Slowtrain

Interesting, I barely met enemies. I mean there were relatively many encounters, but mostly it was 1-1 robot or scorpion, sometimes 3 scorps or a few raiders. Doing what, playing FO3? I dunno. I suppose if you spend all you time fast traveling you won't meet as many since fast travel is basically a freebie ride to anywhere. But once you get somewhere? Every location is jam packed with more enemies then you can shake a stick at.

Fallout 1 isn't even in the same league with Fallout 3 as far as quantity of combat goes. Yes, Fallout 1 had a few major all-out fights if the palyer wanted them (Set in NEcropolis and the Khans for example) and some smaller setpiece battles (Mutants at the watershed, Brotherhood rescue in the Hub) but they were ALL optional. The amount of combat that turned up in random encounters while wandering the wastes was nothing even close to Fallout 3. Fallout 3 plays like a shooter, not an rpg.

Yeah. In other words: it was realistic. I think some people are used to FPS aiming where high energy particle scientists can pick up rocket launchers gauss guns and immediately know how to fire them 100% accuracy at small, fast moving headcrabs. The Deus Ex system is the best thing available when you want to introduce RPG stat elements into the game because it's still based on your skill. Bloodlines's system was atrocious (auto-aim, and your chance to hit randomly decided) - you could shoot point blank and still miss. ERrr, what Bloodlines game did you play? I had neither autoaim, nor was my chance to hit randomly decided as the crosshairs proved to work identically to Deus Ex's. Bloodlines forced a chance to miss. You could be right next to somebody and still sometimes shots would miss, depending on your guns skill. It was stupid. Bloodlines also helped aim (autoaim) by nudging the cross-hair closer to enemies when your crosshair was reasonably close to them. It was very annoying. Tha's interesting. I never noticed that. But, I played Bloodlines almost exclusively as an unarmed Brujah, so I probably didn't do enough shooting to really notice.

But some creatures are so impressive than gaining nothing from beating them would feel really disappointing! No XP for beating Firkraag or Gaax? You've got to be kidding! Perhaps I simply never played the games that I should have to understand why grinding is so annoying to some people, because no game I played enabled grinding. I grinded inadvertingly in Final Fantasy 7 because the devs were dumb enough to believe everyone will flee from every random encounter, but that's about the only game where I grinded. The Witcher, I did it for the money and alchemy, which stays in the credo of the character. Sure, but killing a boss monster or a particular specific npc is really an ends rather than a means. SO yes, XP shoudl be rewarded but not specifically for the "combat". If your pc can talk the boss into giving up or killing themselves or you can drop the ceiling on them with planted explosives or whatever, the XP award would all be the same. Again in FO3, there no other options other than killing, so its a matter of designing a game around interacting with the gameworld in a variety of ways other than killing. WHich, not to beat dead horse, the original Fallouts did, but Fallout 3 does not.

It seems to me that crpgs would be best served by giving XP for the ends rather than the means. The ends could be a wide variety of things: resoliving quests. gettign into a new location, whatever. But the XP reward should come for achieving the end; the means itself, killing, sneaking, talking, repairing, etc doesn'ttactually need to be rewarded individually, since all means are rewarded equally and regardless once the end is reached. IN a game like FO3, there's not much you can do really though, since the game is about 98% combat, so rewarding combat is sorta the same thing as rewarding the ends, since there is really no other way to achieve the ends. It would be great in NV took a slightly less combat-centric apporach to the Fallout world.

Nothing to forgive. Jag 2 is quite the awesome game, modded or not. Tactics is a fun game in its own right, but just a pale shadow really of Jag 2. On your next playthrough you should definitely bump the difficulty to expert or even insane. SOme people like to play the game at very high difficulty but give themslevs lots of money and top end gear right at the start. That way it becomes more a game of tatcical combt and less of loot acquisition. I myself prefer the gameplay of slowly getting enough gear to equip a team and find that if I get a lot of good gear right away (for example using the drop all option), I tend to find the game less fun. But one of the goals of 1.13 was to make the game highly customizable for Jag 2 vets so they could set up their own parameters for how they wanted to play the game.

The preferred method is a fresh install of Jag 2 gold patched to 1.12, but I think people play it with the 1.07 version of the original and don't seem to have problems. If all I had was the 1.07, I would definitely go ahead and give 1.13 a shot. The worse that can happen is it doesn't work.

Hey, if I can get wings, I'm already sold. The only thing better than wings is the Big Daddy suit.

That's weird. It's so hugely popular at the moment. Is there anything in the game you can see that makes you understand why it is so hugely popular?

