Solomon Fight

[DMB]

I really don't understand how this works. I throw a flashbang, I get behind cover, I get out of effective range, I throw down a smokescreen. Solomon and his goons still land all their shots over 90% of the time. My characters just never dodge, the only enemies in the game that seem to have missed them have been spitter frogs, I just don't know what I'm doing wrong exactly, or why Solomon only needs a 61 to hit when I have stacked every defensive buff I can and if I try to shoot him back with anyone except Evan, I have a 5% to hit. They have weapon skill, I'm trying to aim and hit legs to reduce dodge, doesn't matter, they can just always hit me and I can't reliably hit them.

[skaudus]

This isn't how it's meant to be, so you're right to be frustrated.

It would help us give more targeted advice if you gave us a couple of screenshots of your partymembers' inventory screens - a lot of info is conveyed there, from your equipment to your resistances and we can see if there's anything holding you back.

Here are some things that might have gone wrong:

If you use smoke, neither you nor your enemies can hit unless they have thermal vision. You can check this value in the inventory screen for each party member. You can increase it using eyewear. If your thermal vision is worse than your opponents', it's a net disadvantage for you if you use smoke.

Moreover, the enemies use a disruptor grenade against you, which significantly reduces your evasion and action points.

Another thing is your armour handling. If you wear armour that's too heavy, you'll get a big initiative and evasion penalty, meaning enemies can hit you very easily. If your damage resistance isn't well distributed throughout your bodyparts (for example, having a strong chest piece but no arm protection), enemies will zero in on your weaknesses.

[DMB]

I checked an enemy stat and they apparently had 54 base evasion? On top of being a crack shot, either way, their base accuracy shouldn't be high enough for that to matter. I get this is an RPG, but this is a serious case of stats over strategy. I can either have good armor (and still take 6-10 damage per shot) or tank my evasion, but even if I go straight naked it doesn't matter because enemies will still hit me most of the time.

All my character's evasion is sitting at 2, except Evan's because I tagged it so his is at 4. It levels up extremely slowly. So Evan's base evasion before armor is 36, but these enemies I'm encountering in chapter 1 apparently have more than I can physically get (and I've done everything except the goon fight in the warehouse, because when I try it I just get alpha'd on turn 1. If I sneak, and initiate a backstab, I actually come out worse because once Faythe stabs a guy, it doesn't actually 1 shot him and leaves him at 5 hp, at which point he shoots her 3 times and all the enemies then take actions even though I initiated a surprise attack? And I can't position anyone or turn on their energy shields or disruptors? Also the melee guy can run about 20 tiles and still have enough AP left over for a melee attack? Also all the enemies have enough ap to shoot 3 times and even reload if they have to?

I get that this is a crunchy RPG, but, enemies just having better stats than me in every fight is somewhat draining. They all have armor as good or better than me, but also have higher armor and evasion skill, which means they also have better initiative, and the AI also perfectly targets down my weakest member.

I did beat the Solomon fight after enough playing around and changing armor out, but now I'm doing the Mysterious Stranger quest and having even more trouble with it. I think I would just needed to have taken different feats and tagged skills than I did but there's no respect system and I'm MANY hours in at this point. There's no armor trainer, no evasion trainer, and I did a lot of dialogue checks but I've also done a lot of combat and these skills just raise so incredibly slowly. I'm also ruing that I didn't have anyone tag a skill in Biotech or Computers, because I'm literally 1 exp short of raising my Computers skill enough for several checks, and 138 on Biotech to hit 5.

I do really like this game, but I sure wish I had one respec because I don't want to miss timed quests, but I absolutely have no interest in replaying a dozen hours to get back to this point either.

[skaudus]

The trick with starting from stealth is that you don't want to use takedown on enemies you can't immediately kill.

The takedown value is influenced on your side by your critical strike and feats, and on the enemies' side by their perception stat and how alert they are.

If you can't kill them, you can start the fight from stealth and your character will always go first. You can make use of this by throwing grenades and running back behind cover, therefore getting a much better position.

There aren't any combat trainers in the Pit, but there are quite a few training tokens you can find while exploring, and those grant combat skill points.

After exploring everything you can in the Pit, Mission Control, Armory and Hydroponics (just exploration, no fighting required) your team can comfortably beat the crap out of anyone in the Pit.

And don't worry about respeccing, I'm sure your build itself is just fine.

Remember that many of the fights are optional, and many of the optional fights are intentionally very difficult, but all of them have something you can do to make them more manageable.

[DMB]

Like I said. I’ve done everything. That I can. Since I don’t have computers 6 I’m still missing a lot of stuff, and starting combat from stealth isn’t helpful since Faythe WILL lose the 1v1 to the guy. And that still leaves me in a terrible position at the front door with my other three with Evan usually dying on the second round. The AI does what is optimal to kill the player, even if they act with suicidal abandon in doing so. My guys cannot dodge and armor doesn’t save them, so I’m probably going to have to fail this quest because I just don’t see how I can do this fight without relying on 5% misses from the enemy and 50% hits for myself. I can’t block the melee guy from just running down Evan, and the two shooters will kill him since apparently the support column in the room doesn’t count as cover and, if you pin a guy in melee they can still shoot for free (even do reactions!) on other targets. But since I didn’t tag Jed’s melee skill it doesn’t matter because he can’t actually do anything in melee as a result.

[skaudus]

If you send me the save before the fight I'll record a video beating the fight with no RNG involved.

Saves are in \%AppData%\Local\ColonyShipGame\Saved\SaveGames

[skaudus]

Here's [we.tl]the pre-fight save. I gave Jed one of your spare dexterity implants and rebought/rearranged the armour.

Notes: You're sitting on a motherlode of energy cells and weapons, don't be afraid to use them for the hard fights! That's what they're for.

Weapon range is often a big factor. Many pistols and shotguns are very close range, so firing from even a moderate distance will affect your chances to hit.


https://youtu.be/NhgYeezIImA

Here's the video, I beat it 3 times in a row, last one was without using any consumables. I wasn't in any danger of losing any party member at any time.

[skaudus]

if you pin a guy in melee they can still shoot for free (even do reactions!) on other targets

This should be a bug, being in melee range prevents you from taking reaction shots at anyone else not in melee range.

[DMB]

I’m going to be honest I didn’t realize you could select multiple people to stealth. That kind of changes everything because the other three were kicking in the front door for me and getting destroyed as a result when I started the fights. I was just assuming only one person could stealth and in retrospect I don’t know why I assumed this.

Yeah alright, cool. Thanks for the help dude!