ToME Wiki
Bubblegum Crisis
For those who are unfamiliar with it, Bubblegum Crisis was a late 80's cyberpunk anime inspired by the movie Bladerunner. Fortunately, thanks to youtube, all eight episodes are available for viewing:
Bubblegum Crisis OAV (Japanese, with english subtitles)
V050 discussion
BucketMan: Questions? Feedback? Love letters? Post them here! 
NerdanelVampire: How about a map of Tokyo? It doesn't need to be a real map, but something that says that Silk 'n Doll is in the Business District, etc. and things like that. I've found myself thinking that I should make a thorough examination of the city and write directions on paper on how to get to every named place. It looks like the game can have a mission in anything named and passing a mission almost requires knowing where its location is beforehand.
BucketMan: ...there are some extremely 'spoily' things that I'm not going to elaborate on, but the nature of the Tokyo map is extremely intentional. Providing the player with a map completely defeats the point. However, as you suggest, it might be very useful to you if you make one for yourself. I think if you look you'll find a number of clues as to how things are laid out, as well as some things you can do to make it less of an issue. As to missions...it depends. Tokyo express deliveries yes, you pretty much need to know where you're going to make it in time. But the delivery missions are intended mostly just to help prompt the player to learning the map, not as a serious money-making endeavor. Most basic combat missions give you 24 hours. That should be plenty of time to find a place even if you have no idea where it is. Every building of interest has a sign on it, so it's not like you need to go into buildings to identify them. Just running through an area quickly allows you to see everything that's there. Rogue boomer events don't usually last as long, but are similarly obvious when you find them.
NerdanelVampire: How about more informative mission directions that tell to go to place X in district Y, or something like that? Would that be too easy?
BucketMan: Why not spend five minutes and make a list? Buildings are labeled. It only takes a few seconds to run through an area to see everything that's in it. I think it's not as complicated as you're making it out to be. There are only three sets of locations that aren't directly adjacent to one another. For example, it's possible to run back and forth between Heavy industries, hot legs, ravens, the silk'n doll, tokyo express, the sushi bar, fuchi cyber-systems, the park and two different apartment buildings...all without ever setting foot in the subway or on any highway. It's all one big long strip connected by four junctions along the northern edge of Tokyo. And pretty much everything else lies in the other half of the map. You can run from AD Police HQ to the Aerobics gym, once again, without ever touching a subway or a highway. Just follow the road. You'll go through junctions 1, 15, 5, 6 and 8, in that order. And along that trip you'll see three apartment buildings, two subway entrances and pretty much everything else that isn't on the northern half of the map.
NerdanelVampire: Pen and paper as semi-required accessories to a computer game is so old-fashioned (and no, using a text editor in a different window isn't much of an improvement). Even decidedly old-schoold games like ToME and Angband have auto-mapping capabilities for the player's convenience, as well as monster memory and automatic learning of item flavors once they are first identified. So if the full map of Bubblegum Crisis is too spoilerish, simply have things get "remembered" as the player encounters them for the first time.
BucketMan: I'll probably add a "Where are you located" option to the phone menus, so, for instance, if Genom Tower is in your autodial list you can call up the receptionist and she'll give you directions. But if you want an explicit list that "this building is in this area" again, it would be trivial to make yourself, but I'm not going to build it into the module any more than the ToME module is going to have a tilde menu feature that tells you "Galadriel is in Lothlorien...Aragorn is in Minos Anor...Farmer Maggot is in Bree...etc." There's no special 'auto tracking' feature for this. You're just expected to remember.
