Post by grävling on Jul 20, 2012 17:36:30 GMT -5
abs wants to talk about XP allocation.
startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ckbugs&action=display&thread=2565
Ok. Here are my rules -- which are going into the 'how to fight' document. Note: I am playing on brutal (and so is abs). If you are playing on a less-demanding level, you will have more flexibility when it comes to allocating XP. But if you are dying all the time, whatever difficulty, then it may be that your main problem is with your XP allocation. The approach outlined here -- very well tested -- works. This doesn't mean that it is the only way that works, by any means. These are just the Badger's Rules for Staying Alive, that's all. And I am just another player here, not the game's designer. I'm not reading code to work this stuff out, I did this all by killing enemies and being killed by them.
Enough disclaimer.
Take a look at your character's starting stats. This works for newly hired runners, too.
Recall that AP = 3 + (per + int +dex)/2 rounded down.
So if your int is 1, your dex is 2, and your per is 2, then AP = 3 + (2 + 1 +2) /2 = 5
The three things you need to worry about are your athletics, your brawling, and your AP (unless you are playing Female II, in which case it is athletics, firearms, and AP). For starting characters, these are the only things you should care about at all for a good long while -- except that if your stealth is 0, you should raise it to 1 immediately. It wouldn't surprise me if Cory has special code in there which often says ... if relevant stat == 0, then automatically fail at what you are doing. At any rate, the difference between having stealth 0 and stealth 1 in failing patrol checks (Criminal Scum!) is profound. But do not worry about your other skills as of yet. Certainly you will fail to preserve your medkits every time with an electronics of 0 -- but you will fail every time with an electronics of 5, too. You are about as intimidating as a sopping-wet kitten right now -- but you aren't going on any intimidation missions, so who cares? Your whole focus right now is on developing the stats you need in order to stay alive -- because right now your life expectancy isn't that great.
So, back to athletics, brawling, and AP.
If your athletics is under 5 you have a problem. If under 3 a severe problem.
If your AP total is under 7 you have a problem. If under 5 a severe problem.
If your brawling is under 3 you have a severe problem. Otherwise, you are (surprisingly) pretty much ok. A brawling of 5 is nicer to have, of course, but you can live with a brawling of 3 as long as you have a Yakashima MT-Taser glove, which you should buy from Back Bay Importers in Old Kenmore at your earliest opportunity. That store is under new management and no longer sells gloves. Buy your glove from Harkan Pawn Brokers in Copley Square instead. (edit July 2016)
Your first priority is to take any of the above from severe problem to problem (or ok, if it is brawling that needs improvement). If you are so unfortunate to have more than one severe problem, solve them in the listed order, not simultaneously. (So Agent Ex'es need to first get their athletics to 3, and then their brawling to 3. ) An AP under 5 is a worse problem than a brawling of 0, and an athletics under 3 is worse than either of them.
(Edit: March 23 2013. There is now an exception to this rule. If you are playing Male 2, the strength specialist, and you have 0 in Brawling, put 1 point in Brawling as soon as you can. Even if you are an Agent Ex with athletics of 2. You don't have a
gun to use -- not surprising since you cannot wield them -- and with 0 in brawling you cannot even position yourself for a aimed blow. Stay out of trouble before you get your brawling up to 3, if you can, but 1 point of brawling actually makes a huge difference over 0 points if you have to fight.)
Improve your athletics and brawling to 3 by adding points directly to your stats, even if your strength is also so low that so you have to pay double XP to do so. Don't go to work on your Body and Str, thinking to save points. This is a very nice idea, especially if you have a severe problem in both brawling and athletics, but in practice it doesn't work out very well. I have lost a surprising number of AgentExes this way. The problem is that your Dex is usually very good to go with your poor strength and body score, and thus increasing your strength takes a lot of points. And you need to get out of the severe problem stage as quickly as you can, not as efficiently in XP spending as you can. At these very low levels, it is not a lot of points that are wasted -- and it isn't actually waste because it will save your life.
You improve your AP by boosting one of dex, int, and per. You will only go up in AP when dex + int + per reaches the next even number -- so if it is even now, you need to increase 2 stats (or the same one twice) before you will see an improvement. You should increase whatever is cheapest and go on from there. But the general shape that you want is:
Your dex is some even number.
Your int and your per are the same number (which doesn't need to be even).
If your int is 2 and your per is 2 then you will be getting 2 AP out of them, which adds to whatever your dex gives you, and then add 3 to get your final total. It is the final total you are trying to get above ...shudder... 4 at this time.
