Few thoughts about the game

[crowx]

A few thoughts about different parts of the game:


weapons: The main problem of this game. What logical reason is there to not use sniper rifles? They have huge damage, extremely accurate, enough bullets in magazine except rail guns. Yes you have to spend 2 AP to fire reliably. But that is something you have to do with assault rifles as well.
Why would I want to use assault rifles then? With sniper rifles you can one shot most of the enemies in the 1st half of the game and in the 2nd half being able to be sure you can hit and kill reliably is just too good to pass on.
The group DPS is just insane with Lannis (rail gun), Gina (assault plasma), Mule (sniper rifle), Jenna (sniper rifle). You can basically kill most enemies before they even get near, and what is the most important, you can do it with a high chance of safety, as the best defense mechanic of the game is the distance from an enemy!

Assault rifles -- I just dont understand what is their purpose in this game? Even Gina with 10+ aim had only like 80% at best with the best assault rifle in the game. The rest of assault rifles are kind of weak so that is just another reason to not use them.
You basically have to spend 2 AP in this game to hit anything (reliably). Because of that, they are basically sniper rifles with much worse damage, bigger magazine and worse % to hit. They needed some kind of mechanic to make them reliable.
For example you fire short bursts with them so maybe each of those shots should have had a chance for that kind of damage, but each shot with maybe a -10% or -15% to hit penalty? It would make them useable while not OP (would need to tweak those % to get it right). In the end there is simply no logical reason to use them if you have a better sniper rifle.

Shotguns -- useless. Totally useless. The way this games works just makes them absolutely garbage. First they dont really have that much better damage than sniper rifles (in the late game this gets even worse). Second they are effective only at a distance of 2 tiles from an enemy! If you have a character that should get so close to an enemy to do damage you have to have 2 assurances. He CAN do the damage which means 100% hit and second he CAN do a ton of it. And if he cant he must be able to fall back.
But nothing of that sort is in this game! You basically have to go close to your enemies which means even if you can take that one guy down, you get crushed by all the other enemies, because you always go against big numbers. Counting on using something like tank armor is a bad choice as well.
If you get hurt and have to heal, not even do you need to use precious AP in the middle of combat, lowering your DPS and survivability chances, but you also waste resources. Something snipers can avoid for most of the time!
Basically to be a shotgun guy in this game you are only a nuissance. A liability. The last mission shows it even more so. Ouch.
Shotguns need several things to make them viable. Longer effective range starting maybe at 6 tiles with 50% and drastically going up as you get closer with 95% at 3 tiles and less. Spread - to be able to hit adjacent enemies to your target (something like shotguns in Sword of the Stars: the Pit game).
And maybe +1AP which can be spent only on movement or something if you would really want to keep the super limited range. They just cant surive out in the open, becuase the melee enemies in this game are just simply OP and come in packs (even more in the 2nd half of he game).
Even if I would want to swap weapons and use shotguns at close distances such tactic would fall on its face. Because to swap weapons you have to waste AP, and only rarely an enemy comes right into the desired distance of 2 tiles where you get 80% hit chance - only.

Grenades -- there were a few spots where these have been useful. One gripe I have with them is, that there is no information on how much damage they dealt to the enemis. They seem to do enough damage to shields, but direct damage wasnt so great. Basically they only damage the enemy they land on, while the adjacent enemies arent hurt that much. A tiny tweak would be nice. In the last missions greanades werent that effective.

Enemies: Would have been nice to have some description of the enemies. Sometimes in the dark it is hard to see, whether it is a meele type or long-range sniper and so.
Also the biggest problem was not being able to see exact HP and shield numbers. In a strategy game having more info in this regard would be extremely helpful. X-com got this right in its own way.
One big thing I have a serious problems in this type of games is, when enemies dont drop anything or they dont even yield experience. If I dont get something from them, and on other hand I have to spend resources, the best course of action would simply be to run around them and let them be.

Scrolling: more responsivity on the mouse scroll please. It takes almost 2 seconds before the screen starts to scroll, and even if it does the speed is not right. In x-com you get list of visible enemies in lower right corner of screen. You can click on it and it takes you to targeting angle on that enemy. Basically this game seriously lacks this. Yes there are the offscreen markers but they are tiny and very dangerous to use because of missclicks.
A dedicated keyboard shortcuts to cycle directly through enemies would be nice. Or some list of visible enemis like in x-com. Yes you can cycle through enemies even now, but only after you had targeted at least one.