Incidentally...in case it wasn't obvious...the map exists in three dimensions. Meaning, if you go in a circle...you might not end up where you started. You could be above or below it. The most obvious example of the third dimenion in the Tokyo map probably being Junction 4 beneath the Highway 16 loop. From where you start the game, go directly north between the Silk'n Doll and Area 2 Apartments. You'll pass through Junction 4, into Area 12. Note the 'Area 12 Apartments.' Now, walk about ten spaces east, then south...and follow the road going west. You're clearing walking over exactly the same spot you were on just a moment ago, but instead of seeing Junction 4, now you're on a raised highway above Junction 4. Follow it around, staying to the right. You'll come to a Y where Highways 16 and 17 intersect. Stay to the right, and you'll come to another Y, immediately before seeing the Highway 16 sign. Go south through that Y, and it will take you straight to the Area 12 Apartments. In this case, you went in a circle and you did end up where you started, but there are other places in the map where this won't be the case. The most confusing of these is probably the double loop of Highways 19 and 37, near AD Police headquarters. From the Silk'n Doll, go directly south, and get onto the Highway onramp near Ravens' Garage. It looks like a very simply counterclockwise loop, but it leads to three Y's, two of which pass directly underneath the road you start on at Raven's Garage, and no matter which way you go, there's no way to follow the circle counterclockwise to end up where you started unless you follow it all the way to the north end of the map and come out near Area 12. (Remember the Area 12 Apartments from the first example?) Imagine a skyview of someone walking up a set of spiral stairs. To you, it might look like they're simply going in circles over the same exact walkway...but to them, they never twice see the same place.
BucketMan: It's also worth noting that the subway system is part of the 3d layout of Tokyo. The subway sits directly beneath Tokyo, just like Junctions sit beneath the Highways, and in some places it's possible to go in full circles in that third dimension. For example...from the Silk'n Doll, go southwest and enter the subway. Buy a ticket for the office district. Board the train and exit the subway. You'll be right outside USSD. Remember that. Now, go back into the subway, and buy a ticket for Downtown. Board the train, exit the subway, and you'll come out just north of the Aerobics Gym. The subway allowed us to "teleport" but now we're going to trace the circular path of the subway in the third dimension without ever boarding a train. Follow the road south of the Gym, pass Sanwa Bank, through Junctions 8 and 6, and you'll see USSD again. Go back into the subway, but this time don't buy a ticket. Instead, go down the subway stairs to the north, and follow the path. You'll come to a box-like area. Continue though to the northeast, then north again...and you'll come to another subway station. Take the stairs out of the station, and you've arrived back at the Gym. You've gone in a circle. When you follow that road south past Sanwa Bank, you're on top of, and just a bit to the right of the subway passage you were just in.
The map is three dimensional.
Sirrocco: I actually don't know whether this belongs in Bugs or Gameplay. I'll assume it's just that I don't know how to do the thing, and let it ride here. I have no idea how to repair damaged hardsuits. I tried buying up some repair skill, but couldn't seem to get it to work. I tried buying new steel parts to swap in, but (as far as I can tell) the damaged bits went on the top of the stack - meaning that I can use this to swap around structural bits - say, to shift all of the damaged bits to Nene, who I leave at ADP anyway - but I effectively can't buy my way out of more than one. Raven's is pretty much empty as far as I can see, and crashes on exit. Am I supposed to go there anyway?
BucketMan: Repair skill is intended to be mostly automated, but it hasn't actually been implemented yet. Neither is Ravens. In the meantime, yes you can simply swap out damaged structure to 'repair' it. More telling is that damaged modules (for example, from overheating) simply vanish, which isn't quite what's supposed to happen. The crash on leaving the blank Raven's template has been fixed in DV.
Sirrocco: I tried this and it wasn't working for me. It seemed that it would just swap the damaged pieces back in, even though I'd just gotten a delivery of shiny new ones. Probably going with titanium would have fixed this, but....
BucketMan: Try removing structure completely rather than swapping good over bad.
Sirrocco: Is there any point, once you know what you're doing, to taking the random delivery quests? I can see taking the inexperience mercenary quests, if you wanted to avoid the chance of bodyguard BUMA, but the deliveries seem like they're just there for people who don't know any better.
BucketMan: Tokyo Express deliveries were originally intended to be a tool to help people learn the map. But, the delivery missions were built a year ago, and the map-hide feature has only been around for a few weeks, so they don't fit together very well anymore. The current plan is to have a 'tutorial' set of deliveries that will more gradually introduce the player further and further into the map, and without the harsh time limit.
Sirrocco: I do have a moderately useful set of map tips. would you mind if I set up a spoiler page for them, or is not knowing where you're going at first part of the experience, not to be missed?
