Heat calculations?

[sterik]

As we all know rep is "subtracted" from heat,lowering heat with high rep,raising it with negative rep.My question is how is this used ingame during encounters?One the encounter screen it shows both heat and rep but my question is does the game use the base heat for calculations or the modified heat,as in heat +/- rep?Also,does negotiation/intimidation increase or mitigate rep gains/loses?Just curious.

[grävling]

Negotiation skill does not affect rep gains or losses.

tap on the heat and rep display.

You should see in the bottom right corner of the display where normally you see the zone name Heat: X (Y) Zone Rep: Z

Y is your unmodified heat all over the NBZ.
X is your heat in this zone. It is what you are seeing in the red lines in the HUD ... what you tapped to see the numbers.

Y - Z = X. Except you cannot have negative heat, so if it would go negative it is set to 0.

Most of the time the game cares about X. How likely are the owners of this zone to attack me? always a chance, but this is X that matters. There is the odd encounter that cares about Y ... but they are rare.

does this answer the question?

[sterik]

Very much so,thank you.

[grävling]

Dec 30, 2014 7:52:56 GMT -5 sterik said:

Very much so,thank you.

You are most welcome. Have fun.

[sterik]

And another question-should I use two of the stun pistols as a gunslinger or one stun one regular?Seems I get some hp damage even using the stun pistol so I'm afraid a stun pistol paired with a regular pistol might kill more than stun when I dual shot.Also,is it ever worth looting because it seems whenever I do I may get a few bullets and a junky medpak that isn't worth the heat gain.

[brennan]

sterik you can't dual shot with different weapons you need two of the same gun to dual shot

[grävling]

The only loot worth getting are some interesting files to read. They are just easter eggs -- they aren't needed to do well in the game. Once you have read all the interesting reads, there is little point in looting. The loot is better in Corps territory, but again, by the time you
are operating regularly there, you should have enough money that you can buy all the drugs, medkits and ammo you need.

On brutal, which is pretty much all I ever play, it is not cost effective to loot corpses. Always stealth exit away. With the heat you avoid,
you can stay out working longer before heat forces you into a hotel, and the cash you make on 1-3 extra missions is larger than the cash
value of the loot. Plus, if you are doing a lot of capture and assassinate and raid missions, well you need all the heat help you can get.

For a gunslinger to get to dual-shot the two pistols need to be exactly the same model. So you cannot dualshot a raptor and an ares gamma mk 4, even if that would be an otherwise attractive option.

[sterik]

Thanks for the advice.Currently working on a gunslinger and a cybersword...for some reason the cybersword seems much easier to "get off the ground" as it were.Thus far both solo with no runners because I typically play solo in games if at all possible.

[grävling]

Dec 31, 2014 18:38:06 GMT -5 sterik said:

Thanks for the advice.Currently working on a gunslinger and a cybersword...for some reason the cybersword seems much easier to "get off the ground" as it were.Thus far both solo with no runners because I typically play solo in games if at all possible.

For a soloist a cybersword is a lot easier. The cyan gloves are a better weapon that even 2 ares gamma mk 4 blasta-type guns. And they don't run out of ammo. You need better firearms to use the ares gamma mk 4, than you need brawling to use the taser gloves. Since everything but a few robots has Physical Points >= Mental Points, using stun damange is more effective at neutralising your enemies, especially at the lower levels.

Remember that when you get to Corps land, you will want your Cybersword to have pleanty of athletics and AP. You want to be able to run away from the blue shirts so that they will chase you and use up all their AP that way, and then for you to have the AP left over to race up to one, kill him, and dance out of the way of his buddies weapon range in case they get the initiative next round. If you invest in firearms, then a mk251 bounty rifle may be useful to soften them up before they get close to you.

