Technological Disciplines Improved

Mages don't need nearly as much money. Fatigue potions aren't expensive. You can also get around using them, but you can't get around using bullets.

I also get the impression we're assuming disintegrate is being used on every enemy encountered, which would be ridiculous. Against most enemies harm, fire flash, jolt, thunderbolt, or even stone throw would be applicable. Disintegrate is for the more dangerous enemies and in that regard it is second to none because it never fails, never misses, and the "ammo" cost is not very severe at all. About 30 seconds of downtime will completely recover the spent fatigue, if even that. Even the cheapest fatigue potion will nearly recover the spent fatigue as well.

A bonus of 80 fatigue is a bonus of 80 fatigue, whether it regenerates quickly or not. Honestly, in how many places will quickly regenerating fatigue be that necessary? Even in the BMC you can backtrack out of the dungeon if you must, the same with any others. Other encounters are out in the open and you can just wait.

Mmm, I never noticed. Then again you can find charmed and magick staves in loot, I don't think you can find Mage's staves that way. Though perhaps the Mage's staff should have like... 30 mana, and then some other spell to cast.

And yes, getting a dozen arcane staves would be cost prohibitive but also unnecessary. You don't need to go to such lengths to have unlimited mana. You've got plenty of fatigue and plenty of ways to refill that fatigue, all cheap and easy to carry.

 

Buying arcane gear for self and all followers by itself is an expense of dozens of thousands of coins easily exceeding 100k. Coins which cannot be earned in a city. I'd say mages have a similar "money possible to earn/needed money" parameter as technologists do, if not lower.

Not that it matters, really. Since when is there a shortage of coin in Arcanum?

We're destined to exchange "fatigue potions aren't expensive" and "neither are bullets" phrases till the end of time, aren't we?

Really, it doesn't matter how much does ammo cost when a technologist buying junk, creating & selling tech gear and buying ammo ends the day with more coins that he started it.

We are? I actually hardly ever used Disintegrate with my force mage. Jolt spamming for the win.

Lightning Bolt is quite underpowered and therefore useless, though. Two Bolts, while costing as much fatigue as Disintegrate, will hardly ever kill anything larger than a rat.

Come to think of it, similar things could be said about Quench Life, Stone Throw and even Fireflash (though that one doesn't count, seeing how its power lies in injuring multiple enemies at once). In my last game played with a mage on hard, most enemies probably required as much as or more than 50 fatigue points to be dealt with, so spamming Disintegrate would ironically actually start to be the most economical solution. Which is why...

...doubling the fatigue cost to 100 would actually be quite fine with me. It would save quite a few spells from being as useless as they are in comparison.

That's 6 to 9 fatigue points restored for a mage who hasn't invested in Constitution, 18 for one who did.

In the first case you can maybe kill a sewer rat with that. Waiting 30 seconds after each killed sewer rat sounds like a game consisting mostly of idle waiting. Doesn't sound very entertaining, frankly.

In the second one, a mage invested quite some CPs in Constitution, so he deserves to have a quick fatigue recovery. Technologist do not invest any CPs in smaller ammunition consumption, as far as I'm aware.

No, only a bonus of 80 fatigue regenerating with the players Heal Rate is a bonus of 80 fatigue. A bonus of 80 mana regenerating 1 point per hour would be more of a single free Greater Fatigue Restore at every location. Arcane Staves are somewhere between the two.

Only in those locations that have more than, say, ten enemies in them, I guess.

Backtrack? For what reason, exactly? I'm sensing a solution which would be considered cheap by any self-respecting mage.

I'll say it already: Sleeping to recover fatigue points in a combat zone is an insult for one's in-game mage while waiting for fatigue point recovery more than actually playing the game is an insult for one's real life time.

That is pretty much my point.

Mage's Staves cannot be found in chest but can be bought at any magickal shop.

Charmed and Magickal Staves cannot be bought and can only be acquired by finding them in chests.

Therefore there are much rarer than Mage's Staves, and yet they are pretty much useless in comparison.

There is a difference between "much" and "unlimited".