Increasing your int and your per by 1 may mean that you need to increase your mind by 1 as a prerequisite.
So this is the plan.On the first day of your existence, if you are employing an 'excelerated start plan', (see startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=ckrpgtalk&thread=2570&page=1#29020 ) you can go wherever you like, and take on whatever jobs you fancy, including high paying ones in corp land. No longer true, July 2016
But after the first sleep, the survival rules are:
Only travel in Los V, Streets, and Fennian land if any of your crucial stats -- athletics, brawling and AP -- are at the severe problem level. Only take delivery missions, (people and messages) -- no assasinations, and no negotiate and threaten missions either. There are no exceptions to these rules as long as some of your stats are at the severe problem level. Back down from all fights. If you get into one anyway, run away if you can.
Ok. Off you go. Come back when you no longer have any severe problem stats. Consider sleeping when you have enough XP stored up to improve anything, not when you get exhausted, because at this level, spending 25 Yen to improve a crucial stat now is probably in your best interest.
The next order of business -- no surprise -- is having eliminated any severe problems in your crucial stats, you now need to get rid of any problems. Some starter CKs will begin here -- they are fortunate enough to not have any severe problems even when they are brand new. Here, however, there is no real need to improve things in any particular order -- you can focus on AP, and then take a point of athletics, and then go back to AP if you like. Just don't raise your AP prerequisite (int + per +dex) from an even number to an odd one, then raise something else, like brawling, and then go back to AP. And at this point, again only travel in Los V, Streets, Fennian and Yazuka territory if any of your crucial stats -- athletics, brawling and AP -- are at the problem level. There are some exceptions to this rule. You may want to go shopping for some armour that is available North of the Wall. (You don't need to go shopping for a blue glove there, buy the best fromBack Bay Importers in Old Kenmore. Harken Pawn Brokers in Copley Square). You may want to get some starter combat blades (cyberclaws), or some other implants.. (But seriously, the Yakashima MT Taser Unit (Blue Glove) works better than the 900Y rating 1 cyberclaws, which you can buy at Smith Biomedical in Old Church if you still want some.) You may decide to buy a 3 or 4 job computer (by all means do so if you have the cash). A 2 job computer is also available from Back Bay Importers, so you won't have to travel for that.
In general, there is nothing north of the wall that you want now -- just trouble -- and you aren't skilled enough yet to survive in BS or KH territories. Even Yakuzaland is marginal for you. Oxland has the problem that the Blue Oxen often have visiting Aztek guests, and you aren't athletic enough to run away from corpsmen, let alone kill them. The other problem with Oxland is that there is only one hotel there -- the Rare Flask -- and it's not cheap, either, at 100Y a night. So if things go really badly in Oxland, and your heat gets very high, then you can become stuck there.
Benni won't come pick you up, and you cannot burn off heat spending every night in the Rare Flask. You will have to crawl through Corps land ... oe the deadly sewers -- to find another hotel -- and this with your heat high. Your survival chances at doing this are not very good. So don't head for Oxland just yet. Indeed, don't go there at all unless you have either found a taxi driver that is willing to drive in heat, or bought the Water-Damaged Apartment from Independent Properties in Southie. (No longer for sale, must earn it through the Ox ladder.) With 2 places to stay you can alternate, and burn your heat off that way, should things turn hot for you.
At this point it may make sense to improve your Strength stat so that getting brawling and athletics become cheaper -- 15 points to move athletics from 4 to 5 is a lot of points. But since you really can live with brawling at 3 for a very long time, there is an argument that even paying 3x the stat is worth it for athletic improvement. It really depends on how terrible your AP score is, and how good your athletics is. If you have to put a ton of points into AP improvement, then getting better athletics quickly may be important for you. But if your AP is already 7, or close to it, then getting your athletics to 5 more slowly may make sense. If your athletics started at 4, but your BODY and STR are both well below 5, then adding the points to the stat directly will be a lot quicker -- you will have to pay much more than 15 XP to get your Body and Str to 5. Just things to consider.
Off you go again ...
Congratulations! You are now a CyberMouse. With a halfway decent set of armour, and with a MT-taser glove you are now qualified to travel to Los V, Streets, Fennian, Yakuza and Blue Ox territories. You can challenge people in the street -- though I would not do this in Oxland, yet. Continue staying out of KH, BS, and corps lands. You might consider taking on a runner .... you now have the skills that you can probably keep the runner alive long enough for them to become useful. Buy a dog, they are cheap, but only if you can afford synthskin for the pup. Otherwise he will just die on you in short order. You also might consider improving some of your other stats --- they have waited long enough. Beginning cyberware may be good purchases.