BucketMan: I'm reminded of a comment I made in a discussion with DarkGod about this module...here it is from the archive page: "...people are probably going to have nightmares trying to learn how to get from point A to point B. At least, that's my goal."
So, yes...not knowing where you're going is very much deliberately intended to be part of the experience, but if nobody is actually enjoying that experience, then yes, I suppose a spoiler page would be fine. Still though, personally I expected that most people would just take ten minutes to write out a list of buildings by location, and then once they saw how the map was laid out it would stop being an issue.
Sirrocco: Also, wow but this game has a learning curve.
BucketMan: How so? Is it just the map, or is it other things too? Granted, it's not a simple like dungeon crawler, but the game is only going to get morecomplicated, not less. I think it would be helpful to have a more gradual buildup to game concepts...but to some extent you can see that already. For instance, the first difficulty level of missions are competely non-combatative. Combat is second level missions is exclusively against flesh and blood opponents. By default, Nene doesn't even inform the player of rogue boomer incidents, and the ADP warn players away from boomers when they appear. If you haven't figured out how to turn on your cell phone yet, you're not likely to engage in any suited combat. You actually have to go to some effort to find anything dangerous.
Sirrocco: Oh, and you start with no parts in stock (and no armor plates whatsoever), and getting new/replacement parts takes you an hour at priority express delivery rates. For example - I start out with huge stacks of cash (and a fairly reliable way of making a whole lot more pretty quickly by taking a bunch of mercenary missions all at the same time)
BucketMan: I was curious how long it would take for people to realize that you start with roughly 75,000yen. Though it's inconvenient that account transfers aren't implemented yet.
Sirrocco: and I know that gear has varying levels of weight and energy requirement, but I don't have any real way to get a grasp on what that means in terms of actual limits without a lot of experimentation.
BucketMan: This surprises me a bit. I thought the interface was extremely descriptive. Though maybe the sheer quantity of information it throws at you is difficult to take in all at once.
Sirrocco: Oh, and I've got a bunch of skill points to spend, and no real idea of what they mean. A few notes on the skill spoilers (This skill not yet implemented, this skill technically implemented but not yet practically useful, you should have at least one person with this skill at X, you ought to have at least this much of these skills if you are intending to be a credible threat to low-level BUMAs, aiming for probably about that much by end of game (with note on what level you'll likely be at the time)) would help that noticeably.
BucketMan: Well, note the version number. Much of this is liable to change. But, personally, when I've tried actually playing, the most critical thing I've found to do is to give Sylia a level or two worth of Hardsuit Design skill. The difference between components available at skill level 1, vs skill level 3 is tremendous. With that, and a little creativity, it's possible to design suits that will take on any single boomer you're likely to encounter outside the wizard-mode arena. After that, Dodge skill is probably the most useful right now. Avoiding blows seems to help more than hitting more often seems to. It's difficult to find any 'ranged' Class B boomers, though, so you could theoretically just build someting fast and light, pelt them at a distance and kill anything with impunity. But again...version 051. These things aren't exactly polished.
Sirrocco: Also, what with the whole "time is real" thing, I keep feeling pressure to push harder, faster, to get competent enough before the big storyline-driven missions crush me under their booted heel. Is that not a concern? I take the competent mercenary missions because they're more experience and more money for the same amount of travel time, and anyone with a decent hardsuit ranged weapon can waltz through them pretty trivially even if some of the bodyguards do go BUMA - and then some bodyguards go BUMA, and I feel like I should take them out - for the exp and to drag their carcasses back to base... and I get in over my head pretty badly. Should I really just be chilling at first? wait a few levels and get the replacement gear in before I engage, take easier missions and so forth?
BucketMan: Again...note the version number. No Storyline missions are implemented. Rogue boomer incidents will happen every 6-12 hours or so, but skipping those is far from the end of the world. The 'plan' is that unless the player triggers an event (think early Trunks, though there will be lots more triggers than in DBT) pretty much no matter what the player will have two or three game days before game events start to happen. I wouldn't rush it. Personally, I don't even touch 'competant' level missions until I'm wearing 50-100K worth of level 3-5 gear, and even then a bad design will get you killed. Boomers are just too tough to take on with a starter hardsuit. Simply piling on armor and wading into battle is a great way to get killed.
