Factory?

[thelebk]

I traveled to the factory but there is is absolutely nothing to do there. I see areas below with people and places to explore but I cannot get to them. I talk to the greeter but he will not let me in. I see there is an elevator nearby but I cannot access it. What am I supposed to do here? Why release a board where there is nothing for the player to do?

[Iluvcheezcake]

Uhhh, you got to talk to the dudes in the first area where you appear, Stanton and later on Smiles.
Dunno how you missed them

[Ergil]

The greeter won't let you in since, as he tells you, the journey through the Factory costs 10,000 credits. You can either come up with the cash, which is possible but is not the intended route, or find someone to bankroll you. More generally, you might want to consult HuggyBear's guide oftener.

[Vince]

Originally posted by thelebk:

I traveled to the factory but there is is absolutely nothing to do there. I see areas below with people and places to explore but I cannot get to them. I talk to the greeter but he will not let me in. I see there is an elevator nearby but I cannot access it. What am I supposed to do here? Why release a board where there is nothing for the player to do?

All released locations are fully playable.

Once you finish the events in the Pit the (new) leader will send you to the Habitat via the Factory and pay Thy Brother's Keepers to escort you.

[thelebk]

Ahhh game progression is hidden behind a gate that the player cannot know about. Is that the best approach? Perhaps a hint from the Greeter so players don't think the game is over if they cannot win the fight for control of the pit and don't have high enough computers and lockpick (5-6) to explore all of the map areas which might hide a way forward? I'd prefer not to read a guide with spoilers to answer questions which should be fundamental...

[Pink Eye]

Originally posted by thelebk:

if they cannot win the fight for control of the pit

Where exactly are you struggling in regards to the Jonas v Braxton conflict?

[Vince]

Originally posted by thelebk:

Ahhh game progression is hidden behind a gate that the player cannot know about. Is that the best approach?

The greeter does say you need 10k to pay for the trip. So our thinking was that the player goes back to the Pit and the nearby areas trying to earn more money, finishes the central quest and one of the three leaders pays the fee.

Perhaps a hint from the Greeter so players don't think the game is over if they cannot win the fight for control of the pit...

Did you try the alternative quests? Tell Braxton or Jonas that you aren't much of a fighter and you'll be offered to do something else (a good way for non- or low-combat characters to handle it).

[thelebk]

@Vince Thanks for checking in. Its not a logical assumption that players can earn 10k after talking to the Greeter. Quest payouts are low, and often not in cash. Furthermore by the time players are likely to explore the Factory they have explored most of the rest of the board leaving no realistic prospects for quests or money. I have not tried the non-fighting option, but if it involves high level lockpick-computers-biotech then I would not be successful. There is no reason for the player to assume the fight with Jonas after all the shaping operations are complete will be exponentially more difficult than previous encounters. I could not predict, for example, that from the starting position my rifle NPCs only have a 5% chance to hit the enemy whereas Jonas troops seem to hit most of the time at the same long distance. They are much more dangerous than Samuel, which seems to break the story narrative. The game encourages the player to come back later with better gear/level for encounters that are too tough, but unfortunately it seems there is nothing else left for me to do/ explore without more lockpick and computers-- which I cant get.

[HuggyBear]

@thelebk , are you running a speech character, a combat character, or a hybrid? The assault on Jonas' saloon is a much tougher fight than the alternative. If you're struggling to complete the big fight you can tell Braxton you're not much of a fighter, that will let you into the alternative scenario which features both a speech solution to bypass combat, as well as easier combat, and with some electronics skill you can get a turret ally which makes the fight trivial.

