How do you permanently increase stats?

Game Talk The Bunker
21

[quote=“secretfire, post:18, topic:5478”]One thing I’ve noticed - when people use the default stat set and then do really ‘unskilled’ twinky things with it; they’ll take disadvantages that don’t do all that much, they won’t take a realistic number of skills - and they’ll min/max the stats like crazy.
If you want to create a realistic human being, with a human-like set of advantages, disadvantages, and skills, you should up the starting points. After all - who /really/ if they were real, would start life with all 0’s in these skills? With a 0 driving? With a 0 swimming? Even the professions don’t provide all that much - and the endless grinding people do ‘because its easy to read a book as opposed to buying stats’ is silly. That doesn’t mean they are less skilled at LIFE of course; just more skilled at playing the game… … … (sarcasm flag on the last bit, you guys)

But yeah, play how you wan’t, don’t hate, don’t judge.[/quote]

I believe that is what the function of the professions is supposed to be for, though. You spend a few points (time investment before the cataclysm, say) to get a bunch of life skills like that. And it’s clear that a 0 skill isn’t total incompetence, either. You still hit monsters with 0 melee. You can still cook meat without heavily burning it at 0 cooking.

Now, do profession grants need a buff? Perhaps. Or perhaps the major benefits of other things could be nerfed. Hmm, but that doesn’t seem all that fulfilling either.

Upon some reflection on the matter, I think the real problem is the abundance of military gear and weaponry as far as difficulty goes. With the abundance of great gear, who would skill melee when you can just accrue it over time with your shiny machete and full-body kevlar or army gear? I think tuning down the specials as they have been is the first step, but it should probably continue even more.

Though perhaps one of the charms of cataclysm is that it isn’t so brutal when compared to most roguelikes. It’s hard for me to really say.

How does everyone else feel about the difficulty, in general, and perhaps ways of going about fixing it? I think I’ll try playing at half-items for a while, with double spawns. It should make getting fabrication, construction, melee, etc. at least have their place. Cooking too, I suppose, if we found less ready-to-eat food. Needing to make the good gear instead of easily finding it, and needing to make your own food, etc.

I don’t think grinding, as you mentioned, is particularly an issue. As an RPG, there is almost always a way to grind for maximum power for minimum difficulty. Most people don’t want to do this for any long period of time because it is rather boring. So balancing around those who would grind probably isn’t a good answer. Instead, know they exist, but balance things for a small amount of grinding but otherwise natural progressing in the game. You know, those who will probably practice some fabrication with sticks and practice tailoring with some pairs of socks or just reinforcing things they find, but not such that they stop doing what they were doing otherwise. But perhaps I’m off here as well, thoughts?

a final aside to Alpha: please don’t call me out, then claim I’m an aggressor and say that somehow sniping at me a second time is you “backing off”. I’m not picking a fight. You called me out and I answered it pretty diplomatically. You leave something alone by not responding at all.

22

I think you might be right there. I don’t think the military gear PAR SE is a problem. Having plenty of military gear around is fine. I just think the military gear should mostly be mixed up with the Zombie Hordes… its interesting, because I think the difficulty of killing an individual zombie is about right. It shouldn’t be tough. And I do like the roaming spawns idea, the limited dynamic spawns - the whole system. I just think they need to tinker with it. At some point, it would be neat to try and recreate -specific- zombie scenerios in the game and see how they stack up. It shouldn’t feel ‘needlessly difficult’ or ‘stupid difficult’ - but logical. You rarely end up camped out in a house for days with the zombies banging on your door, or stalking around outside, slowly starving…because either they know you are inside and they get in, or they don’t and you can just rush out and run past them. That probably needs no real changes to the existing systems, par se, just balancing and tweaking.

Likewise, with the military gear, Nubsawce, I think it might work better if you mostly find it amongst…barricades, where soldiers fell against zombies, or in lost military battles, or in the middle of military convoys surrounded by hundreds or thousands of the buggers.

Perhaps its just a matter of upping spawns. Whether your a demigod or a normal human, killing one or two zombies should never be hard; nor should running off in the wilderness. But trying to scavenge when the cities have tens of millions of zombies, and even the smallest town has tens of thousands… … … no amount of bullets or armor will help you.

