Are all the *ass skills necessary in a single playthrough?

[happyemi]

Of course they are not, because the "shoot 'em all' strategy always works

However, let's say that I want to find the most diplomatic way to solve quests so that speech skills are required. I'm still in Arizona but my experience so far is that the quests almost always require ANY of the three skills to be solved "peacefully".

What am saying is I could invest in smart ass only and be able to solve all quests that require a speech check with that. Then, in a second playthrough, I could invest in kick ass only and still be able to solve all the quests in the same way. I haven't encountered any quests that basically tells me "sorry, you invested in the wrong speech skill for this, let's go to the shooting part".

Only hard ass seems a bit off (i.e. it more used for secondary quests, but not so much for the main ones).

Again, I'm still in Arizona, not sure if this changes later. Do you have the same impression?

[Jimmious]

There are parts of dialog that you can access only through a specific...ass. I've actually missed quite a lot of them, since I seem to be always a bit "behind" in terms of my team's ass skills

[Raestloz]

There are parts of dialog that you can access only through a specific...ass. I've actually missed quite a lot of them, since I seem to be always a bit "behind" in terms of my team's ass skills

I'd say that you need a dedicated ambassador to stay on top of ass skill requirements. I put my kiss ass and smart ass on my medic and she always comes short of 1 or 2 points

[ZingFreelancer]

You will need all 3. For instance, the way to solve Rail Nomad quest, I used all 3 ass skills to persuade an NPC.

[happyemi]

I'd say that you need a dedicated ambassador to stay on top of ass skill requirements. I put my kiss ass and smart ass on my medic and she always comes short of 1 or 2 points

In this game I actually find much more useful to have the ass skills spreaded among different characters. Having one ambassador make him pretty bad at combat imho. This is of course possible because charisma has no effect at all on speech skills.

The "one ambassador" route is the only possible route if they decide to bind attributes (such as Charisma) to skills (such as * ass) but for now, fortunately, that's not the case

[frozyx]

I made peace at RNC and Prison (well, the dog curing end) and was able to choose any ending in TV w/out a single ass skill. There were a few noteworthy things i missed from the lack of ass skills, being:
- Kate Bowling suicided
- I couldnt get to Gurkovichs Distillery
- Tom in Titans Valley didnt give me the key to his cache
- I couldnt get the Comp Sci book off Dr. Kyle
- and i couldnt trade the Toaster item to the DBM commander Sadler for the sniper rifle

But thats it actually. Otherwise i pretty much only missed a few XP or had to pay a few scrap to make up for it.

Cant talk about LA yet b/c i am just about to go to Rodia.

[Raestloz]

In this game I actually find much more useful to have the ass skills spreaded among different characters. Having one ambassador make him pretty bad at combat imho. This is of course possible because charisma has no effect at all on speech skills.

The "one ambassador" route is the only possible route if they decide to bind attributes (such as Charisma) to skills (such as * ass) but for now, fortunately, that's not the case

I have a hard time trying to build my ranger team, can't decide whether to raise ass or loot skills or weapon skills. I guess I haven't planned my team well enough, my entire character build is based around the 4 custom rangers. Still, I haven't even seen Rail Nomad, so I guess it's normal to be suboptimal

[Ink Blot]

I built my custom party with one Ranger at 10 INT and the other 3 at 8 INT (yes, I know the conventional wisdom about 8 INT). I found this gives me plenty of skill points to raise several skills to a decent level early. As for the Ass skills, I agree that it's a better strategy to spread them among your team members instead of a single ambassador type.

But it seems at first you'll have to accept that you're probably going to miss out on a few of those Ass checks (now, why am I thinking about a colonoscopy at this point?) since even with this strategy you'll probably not be keeping all of the three skills at max level.

Once you pick up a couple NPCs though, you'll be able to juggle some of your skills around. Angela Deth has Hard Ass already, so if you decide to take her, you can forgo that one on your Rangers. And since she's high level right out of the gate, you can opt to toss points there for the first couple times she levels without worrying that she's going to fall behind the curve as far as combat goes.

[Sxerks]

Later on some ASS skills ( mainly HARD) actually give bad choices. And some don't progress dialogue and but give you experience. I've run across quite a few 10s in LA

[Mallaca51]

definateley a greater experience if you go full ass. miss out on many many shortcuts.

just like taking level 2 outdoorsman straight off the bat, and one level of barter.

