Dev Log #29: Foundry

3 Mars 2014

Hey guys. We're still working on the new update and it will be a while longer because some of the new areas require quite a bit of graphical work. Here's a little sneak peek at the new major urban area - the Foundry:







In addition to that we're also adding a new minor quest hub in the cave areas south of SGS and couple more quests in SGS and Rail Crossing. Also, we reworked the order in which you receive the early game quests to avoid sending people to GMS too early and added some early game oddities.

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In other news:

• Tweaks
  
  • Reduced electronic crafting requirements for galvanic vests
    
  • Increased drops rates for all types of carrier vests
    
  • Boots now require a pair of rubber soles to craft
• Bugs
  
  • Fixed the bug that caused the game to crash when attempting to set up the fishing rod on certain spots
    
  • TNT charges will now go off properly after loading a game in which it's been already set
• Feats
  
  • Changes
    
    • Changed the AP reduction of Tranquility to 5 (down from 10)
  • New
    
    • Vile Weaponry - Whenever you cause a bleeding wound with a cold weapon, armor enhancement or trap you also apply infected wound which increases the damage taken from all sources by 10% and reduces healing effects by 25%. Stacks 3 times.
      
    • Expose Weakness - You can preform a special melee attack that deals normal damage and reduces target's mechanical resistance and threshold by 50% if it lands for 2 turns.
      
    • Steadfast Aim - Increases critical hit chance with a pistol by 1% for each base action point required to fire it above 10.
      
    • Spec Ops - Reduces action point cost modifier for burst attack from 300% to 200% when using SMGs. Also reduces cooldown of flashbangs by 1 turn.
      
    • Supressive Fire - Enemies caught in your burst attack cone (regardless of whether they've been shot) have their ranged chance to hit reduced by 10%, action points reduced by 5 and movement points reduced by 10 for 1 turn.
      
    • Quick Tinkering - Grants you an ability that when activated will allow you to arm your next trap instantly, even in combat in which case it will cost no action points.
      
    • Fancy Footwork - When you land a melee attack you gain up to 8 movement points, depending on your armor penalty. This can exceed your movement point maximum.
      
    • Taste for Blood - Whenever you attack a bleeding target with a melee weapon, you increase your melee damage by 5% and reduce action point cost of melee weapons by 0.2 for each bleeding wound the target has. This can stack up to 20 times. Expires after 2 turns if not refreshed.
      
    • Eviscerate - Grants you a special knife attack that removes all bleeding wounds from the target and deals 100% bonus damage for each bleeding wound removed.
      
    • Hypertoxicity - Increases damage done by poisons you apply by 100%.
      
    • Wrestling - When you strike a living target with fist weapon or unarmed attack you have 50% chance to reduce target's movement points by 8, action points by 3 and chance to hit with all ranged weapons by 7%. Stacks 5 times.
      
    • Combo - If you land three consecutive damage dealing unarmed or fist weapon attacks against a single target in a single turn, the third attack will deal 100% bonus damage and stun the target for 1 turn.
      
    • Pack Rathound - Increases carry capacity by 50.
      
    • Last Stand - Grants you an ability that when activated it will temporarily reset your health to your maximum for 2 turns. After the effect expires, your health will be reduced to 1.
      
    • Salesman - Increases the amount of goods merchants will buy from you by 1% per mercantile skill.
• Items
  
  • Tabi Boots - lightweight boots that can be crafted from leather or fabric components
    
  • Components (these are all crafting only; that is items made of these cannot be found or bought)
    
    • Siphoner leather
      
    • Psi Beetle armor plate
      
    • Burrower armor plate
  • Super secret stuff

Dev Log #28: Energy Shields

2 Februari 2014

This has been long overdue but I finally got around to implementing energy shields. The main purpose of energy shields is to provide the player with kind of a health buffer, particularly against ranged opponents, so they can get into the fight and survive long enough to establish the control over the battlefield.



So the way the shields work is they block a certain amount of damage from each direct attack based on impact speed (very slow to very fast) rather than on damage type (mechanical, heat, etc). The amount of damage a shield can absorb in total is equal to its max energy times conversion rate. Shields also dissipate over time, so you won't want to keep them running unless they are needed to block damage. They cannot be recharged in combat.

The amount of damage blocked for each impact speed depends on the modulators used to craft/generate the shield emitter, but overall shield emitters are much more effective against higher impact speeds, so melee characters and, to a lesser extent crossbow users, will have an edge when fighting shielded enemies. Additionally, most types of melee weapons will ignore certain amount of shield (and some special attacks ignore it completely) so we can balance out their usefulness against the hard hitting sledgehammers - knives ignore 60% of energy shielding, fist weapons 80% and unarmed attacks 100%.