 

Thanks for posting that. Sounds like I can use that info to get rid of Virgil's stupid heal spell that cripples him for the entire game if you've got a tech character.

As bullets don't regenerate for free when you're not fighting, disappear for good every time you attack, and are completely unavailable over large portions of the map, I'm not sure there's any comparison, really. If you run out of fatigue potions on your way to T'sen-Ang, what do you do? Wait a few minutes, or rest for a couple hours. At worst you can pace yourself or hit the merchants in Qintarra and get a few more. If you run out of bullets, you've got to trek all the way back to Stillwater, at least.

Or spend two weeks gathering bullets in Tarant if you're depending on the MR. The extent to which this is a pain-in-the-arse should not be minimized. It involves running a circuit of all the stores and waste bins on the west side of town day after day after day.

Also, you don't have to Disintegrate everything. It's not just that spells don't have weight or take up space, it's that you have several different options, and none of them take up space or weight, while every firearm does.

Cheaper: No, they shouldn't...and they don't, except in high-powered battles as long as you pace yourself a bit. Firearms always cost some money. Every single attack.

Lighter: No, unless there was some sort of material component system.

More Powerful: Instant kill, reducing ore golems to ash, that sort of thing.

Reusable: It's free to cast over and over as long as you pace yourself. Firearms are never free. Firearms are also subject to damage in combat. One of the annoying things about the skeleton archers in Rench's mansion is that they damage your weapons sometimes.

In the end all I can say is that, having played through the whole game as both a force mage and as a gun techie, I found the force mage to be vastly easier. The time spent waiting for my fatigue to replenish itself was more than offset by the constant scrounging techies have to do. Still (bullet dodging aside), if I have a complaint it's against magick for being too easy, not against tech for being too hard. Tech is simply more fun, IMO. It's like treasure hunting in Diablo, only better.

I never play that way. I clean out the factory in Tarant ASAP and use it for storage for the rest of the game. When I'm going on a "mission" I travel as light as possible. Makes role-playing sense, since a technologist ought to have a workshop of some sort for crafting.

If I ever do a mod with quests and stuff, I'll start with letting the PC buy the factory and add stuff to it throughout the game, like hiring guards and decorating the interior. Or maybe turning it back into an operational factory...an ammo factory maybe?

If you attack everything with the Mechanized Rifle you'll be trekking back to Tarant every ten minutes so you can spend a week running around to all the stores over and over again.

From the experience of my current game, I'm leaning toward the Tesla Gun as the best firearm in the game when you factor in ammo cost and consumption, damage, and ease of acquisition. It uses quite a few charges, but not enough to make it unfeasible as an everyday weapon. You should be able to keep your supply steady as long as you buy every electrolyte solution you can get your hands on.

Interesting that bullets, fuel, and charges all have the same weight per unit.

Therapeutics is pretty sweet with all the concoctions stacking, although if your character is going to be pumping himself full of chemicals throughout the entire game, there ought to be some "Jekyll and Hyde" repercussions. :thumbup:

Or at least a "crash" after the stat boosts wear off.

 

Muro wrote:

I'm failing to see how making things harder for gun smiths would make the game more balanced.

As far as the magick item stuff goes, I disagree about mana storing weapons.

Speaking from personal experience, even the lowly Mage's Dagger can be really handy because the extra 10 points will let me cast Harm a couple more times or cast a level two spell for free. My last mage character had a Mage Staff, a Mystic Dagger, a Mage's Dagger, an Arcane Dagger and a couple of swords that gave him extra mana. I had to do some inventory juggling, but I was able to teleport and use Force spells a lot more often than I would have without all that stuff.

Anything that gives you 20 or more mana points can do a lot to get you through fights. Especially if you mostly use spells like Harm or Jolt. Heck, I'll even take the five points you get from a Magick Dagger if I'm getting low on fatigue potions.

More mana is obviously better, but the 50 points from a Mage Staff is plenty for most situations.

