Uncle Al

And there was I thinking I was the only person to randomly drop Zardoz pics on my friends so that they will never look at Sean Connery in the same way ever again. The gun is good, the @%$# is evil!

As far as new crafting goes I'm assuming the desired sweet spot for knowledge vs. parts drops is that players don't always craft a new item as soon as the get the required knowledge, but equally avoids the current situation where you hang on to your parts for a very late craft. Thus maximising meaningful player choice. It occurs to me there are a couple of parameters that heavily influence this behaviour: How many parts higher tier versions require over lower tier versions, and the degree to which higher tier versions of items give back more parts when scrapped. If a Q4 item was giving back 80% of the parts required to make it, or similar, that would push things strongly towards 'always craft as soon as you can'. If it stays at more like 15%, as it is now, that pushes heavily towards 'craft late'. A bit of playing around with those ratios should allow for fine tuning to hit the sweet spot for the majority of players. Without telling the devs what's easy and what's not (as an agilist I'm a firm believer that only the people who are going to do the work get to estimate it) it does strike me that you may well be able to vary those two parameters without making significant changes to the rest of the system, giving a lot of flexible control over the incentives to adopt a particular crafting behaviour. This is a good thing.

From previous dev streams, factions and an end game storyline are planned for gold. The way it was described was having two factions, White River and the Duke. Gaining rep with one unlocks some additional quest lines for that faction, but locks you out of the other story line. It was also implied that allied factions would be non-aggressive in settlements but still aggressive in the wild. So no breezing through a POI and looting without risk just because you're friendly with the occupying faction. It was all pretty vague but the intent is definitely there. I also have the impression that the 'game ending' event (although it wouldn't actually end your game, you can still sandbox as much as you like) is either killing the Duke or Noah depending on which path you take.

I'm with you that I pretty much always take a bit of mining skill in a solo play through, but the point investment required to be decent is pretty small. Strength to 2 plus a cigar and three points in miner 69er makes you a very capable miner. Mother lode to 3 as well is a nice bonus but I don't find it necessary. Using rock busters, which is easy enough to do for all dedicated mining days once you're into mid game, effectively gives you a point in mother lode for free, too. The biggest 'must have' reason for miner 69er I find, if I'm doing a lot of construction, is you really have to go to 4 points (and thus need 4 in strength and a cigar) to be able to one shot dirt blocks. That's a huge time saver if you're building serious foundations or doing underground construction. I'm fairly sure you CAN one shot dirt with miner 69er at 3 but you need a fully modded Q6 steel shovel that rolled lucky for stats. Having the perk at 4 lets you one shot with a Q5 (which you can also forge yourself at that skill level) so is a lot easier to achieve. The ideal solution there would be variable damage rolls, but that's not something that seems to be on the devs radar. Fixed damage is a major issue with how harvesting works, because the difference between doing 190 and 200 block damage with a shovel, or 90 and 100 with a wrench, is vast. Those last few points of damage basically double your efficiency.

My dream is a trader offers every suitable POI within range (say 1km per tier) before offering the same location again. So rather than a day count, a POI doesn't come around again until all the other locations in that tier have been offered. That probably gets complex for multiplayer though.

I can't point you at an actual quote, but I'm fairly certain it's been stated that collectors aren't affected by which biome they're in. They're also not affected by weather.

I remember the original dev comments, to an extent, and it was more along the lines of 'at full crit resistance you cannot be crit' than 'at full health you cannot be crit'. The dev's point was the first hit you take will never cause a crit if you've been out of combat for a reasonable time before getting hit. If you're taking hits while regenning health then I'm fairly certain you can take crits even at full health, because your crit resistance will have been pushed down even though your health is staying at maximum, because you're regenerating faster than you're taking damage. My understanding is: Getting hit debuffs crit resistance. That debuff goes away fairly rapidly with time. A few seconds without getting hit allows your resistance to recover. You CAN see the effect of this debuff if you look at your character screen. Being at low health increases your chance of being critically hit. That penalty only goes away when you heal the missing health. This does NOT show on the character screen. From the 'cannot be crit on the first hit' dev comment, it seems likely that 'full' crit resistance will protect you from a crit no matter what your health is. So being at low health means more hits will be crits, but the first few of these will likely be shrugged off by your crit resistance. Mechanically this does imply a 'two roll' system where a hit 'rolls to see if it is a crit' and then the crits roll against your crit resistance to see if they actually inflict a status effect.

The probability graph for 'not coming out this year' drops off a cliff on January the 1st, though.

Admit it, you're baiting a @SnowDog1942 trap with this one, aren't you...

