PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

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Thaat's better.

As a hunting/farming/cooking oriented player, I quite like the changes coming down the line.

Sham chowder uses canned sham instead of sham sandwiches
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Excellent! I was just talking with my friend no more than 12 hours ago about this; I was thinking of adding a recipe for Sham Sandwiches which would use canned Sham and Moldy Bread, so that we could get at least a little more Sham Chowder going.

This is a welcome change indeed.

Faster crafting time on the topsoil block and hobo stew
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  • Bathtub filled with gore drops more rotting flesh
  • Zombie animals drop the same amount as rotten flesh as a live ones drops meat
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I like it, but I wonder if that's necessary? If it's not a huge change no worries, but given how good Hobo Stew is, I wouldn't want it to be too easy to produce now that rotten flesh is going to be markedly more abundant (another change I welcome).

 
I was very excited to try out animal tracker, but sadly it is mostly useless at the moment. The radius is too small to justify the use of skillpoints and very often I have green tracks but nothing on the radar - maybe because the animal spotted me or it is out of the radius.

I think every additional animal tracker level after level 1 should increase the tracking radius for additional 100 units.

It is great to see more xp for the builders/house fortifyers. As it is now, at least in our game the looters are outleveled by the builders/fortifyers by far. Playing in a team of 5 players, the 3 looters are around level 15 while the 2 builders (who care 100% about the base) are around level 25. Maybe we are no efficient looters, but it seems to me as if the builder/fortifyer xp is for about 40 - 60% too high now.

 
I like it, but I wonder if that's necessary? If it's not a huge change no worries, but given how good Hobo Stew is, I wouldn't want it to be too easy to produce now that rotten flesh is going to be markedly more abundant (another change I welcome).
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It's probably not about the Hobo Stew but about the Farm Plots. I suppose that the recipe for the farm plots will be changed so that you need more rotten meat. With the Living of the Land Perk you then will need less ressources if you invest points.

 
Definitely at least IMO after more testing the quests need balancing. Few seperate issues.

1. Dukes to Brass ratio - Brass is literally a joke now. Do a quest get enough brass for 500-2000 casings (in addition to other quest rewards)

2. Sharing quests results in a ton of loot, honestly IMO anyone who does a shared quest should get a lesser reward then the quest holder.

3. Variety - Fetch quests are the holy grail. Huge rewards, little risk and time commitment. Almost wish they were removed and replaced with crafting quests. Aka bring a trader 5 tools, 20 cooked food, 50 distilled water, etc. Offer a quest and let people pick a category aka cooking, mining, weapons, tools, gathering. Then you need to go out and bring a trader 1k cement for instance and he gives you a reward based on that.

 
I was very excited to try out animal tracker, but sadly it is mostly useless at the moment. The radius is too small to justify the use of skillpoints and very often I have green tracks but nothing on the radar - maybe because the animal spotted me or it is out of the radius.I think every additional animal tracker level after level 1 should increase the tracking radius for additional 100 units.
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Would never use that tree myself. (Pretty obsolete I think too)

You can indeed peddle about and just spot the animals really easily anyway.

 
I was very excited to try out animal tracker, but sadly it is mostly useless at the moment. The radius is too small to justify the use of skillpoints and very often I have green tracks but nothing on the radar - maybe because the animal spotted me or it is out of the radius.
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Just tried Level 1 and i think it works well. You have to move around and search for tracks here and there. Just if you get close enough to an animal you get it on the tracker.

I think every additional animal tracker level after level 1 should increase the tracking radius for additional 100 units.
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I don't even know how big the radius is, but additional 100 per level will not work anyway in my opionion, because that would by far exceed the range of the active chunks around you.

We use the server fixes webmap, which shows the count of animals in all active chunks. There you can see when an animal comes into the active chunks or leaves them according to how you move. You can also (ab)use that to find animals. I'd guess, 100 blocks is already larger then the active chunk radius, or at least close.

Anyway the skill itself is quite useless. I'm the cook for 3 other players and raw meat is what we have the most. I find enough deers and pigs by accident, just while moving around for visiting the traders or doing quests, so that i don't need to especially try to search for them.

Additionally in my opinion it should be easier to find dear- and pigtracks then finding chicken- or rabittracks. But the skill makes you able to find the small animals first, but the small ones are very ineffective to hunt: They are much harder to catch and give so low amount of loot, that you won't even look for small ones, if you can hunt deers and pigs even easier. That makes the skill stupid in both directions.