[thelebk]

@Huggybear I'm playing a stealth type character with stealth, bladed, evasion. So far stealth has played very little role in the game. All of my investment has allowed me to KO a single enemy in a board where I did not need to KO to win. Since you take all of your NPCs even on stealth missions, there is no advantage to the stealth approach. Boards are not designed for a single stealth player to move through. You always get into a fight and don't even get a surprise attack when it starts. As soon as stealth is negated all the enemies go before any of your party can react even if you snuck up on them. Very disappointing implementation. As I have been fighting my way through most of the game, why would I assume that my character with a combat reputation is "not much of a fighter" and I should pick some other less heroic option in Braxton's dialogue? It doesn't make sense. The Jonas fight presents an over the top difficulty increase for the player to suddenly have to fight three tough battles in a row (2 boards for Jonas, then one for Mercy) with no time to heal, rest, restock, resupply. How about a warning from Braxton to buy a ton of stims and extra grenades? Nope, nothing. Surprise! :)

[HuggyBear]

Originally posted by thelebk:

@Huggybear I'm playing a stealth type character with stealth, bladed, evasion. So far stealth has played very little role in the game. All of my investment has allowed me to KO a single enemy in a board where I did not need to KO to win. Since you take all of your NPCs even on stealth missions, there is no advantage to the stealth approach. Boards are not designed for a single stealth player to move through. You always get into a fight and don't even get a surprise attack when it starts. As soon as stealth is negated all the enemies go before any of your party can react even if you snuck up on them. Very disappointing implementation. As I have been fighting my way through most of the game, why would I assume that my character with a combat reputation is "not much of a fighter" and I should pick some other less heroic option in Braxton's dialogue? It doesn't make sense. The Jonas fight presents an over the top difficulty increase for the player to suddenly have to fight three tough battles in a row (2 boards for Jonas, then one for Mercy) with no time to heal, rest, restock, resupply. How about a warning from Braxton to buy a ton of stims and extra grenades? Nope, nothing. Surprise! :)

I agree the finale of crossroads is definitely a step up in difficulty, there is a little trick that is not intuitively obvious though, if you set your party to autoheal after combat (party screen next to where you can toggle auto reload weapons) you will heal between the two phases of the Jonas fight, currently your surviving Regulator allies also heal between phases. Also, if you persuaded Mercy to back Braxton, you should be able to stop to loot and heal after killing Jonas and before the Mercy fight. You can also choose to side with Mercy to fight Braxton instead, depending on your party composition that might be an easier fight at the very end.

re: Stealth missions, when entering stealth you should be able to pick and choose who to bring with you, if you're running a stealth main you would generally choose to send your PC, if you get detected your party will automatically join you. While in stealth if you choose to Initiate Combat, instead of getting caught, whoever is the active party member will get kicked to the top of the initiative order, sort of a free turn there.

Also, if you have stealth tagged (and maybe a supporting stealth feat like ghost?) and have a decent takedown score (based on Critical Strike not Bladed) you can definitely clear all of the stealth missions by killing everyone from stealth if you have the Cloaking Device from the Armory. This does take some experimentation though, it's not as straightforward as combat.

[Vince]

Originally posted by thelebk:

Boards are not designed for a single stealth player to move through. You always get into a fight...

Depends on your stealth (which in turn determines how many tiles turn green/yellow, how quickly enemies become alert, how much noise you make). You can definitely use a single character and kill all or most enemies with takedown or just stay undetected.

Can you post your character screen for feedback purposes?

... and don't even get a surprise attack when it starts.

That would screw up the balance and force everyone to start combat from stealth for the bonuses.

As I have been fighting my way through most of the game, why would I assume that my character with a combat reputation is "not much of a fighter" and I should pick some other less heroic option in Braxton's dialogue? It doesn't make sense.

I meant that if you're having trouble with that fight, you can reload and opt out of the frontal assault. As for the difficulty spike, we can't make taking out the local boss too easy as it wouldn't make much sense either.

[thelebk]

@HuggyBear Unfortunately its not as easy as you present. If you set the party to autoheal after combat, unless you have a good biotech (I don't) you use a lot of medkits which you may not have and cannot afford to replace. I cannot afford to lose 16 medkits after the back to back Jonas boards conducting healing. Why should I, when for a lot less money ~100 credits, I can get all four characters healed in the medbay? The double Jonas fight is already a significant difficulty spike in the game (worthy of a finale, though the player does not know it is one), there is no way a reasonable player would expect *yet a third* immediate fight here (especially after you got Mercy to take Braxton's side). Also where do the regulators (if you have managed to save any of them) vanish to when Mercy walks right in the door? Makes no sense, and isn't particularly fun.

