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Author Topic: A brand new year: The year of the handle  (Read 19049 times)

Offline legionof1

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #15 on: November 23, 2016, 12:51:35 am »
Bows are an option true but at least for me have been of limited success due to mission terrain being largely forest and the production drain for ammunition being relatively higher due to smaller ammo count per batch. Longbow and combat bow ammo is 60 shots per batch. Rifle ammo is around 4x times that for average 1.8 the time.  Alot of my runt hours are tied up in processing incoming prisoners and things like small engines and computers so storage overflow doesn't happen 

Offline CaptainCorkscrew

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #16 on: November 23, 2016, 10:10:29 am »
Use the "Alt" key for to get unit facings.  It pops up arrows over the units to show their direction.

Thanks Ivan, one of the many things I don't know. It will certainly be useful.

Because we were talking annoying missions, I had a progrom yesterday in a city full with multi-story buildings and one tile corridors. And the map was filled with star gods. Constant mind control and those suckers can be hidden in any cabinet. In addition you practically have to run into them to see them.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #17 on: November 23, 2016, 10:47:07 am »
Thanks Ivan, one of the many things I don't know. It will certainly be useful.

It's in the Hawtkeys article, right at the top...
Is there something wrong with that article, like not being displayed? It looks fine for me.

Offline legionof1

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #18 on: November 23, 2016, 01:22:43 pm »
More then likely it's veteran player/wall o text blindness. At least some of the hotkeys are new as well as the entry itself, easy to overlook for players of older versions. Adding the multiple rather verbose pages it easy to lose details.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #19 on: November 23, 2016, 02:54:11 pm »
More then likely it's veteran player/wall o text blindness. At least some of the hotkeys are new as well as the entry itself, easy to overlook for players of older versions. Adding the multiple rather verbose pages it easy to lose details.

Well, you're right. But then again, all unread articles are marked as such.

Offline CaptainCorkscrew

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #20 on: November 23, 2016, 03:16:04 pm »
I've certainly looked at that article, but you can't access it if you are in the middle of a battle AFAIK.

Plus there are some hot keys which are completely undocumented, for example for moving facilities. (I saw it in Meridians LP, tried to figure it out from the code and failed, even though I found the actual function that does the moving. Trial and Error eventually did the trick.)

Offline ohartenstein23

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #21 on: November 23, 2016, 03:52:17 pm »
I think Meridian said at one point what the key combination is supposed to be, but that one's a bit more game-y... although I unashamedly use it all the time.  For the pedia, you can access it pretty much anywhere - press "U" to bring up the menu.  You can also press the right and left buttons to scroll through the entire thing one article at a time once you middle-click a weapon to bring up its article.  Checking the options for the extended keyboard shortcuts is a very good idea.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #22 on: November 23, 2016, 04:28:17 pm »
I've certainly looked at that article, but you can't access it if you are in the middle of a battle AFAIK.

Plus there are some hot keys which are completely undocumented, for example for moving facilities. (I saw it in Meridians LP, tried to figure it out from the code and failed, even though I found the actual function that does the moving. Trial and Error eventually did the trick.)

You can access it. By pressing 'U'. It's in the same damned article :)

Also, moving facilities is undocumented since I consider it cheating. Maybe if it costed you money...

Offline legionof1

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #23 on: November 24, 2016, 02:07:22 am »
Well 2 years done and finally got the economy boost i needed from some mansion runs. Why they took 18 months after finishing the research to appear i dont know. Next stumbling block is power armor parts from lack of high tier guild ships, but plenty of juicy freighters in the mean time.

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #24 on: November 24, 2016, 02:58:47 am »
I consider cattle prods & stun batons to be an utter underdog, for their crappy DPS.
Im worried about the portion of the damage which turns out to be lethal with handles. The prod/baton doesnt do lethal at all afaik.

How many brainers are you trying to support? Those suckers are expensive  :o
personally I fill up my entire quota as fast as I can
minimum 10, if not 15
I usually have them researching 3-4 different things.

Rifle ammo is around 4x times that for average 1.8 the time

Shotguns are obscenely accurate, and the Military Shotgun AP ammo does like 50 damage or something. You would think they had a scope, reflex sight, and laser dot on them for the accuracy they've got. And you can buy the ammunition, and its available rather early on, and the ammo may even pile up from missions.

Rifles are a trap, the only use for them is auto fire at point blank range. And a Clockwork Gun is better for that (muh 40 damage). Scoped Hunting Rifle is the only exception ive seen for ranging.


My last experience with them was that they were too accurate, yes.
The arcing behavior along with obstructions really balances these weapons out. If anything the damage is rather steep for a bow (my suggestion is settling it at around 30, altering the damage bonus so that the ladies' veteran stats comes out to around that much, this being for the most destructive bows).

