Are Beak Things OP?

[QuickHeal]

Hello Forum,

I just had 4 adult Beak Thing barge into Stack and decimate 15 Holy Sentinels and Shop Keeps...

Beak Thing stats, 27 attack, 26 toughness but 350HP on each limb... Holy Sentinels are 36 attack, 43 toughness but destroyed by the lack of HP...

I realize, It's Holy Nation, who cares... but the same thing happened at Mourn and the tech hunters were literally massacred until the Beak Things ate one, got bored and left. I understand, I love the 'WHOA' of it also and it's absolutely in line with the 'Anything can happen' that is the gem of this game, but how many times have you ran the desert only to find a Beak Thing adult sprinting at 35 MPH at your lvl 80 athletics warriors and then it's an Elder... and you don't have arrows left... good luck...

Kwik

[NyRos]

I had my first encounter with those monsters today, yes my squad was mascaraed and eaten alive.

[Minim]

Yeah, but I kind of like that some enemies are intentionally OP.

[Klingenmeister]

Yep, I made a thread about that yesterday. Today Mourn is officially dead. Only the bar (minus the barkeep), the backpack shop and two guards remain. I think even the 10k bounty died.

Originally posted by QuickHeal:

I love the 'WHOA' of it also and it's absolutely in line with the 'Anything can happen' that is the gem of this game

I completely disagree. The beak things in this area are so dominating, that it is unrealistic having people living there in the first place. If a single beak thing attack can wipe out the city, the city could have never be founded in the first place.

Like most sandbox RPGs the NPCs look completely helpless without player intervention. I really dont feel the "you are nothing special (until you hit past 50 stealth and ravage the continent)" the shop page promotes (dont get me wrong I still love the game). The game still unintentionally gives a heavy "you are the chosen one" vibe, since everyone else has the typical "NPCs are stupid lemmings" disease.

If beak things are able to wipe out a city at any moment, there shouldnt be cities in this game, since an alpha predator (which f...ing travels in packs) like the beak thing should be drawn to a major food source like a settlement.


I think more outposts should have harpoon guns and they should close the gates if they are attacked.


On a side note, I love the beak things, they are the weirdest, most non sensical and original beasts in a game, Ive seen in some time. They are designed to look slow, derpy and docile and scare the ♥♥♥♥ out of every new player, when they begin to sprint at you. Mob design in this game is the absolute best.

TL;DR: The final doom of kenshi arent machines or cannibals, but a derpy looking giraffe on crack, that has spread across the entire continent like an unstoppable disease.

[Lady Snowblood]

They are dinosaur-sized, I think they should probably have more hit points. I find their presence in the world a bit unrealistic. These things are dangerous, surely, years before your adventure starts in Kenshi, either UC or Holy Nation would have saved up some money and hired some skeletons or mercs (if HN) to go and exterminate them, at least from their territory and on the trade routes they commonly use. There would be huge casualties but getting it done once and for all would be a huge boon for the faction's economy.

I love them though and glad that they're in the game.

[Red Bat]

The holy empire use a lot of weapons that have a penalty against animals, which makes them pretty bad vs beak things. Beak things are tough, but you'll occasionally see tech hunters and wandering skeletons fight off small groups of them in the cannibal plains without player help, and you can clear out a beak thing nest with a small group with surprisingly low stats if you've got decent weapons, particularly polearms.

[Guts]

I kicked a whole pack of beak things to death with 1 martial arts master but then again my 99 athletics and masterwork scout legs make it so i can outrun them so i can avoid their attacks.

[Illegal Cage Fighting]

Just get the mod that disables the AOE on their attacks, and they're perfect.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Beak things are worse the more people you have.

They are beatable by anyone 1v1, even noobs, because their attacks (Even if you don't run away) have low accuracy. One person blocks their attacks at almost 100%.

It's when you have more beak things, and more people that ♥♥♥♥ gets bad. As a professional Beak Thing hunter (DEM EGGS BOI) you really want to only ever fight them 1v1 or 2v1. Bring a Polearm of some kind, and/or a line of archers.

For my early game income stream, I usually set up a camp on the edge of the gut. The "Blue Beach" close to the Fishing Village is a particular favorite of mine, can make bank getting Beaky eggs. Even with a novice squad.

But like any Kenshi player, I have been eaten alive by the bastards once. For having no eyes, they have incredible line-of-sight detection...

Originally posted by lee scott possessed by eminem:

Just get the mod that disables the AOE on their attacks, and they're perfect.

if you're going to cheat, just give yourself unlimited health at that point. The difference is academic.

[QuickHeal]

@klingenmeister, all good points. All good points.

Originally posted by lee scott possessed by eminem:

Just get the mod that disables the AOE on their attacks, and they're perfect.

I was looking at a lot of mods and thank you for letting me know - I absolutely will.

This first play thru I want to understand what the developer wants me to feel from this game. This really is a work of pure soul, that is why this 12 year old graphics game is a masterpiece. :)

Kwik

P.S. a Beak Thing Elder, just 1, ate the entire gate guard and support guards at Catun. LOL!