Concerning what attack has which impact speed - it's displayed for the weapons, but most other stuff (psi, grenades, etc) don't list it. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this, because I don't want to clutter the descriptions so maybe a better solution would be to list it somewhere else or have an NPC educate the player about it. We'll see, I haven't made up my mind yet. But until the, here's how it works basically:

• Very low impact speed - Melee attacks
  
• Low impact speed - "slow" projectile attacks, that is projectiles considerably slower than bullets, such as crossbow bolts and cryokinesis
  
• Medium impact speed - bullets, shrapnel (from frag grenades)
  
• Fast impact speed - super fast projectiles, such as those fired from sniper rifles
  
• Very fast impact speed - lasers, plasma, electrical attacks

We still haven't done much balance testing regarding how effective shields are right now. I did some number crunching, but until we put it to test in a real playthrough and also have you the players have a go at it, it's hard to balance it out properly.

Also, characters skilled in electronics will be able to craft shield emitters and, with enough skill, they will be able to attach secondary modulators (which run at 50% efficiency) giving them a bit of an edge against character who have to purchase or find their own since those very rarely have the said secondary modulator.

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In other news, here's the other stuff I've been working on:

• Tweaks
  
  • Increased the block chance of riot gear shields to 30% (up from 20%)
    
  • Firearm ammo weight now varies depending on caliber
    
  • Indirect damage no longer removes incapacitation (e.g. poison)
    
  • Electroshock primary target damage, pneumatic hit damage and force emission hit damage no longer remove incapacitation in order to better synergies with Cheap Shot feat
    
  • Minimal hit chance for melee and ranged attacks is now 10% (down from 20%)
    
  • Increased the amount of item categories most merchants will buy per reset, included the missing categories and also changed certain categories to always be included for specialized merchants (not in the unlimited amount though)
    
  • Added more psi boosters to early areas to ease up the early game for psi characters who need those rather than bullets
    
  • Telekinetic Punch, tazing and pneumatic strike are now resisted through fortitude, instead of resolve
    
  • Melee skill now scales up with either Strength or Dexterity, whichever is higher
    
  • Boot springs now reduce stealth (will add stealth speedy boots later)
    
  • Aluminized cloth heat resistance increased and crafting requirements changed to 1 per quality (down from 1.5)
• Bugs
  
  • Doppelgangers should now properly ignore target's resistances with their attacks
    
  • Fixed a very serious bug that caused ranged attacks to mostly ignore evasion rating of the target. Evasion should have much the same effect in avoiding ranged attack as dodge has for melee attacks. This will definitively affect the game's balance, both by increasing the difficulty of high evasion enemies and by buffing agility based player characters, so I'll be keeping an eye on it.
• Items
  
  • Advanced Health Hypo added
    
  • Balaclava added (+10% cold resist, +5 intimidate, +stealth when crafted out of black cloth or +hear resist when crafted out of aluminized cloth)[/li]

Also, I re-balanced bunch of feats, mostly buffing those who were in need of a buff and maybe nerfing one or two overpowered ones. I tried to hit all the feats that needed love, but there are still a couple I'm not sure how to fix or just don't have the mechanics in place to do so yet. Anyway, here's the list of changes:

• Dirty Kick - now works regardless of the current weapon, the damage is equal to 200% of unarmed damage
  
• Premeditation - now also reduces AP cost of the next psi ability buy 100%
  
• Psychosis - psi cost increment changed to 20% (up from 10%)
  
• Tranquility - reworked: now reduces AP cost of all psi abilities by 10 while the invoker is at full health
  
• Cerebral Trauma - reworked: now increases Neural Overload damage by 25% (up from 20%) and burns 15% of the target's max psi points when Neural Overload lands
  
• Force User - now increases Telekinetic Punch damage by 100% (up from 20%) and Force Field duration by 2 turns (up from 1)
  
• Lightning Punches - now works with fist weapons as well
  
• Pyromaniac - doubled the chance it will trigger across the board and the exact chance is now shown for each individual psi ability; also the bonus damage has been increased to 100% (up from 80%)
  
• Crippling Strike - damage increased to 150% (up from 125%) and it no longer costs additional action points, but has 1 turn cooldown
  
• Grenadier - now reduces standard grenade cooldown by 2 turns (up from 1) and special grenade cooldown by 3 turns (up from 2)
  
• Hypothermia - now reduces constitution by 1 (down from 2) and stacks up to 5 times (up from 3)
  
• Thermodinamicity - instead of psi cost, now reduces action point cost by 50%
  
• Evasive Maneuvers - now grants evasion equal to three times your movement points (up from x2)
  
• Uncanny Dodge - now allows you to dodge next three melee attacks instead of just one, but cooldown is increased to 3 turns (up from 2)

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As far the content is concerned, we're working on new areas, quests and creatures. One of the goals is to add more side quests to SGS (and surrounding areas) and Rail Crossing which we feel are most in need of those. We'll also be adding a major new station with the next update, but more on that in some future dev log (won't be Core City just yet, though). ;)