about 20 in W3 instead of 30 in W2). In a handful of fights you can use your armored car which is great. Other than that both games are very similar.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Really liked Wasteland 2, I'm sure I'll like Wasteland 3 too. But right now, just can't bring myself to really give it a go.

Mainly because of the dialogue system, I hate the way dialogue is presented. I could swallow the lack of a visible dialogue box. But being limited to seeing just three options at a time is really aggravating the heck out of me.

Yes I noted that too. It's ridiculous that in 2020 in the majority of games, in particular text heavy games, UI designers still haven't figured out how to poperly present text and dialogues. Luckily WL3 has not an huge amount of text, at least not as much as POE 1&2 for example (and there the text presentation is even worse). One of the few games that has a decent way to present text was Disco Elysium that at least rejects the manieristic visual novel-style of presenting few lines of text at a time in a ridicuolus wide and shallow box at the bottom.

But I give up on any improvement on this front. Now in more recent games there is the ulterior aggravation of the mandatory VO on the already miserable way to read the text too.

 

[cvv]

Is there some summary on what changed for the better and what for the worst compared to Wasteland 2 in terms of gameplay/game mechanics?

It is the game Wasteland 2 should had been if they focused more on quality than quantity. Imagine if they took the second half of Wasteland 2, actually written a real story this time that isnt chasing radio towers and decided to expand and properly develop it as a solid RPG .

Wasteland 2 isn't quantity over quality, it's a great TB, party-based RPG.

Most of the memes and negative takes are due to the utter technical brokeness of the game on launch, plus some drama related to Kickstarter and beta players or some such (some ignored promises I think?). Also there was a lot of edginess around Fargo back then (I guess still is, to an extent). None of that matters for the actual quality of the game you can buy and play now, i.e. the Director's Cut. The DC is one of the best RPGs ever made in my book.

 

[cvv]

Yeah, on topic of HMGs being bad, I just saw this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wasteland/comments/inzksa/hmmm_i_decided_that_i_like_big_guns/

That's fucking insane.

It'll chew through your ammo like a feminist in a cake shop tho.

 

[jf8350143]

Also is heavy machine gun complete useless in the game? it cost more ap to attack but didn't really do much more damage.

Heavy machineguns have really low base accuracy, if you dont get some to hit bonuses, you will easily miss half the bullets if not more, doing really mediocre damage, they do more base damage than any multi shot gun if most bullets hit but snipers do way more damage on crits. If you get a machine gun with a decent crit chance and mod it to do fire damage, go for toasters/weird science, it can melt enemies on single target damage while flamethrowers are still better for area damage, also, if I'm not mistaken, sniper rifles cant be modded to do fire damage.

I have yet to test a luck build with machineguns as it is unclear how much extra damage mega crits do, in theory, every time a heavy machinegun shoots, there are nine chances for megacrits. I dunno if that odd megacrit is worthy not going for intelligence instead. I really hate this tendency of developers hiding numbers to not make normies despair, supposedly.

Hmm, never get the mod that makes HMG do fire damage, only mods turns into energy damage. I'll check some merchant to see what I can find.

Weapon mods are kind hard to get unless you fileld strip every weapon with the perk, but you need to filed strip them one by one and it's a huge chore.

Has anyone tried running 2 snipers on SJ? Wondering if ammo would be an issue, I never had any problems with ammo for a single sniper on Ranger, but I did prioritize buying sniper ammo over other types early game.

Maybe in the early game, late game you will have enough cash to buy all the ammo you need.

 

[cvv]

Maybe in the early game, late game you will have enough cash to buy all the ammo you need.

Yeah I ran out of mods mid-game coz I wasn't stripping or buying them.

Kindda bad system IMO, doesn't make sense to not be able reuse mods. I mean...you can't take off your laser sight and mount it on a different rifle? Really?

 

[jf8350143]

Maybe in the early game, late game you will have enough cash to buy all the ammo you need.

Yeah I ran out of mods mid-game coz I wasn't stripping or buying them.

Kindda bad system IMO, doesn't make sense to not be able reuse mods. I mean...you can't take off your laser sight and mount it on a different rifle? Really?

They should at least add a perk to make you be able to reuse the mods. Currently lots of the skills lack meaningful perks, for example armour modding.

 

[Haplo]

Also is heavy machine gun complete useless in the game? it cost more ap to attack but didn't really do much more damage.

Heavy machineguns have really low base accuracy, if you dont get some to hit bonuses, you will easily miss half the bullets if not more, doing really mediocre damage, they do more base damage than any multi shot gun if most bullets hit but snipers do way more damage on crits. If you get a machine gun with a decent crit chance and mod it to do fire damage, go for toasters/weird science, it can melt enemies on single target damage while flamethrowers are still better for area damage, also, if I'm not mistaken, sniper rifles cant be modded to do fire damage.

I have yet to test a luck build with machineguns as it is unclear how much extra damage mega crits do, in theory, every time a heavy machinegun shoots, there are nine chances for megacrits. I dunno if that odd megacrit is worthy not going for intelligence instead. I really hate this tendency of developers hiding numbers to not make normies despair, supposedly.