[Cipher]

Absolutly not.You can play the "psychopath style" and blast the hell out of whoever stands on your way. I remember the first time I went to said and said a straight "FUCK YOU" to the ugly pink dyke.

[Sxerks]

I would suggest spreading out the ASS skills, as I have one character with 2 and Demolitions and they are 2-3 levels ahead of everyone else.

[drealmer]

Of course they are not, because the "shoot 'em all' strategy always works

However, let's say that I want to find the most diplomatic way to solve quests so that speech skills are required. I'm still in Arizona but my experience so far is that the quests almost always require ANY of the three skills to be solved "peacefully".

What am saying is I could invest in smart ass only and be able to solve all quests that require a speech check with that. Then, in a second playthrough, I could invest in kick ass only and still be able to solve all the quests in the same way. I haven't encountered any quests that basically tells me "sorry, you invested in the wrong speech skill for this, let's go to the shooting part".

Only hard ass seems a bit off (i.e. it more used for secondary quests, but not so much for the main ones).

Again, I'm still in Arizona, not sure if this changes later. Do you have the same impression?

I tried all 3 routes just right in the beginning of the game. I always play to get the most dialogue options out of an RPG, and I wasn't sure how this game worked (in many ways, so I went in knowing I'd probably restart and retweak my characters a few times, the 3rd time I started I even upped to Ranger difficulty.) If you want the most dialogue options, you definitely need all 3 skills, no question about it. And you need HardAss at level 4 pretty early if I remember correctly, and a smartass of 2 is necessary for the radio tower right at the beginning (if you want all the dialogue options, and to solve that mission "peacefully." I personally like to smart-ass to make them non-hostile, animal whisper the dogs, and then kill them all.

On my 1st play I didn't have hard-ass at all yet (I had totally missed Angela, took me a little bit of playing to get comfortable with the camera and movement, so I didn't see her) and came to a hard-ass dialogue and immediately knew I had to start over and have all convo. skills early. 2nd time I started I decided to try and have 1 character have all of the convo. skills, which required a reworking of all of my characters a bit. It took a little out of the roleplaying I had already built, but in the early stages of a roleplaying game I'm aware for the need to be adjustable sometimes in how much I can roleplay, and so I adjusted and moved forward. I wasn't finding it very satisfying though, and wasn't playing how I wanted and so I decided to start a 3rd time, on Ranger difficulty this time, and roleplay how I wanted to and use the convo. skills spread out appropriately to roleplay with, and it is working beautifully.

[Militant]

You will need all 3. For instance, the way to solve Rail Nomad quest, I used all 3 ass skills to persuade an NPC.

You actually dont need ASS skills for RNC main questline.. Can make peace without any.

Personally I skipped Hardass, used pizipi for smart and 1 of my rangers has kiss.. As stated, hardass usually just makes the NPC attack you.

[drealmer]

"Necessary" is relative to the player, but for me, I find it "necessary" to be able to do all dialogue options at every point, so the *ass skills are my 3 highest skills among my rangers. Each of my 4 custom rangers has 4 skills each. So, I made 3 of the 4 custom rangers each have 1 *ass skill, and it works great that way. My leader has smart ass (+toaster repair, leadership, energy weapons), 3rd has hard-ass (+perception, brute force, blunt weapons), 4th has kiss-ass, and has 8INT (+assault weapons, safecracking, demolitions.) 2nd character animal whisper which is their "dialogue" skill in my mind, (+sniper rifles, mechanical repair, weaponsmithing.)

I find this to be a kickass build! ^

for those curious/to share the info:

Rose and Scotchmo are my only other companions I use once Angela leaves.

Rose: Surgeon, Field Medic, Computer Science, Alarm Disarming, Hand Guns

Scotchmo (at lvl 10 I raise his INT to 4 so he gets 3 SP a level) : Shotguns, lockpicking, outdoorsman.

That covers all skills. Of course feel free to try the build and of course you can switch the weapons used for 4 custom rangers if you want, but I advise no overlapping weapons or skills, ever, it's just more fun that way, so I choose the only 2 followers that work with that build. I personally don't like how they have the stats+skills for most of the followers, Rose and Scotchmo are at least sensible and workable to a degree.

Also, I don't know why you wouldn't use all different weapon types for 6-7 rangers. Each ranger can essentially use 2 different weapons of the same type for combat (different APs), so that is a variety of a lot of weapon's effects/plenty of weapons to get used among the rangers, and I find it fun to be varied and unique personalities with unique weapons.