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Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Blacktoll posted:

I'm utterly stunned that anyone could gleam fun out of this disappointing game. I'm still shocked that in a turn based game they opted for WASD in lieu of clicking around with a mouse for movement / everything.


if they used mouseclick for movement the game would break down sobbing and lock up the first time it tried to take a tight corner around stairs. Better for immersion to make the player the one who does that.

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ekuNNN
Nov 27, 2004

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Promontory posted:

That's the feeling I got. It would be nice if the game would tell you more about the mission at first. "You'll have to take down that ogre" was a nasty surprise, it flattened one of my heroes after some bad rolls. I tried to find an alternative way into the garrison (I wish the map was more useful) but the only way to go was to brave the overwatch of 3-4 mercs. All of my guys took wounds, but managed to get inside. Then a demon showed up :v:

I might have been able to finish the mission, but I lost my will to go on once I saw a merc spawn in as a "reinforcement" in a cellar I had just cleared. Also I would've had to beat up another demon in an even smaller space.

e: I picked the option to immediately quit the mission when loading it. The game went and gave permanent wounds to characters who hadn't even been knocked out. :negative:

Yeah. to quit a story mission that's clearly going wrong you have to kill off your special character that's not allowed to die, otherwise it puts everyone out of action.

And I think the reinforcement mechanic of the story missions is the thing I hate the most. It feels like youre being punished for doing well.

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
I did the second human mission and ended up with 30+ kills, killed both magisters, the mutants, the demon, got all the objectives except forgot to fill the third flask, and had morale defeat while running the second flask back to the cart.

barkbell
Apr 14, 2006

woof
ya this game is poo poo

Promontory
Apr 6, 2011
I want to like this game, but it's hard. After learning that the story missions are traps, I've been doing the random ones instead. It's getting a bit boring: the maps look similar and everything is so very grey, even though there are neat details (I liked the eyes following your guys). It's still hard to tell exactly how far my guys can go in a turn. Collecting rocks gets annoying, especially when you put useful items on your guys and they take up space. The battles are still pretty much the same, surround one guy to get as many attacks on him as possible and hope your guys hit. Maybe I should try to play the rats, since they seem very mobile?

e: I tried them out. Had fun running a fighting retreat against sisters, shooting them and running away. Then I had my leader rat stand on top of a ramp, trying to make sure others can run past him while he overwatches. No rat can get past him. Two promising rats, gone :(

Promontory fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jan 8, 2016

Tiler Kiwi
Feb 26, 2011
i remember making an effortpost on their steam feedback forums bitching about their love of purplish grey monotony for scenery. and love of fog.

I made a few effort posts about the game. The one time I managed to get a point across and acknowledged was when dodge and parry did the exact same thing, which meant giving a choice between them was completely banal when a player would just go with the better %. I had to reiterate that point twice before I got a merely evasive and cagey reply instead of a banal dismissive one.

e: other things I remembered kvetching about: morale, rout tests, the interface, obfuscated math, skills, armour, weapons, wounds, static nature of combat

Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jan 8, 2016

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe
Did they change much with Dodge/Parry? As someone who only played the released game, I thought the difference between the two worked quite well.

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
The difference is the Ai will prioritize anything, literally anything, above attacking someone in parry stance. So that means they're different!

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
People on their forums talk a lot about paying for new faction dlc. scumbag mordheim devs did them one better and release individual units as dlc

quote:

Today we are proud to release the 3rd patch (v1.1.4.8) for Mordheim: City of the Damned. We are also releasing 2 new exclusive Hired Swords: the Smuggler and the Globadier, available as DLC in the Steam Store!

Party In My Diapee
Jan 24, 2014
Well, if they can still get anyone to buy more crap from them at this point they deserve the money.

Deadmeat5150
Nov 21, 2005

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLAN
I cant believe this poo poo. Individual units as paid dlc? These fuckers...

Ratzap
Jun 9, 2012

Let no pie go wasted
Soiled Meat

Deadmeat5150 posted:

I cant believe this poo poo. Individual units as paid dlc? These fuckers...

Isn't it very much the Games Workshop way though?

always be closing
Jul 16, 2005

Ratzap posted:

Isn't it very much the Games Workshop way though?

Lol good point.

Safety Factor
Oct 31, 2009




Grimey Drawer
It's $3 for both. Whatever. :shrug: I don't play this anymore so I won't be getting the DLC, but I just don't see it as something to get worked up over.

Deadmeat5150
Nov 21, 2005

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLAN
I only play this now when my buddy is on and we fight each other.

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe

Safety Factor posted:

It's $3 for both. Whatever. :shrug: I don't play this anymore so I won't be getting the DLC, but I just don't see it as something to get worked up over.