Would make more sense to rename the skill to maybe "Hunter", lvl1 enables the tracking of all animals and lvl2+ gives you more ressources for harvesting their corpses (only them!)?

Maybe we are no efficient looters, but it seems to me as if the builder/fortifyer xp is for about 40 - 60% too high now.
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As i said in multiple posts yesterday. Don't think that is caused by your looting-skills ;)

 
It's probably not about the Hobo Stew but about the Farm Plots. I suppose that the recipe for the farm plots will be changed so that you need more rotten meat. With the Living of the Land Perk you then will need less ressources if you invest points.
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"Is it necessary?" did refer strictly to Hobo Stew alone, I realized I should clarify that after posting but got distracted working on a mod.

Regardless of Hobo Stew, I'm all for the Rotten Meat-oriented changes (including changes to farm plots/LotL).

 
1. Dukes to Brass ratio - Brass is literally a joke now. Do a quest get enough brass for 500-2000 casings (in addition to other quest rewards)
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Not just because of the Dukes you get as reward, but also Dukes are afik the best brass source.

The trader sells items which you can melt to brass for (far) more Dukes then you get brass out of it. (e.g. he sells a brass faucet for 120 dukes, but the faucet only melts to 25 brass). I'd not even wonder if the trader pays more dukes for loot items then their brass worth. Have to check this next time i play. Then i'd would be more effective to sell looted brass-items to the trader and melt the dukes, instead of melting the item itself. (Of course the trader does not buy unlimited counts).

Fetch Quests are even more OP because they are an additionally loot respawn for the whole building. ;)

 
Not just because of the Dukes you get as reward, but also Dukes are afik the best brass source. The trader sells items which you can melt to brass for (far) more Dukes then you get brass out of it. (e.g. he sells a brass faucet for 120 dukes, but the faucet only melts to 25 brass). I'd not even wonder if the trader pays more dukes for loot items then their brass worth. Have to check this next time i play. Then i'd would be more effective to sell looted brass-items to the trader and melt the dukes, instead of melting the item itself. (Of course the trader does not buy unlimited counts).

Fetch Quests are even more OP because they are an additionally loot respawn for the whole building. ;)
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Change Dukes to be made of (and scrap to) Scrap Iron. Problem solved? (also discourages scrapping them because of how easy it is to get Scrap Iron)

 
Change Dukes to be made of (and scrap to) Scrap Iron. Problem solved? (also discourages scrapping them because of how easy it is to get Scrap Iron)
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The problem with that is they really do make sense to be a source of brass. I made a thread on it in general but its part of a larger issues with quests that will be hard to balance without more time spent on the quests.

Without dukes brass could be very hard to get, and i'm not sure that's a good direction. It's probably easier to adjust the ratio so it takes more dukes to equal 1 brass. It should be the same ratio as what you are paying to BUY brass items.

 
Without dukes brass could be very hard to get, and i'm not sure that's a good direction.
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In the late game dukes are the ONLY source of brass.

Iron ores are huge, you will never deplete all of them on a map. Same for leed and nitrate. Wood grows itself, also vegetables. Animals do respawn.

But there is no source for brass. Once you looted all the buildings (and playing without loot respawn) the only source you can get brass is trading with a trader and get dukes. An especially in lategame i assume you will need a lot of brass.

It's probably easier to adjust the ratio so it takes more dukes to equal 1 brass. It should be the same ratio as what you are paying to BUY brass items.
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Almost. Ratio 1:10 (10 Dukes get one brass), then buying a brass-item from trader which melts to 25 brass should maybe cost 200 dukes (or maybe even vary from time to time between 180 to 220?). So you still can make win of 50 brass when buying such an item. Other way round for an item worth 25 brass, the trader only pays 200 dukes, which makes you melt your items yourself instead of trading them.

 
TL : DR

The characters ability to climb a gradient should be a skill.

Due to the fickle nature of RNG I've spent a quite a bit of time in the desert. The mesas look great but I was expecting them to be a greater hazard to navigation than they are. This is largely because my character seems to have the rock-climbing ability of a Skyrim horse. Limiting the characters ability to scale damn near vertical surfaces would make a mesas into interesting navigational hazard with known safe passages and one-way routes instead of a really large set of stairs.

