What to do with Ralphy?

[Gregorovitch]

First playthrough i gave up on toasters so i decided to go for them this time, and so i decided to recruit Ralphy mainly for this purpose.

Trouble is now I look at his build I am totally disappointed with it. it's as though he has been deliberately constructed to be as useless as he possibly could be apart from his 5 points in toaster repair. Intelligence 3 - gimped. AP 7 - gimped. CI 11 - gimped. Mr Average basically. Nothing there to work with. Attributes deliberately wasted on charisma and luck.

So I am thinking of abandoning this game, which is annoying after 14 hours put into it, in favour of a more effective toaster repair strategy, but before i do i would be interested if anyone has managed to make Ralphy into anything remotely like an effective fighter and if so how?

[竹爺]

My Ralphy.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=328890043

・Recruit Ralphy before his level is above 10.
・When he reach Level 10, consume your attribute point to
Intelligence, so that he can gain 3 skill points per level.
・Use 1 skill point statues everytime he is recruited.
・Use a toaster repair skill book at his toaster skill level 9.
・Shotgun ambush and hand to hand strategy.
And there is a chance to tame animals if necessary.

This works for me.

[pev69]

Heh, I went sort of opposite: First playthrough I got toasters (gave skill to one of the core four rangers) but didn't get Ralphy at all. Second playthrough I decided to forgo tosters except for the Titan one that gets the great energy weapon, and when Angela left I got Ralphy for mainly just that one toaster. My group was so strong in combat that I didn't need him in fights (the opposite: I tried to always get him as far from the enemies as possible, to "shelter" him) and he just tagged along and helped carry stuff until Pistol Pete replaced him.

EDIT: Oh, actually I remembered wrong: Lexcanium replaced him first, and then PP replaced Lexcanium.

[Kinakin]

his CI is actually around avrage for a recruitable NPC
but what he really suffers under IMHo is that hes sort of a jack of all trades. Able to do a little bit of anything but nothing really well. His main use for me was bumping party CHA up in order to recrutie better guys.

From looking at his stats its almost like someone was trying to make a crit based brawler without knowing the final effects of attribute stats. And if movement fucntioned differently he might actually have been good at it. But with the current system he needs some tweaking in order to shine as I think he was intended.

A crit brawler works by increasing his crit chancce and hoping that the increase in crits will compensate for his lower dmg base dmg. Crit dmg is a combination of the base dmg of a weapon multiplied by the weapons crit multiplier and then any bonus crit dmg from strentgh applied ontop of that.


Brwaling weapons usually have a higher crit multiplier then Blade and somewhat similar to Blunt weapons but at a lower AP cost. However as a skill it gets rather shafted due to inability to modify you weapons. So generally blunt can out performs it on a properly designed melee charachter. but from a pure cit design you want to able to attack as often as possible as many times as possible and with the highest crit chance possible.

1 square is 1.5 meters. As such you will want a movement rating dividable by 1.5 in order to not waste AP when moving. Your movement pr AP is decided by your speed rating and starts off at 2.2m at lvl 1 and goes up to 3.8m at lvl10. Increasing by 0.2m pr lvl. My personal fav is lvl 8 which is the only lvl that is clearly dividable by 1,5 due to its 3.5m pr AP value. ralphy sits at 2.9m at lvl 5.

Luck is very important in regards to crit chance. As from what Ive been able to find out its affects your chance to crit twice over. First the base formula is suposedly soemthign like this:

Critical Hit Chance = RoundDown(Luck/2) + Critical Chance from Weapon Skill + Critical Chance from Weapon

But then ontop of that crit bonus chance is added. And luck suposedly gives +1% bonus pr lvl according to the wiki.

So Ralphy has a formula that looks kinda like:

RoundDown(5/2)= 2
+Critical Chance from Weapon Skill=+1
+Critical Chance from Weapon = 0 ( I dont remember if brass knuckles have a modifier )
+Critical Hit Chance Bonus =5
=Total Critical Hit Chance = 8

Increasing his brawling skill up to 10 can add another 9 ontop of that in addition 1 additional Luck point will increase the crit chance by 2 more points ( 1 from roundown and 1 from bonus). Meaning if you add a luck charm he can have a 10% critchance very early.

The real bummer is that he sorta lacks 2 attribute points ( 1 in luck and 1 in Speed) in order to start showing what he can do. And Some more points in order to be brilliant.

[Sir Crashalot]

I consider him to be one of the more useful companions because you can get him early (provided you are willing to go there early just to get him) and his low level allows you to build him up as part of the team.

One point in int at level 10 sorts him out skillpoint wise and the other attribute points can go towards sorting out his AP issues.

I find that most of the companions you get later on are about as useful as a spare left hand and are harder to incorporate into the team while allowing for the full range of skills.

[Cutlass Jack]

I sent him to Ranger Citadel and made Pizepi my Toaster Girl. Worked excellently.

[Jeff Kaos]

I gave him assault rifle skill as soon as he leveled up the first time and he was a fairly solid "rear line" defense guy; I just had him stay back and protect my sniper. I figure he might've done better with either energy or sub-machine gun. My team has just about every skil covered except for "alarm" so every NPC I recruit I concentrate on or give a firearm skill. Right now I have Scothmo with high shotgun and Chisel who I gave SMG skill.