Hmm, never get the mod that makes HMG do fire damage, only mods turns into energy damage. I'll check some merchant to see what I can find.

Weapon mods are kind hard to get unless you fileld strip every weapon with the perk, but you need to filed strip them one by one and it's a huge chore.

Has anyone tried running 2 snipers on SJ? Wondering if ammo would be an issue, I never had any problems with ammo for a single sniper on Ranger, but I did prioritize buying sniper ammo over other types early game.

Maybe in the early game, late game you will have enough cash to buy all the ammo you need.

Think it was from Delgado at the HQ? The 2nd weapon shop you visit (first at Colorado Springs had Frost mod, 3rd at Bizzare had Explosive mod). It's not only for HMGs, btw. Should work on most guns (but there's synergy with Flamethrowers in "Big" category).

Damn, I do hope there's another Fire mod somewhere.

 

[jackofshadows]

Has anyone tried running 2 snipers on SJ? Wondering if ammo would be an issue, I never had any problems with ammo for a single sniper on Ranger, but I did prioritize buying sniper ammo over other types early game.

I had exactly 2 snipers: ammo is not an issue whatsoever since for a while you can use 2 rifles with a different types of ammo. And in the late game it's even less of a problem.

Yeah, on topic of HMGs being bad, I just saw this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wasteland/comments/inzksa/hmmm_i_decided_that_i_like_big_guns/

Yeah, I did this too since I was stacking fire dmg% in a hope of using flamethrowers all the time but turns out they suck anyway (damage is too low, enemies can attack before fire dmg ticks and they die). Pretty powerful setup but problem is that I've seen only one +20 -10thc mode as well as fire dmg switch and minigun itself was aquired pretty late (after dealing with Vic). Strike attack is devastating but it takes forever to stack it up and you may have a hard time with positioning (God forbid you have some fucking ANIMALS). Without strike attack it's just a very strong single attack which is far better leave to snipers because minigun has 7 ap per attack i.e. impossible to have 2 reliable attacks per turn w/o drugs or rally unlike snipers (which are having far better range and thc as well). And even drugs is a bad option because you have to take them in order to have a strong next turn while the first turn is the crucial one.

As for AoE, it's much better to have jackhammer dude(s) (which is begging for a brutal nerf) with + range mode (I had plenty of them unlike aforementioned), small arms can stack strike ten times faster and the attack is absolutely devastating as well, just with a narrower cone. At the end what I liked the most about heavy gunner is a suppression+demoralisation combo+flamethrower debuff attack on top of that. But slow debuffing & killing is a luxury here and it's way better to finish off one target after another which heavy gunners just not a very well suited for. However, I saw yesterday reply on some forum, a guy claimed that he beat the game with 4 heavy gunners + extensive use of grenades on SJ. I don't thinkg he's lying so it's all matter of preference, the game is not that hard at all.

 

[jf8350143]

Also is heavy machine gun complete useless in the game? it cost more ap to attack but didn't really do much more damage.

Heavy machineguns have really low base accuracy, if you dont get some to hit bonuses, you will easily miss half the bullets if not more, doing really mediocre damage, they do more base damage than any multi shot gun if most bullets hit but snipers do way more damage on crits. If you get a machine gun with a decent crit chance and mod it to do fire damage, go for toasters/weird science, it can melt enemies on single target damage while flamethrowers are still better for area damage, also, if I'm not mistaken, sniper rifles cant be modded to do fire damage.

I have yet to test a luck build with machineguns as it is unclear how much extra damage mega crits do, in theory, every time a heavy machinegun shoots, there are nine chances for megacrits. I dunno if that odd megacrit is worthy not going for intelligence instead. I really hate this tendency of developers hiding numbers to not make normies despair, supposedly.

Hmm, never get the mod that makes HMG do fire damage, only mods turns into energy damage. I'll check some merchant to see what I can find.

Weapon mods are kind hard to get unless you fileld strip every weapon with the perk, but you need to filed strip them one by one and it's a huge chore.

Has anyone tried running 2 snipers on SJ? Wondering if ammo would be an issue, I never had any problems with ammo for a single sniper on Ranger, but I did prioritize buying sniper ammo over other types early game.

Maybe in the early game, late game you will have enough cash to buy all the ammo you need.

Think it was from Delgado at the HQ? The 2nd weapon shop you visit (first at Colorado Springs had Frost mod, 3rd at Bizzare had Explosive mod). It's not only for HMGs, btw. Should work on most guns (but there's synergy with Flamethrowers in "Big" category).

Damn, I do hope there's another Fire mod somewhere.

Checked all those vendors you mentioned and found nothing. Maybe it's random? No reliable way to get mods sounds like a bad design choices.

 

[Haplo]

Only one Fire damage mod in the game?

I know 7 AP is a lot. But you can fire that one + Suppressive Fire for 5 AP (preferably after Demoralizing enemies). Or, if the situation permits, that plus the Flamethrower attack.