[sterik]

Thus far I seem to have good results with a cybersword,average as a gunslinger,horrible as a face and sniper.Hacker I'm lost,agent ex I haven't tried nor the hunder.I suspect that's because I have a bad habit of not making my knight combat effective before improving noncombat skills.Guess I should do that first or hire a good combat runner.Does a larger group size increase encounter difficulty or reduce xp or rep gain from jobs?If not a team of me as a cybersword focused on pure combat with a face and hacker who are at least decent in combat while mainly focusing on their respective strengths seem like it could handle most job types.Maybe along with another combat style runner to make it full.Also I see talk of recruiting one of the missing people in the main storyline,how does that work?

[grävling]

Jan 1, 2015 0:52:52 GMT -5 sterik said:

Thus far I seem to have good results with a cybersword,average as a gunslinger,horrible as a face and sniper.Hacker I'm lost,agent ex I haven't tried nor the hunder.I suspect that's because I have a bad habit of not making my knight combat effective before improving noncombat skills.Guess I should do that first or hire a good combat runner.Does a larger group size increase encounter difficulty or reduce xp or rep gain from jobs?If not a team of me as a cybersword focused on pure combat with a face and hacker who are at least decent in combat while mainly focusing on their respective strengths seem like it could handle most job types.Maybe along with another combat style runner to make it full.Also I see talk of recruiting one of the missing people in the main storyline,how does that work?

When the enemies show up it is the experience of the team as a whole that counts when deciding how many enemies to send against you, and how
skilled they are. So I never want to increase my team size to 2 -- which is pretty much all I ever want it to be, as I favour small teams
just as a matter of how I like to play games -- until my CK is pretty well established. For me this means a brawling of 3 (for brawlers) or
a firearms of 5 (for shooters), an athletics of 5, and 7AP unmodified by drugs, which means that int + per + dex must be 8 or more.

AP = 3 + [int + per + dex]/2 which means that (int + per + dex)/2 must be 7 - 3 for 7AP which means int + per + dex must be 4 x 2 which is 8.
You round down here, so if your int + per + dex is 9 you will still only have 7AP unmodified.

There are 2 philosophies of team building which I know work well. The one you have outlined, where you have a full team with all the
specialists is one approach. The drawback is that your fights will get tougher, quicker and you don't get any more experience for
slaughtering a Los V army of 3 shooters, 2 thugs with clubs, 3 vokked hellhunds and a red hatted boss than you get for winning an encounter with one dog, one red hatted boss, and one shooter or hyperpunk. But you tend to do very well in encounters and get plenty of XP that way that smaller teams miss.

If, on the other hand, you want to go the small team route, then what I do is decide early if my CK is going to be the shooter or if my CK is going to be the brawler. You then hire either a martial artist Cybersword runner (Mars, Bravestar) if you are the shooter or an Agent Ex (Mars, Aztek) or Sniper (Blue Ox, Yakashima) Runner if you are the brawler. And I don't do this until I have the 7AP and the fighting skills mentioned above. If you start joining the loner in encounters when you reach this level, you are likely to run into an Agent Ex or a Martial artist, but you will never run into a Sniper that way, you must recruit him out of a backroom.

If I am the brawler I raise my athletics and brawling evenly, after raising Strength don't worry about shooting at all, and raise dex.
If I am the shooter I raise my athletics to 5 without raising Strength, paying the 2x and even 3x penalty and raise dex.
Then either my runner becomes the int specialist (and ignores per, and per related skills) and I improve per and ignore int and int related skills, or I do the reverse.

This is because long experience has taught me that the extra starting points in skills that you would get hiring a Face or a Hacker is not worth the problem that they can only use pistols and cannot dual shoot them. I want my shooting runners to be able to one shot kill a predator drone from 5 or more squares away, otherwise I don't find them a valuable addition to a 2 person team. I haven't hired a gunslinger runner since before we had dual shooting. It may be that a dual raptor equipped gunslinger runner is not just dogmeat, but I think I would still prefer a Sniper on my team.

About recruiting the storyline member:

First you have to find the Journal, and read it. Then when you meet the member, you have to talk about the Journal contents. A third story option ending becomes available. That's the one you want to take.