Sirrocco: Well, I've thrown another couple of characters at it, and I have a few bits of possible insight/issue.
- It is *entirely* possible to take out a boomer with starting resources (not with "bought with starting money and then waited for shipping" resources, but actual starting resources). You strip the boltguns off of Linna and Priss, take the laser sword off of Sylia, and load both boltguns on Sylia (I take on for each arm). Sylia is now capable of playing stand and deliver and taking out the early light melee boomers as long as she's got a decent amount of run-up space. She can even take them out without the run-up space, though it hurts a fair bit more. Since the competent missions always either have multiple human guards or a single boomer guard, you can scout them out beforehand and see if you need to engage at extreme range or not. I admit that taking more than one competent mission at the same location at a time is probably a mistake, but you know me - always going for the extremes. and hey - you can get that salvage in faster than anything but the one-hour priority deliveries. That's not a bad thing.
BucketMan: Yes, it can be done. Though personally I tend not to. I usually place an order with Heavy Industries, then run some miscellaneous easy missions first. The one hour shipping is expensive, but giving Sylia an extra level and some storebought parts to work with makes life much easier, I find. I think boomers probably need to be made a bit deadlier.
- if, for some reason, you unequip your starting CPU, you cannot reequip it without hacking skill. Thus, Nene is the only character who can re-equip her CPU right out of the box. Likewise, Sylia is the only one who can actually equip her starting weapon without gaining a level. This seems a tch silly.
BucketMan: Computer skill is required to install computers. This was by design. It could be reconsidered, but probably not until the computer design interface is finished. As for fitting weapons...that's actually a bug in the designer. Any character is supposed to be able to perform fitting for any other character. That's what the second line up from the bottom is supposed to be for. Fixed in DV.
- Ranged weapons seem to be a whole lot more effective than melee weapons. I could believe that this stops being the case once you start loading up with synth fibers and the like, but at least in early game, the ability to pick your target areas is huge - particularly since you're often engaging boomers specifically for the salvage, and damage to other areas comes out of that.
BucketMan: Yes, a few trivial speed-booster design changes and a single starter ranged weapon can take out any class A boomer with pretty much no risk. Again, boomers probably need to be a bit deadlier, but that rebalance probably isn't going to happen until the party AI's are working. Not much point balancing them for single characters. As for ranged vs. melee...yes, being able to hit your opponent at range is nice...but it takes a while to punch through armor, so you pretty much need to be faster then they are. At similar speed, ranged weapons tend to only be good for a couple plates. Admittedly, speed boosts are exactly what I usually buy before accepting 'competent' missions, but if you design specifically to absorb damage from physyical attacks, it's easy to have a relatively early game build that's pretty much impenetrable to security and class A boomers. Long run, the plan is for melee to generally deliver damage more quickly, but a good melee design requires a lot more modules than a decent ranged design. And, of course, a design that's strong in one area may be very weak elsewhere. All your power and heatsinks supporting your four-simultaneous beam sabers means you'll probably be running with little ECM, and all that heat makes you easier for ranged attackers to track. In any case though, we have a lot of time and room for balance changes.
- Side note: if you try to take more merc quests than you're allowed to (I've generally been trying to fill my roster, for travel-time efficiency) it gives a LUA break in a nice, safe place, and doesn't really harm anything much.
BucketMan: Known, pending. Phone entries behave similarly.
Sirrocco: Yah. My point was that it's clearly a bug, but it's really just a cosmetic one, so, not such a big deal.
- I am now starting to understand everything better, and it is now all making a lot more sense. The bit about the learning curve, though, is still there. Being functional in this game means figuring out a number of things all at once. For the people who learn best by reading everything and thinking and then doing, hardsuit design is probably pretty doable. For the people (like me) who want to learn by jumping in and maybe failing a few times while we figure it out on the fly, there's a lot about the designer that's pretty impenetrable at first.
