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wolfman101 posted:I take it back, rapier is highly dependent on map layout and it is pretty easy to get hosed and have all the hackable things be on the rear end ends of the maps and now you have to spend 5 power to break a single firewall. D: It is really more of a "extremely good chance to get owned in the first few level, but by the 5th you should be unstoppable" kind of deals. Yeah, if you get rapier, you generally want to pick up a cheap backup program pretty quick for the latter halves of missions. Or you could play by the seat of your pants and sprint endlessly. Like a true operator. 
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May 26, 2015 15:27
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Shock trap III. Yes, a shock trap would have been very helpful  I have a better idea as to what I want to have by the final mission now, but at the time I didn't even know that armor 6 was a possibility.
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May 26, 2015 15:50
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Is there anything in specific that makes guards destroy doors instead of just opening them? It shouldn't come up very often but I just had an agent killed that I think might have lived if the door had still been there.
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May 26, 2015 16:22
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In my experience, they bust doors down if they have first-hand knowledge of your agents being on the other side. Easiest example I can think of is closing a door to block their overwatch.
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May 26, 2015 16:25
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Dav posted:Yes, a shock trap would have been very helpful You can actually encounter said barrier guards in one of the corps on the last day, but it's entirely possible (especially with the incentivization of hitting missions in clusters) that you... won't.
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May 26, 2015 16:33
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dyzzy posted:In my experience, they bust doors down if they have first-hand knowledge of your agents being on the other side. Easiest example I can think of is closing a door to block their overwatch. That makes a lot of sense. I seem to remember a knocked out guard busting down a door after waking up when I was a couple of rooms away, but that doesn't necessarily rule out what you said. Or I could just be wrong. I guess I just have to stop getting caught.
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May 26, 2015 16:49
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Yeah I think there's probably more to it, my expert campaign I vaguely recall a mission where a guard was going SWAT through the entire level.
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May 26, 2015 16:51
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wolfman101 posted:I take it back, rapier is highly dependent on map layout and it is pretty easy to get hosed and have all the hackable things be on the rear end ends of the maps and now you have to spend 5 power to break a single firewall. D: It is really more of a "extremely good chance to get owned in the first few level, but by the 5th you should be unstoppable" kind of deals. Has anyone bought any of the Wrench programs? It seems like Wrench 2 or Wrench 3 probably gives you the best coverage (depending on if you want to use Wrench before or after the Alarm 2 firewall bump) but I haven't taken the dip yet just because Incognita slots are so precious.
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May 26, 2015 16:54
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Wrench 4 worked fairly well with Seed and Parasite, for me. I had to really think about how I was going to allocate my PWR and parasites, but it saw me through some pretty nasty situations. I did find myself cursing the lack of "I need this thing hacked immediately" versatility though.
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May 26, 2015 17:02
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TastyLemonDrops posted:The jump in difficulty from Beginner to Expert shouldn't really be apparent at all, unless you rely on rewinds. Expert to Expert Plus is basically Beginner to Expert Plus is what I'm saying. It doesn't seem too different if you learned the correct lessons from beginner, but if you took the wrong ones I personally found that Expert beat them out of me very quickly since I failed quite a few missions in a row my first few outings in Expert, despite never coming close to using my rewinds in beginner except in the final mission
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May 26, 2015 17:26
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RoboCicero posted:You definitely want something better than Rapier by OMNI due to how many devices start rebooting and how quickly the alarm levels rise. It's more or less for this reason that I switched over to Fusion/Lockpick and trying to pick up something like Hammer by the end. I think if you take rapier, you should be doing so with the intent to sell it immediately once you find pretty much anything else. I think Rapier has the highest value of all the starting programs, and with the exception of brimstone, you eventually want to replace them anyway. I like Wrench 3 a lot since a lot of firewalls will either start at 3 or upgrade to 3 after the security level raises enough. My ideal loadout is seed/lockpick 2.0/oracle/wisp/hammer, but I can live with wrench 3 instead of hammer.
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May 26, 2015 20:10
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I thought rapier was best at the end of the game when you have more dudes with more speed and better equipment. The early game is what sucks because you have to crawl across the map and you might not find all the safes before level 3.