This option completely destroys the game, imo. If you are going to do that then you should raise the diffciulty level to Insane and just give yourself all the best guns and gear right at the start, since it becomes way too easy at any other difficulty level. In 1.13 the drops are balanced to your level, so you should enable that option. It wont make the game harder or easier, just provide a way for you to get medium-quality equipment without having to scurry back and forth to fetch stuff from Drassen airport. Is that a setting in the ini? The only things I change relative to drops is that I set the drop style to Old. I don't know what the difference is, but I try to keep as many of the settings as I can close to the original Jag 2.

Interesting. I didn't know that. SO if an enemy drops a spectra vest and an NVG3, they weren't actually using them? Is each soldier equipped with items that simply don't drop? It appears obvious in playing that not all soldiers are wearing the same armor or wearing NVGs. Items that they drop usually corrlate as well to items they were using. And ammo correlates to the weapon when both drop together. Yeah, my only thing is that when the human player is as well equipped as the AI, the human player wins because the human player can out think the AI and given the same resources can use them better.

Would be awesome if that were true, but I think you've just had some luck there. A little luck is a good thing. The drop calculations in 1.07 were probably different though but it's so long since I played a game of 1.07, that I couldn't compare it to 1.13.

They do. They drop weapons, armor, gear. I don't know how the drop chance percentages are calculated, but they appear to be able to drop anything they are using, wearing, equipping, or carrying. The % chance of getting a really useful drop are fairly low though.

This option completely destroys the game, imo. If you are going to do that then you should raise the diffciulty level to Insane and just give yourself all the best guns and gear right at the start, since it becomes way too easy at any other difficulty level.

This shouldn't be framed as an "either/or" situation. It is possible to have both, as FO1/2 had both substantial stories/quests and grinding opportunities. Removing either is a bad move, IMO. Frankly, I don't get EXCLUSION arguments like yours. I'd rather have the opportunity to approach a game in as many different ways as possible, and not be forced to approach it in one way. I don't see any problem with being able to grind mobs in any game, as part of the whole feature package. *shrugs* It was just an idle thought, given how much combat dominates XP gain in FO3. I've played other action/rpgs where that isn't the case and it might be worth trying in FO:NV. Doesn't matter anyway. We all know deep down that FO:NV is most likely going to be pretty much identical to FO3 in terms of gameplay style and structure. Any changes are most likely going to be minor.

lol. Or you can just throw Boo's list at people!

Not without knowing what you already played and which ones you liked/didn't like.

It would be great if Josh and the other devs would speak more about what they are doing and thinking about doing with the game, but after what happened with the alien crpg, I don't really blame for keeping their mouths shut during the first part of the development phase. Josh has said he reads the threads, so there's no reason not to throw out suggestions or ideas on our own. They're getting read, even if not commented on or about directly.

As Josh said before though, it was Bethesda who released the initial info about the game not Obsidian.

Not really, the army will send groups every other day or so to retake Drassen. Especilly the mine. Not very aggressively though on experienced difficulty. ANd holding the Drassen mine against those attacks is peanuts compared to that first counter attack. If you can survive through that counter attack, you can handle the next 1/2 of the game and not see anything harder.

Yeah, donuts and diet soda at the same time is a big no no.

Nope. Your clear. That's the hardest thing you'll face for a consderable long time. :waves: Heya, Majek.

I should point ouit, just to clarify, that the hiding in a small room opart is optional. It just helps to control the combat. With enough saving and reloading, it's not neccessary though. If you are playing on easy or normal, the battle is winnable with just the occasional save and reload since the enemy has a numbers advantage but the same crappy weapons and armor as your team. On expert and insane, they will have somewhat better gear which will make the fight somewhat tougher and you may runn your team out of ammo before you win the battle regardless. Although if you are playing with the new armor system, you can get some high damage hits regardless of weapn from time to time. but for the most part those pistol rounds are going to have a hard time gettign through the better armor. ANyway, just save and reload as neccessary and you'll get through it eventually.

The question was whether there was an acutal tactical way of going about it apart from the door cheese or running away. As I said, no. Other than hiding in a small room to shorten the combat range and then saving and reloading extensively until you get a good outcome every time, you are simply outmatched. If you had a night operations team, where the short range your weapons and small amount of personnel wouldn't be as much a problem, you could approach it more tactically. What difficulty are you playing on? Expert and insane are considerably more diffucult than easy and normal even in the 1.13 mod.

The game isn't as hard in the vanilla version. It was balanced to be playable for people who hadn't played before. 1.13 isn't. It's balanced for people who have played the game previously. They wouldn't. But if you are bent on doing so, hiding in the bathroom and loads of saving and reloading is the way to go.