[sterik]

I do very much prefer solo but it feels like by doing so I miss things.As far as a journal goes I'll spend more time looking for it next time-I already helped them both escape on this runthrough.I did take your advice-athletics to 5,ap to 7,then I boosted brawling to 5 then went back to ap and athletics until I had 8 athletics and 11 ap.More with drugs.Speaking of,is there any reason to take mp to 20 other than drone attacks?I have to thank you for all the advice...now if only I could stop sucking at hunder and keep my hunds alive long enough to be useful.

[grävling]

Jan 1, 2015 11:06:58 GMT -5 sterik said:

I do very much prefer solo but it feels like by doing so I miss things.As far as a journal goes I'll spend more time looking for it next time-I already helped them both escape on this runthrough.I did take your advice-athletics to 5,ap to 7,then I boosted brawling to 5 then went back to ap and athletics until I had 8 athletics and 11 ap.More with drugs.Speaking of,is there any reason to take mp to 20 other than drone attacks?I have to thank you for all the advice...now if only I could stop sucking at hunder and keep my hunds alive long enough to be useful.

You want to take MP up to 10 or more because your AP is your base AP -- the thing I have been suggesting you raise to 7 plus a chance to get 1 extra (if your MP is 9) or 1 or 2 extra (if your MP is 10). I tend to walk around with MP of 12 or 13 just so that if I get shot I will still be over 10 MP. The problem is that so many encounters damage you in MP, so if you are routinely cranking your MP up to 20, then you are spending a lot of cash in stims that might better be spent on better gear, sooner.

Indeed, it sounds to me as if you need an improved 'deal with the Predator Drones' strategy. There is the ever-popular 'shoot them dead with my mk251 bounty' which becomes 'shoot them even deader when my firearms skill becomes so good I don't need the 5 points of accuracy and so can use a more powerful but less accurate rifle'. There is 'dual-shoot them with my Raptor II' (but better not miss, because they are now on top of you).
You can also try 'mash them to pieces with my Steel Enforcer II (or Doom Hammer or Skull Smash if you are playing Male II)'. Or get your dogs a set of Knashers and have them chew them to pieces. If you find you need the 20 points of MP in order to survive encounters with robots, then you aren't doing something in an optimal fashion. Sometimes the trick is to run away from the encounter. You need good AP and athletics for this, but the important part is that you will be able to ditch all of the other enemies except for the hunds and the high-AP robots. Which means you can spend your second turn's attacks focused on making them dead, as everybody else is too far away to bother you.

When playing a hunder I release Atilla and don't rejoin with him or buy any more dogs until I can afford a SynthSkin suit for each dog. When you
can afford a shock maw for your dogs, playing them becomes pretty much the same as playing a cybersword knight with a pair of cyan gloves, except that they need to raise their brawling more than the Cybersword, as they don't get as many bites in per attack as a the CK gets electrical shots (the Speed figure). And when you get a new puppy, just have him run away from fights, same as an escort client does. Your puppy won't be much good for you until his or her AP are 6 or more because he needs to be able to bite and then run away, same as a baby CyberSword, so take your pup out to do package deliveries in ganger land until he has the AP to be worth fighting with.

Remember to get your hunds to equip Knashers over any shock maws if you see robots, though -- well the refurbished Fennian ones do not matter, as they die on MP or HP damage. Trying to kill a Predator Drone or a Horizon Drone with MP damage alone is a quick way to become a corpse.

[sterik]

Thank you for the tips.May I ask what being monitored does?Also which is lower heat-stealth exit or a successful intimidate and exit?Sorry for all the questions,it just bugs me wondering.

[grävling]

Jan 1, 2015 12:06:14 GMT -5 sterik said:

Thank you for the tips.May I ask what being monitored does?

It makes encounters -especially hostile encounters -- more likely. If you kill somebody it will be sure to be noticed. I don't know if this means that you will lose more rep when you do so, or just that you have a greater chance of losing rep when you do so. I haven't noticed any positive effects, though -- they don't seem to like you more when you complete jobs for them when they are monitoring you.

You may gain heat faster, too. I cannot really tell. fallen ?