As far as fatigue potions go, with one point in Haggle you're probably going to pay about 23 gold for one lesser fatigue potion and about 58 for the greater fatigue potion. Bullets seem like a better deal (especially if you can make your own and get 20 bullets for about 33 gold). And each bottle weighs 10 stone. And they take up more inventory space if you have more than two of them. Bullets are better.

 

Raid trash cans and don't buy all of that stuff for followers. It might take you a couple of months (real-life months) but you'll get the money and items eventually. What's the rush anyway? (you know it might be neat if Arcanum did something similar to Fallout in regards to Kerghan's return). Unless you're really unlucky you'll probably find a bunch of enchanted gear in chests and such, thought it won't usually all be arcane.

Since when is there a shortage of coin in Arcanum?

Quite true.

Of-course not every technologist will have access to the shocking staff (good seller), eye gear, or explosive grenade. The other options don't produce nearly as much profit.

Anyway, let's stop going in circles here. I'm starting to forget where we started.

That can't be right. You're telling me at level one with 8 CN that you only regenerate 3 fatigue points every ten seconds or so?

Then I guess the whole discussion about arcane staves is moot.

Now we're getting into roleplaying territory.

After a number becomes big enough it becomes nigh indistinguishable from infinity in most situations. Unless you abuse the Ashbury graveyard I don't think you'll otherwise run into a situation in which all your staves and all your fatigue and all your fatigue potions are exhausted. So it might as well be infinite.

Not to mention critical fails which can blow your arm off and insta-kill you.

 

Not if you're using a Mechanized Rifle. Try it.

For most firearms, though, bullets aren't a problem. Then again, most firearms are pretty unsatisfactory weapons.


So anyway...

I started over as a Dwarf Grenadier with Chemistry and Explosives. Insane. If you're going to make an argument that tech is as good or better than magick, this is the build to use.

First off, boomerangs are vastly better weapons than most guns.

They're light, use no ammo, make very little noise (I've found this difference to be quite significant), require no skill and very little money to acquire, and have extremely high speed.

Now carry some grenades too...

My grenadier has access to several weapons I think are considerably overpowered.

1) Explosive Grenades. This is the most lucrative cash cow in the game as far as I know. Using my dwarf with zero Haggle skill as a baseline:

Metal Can (free) + Black Powder (8 gold) = 3 Explosive Grenades.

Each one can be sold to the gunsmith in Tarant for 635 gold. That's 1905 gold return for an 8 gold investment, and you can often find 2 Black Powder units for sale in Tarant every day. I had 60000 gold before I could blink.

Other grenades are also profitable, though less so. Smoke grenades are almost useless in combat, but they only require sugar and fertilizer to make, and you can sell them for a nice profit.

2) Paralysis Grenades. Stun grenades are good, but these? Sick. Just sick. Getting swarmed by...anything? Toss a PG in the mix and watch as your enemies stand there helplessly long enough for you to swat them to death with a wet noodle. Fantastic! I'm fairly intrigued by the possibility of using these in coordination with Backstab. It should be even better than the Stun/Backstab combination.

Finally, since I took Chemistry, I was eventually able to build a Tranquilizer Rifle, which I gave to Sebastian. Quite good. He put the Dread Crystal Spider to sleep with two hits. The next time I try an all-gunslinger party, I'm going to give these to all my NPCs. Very low ammo consumption, but it doesn't need more. The only drawback is that it (quite logically) does nothing to undead, and hopefully does nothing to machine monsters either. Rench's Mansion could be tough.

 

Ooh, you, UniversalWolf, you, why are you teasing me to make a new character?

 

I would be too if I hadn't already done something similar with an elf grenadier.

Racial tech penalties make using a Tranquilizer Gun problematic, but I made one anyway. I should have thought of giving it to Sebastian. That's an interesting way to take advantage of his Firearms skill without letting him poach so many kills.

It's definitely worth getting a Doctorate in Chemistry at least once because you can make a lot of neat stuff. A couple of the weirder types of grenades might not be worth the trouble. But paralysis grenades are almost too good.

Being able to make stun grenades by the time you go to the BMC makes dealing with Ore Golems a lot easier. And being able to make explosive grenades will cause you to wonder how you ever lived without that skill.