The important thing is to not waste your time improving your other stats until you have these ones set to at least this level. 6 points of hacking skill is of no use to you if you are dead. If you are playing on Normal, Crazy or Hard there is a strong temptation to say, well, I have 8 XP to spend here, and this isn't enough to raise my athletics which is what I really want to do. So I'll just go and stick 7 points into negotiation or stealth or something. That way, if I die, those points will be safe. Resist those feelings. Because the worst thing that can happen to you is not that you die and lose 7 XP. The worst thing that can happen is that the game calculates that you have enough XP now that it should start sending tougher monsters your way -- while you still have problems, or even severe problems with your critical stats.
And if you are playing a Female 2 char?
Athletics works the same way. You need 5, below 3 is a severe problem.
But you need to get your firearms to 6. Below 4 is a severe problem.
You need to get your AP to 9. Below 7 is a severe problem.
The Female II character comes with a dex which is easier to raise than usual, as compensation for not being able to brawl at all. So boost it, early. Not only will you get your improved firearms skills at the rate of 1XP per point of the increase, instead of 2X or 3X that, but every 2 points of dex is worth a point of AP. Due to her ability bonus, this may be easier to get than an additional int and an additional per -- the standard way to get another point of AP.
Go to Fairmont Self Defense and buy a Strumwhelger M2 a.s.a.p., unless you can already afford the Yakashima mk251 Bounty from Back Bay Importers. If you can afford that, buy it instead. Better yet, buy one of each. You may want to consider hiring a cyberknight glove-using runner as soon as you have the cash, so that you can train up the runner as you train yourself up. The problem with this approach is that you are so weak that you will not be able to save your runner from inconvenient death in the early stages of the game. The advantage, especially if you hire a martial artist runner, is that the runner is pretty much guaranteed to be a better fighter than you are, early on.
If you can get the mk251 Bounty then by all means go for it. But Now there is a non-lethal gun that female 2 can use.
Head to Fairlight OUtfitters in West End. Get the Ares Gamma mk 4. Use it. But the rest of what I wrote 2 years ago still stands. (May 4 2014)
It is even more important that you do not mess around improving other stats such as hacking, negotiation and the like until you have your basic set down because you need better stats to be a shooter than you need to be a brawler. The Ghosts of 52 dead Kyera the Guns in my graveyard want you to remember that you cannot negotiate with a dog.
edit: (Feb 1 2013) due to game rebalancing, dogs are not as hard now as when I wrote this. Or at least the hard ones come later. You still cannot negotiate with them.
startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ckbugs&action=display&thread=2565
Ok. Here are my rules -- which are going into the 'how to fight' document. Note: I am playing on brutal (and so is abs). If you are playing on a less-demanding level, you will have more flexibility when it comes to allocating XP. But if you are dying all the time, whatever difficulty, then it may be that your main problem is with your XP allocation. The approach outlined here -- very well tested -- works. This doesn't mean that it is the only way that works, by any means. These are just the Badger's Rules for Staying Alive, that's all. And I am just another player here, not the game's designer. I'm not reading code to work this stuff out, I did this all by killing enemies and being killed by them.
Enough disclaimer.
Take a look at your character's starting stats. This works for newly hired runners, too.
Recall that AP = 3 + (per + int +dex)/2 rounded down.
So if your int is 1, your dex is 2, and your per is 2, then AP = 3 + (2 + 1 +2) /2 = 5
The three things you need to worry about are your athletics, your brawling, and your AP (unless you are playing Female II, in which case it is athletics, firearms, and AP). For starting characters, these are the only things you should care about at all for a good long while -- except that if your stealth is 0, you should raise it to 1 immediately. It wouldn't surprise me if Cory has special code in there which often says ... if relevant stat == 0, then automatically fail at what you are doing. At any rate, the difference between having stealth 0 and stealth 1 in failing patrol checks (Criminal Scum!) is profound. But do not worry about your other skills as of yet. Certainly you will fail to preserve your medkits every time with an electronics of 0 -- but you will fail every time with an electronics of 5, too. You are about as intimidating as a sopping-wet kitten right now -- but you aren't going on any intimidation missions, so who cares? Your whole focus right now is on developing the stats you need in order to stay alive -- because right now your life expectancy isn't that great.
