AgentTBC

The weird part is how quickly weapons become overshadowed but how slowly armor does. They're so radically different!

Oh, so the problem must have been that I was way overleveled when I found it. Because it was doing like 40% the damage of what tac shotgun I was using.

I think unique weapons need better descriptions of what they actually do, because a lot of them seem like flat-out worse versions of common weapons. Take the unique tactical shotgun "Euthanasia Kit". I love shotguns but as far as I can tell this... is just a gimped tactical? Same damage, same range, same noise, same critical, same everything... except a lot lower level when you find it so worse in every respect. But maybe it does something? Extra headshot damage? Who knows? I sure don't. (side suggestion: all uniques should be scaled to your level when you find them to remove the problem of finding a "cool" unique gun... which is level 13 while you're level 25).

Look at me putting 50 points into medic skill for a 2 second buff extension wheeeeeeeee

You're right, you get bonus duration to the effect on buffs you get through the inhaler! On the other hand, we're talking a couple of seconds on the short buffs so not exactly something to throw a ton of points at. Also, there's something wonky with the buff extension... it doesn't seem to exactly match what the skill screen says it should. And the amount it doesn't match by is not consistent. Like with 64 Medical the screen says it should be about a +34% extension which is nice and convenient since its almost exactly 1/3. However the extension was only 2 seconds on the 15 second buffs which is like 13%. It was 6 seconds on the 30 second buffs with is 20%. And it was 30 seconds on the 2 minute buffs which is 25%. So in all cases the extension was less than it should have been, and was negligible for the shortest buffs. (2 seconds, really?) Weird.

Interesting, I will test if the inhaler buff durations are longer than if you pop them directly from inventory. That would indeed make a difference, although Adreno or whatever its called is so plentiful the extra slots would just be to save you the hassle of taking them one at a time more than an actual advantage. I think I have like 200 at this point, without ever buying any.

Seems to me the easiest way to make it worthwhile would be to allow only one food/drug buff to be active at a time and if you use another, it kinda overwrites the old one. So the inhaler would be useful in allowing you to stack bonuses into a single buff in a way which would be impossible to achieve otherwise.

Right, but instead of mixing buffs by dragging them to the inhaler and then using it, you can just directly use the buffs in the first place rather than drag them. I just don't see how you gain anything... it's an extra step for no particular benefit.

I'm having a blast with the game so far (though I think despite the impression you'd get from reading forums it's significantly too easy even on Supernova once you're past level 4-5) but one thing keeps bugging me: is there some advantage I'm not seeing to unlocking the inhaler slots by boosting medical skill rather than using those points elsewhere? All that does is save you half a second of going into your inventory to use a consumable... and not even that if you don't happen to have the right consumables for the situation slotted. Isn't it just as quick and easy to directly use the consumable you want out of your inventory rather than dragging it into the inhaler and then using that? I feel like the multi-drug inhaler is a great idea but doesn't actually do anything so long as you can just use the stuff directly. Unless as I said there's some advantage I'm missing to using the inhaler rather than just popping the food/drink/pills into your mouth from your inventory?

If anyone is still reading this, I did a couple of tests on questions I and others had. First, companion skills including weapon skills are affected by armor mods. You can test this for the science/stealth skills easily enough but making sure they worked for ranged was a little trickier because and I'm lucky I noticed this... the stats on the weapons you see only update when you zone transition or save and load the game. So at first it looked like Ranged Weapon Skills +5 didn't work but once I understood I had to save/load or zone transition it started to update. Note that I do not know if this is a DISPLAY BUG where the stats update but you can't see it until then or if its a functional bug where the stats themselves don't update until transitions. Second, I'm not sure people realize but weapon damage is only indirectly changed by weapon skill via critical chance and weapon sway. Direct damage increase comes from the attributes not the skills. I did some quick and dirty tests and of the first four companions and Ellie seems the best with all ranged and heavy weapons while Vicar Max is the worst, though the differences are mostly not enough to be all that worth worrying about (like a 5% difference between best and worst. Very marginal.) Felix is, unsurprisingly, the best at BASHING STUFF with melee weapons and the difference is a bit bigger with a 10-15% difference in damage. Vicar Max is again the worst with melee weapons though, again, the differences between the middle of the packers and Max is marginal. This is at around level 10 so the differences may start out at the lowest point and increase over time as levels increase. Will have to check again later and with other companions. But for now it's clear you'd rather have a good weapon of a non-optimal type on the companion than a medium weapon of the optimal type.

