toasterwarrior posted:

3) After an arduous storyline where I stole Excalibur, the loving thing is still randomly setting poo poo on fire in my base. I hope it's a bug.

LLSix posted:

The rate at which gold comes in is incredibly slow. Insanely so compared to basic expenditures. Adding just two new radio consoles takes 10-15 minutes of gold generation even with all of Africa and a few other areas scouted. And since gold generations is surprisingly micro heavy, that's pretty annoying.

Gold generation mechanics are much, much less fun than in the original. In the original game, you had a hard limit of 100 minions. To get gold, you had to park some of those minions on the world stage. So there was always a tension between making money or protecting your base or running other schemes even before accounting for heat. If you needed regular gold infusions, you could park a small group of minions with some social minions to cancel out the heat they generated more or less indefinitely. But that took a significant portion of your minions. Or you could flood an area with minions for a quick cash grab, but that generated a lot of heat which meant large groups of dangerous good guys. Or you could send out several small groups and get a small amount of cash and a smaller number of weaker good guy groups showing up.

In this game, heat doesn't seem to matter so far (played through the tutorial to the first henchman so far). So I always just mash the quick gold grab mission, the long gold grab mission, and then the fast heat reducer if the game lets me cycle the schemes fast enough. Sometimes the chopper is slow or it takes ages to bring up new schemes and the area goes into lockdown instead, which is also fine. Lockdown just means the heat goes down for free and faster than my minions can do it. There's no decision making. No tension. Just endless busywork cycling every scouted region. The number of minions a scheme takes is meaningless. Sure they're "gone forever" but you get more back for free so who cares.

toasterwarrior posted:

There's a couple of things I'm thinking now that I'm like 12 hours in:

1) gently caress a casino, poo poo's useless. Yeah, investigators will keep coming but it definitely feels like as long as they never leave (because they're dead) then it won't matter, let 'em come. I can put armories and incinerators right at the entrance of the actual lair, watch my boys and gals terminate anyone that walks in extremely quickly, then burn their corpses right quick; why bother with valets and having to plan out a casino layout/trap corridor that stops working when higher level agents get deployed?

2) I've went wide, covering the world in level 1 networks while using the long-term money gain schemes to keep in the green. Apart from being a micromanagement nightmare, I'm told that level 2 networks in the right places are way better for cash than a slow trickle and having to watch the world map like a hawk? Maybe I should retool things.

3) After an arduous storyline where I stole Excalibur, the loving thing is still randomly setting poo poo on fire in my base. I hope it's a bug.

Captain Oblivious posted:

Stop relying on going wide with level 1 networks. Use like 2 level 2 networks and you will print more money than you need for the vast majority of the early and mid game.

Seriously can we just put STOP GOING WIDE in the OP. This keeps having to be said


In Southern SMASH and eastern ANVIL I have two level two networks printing 300k/hour each. Stop going wide.

skeleton warrior posted:

Going wide is actually fine, just don’t do missions.

Each level 1 network generates $240 a minute, and gains 1 heat per minute, so a level one syndicate in an ANVIL territory (where heat reduction is 50% off) will generate over 7K an hour (per area, so 35K total until Symmetry sits in one) and you have to hit the “reduce heat” mission one time. Other areas are less lucrative, but still pay off, and it’s only asking for one click an hour.

The tech for reducing heat generation and for video screens that reduce heat should improve this, but I never timed it out to see how it changed the math.

If you invest in an area to make it level 2, you should also invest in making every area in that region open, if not level 2. Super Agents, once active, seem only to bounce between areas you’ve started a syndicate in. Whenever I wake up Olga with my one HAMMER base, she just stays parked there until I build another base somewhere in HAMMER, so if you’re going to be working in an area, you should open them all up to get the super agent to actually rotate more.

But running missions in every area you have is tedious and not productive.

Wipfmetz posted:

I've unlocked socialites yesterday. They don't seem to man any items. So, how do I use them? Do they require me to tag agends for distraction?

Captain Oblivious posted:

Stop relying on going wide with level 1 networks. Use like 2 level 2 networks and you will print more money than you need for the vast majority of the early and mid game.

Seriously can we just put STOP GOING WIDE in the OP. This keeps having to be said


In Southern SMASH and eastern ANVIL I have two level two networks printing 300k/hour each. Stop going wide.