Yeah, they're cheap enough that I might get one if I was to play again. Still, new heroes isn't really what the game was missing, a new henchman unit for each faction would have been a bit more interesting imho, since each faction only has 2 and you usually end up taking 5 henchmen into each battle.

Promontory
Apr 6, 2011
I took a long break from playing, but tried again on the past few days. The loading times have become a lot better, but not much else has changed. Now that XCOM2 is out, watching clips of it makes me jealous of how much easier it is to move your guys around in it. :v:

Kokoro Wish
Jul 23, 2007

Post? What post? Oh wow.
I had nothing to do with THAT.
And here's the game being given a very positive light by Extra Credits' Games You May Not Have Tried series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgt0MhCWZmE&t=178s

Relatively glowing from a bunch of games designers.

Lassitude
Oct 21, 2003

I think the game is pretty good. My biggest gripe are how deployment/spawning works. Not just because it's awful console poo poo to choose where to put your guys, but because spawning adjacent to enemies and getting rushed by skaven in turn 1 and losing multiple guys before I can move more than a single unit it is pretty poo poo. But otherwise it's pretty neat. Wish there were bigger differences between the gear/warbands though.

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
manual deployment and the overhead map were both super late forum whiner additions. Honestly just being able to guarantee a buddy system would be good enough.

ANGRYGREEK
May 3, 2007

If you meet the Storm Spirit on the lane, gank him.

Lassitude posted:

I think the game is pretty good. My biggest gripe are how deployment/spawning works. Not just because it's awful console poo poo to choose where to put your guys, but because spawning adjacent to enemies and getting rushed by skaven in turn 1 and losing multiple guys before I can move more than a single unit it is pretty poo poo. But otherwise it's pretty neat. Wish there were bigger differences between the gear/warbands though.

This just happened yesterday, map looked loving grim after losing two guys right from the start. I lucked out with the AI, their rogre and a couple of the normal rats (?) got stuck at crucial times, so I could pull out a win. I usually try to choose missions with a safe start (pretty much anything without being scattered), but this time I forgot.

Other than those problems, the game is kinda fun. Although I wish there was more variety in maps, equipment and classes (without DLC, you fuckers).

ANGRYGREEK fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Mar 18, 2016

Lassitude
Oct 21, 2003

The lack of real variety between warbands, gear, units, etc. is my #2 gripe. Way too much overlap. I have trouble distinguishing the warbands in terms of playstyle. With my skaven I gravitate toward light armor and stuff just because that seems to fit them, but otherwise the only thing is the different spells, really. Disappointing stuff.

Tiler Kiwi
Feb 26, 2011
I played this again a bit; I haven't played since before they added deployment.

Deployment actually helps a lot in alleviating this games most stupid moments/mechanics, since you're able to kind of set up a cohesive battle plan with your dudes (allowing you to actually try to give them purposes instead of trying to do that and watching them be put in really lovely positions that they can't accomplish poo poo from) and avoids some of the most egregious fuckery, although some mission deployment types are still bullshit; the one where both warbands deploy in 3 teams is really awful, since you wind up getting a dude piled on and there's really nothing you can do to stop from getting them rocked. The control interface for deploying is garbage.

I think the biggest thing that keeps coming up, in terms of my thoughts on why this game is so mediocre, is the real lack of counterplay.

First, you never really know what you're up against, or the lay of the land you're going to be fighting in, so your only real option with your team is to tailor it to be as good in all situations as possible so when you stumble into a fight, you'll probably win. That means a lot of the niche skills are pretty much worthless since they require particular situations to be useful and you're left mostly in the dark in how impactful they really are. Jaw Strike, for instance, requires you to get a particular dude in melee range with a spellcaster to give them a higher chance of a misfire; you don't know really if this is going to really do anything for you even if it all works out perfectly and there's a multitude of situations where it probably won't, and you're also sacrificing skill points for this niche skill when you could get something like "parry/dodge 5% better in all situations" which is still "eh" but it at least has more obvious benefit.

But wait, you say, if you go very parry heavy, don't you stand the risk of the enemy going anti-parry? Well, no, because you can't tell how enemies are built until you're actually already hitting them, and you can't see their skills very easily either, so trying to counter setups requires you to set up your dudes ahead of time for the express purpose of countering a particular style, which you don't know the enemy will employ, and even if they do employ it, doesn't actually counter them that much. Countering parry, for instance, requires taking skills that reduce it, and taking weapons that reduce it, while the parry heavy foe is going to be using weapons that are better at actually killing you, and losing 20% of 65% parry is going to bother them a lot less than someone losing 20% of 25% parry anyways. Its a lot of assumptions and tinkering and it doesn't really accomplish what you want, compared to just making your guys generally better in all situations anyways. This sort of dumb waste-of-time bullshit permeates so many skills and systems in the game. Like you can build a guy based around reducing enemy initiative, and... they'll get the poo poo beaten out of them by the enemy who has lower initiative anyways but is better at fighting. You can make a guy who can tank via taunting and some other skills... and they'll get the poo poo beaten out of them since they wasted their skills on their weird niche role instead of taking skills that make them fight better. Combat is just such a straightforward HP grind that anything that doesn't make your foes HP go down faster compared to yours is irrelevant, and there's really no sort of room for some tactical coups or misplays aside from "hit single foe with a lot of my guys", which is still just playing into the damage race combat, rather than really adding depth to it.

