Jewelsmith

Cool! Congrats!

There's a Polygon article where Leonard Boyarsky says something along the lines of not wanting romance to influence the player's decisions. “We had to pick what we were going to put our time into,” Boyarsky said. “Other people have explored the romance angle in different ways. We felt like sometimes it kind of waters down your roleplaying for your character because it turns into this mini game of how do I seduce this companion or that companion. So it was just one of the things we felt wasn’t really what we wanted to focus our time on. [...] We’re really trying to be focused on a specific experience so that we can polish that experience and give players the best version of that experience that we can.” With limited time and money to develop the game, adding a romance system would have meant losing other characters and side quests, and not being able craft the story they wanted to tell. But saying that love "waters down" roleplaying... That doesn't make any sense to me. Caring about the crew did not "water down" my game experience. The exact opposite. I really enjoyed being able to ask my favorite crew members for their opinions during quest moments, or having them join the conversations. In a game where the player is expected to craft a personal journey and choose from various nuanced dialog choices and moral decisions, why shouldn't feelings and relationships be a factor, just as in real life? The Outer Worlds could have characters who are not romanceable, if they want to have a particular story arc like Parvati's, but they could have at least acknowledged that the player would have an interest and shut it down in some clever, character-related way. Ellie could have said, "Sorry, I make it a habit not to sleep with my boss," or Max could have said he was too devoted to his religion to have a relationship, or Nyoka could have said, "You're not screwed up enough to be my type," etc.

I just did this battle yesterday (can send you a link to my YouTube video if you want to see what I did). First time through, I was able to hack my way past it, then I reloaded an earlier save and did it without hacking, just to see what would happen. I had 1000s of ammo of all types and took a level 32 deadeye assault rifle II and level 20 Thunder, a special named rifle that does shock damage. I also had the mind control science weapon, which seemed to help against the drones. Felix and Max were with me but went down pretty quickly, and as soon as they'd get up they'd go down again. It can be time consuming but it's possible to win. I was on normal difficulty. Keep moving, pay attention to your health bar, run around to let it regen on its own if you have to conserve the adreno. The drones come out in waves as you whittle down RAM's health, so stay away from him and put down the drones, then focus on him again. I would hide around the side of a pillar (or whatever those things were in the center with the hibernation chambers) and then just as RAM came into view, I'd fire several shots and run before he could rush me. Aim for his arm or back, not the shield (you probably know that). Right after he rushes, he will go into a brief recovery period, kind of bent over and still for a few seconds, that's a good time to shoot him a lot. If you just can't do it, maybe backtrack and pick up some ammo or reload an earlier save and gear up a little more? Good luck.