I know this all has to do with colliders and physics materials so it may not be quite so simple to implement but hear me out. :-)

A low level character should have to find a reasonably easy route across a mesa. There are plenty of shallow routes up each of them. If a character practices climbing they should then be able to climb increasingly steeper gradients which, in turn, will open up more routes over the mesa.

This will also benefit tactical assaults in PVP. A sniper with a high climbing ability can use the mesa to great advantage if the enemy cannot get to them by the shortest route.

 
Speaking of augers I kind of feel like Mechanical tools should be governed by an int perk. I wanna say adv. engineering makes the most sense but it's aready such a strong perk, maybe "Yeah, Science" simply because after a while there is really no point in taking the perk past level 1. all it gives you is recipe unlocks which I can get elsewhere and a lot of those unlocks are for recipes that aren't really a big deal.
At most I'd take it to 3 if I was having bad luck with finding a first aid schematic, and then elixir out of it as soon as I found the schematic.

Or maybe grease monkey for a similar reason, It's nice to have early cheaper motorcycles or Trucks, but once you have them built the perk is useless.
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Yeah Science is getting deleted and its perks moved to demolitions, physician, grease monkey and engineering etc to improve consistency and give more weight where its needed. We are reducing several non combat perks to three ranks to make them more enticing and affordable.

 
Totally agree with this. There needs to be reasons BEYOND unlocking recipes for all the perks. Maybe Grease Monkey also makes vehicles use less fuel or something, but there needs to be persistent bonuses or something or else the perks feel wasted.
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Grease monkey governs how easily you can repair a vehicle once we get random breakdowns in. It will be like the lockpicking mini game and use repair kits instead.

 
Grease monkey governs how easily you can repair a vehicle once we get random breakdowns in. It will be like the lockpicking mini game and use repair kits instead.
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Ugh, no, just frigging no. We do not need random breakdowns of vehicles for no reason, what we do need is some better suspension on them espcially the 4x4 truck as that truck gets stuck on any little incline, to the point I stoped using it entirely after during 1 quest run I had to get out and pick up and move my truck 4 times as it kept getting stuck on terrain. Thankfully, it was pretty much empty, but if it would have been full of loot it would have been a major pain in the ass. Also as it is tools break way to damn fast like they are made of cardboard. I know gameplay and all, but people can use the same pickaxe for years in real life before it needs replacing, yet I mine for about 10-15 mins I had to repair it once or twice already. The gun weardown though is fine, as you need to clean a gun often irl or else the building of residue can screw things up, cause jams and misfires etc. However, Sledge, melee weapons (other than stun baton), non-motorized tools should rarely need repairs as they have no moving parts.

 
In the late game dukes are the ONLY source of brass. Iron ores are huge, you will never deplete all of them on a map. Same for leed and nitrate. Wood grows itself, also vegetables. Animals do respawn.

But there is no source for brass. Once you looted all the buildings (and playing without loot respawn) the only source you can get brass is trading with a trader and get dukes. An especially in lategame i assume you will need a lot of brass.
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I edit destroyed stone to yield 0-2 scrap brass when destroyed. So if I want brass I go to the wasteland and strip mine. Maybe that could be a solution. I like it-- and it is an easy mod if TFP decides they'd rather not create a mine-able source of brass. It also makes sense that there could be some salvageable scraps of brass in the nuclear ruins.

 
Yeah Science is getting deleted and its perks moved to demolitions, physician, grease monkey and engineering etc to improve consistency and give more weight where its needed. We are reducing several non combat perks to three ranks to make them more enticing and affordable.
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I'd like it if you'd do that but also remove those same perks from being stat locked, have a "General" Perk pool with stuff like miner 69'er, mother load, and other non-combat perks in it, could have requirements to unlock be total stat points spent. Like for miner 69'er 3 or 5, you'd need 6 stat points bought total. As an example: You could have 3 int, 3 agi, 3 str, and that would meet the requirement as thats 6 stat points bought. This way you keep the stat system, but you don't force players into buying stats they have no interest in (Like for me I find int and agi mostly useless). I do wish handguns weren't in agi though as I love using the pistol, but its just not worth spending points in agi just for the handgun perks. Yet another example learn by doing is far superior to the current system. Because then I could just use pistols, and at certan skill levels upgrade the handgun's perk.

 
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