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May 27, 2015 19:20
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The wording regarding stacking implants is confusing. I took it to mean that I could install select implants on top of each other and the benefits would stack instead of each implant needing to be installed in separate slots and stacking as a whole.
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May 27, 2015 20:17
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Finally completed Expert+ Ironman. I took someone here's advice and just went balls to the wall lethal for the final mission. Shalem with just a piercing scanner is brutally effective. The level tends to be made up of huge rooms with tons of cover, so it's perfect for camping somewhere and taking potshots at soldiers. I think I went through 3 charge packs on that mission.
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May 27, 2015 21:31
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wolfman101 posted:I thought rapier was best at the end of the game when you have more dudes with more speed and better equipment. The early game is what sucks because you have to crawl across the map and you might not find all the safes before level 3. I can understand that logic, but I don't think rapier is good enough beyond day 2 when 2 firewall becomes the norm. Stuff like lockpick 2.0 and parasite 2.0 are just more potent overall. If you can finish missions quickly and quietly, rapier is great. But when poo poo goes wrong, it sucks having to use a 4-7 power rapier. If you have another firewall cracking program it's fine to keep rapier around, but I'd rather have the 300 credits and another program slot.
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May 28, 2015 00:28
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Just won a Robin Hood playthrough (never leave an agent behind, never cause anyone to die through any means for any reason) on Expert difficulty, using Banks & Xu. Money was never an issue - those two, with a SLAM unit installed in Banks, were just making it rain all day everyday. Halfway through, I started getting worried about my lack of combat ability, and hit a detention centre. It contained Internationale  Picking up Taurus, Ping, and a cloaking rig III let me bullshit furiously through the final mission and win without a single agent even being KOed at any point during the game, aside from Xu getting new ports installed so I could load him up with melee augs and turn him into Professor Puncheverything Intosubmission. He spent the entire final mission setting shock traps, turning the team invisible, punching robots into scrap, and punching guards into dreamland. 
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May 28, 2015 04:31
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Rapier is pretty good if you get an early ap on hack implant or a bunch of stims but five missions where you hack everything on level 0 isn't worth the one mission where it goes from 2 to 3 on you and ruins everything.
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May 28, 2015 04:38
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I'm in the last mission of the beginner/tutorial campaign, and I'm a little lost as to what I'm supposed to do: I brought Monst3r to the giant blast door + terminal, he did the several-turn long hacking thing, Incognita starting writing a new program, and the objectives now read "Access the Corporate Mainframe" and "Bring Monst3r to the final security console". Is there another story console somewhere in the level that I'm missing? The only unexplored room is on the opposite end of the level, and I really don't want to make the trip now that security is liberally peeing omni elites at me.
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May 28, 2015 05:33
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Omi no Kami posted:I'm in the last mission of the beginner/tutorial campaign, and I'm a little lost as to what I'm supposed to do: I brought Monst3r to the giant blast door + terminal, he did the several-turn long hacking thing, Incognita starting writing a new program, and the objectives now read "Access the Corporate Mainframe" and "Bring Monst3r to the final security console". Is there another story console somewhere in the level that I'm missing? The only unexplored room is on the opposite end of the level, and I really don't want to make the trip now that security is liberally peeing omni elites at me. Could it be that the final console is in that specific area?  EDIT: It's a room with a giant set of vault doors.
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May 28, 2015 05:41
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Hmm, this is the right room, right? After Monst3r finishes the hack, what object am I supposed to interact with? I don't get any options putting him next to the mainframe or the door.
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May 28, 2015 05:52
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Omi no Kami posted:Hmm, this is the right room, right? That is decidedly not the room at all. It is a room with a huge set of sliding vault doors. If nothing looks like it, it might very well be in that one room you haven't explored.
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May 28, 2015 05:53
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Ooh okay, that's reassuring- the orange light thingie looks vaguely like a bank vault to me, so I'd been under the impression that it was blast/vault doors.
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May 28, 2015 05:56
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Omi no Kami posted:Ooh okay, that's reassuring- the orange light thingie looks vaguely like a bank vault to me, so I'd been under the impression that it was blast/vault doors. Try rotating the map to make sure you haven't missed it in another room. It should have a console right in front of it.