I mean, for RP reasons I'm keeping a handgun on Ellie but probably I should just give everybody flamethrowers or something for effectiveness.

I've been messing around with it and, really, I don't see any particular reason you just don't want to stick the highest DPS (or highest burst) damage weapons you have on every companion regardless of type, taking into account range if you want. And while there may be extremely marginal advantages to pumping a couple of stats on different companions with armor, really you're probably just better off throwing the heaviest piece of metal you can find on them for the highest armor rating. At least as far as your companions are concerned keeping them alive is a lot more important (on Supernova) for obvious reasons than trying to squeeze one extra point of Hack out of somebody. At least through level 10-12 I think light armor is pretty underpowered compared to heavy. The extra skill boosts are very tiny if any at all.

There do seem to be marginal differences when I swap weapons in and out with "Show Base Damage" turned off. But nothing too major yet given none of our stats are even at 50. But Parvati still does a ton more damage with a Flamethrower (Heavy Weapon) than even my best non-Heavy guns despite it looking like she doesn't have much if any Heavy Weapon skill (since the listed damage decreases a touch when I equip it on her). So the stat of the weapon still predominates. A related question re: companions: All companions I've found so far have 3 skills listed on their Details page. Why only those 3? If those skills are higher than mine and that companion is in my party, does their skill get used in place of my own? That would make sense for things like Hacking or Lockpicking but not so much for sneaking? What's felix going to do, sneak for me?

The Vicar claims to prefer melee weapons but, sorry dude, I'm playing on Supernova so that's a recipe for being instagibbed. He can use the tactshotgun and LIKE IT.

Hm, thanks. I'll just pay attention and see if they refuse to use the weapons I give them or not.

Quick and simple: Are the different companions better with one type of weapon or another? Or should I just give them whatever I have that seems to fit the current situation in terms of range, etc? Like can they all use Heavy Weapons just as well as handguns or melee or long?

That sucks, I can't figure out how to target. I seem to hit friendlies or enemies completely randomly.

Anyone know if this is fixed in the latest patch? I respec'd out.

Just noticed this myself when I ANNIHILATED MY PARTY with it

Poor Tekeku's watery double just stands around punching for 2 damage as well. Sad. Low energy!

The empower point you get from it goes away at the end of combat. So for example if you have 3 empower points and use 1 in a battle, that leaves you with 2. Now you hit your guy with Ancestors Honor and he goes back up to 3 during the battle... but you can't use that empower point during the battle (still 1 per combat) and it goes back down to 2 after the battle ends. So you get a temporary empower polnt... but cant use it. Prestigitator points out that if you are at 0 empower points when the battle starts you can use the empower point in the battle but given that resting is basically free you should virtually never have 0 empower points so its useless.

Oh. *respecs out of Ancestor's Honor*. Thanks.

The Cipher ability "Ancestor's Honor" is a level 7 ability and thus should theoretically be fairly powerful. It gives a character an empower point. However, you can still only use 1 empower point per character per battle so far as I can tell AND you lose the empower point from Ancestor's Honor at the end of the battle. So if you can't use a second empower point during the battle and you can't bank the empower point for future battles... what precisely does the ability do? I'm not sure how to use it I guess.

This bug has been a problem for a month. Pls to be fixing

The patch notes for the beta patch today say that they added a new defender count to the ship duel AI. Perhaps this means we'll have an accurate count now? I havent tested it yet. But great update if so.,