That's really the problem with the design mentality they took with this game, with all its granular stat gains and fiddly skills that everyone shares. It results in a very flat, simple system with a strong focus on generalist minmaxing. They really, really should have cribbed more notes from the XCOM remakes, where they eschewed the RPG stat poo poo and generalist dudes in favor of fewer, more impactful skills and clearly defined roles; it ends up creating a lot more room for experimentation and composition. XCOM also gives a bit more of a "breather" between encountering enemies and actually engaging them, in that the UI promotes being able to look at foes and see their capabilities, and you have a lot more ability to maneuver and come up with a plan or action. It also had its cover system, with flanking and such, that allowed such maneuvering to matter, had skills and abilities that added power beyond "does more damage on average", a damage/HP system that allowed less predictable outcomes based around player action rather than HP grinding combat that is so predictable and inflexible in outcome you could write an algorithm to predict the winner, weapons and characters that had roles so dudes were situationally powerful rather than just generally powerful, and encouraged thinking of a team as a sum of its parts rather than just individually powerful dudes. Mordheim, in contrast, usually winds up in a situation where an enemy appears, you have no clue what they can do or how to play against it aside from the most broad strokes (with "surround and kill it" being the solution 99 times out of 100), and they often just charge and start hitting a guy which really undermines much in terms of "plan of attack". The initiative system really sucks in this regard, since you often just have to make do with whatever guy you have on hand since coordination is a pain and you can't really wait for a guy to set up things or act in a particular role.

words words words words words.

Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Mar 20, 2016

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe
I agree, and I'd also like to point out just how many of the skills you can add to your characters are either boring, pointless or both. Here's all the skills in the game, and here's my appraisal of 10 of them, along with easy ways to fix them

  • Passive: When Fleeing, increases Melee Resistance by 15%.- 0/5 - If you're fleeing, chances are that you're already dead, 15% isn't gonna make any difference, the skill should make you flat out immune to the damage.
  • Active: Once per turn, restores 1 Offense Point but removes 30 Wounds at the beginning of the next turn. This loss can render the target out of Action. - 1/5 - Sacrificing a moderate amount of health for half the action points needed for a single attack is a lovely deal. It should sacrifice 50% of your max health for a complete refill of all your offense points.
  • Passive: Increases the chance to hit during an Ambush attack by 10%. - 1/5 - Even if ambushes weren't glitchy and unreliable, 10% isn't enough to make a real difference. I'd make it a guaranteed hit.
  • Passive: Reduced the Heavy Armor movement penalty by 1 meter. - 3/5 - It's boring, but it's actually pretty useful, since heavy armor users are slow as hell.
  • Passive: Increases the Critical hit chance of Charge attacks by 10%. - 1/5 - Chances are a character will only do 1 or 2 charge attacks per battle, I'd make it a guaranteed critical.
  • Passive: Increases the chance to pass Climb, Leap, and Jump Down tests by 15%. - 2/5 - Boring, but it does the job I guess. I'd up it to 25%.
  • Passive: Increases Dodge chance by 10% - 2/5 - Only useful if you're really focusing on dodge, and even then it's too low. I'd up it to 20%.
  • Passive: Increases the range of Ambush attacks by 3 meters. - 2/5 - Actually sort of useful, this ability means you should always be able to ambush a unit before it gets into range to charge you. Ambush is still glitchy and unreliable though.
  • Passive: Increases the range of Charge attacks by 3 meters. - 2/5 - Counters the above, so useful-ish as well I guess?
  • Active: Increases Ranged Resistance by 20% but reduces movement range by 2 meters. Lasts 1 turn. - 0/5 - You spend offense points and movepoints for a small chance to dodge ranged attacks which will probably do gently caress all damage even if they do hit you. JFC I have no idea how to fix this, make it a mode you can toggle on and off for free maybe?