BucketMan: Other than the things that aren't implemented? I suppose heat and power could be an unpleasant surprise for people who don't know about them. Probably the first thing most people do is completely load up on modules...then take two steps before they start frying components and having emergency shutdowns.
Sirrocco: no - it's more that there's no obvious first step. Also, the controls to the hardsuit design process aren't well-documented or entirely intuitive. I suppose I've become spoiled by games that hand you a bit at a time, but the first time I walked into the hardsuit design screen, the first thought in my head was "what the heck do I do now?" For example, taking off old modules is fairly unintuitive the first time through - old structurebits moreso. Mostly, I think we need something of a quick, first-game newbie walkthrough - not so much to tell people how to do things, but to suggest which things they're supposed to do. "First, take a few delivery quests, learn your way around the city, take notes on where everything is and how to get there. Once you're pretty comfortable with the city structure, grab the phone numbers for (your suppliers), and put in a purchase order. Try one-hour delivery of some armor (or whatever is probably the plan). Then take a few novice quests with Sylia until the armor shows up, and work on increasing hardsuit installation skills. A level of hacking might also be a good idea. Kit out Priss or Linna with the armor (and remember, you can equip more than one piece of armor per location), transfer over the laser sword, and go out hunting competent missions." (or whatever). Something on that level.
BucketMan I may be at a disadvantage because I've been using it long enough that it seems relatively simple for the amount of control it gives you for that much information. When the cursor is over the structure, for instance, the help blurb in the loer right tells you 'press enter to remove structure.' I don't see why removing structure would be any more or less difficult than removing anything else. The entire interface is 'arrow keys to move, enter to toggle, esc to exit.'
BucketMan: Yes, a tutorial would be good. Though as much screen space as is being used by the hardsuit designer, it's going to be awfully difficult to squeeze a tutorial into it. Incidentally, why was it giving you trouble? The help text tells you exactly which keys do what as you navigate through the designer. Arrow keys to move, press enter to remove this module, etc.
Sirrocco: I hadn't actually meant a tutorial. If you want to throw one in there at some point, that's cool, but I'd really just meant something like a helpfule labeled "first steps" that would be more or less what I just wrote (fixed for clarity, fixed for accuracy of simple, straightforward, functional strategies, possibly in a smidge more detail, but you don't need much.) Really, the point is just to give people a coherent, sensible order in which to try to learn things, where they won't suddenly find themselves completely horked because they took a few competent missions without figuring out how the hardsuit design interface worked first, and tried to take out the BUMA without realizing that they were unprepared.
BucketMan: Hmm. Ok, yes. We can do something like that.
Sirrocco: As a side question, are we supposed to be able to buy weapons? I can't seem to figure out how, if we are. If we're just supposed to get all our weapon upgrades from BUMA kills, then I can roll with that, but some of what I'm hearing from you suggests otherwise.
BucketMan: ...now that you mention it...I've just checked, and no, there are no weapons available for purchase. Though you can buy synthetic muscles from Genom. I've added a few pieces of generic gear to the equipment you start with to help compensate. Otherwise yes, you'll need to salvage from boomers.
V055 discussion
Sirrocco: two things. First, minor, the USSD entrance now dumps you off in the wrong place.
BucketMan: Looks like Heavy Industries does too.
Sirrocco: Second, it's rather more difficult to get into the apartments under certain circumstances than it really should be. I've got a "feed the junkie" quest. I'm wearing power armor. Supposedly, this guy's desperate. I have to blow away the security camera, because otherwise, everybody flips out when they get a look at me - but shouldn't I be able to sleaze my way in from knowing that I've got this guy's fix? I tried doing it over the intercom, and also over the cell phone from the lobby. Personally, I figure both should work, but neither did. Now, maybe having a bit of the old charm skill would help things, but....
