Lakstoties wrote: ↑August 2nd, 2017, 12:32 pm
You just feel robbed. I mean, what else is a player suppose to feel when an enemy gets practically two turns before you and drops two 200 HP characters with a SINGLE PISTOL shot each... Before you even get a chance to act?
200 HP sounds a bit low at first, but maybe not so bad when I think about it. I've seen two of those synth gunslingers in a random CotC encounter, and I didn't even know they were there until they started shooting from sniper distance. Managed to kill my best combat Ranger because taking
almost all HP in one shot and then doing
a lot of damage in the next shot was instant death. Meanwhile Rangers with
less HP just went down on the
first shot and started bleeding, waiting for Rose to resuscitate them with her Surgeon skill. A bit of a curiosity there, how
more HP isn't always a good thing. My surviving Rangers still managed to take those synths out, by carefully using covers while advancing upon their positions. But I wasn't interested in saving the game with that Ranger dead.
Also saw one in Whittier, and I had that one expertly hacked by Rose, so that its cheesy weapon could be turned on the enemies. Unlike Dugan's robots, the synths seem quite easy to hack if you can get close enough without dying. Maybe that's some kind of balancing? I guess I'll know more when I've finished the game, as I'm bound to fight more of them.
Lakstoties wrote: ↑August 2nd, 2017, 3:50 pm
And since I'm right at it with my current playthrough... A prime example of magic numbers and other "difficulty" tweaks gone bad... The Culver City Brothel. Average Party level 27 (I've been taking my time to do every quest imaginable). Kevlar suits and Power Armor. Augs, .45's, Ion Beamers, and Brawlers. Ready to fight...?
Inside. People in religious wear with at least 325 HP, 8 Armor, Pistols that do at least 66 damage, Shotguns that do at least 100, and god knows how much armor penetration.
For this scenario I used my Thick-Skinned Ranger. The only one with Power Armor, because heavy armor should be backed up with the Thick-Skinned quirk and the Hardened perk, and preferably also Self Defense (Bladed Weapons 3) and Reinforced Plating (Weaponsmithing 8). You want to get your Armor value to six points higher than the Penetration value of your enemies' weapons. That makes your Ranger invulnerable, so only the psycho lobber nun is able to damage that Ranger. And this time she went down with the first swing of the mighty Plasma Hammer, taken from the cold, dead hands of a random CotC basher. The rest of the Rangers and their many followers mostly hid behind the wall.
To see the Penetration of an enemy's weapon you can hover with your mouse over their portrait in the initiative queue. Or look at the damage their weapon does, and then look up which weapon does that exact damage and see what Penetration that weapon has. God's Militia has mostly Penetration 5-6, though some nuns drop Uzis, and those are supposed to only have Penetration 3, which Power Armor
alone would reduce to zero damage. But a Wasteland Hawk with Penetration 6 is still going to do 40% of its damage to an ordinary Ranger in a Power Armor, and the shotguns with Penetration 5 are going to do 30% to that same Ranger. But Armor 12 (Power Armor + Thick-Skinned + Hardened) just laughs as the bullets tickle and the guns make funny noises. I'm looking forward to Armor 15 laughing like that at Penetration 9 weapons. Armor 13 (Power Armor + Thick-Skinned + Hardened + Self Defense) already laughs at the Plasma Knives that synth cutters play around with. And also Proton Axes. Ho ho ho. No need for a machine gun. Just slice them open with the Shu Model Combat Knife and watch them slowly bleed to death.
Oh, and those Armor 6 Kevlar Suits? 40% damage from Uzis, 80% from shotguns, and 100% from a Wasteland Hawk. My Thick-Skinned Ranger keeps a Kevlar Suit as a backup armor for fights with random CotC groups, since those have a lot of pulse gunners, and that Ranger can bring up the total Armor value to 10. But the other Rangers would only suffer the Combat Speed penalty without gaining much protection, since pretty much all attacks at that point have Penetration 6 or higher, making the Kevlar Suit as protective as tissue paper. Still wearing Kevlar
Vests though. Because they look cool, and
some light armor is needed to activate the Tinkerer perk.
Lakstoties wrote: ↑August 2nd, 2017, 3:50 pm
All get a turn after the first shot from me before I get a get to act again.
It's not very important for this fight, but your Rangers must have had terrible Combat Initiative if all those pistol-packing priests and nuns with guns got to act first once combat started. I suppose it's too late for that to matter now, but if inXile keeps the same CLASSIC system in Wasteland 3, be aware that Combat Initiative is
king of combat. It's not just how
early someone gets to act, but also how
often. I found this out by trying to make a scout character with high Speed for quickly running out of danger, and high Awareness to increase the range of vision. But that character turned out to be a
monster on the battlefield, because high mobility and frequent combat turns means
death to the enemies.
Anyhow, it seems to me that many of your issues stem from not knowing how the system works, which is understandable, since it's not explained in the manual. I guess inXile expects players to either don't worry their pretty little heads with such
complicated stuff, or go online and research how things in the game
actually work.