So, back to athletics, brawling, and AP.
If your athletics is under 5 you have a problem. If under 3 a severe problem.
If your AP total is under 7 you have a problem. If under 5 a severe problem.
If your brawling is under 3 you have a severe problem. Otherwise, you are (surprisingly) pretty much ok. A brawling of 5 is nicer to have, of course, but you can live with a brawling of 3 as long as you have a Yakashima MT-Taser glove, which you should buy from Back Bay Importers in Old Kenmore at your earliest opportunity. That store is under new management and no longer sells gloves. Buy your glove from Harkan Pawn Brokers in Copley Square instead. (edit July 2016)
Your first priority is to take any of the above from severe problem to problem (or ok, if it is brawling that needs improvement). If you are so unfortunate to have more than one severe problem, solve them in the listed order, not simultaneously. (So Agent Ex'es need to first get their athletics to 3, and then their brawling to 3. ) An AP under 5 is a worse problem than a brawling of 0, and an athletics under 3 is worse than either of them.
(Edit: March 23 2013. There is now an exception to this rule. If you are playing Male 2, the strength specialist, and you have 0 in Brawling, put 1 point in Brawling as soon as you can. Even if you are an Agent Ex with athletics of 2. You don't have a
gun to use -- not surprising since you cannot wield them -- and with 0 in brawling you cannot even position yourself for a aimed blow. Stay out of trouble before you get your brawling up to 3, if you can, but 1 point of brawling actually makes a huge difference over 0 points if you have to fight.)
Improve your athletics and brawling to 3 by adding points directly to your stats, even if your strength is also so low that so you have to pay double XP to do so. Don't go to work on your Body and Str, thinking to save points. This is a very nice idea, especially if you have a severe problem in both brawling and athletics, but in practice it doesn't work out very well. I have lost a surprising number of AgentExes this way. The problem is that your Dex is usually very good to go with your poor strength and body score, and thus increasing your strength takes a lot of points. And you need to get out of the severe problem stage as quickly as you can, not as efficiently in XP spending as you can. At these very low levels, it is not a lot of points that are wasted -- and it isn't actually waste because it will save your life.
You improve your AP by boosting one of dex, int, and per. You will only go up in AP when dex + int + per reaches the next even number -- so if it is even now, you need to increase 2 stats (or the same one twice) before you will see an improvement. You should increase whatever is cheapest and go on from there. But the general shape that you want is:
Your dex is some even number.
Your int and your per are the same number (which doesn't need to be even).
If your int is 2 and your per is 2 then you will be getting 2 AP out of them, which adds to whatever your dex gives you, and then add 3 to get your final total. It is the final total you are trying to get above ...shudder... 4 at this time.
Increasing your int and your per by 1 may mean that you need to increase your mind by 1 as a prerequisite.
So this is the plan.
But after the first sleep, the survival rules are:
Only travel in Los V, Streets, and Fennian land if any of your crucial stats -- athletics, brawling and AP -- are at the severe problem level. Only take delivery missions, (people and messages) -- no assasinations, and no negotiate and threaten missions either. There are no exceptions to these rules as long as some of your stats are at the severe problem level. Back down from all fights. If you get into one anyway, run away if you can.
Ok. Off you go. Come back when you no longer have any severe problem stats. Consider sleeping when you have enough XP stored up to improve anything, not when you get exhausted, because at this level, spending 25 Yen to improve a crucial stat now is probably in your best interest.
The next order of business -- no surprise -- is having eliminated any severe problems in your crucial stats, you now need to get rid of any problems. Some starter CKs will begin here -- they are fortunate enough to not have any severe problems even when they are brand new. Here, however, there is no real need to improve things in any particular order -- you can focus on AP, and then take a point of athletics, and then go back to AP if you like. Just don't raise your AP prerequisite (int + per +dex) from an even number to an odd one, then raise something else, like brawling, and then go back to AP. And at this point, again only travel in Los V, Streets, Fennian and Yazuka territory if any of your crucial stats -- athletics, brawling and AP -- are at the problem level. There are some exceptions to this rule. You may want to go shopping for some armour that is available North of the Wall. (You don't need to go shopping for a blue glove there, buy the best from
In general, there is nothing north of the wall that you want now -- just trouble -- and you aren't skilled enough yet to survive in BS or KH territories. Even Yakuzaland is marginal for you. Oxland has the problem that the Blue Oxen often have visiting Aztek guests, and you aren't athletic enough to run away from corpsmen, let alone kill them. The other problem with Oxland is that there is only one hotel there -- the Rare Flask -- and it's not cheap, either, at 100Y a night. So if things go really badly in Oxland, and your heat gets very high, then you can become stuck there.