I'm not cherry picking bad skills here, these are the first 10 in the list. In fact, I have to go 2/3s of the way down the list to find a genuinely good skill at all (Sidestep, which doubles your dodge attempts). They need skills which open up new gameplay options and change the way you can use a character, but most of the skills are just fiddling with numbers. The few skills they have which genuinely do add new options all seem to have been nerfed to the degree that they barely seem to be useful at all, for example:

Overpower - 4 OP - A melee attack that deals regular damage but with a -40% chance to hit. If hit, the target is stunned unless they pass a Stun Resistance test.

So, I'll probably miss, and even if I don't, there's a good chance the target will resist the attack, also, it costs twice as many OP as a normal attack. This is one of the most expensive skills you can get as well.

It's a shame, because you can see some of the ideas are good, they just seem to have been crippled by a overly conservative approach that seems so terrified of adding overpowered skills and abilities that all the fun has been drained out of them.

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Heavy armory mastery is important because the second upgrade removes the movement penalty entirely and long charge is important because the Ai has like a half meter ambush advantage over you so it makes it possible to charge an ambusher

Tiler Kiwi
Feb 26, 2011
eh, I haven't picked it up. I don't like going for mastery skills since they tend to cost too much and offer fairly diminished returns on the investment. the only exceptions are for attack skills since you want to squeeze value out of your attacks, but for passives its probably better to go broad.

I've been playing skaven, and I totally agree that the skills just sucking is one of the biggest detriments to the game. Not only are they just number fuckery rather than offering new choices and options, but when I'm picking a skill, I find myself aggressively hunting just for something that doesn't suck. Most active skills are hot goddamn garbage (the entire alertness tree is worthless. Not just niche or not worth it whatever, just pure worthless). It also doesn't help that the training time/cost mechanic is borked in that the higher tier skills are not really much better than the lower tier ones, which makes you gravitate towards the cheaper ones which just further trashes on variety (not to mention lessens the pain when the character gets some -OP injury and becomes totally worthless). In contrast to listing all the bad skills, here's the skills I actually bother getting, because im stuck in a place and im bored.

quote:

Mighty Charge - Charges a target at normal range +4 meters. The Charge has a -30% chance to hit, deals +75% damage, and bypasses 10% of the target's Parry chance.. Charges trade 1OP for 50% damage and less chance to hit, so they're generally not worth doing unless you're getting past an ambush or you got an extra OP to burn. This makes charges actually worth it overall, provided you have other skills and a high enough melee ability that make it so you can actually loving hit. Worth upgrading. I've got a rat focused on charges and he typically hits at 85% with it. Its worth getting even if you're not focusing on charging, imo, just to take advantage of stunned foes or if you've got some means to trash their melee resist (generally not since those skills don't do much).

Sidestep - Take a stance that ends the current turn. The stance allows 2 attempts to Dodge incoming melee attacks. Yeah pretty obvious choice for a dodge focused dude. I don't bother upgrading it since you generally don't get attacked that much.

Strider - Increases the Hit chance of Charge attacks by 10%. Charge build.

Strong Blow - A melee attack that deals +50% damage. Target has a -20% chance to Parry this attack. Trading 1OP for 50% damage is a wash, but it lets you use OP you'd otherwise miss out on using, especially for a dual wielding / 2H weapon dude. Not worth upgrading because oh boy you get more parry chance removal for 4 skill points and a billion gold big loving whoop. Still, this is probably the best skill in the game, overall, since its not that expensive, is part of the strength skill tree and strength is a good stat to level, and is basically required on a hero that wants to use a 2H/DW setup. Not that useful on henchmen since they sit at 4OP forever so they can really only use 1H stuff without winding up with excess OP they can't use at all.

Unstoppable -Increases Stun Resistance by 15%. getting stunned is a death sentence, this is a pretty easy to access skill that is low cost enough to be worth picking up. Getting the -10% chance to get crit in the first place is probably more useful but it costs more and requires 9 toughness to get, which I don't generally do because toughness isn't really that great. There's also Force of Will which is objectively better at 20%/45% resist but requires 9/15 leadership which I generally don't skill up compared to Intelligence, which gives stun resist anyways. Leadership doesn't have very good skills, either.

Knowledge: Tactics - Increases Dodge and Parry chance by 5%. Terminally uninteresting but stacking bonuses on dodge/parry is really the best thing you've got for damage avoidance. Worth upgrading since it bumps up the value to 15% for 4 points, which means it is one of the few upgrades that doesn't have diminishing returns! crazy, I'm guessing thats an oversight.

Introspection -Once per turn, converts 3 Strategy Points into 1 Offense Point. Cannot exceed maximum Strategy Points. Can only be used while not engaged. Somewhat useful for a back line magician. Might be worth upgrading to get 2OP instead of 1, but idk magicians have a lot of things to put skill points into that are probably more worth it. Might be useful as part of some disengage/introspection build, perhaps combined with charges, but I'd have to sit down and do math to figure out if its even worth doing. Minmaxing is fun.

