Topic: PipBoy's Big List of Suggestions

About the classes or the weapon type bearers. Archers as such are not underpowered imo, they are extremely good if they have bows. The xbows are in my play more of a secoundary weapons for my fighters just like javelins. While javelins are nice agains low armor no shield enemies, the xbow is the one range atack that any of my men can do before the enemy or they close in. It is possible since most on my men have the quick hands and the ones that don’t have still need only 6 ap to shot and swap they are mostly 1 weaponers be that a 2h or a single 1h. The said xbow deals massive damage if it hits. It usually annihilates the enemy armor/helm making everything quite easier. Only few enemies have high enough armor to ignore the shot out, like orc warriors or fallen heroes, leaders. Making it more armor damaging would be a big issue rendering even those absolutely useless. When an enemy reaches you without an armor even the weakest can 2 shot them. The archers with bows are a tactical unit that usually moves around quite a lot especially early in the game in my plays. Changing position for clear shots, high grounds or covering a unit in need. As for now I can say that 2 archers feels very few, 3 are mostly good but 4 are sometimes too much. I tend to go for 4 early game but if or better when I lose one it is not a problem. The main difference is that the bow can shot 2 times a turn (without focus) and does not need a reload while the xbow needs one, and no the argument that you can have more xbows and shot up to 2 in a single turn does not matter in most battles you can keep up only the first 2 turns with the bow. The damage is clearly different imo and the armor penetration aswell. And I do agree that there have to be more firearms especially early game ones. There are only 2bows 1xbow 1javelin.

My usual team is 6 shields, 4 archers, 2 heavies (two handers). I think archers get really good at high levels, but early on they’re pretty terrible when compared to shield/weapon guys.

Pikemen
You refer to the 2 hex reach weapons. There are 2 type of these, the pike/pitchfork and the billhook. The first ones are to hold the enemy back, push away and deal damage from a longer distance while the hook ones are to get the enemy closer tear them from their formation or advantageus position. As any of the enemy place changing abilities these are more tactical than damage dealing ones, to push an enemy back from surrounding one of yours, to pull them closer from a highground or push from the hill so they not only lose the position but also health and have a long run. Best use on uneven terrain. For the damaging abilities of these weapons as you mentioned the spearwall it is not a good one since the spears stops the enemy from closing in. But these are the perfect line weapons while the front row shields up you can freely attack from the back row without needing armor or any defense and deal massive amount of damage if you hit, especially with the billhook. Started with having 1 of these now playing with 2-3 and one of them is always a billhook while an other is a more heavy armored support one who can save a frontliner with rotation if needed.

The fact that these weapons function as “heavy” weapons and only get 1 attack per turn limits them a lot, imo. They have their uses, but with all my experimentation, I don’t feel they’re that great.

2h
They are the hardest one to breed. Unfortunately at this moment I found that the only usable 2h weapon is the sword sometimes the orc chain. The sword can attack in a line just as 3 around and usually you can easily setup so that they don’t hit your own. Nothing is more facepalm when you behead your own guys with a careless swing. If you do a line tactic then just place them at the end of the line, they will attract enemies around and can do good use of those swords. But they need skills like berserk, armor, and lots of fatigue to be extremely effective on their own. It is very satisfying in a rush attack to exterminate the filth with those big swords. Tend to have 1-3 of these.

I find swords way more useful than axes. Axes should maybe get another special attack to help balance them. Greatswords are just way more versatile.

Rogues
Well, half of your concept of the rogue is the weapon, and the ther one is focus. Focus can be used with any weapons, it is deadly even on an archer with no atk skill and just a blunt weapon. Imo you should look for ways to improve the way of the rogue to be more unique and not depending on just one skill. You can try the swordmaster lone wolf build with the dagger I belive it will be much more usable. I’d even go further and would go mainly in the support tree for the footwork, weaponmaster, battleflow, fearsome. While getting dodge and nimble from defense. Since you have no armor to worry about you don’t realy need the attack tree skills, maybe the tier one for tohit only.

See my previous comment, plus what I really wanted was some form of stealth.

Weapons / Armors
You are only half right. There sure is no reason not to go heavy armor while maintaining a good fatigue. And you realy should do that. Except if you going more special builds that do not need that or that is a disadvantage in their situation. There are more other builds that are viable. Some examples: swordmaster build(no shield dodge nimble), the light assault builds(high mobility units to go for archers necromancers), or the glasscannon pike/billhook builds(just pure damage no defense). You can make anything for any tactical situation. There is no builds as in some mmo but rather a general direction ones, you can achive similar results with different ways.

