Bay 12 Games Forum

So how do I get to creating genetically modified super soldiers?

A few techs, but the real answer is: find a pre-warp civilization of warrior people, infiltrate it/kidnap some cows, wrangle them into your army and profit: I ended up with an industrial era glacier world full of strong, friendly squid people and a water world full of strong, xenophobic ratmen. So far they have rolled over all the militaries they fought (provided the accompanying fleet strips away the planetary defenses)

Right...hard to see how to extend what's implemented of the plot, until what is there in the game, is working properly.  This requires changes to the savefile format.  What was the key misfeature introduced in alpha 8?

I clearly recall that the sanity mechanic [new in alpha 9] wasn't very popular.  (It makes hiding impractical, and is unfixable since it cannot be balanced for all reasonable playing styles.  It is currently balanced for lone wolf gun bunnies, which is not a very survivable playstyle with only in-game knowledge).  There wasn't a lot of noise about alpha 8 or alpha 7, although I'm aware of at least one player who considers alpha 7 to have a breaking misfeature.

Plan on my end is another day of early-game testing, then cut a final release with some changes to the AI and UI to make the game slightly easier -- and then start intentionally breaking savefile format.

I think it was in 9, not 8, but the gamebreaking feature was sanity, just as you suggest (.8 obviously not to blame: I just only have a .7 on file). The sanity thing made it impossible to clean up corpses or survive as a loner without losing the ability to sleep and then perishing.

I played this for a while, the community was friendly and mature when I was there.

I feel like the major good reason not to release a game like that early, is if it would spoil the plot or something, but this is an emergent strategy game, people other than the dev should be playing the early, broken builds!

Otherwise the dev will never find all the crazy possible ways to combine the systems.

I'll reiterate, my problem isn't with the people who are calling for communication (because I agree that that is a problem), my problem is with the people calling for mass refunds because the 1 man programming team hasn't managed to produce something concrete in half the time it took a group of professional software engineers to do so.

I think part of the issue is that developer silence is exactly what is causing people to jump ship: as we already mentioned by another person on this forum, Toady maintained player interest through long development stretches through the occasional tantalizing hint or interesting bug. He also released a build of the game, though. A working build at that, if occasionally buggy.

This too should be considered as a solution to the complicated one man game: Toady, and back with Cataclysm, Whales (before he abandoned the project to the community) opened themselves to the community for patient bug testing, fixes, suggestions, mods etc. The games grew from this in response.

When the developer goes silent and has never so much as released a buggy and broken build, in the age of numerous broken alphas which sell on the open market, people will rightfully get suspicious that the whole game will just never materialize.

I am not clammoring for a refund (didn't kickstart, bought it last may) yet, but if you sell a product, you really cannot back out of it and expect people not to hold you responsible. 

I think the best part of this new version, is the return to the old tactical pillar of old com: explosions.

Turret with 3 armor on a building?  Don't try to kill the turret! Kill the building! Blow up everything under the turret and it instantly dies.

Complicated extraction/bomb placement past several fortified positions? Blow a hole in the undefended side and walk right through!

Extraction far away and on top of a building? Blow up the access to the extraction site, or just the whole thing and the game will assign you a new one, which at least in my experience, tends to be much more convenient.

That and psychics: god are psychics good. Put biggest thing in stasis, kill everything else. Put the only vulnerable member of the group/ threatened civilian in stasis and mind control whatever is threatening.  Void storm to trigger 5 different effects on 5 different enemies.

The only thing I cannot understand is what prompted them to nerf Snipers so (especially if Assaults got such an unnecessary buff)... Killzone is the only good ability in the whole class, they are just never up to what one expects from snipers after xcom 2.

The only thing that breaks the game good and true are mimic bombs.  For whatever reason a mimic bomb completely overrides the AI: no matter what is happening, every alien in sight will try to shoot the mimic clone, ignoring all other targets until it is dead, leaving cover to get to it, etc.  It is a virtual I win button, although you can only make one per 1-2 retaliation missions.

I've been playing this. I like the game and like the scope of it: I always feel like the underworld is endless and I can just keep following tunnels to find something interesting. The oddity system keeps the pressure off me to kill everything, and makes stealing for a living (in xp terms) quite viable.

Last session I was trying to find a secret entrance to some plot point in one town, got lost, barely made it through some scary areas with my life intact, discovered enemies not only use stealth too, but lay serious ambushes (being a horrible cheater I cheat by reloading and throwing a grenade in the area I think they are). I ended up finding a completely different town I hadn't been to, after straying from tunnel to tunnel for a few hours, but in the process I  found a good number of oddities, so I am closer to leveling up than I was after doing a bunch of plot related quests.

I like the oddity system, I really like the character system. I am not wild about crafting: I feel like I sank some points into it and still can't make anything decent, and that I need every damn crafting skill in the game to make anything that I want. It also doesn't make any sense: e.g. to make throwing knives at first I needed 20 mechanics to use up the insanely heavy metal plates requires and 25 biology to apply cheap poisons. I raised my mechanics the 20 points (a serious investment) Now I keep finding metal plates that require 40 or 50 mechanics to make the same damn knives. I will need to invest 30 more points into mechanics before I can make my own knives again, or I could just buy the damn things (money is cheap and everywhere) How does this even make any sense?

I also (and here I realize I am being a bit unreasonable), think the weight and trade systems are trying too hard and turn out less than fun. I am always fiddling with my inventory because I have too much loot I cannot sell because the merchants only want to buy the stuff that I want to buy (and never guns, never goddamn guns. Even the weapon merchants will only buy three at a time). As a result I always have 15+ guns in my inventory, and have to keep throwing guns away to make room for other loot.

I also don't understand how you are supposed to play the game without copious rogue skills: lockpick and hacking are both mandatory for many quests and quite a few areas feel purposefully too difficult to deal with without some sneaking around. Things like tunneler murderers will kill me in one round if I don't start the combat on my terms. In early game, security bots and mines caused me a lot of frustration. Basically, reloading is necessary if you aren't built for X threat, but any threat is manageable and the autosaves are plentiful.

As a result my build is turning into pirate-ninja-zombie robot, even though I am trying to keep my main skills (sneak, throwing, mind control, psychokinesis) maximized. The feat system is especially good, since with my current feats I can toss of a pile of psychic damage without using AP and then finish everyone off with my throwing knives, getting ap back everytime I score a kill. Functionally this means I either win in the first round, or have to run away, but I still appreciate that my weird little build is viable for me.

I think next time I will be a pure psychokinetic adept monk with electric gloves and psychic punching. Punch everything for a million damage, use all other skill points to become master thief.

Liberal Crime Squad has an android port.