[NiceTenant]

A way to make companions contribute meaningfully in combat (if thats what you want) would be to coast on overpowered weapon skills like Assault Rifles or even brawling (takes way longer tho), then aggressively push their hit chance while at low skill ranks.

Ralphy is actually one of the better options out there, since you can get him right away (even before AG/Highpool with Angela), meaning if you deck him out with fully modded guns first (to up hit, long barrel/underbarrel,trinket from Mercaptain), 4-5 Ranks is enough to burst stuff out in the open reliably. Just get that +INT for the skill points and you'll be good before you hit prison. I I gave an AK to Chisel haven't regretted it so far. He kicks ass at range and up close. I like it.

Since toasters don't run away, you can revisit them shortly before you leave AZ.

[DankDankerson]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

First playthrough i gave up on toasters so i decided to go for them this time, and so i decided to recruit Ralphy mainly for this purpose.

Trouble is now I look at his build I am totally disappointed with it. it's as though he has been deliberately constructed to be as useless as he possibly could be apart from his 5 points in toaster repair. Intelligence 3 - gimped. AP 7 - gimped. CI 11 - gimped. Mr Average basically. Nothing there to work with. Attributes deliberately wasted on charisma and luck.

So I am thinking of abandoning this game, which is annoying after 14 hours put into it, in favour of a more effective toaster repair strategy, but before i do i would be interested if anyone has managed to make Ralphy into anything remotely like an effective fighter and if so how?

i got the plus one to inteligence giving him 3 skill points as soon as i could, then focused on assultrifles and toaster, worked well, since he can get a burst out of any AR, give him an AK and watch him oneshot robots in arizona, same stratagy works in california

[Gregorovitch]

Thanks for all the ideas everyone. Seems to be a strong concensus that +1 INT @ L10 is the way forward with him. I already have enough AR's but this time I'm light on a sniper so I think I'll give him that to do and see how he makes out.

[Cutlass Jack]

I nearly made him a sniper myself. Not because I thought he'd be good at it. But because a name like Ralphy nearly demands you give him the Red Ryder BB gun. :D

[Patrick]

Remember character level adds to brawling damage. That is why brawling is the most OP melee skil at the end.

[Crazyspartan]

Originally posted by Jeff Kaos:

I gave him assault rifle skill as soon as he leveled up the first time and he was a fairly solid "rear line" defense guy; I just had him stay back and protect my sniper.

Not a bad idea.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Originally posted by Dragoon:

Remember character level adds to brawling damage. That is why brawling is the most OP melee skil at the end.

That (and it's *before* the crit multiplier), and its incredible crit chance combined with a to-hit that's also a bit above 100%.

Ralphy w/ Brawling 10 you're looking at *guaranteed* critical hits even if you don't dump any more stat points into Luck, and he'll guarantee a hit on anything that doesn't have decent evasion. With, say, Chisel at Blunt 10, you're looking at critical hits roughly 40% of the time. Chisel with Blunt 10 will do over 200 damage with a plasma hammer crit, but he won't do it consistently while a Brawling 10 fighter ends up always critting.

So you take the weapon's base damage -- say, Dragon Claws, 15-19.

Add the character level (let's use 35 as an example; by the time I finished my run, most of my characters were level 43 or so). So: 50-54.

So then with the guaranteed hit and guaranteed critical hit, he'll do (2.5 + (str/10)) * 50-54. Even if you don't dump any more points into STR, that's 2.9x w/ his strength of 4, for... 145-156, for 3 AP. That's not bad for melee.

[Darth Cannabis]

Originally posted by Sentient_Toaster:

Originally posted by Dragoon:

Remember character level adds to brawling damage. That is why brawling is the most OP melee skil at the end.

That (and it's *before* the crit multiplier), and its incredible crit chance combined with a to-hit that's also a bit above 100%.

Ralphy w/ Brawling 10 you're looking at *guaranteed* critical hits even if you don't dump any more stat points into Luck, and he'll guarantee a hit on anything that doesn't have decent evasion. With, say, Chisel at Blunt 10, you're looking at critical hits roughly 40% of the time. Chisel with Blunt 10 will do over 200 damage with a plasma hammer crit, but he won't do it consistently while a Brawling 10 fighter ends up always critting.

So you take the weapon's base damage -- say, Dragon Claws, 15-19.

Add the character level (let's use 35 as an example; by the time I finished my run, most of my characters were level 43 or so). So: 50-54.

So then with the guaranteed hit and guaranteed critical hit, he'll do (2.5 + (str/10)) * 50-54. Even if you don't dump any more points into STR, that's 2.9x w/ his strength of 4, for... 145-156, for 3 AP. That's not bad for melee.

Yep then after that 1 point intel I like getting 1 more point AP, then taking his highluck and increase it more on level 30 and 40. The increase in both dodge and crit chance from luck (plus all the extra AP moments that also happen with high luck), and by end game he is basically a kung fu master. Critting in hand to hand almost everytime, and dodging what is directed at him.
The fact that you recruit him at low level, and develop with a plan from there makes all the difference.

[Gregorovitch]

Actually i've just discovered there's a special statue in the Nomad's village just round the corder from Ralphy's house you use animal whispering on and gives you +1 INT unique buff permanent by the looks of it. Specailly for Ralphy by the looks of it.