Combat Focus - Increases the Chance to hit of the next melee Attack or Attack Skill by 10%. Valid only for the next action. Not Stackable. - Helps sort of get value for extra OP, but Strong Blow is better. Useful when combined with Mighty Charge, but you don't really improve average damage per OP unless you go hard in that direction. Worth upgrading if you're doing mighty charges.

Eagle Eyes - Ranged attacks bypass 5% of the target's Armor Absorption. aka do 5% extra damage. weeeeee.

Flash Parry - Increases Parry chance by 5%. if you like parrying then go for it i guess. objectively worse than knowlage: tactics because gently caress you. upgrade bumps it to 15% so it doesn't have diminishing returns, yet another bug i guess.

Quick Reload - Reduces the cost of the Reload action by 1 Strategy Point.. Oh look ranged weapons are useful now. Don't bother upgrading since you'll be limited by OP anyways.

Shield Specialist - Increases Melee Resistance and Parry chance by 5% when equipped with a shield. I mean if you're using a shield then why not.

Vital Shot - A ranged attack that deals regular damage and has a +10% Critical hit chance. the "lets burn excess OP" skill for ranged units. 10% crit hit chance. Crits do max damage plus some X% bonus based on accuracy, and the victim makes a stun resist roll. Stunning is really good to do, which adds about the only thing in the combat mechanics that falls outside the pure average damage per round numbers game, but the odds are so low generally that its not worth really building towards compared to damage, since a dead unit is even more neutered than a stunned one. Plus, focusing on crit chances means sacrificing raw damage and melee hit chances, and you can't generally crit things you can't hit so I tend to feel its not worth going for that. Ranged units don't have an equal to Strong Blow however so unlike Vital Strike you might as well get it. Upgrading it boosts it to 20% bonus which is better and tbh stunning is such an absurd death sentence that I'm probably underestimating its value. I've tried crit builds and been fairly underwhelmed by them, however, since they are unreliable.

Web of Steel - Take a stance that ends the current turn. The stance allows 2 attempts to Parry incoming melee attacks hey parry is cool and helps your leader not die so maybe get it????

Warband Specific Skills

Skaven
Warp Poison - Applies Warp Poison to all weapons for 1 turn. Dealing damage with a poisoned weapon inflicts the target with a poison debuff that reduces maximum Offense Points by 2 for 1 turn. Can only be used while not engaged. Not Stackable. Upgrade boosts it to 4OP which is generally worth doing. Its probably the only "reduce OP" skill that is worthwhile since it cuts it down by 2/4 instead of 1/2. Kind of a CC! Somewhat groovy.

Swarm - When another ally is engaged with the same enemy, increases melee Hit chance by 5% and melee Critical hit chance by 5%. Not Stackable. This used to be 10% boosts to each at rank one and I think 20% at upgrade? Which was loving patently insane and made me seriously loving question if the designers understood how their game played, since I guess they imagined people didn't generally engage a single foe with multiple units. Its still alright to get.

Black Hunger - Increases melee Damage by 20% and bypasses dodge/parry by 20% at the cost of 30 wounds. About the only "cast from HP" skill that's worth getting, but only if you upgrade it, which boosts the bonuses to 40% for the same cost. You need nine toughness to do that, though. Rat Ogres start with 9 toughness and have a lot of attacks and HP so its something they get and nobody else gets, generally.

Other Warbands
None - there are no good skills for other warbands. okay exactly one of the sister ones looks worth taking (prayer of swiftness, 2sp for 15% dodge).

Spells
general
Damage Spells - either upgrade them so they do respectable damage or dont use them at all.

Chaos
Chains of Chaos - Block the use of basic attack, charge, shoot, aim, ambush and Overwatch stances holy poo poo this is actual CC??? and upgrade prevents offensive skills as well?????? why the gently caress aren't I playing chaos wtf this is absurdly good.

Weapons of Destruction - Imbue the weapons of the target with dark magic. The weapon now ignores 8 points of armor absorption and increase damage by +20%. yeah okay sure, its damage and you can tag a lot of dudes with it at only 2OP. man, just these two spells make chaos spellcasters pretty rockin'.

Human
Dread of Aramar - Everyone suffers from Dread and loses 2 of their Current OP. The unit's chances to hit in melee are also reduced by 5% for 1 turn. There's also 25% chances units will break their stances. Not Stackable is this good? i mean i guess idk.

Dispel - Remove every active spell effects. Doesn't remove Tzeentch's Curse or Divine Wrath effects i could see this being useful, especially if some rear end in a top hat cast, say, chains of chaos. poo poo man did i mention how that spell looks ridiculously good? hits everyone so enemies with a lot of buffs get them removed as well.