BucketMan: ...Oh? You should be able to talk to missions contacts through the directory computer in the lobby, and they'll open the gate for you. Could be a bug....but just to check, are you sure you were talking to the right person? The directory only shows last names. It's not uncommon for multiple people of the last name to all live in the same apartment building. Just because you see someone of the last name you're looking for on the first floor doesn't mean there isn't another of that same name on a different floor. Yes, Charm skill will allow you to convince anyone to open it for you, but no skill should be needed for 'friendly' missions. (Don't expect people you're going to assassinate to open the gate for you.) The long term plan, incidentally, is to check reputation for things like this. If you check your character sheet you'll see new 'reputation' values for each faction. If the general civilian populace knows that the Knight Sabers are a bloodthirty bunch of killers, they should be more difficult to deal with. On the other hand, if civilians know and love the knight sabers, and they'll built up a reputation as saving people from boomers, when they start blowing things up in public, people should generally assume that they're doing it for a good reason. Same with ADP. "What? The knight sabers just killed somebody in a public cafe? Hmm. Well, whoever he was, he must have been bad." And so forth. Unfortunately, a lot of that code didn't quite make this release, though the guts are basically in place.
Sirrocco: I am talking to the right person, wearing a hardsuit. I checked all floors, and called everyone with the right last name. Was it supposed to work with or without the camera in place? I admit I may not have checked with the camera in place on one of them, but when I call someone with camera and hardsuit, they don't even let me say anything... and actually, it's even more broken than that. I have the mission to bring some guy his drugs. I have the drugs. I am not wearing a hardsuit. I call him up (only Shooji in the place) and give him the "no, really, I'm the delivery girl" speech. He decides that it's not worth breaking his leasing agreement and refuses to let me in. As far as I can tell, the existence of a "getting the man his fix" mission simply has no effect at all on whether or not the guy will let you in - that or you're not connecting the name in the mission to the name in the directory properly.
BucketMan: Strangely...I am unable to reproduce what you're describing...for the reason that the game locks and dies whenever I try to enter an apartment building with a Junkie quest issued. Hmm. And yes, if you have arrangements to meet someone they're supposed to let you in whether or not the camera is working, and whether or not you're suited.
Sirrocco: hokay, well... given my utter inability to do anything inside apartment buildings, I decided to try a bit of butchery at Day Funy. I successfully took out the BUMA and the hapless wretch he was protecting. I find that the criminals like me a bit more, the people and the cops like me a bit less. I'm not thinking that that's the direction I want to go in. There is a problem this build in finding things to do in the early game that are both worthwhile and plausible. I can wait for rogue boomers to show up, then go kill them. This is eminently worthwhile in all sorts of ways, but takes a long time. I can run package missions around. This takes a long time for very little money, and once you actually know the map is awfully boring. I can run kill missions in public places. This has obvious effects on reputation - if you're willing to be labeled as a bunch of bloodthirsty killers, liked only by the criminal element, this might be okay, but it has its... issues, for those of us who want to stay more or less heroic. I can pull Nene off of desk duty to have her charm her way into apartments so that I can kill people. This first of all cuts off the rogue boomers that I crave, and also seems a little... wrong. I can take competent kill missions in public places and just kill the BUMA bodyguards, thus preserving my reputation (except, presumably, with the criminal element, for whom I'd be failing missions) and gaining the exp I need for the levels I need to get the charm skill I need to start carving a bloody swath through the apartment complexes (which may or may not preserve my reputation with the appropriate people). I think I may try this next, but it seems awfully complicated for a default start. Essentially, the only way I have to get into fights that won't alienate people (other than taking up a hobby of killing bodyguards) is to just sit around and wait for a really long time until Nene calls me up - and the only noncombat missions I have are repetitive, time-consuming, and generally unlucrative, once subway fare is counted in. This may be somewhat in theme (Scenes of Priss sitting around at night, bored and antsy, wishing for a Boomer to show up so she can fight it) but it doesn't really make for a particularly good game. Suggestion: Have the "Nene - anything going on down there?" talk option actually set up a mission. You'd only get one at a time, you wouldn't get any money at all, and you couldn't get another until you took it out or it expired, but it would give those of us who want to play the goodguy something to *do*.
