Companions skills

[Dorok]

Companions have some skills disabled, so it's clear they are pointless. Then player can expect those enabled can be useful.

Weapon skills: To use weapons, fine except Martial Art that is more a trap but for the dog.

First Aid: Lower addiction risk and increase healing during rest, fine.

Lock Picking: Any lockpick allows ask to companions help, the companion with the highest skill will try the lockpick, fine.

Stealth: To not attract enemies from a shorter range, can be useful, but it's the whole team that is involved. For most players because the whole team is involved it's close to pointless. But I can't say it's a trap. It can be useful.

Technology: A few dialog with allow a companion do a technology skill roll. It's so rare that it's a trap, clearly a feature planed and not really finished because of the amount of work involved.

Survival: No idea of its use for companions.

Is this right? And what's the point of Survival with companions?

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Curently, the game almost forces you to take the Praetorian perk line and as for skills.....well, only chose the gun skill you want them to use, without a very high skill they are kind of bad in combat.
Stealth is not so good on them because they very few points and level ups so you will just a lot of them and you character will always have more
Technology is not that good, you need a few points in it or none at all

Survival is pretty pointless after you get gear because you to fight bandits.

The skills/companion skills are not as polished as the rest of the game

[caverat749]

Originally posted by Dorok:

Stealth: To not attract enemies from a shorter range, can be useful, but it's the whole team that is involved. For most players because the whole team is involved it's close to pointless. But I can't say it's a trap. It can be useful.

it can influence range, so that during battles you can position the entire team in advantageous positions UNLESSSS the game messes you up by spawning in the middle with the enemies shooting first, regardless of your build
stealth is also very important when you go for the thief build - no matter how high is your pickpocket & stealh skills, if you have a companion near by , even the most daft NPC will detect you

from my playthroughs lockpick, technology and survival tend to be points dump for your companions (wanting to avoid encounters depends on your level, gear even at lower levels ) and if i can get lockpicks and toolboxes then i just give them the items and noticed an improvment sometimes opening lockes that i couldn't break with ease even though they were lower level and i had the lockpick set equipped - talking about some of the KZM safes (i.e. chamber of commerce)

anyway to improve some skills by training them at the ATOM base?

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Neyreyan:

Curently, the game almost forces you to take the Praetorian perk line and as for skills.....well, only chose the gun skill you want them to use, without a very high skill they are kind of bad in combat.
Stealth is not so good on them because they very few points and level ups so you will just a lot of them and you character will always have more
Technology is not that good, you need a few points in it or none at all

Survival is pretty pointless after you get gear because you to fight bandits.

The skills/companion skills are not as polished as the rest of the game

Thanks, in my point of view your comment doesn't change the OP comments. The most optimized way could be what you describe but it makes sense to not use a companion for combats but for lockpick. The same could be done for technology with the trap that the number of uses cases will be low.

With builds with low int such approach could make sense.

For First Aid you didn't comment, if companions can be drugs addict, it's a very useful skill. If not it is useful anyway.

For stealth again it's more for some special party. For example main character and dog. Or some other approach like in my current play.

For perks, I doubt that Praetorian is a requested Park, best armor don't have attributes penalty, just are more heavy when compared to other as good but with attribute penalty. And if you check the wiki, the best armors are those without attributes penalty, except for the weight aspect.

But Think like Enemy is perhaps mandatory, I haven't played enough to compare, but from reading posts it's efficient even when you get a single blow like 70 damages. My companions has it already, my main char not yet, it's still fine but I'll need two more level up to get it, I hope not regret it.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by caverat749:

Originally posted by Dorok:

Stealth: To not attract enemies from a shorter range, can be useful, but it's the whole team that is involved. For most players because the whole team is involved it's close to pointless. But I can't say it's a trap. It can be useful.

it can influence range, so that during battles you can position the entire team in advantageous positions UNLESSSS the game messes you up by spawning in the middle with the enemies shooting first, regardless of your build

Yes, it works very well when you attack for a random encounter, with few rare exceptions. And it changes the face of the combat without any exception if you benefit of it.

But it rarely works if you try dialog to skip and fail. I don't know for Survival skip attempt, perhaps it's better.

I don't consider avoid many random encounters as minor nor just linked to equipment, it is important to control the gameplay to fit better your taste or current mood.

Originally posted by caverat749:

stealth is also very important when you go for the thief build - no matter how high is your pickpocket & stealh skills, if you have a companion near by , even the most daft NPC will detect you

I never quote this problem for stealing. I won't bother with pickpocket in my current play.

Originally posted by caverat749:

from my playthroughs lockpick, technology and survival tend to be points dump for your companions (wanting to avoid encounters depends on your level, gear even at lower levels ) and if i can get lockpicks and toolboxes then i just give them the items and noticed an improvment sometimes opening lockes that i couldn't break with ease even though they were lower level and i had the lockpick set equipped - talking about some of the KZM safes (i.e. chamber of commerce)

So you think that companions survival help? That would be logical but nothing in game hints it. If it isn't reflected in chance to avoid an encounter through survival skill, it's hard to say if companions contribute and how.

For tools helping companions I was wondering, in my current play I gave up use them for both Lockpick and Technology, that would be an important detail for those skills for companions.

In my current play, Fidel refuses use both a shield and a close range weapon like the Russian knife he is using without the shield. I haven't tried yet companion shield + pistol.

[Nikanuur]

If there is a high-check in some situation (repair, assemble etc.) for TECHNOLOGY, does it matter if some of my companion has high technology or not? Or do I have to train it only myself?