That make any sense?

23

The hell is going on here?

24

Sure. It seems like your ultimate suggestion is along the lines of tactics and evasion over the typical brute force RPG “you should be able to clear every encounter” mentality. The good gear is there, but you can’t brute force your way to it. You must outsmart a swarm you have no hope of duking it out with and get what you want. I like it. It promotes thinking in new ways and really using the diversity of systems available in the roguelike genre (construction, bashing, fire, etc, under complete player control) and it demotes the kingdom of the melee skill.

I think that might be really good actually. APC caravans with a horde dynamic spawn around it in a city and things like that. Unwinnable unless you’re decked to the teeth or very very clever. Am I getting you at least somewhat right? Because I like where this is going.

Edit: Ninja, it’s currently a conversation about player power and balance, as far as I can tell. Though I imagine you can tell that much. What else do you mean?

25

I feel like there’s very little of a gap between “extremely vulnerable” and “nigh impenetrable” in terms of armor. At a certain point, more zombies aren’t any threat, just more time consuming. If the basic zombies scaled up a bit over time, it’d be better for maintaining challenge I think. As is, there’s a point where the basic zombie is zero threat in melee. I think there should be at least a tiny chance of them overwhelming you, at least if there’s a massive crowd. I mean, at some point, the sheer massive tide of undead flesh would be too much to physically fight against. If you get trapped by all that weight, there’s not much you can do (well, ok, bionic muscles would probably work).

26

I think that would actually make sense with the lore too, because

the infection causing the zombies is said to attempt to improve upon its hosts according to lab data files, so the ramping up over time would be akin to the PE027 or whatever having made modifications to the bodies it’s using.

I think it could work, and yeah, the armor gap is what I was complaining about with too much military gear just lying around. you just sort of hop from cargo pants to military gear with no real in-between.

Every game lately my progression is this: two lab coats with two cargo pants -> two army jackets and two army pants -> MBR + army jacket and two army pants -> power armor or RM13 combat armor.

I usually find RM13 Combat armor in a week or so, if not in the first 3 days. That’s really gotta be a rarer thing. Also I’m using a machete by day 2 or a combat knife if I can’t find a lab card by day 2. Happens very infrequently.

27

Perhaps this could be solved with some sort of fatigue mechanic. As it is now, if you go out well rested and full/slaked, you can probably whack zombies for two whole days (with a snack and a sip here and there) before you reach Dead Tired and have to quit.

If a mass of zeds were able to overwhelm you simply because you’re too tired from bashing heads for three hours straight, that would be both more “realistic” and restore some challenge for late-game zed encounters. Currently there’s nothing forcing you to retreat when facing a mass of zeds in late-game.

Falling over from exhaustion should mean a certain death, regardless of armor.

28

Regarding the ease of access to items, I think the masses of dead scientist spawns all over the place is a problem. I tend to end up with a stash full of bionics and mutagens and stuff very early in the game. Dead soldiers are a similar (but less pronounced) problem. It’s not good for the game to have all this great gear available risk free that can be found with a quick drive down an empty country road. Other stuff like wrecked helicopters are also too common.

I think the random map spawns like this should be much rarer, so it’s a real bonus when the player encounters one. High level gear should instead come from dangerous places like raiding towns, military bases, science labs, and similar.

29

methinks its peoples not understanding the meaning of well-rounded.

heck, a 10 10 10 10 start with no traits and level 2 or 3 in this, that and the other skill needs that many points and is totally cool and fair and well-rounded, saves you from a silly death or two, lets you get started in mechanics et all without any books but does not make you OP.

30

it does when you fall asleep from exhaustion.

31

The spawn chance of all map specials has been somewhat nerfed in the experimental already, which should go a bit towards solving this problem.

[quote=“dovla, post:27, topic:5478”]Perhaps this could be solved with some sort of fatigue mechanic. As it is now, if you go out well rested and full/slaked, you can probably whack zombies for two whole days (with a snack and a sip here and there) before you reach Dead Tired and have to quit.