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May 28, 2015 05:58
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I found it, it was indeed on the other end of the complex... I *almost* finished, but Central got shot one move from the door
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May 28, 2015 06:28
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 but this game
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May 28, 2015 14:18
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Omi no Kami posted:I found it, it was indeed on the other end of the complex... I *almost* finished, but Central got shot one move from the door Never surrender! If Central's out of commission, the nano-fab might still have a Med-Gel you can use to get her back up. --- Sank in the home stretch my first run on Experienced. drat if it wasn't a rush, though. I was badly underequipped (note to self: three neural stunners, a D.A.R.T., and two paralysers do not constitute an acceptable amount of equipment for the final mission) but wow, nearly, nearly made it! Out of agents, and Monster making a desperate run to an incapacitated Central with the codes in mind. Alas, a guard caught Monster out in the open with no rewinds left. Game over. But what a trip, even with practically nothing to work with and a mountain of guards swarming over everything. Finished a run on Beginner for the practice, and I think if anything my biggest error was being overly tase-happy - bad habits from less finely tuned stealth games where the optimal strategy is to silently incapacitate every guard along the way, which usually meant either being forced to scram out when I found the exit with an increasing pile of alerted guards charging towards my position or worse. Best of all, it's still possible to escape if you make the right moves, even with a mountain of guards bearing down on you and your spies stranded on opposite corners of the map and the exit on a third - something very rare for stealth games. Pingcode fucked around with this message at 15:26 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 14:58
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Boom, finished Expert. Last mission was fairly easy. Lots of guards but no running around required and with a bit of patience I could avoid all contact until Monster was hacking. Dropped a few fools that were getting close and that was that. Start was with Xu and Banks, and I picked up Decker + a cloaking kit on the way. Incognita started with Fusion and Parasite, picked up Ping plus a few more firewall hacking tools. No daemon killing programs even though I was looking for them. I like Banks, unlocking doors is cool. Xu, I dunno. His door thing is nice, but very circumstantial. I think I'll try Expert again but with different agents. Expert Plus looks scary... General tip for Expert: do your absolute best to stay undetected. Better to waste a few turns waiting than to alert someone or something.
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May 28, 2015 15:05
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I finished an experienced run with xu, sharp, and picked up internationale. xu is crazy with the ability to disable shields, he was already amazing with the ability to clear safes and now he's a tier above everyone else, AND he gets a shock trap? Maybe he wouldn't be worth taking if you were going seed + datablast, MAYBE. I also took fusion/parasite and got wisp, ping, and wrench but am really disliking parasite at this point. +1 firewall alarm, daemon, and especially no ability to disable additional cameras before they turn on and see me means I sit around for my thumb up my bum for a turn, sometimes more, multiple times per level. Maybe it's just my speed playstyle; I tend to upgrade to 2 str for drag and then to 4 speed ASAP. the last level was silly though; I was rolling in money due to getting a SLAM and sharp was KOing people for 6 turns. I used xu to lure and disable 3 8-shielded people, then just sat on everyone in the entire level, and finished it before alarm level 4. Was able to shock trap the one guard who came in to investigate monst3r. It was the cleanest run I had, including beginner. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 16:01 on May 28, 2015 |
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May 28, 2015 15:58
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uXs posted:Xu, I dunno. His door thing is nice, but very circumstantial. It stops being circumstantial when you realize that it turns every door into an automatic KO on any one guard in the vicinity. If it's in a guard's view, Xu can open and close it from the other side, then trap it. If it's not, but the guard is within earshot, Xu can sprint around behind it to make noise and then trap it. If a guard sees Xu but he's able to escape, he can just slink through the nearest available door and trap it. The shock trap automatically chumps even OMNI guards, so it's insanely powerful if you use it creatively. For instance, when Monst3r was doing his hack in the final mission, I had Xu plant a shock trap on the door and hang around nearby, just in case. That shock trap, coupled with Xu's trapdoor spider shenanigans and another trap on the way out, allowed both of them to link arms and skip cheerfully out of there over a pile of unconscious guards (two of which were shielded OMNI dudes) without a care in the world. Couple all that with Xu's ability to headbutt open safes and punch camera drones in the face to permanently destroy them, and you have a preposterously good agent. Never underestimate Xu!