P.P.S. a simple solution may not be to nurf the Beak Things but give the city guards some range weapons to Bleed the dang things because there is very little hope of squashing 650HP on an Elder's limb to make him unconscious. A Samurai legion couldn't do it.

[cdplayer906]

they're not OP. they are easily crushed in 1v1 w/ even comparative stats. the problem the cities run into w/ them comes down to the faults of the combat system, where the individual 1v1 engaged w/ the beakthing defends while the others do not. this allows for an easy wipe in many cities, especially HN where the lower units have cloth armor.

that doesn't detract from the other half of the problem you brought up in your post and that is city security. to put it frank, is a joke. beak things wiping cities is an infrequency to shark getting wiped by raptors and blood spiders tho, which has been going on for as long as i've played the game. there really needs to be something done for vanilla to strengthen either the base numbers or the base stats of the gate guards, at the very least

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by QuickHeal:

Hello Forum,...

Hello!

Yes, Beak Things are powerful. But, as far as the player is concerned, there one of the only things left to "fear." You can't run away from them. (Not easily, that is.)

Towns are vulnerable things in Kenshi. That's part of the setting/theme. They have guards for a reason. Or, in some cases, they don't have formal guards for a reaon...

What can be done when there isn't really supposed to be any "safe place" for anyone in Kenshi?

There are limits, mostly based on the same things the player has access to. Guards can't have special +Beak Thing damage without +Beak Thing Damage weapons/etc that players could loot and that could threaten to unbalance their games. Beak Things have to remain fearsome, after all.

And, how do Beak-Thing-Proof a town without Player-Proofing the town? One of the suggestions has been "More Crossbows" and I think that's a good idea.HN Eagle's Crosses would surely help out the Gate guards... and provide a source of Eagle's Crosses for players warring against the HN. That might not be so good.

AFAIK, nothing in the game can interact with opening/closing a Gate besides the player clicking on it. It doesn't appear to have the same dynamics as a shop door in that respect. (Which is surprising, consider how cut&paste some things are.)

If it could be worked out, a "Beast Hunter" squad might be possible. I don't mean a natural random spawn, but using something like the same mechanic the game uses for Shinobi Allied players with a "Wandering Assassin" that "just happens to show up" when you're in the middle of a desperate fight and are Allied with the Shinobi. Whenever I see a Wandering Assassin on the road, I make sure my weapons are ready... If a Beak Thing attack could spawn such a group, that would help.

But, the most obvious issue is that NPCs don't have "replacement spawn" mechanics. Despite the vast region of territory the major factions claim in Kenshi, they can't hire enough guards for their major cities, even if the guards have been decimated by RNG. They can't hire one of the hundreds of Mercenary Groups even just for a few days. They are... pretty darn helpless. A player could just lure out and ambush gate guards over a period of a week and then have a Major Faction City at their mercy. But, these are the same factions that threaten to wipe out player-owned bases with repeated assaults by overpowered maniacs...

Replacement Mechanics - We need them. We need something there. I enjoy having a "purpose" in seeing myself as a "Protector of the City." Sure, that's fun.

But, when the game itself begins to play the game and has more of an impact on the player's game than the player themselves? That's dumb and bad.

The devs made the game. They need to figure out how to balance exactly how much they want the game to be playing the player so that the player has a bit more control over their own game. Terminal RNG-creep can only be countered by the player and the player can not counter this type of RNG-creep without just resetting their game, which is a non-solution to the problem.

This is why no game has ever managed to successfully rely heavily on RNG to generate "content." Kenshi does a very good job of it, that's true. (IMO) But, the same RNG elements that we find exciting can result in large doses of Unfun and repeated Imports to fix what RNG just broke.

[Retro]

they are like nuclear bombs in kenshi

[cdplayer906]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

But, when the game itself begins to play the game and has more of an impact on the player's game than the player themselves? That's dumb and bad.

disagree completely on this point. and i believe the devs do to an extent as well being they implemented base level interactions w/ reactive world mod to the vanilla game.

dynamic expansion of environment, outside of player interaction, is the way of the future and is wall breaking to organic adaptation.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by cdplayer906:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

But, when the game itself begins to play the game and has more of an impact on the player's game than the player themselves? That's dumb and bad.

disagree completely on this point. and i believe the devs do to an extent as well being they implemented base level interactions w/ reactive world mod to the vanilla game.

I can't follow what you're saying, here. Note that "reactive world" things like World States require the player's interaction with the game, so I fail to see how that supports your point.

dynamic expansion of environment, outside of player interaction, is the way of the future and is wall breaking to organic adaptation.

This makes no sense. What are you trying to say? What you have said here sounds like "a game dynamically expanding by itself without player interaction is the way of the future" and that makes absolutely no sense. It's as if you just started throwing words at the screen...

Can you clarify your statements so I can better understand them?

[Guts]

Replacement mechanics are needed. Major factions should keep replenishing their town guards and shop keepers every week as long as the faction leader is still alive and not in jail.