BucketMan: Yes. We definitely need more missions templates. Lots more. And we also need actual storyline quests for the actual game part of the game. Yes. Unfortunately I've been spending the vast majority of my development time fixing bugs rather than making content. As for doors, if you want to keep Nene at ADP HQ, try simply blasting the door open. Priss' starting weapon can penetrate walls and doors and things.
- Also, was at Day Funy, killed a BUMA, was unable to call in Mackie for the pickup. If this is because there were a bunch of tourists nearby, that's fine, though I'd thin there should eventually maybe be some sort of code that leads to the noncombatants leaving the area when this sort fo thing happens (and then perhaps the ADP showing up). Also, while killing said BUMA, I pretty much had to utterly destroy him. I blew off the exo torso, and then instead of targeting endo torso, it targeted bodyparts at random. I had to walk around the body and blow away pretty much everything else before he dropped (which worked just fine, I might add - possibly blowing away the legs on melee boomers is a little *too* easy - though I was packing two bolt cannons and a PPC)
BucketMan: Tourists shouldn't have any effect. There probably simply wasn't any salvage. If you 'utterly destroyed' him there wouldn't be anything to pick up. Salvage is not random. It's a direct result of what's left of the boomer when it goes down. If you take all ten locations of a boomer to at least yellow before destroying it, there won't be anything left. As to boomers being too easy...it's been said a bunch of times that boomers need to be tougher. But in this case, part of the problem also is that ranged weapons don't consume much power and don't generate enough heat. It's possible to simply mount the ranged weapons you start with onto a single hardsuit without any heatsinks or power generation at all, and blow everything away with impunity. For comparison, try mounting three beam sabers on a default hardsuit, and then simply walk around. You'll probably make it about five steps before your suit shuts down.
- For that matter, it might be appropriate to have black market reselling of various boomer/hardsuit parts. if you really just don't need that 123rd piece of blood-soaked steel armor, I'm sure that there's someone in the criminal world who'll happily take it off your hands for a sufficiently deep discount. It also gives a way for someone who focuses pretty much entirely on taking out boomers to make some money for whatever money may be useful for - subway fare, for example.
BucketMan: Ravens is supposed to act as a fence. But he's not implemented yet.
- In the initial talk page for the delivery service, the "may I have your phone number" option does not work.
- Just a thought - but perhaps successful deliveries should give a bonus to the rep of whoever you're delivering to. It would help justify their existence past the "you should learn the map" stage.
- note: getting into apartments is even worse than that. While not in power armor, with a charm of 2, I still wasn't able to convince a random schmuck to open the gate. Also, eventually those gates really should be hackable - preferably both the gate and the camera.
BucketMan: The charm requirement is random. One should get you in sometimes. Three should get you in always. Also, the gates are hackable. Look for 'h' on the directory menu. Hacking skill of one should be sufficient.
Sirrocco: I'll look into that. I generally give Sylia a level of hacking anyway, just so she can put computers back in (and so, by extension, I can swap out the structure of the endo torso)
- Also - semi-sick thought, but should you be able to reduce the negative rep impact of, say, assassinating three people in Day Funy in broad daylight and butchering their gaurds, by killing everybody else and thus ensuring that there are no witnesses? After all, it looks like you maybe have to do that to get Mackie in there anyway....
BucketMan: Probably won't implement this.
- On further note, even turning Funy Day into an abbatoir was not enough to get Mackie to come pick up the 20 or so BUMA corpses littering the ground... or to convince people that perhaps this is not the club to visit.
BucketMan: How did you get 20 boomers to appear in Funy Day? As to Mackie not appearing, as mentioned above, he'll only pick up salvage if there's anything to pick up...but all in all what you're describing doesn't sound right. Is this something that happened once, or is it repeatable? After it happened once, did the game get 'stuck' and from then on you could never get salavge, or did it go away when you tried somewhere else?
Sirrocco: I didn't get 20 boomers. I got 20 boomer corpses. I had about 6 quests in Funy day at one boomer each, and repeatedly came in, killed the boomer (while leaving the target alive), left, came back, killed the boomer again. It was the only way I could figure out to consistently get exp without tanking my rep something fierce....
BucketMan: ...oh. I misunderstood. That's actually a much larger problem than it might appear to be. Imagine the same situation, but without the inbaility to call in salvage runs that you're having.