Stimpacks and progression: Because of the last mission I undestand why you only made using 5 stimpacks per character reliable. You wanted to evenly spread the use for all characters. Those agility stimpacks are actually very important arent they (last mission - 2nd phase)?
I personally didnt like this. Would have been much better and clearer to just have some simple experience progression system, which would allow to raise either aim or agility with maybe HP raising for each 2 points raised automatically?
The way it is now, you basically dont know how to build you character without finishing the game at least once, or having a good experience from this type of games. I mean what if somebody invests 5 aiming stims into a character with low agility? That last mission would get even harder than it already is.

Inventory: Why are equipped armor and weapon being counted to the inventory limit? It really makes scavenging in this game annoying. Without Mule that would even be impossible!
I mean in the second half of the game you really need to start carrying more ammo, cells, grenades and medkits so space is tight as it is.
It takes a lot of fun when you have to micro-manage constantly, or just waste time on the end of the mission to just go and pick something you couldnt.
I am the type that takes everything that isnt nailed down. I have basically left maybe a few ammo packs and cells lying around, everything else got either dismantled or came with me to the base. Yes it is doable but only with Mule in party an a lot of annoying micromanagement. Not fun.
Having equipped weapon and armor not count towards the inventory limit would hugely improve this.

Armor: Scout armors are hands down the best choice. Having high shields in a game where shields recharge and HP not is just too good. Tank armor and assault armor had lower shield I think? I mean you dont want to get hurt in this game. If it only gets your shields it is ok, you run back and wait on recharge.
If it gets your health you are in real problems. Tank armor has good reduction, but the problem is still that you dont want to get hurt in the first place, thus high shields are just too good to pass on. I would also like to have something like "hunker down" from x-com, which sacrifices AP for defense.
Because the really highest form of defence in the game is the distance from your enemies. If you are near an enemy you cant do much to avoid being hit, only run further away.

Shop: I have ended the game with over 3500 credits unspent. I had to buy a lot of ammo only and then a few grenades and even fewer medkits. Nothing else really. Would be much better if the shop had some more things like weapons, or maybe some weapons enhancement like scopes, silencers etc (mabe in sequel?).
Basically there is a lot of room for improvement. Btw. the grenades cost too much. You can always carry only a limited amount per character anyway, no point to put such a price tag on it. X-com got this very right by grenades being simply available, and the limiting factor was the equip slots.
And why cant I buy mk2 grenade in the last shop? And 50 space for the shared base inventory is too low - 75 would be ok, 100 generous.

Last mission. :-( First phase OK, second phase wtf? If I wouldnt take recharge cells and medkits this would be basically impossible to do. I had 1 large medkit and 1 large cell per character. Still he downed 3 of my guys before I was in range and 1 or 2 after I started doing damage on him.
Seriously having a sniper, that can shoot anybody anywhere on the map, which doesnt have that much cover to begin with, is just brutal.

No special abilities in the last mission? Is it a bug or intentional? I wasnt able to use things like paralyze and so after being teleported by the boss to the second phase and third phase.

Missions: In the whole game there were only a very few missions (mostly sidequest-ones) that were kind of hard. One is the Mule side mission with obtaining rations. Everything goes smooth until wave 3 which have initiative right after they warp in. Instant wipe for 2 times, before I realized that I cant do anything about them beginning first.
Another brutal mission was the citizen A storage with weapons and armor. I dont know whether the items were randomized or not, but I have chosen to do it clockwise - big mistake! The weapons were on the left side of the room while the armors were on the right side :-( . This was the most tight mission of them all. 3 guys had 1 HP in the end, dying a few times. Gina was the difference that let me surive and not have to restart. I dont know if different crates spawn different waves or not, but having spawn 3 heavy armor enemies while I havent picked the guns hurt.
Basically the hardest thing about the missions were the enemies that got initiative right after being spawned. And another thing is when my guys simply get out of their positions because of some dialogue with an enemy wave following right after. I mean after 3 or 4 times when enemies start to spawn each time something happens, I started to put them in secure spots beforehand, only for them to waltz outside of cover and being shot by enemies that got initiative after warping in. :-(

characters - my thoughts about them if I would want to recommend them for play. From most useful to useless:

Gina -- paralyze -- best ability in the game. Having her on the team or not is a huge difference. Taking down heavy armor enemies becomes noticeably easy with her. I was using the best assault plasma rifle with her. On aim 10+ she was able to hit reliably on longer distances. Having a good sniper rifle would be probably better, but I didnt have one so this was a better choice. Rating: 10

Josh -- overload ability. Using this on the purple alien floating enemies is probably the best use of this ability in game. Being able to drain any amount of shields on an enemy is huge. Personally I havent used him that much because of the other mechanics of the game but giving him a rail gun sniper rifle would make him extremely good because of his passive. If I could pick between Lannis and Josh I would almost always pick Josh. Rating: 8

Mule -- a 100% crit on hit active ability really makes him the best sniper of the game. He had always got the best sniper rifle when it was available. Had him on every mission I could. Also because of the limited inventory on other characters, 12 space is a godsend. The only downside is that he needs to take those stimpacks to boost his abilities, but there is enough of stimpacks in the game so it´s not a problem. Rating: 8

Lannis -- well he is on every mission so he had to be good, right? The only good thing he has is steady shot. The biggest misleading thing is the passive, which basically tells you to use assault weapons. Dont - just rail gun mk2 and at the end of game mk3 makes him a beast with combination of stedy shot and aim of 10+ for that following 1 AP shot. Rating: 7

Jenna -- another sniper. I was using her and Mule in every mission I could. Berserk sounds good on paper but it is not. It is a waste of active ability so she is not as good as Mule. The passive is nice but not game changing. Always got the sniper rifle from Mule when he upgraded. Rating: 6

Linda -- she is a good tank in the beginning of a game. But basically she is a support guy in a squad that can only have 4 people. The active ability doesnt cut it in the 2nd half of the game and the passive is completely useless. I was trying to build her as a short range killer with shotguns but it doesnt work in this game. Avoid. Rating: 3

Schaffer -- teleport doesnt make sense for him. High agility doesnt make sense either. He is an old dude! He has very low HP, and the way teleport would

be useful is for a melee or shotgun oriented character. In the end he always got a leftover sniper rifle from Jenna and that was it. He isnt a good shooter as well and you want to use stimpacks on other characters first before wasting them for him. Too bad a lot of missions make him default member of the team. Stay away any other time. Rating: 2

13 -- this guy is some kind of a joke. Agility 1, aim 2. High HP. It is basically telling me to use him as a tank. But he cant get anywhere. He is so damn slow, and you want to invest those agility and aim stimpacks for the better guys first. Shouldnt Schaffer´s stats and 13´s stats have been transfered between the two of them? The passive is a melee buff, active a scanner? He needed the stats Schaffer had for agility while keeping the high HP. Also he needed the teleport. Devs are you sure, you havent misplaced their stats somehow? Dont use, ever. Rating: 1


At this moment I would rate the game 6/10. I had fun but also a bit of frustration because of game mechanics. It is too simple, more depth would make it more enjoyable but I undestand that making a game with just two guys, you had to set priorities just to have the game finished in some reasonable time.
Maybe you will do a sequel? A bit more of a story would be nice. Maybe exploring the A and B class citizenship problems and also who was the boss guy and what was actually happening? We didnt get to know that. Mechanics wise I would like attachments to weapons, noticeable difference between the weapon types, some exp progression system maybe with talents (no talent trees - just new talents the higher level you are). Enemies dropping stuff. Bigger squad limit, inventory improvements.
Thank for the game.
(maybe if you do a sequel you could send it to Rock, paper, shotgun - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ - for more publicity. On steam it got kind of lost among all other games without any publicity).

[The Captain Coder]

I agree with almost everything you said here.

* The equipment you are wearing doesn't count toward your limit. I also thought this at first but later realized it didn't. I think this is why there is no "unequip" option (which I found annoying). I personally didn't use Mule much. I used Nia, Josh, and Jenna whenever possible. I would give each character 1 Medkit, 2 Ammo, and an extra gun (usually 1 assault rifle and 1 sniper). I only ever had to buy ammo (not until the last few stages) and rarely had a problem picking up loot. The levels almost always provide plenty of extra ammo / grenades (which I found mostly useless).

* I agree that the snipers are the best but on occasion, I found it useful to have an assault rifle / shotgun to switch to. Jenna + Mk III Shotgun + Berserk was epic in more than one situation. It cost 1 AP to switch to the gun and then 1 AP to use berserk. Most of the time I had her with a sniper but sometimes it was useful. Better documentation on the weapons / enemies would help with utilizing these better.