As to stealth, again the implementation is flawed. With none of my party detected, if I click to "initiate combat" with my high stealth main I DO NOT get a first strike. ALL of the enemies go while my undetected character just sits there. This happens EVERY time. There is no advantage to making a surprise attack from stealth as currently implemented which makes no sense. I have been in multiple real life fire fights and I can tell you this is completely unrealistic. Surprise is often the single most decisive element in combat. What happens if you only bring your one stealth player in and then get detected? Are you indicating they teleport in right next to you? How does that make sense? I suspect they may come in near the entrance and thus be unable to support you when you get mauled. Also the missions I have gotten to date where stealth is possible are not really stealth missions. They are "kill everyone that is in that warehouse" or "get rid of everyone in that hydroponics tower" (Which by way of stealth leads to killing all of them through the computer). Viable stealth missions for a solo character would involve things like conducting reconnaissance, spying, stealing something, planting something, etc. You could even do that as legwork prior to a kinetic follow-up with the rest of the party. Finally, it appears there is only one viable stealth build in the game. You must have bladed (for your dagger), and critical strike (for your KO). The third tag skill needs to be lockpicking or computers to get to places. This is not obvious at character creation.

It is quite an assumption that someone will have a "cloaking device" from the Armory. It is a much safer assumption that new players will not have anything, from any board, that requires lockpick-6 or computer-6 or biotech-5. I have none of those skill levels and cannot get them. In my next play through, I will be able to metagame with out of game knowledge, to create builds that deliver those specific skills and levels.

Thank you also for your excellent play guide. I try not to read material that can give spoilers on my first play through of games, but I have had to resort to your guide several times to get past play deadlocks due to insufficient messaging in game. I'm sure the in game messaging with rise to the standard of other titles as development continues.

[thelebk]

@Vince stealth is not relevant in missions where the goal is effectively to "kill everything". Since you do not even get a surprise attack it is largely pointless. Stealth did let me steal a "regulator badge" for some unknown quest, which is not useful to me, as I do not use the impersonate skill.

I am not clear what the balance issue is if the players initiate combat from stealth on the few boards where stealth is an option. It is simply good planning backed by common sense which should be rewarded. As currently implemented the game PENALIZES you for putting points in stealth and trying this as the net effect is you split your party and when stealth is negated every enemy in the place gets to go before any of your characters and will likely focus fire on your split off stealth character before you can take any action. This is neither realistic, nor fun.

In a role-playing game every time you are forced to reload you break suspension of disbelief, diminish the player experience, and harm the story. This should be minimized, which most games accomplish with better in game messaging so players don't end up making random decisions with detrimental consequences they cannot predict. I am confused how you feel that the double Jonas boss fight-- the first of its kind, and significantly tougher than previous battles, is not of acceptable difficulty for a finale. Is having to reload and replay at least three times not enough? Adding a third battle here without a break is unreasonable and actually harms the story. From the perspective of the story, if Mercy is convinced to back Braxton and then Betrays him last minute, Braxton and Mercy's people should fight it out. It would be entertaining, and potentially comical. The player could either watch it happen or participate declaring allegiance to one party the first time they target members of the opposite party.

[thelebk]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2801043848

Party just completed the huge shoot out in the pit. Nothing left to do save get access to the factory and head towards the habitat.

[HuggyBear]

Originally posted by thelebk:

@HuggyBear Unfortunately its not as easy as you present. If you set the party to autoheal after combat, unless you have a good biotech (I don't) you use a lot of medkits which you may not have and cannot afford to replace. I cannot afford to lose 16 medkits after the back to back Jonas boards conducting healing. Why should I, when for a lot less money ~100 credits, I can get all four characters healed in the medbay?