Sisters
Healing Circle - Give back 20 wounds to nearby standing allies HISSS HEALING ABILITIES, UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN. like wow, you could actually have a team that could fight, withdraw, heal, then come back, aka have a tactic beyond "rub mans on other mans", this is insanely hosed up.

Sigmar's Might - Increase the weapon's critical hit chances by +5% and their damage by +10%. Not Stackable yay damage

Sigmar's Second Wind - Give the unit up to 2 OP until its turn to counter-attack enemies Any stunned unit will get up as well first part is worthless but guaranteed stun removal is pretty good. hope your initiative ladder actually plays nicely.

Sinful Speech - Silence the enemy preventing it from using any spells use it on the chaos guy. Man, spells are really loving good compared to skills. Why isn't it "inflict 20% climb penalty and 5% extra curse on spellcasters" or some poo poo instead of something that actually does something.

Skaven
Bless with Filth - Weapons of the unit now apply warp poison on damage. Damage 8-16 use it on some fellow with lots of attacks since its a flat damage bonus instead of a % bonus. Upgrade is 18-24 so your rat ogre will hit 3/4 time for 60ish compared to 30ish. nice bonus.

Gaze of the Horned Rat - Reduce OP by up to 2 and reduce maximum OP by up to 2 (minimum is 0) run your dude in the middle of a mosh pit and cast this, since it doesn't hit allies. This makes it a lot more practical compared to other area CC, even though the effect is kind of underwhelming.

Sorcerer's Curse - Reduce Armor absorption by up to 20%. Reduce avoid (dodge and parry) chances by 15%. Not Stackable enemy unit takes 20% more damage. dogpile things, kill them.

Aaaaand that's it. Those are the only skills in the game that I think are worth getting. There's some spellcaster only stuff I haven't managed to really look at and you can probably build some Ambush build like a Charge build and get value out of that but ambushing is so janky I'd not recommend it. There's a few other skills I'd like to try like Overpower combined with Vital Strike or some poo poo but it costs a lot of money and time to train it so I don't bother. Everything else is Bad or requires dumping points into stats which are Bad. And only like, one or two of these actually offer anything new in terms of choices or options, the rest just improve numbers. Which is lame.

I think one of the big weaknesses of the AI is that they don't understand this and instead build their skills based on their "roles" so you have dudes outfitted with a bunch of things like "climb better" or "improve initiative for a round" while a player has things like "hit enemy harder" and "get hit less" and the AI doesn't minmax stats which means that even with the x% bonus to health and damage, they still come up short.

Another comment is just how big a trap some of the options in the game are. Building leadership, for instance, improves your teams morale, and has a few skills that do nothing but grant bonus morale. YOU DO NOT WANT HIGH TEAM MORALE. High morale means that if you're losing, more of your poor fuckers have to die before the game lets go of your balls and lets you actually leave the battle without punishing you. Its only situationally useful if you're in some grind down to the last man, but generally once a team is down in manpower it rapidly becomes one sided due to the damage race mechanics and the All Alone checks. You still probably want to skill up leadership after int so your dudes can sometimes fight ogres and beasts without pissing themselves.

Other thoughts: Injuries are a white elephant mechanic. They're incredibly uninteresting and don't do anything mechanically except make losing teams eat even more poo poo. In Blood Bowl open leagues they cause people to concede matches in rapid fire succession instead of playing matches they might lose, so to counter that the designers of this game implemented a mechanic that inflicts injuries on EVERYONE on your team if you dare leave a losing fight without getting your requisite wedgie. Shouldn't that have been a massive red flag to them that there's something critically wrong in the design when people don't want to play your game? XCOM has permadeath but XCOM is PVE, has a means to mitigate chances of death via medkits, promotes the idea of cutting and running, and while less leveled replacements are not as good as high level dudes, its not nearly the same sort of yawning chasm as in Mordheim, where a higher level dude is objectively better in every way than a replacement to the point where a level 0 guy is going to die horribly to a level 10 one with absolute, 100% certainty (XCOM levels add health, aim, and skills that add options. Mordheim levels add health, skills that flatly improve attributes, chance to hit, chance to dodge/Dodge/Parry, damage, number of attacks, movement distance, etc, and the combat mechanics are much more determined by dice rolls and numbers than in XCOM, further accentuating the importance of levels) , and costs a shitload of gold and time to train. You can hire replacements that are higher level, but that costs gold, which you won't have if you're in a losing spiral, and the game is seemingly set up to promote death spirals as a matter of course. The losing team already loses out on wyrdstone, items, and money, what actually gets added by punishing them even more? Its garbage, borne from chasing the dragon of "realism" and an obsessive need to roll on random tables for everything.

