Draco

[Seldkam]

The new DLC character Draco.

I want to love him. Really, I do. But I can't. For him to be useful the player needs to go against their own self-interest and kill guards and make the levels harder for them while also increasing the security level of future levels even faster because of the killing going on.

He needs help. I want him to be helped, he has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AWESOME idea behind him, one that could have been implemented just a little less... USELESSLY.

And yes I"ve tried multiple different agent combos with him, but by the third day, EVERY TIME, he is falling behind on the statistics department because I cannot afford on day2 and day3 to kill any guards, because that means too many guards showing up.

has anyone had any SIGNIFICANT amount of success with him? Past day 3 preferably?

[CureAga Wine]

Just hook him up with the scanner.
I had him as my 3rd, he was doing a pretty good job sitting at guard's faces. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Made it past the first time-out actually. And then I forgot about the energy cell (doh).

[Seldkam]

Wait, scanner? O_o

I haven't really played in awhile (aside from the past few days of frustrating re-starts lol) What is the scanner?

[CureAga Wine]

Eh, damn. I mean analysis. Anatomy analysis.

[Seldkam]

So basically RNG ? :P ARGHHHH

[Tally]

I've only used him once so far, but I got lucky with rescuing Shalem and managing to score trucktons of Piercing Scanners and an Anatomy Analysis. Draco still ended up being my least leveled agent until the end of the campaign, but he was far from useless. These are some of my thoughts from trying to figure him out:

Technically speaking, upgrading Draco is actually leagues cheaper than normally, as long as you can deal with the inreased alarm tracker (and ideally have a way to kill armored guards). Charge Packs only cost 400, and you already start with a gun. I'd still try to limit your gun use to a certain 'allowance' if possible, though. One charge pack per level, as you only get 1 per nanofab.

The real headache around Draco is that none of his benefits, temporary or permanent, can ever be relied upon. He will gain Anarchy 4 when you still just want him to get past his starting Strength 2. He will gain +3 AP from a KO'd guard when he's not in a position to move. You can't expect him to develop in any linear fashion, or for the advantages he creates to reliably be capitalized upon.

At the very least, he will earn you more money innately than you would otherwise! Both in savings and scanning. And perhaps more importantly, he'll make you think. Just don't kill guards when it would bring you more heat than you can handle -just- because you think you have to.

[homedrone]

It won't help your alarm level woes, but going to K&O and Sankaku for the free kills from drone and turret guns helps keep the cost down.

Try and capitalize on early kills. The alarm will still be a few stages away from new guards arriving and the level will be much safer without the guards waking up and hunting for you.

Also, reaching a high alarm level in a mission does not affect other missions. Just advancing through days does that. So getting a high alarm level won't make the rest of the missions harder.

If you want a quick headstart with him, archive Decker has 6 shots. So that's 7 "free" skill upgrades when you throw his shot into the pot.

[Paranoia]

Originally posted by Tally:

Technically speaking, upgrading Draco is actually leagues cheaper than normally, as long as you can deal with the inreased alarm tracker (and ideally have a way to kill armored guards).

That it assuming you start with Draco. If you rescue him, you'd have to invest in a lethal weapon, which can be a problem if you were planning to have a non-lethal party, for instance. And that could be quite an investment early on when playing on Expert. I mean yeah, drones are an option too, but only if you have a lot of energy to spare and are lucky with daemons, which isn't always the case.

So while it's probably cheaper to upgrade him that way, that's still a lot of hassle just to setup one agent. Especially considering you normally wouldn't want to speed up the alarm tracker...unless you're planning to skip a lot.

That said, if you have Dr. Xu on the team, then suddenly getting attribute boosts for Draco is as easy as pie. Find a guard, disable heart monitor before killing him and there's the free upgrade. So yeah, it's possible to make it work, just not necessarily with every comp/playstyle.

[The Skirmish Lord]

Draco can be awesome and remains the only agent I've ever been able to max out in the campaign.

Get anatomy analysis and a flurry gun ASAP to make the kill cost less painful.

As homedrone has said, turrets & hacked drones can allow you to level Draco up MANY times in one mission. Another trick is to KO a guard, drag and drop him in the path of a hacked fatal laser beam, then turn on the power to fry him. Another cost free, but not alarm free, upgrade for Draco.

The downside of Draco is that the gun he comes with has one shot and if you keep having to buy charge pack to satisfy his killing spree, there will be little money left to upgrade other agents.

Even so, 400 credits per upgrade is a bargain.

[Seldkam]

Originally posted by homedrone:

It won't help your alarm level woes, but going to K&O and Sankaku for the free kills from drone and turret guns helps keep the cost down.

Try and capitalize on early kills. The alarm will still be a few stages away from new guards arriving and the level will be much safer without the guards waking up and hunting for you.

Also, reaching a high alarm level in a mission does not affect other missions. Just advancing through days does that. So getting a high alarm level won't make the rest of the missions harder.

If you want a quick headstart with him, archive Decker has 6 shots. So that's 7 "free" skill upgrades when you throw his shot into the pot.

Woah woah woah, so drones can be scanned if killed? O_o

and yea I've tried the Decker 6 shot thing, it worked STILL up till day 2-3, and though that day3 run was the best I've had so far, it was nowhere near close to where it should have been IMO.

My basic question is: If Draco is meant to (from what I can tell) be designed for endless mode, then why the hell is he so useless in the later levels where killing is basically a suicide statement?

I dare anyone to go into a level 3 guarded facility and see if killing is really worth it. Because in my 5+ tries with him, it just isn't. And that is weird for a character that is clearly (again, to me) meant to snowball / grow as the game progresses.