If a mass of zeds were able to overwhelm you simply because you’re too tired from bashing heads for three hours straight, that would be both more “realistic” and restore some challenge for late-game zed encounters. Currently there’s nothing forcing you to retreat when facing a mass of zeds in late-game.[/quote]
Fatigue is definitely something we’d like to add in eventually.

32

I’ve been thinking about this a bit and the best I came up with so far is the following idea:

Make fatigue raise at an accelerated pace while the player is engaged in combat, but keep a counter separate from the “normal” fatigue counter. Both the normal and accelerated counter are added up when calculating current player fatigue. However, once the player has stopped fighting (say, for 10 turns), the combat fatigue counter starts to degrade gradually, up to 75% of the total amount. The remaining 25% are then added to “normal” fatigue and the combat fatigue counter is reset.

Basically, you’d be reaching Dead Tired if engaged in combat for prolonged periods of time, but you could also “catch your breath” by disengaging and wouldn’t have to go straight to bed to restore your fatigue. This way you’d still be able to maintain a somewhat normal day-night cycle but couldn’t spend 12 hours straight bashing zombie heads in.

I’m not entirely happy with this yet, once I’ve refined it a bit I can post it in the Drawing Board.

33

Found 3 Granades in a bunker. The first one nerfed me, the 2nd and 3rd merged/buffed. End result: 21 Str, 23 Dex, 31 Int (makes reading a nuisance), 28 Per.

Another char was nerfed to death, ending up with 3 Str, 1 Dex, 5 Int and 4 Per, but was still fun playing.

Wealth/Shit happens, same is true for the mutagenic roulette.

34

[quote=“prytoclasm, post:33, topic:5478”]Found 3 Granades in a bunker. The first one nerfed me, the 2nd and 3rd merged/buffed. End result: 21 Str, 23 Dex, 31 Int (makes reading a nuisance), 28 Per.

Another char was nerfed to death, ending up with 3 Str, 1 Dex, 5 Int and 4 Per, but was still fun playing.

Wealth/Shit happens, same is true for the mutagenic roulette.[/quote]
0.o how does 31 intelligence make it a nuisance?

35
0.o how does 31 intelligence make it a nuisance?
I guess, he can study books very fast, but can't study to recipes as well.
36

You lucky man!

37

How does a grenade give you stats that high?

38

My base stats on every char are: Str 13, Dex 11, Int 13, Per 11.
(Traits: Night Vision, Robust Genetics ~ Addictive Personality, Glass Jaw, Heavy Sleeper, Lactose Intolerance, Lightweight, Truth Teller, Wool Allergy and ‘Shower Victim’ as profession.)

Don’t ask me how the system works. Seems like you can get ‘better’ results if you fire up more Granades at once.

39

The spawn chance of all map specials has been somewhat nerfed in the experimental already, which should go a bit towards solving this problem.[/quote]
It seems to me that the problem isn’t finding one, its finding 5-6 scattered across the field between the shelter and the town. Since the map generates dynamically, would it be possible to make it so that each one generated reduces the odds of finding a new one. Perhaps just changing it to a trap cache or other lower value find? Because that initial find of a scientist pile or military grouping is important, both for the lore of the world and for supplies, but multiple finds tend to be overpowering. Towns and buildings should be the main supplies. And, from my perspective, making the scientist and military corpse encounters rarer just turns them into “The RNG smiled on me even more then usual this run.”

40

Granade, not grenade.

Anyway, on the topic of OP-ing up characters:

I play with 12 start points, but I also take 12 disadvantage points and 12 advantage points. I generally take several crap traits, because, come on, everyone has a few disadvantages about themselves. I tend to take 10/10/10/10, perhaps bumping one up, and Forgetful, as I play with skill rust off. (Seriously, since when has not soldering transistors to random pieces of metal every day caused you to forget how?) Then, I take a few good traits pertaining to the profession-- bionic thief starts with Ninjutsu, Inconspicuous, and Light Step, Survivalists start with things like Outdoorsman, Eagle Eyes, or game-tracking help like Animal Empathy and Light Step, and Students or Hackers or the like get lower strength and higher Int, along with a few “nerdy” traits like glasses traits or Fast Reader.

Also, I noticed that if you take Eagle Eyed and then take Near-Sighted, you can keep Eagle.