e: checking some guides, other recommended skills are Adrenaline Rush for 3OP for 60HP (eh), Frenzy (lose stances and gain 15% damage), Daredevil (waste 3OP for 125% damage boost but give foes dodge and lose 15% melee resist). The idea is to daredevil, burn 60HP for more OP, then hit things. Comparing things, suppose you got, uh, 7OP and a 1handed weapon; you can do unmastered strong blow and then hit twice for 3.5[w] damage, or do mastered daredevil and hit twice for 4.5[w]. Using the upgraded adrenaline on both makes it 5[w] vs 6.75[w]. 60 damage is kind of a lot, though, and giving free dodges is potentially really annoying. And it also means that you need 15str and 12tou, 12 skill points, and a lot of gold to pull it off so its pretty much theoretical until the very late game. So I'm still going to claim strong blow is better because its only 2 skill points and I'm too dumb/lazy to have figured out that daredevil didn't suck. Still it seems to be the ~meta~ so its probably the way to go, and people have gotten damage in the range of like 400-600 by exploiting it so uhhh thats a thing. it was from early access so maybe thats not possible anymore, idk.

that kind of highlights a big problem of "hard power" buffs in game like "do 125% extra damage" versus "soft power" like "move further" which are powerful things only in a certain context and depend on player utilization instead of knowing the right minmax skill combo. even with their ultra conservative mindset with skills, they still managed to get people to break poo poo over their knee. i saw some dev asking "how did you do that?" in the steam forum about it which was pretty funny to me. it seems to me that a lot of times devs like to put on blinders about this sort of poo poo rather than thinking ruthlessly about how to exploit their systems; the consistently awful default builds in games tends to reflect that, since they're created based on how devs would like to think their game works, rather than what actually works. mordhiem's AI doesn't have a "if skill == skill_staggering_blow then return false" clause when considering what skills to use probably indicates that such a problem exists here.

Frenzy mastered is popular as well because 30% extra damage is nothing to scoff at, but you lose your stances, which might not matter.

crit builds can get something like 40-60% chance to crit on a good day. using adrenaline rush + fatality or its ranged equivalent lets you improve the odds. my own experience with accuracy didnt work out well since the rear end in a top hat involved couldnt hit poo poo but maybe not being an idiot helps here.

The guides also also recommend upgraded alertness tho which I don't get. Initiative is pointless after turn 1 and often before then as well. The big draw seems to be Alertness, which gives melee resist (10%/20%), so you'd combine it with frenzy to make up for the loss of stance.

Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 10:49 on Mar 21, 2016

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
One of my favorite examples of them having no idea wtf they're doing is comparing command to chaos lure. Command costs 4 op and allows you to make a nearby teammate perform an attack. Chaos lure is 3-2 and forces an enemy to flee which gives every engaged ally a free attack that cannot be dodged or parried.

Gerblyn
Apr 4, 2007

"TO BATTLE!"
Fun Shoe
I think my favorite is Intensity:

"Increases the chance to pass Climb, Leap, and Jump DOwn tests by 15% for 1 turn, but removes 35 Wounds at the beginning of next turn. This loss can render the target Out of Action. Not Stackable."

Which is utterly loving awful, even when you ignore the fact that you can just get the Athletic Expert passive:

"Increases the chance to pass Climb, Leap, and Jump Down tests by 15%. "

ANGRYGREEK
May 3, 2007

If you meet the Storm Spirit on the lane, gank him.

Normal Adult Human posted:

One of my favorite examples of them having no idea wtf they're doing is comparing command to chaos lure. Command costs 4 op and allows you to make a nearby teammate perform an attack. Chaos lure is 3-2 and forces an enemy to flee which gives every engaged ally a free attack that cannot be dodged or parried.

The target wont be eligible under certain circumstances, though. Like immunity, or no room to run away.
I like command, because it lets you level smaller guys, or make a strong guy attack again, or help in a melee in close combat, where the commandeering guy can't reach the enemy.

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Gerblyn posted:

I think my favorite is Intensity:

"Increases the chance to pass Climb, Leap, and Jump DOwn tests by 15% for 1 turn, but removes 35 Wounds at the beginning of next turn. This loss can render the target Out of Action. Not Stackable."