* Mission difficulty was my main complaint. The first 75% of the game is a cake walk. There are a few good levels (I never had to restart a mission more than once). The last level was really dumb in my opinion. Who wants to charge an enemy? I played the game for the strategy part of it. I would have much preferred an epic circular room where you kept having to run / hide / shoot at some epic baddy that was chasing you down.

* Completely agree about 13 / Schaffer. I tried the teleport ability a few times before I realized how bad it was. Everytime I tried to use it I wished there was a cancel button. If 13 had the teleport it would make more sense. He could run in, punch something, if it doesn't die teleport back. Or he could jump to something quickly and punch it twice. I felt like he was definitely not play tested.

[crowx]

Yeah, when I think about it now, you are right, it doesnt count. :-( (the inventory) -- I have finished the game and just wrote this from memory, havent double-checked. Which makes it even worse -- of course if you dont mind items lying behind it is ok, but not when you are like me ("it can be important later" mentality -- never use an elixir in Final Fantasy result)

The thing about shotgun and berserk is the low hit chance -- I was thinking of trying it like that but when I tried it with sniper rifle the result was already abyssmal, so I didnt. The only way how I see this useful is, if the enemies get warped in on you. I rather placed my guys beforehand so didnt have much problems with that. And having everybody with sniper rifles made short work with melee types.

[BlackjackGT]

A dedicated keyboard shortcuts to cycle directly through enemies would be nice

Although I had suggested in another thread using TAB key to cycle through our own characters, maybe it would be more useful to let us use TAB key to cycle through all the enemies on a map? Kind of like tab-targeting in mmoprgs -- I think it would feel intuitive. :)

On the sniper rifles, in turn-based squad strategy titles like Wasteland 2 and Firaxis' XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the Sniper Rifle Achille's Heel is that you can't move and fire a sniper rifle on the same turn. I think one way to make the Sniper Rifle less omnipotent in Halfway is to introduce that drawback -- I guess in Halfway it would be: always require 2 AP to fire a sniper rifle. I realize that's kind of at odds with the game's "right click to assign an AP and increase % to hit."

They could alleviate it a bit by letting one character have a passive ability: "Joe Schmoe only needs 1 AP to fire a sniper rifle." Maybe even a temporary "sniper stim" that enables you to fire a sniper rifle with just 1 AP for 5-6 turns, etc. I've really never played any squad-based strategy titles where it made sense to have more than one or two snipers in a group, and usually only one if limited to 4 squad members.

I wouldn't suggest only making that sniper rifle change -- it would drastically alter how people choose weapons in the game. It would probabably need to be part of a comprehensive revamp of all the firearms in the game (or, via mod, if they let us drill down to that level of altering the game), so everything had its advantages, drawbacks and appeal, and the game better rewarded "combined tactics" in terms of firearms.

Otherwise people would just say, "Thanks, BlackjackGT, now ALL the weapons in Halfway are USELESS! IDIOT!" :-)

P.S. I should've read the op's post all the way. I already wasted a stimpack on Shaffer -- his HP just seemed too wimpy. :D

[The Captain Coder]

You can cycle through characters with the left / right arrow by default. In addition, when you have an enemy selected for an ability, it will cycle through valid targets.

[Charook]

I was going to write up a reveiw but the OP's post covers the games issues really well, I hope the devs take it under consideration.

That said, I think it is a great game and found it very entertaining. I really hope to see a sequal.

[SonofaGlitch]

I completely agree about the basics on the weapons. Sniper Rifles dominate and Shotguns desperately need a range boost of 1 tile optimum and another tile for a decent shot at the very least.

One idea to improve both shotguns and assault rifles immensely would be to count their bullets/pellets (I get that they're technically energy weapons, but whatever the equivalent of them is). on both the chance to hit and damage variables.

I.E. when firing an assault rifle, each "bullet" fired makes a separate chance to hit check against the opponent. So the assault rifle that fires two shots has the chance to hit twice, and the laser rifle that fires three shots has three chances per shot (perhaps with modifiers so that each subsequent hit chance is affected by the success of the prior hit).