The main issue is that no one but a “captain” (utility spec) will be wearing the super, super heavy armor, simply because they won’t have the fatigue, even if you put points into fatigue every level. The second issue is that when given the option between wearing heavy armor and missing a turn to recover fatigue, or wearing lighter armor and attacking one more time, the armor option will win out almost every time. There should be some benefit besides fatigue to wearing lighter/no armor (dodge %, 1 more hex of movement, etc)

Medical supplies. I belive they will be much more useful when the “reserve” will be implemented (when you have an active 12 man group and some amount in the reserve) as for now it has almost no use and I’m sure it will be balanced.

Good point, but I still rarely buy them. I’ve never run out just using the ones gained from battles.

I’ve been running four archers in my party and while they’re painful to level up I feel they really take off once you’ve got them leveled and have some bow skill on them. Four archers with high bow skill and the berserk perk shred enemy forces. Generally I’ve been trying to run a front of six spears&shield guys with archers behind and 1 greatsword on either side of the archers for if the enemy tries to flank around spearwall and I find it works very well. Basically I use the spears to tank while the archers kill everything and have the two handers focus down anything that manages to flank around and get my archers in melee. Also, giving archers quick hands and a spear (I always go with spear for the +20% chance to hit) usually allows them to finish off a weakened enemy in melee if necessary and swap back to their bow. They are weak against armor, but I’m hoping higher tier bows might fix this in the future.

This is usually how I run too, although I’m experimenting with crossbows instead of bows now.

The problem is that ranged weapons are only great against unarmored enemies. Ghouls and young orcs get destroyed, anything else and they’re meh. They also take about 5 levels to get to a point where they feel worthwhile.

I think the Blocked Shot penalty should be greater, but the base hit chance of all ranged weapons increased. Shield Wall should provide more ranged defense too, maybe. This way you can slowly advance on archers, but running up without a shield is a death sentence.

Not to mention, Skeletons resistance to archers is possibly a huge problem. If the story of the game requires a lot of fighting skeletons, no one is going to use many archers. I know you’ll be able to have more men and swap them out, but I feel like as they are now, archers are too much of a time investment to make them worthwhile.

The other problem is that base ranged skill starts out about 20-30 points lower than melee skill. This contributes massively to early game archers being whiff-cannons.

My suggestions–
1. Lower the “whiff” factor of crossbows and archers, to make them deal out damage more consistent with melee.
OR
2. Raise the armor penetration of both the crossbow and the bows. This makes trained archers a better investment, as more enemies wear armor as the game progresses.
OR
3. Have Aimed Shot have a greater % chance to hit the head and raise its base hit chance. Right now it’s almost always better to take 2 quick shots than one aimed shot (two 20% is better than one 40%, statistically)

I think playing around with ideas such as these could lead to archers having a progression more like melee characters.

Having run with crossbows for awhile, I think they need some work too. The 1 shot per round really limits them, even if they hit harder.

A. Raise the accuracy/damage to make the single shots more effective
B. Give the crossbow a melee attack, like a bash that maybe knocks back enemies for a little damage. This gives crossbowmen some more versatility.
C. Include Pavaise’s in the game

Also, would love more information in the combat log with options to disable some of them, but for nerds like me we could have a wealth of info.

Floating combat text is always fun too.

They do, but how often do you use the axes 360 swing? The 3 hex cleave and 2 hex swing from the greatsword seem to outweigh the axe’s increased damage.

If I want to destroy a shield, I’ll use a 1 handed axe from another warrior, to set up the dude with the giant 2 hander. Wasting a 2 handed attack to break a shield is sorta meh.

Your mileage may vary, but that’s just what I’ve found suits my style.

PsenBattle wrote:

Just mentioning I’m reading all of this and like what I see
Not promising anything but maybe we’ll tweak the two handed axe a little, as the 360 swing is really difficult to employ in an effective manner.
We’ll see.

Dev reply! :D Yeah, I’m not sure what the axe could gain. Maybe a passive chance to damage shields? A swing that deals no damage, but forces all enemies to move 1 hex away? Or maybe a Perk that allows AoE attacks to auto-miss allies. Again, the main issue is the versatility of the greatsword. It might deal less damage, but it’s more tactically viable.

I’ve finally managed to put every Perk tree into action and I’ll post my thoughts up asap.

Keep up the good work, love your game :D