Benni won't come pick you up, and you cannot burn off heat spending every night in the Rare Flask. You will have to crawl through Corps land ... oe the deadly sewers -- to find another hotel -- and this with your heat high. Your survival chances at doing this are not very good. So don't head for Oxland just yet. Indeed, don't go there at all unless you have either found a taxi driver that is willing to drive in heat, or
At this point it may make sense to improve your Strength stat so that getting brawling and athletics become cheaper -- 15 points to move athletics from 4 to 5 is a lot of points. But since you really can live with brawling at 3 for a very long time, there is an argument that even paying 3x the stat is worth it for athletic improvement. It really depends on how terrible your AP score is, and how good your athletics is. If you have to put a ton of points into AP improvement, then getting better athletics quickly may be important for you. But if your AP is already 7, or close to it, then getting your athletics to 5 more slowly may make sense. If your athletics started at 4, but your BODY and STR are both well below 5, then adding the points to the stat directly will be a lot quicker -- you will have to pay much more than 15 XP to get your Body and Str to 5. Just things to consider.
Off you go again ...
Congratulations! You are now a CyberMouse. With a halfway decent set of armour, and with a MT-taser glove you are now qualified to travel to Los V, Streets, Fennian, Yakuza and Blue Ox territories. You can challenge people in the street -- though I would not do this in Oxland, yet. Continue staying out of KH, BS, and corps lands. You might consider taking on a runner .... you now have the skills that you can probably keep the runner alive long enough for them to become useful. Buy a dog, they are cheap, but only if you can afford synthskin for the pup. Otherwise he will just die on you in short order. You also might consider improving some of your other stats --- they have waited long enough. Beginning cyberware may be good purchases.
The important thing is to not waste your time improving your other stats until you have these ones set to at least this level. 6 points of hacking skill is of no use to you if you are dead. If you are playing on Normal, Crazy or Hard there is a strong temptation to say, well, I have 8 XP to spend here, and this isn't enough to raise my athletics which is what I really want to do. So I'll just go and stick 7 points into negotiation or stealth or something. That way, if I die, those points will be safe. Resist those feelings. Because the worst thing that can happen to you is not that you die and lose 7 XP. The worst thing that can happen is that the game calculates that you have enough XP now that it should start sending tougher monsters your way -- while you still have problems, or even severe problems with your critical stats.
And if you are playing a Female 2 char?
Athletics works the same way. You need 5, below 3 is a severe problem.
But you need to get your firearms to 6. Below 4 is a severe problem.
You need to get your AP to 9. Below 7 is a severe problem.
This used to be the case. Now female 2 do not have a dex that is easier to boost, but stealth and firearms which are eaiser to boost. So boost your firearms to 6 and then work like crazy on getting your AP up. The fights have been toned down a fair bit since I originally wrote this. It used to be that if female 2 saw a cyan and brown dog before her AP was 9, that was one dead knight. Now they are somewhat easier to hit. But still they should terrify you. Feb 27 2013
Go to Fairmont Self Defense and buy a Strumwhelger M2 a.s.a.p., unless you can already afford the Yakashima mk251 Bounty from Back Bay Importers. If you can afford that, buy it instead. Better yet, buy one of each. You may want to consider hiring a cyberknight glove-using runner as soon as you have the cash, so that you can train up the runner as you train yourself up. The problem with this approach is that you are so weak that you will not be able to save your runner from inconvenient death in the early stages of the game. The advantage, especially if you hire a martial artist runner, is that the runner is pretty much guaranteed to be a better fighter than you are, early on.
If you can get the mk251 Bounty then by all means go for it. But Now there is a non-lethal gun that female 2 can use.
Head to Fairlight OUtfitters in West End. Get the Ares Gamma mk 4. Use it. But the rest of what I wrote 2 years ago still stands. (May 4 2014)
It is even more important that you do not mess around improving other stats such as hacking, negotiation and the like until you have your basic set down because you need better stats to be a shooter than you need to be a brawler. The Ghosts of 52 dead Kyera the Guns in my graveyard want you to remember that you cannot negotiate with a dog.
edit: (Feb 1 2013) due to game rebalancing, dogs are not as hard now as when I wrote this. Or at least the hard ones come later. You still cannot negotiate with them.