Danaru posted:

Man I wish they were a little more forthcoming with...info

quote:

General
- Agents of "Average" quality and below will no longer fight back when being distracted and escorted out of the Lair. The chance for higher quality Agents to fight back has been reduced.
- The Spotting Power bonus for minions on duty at Guard Posts has been improved.
- Killing characters as soon as they disembark from the Cruise Ship will no longer prevent other characters from disembarking.

Side Stories
- Crime Lords dying outside of combat will no longer block progression.
- Gas clouds of all types, including those seen in the Sword in the Stone Side story, will correctly disperse on completion of the Side Story.

Zadda posted:

Anyone got a tip where I can find the dog statue and the John Steele statue? I got the unlock codes for them via mail but can't find them ingame, checked the loot tab and they are not there. Neither is horse or whatever the pre-order bonus was it seems.

MonsterEnvy posted:

(Patch Nodes)

Wipfmetz posted:

Cool patch, assuming it works as described. I was near scrapping the whole cover area, because so far it has just been a moneysink for me.

Banemaster posted:

After playing Evil Genius 1 as well, some notable differences:

• EG1's helicopter is much slower, as it waits for every minion assigned to world map to board before leaving at all.
  
• In EG1 gold is only consumed on building things, easing research and recruiting minions fast. This allowed player to hunker down to their base to wait for heat to go down without fear of running out of money. In comparison EG2's heat is constantly increasing and / or gold always being drained by salaries.
  
• Research feels much more interesting in EG1, as scientists go around analysing objects and then allowing player select what science equipment to utilize to which object. Leads into player needing to put down every object in case of it is needed for research, though.
  
• Casinos and hotels feel very pointless in EG1.
  
• Lack of auto tagging hurts badly in EG1.
  
• Super Agents moving around in World Map without any announcement and destroying stealing operations is annoying as heck.
  
• Sending out minions to Acts of Infamy is annoying, as player can't see required minions while selecting minions. Both screens are wacky, as they can't fit all the minions in them. Adjusting the count up and down is done on different parts of screen.
  
• EG1's minion screen feels better, as all minion types' counts and caps are all shown in single screen.
  
• Training minions in EG1 feels worse, as it feels slow, pyramid is high and there is always risk of losing the last minion of that type, needing to kidnap people again.
  
• Those kidnapping missions cluttering world map in EG1 is annoying.
  

tl;dr: Parts of EG1 have more soul but some parts are annoyingly clunky. Same is also true for EG2.

Big Ink posted:

It pays for itself if you set everything to "Scam tourists," at least money wise. And setting up a maze at least buys some time for either deception or muscle to deal with the problem. That is until you get slot machines, then the distraction and cash output become somewhat worthwhile.

cumshitter posted:

The one thing I wish they would bring back form the first game is the ability to increase the rate that yellow jumpsuit minions join. In the first game you had a slider where it was $0 for 1 minion per minute, and you could slide it up to something ridiculous like $10,000 for a minion every 5 seconds or something. I believe they also came in through the stockpile they grab purchased items from rather than the helicopter.

But having to buy minions in bulk, and having to wait for them to arrive on the helicopter, feels like a real choke point for the game. Every scheme costs yellow minions and you should be able to increase the flow at which they come into your base rather than set bulk purchases.

Tenebrais posted:

Honestly I think objects with options like that should make default settings one of the explicit options. So your roulette tables etc give you an explicit choice between "distract agents" and "scam tourists", your security desks give you a choice between "workers" and "muscle", and so on.

skeleton warrior posted:

Agreed, but there's at least some slight mitigation - there's a mission that shows up in PATRIOT territory semi-regularly where you can buy 10 workers for a few thousand bucks and 5 intel or so. It shows up as a yellow mission so it's easy to miss for the regular stealing missions.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Danaru posted:

I didnt realize brainwashing soldiers has them start off as guards, do saboteurs and rogues become advanced minions as well?

gimme the GOD drat candy posted:

i hadn't realized that the identical lines for all geniuses even extended to emma during the kill steele quest line. foxworthy was emma's secretary! even if emma doesn't remember her secretary, there's no reason why foxworthy wouldn't remember her.

Carcer posted:

This is a really good mission and it shows up regularly. You can really rebuild your base worker count quickly with it.

Saint Freak posted:

" Interesting word, 'research'... " - Zalika, actual expert in researching, 2021