I'd counter by saying that game systems that have virtually zero impact on gameplay are not 'functional'. Water was a total non-consideration past day one - according to playtesters, the changes fix that. Crafting of levelled items (tools, weapons and armour) was utterly pointless (bar maybe crafting a Q5 tier3 version of your primary firearm precisely ONCE per playthrough) - again, according to playtesters the new system leads to regular crafting throughout your playthrough. From what I see, there is a roadmap, or at least a product backlog, that lists all the game systems that don't yet align with the design vision and require more than just balance tweaks (which can be done in Alpha) to remedy. Each alpha attempts to remedy a few of those systems. If, after live playtesting of an alpha, the solution gets in the neighbourhood of the design vision, it then gets left alone. If it doesn't, it gets reworked again. That's pretty much textbook iterative product development.

Sure, if coffee gave a 50% stamina regen boost and lasted all day then master chef would be as much of a problem as Sexual Tyrannosaurus is, but it doesn't so it isn't.

That's akin to saying perception improves all gun skills because demolitions expert allows cheaper gunpowder crafting. There are a lot of ways to get a steel pickaxe that don't require a workbench, and a lot of ways to get a workbench that don't require INT, so this argument seems VERY stretched.

I'm fairly certain there's already been an official comment that traders will offer both a single magazine, but you know what you're getting, or a random grab bag of nine magazines, as quest rewards. To add to a few of the comments made in recent posts: You cannot get a 'duplicate' magazine. Unless you've maxxed out that crafting skill (so you're 60/60 or 100/100 in a certain type of crafting) then every magazine you find is useful. Magazines don't have issue numbers, they're not like books. You just have a generic 'sharp sticks' magazine and when you've found 60 of them you've mastered spear crafting. Magazines don't affect skills generally, only crafting skills. The normal perk system is still in place for all non-crafting skills. (Hopefully with a fairly major revamp of the perks) There's been no indication magazines have 'tiers'. The first copy of Engineering Weekly and the last one you find are identical, but they unlock different things depending on how far your skill has progressed. Although it's not been explicitly discounted that higher loot stages might skew which brand of magazine you find, the implication seems to be strongly that it's container type that has the biggest effect, with a slight modifier for which skills you're perked in.

The blue blocks represent the attribute 'craft' in the boardgame Talisman

OK, I see where you're going if you're shooting at a stationary target, but how often does that happen. The fact you have to reaim and reacquire your target anyway after reloading is why I don't think recoil is an issue on single shot weapons. In fact how much recoil matters is pretty much directly proportional to your rate of fire. As for the grip, possibly it's changed or possibly "WeaponHandling" only adds to hipfire handling unless it has the additional requirement. That would certainly match what's shown for the foregrip in Mem's accessory guide, which was very good but could be outdated: Positives: +15% Hipfire Accuracy, +15% Additional Hipfire Accuracy while Crouching, +13% Hipfire Handling, -5% V. Recoil, -5% H. Recoil- Negatives: -8% Aim Handling Certainly the foregrip makes more sense with those stats than adding 13% to ALL handling then reducing aim handling by 8%. I'm not sure if a difference of 13% aim handling is enough to actually test reliably just by observation but I might give it a go. Be interesting to see what the XML for the bipod it. The guide entry is: Positives: +8% Aim Accuracy, +35% Aim Handling- Negatives: -5% Hipfire Accuracy, -5% Accuracy while Walking, -5% Hipfire Handling For comparison. I'm perfectly willing to believe Mem misread the XML, or it's changed, but equally willing to believe they knew something we don't about how XML entries affect actual handling.

What's your thinking here? My understanding, it may have changed, is a muzzle brake gives -25% V recoil, -15% H recoil and +8% handling Most of that is useless on a hunting rifle, as the need to reload between shots makes recoil irrelevant. You'll need to start aiming again once you've reloaded, by which time the recoil effect has disappeared. I'd only put a muzzle brake on a hunting rifle if, as here, he didn't have anything better.

I'm assuming these are the only mods you have available, so having anything on for extra damage is a plus. As others have noted, bipods and barrel extensions are more generally useful mods for rifles. I'd go with retracting stock over fore grip. Both improve hipfire accuracy but the stock has no drawbacks whereas the grip will reduce aim handing. Reducing recoil is pretty useless on a hunting rifle, as you're reloading between every shot anyway. The muzzle brake does give a small general handling buff though, so better than nothing. Equally the foregrip recoil reduction is wasted, another reason to lean towards the folding stock.