And if he ISN"T meant to continue progressing then why the bloody hell would anyone use him? :|

[Paranoia]

Originally posted by Seldkam:

Woah woah woah, so drones can be scanned if killed? O_o

and yea I've tried the Decker 6 shot thing, it worked STILL up till day 2-3, and though that day3 run was the best I've had so far, it was nowhere near close to where it should have been IMO.

My basic question is: If Draco is meant to (from what I can tell) be designed for endless mode, then why the hell is he so useless in the later levels where killing is basically a suicide statement?

I dare anyone to go into a level 3 guarded facility and see if killing is really worth it. Because in my 5+ tries with him, it just isn't. And that is weird for a character that is clearly (again, to me) meant to snowball / grow as the game progresses.

And if he ISN"T meant to continue progressing then why the bloody hell would anyone use him? :|

Not sure about drone kills, but they were probably referring to the fact that you can hack drones and turrets to force them to kill guards, thus not wasting any ammo yourself.

And, once again, there are ways to make him work - Dr. Xu's special ability and/or that one augument that bypasses heart monitor...just make sure you hide corpses well. Otherwise I concur, Draco is pretty niche.

The worst part about him is that you can't really plan ahead - all of his bonuses seem to be random and you'll just never know what you get, which is pretty unique considering the game is all about planning ahead (save for Faust...that program is just evil ).

[Seldkam]

Which is really my point. It doesn't matter that he "can work". In a game that is roguelike, in a game where the point is to challenge yourself, in a game where almost no SIGNIFICANT amount of RNG exists (sure I know, you get unlucky and you didn't get the augment / item you wanted out of your mission)

but with Draco, RNG is the #1 cause as to why he doesn't work. It doesn't fit the game design, and it certainly makes no sense to me.

Again: My point isn't that he is useless because there are no good things about him, but because he literally has NO advantages over anyone else because in the end, sure he's cheaper, but what EXACTLY could you be doing with the money you're saving? That is to say, sure he got hacking for free, but wtf are you going to do with Internationale now? Make her a speed demon? No.

That is what I"m trying to get my head around.

This post started out as my original point which is :

He needs help. Badly.

[Paranoia]

Originally posted by Seldkam:

Which is really my point. It doesn't matter that he "can work". In a game that is roguelike, in a game where the point is to challenge yourself, in a game where almost no SIGNIFICANT amount of RNG exists (sure I know, you get unlucky and you didn't get the augment / item you wanted out of your mission)

but with Draco, RNG is the #1 cause as to why he doesn't work. It doesn't fit the game design, and it certainly makes no sense to me.

Again: My point isn't that he is useless because there are no good things about him, but because he literally has NO advantages over anyone else because in the end, sure he's cheaper, but what EXACTLY could you be doing with the money you're saving? That is to say, sure he got hacking for free, but wtf are you going to do with Internationale now? Make her a speed demon? No.

That is what I"m trying to get my head around.

This post started out as my original point which is :

He needs help. Badly.

Oh absolutely, wasn't trying to disprove your point, in fact I agree with you. Just the fact that you need to get out of you way to make him viable (unless his goals align with your playstyle) speaks volumes. But the added RNG aspect is the nail on the coffin here. Draco could use a buff, that's for sure.

Most agents can be great and efficient out of the box without the need to commit to some drastic changes in playstyle and you can choose how to develop them, so Draco seems very high maintenance in comparison.

To be fair to Draco though, getting extra credits from his ability can be really nice on Expert, and as for RNG...just try Faust & Brimstone achievement on hard difficulties. It's so RNG it's ridiculous (but obviously that's part of the fun there).

That is to say, sure he got hacking for free, but wtf are you going to do with Internationale now? Make her a speed demon? No.

Funny you say that, I always try to max speed on Internationale (well, more like on every agent) so that she can use cloaking 3 in addition to some EMPs.

And having 2-3 points in abilities like hacking or anarchy can be really useful. After all, you could just take higher lvl EMP and give it to your main hacker and give something like EMP 2 to your other character so that when your party splits (like 2x2 split), you will be safe from drones, more efficient at scouting the facility, etc. It can be any item - paralyzers, hacking tools, cloaks. So while having one specialist is always nice, it's useful to branch out on your other characters as well if you can afford it. Depending on your playstyle, that is.

[Jooshimus]

Originally posted by Seldkam:

sure he got hacking for free, but wtf are you going to do with Internationale now? Make her a speed demon? No.

I spot a problem, get off that Internationale crutch, and get on the Xu train.

[Paranoia]

Originally posted by Nxf7:

Originally posted by Seldkam:

sure he got hacking for free, but wtf are you going to do with Internationale now? Make her a speed demon? No.

I spot a problem, get off that Internationale crutch, and get on the Xu train.

She's too good though. Spotting devices to hack through walls AND conveniently hacking consoles from afar? Damn, why wouldn't you take her? Heh.

Xu is pretty useful too, especially if you want to kill guards, but he's no match to wireless hacks.

[Jooshimus]

Originally posted by Paranoia:

She's too good though. Spotting devices to hack through walls AND conveniently hacking consoles from afar? Damn, why wouldn't you take her? Heh.

Xu is pretty useful too, especially if you want to kill guards, but he's no match to wireless hacks.

I think she's a crutch because she doesn't provide anything special, only slight convenience. You have to value the worth of saving a couple AP's otherwise spent walking to a console, and you can potentially spot devices to hack a turn earlier, which is useful if you're using parasites I guess.

To steer this more towards the topic of Draco and hopefully not derail the thread into why I think Internationale is overrated, I don't pick Draco for endless either but it's only because once he's maxed stats he's just another plain agent when there's so many more useful ones. The small random bonuses of scanning guards at maxed stats aren't good enough.