Unless things have changed Sarah charges you $25 per 10 pts of damage she heals, which is the same as using a $25 medkit to heal 10 pts of damage at Biotech 2 which should be a free skillup by talking to Sarah, so economically you don't lose by healing yourself with medkits.

Originally posted by thelebk:

The double Jonas fight is already a significant difficulty spike in the game (worthy of a finale, though the player does not know it is one), there is no way a reasonable player would expect *yet a third* immediate fight here (especially after you got Mercy to take Braxton's side). Also where do the regulators (if you have managed to save any of them) vanish to when Mercy walks right in the door? Makes no sense, and isn't particularly fun.

Let's posit that the Regulators walk away after the battle, Mercy sees them walking away and then chooses to approach you? I'm certainly not an authoritative source though. You should definitely have a break between Jonas dying and Mercy approaching you though, gives you time to loot reload and heal, if you don't have the break, if the Mercy fight starts automatically after killing Jonas that's a bug and should be reported.

Originally posted by thelebk:

As to stealth, again the implementation is flawed. With none of my party detected, if I click to "initiate combat" with my high stealth main I DO NOT get a first strike. ALL of the enemies go while my undetected character just sits there. This happens EVERY time.

That hasn't been my experience, if you have a save file that can reliably reproduce this I'd suggest posting it in the bugs thread.

Originally posted by thelebk:

Finally, it appears there is only one viable stealth build in the game. You must have bladed (for your dagger), and critical strike (for your KO). The third tag skill needs to be lockpicking or computers to get to places. This is not obvious at character creation.

Nitpick, your Bladed skill has 0 impact on stealth sequences, it does not raise your Takedown value (what you use to kill people during stealth sequences), you do need to have a dagger type weapon equipped, I understand that it is an animation limitation rather than game design choice, but you can stealth kill peeps with Bladed 1 with no problems.

Otherwise yeah, it's not necessarily obvious that to be a good sneak thief/assassin you'll need a lot of skill tags.

Originally posted by thelebk:

Viable stealth missions for a solo character would involve things like conducting reconnaissance, spying, stealing something, planting something, etc.

I agree this would be super ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cool, and hopefully we'll see more involved sequences like this in the future, but, given the constraints of a gameplay based stealth system they've added I'm guessing they'd be reluctant to go back to a more choose-your-own-adventure style that would support these myriad possibilities. Iirc they are going to be adding more complexity to the stealth systems, things like alarms and security cameras you can compromise. As always I'd venture that this will come down to dev resources on a tiny team making a complex game and the painful prioritizations that follow.

Originally posted by thelebk:

It is quite an assumption that someone will have a "cloaking device" from the Armory. It is a much safer assumption that new players will not have anything, from any board, that requires lockpick-6 or computer-6 or biotech-5. I have none of those skill levels and cannot get them. In my next play through, I will be able to metagame with out of game knowledge, to create builds that deliver those specific skills and levels.

That is reasonable, there's nothing in the early game that tells you that you'll need civic (lockpick, electronics, computer, biotech) skill tags to access all of the content, I think it's intended to just be a learn this time, apply next time situation. Faythe's build does lend here towards being a skill monkey but again it's not something someone would just intuitively know on their first run. Stealth, especially if you don't have the exact right tags is a tricky gameplay path to go down.

Originally posted by thelebk:

Thank you also for your excellent play guide. I try not to read material that can give spoilers on my first play through of games, but I have had to resort to your guide several times to get past play deadlocks due to insufficient messaging in game. I'm sure the in game messaging with rise to the standard of other titles as development continues.

You're welcome! I take great joy in people reading the guide, feel free to leave any feedback you have if anything was unclear or inaccurate.

I'm sure that tutorials, messaging, et al will get another level of polish as we head to the 1.0 release, but judging by Age of Decadence the devs don't mind their players flailing around a bit before getting their feet under them ;).