Sirrocco: Except that it's not even the real problem. The real problem is that a fast ranged hardsuit build can run and gun as many basic melee boomer builds as it wants without danger, and the only boomer builds that you run into on the competent level quests at the beginning are basic melee. Having it be a 50/50 mix of basic melee and basic ranged would fix this, particularly if we get a few balance tweaks so that a basic melee hardsuit can take out a basic ranged boomer quickly and easily under the right conditions - say, if ranged weapons get a lot less effective when hostiles are adjacent. This would also make the genre convention of packing both melee and ranged weapons on the same hardsuit make a lot more sense, and let some weapons get a lot more interesting. Knuckle bombers, for example, could be a melee attack with a severely limited ammo capacity, a healthy block of damage, and a noticeable knockback - perfect for the melee holdout weapon of an otherwise ranged-heavy hardsuit.
Sirrocco: and it's not that Mackie doesn't appear, it's that I never get the "hey, would you come salvage for me" conversation option. Anywhere. Ever.
BucketMan: Odd. I'll look into that. If that's broken that would justify an early V056.
- It is entirely possible to farm competent quests for BUMAs to kill for exp. This is made moreso by the fact that all competent assassination quests are now BUMA-guard quests.
BucketMan: This should also solve your reputation woes mentioned above. Destroying boomers is supposed to increase your reputation with both civilans and the ADP, though having just checked, apparently it doesn't in V055.
Sirrocco: Even bodyguard BUMAs? Does that really make sense?
BucketMan: Ahh. I suppose not. Hmm...then the negative reputation dilemna will probably need to be solved by having a better variety of missions available. Being able to call Nene and conjure rogue boomers at will would break certain elements of the storyline.
Sirrocco: well, not at will then, and maybe not all rogue boomers. if she had a few missions that basically said "well, there aren't any rogue boomers, but if you're really feeling bored, there's someone trying a heist with hostages at the Sanwa bank" (random street toughs, possibly carrying a few weak BUMA-grade weapons, no real benefit other than some improved rep and maybe a smidge of exp) that would help. Of course, that sort of thing also tends to make criminals a bit more leery of you. Even being able to notch up the rate of rogues would help - from "I'm looking for a chance to prove myself" to "Don't bother me unless you really don't think your guys can handle it." (which might result in fewer BUMAs, of generally higher grade, with injuries, sometimes surrounded by dead cops.)
- There appears to be a targeting preference for the right side on the default security BUMA
- Suggestion: if possible, have firing speed be independent of move speed. Having your hardsuit be faster on its feet, and hit faster with its fists/spikes/plasma blades because of improved muscle fibers and light construction makes all kinds of sense. With the way we're describing things, however, firing speed sounds more like a function of computer quality, and possible a marksmanship addon or two. It would help make things a bit more plausible, open up a build for a ranged tank (not so hot at maneuvering, can't dodge melee real well but deals out a lot of damage at range, has a nice solid block of ECM, and can take a lot of hits before going down. Strong against ranged builds, strong against light melee in small numbers, weak against medium to heavy melee and melee swarms) and provide a (well-deserved) reduction in power for the currently quite strong speed blaster build (simply wins against any number of slower melee. Weak against any ranged heavy enough to do critical damage before I can blow its head off). It would also bring the cost of making a strong ranged fighter more in line with the cost of a strong melee fighter, without badly crippling the ability to play ranged as a starting character.
BucketMan: Hmm. It's certainly possible to do. I've generally avoided variable speeds in all of my modules...but yes, here it may make sense to do.
EtMarc: I played a little, doing mostly delivery missions (and getting horribily lost). Although I got spammed by boomer reports once I activated direct phone calls and asked Nene for them. The first thing I remarked is that the module activation command selection is yellow while the rest is green, or vice versa, I couldn't tell. So please, could you chose another color pair for all colorblind people? (yep, I am yellow-green colorblind) Other than that, aren't human bodyguards a little on the weak side. I danced next to one of them without getting hit once (I was checking if my AI party member would attack him, and no she didn't).