The comment about the boomerang is spot-on. The regular chakram has its charms as well in spite of being too heavy. Add in the mixed blessing of the way that a throwing weapon will keep going and hit somebody else sometimes if you miss your intended target and they're definitely better than most pistols in situations where you're outnumbered.

Bullets should really keep going if you miss instead of apparently vanishing into thin air. Heck, they should keep going sometimes even if you hit your target because that's how bullets work in real life. But I digress...

 

NPCs effectively "steal" your experience by damaging/killing monsters, don't they? If so, the Tranquilizer Gun is a great choice for them. There are plenty of creatures who are unaffected by it (so far I've confirmed undead, mechanical monsters, and logical immunes like ore golems), but when it works, it works wonders. It seems to be especially potent against spellcasting enemies.

Since my last post I've gotten Knock-Out Gas, which is even better than Paralysis Grenades. Why stun your enemies when you can render them all unconscious? Amazing! Running into Molochean assassins with Dark Individuals and Ogre Destroyers is hilarious. Toss KOG at them and they die without ever getting to move.

There's one tech boomerang -- the Balance Boomerang, I think it is -- which I purchased as soon as I got Tarant and I've used it from then all the way to T'sen-Ang so far and it's still useful.

I'm not positive they don't keep going, but you may be right. I haven't noticed them doing it like my boomerang does.

You can shoot people in the back with firearms though. I gave Sebastian the Acid Gun as a test (it's utterly worthless, BTW), and I had to take it away because he kept hitting Magnus in the back and damaging his armor. I've been worried about getting hit in the back with the Tranquilizer Rifle, but it hasn't become a problem so far. I'm not sure why.

 

Time is money.

When I played with my gunslinger, I did all the fighting from my team, and yet I don't recall having any problems with bullet shortage on my way to T'sen-Ang so I don't think that journey is really an issue.

You shouldn't be depending on the Mechanized Rifle in the first place.

Indeed, just like you don't have to kill everything with the Mechanized Rifle. Moreover, you shouldn't, because it's economically unwise. The way it is now, it's a weapon for special occasions, just like Disintegrate for mages. You said it yourself:

And I would say that is fair.

What would be your counter suggestion, though? Weightless weapons taking absolutely no space?

When things need to work the way they work, I don't think complaining about them has any sense.

Disintegrate can instantly kill enemies while a Tranquilizer Gun can drain all of their fatigue, leaving them defenceless against any form of attack one desires. The end effect is the same.

I don't recall an enemy ever damaging my weapon, frankly. Are you sure it wasn't a critical failure on your part?

You actually do. I may have been misunderstood, though.

What I meant was that technologists fully depend on their items, gear and ingredients, destined to carry around and/or store a lot of equipment, by themselves or on their followers, while mages depend mostly on their own bodies and minds.

A mage is powerful even naked and stripped of his weapon and equipment, a technologist isn't. And it should be like that.

I was simply saying that better guns should be higher in the gun smithy tech tree, even if that makes the game harder for gunsmiths. What would be the sense of having good weapons earlier and weak weapons later?

When technologists can easily earn hundreds or even thousands of coins a day in Tarant, your counter suggestion for mages is raiding trash cans and earning at best a few dozen coins daily by selling tin cans, worn shoes and coal? That is not fair, sir, not fair at all.

Why stop at that? Don't have followers at all - no need to buy them stuff. Don't use guns - no ammo problem.

Restricting the possibilities of the player, even though being as effective at bringing balance between magick and tech as it is, doesn't seem to be the best way to go, though.

Indeed, just like not every mage will have access to Disintegrate or Tempus Fugit.

I'm afraid that is so.

The level is irrelevant, all that matters is the Heal Rate, and Heal Rate X = X restored fatigue points per 10 seconds.

It's a complex roleplaying game, after all. Realism is as important as mechanics.

Critical fails aren't exclusive to firearms. The same could be said about any weapon used directly in combat.

 

It's not fair because its inconvenient? Too bad.

Yes, I know it is the heal rate that matters. In any case I think maybe that should be sped up a little bit. 10 seconds per-heal is a little annoying. The game shouldn't try to make the player bored.