The same thing with shotguns, which should be broken up even further, but affected by range much more. There should probably be 5-9 (depending on type of gun) "pellets" per shot, each doing minimal damage but if they all hit, it's quite a bit. This would have the effect of making them highly effective against shields, but highly ineffective against foes with high Damage Reduction. The chance to hit with each "pellet" would be greatly reduced with range on shotguns, but due to some spread of the "pellets" (or maybe it's waves with an energy weapon variation) could hit multiple foes in a horizontal line.

Basically . . . more simulation on the physics of the projectiles could solve a lot of the problems with the weapon balance. This is what's done in a LOT of other games, and it tends to work.

[DrunkenRine]

Wow! Long posts i didnt have the time to read it all but i my suggestions on the weapons.

Sniper rifles:
Should have extremely high damage and accuracy but should as a disadvantage keep this all or nothing style. If you hit, its massive damage, if not, not damage at all.

Shotguns and Assault Rifles:
They definately should have always multiple projectiles with the full percent chance to hit of the attack for each bullet. Then the individual bullets of the burst should have their damage tweaked and adjusted. This way you have for rifles a much more reliable damage source. Lets say to clear those really low life enemies reliably or to do splash damage in an area and deal with a large mass of enemies approaching (shotguns)(a situation where sniper rifles should also be bad at). They should always have a high chance to at least do some damage, as opposed to sniper rifles which really rely on good aim.

In general: Sniper rifles should really be risky to use special weapons by higly trained specialist with high base aim and aim stims to pick out certain threats from a distance, but not your one and only bread and butter skill that wins the game. For example: a guy equipped with a sniper rifle should really have massive trouble in close combat. Up to the point where he should have to spent ap to switch his weapon to a pistol or shotgun which he uses to defend himself in that case. But right now it makes no difference, he can just wreak havoc at short distance aswell.

[danila99]

Damn, I wish this game was more polished mechanics-wise. Thanks for your reviews guys. I'll hold on buying it until 3 month or so, maybe devs will have listened to you

[BlackjackGT]

They just updated game this morning, and now we can use special abilities in the finale :-)

My shotgun thought is couldn't they make it so they do some sort of AOE or cone damage, albeit less dmg per tile than the other weapons? I think this is generally how that type of weapon works in stuff like XCOM Enemy Unknown and Wasteland 2. In Wasteland 2 I found shotguns very useful for tackling grouped enemies but the cone dmg makes it tricky to use around friendly troops without friendly fire occurring.

Maybe they could have one shotgun-skilled troop who could also "penetrate" with a special attack so the shotgun would damage a target and the enemy behind it, something like that. Or maybe a shotgun special ability that knocks a target on his back for a turn, etc.

In Halfway, if I don't have a grenade handy, the only attack really useful against a bunched up group seems to be Wallace's Beserk. :)

I love the various weapons suggestions in this thread. I guess it'll be up to devs whether they think any of them are feasible changes for Halfway at some point, best saved for a followup game, or if they're things we can mod into the game when the tools are released. :)

[a1923]

where were the rare stimpacks? didtn see any

[SonofaGlitch]

One's in the Cake room, another's hidden in one of the later missions. Don't know if there are any more or not. I only found two.

[Charook]

Originally posted by a1923:

where were the rare stimpacks? didtn see any

there is a superstim (+1 to all) in Labratory I,

[crowx]

Anybody found a stimpack that raised aim by +1 for 5 or 6 turns? I have found only one - was that some kind of an oversight, because they were not intended for the released game?
Actually I havent tried it, didnt seem that appealing to me, so I have sold it right during the mission.

[BlackjackGT]

Originally posted by crowx:

Anybody found a stimpack that raised aim by +1 for 5 or 6 turns? I have found only one - was that some kind of an oversight, because they were not intended for the released game?
Actually I havent tried it, didnt seem that appealing to me, so I have sold it right during the mission.

Yes, I have one of those Aim+1 for 5-6 turns stimpacks too. I have one or two troops kinda low on aim but I just tend to forget I even have the temporary stim available. :)

Actually, my bad memory (my brain) hurts me in this game sometimes. Like on that duo mission (the one where you can only take Nia and the initial guy) , I forgot the initial guy has Steady Aim. Probably cost me the chance to finish off that frustrating last turret. :D

[seminus]

Ih :D the temp Stims should not be in the game atm. They were on idea we tested but they did not work well in the gameplay. So I thought I removed all of them. Oh well...
Mod builders thought will have the possibility to tweak them and bring them back into the game.