My party basically stopped gaining combat levels at the midgame

[okka2020]

At the beginning you grow skills rapidly, but after the ~4th level (or 6 tagged) it requires much more experience.
While growing non-combat skills is still not that hard, e.g. you get +100-150 in both persuation, streetwise and impersonate for talking your way out of trouble,
Combat skills basically stop growing, if you are not playing solo character.

The end of combat with protectorate guards in the residential district:
https://imgur.com/a/chS0EsL

Everyone gets like +2 +5 +8 to skill for a single enemy, +10-15 for the whole encounter
(while i need 700 skill points for level up).
It seems that combat gives less skill points than diplomacy in total, and then it gets split between 4 characters, so between a dozen of skills.
Because of that, the skill growth becomes just miniscule.
Yes, this encounter is comparatively small, but i fought much larger battles at the Factory, and the result was not much different.

[skaudus]

It's the trade-off for having a large party. More members are balanced by splitting combat SP.

Solo and Duo builds get higher skills comparatively, but they're still often weaker than full parties.

Your main sources of extra juice are feats, equipment and implant upgrades. (e.g. you generally use one weapon class per character, so if you find a really neat rifle but you're using pistols, you can't make use of it. A full party can find a use for everything)

[okka2020]

I see the balancing issues, but idk... it makes combat less enjoyable. It's cool to feel a bit stronger with every battle. And as is, there is no much point in taking battles, except challenge. Diplomacy is already a no-brainer, you just pass skillchecks in dialogues and auto get more skillpoints to pass further checks. And for taking more challenging combat you get what? +5/700 to armor and some damaged equipment worth 100$.

[skaudus]

Combat is the best way to earn money, which means more implant overclocks at Eli the Monk's in the Maintenance area. They are 2000 credits a pop and double the base effect of an implant.

With a full party, you need tens of thousands of credits, and you get them by selling loot from fights.

[Wrath of Dagon]

I agree mid-level combat skills, especially evasion and armor, increase slower than molasses, it is frustrating.

[okka2020]

I just got 515(!) skill points split between persuasion, streetwise and impersonate for reloading and solving this without combat.
You get 20 for passing 2 dialogue checks with guards, +100 to every social skill for passing the encounter. Then you meet a worker, you get 30 for 3 checks and +55 to every social skil if you succeed in persuading him to tell where is spy.
I'm not voting for less skill growth for diplomacy, but there's a clear difference between +10 points to weapon skill and +200 points to persuasion after completing the same encounter.

[skaudus]

If you tally them up for soloers throughout the entire game, you actually end up with more combat skills, since those are per enemy.

For instance, my speech-first characters usually end up at around 7-8 speech untagged, while my solo combat first characters end up at 8-9 combat untagged (weapon, evasion, armour etc).

[Wrath of Dagon]

But that's because you have some kind of boosts to those skills? My untagged skills rarely exceed 6.

[skaudus]

Oh, right, I forgot I had both [Ask Questions Later III] and the INT implant upgrade for bonus combat stats.

The speech and combat skills should end up about same for the endgame then, around 7-8 without any boosts (if you fully focus on one or the other).

[stadtpark-hartmut]

You are right.

But: seeing the dialogue options is why a lot of people go with a high
Charisma Character for their first playthrough (- a bit like "Bard" type or"Paladin" type in other fantasy games) - You can only appreciate how well events are written, when you actually get to say all the cool lines. Sure: opening fire without talking (the Initiative options) earns you the feat "Ask Questions later", but you do want to see the content first, before you decide what to bypass in your next playthrough. (Similar thing for sneaking / takedowns).

https://colonyship.fandom.com/wiki/Feats#Ask_Questions_Later


As for the importance of Weapons skill level:

The issue with the lower weapons skill is usually accuracy.

You might want to free up a tag for weapons in your next playthrough.

The workaround is to stack boni: choose Captain feat (or Sarge), install a Squadleader Implant. Overclock Squadleader implant. Install Bionic Eye: add +ACC chip. Overclock Eye. Get the weapons with the highest accuracy (- in EA my talker MainChar always used Pistols, because the highest Accuracy Pistol had more Accuracy than any other weapon (- I think it's stolen from one of the Sneak-Rooms in the Habitat).

Get Evans inspired: he then gives a party wide buff to accuracy.

Choose aimed shots over Standard shots. Shoot at enemies legs first to debuff them, then Head (or special attack) for staggered.

Use Bullseye or Knockdown with your competent guys, so that the less competent can hit guys on the ground.

Throw Flashbang if enemy has low Optical resistance.

Choose Master Blaster not with the competent guy, but with the incompetent.

The damage output per hit does usually not depend very much on the weapons skill, but on the weapon itself, and its attack modes. (Exception might be Critical Thinker that also gives +crit damage per skill level.)

"Focus Fire" to down one enemy fast. Crowd control is relatively limited (Stasis Grenade; very few locations have choke points.)

[Wrath of Dagon]

My combat character has minimal speech skills and my last Lone Wolf playthrough armor was 6 and evasion 7 only because I took Fast Runner. Admittedly I skipped a few combats in favor of giving Faythe a tech skill or stealth boost.

[skaudus]

I was talking about solo skill gains, as that's where you take all of them. Parties will naturally have lower levels as they're split between members. The issue was the total # of combat SP versus the total # of speech SP.

[okka2020]

Originally posted by skaudus:

If you tally them up for soloers throughout the entire game, you actually end up with more combat skills, since those are per enemy.

It's perfectly fair that sole hero improves combat skills faster, but maybe exp system should be tuned a little, so you won't enjoy 4x slower development when playing with a whole party.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Originally posted by skaudus:

I was talking about solo skill gains, as that's where you take all of them. Parties will naturally have lower levels as they're split between members. The issue was the total # of combat SP versus the total # of speech SP.

I mostly don't share combat LP since I do most combat solo. I had the same skill gains even before having to take Faythe to the Habitat, although back then there was a bit less content.

[Blackdragon]

Originally posted by stadtpark-hartmut:

Choose Master Blaster not with the competent guy, but with the incompetent.

While I agree with most everything else, here I'd note that giving your "incompetent" characters energy weapons would be an inefficient use of energy cells - which are very scarce through most of the game. I would rather allow my snipers to use energy rifles more often, than let my diplomat/skill monkey char waste cells on pot shots. So they are the ones with Master Blaster, and the skill monkey gets leadership, social and stealth feats.

[Blackdragon]

Originally posted by amaks2020:

Originally posted by skaudus:

If you tally them up for soloers throughout the entire game, you actually end up with more combat skills, since those are per enemy.

It's perfectly fair that sole hero improves combat skills faster, but maybe exp system should be tuned a little, so you won't enjoy 4x slower development when playing with a whole party.

It's not actually 4x slower because there are often big gaps between XP/LP requirements per level. So the difference in levels between a full party and a solo character won't be 4x, but rather only 2-3 levels by the end of the game. Also full party allows for deeper specialisation, with feats like Skill Monkey and Zen on the non-combat char while the rest invest everything into combat, while the soloer must perforce spread himself thin in order to avoid missing important content.