Then firearms should do more fatigue damage and have a higher chance to cause crippling injuries. Different ammo types would be welcome.

Ahh... it's fun to dream.

 

I'm actually playing a gunslinger now with a doctorate in Electricity.

Yes I'm sure magic is stronger and all but personally, I find technology way more fun and like Muro said, you get a sense of reward whenever you build something powerful, not at all like magic when you can harm your way till the end

I'm using the Tesla Rod for the first time since I started Arcanum and I had no idea that it was this powerful!
And it even uses batteries instead of bullets! + you get all the goodies from the elec tree (healing jacket, chapeau of magnetic inversion, charged rings).
I was just wondering if I should upgrade the Tesla rod to a Tesla gun. Is the latter better?

 

No, it's not fair because of the vast disproportion of earned-money-per-day-in-cities reaching two orders of magnitude.

Sounds reasonable.

Personally I find the universal ammo in Arcanum a nice contrast to Fallout's numerous ammo types, but indeed, what you're saying would make the game more realistic. Universal ammo makes little sense in quite some cases.

As you can see, compared to the Tesla Rod the Tesla Gun is slower, requires more strength and its ammo management is 57% less efficient, yet at the same time it has a 44% greater damage dealing efficiency. It's your call.

 

Don't do it! The Tesla Rod is better than the Gun and, although I always build one for the collection, the Gun seems like a waste of a good Rod, not to mention the LGR.

I quite agree with the idea that Magick is easier but Tech is more satisfying. If you're arguing about which is more powerful and profitable, it has to be magick, every time. Earning gold by salvaging from bins is nothing, NOTHING, compared to walking in *Mental Domination + *Unlocking Cantrip + #Back Off = All Your Gold Every Day For As Long As I Want, Foolish Muggle.

By the way, amazing work with the table there, Muro. As usual your scholarship is most impressive. Makes me wonder again wtf you were playing at sending me a PM from theREALrodneydale, which is one of your sock-puppets. Perhaps you underestimated my scholarship, sir.

 

I sent that wololo PM to a few gents mostly because I had a sudden urge to do something completely random and WTF-worthy. Happens to me sometimes. No sinister intentions included, good sir.

 

Oh, so that was YOU.

 

Damn, nice table!

While the max damage of the Tesla Gun is impressive, being slower AND requiring 4 times more ammo is a big let down.

Guess I agree with ytzk, I'm sticking with the Rod

 

Rod onwards, good sir.

Muro, wtf-worthy indeed. No offense taken.

 

Depends completely on your choice of weapon. We were speaking of the Mechanized Gun.

Agreed. Despite it's tantalizing stats, it's operating costs in time, money, and carrying weight destroy its feasibility as a weapon in the game.

My Force mage used Disintegrate fairly frequently throughout the entire game, relying on it to obliterate the strongest enemies. The Mechanized Gun I used once for 20 minutes and gave up.

I don't think fair has anything to do with it. Firearms are the most disappointing, screwed-up attack mode in the game, but they're still more fun than, say, the Force school of magick, which is simply too easy.

Firearms need a complete overhaul from top to bottom. Drastically lower the rate-of-fire of most of them and drastically increase the damage potential. Make them much, much harder to dodge. Get rid of all the schematics for useless teaser weapons like the Acid Gun, the Pyrotechnic Gun, the Blade Launcher, the High-Velocity Pistol, and the Flamethrower (well, maybe keep the flamethrower but rework it so it's not useless rubbish).

Take the Fine Revolver, for example; it's a decent weapon early in the game, but if fires way, way too fast and when it hits an enemy it does damage similar to a boomerang. It's basically a boomerang that uses expensive ammunition. I would much rather get only one or two shots per turn, but have them do damage like getting hit with a bullet ought to do. If I shoot a Kite Scout in the head, it should die.

Another case is the LGR. A targeted head-shot with LGR should be devastating, but you shouldn't be able to get off more than one per turn unless you're Superman with Firearms. The way it is now you often need several targeted head-shots with the LGR to bring down moderately powerful enemies, and you can fire it multiple times per turn. Silly.