The use for a bow id say is a Throwing enhancer like how the various melee weapons are unarmed enhancers, so you can capitalize use of throwing skill for more than explosive stuff. It balances against firearms because bows and arrows should be dirt cheap.

Currently the combat bow and longbow are unnecessary, expensive, and even though its a game balance issue they have different ammo than the Hunting Bow - which strangely has much less capacity. Most of the damage for the bow is in the damage bonus and its better to have 16 shots per quiver, plus you use ammo you're getting in the maps and can buy so you dont need to make it.

Hunting Bow you can just bring 1 quiver pretty much and itll work, no need for bringing more ammo. Its pretty dang effective, and something just seems odd about trying to shoot somebody in plasteel armor with arrows.

DPS doesnt mean anything in tactical when you can shoot somebody Twice and walk off and let him bleed to death. Or since you know where they are, have someone else come out of nowhere and "handle" them because they're probably about to drop anyway.

All that matters in this game is how much damage you can do with one shot, because thats what will blow through armor, after that somebody can be left to bleed out. If they're really dangerous or they might kill civilians blowing them up is always an option, thats why you bring fancy weapons.
« Last Edit: November 24, 2016, 03:07:11 am by RSSwizard »

Offline CaptainCorkscrew

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #25 on: November 24, 2016, 04:05:38 am »
I found the stamina drain of bows prohibitive, especially for the stronger bows. Yes, you can drink beer or whatever, but it's annoying and costs time.
I do play with relatively small teams, it certainly is less of an issue if you go in with 20 people.

Offline KateMicucci

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #26 on: November 24, 2016, 04:16:40 am »
Quote
Im worried about the portion of the damage which turns out to be lethal with handles. The prod/baton doesnt do lethal at all afaik.
The handle won't kill anyone who wasn't already heavily wounded.

With things like ball bats, bone clubs and anything with a stun damage multiplier though, overkill is such an issue that they aren't worth using (unless I simply can't fit anything but fisticuffs in a gal's inventory)

Quote
Rifles are a trap, the only use for them is auto fire at point blank range. And a Clockwork Gun is better for that (muh 40 damage). Scoped Hunting Rifle is the only exception ive seen for ranging.
How? At 33, the damage is still too low to compete with bows. The scoped rifle might let a gal with crap accuracy hit things, but it won't help her do any damage against enemies that actually pose a threat.

Quote
I found the stamina drain of bows prohibitive, especially for the stronger bows.
Stamina stops being an issue once the gals get higher stats, especially if you put them in stamina boosting clothes.

Offline legionof1

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #27 on: November 24, 2016, 06:19:20 am »
I'll agree that rifle damage is poor for the vast majority of them but rifles fill a need, namely firing training. Shotguns behave oddly in terms of exp gain(only first pellet checked) and i dont think that issue has been solved. At least for me shotguns also have competition from sprinting to melee. TU grow faster and more easily then firing early game. High TU gals benefit more from melee's fixed costs. Also Melee has very powerful scaling options from very early research. Stone Hatchet for example is survival tech and 125% accuracy 12 TU and 40 base dmg with 2 scaling stats.


I will grant that with later tech/veteran gals shotguns are quite a bit more flexible then one would assume but before you get there their engagement radius is out performed by melee blitzing.


Offline khade

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #28 on: November 24, 2016, 07:24:58 am »
Different bows using different arrows is reasonable and logical.  You can't use an arrow built for a short bow with a longbow, for example, the arrows are just too short, first of all.  Second point is using a bow with a very powerful draw needs arrows that are built around surviving the shot.

On the using bows against people in futuristic armor, I figure all but the one bow you buy are probably built around the large frame of the Uber, It's not quite the same scale, but I imagine the bows used in Avatar, even wearing heavy armor, you're gonna feel that.

Musket weapons now act like they have more armor than they actually do, so it's still useful, but is not AP.

I usually have good early luck with the homefront rifle, though I wouldn't attempt to use it on someone with actual armor.

Offline CaptainCorkscrew

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Re: A brand new year: The year of the handle
« Reply #29 on: November 24, 2016, 09:48:22 am »
I still use the battle rifle on easy missions. For firing training I found that the minigun gives more points than single shot thingies.
But I prefer melee. My strongest fighter atm is a gal in a swiftsuit wielding a bardiche. Just yesterday she took apart a tank two hits. That's a can opener. The bardiche just takes a lot of TUs (18), maybe I'll replace it with something else, but all other strong melee weapons I have a single handed. Not sure there is such a thing as a two-hand power bonus...