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May 28, 2015 16:26
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One thing i noticed stik, this is kind of annoying maybe you could fix it, is that the end-level report doesn't consider safes cracked by xu (and maybe ecm?) to be 'hacked'. I sort of use the report as a 'did I miss any safes on this level' but you could loot a safe and it still shows up as grey if you blow the lock instead of hacking it.
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May 28, 2015 17:10
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Angry Diplomat posted:It stops being circumstantial when you realize that it turns every door into an automatic KO on any one guard in the vicinity. If it's in a guard's view, Xu can open and close it from the other side, then trap it. If it's not, but the guard is within earshot, Xu can sprint around behind it to make noise and then trap it. If a guard sees Xu but he's able to escape, he can just slink through the nearest available door and trap it. The shock trap automatically chumps even OMNI guards, so it's insanely powerful if you use it creatively. For instance, when Monst3r was doing his hack in the final mission, I had Xu plant a shock trap on the door and hang around nearby, just in case. That shock trap, coupled with Xu's trapdoor spider shenanigans and another trap on the way out, allowed both of them to link arms and skip cheerfully out of there over a pile of unconscious guards (two of which were shielded OMNI dudes) without a care in the world. Right, zapping omni guards with the shock trap regardless of armor level is great, had figured that out for myself too. I'm far less clear on what his other ability can do though. I tried using it on all sorts of poo poo but it didn't seem to do that much. Tried it on drones but they're just disabled for one turn. It destroys camera drones outright? Does the game tell you that in any way or are you supposed to figure that out for yourself? And what's this about safes? I thought they would just be disabled for a turn, and not, like, opened.
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May 28, 2015 17:29
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Camera drones are listed as EMP Vulnerable if you mouse over them.
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May 28, 2015 17:59
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Xu's ability basically disables a device for one turn -- this can be nice for drones since you can disable them and then pin them without hacking through 3 firewalls. You can kind of think of it as cutting off power to a device, so with safes this means the electronic lock just pops open. This is doubly great because you can bypass daemons this way. Being able to disable heart monitors and power supplies is more marginal, but really useful in the right circumstances. All this Xu talk makes me wish that Decker's implant was more useful. He's great if you pick him up first thing because he comes in with a cloaking rig, but if you rescue him from a detention center you get the ability to passively identify daemons in devices that he parks himself next to 
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May 28, 2015 18:14
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Cool, thanks for the info. And to think that I got through Expert without knowing all that, I'm so MLG Pro.
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May 28, 2015 18:59
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RoboCicero posted:Xu's ability basically disables a device for one turn -- this can be nice for drones since you can disable them and then pin them without hacking through 3 firewalls You can pin drones?!  I don't know what made me think you couldn't, to be honest, but this changes everything.
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May 28, 2015 19:34
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Keksen posted:You can pin drones?! Yes, while they are rebooting. You can't drag them though, so it's a good idea to move them somewhere safe while you have them hacked.
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May 28, 2015 19:36
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RoboCicero posted:All this Xu talk makes me wish that Decker's implant was more useful. He's great if you pick him up first thing because he comes in with a cloaking rig, but if you rescue him from a detention center you get the ability to passively identify daemons in devices that he parks himself next to I don't know why he was changed from the beta. If I remember right his implant used to just straight up give him +1AP, which was quite good (if a little bland) and made him a worthwhile choice if you just wanted an all-around reliable agent.
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May 28, 2015 19:42
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He comes with +1 speed built in....
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May 28, 2015 20:03
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Sounds like they just converted the old starting augment to a +1 speed at the start. I think having him start with a level in speed is more elegant since having augs that just duplicate stats is kind of boring. His daemon scanning isn't amazing, for sure, but he's not worse off compared to his old self. Plus you don't always have a daemon database handy every time.
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May 28, 2015 20:10
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I'm on Day 6 in Endless now, still with a team of four agents, and I'm pretty sure I'm just going to stick to Sankaku and KEO levels from here on in. KEO gives you all those lovely turrets to thin out the guards with, and Sankaku tends to be lightly staffed with drones that I can easily deal with thanks to my Flurry Guns. (Oh I love those things, and giving them to Nika is just fantastic.) Meanwhile, I get to avoid FTM's obnoxious scanner and never having to deal with one of Plastech's stupid loving Modded Mikis again is an added bonus. (Though now that I have so many lethal weapons...)
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May 28, 2015 20:19
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