The Tranquilizer Gun has no effect on golems, undead, machines, and quite a few other creatures, so it's really not the same at all. It often requires more than one hit to take down the kind of enemies you run into starting around level 35. Disintegrate also can't be dodged and never hits fellow party members in the back on a miss.

That's not a safe assumption, though. Some of the tech disciplines are money-makers (Herbology, Electricity, Mechanics, and especially Explosives), but other are not. You can make a little cash with the Flintlock Pistol and the Fine Revolver in Firearms, but you're hardly going to get rich from them. There aren't any big money-makers in Chemistry either, and Therapeutics is not profitable at all.

A gunslinger with Firearms, Therapeutics, and Chemistry -- and Sogg and Gar as NPCs -- is going to be poor most of the game. The Mechanized Gun is out of the question, even if you toss in a couple ranks of Herbology.

Profit from tech also requires an extensive knowledge of the different items in the game. You have to know what buy, where to buy it, what it combines with, and where to sell it. In fact, tech as a whole requires a much more extensive knowledge of the game, which is one of the reasons it's more fun than magick.

Quite sure. As far as I can tell, any enemy archer can damage your weapon. Last night a Kite Bowman damaged my Aerial Decapitator, believe it or not.

Let's call it item hoarding, in which case I agree.

Fine with me. Although a technologist stripped naked in a junkyard might be a different story.

I agree the tree is wacky. I don't think there are many decent weapons that are too easy to get, but there are many firearms that have very difficult, expensive requirements and turn out to be garbage (the High-Velocity Pistol being one that comes to mind). That's one of the reasons Firearms is so disappointing.

Not to mention the absurd effort required to get a schematic for the crucial Charged Accelerator Gun, assuming you don't just cheat.

Frankly, I'd remove most of the tech schematics from stores and make them random treasure (with a few exceptions, like Bullets). Harder, but more rewarding.

It's not a safe assumption that all technologists can easily get rich, and even if they can, obtaining enough ammunition for the Mechanized Gun is going to be a bigger problem than the cost. It can be done, but it's not fun.

If you're worried your mage won't have enough money, take the first rank of Herbology. That should be enough to pay for your fatigue potions through the whole game. Mixing two plants together to make a Healing Salve doesn't strike me as particularly un-mage-like behavior, either.

Or add Jayna to your party, which is what most technologists do. That's a far less egregious imposition than forcing a magick-using Virgil on a tech characters.

Nothing fails the realism test (or at least believability test, in a game with so many fantasy elements) quite as badly as Firearms.

Probably a mistake.

When it comes to ammo consumption, there's only one thing that matters: can I maintain my ammo supply without extraordinary cost or effort? In my experience, I had no problem crafting enough charges to maintain an adequate supply for my Tesla Gun as long as I bought every Electrolyte Solution I ran across in stores. Since you make 50 Charges every time you combine Electrolyte Solution and Metal Plates, it's much easier than Bullets.

If maintaining an adequate ammo supply is not much harder for one than it is for the other, you can mostly factor it out; ignoring ammo consumption, the Tesla Gun is much better in combat than the Tesla Rod.

There are some instances where this would not be correct. If I were using the Tesla Gun, I would not want any other party members using a weapon that consumed Charges. If you're an Explosives tech, you can use Electrolyte Solution to make Plastique, so that might put a dent in your ammo.

 

I always found that when you use a healing-jacket, a flow-capacitor and a Tesla gun together, charges are quite precious. Using four times the ammo for twice the damage is not prohibitive, but I cringe whenever they dodge a T-gun shot, thinking, "There's four charges I won't see again."

But that's personal preference, I'm not secure as a gunslinger unless I have a super-abundance of ammo at all times. The T-gun is a fearsome weapon, for sure.

On the subject of Tesla weapons, I assume you all know that Nicola Tesla was the awesomest mad scientist of our age. The fact that his name has crossed dimensions into Arcanum's history just goes to show how awesome he was. I don't think any other name from our world made the cut.

VIVA LA TESLA!