Hah! Strictly speaking it's not going to be fixed, but the incidence of situations where it might occur will be reduced to zero. Assuming A21 is removing spear throwing completely, which I'm 100% in favour of as power attacks are so much more valuable.

It's anecdotal but I've experienced what I think is the 'seems to go through the target' effect and it's only happened with bows and thrown spears, and only at close range. I speculate it could possibly be something to do with the projectile being created on the wrong side of the hit box and thus never connecting. I'm fairly certain a large proportion of the 'I missed a certain shot so there must be a 'to hit' roll' reports come from the human tendency to assume low failure chances are zero when they are not. Any shot where even a tiny proportion of the area inside the cross hairs isn't on part of the target can be a miss. As noted above, spending some time with a laser sight turned on is a great way to see where your shots are actually going. This effect is probably also why folks find early shotguns underwhelming when they don't have the skills or weapon mods to tighten the spread. They go for headshots and the target's head looks prominant in your cross hairs, but actually the target is only making up a modest proportion of the possible hit zone (compounded by the tendency for our eyesight to naturally overestimate the relative areas covered by a single large object compared with lots of smaller spaces around it). Every now and again you'll get a shot where many, or even all, pellets don't connect, and you actually end up doing way less damage than a much safer body shot.

@meganoth Yes, the terminology was getting me confused @theFlu Got you now. I'm not criticising your use of terms, either. 'Auto-aggro' does make sense to describe the 'looking but not locked on' state we see now, but it used to correctly describe the 'coming for you, personally, no matter how sneaky you were' state of earlier stealth incarnations. Basically I agree with all three of you! @ElDudorino You make a good point. If the zombies that burst out of hiding, but don't make the perception check to see you, were just wandering around in the first place, it would be a lot easier to intuitively grasp the modern stealth mechanics. I know 'wandering sleepers' has been a thing that the devs have talked about, but no idea where we are with them. My assumption is that the current 'burst out of hiding angry but without a fixed target' functionality is a compromise to give the performance saving effects of only creating zombies as they're 'needed' while providing a much required middle ground between the 'just stand here and get shot in the head' and 'totally ignore stealth' enemies of earlier iterations.

I don't think I'm following this, or just seeing exactly what I'd expect. Am I interpreting correctly that your test is: Triggering a volume with an active light source, so you'll fail your stealth check on all enemies Firing a loud weapon - I'm not clear what this is meant to achieve Finding the triggered enemies remain 'locked' on you for 20s - which is precisely what I'd expect with rank 5 'From the shadows' What's the weird or surprising behaviour you're seeing? I can understand if you were testing whether noise can change a 'active but not locked on to you' enemy to 'locked on' - I don't think it does, but I haven't properly tested. Anecdotally I think noise just changes their 'moving to investigate' target location and/or drops your stealth value so you can be seen from further away. If you're triggering the volume with your lamp on, though, all the enemies are going to be aware of you, pretty much. (From other test comments it appears that the orginal dev statement 'active light source means auto fail stealth check' isn't quite true, but it bumps up the failure distance to the point it's almost true.) Apologies if I'm being dense.

I find sort of the opposite approach to 'let rip with a loud, single target weapon' works well when you've tried to sneak into an area and triggered several zombies. Usually you'll have a mix of one or two (the ones that were closest to you because of the updated way stealth checks work) that are actually aggroed on you. You don't get stealth damage bonuses on those. You'll also have the rest of the pack who are heading towards your location but haven't actually spotted you. You do get stealth damage bonuses on them. At that point you can swap to your spare crossbow, loaded with explosive bolts, and slam one of those into the incoming group. The 'haven't spotted you yet' crowd will just die. Explosive bolts get full stealth damage bonus (including the massive bonus for archery weapons) and are insanely lethal when used from stealth. The zombies that had spotted you may survive, but they'll usually be on the floor from the blast. You can then clean up using quiet weapons. Sound, as far as I'm aware and what I've seen definitely supports this, has an addition element to it. Firing a loud weapon repeatedly in a short space of time will alert more enemies, or at least enemies further away, than a single loud noise. The one and done approach of a single explosion seems to generate less attention that doing something pretty quiet repeatedly, like emptying a full clip from a silenced SMG.

First pic could also be a more general 'crafting' Either way I'm feeling strongly that the ability to hide wiring is the essence of it

Yes, thanks, much better explanation. I'd done the x2.5 +30 in my head for Wasteland but didn't explain it well at all. Still being inside a POI come nightfall in the wasteland is a big deal, but the impact is much less for other biomes. I'd certainly say a T4 snow is usually easier than a T5 desert, but the snow POI will give a significantly higher loot stage.