Where are the tech enemies?

I would get scared if mr. Plough asked me if I "wanted him to take me to his cellar". Gnomes are perverts, and that guy is so sick that he has a warehouse full of rats.

 

When I unpacked the main Arcanum module, the speech files, town maps, and a few other things were in there.

Have I got a different version of the game than most folks?

Perhaps Chris would be willing to help. It seems as though he was able to keep most of his changes out of the main module.

 

Almost the whole game is compressed into the ArcanumX.dat files. Pretty much everything apart from the game engine itself.

When they are undatted the maps and speech are separate which means if I alter the maps I only need to include the map files. The speech files are unchanged so they don't come into the equation.

Not really. His mod file size is pretty big. 25mb after datting and then additional compression. If you unpack it you will find that the map changes take up 68mb. He basically copied across all the maps there are.

For Version 2 I would expect to have it down to around 40mb. But what I was saying before is that I can't just throw in a little map change to version 1 because regardless of the size of the change it will add 30mb onto the file size (unless I investigate another route but I'd rather just concentrate on protos and scripts for now).

 

I see what you're saying and find myself agreeing.

I'll shut about it (for a while....)

 

Re:

I don't know about 'tech' enemies, but the Molochean hand assassin in Dernholm uses strong poison on you when he attacks occassionally. If that counts.

I think poison is the closest I've come to an enemy using any of the real tech implements during an attack.

 

Thrond: You're right. I've never ran into any that did either.

Also: Not to change the subject, but your comment about the poison reminded me. If you are using the Merchants' Hack, you have the option of making the Hand some truely deadly SOBs.

Get the item numbers for the envenomed sword , and/or katana and Morgana's Tears.

Open the InvenSource.mes with notepad. Find the listings for the Molochean Hand (there is four listings) and add :
100, (Sword Number) (Space) 100,(Tears)

Add three or four of the Morgana's Tears and save. On your next encounter, GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!

Note: The Hand does poorly trying to wield anything more powerful than a Katana or envenomed sword.

 

I discovered this when I was trying to scale up some encounters.
I couldn't understand why the enemy was doing poison damage when he only had a gun. After some investigation it turned out that the random inventory (medium tech) he was assigned sometimes included strong poison.

I'll have to try loading up an enemy with lots of tech items and seeing if he uses anything other than poison.

Yep, that's one way of doing it. However the problem with that method is that regardless of the enemy's level he will have the same equipment. Instead of using the inventory method I use scripts.
e.g. store (level) in number X
IF number X is greater than 30 then create (cool sword) in inventory
IF number X is greater than 20 then create (ok sword) in inventory
etc
This way the enemy's items will scale with his level.

They have no combat skills so if you give them a fancy weapon they'll just cut their own arm off.
And they are the elite assassins of Arcanum... :roll:

 

Although I have been happy with the inventory method, I'm going to give your idea a try. The idea of a varied inventory was something I should have thought of.

Yeah, the Hand was scripted to use daggers, so by trial and error - lots of error - I learned that the envenomed sword was about the best the lesser henchmen could handle, where as the leaders (Dark Individuals) were able to wield the Katana without undo problems.

Add the near-regenerative powers of Morgana's Tears, and it made for some interesting battles.

Elite Assassins my foot.... The boys in the Boil gives me more problems that the Hand (almost) ever did. (Level 2, nice suit, dagger)

 

To continue (sort of) the original topic about alignments:
Most of the magickal critters are neutral.

Summoned orcs, ogres, demons, familiars...
The shambling undead...
Dragonkin...
All neutral!

The magick / tech system is a lie! It's all a lie!

 

Indeed.

Although, in the story, technology is such a new item to the world that 90 some-odd percent of eveything you encounter would be natural or magical based creatures. The tech menaces? Gun-toting bandits, automatons and mech spiders.

Troika really should have put a little more effort into the tech side.