Which is utterly loving awful, even when you ignore the fact that you can just get the Athletic Expert passive:

"Increases the chance to pass Climb, Leap, and Jump Down tests by 15%. "

at one point they must have considered falling off a wall to be equally as risky as combat. i can't see otherwise how this kind of stuff exists

NeurosisHead
Jul 22, 2007

NONONONONONONONONO

Normal Adult Human posted:

at one point they must have considered falling off a wall to be equally as risky as combat. i can't see otherwise how this kind of stuff exists

I had a lot of warbands laid low in tabletop mordheim by falling down the god damned stairs

Tiler Kiwi
Feb 26, 2011
falling down is super neutered, since it does around 7-11 damage and dudes have 150ish to 500 health. did have an AI sister kill herself by failing to climb a wall after I shot her a bunch tho.

tbh despite all my kvetching im coming around a bit on the game. still a lot of really terrible stupid design decisions and the level of pointless complexity, slowness, and jankyness is something that'd make me not want to ever recommend someone getting this game, but i keep loving playing it for some reason. i enjoy the incremental customization of dudes and exploiting bad AI i guess; now that im high level im playing mainly brutal missions since more skill points overall just mean more room for the AI to put points into the multitude of worthless skills (to the point where my warpguards are pretty capable of soloing some enemy heroes despite the OP deficit since the hero oftentimes is some 8 melee 10 ranged 8 accuracy fuckshit armed with a dagger and mastered careful approach/quick draw/knowledge:ambush/staggering blow or some other poo poo).

dudes also gain around half their total skill points at levels 8-10 for some reason. that, along with enough OP/SP to make using skills worth it (blowing 4OP to boost damage is a lot more sane when you have 9OP instead of, say, 4OP) means that you can actually build your dudes into some roles that let let them do something other than "hit man for damage" and "try not to die", like "this dude charges"/"this dude defends flank with ambush"/"this dude is harder to hit and so stands next to thing that hits hard"/"this dude throws poo poo six times a turn and does 250+ damage easy because this game is loving dumb". i mean its not crazy or diverse or anything but its something. idk why they don't take some of those later skill points and use them to make characters more distinct and role-based via default skills but who loving knows, they'd probably pick bad skills anyways.

like poo poo even impressives are just complete tabula rasa that are distinct mainly by hitting like trucks and having a lot of health and nothing else.

i sprung 3 bucks for the character dlc and its actually kind of interesting. the characters are actually unique and have distinct skills and abilities compared to other units which blew my loving mind. half to 3/4 the unique skills are hot garbage of course. the skaven/chaos globe thrower, for instance, has a skill that can assign some random debuff to an area (literally randomly chosen from around three lackluster ones and one good one; inconsistent garbage), throws a gas bomb that poisons an area (that does at most 30 damage for standing it in, which is totally irrelevant), some passives that reduce poison resistance by 10% when throwing globes, reduces melee resist by 5% in an area,... or can throw a globe that, when upgraded, heals 30 wounds to everyone in an area at the cost of 3OP what the gently caress. The only other healing ability I know about is a SoS spell that can heal 20/40 to allies in a smaller aoe (and there's a failure mod and curse chance that rises the more you use it) and it costs 4OP. The gas gives a warp debuff as well and can heal enemies but 1. who cares and 2. you can aim it so as long as youre not a dipshit youll be fine. poo poo if you give them introspection/adrenaline rush they can chuck six of those things a round for 180 health AoE heal. and it can't fail, and its infinite. the devs must have gone nuts or something, adding dude that can be a "medic", that's seriously hosed up and imbalancing, to have a character capable of doing a not-damaging thing that isn't ADJUST STAT X or IF Y THEN ADJUST STAT X that no other character can do.

Tiler Kiwi fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Mar 24, 2016

Slaapaav
Mar 3, 2006

by Azathoth
the game makes more sense if you have played tabletop because that is way more unbalanced

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
witch hunters released, to deafening cheers of nothing by noone.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
I saw that, was excited for about half a second, then remembered how cumbersome the game is overall, and promptly went back to not really caring.

Ichabod Tane
Oct 30, 2005

A most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.


https://youtu.be/_Ojd0BdtMBY?t=4
What a tactical rpg on the computer that isn't mouse driven and listened to the echo chamber of a terrible fan base? It will succeed.

Normal Adult Human
Feb 12, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
i dont know man, either xcom 2 or rosetta stone: english

always be closing
Jul 16, 2005
My friends and I dug out the old miniatures and are playing on the table top Sunday. :Sperg:

Ichabod Tane
Oct 30, 2005

A most notable
coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.


https://youtu.be/_Ojd0BdtMBY?t=4
Are you planning on moving your guys with a croupiers stick awkwardly instead of your hand and making your moves etched in stone? If not, you're missing the mordheim experience.

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Deadmeat5150
Nov 21, 2005

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLAN

Blacktoll posted:

Are you planning on moving your guys with a croupiers stick awkwardly instead of your hand and making your moves etched in stone? If not, you're missing the mordheim experience.

I thought that was how you were supposed to play the tabletop game.

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