A List of Questions

[filibuster]

Okkkay, I've finally got  time to do some quiet brainstorming, and the first thing I've discovered is that there's a surpising lot of game mechanic instances which are not clear to me - to the best of my knowledge, they have never been documented, or maybe I just missed them. Guess it won't hurt to ask anyway, so:

1. How do skill rolls work? The corresponding wiki page is not ready.
2. The readme says that travelling at full speed implies a targeting penalty. Does this penalty remain in place when I change my speed back to cruising before firing?
3. Another (IIRC wiki) reference said that the current game distance count makes a mecha more vulnerable during diagonal movement. How heavy is this penalty? Should I avoid diagonal movement completely?
4. Do types of movement (walking, skimming etc) influence the stealth rating? Because it's hard for me to imagine how you can hide a skimming or flying mecha.
5. Can you include a ECM, Tarcomp etc into a weapon? Or into a shield which features a weapon? Can a medikit or a repair kit be built into an armor suit?
6. The wiki says that science skill may be substituted for codbreaking and investigation. How heavy is the penalty for that?
7. Can burst mode be used with melee wepons like chainsaw (i.e, instead of giving it high attack value, give it low attack * high burst)?
8. What does "Magazine" in PCEquipment mean? Ammo is the number of shots in the clip, and magazine - ? Also, the man_umek file has no description of the BURN weapon effect though it is used with some ammo types.
9. How does the CYBERPSYCHO trait work?

That's a lot of stuff in one post, but I think it would help most of the people here to understand the game better.

[Joseph Hewitt]

1. For the actual math you should probably look at the code, since it gets a bit involved. Basically the player makes a skill roll, the opponent makes a skill roll, and whoever's roll was higher wins.

2. No. The penalty only applies while travelling at full speed.

3. I thought this bug was fixed a while back? Lemme check... Yes, this bug has been fixed for both GH1 and GH2.

4. No, with the exception that flying mecha are usually so high they can't take advantage of cover.

5. No, no, and no. See TheRules.txt for details on what parts can incorporate what other parts.

6. The wiki page says that? There are certain cases in which a problem can be solved by multiple skills, i.e. Science and Investigation, or Investigation and Code Breaking, but Science cannot generally be substituted for anything else.

7. No. All melee weapons are capable of scoring multiple hits, depending on the skill level of the attacker.

8. Magazine is the maximum number of shots that the weapon can hold.

9. As long as you have unspent MP, instead of taking cyberdisfunction points you will lose MP and morale instead. This means you will gain disfunctions at a much slower rate, but will spend much of your time exhausted and angry.

[filibuster]

Thanks for the quick answer. The only thing I would like to draw your attention to is the targeting penalty while moving at  full speed. There's no penalty that I noticed for switching to full speed, moving to firing position, un-switching back to cruising speed, firing, and continuing on at full speed again. This way, you move faster, but fire with no penalty. Perhaps accelerating/deaccelerating should be stepwise? So that instanteneous speed shift would be impossible.

[macksting]

It's like dodging from rock to rock at full tilt, pausing to crouch and pop off a shot between bursts of running... as opposed to running sideways and popping off shots.
Seems fine to me. If you're stopped to fire when the enemy is shooting at you, you've still got your pants down. (So you'd best hope there's a rock?)

[Aquillion]

Yeah, you're forgetting that firing a weapon takes up time.  It makes perfect sense to slow down the vespa (or whatever) so you can get off a clear shot, but it's not without risks.

...although, come to think of it, acceleration in the GH universe is currently infinite, isn't it?  If that strategy seems better in GH universe than it is in the real world, that would be why.

[Joseph Hewitt]

One more thing to note- you don't actually count as moving at full/cruise speed until you've started moving at full/cruise speed. So, if you're using the "R" key to switch between the two, you won't actually count as using the other speed until you move at least one tile at that setting.

[Anonymous]

Quoting: Aquillion

eah, you're forgetting that firing a weapon takes up time.

Sorry to jump into this, but when firing while staying still makes you wait until you've recharched all of your weapons, right? Or is it based on the Initiative skill?

[Joseph Hewitt]

No, it's based on your initiative skill. In GH2 it's based on your initiative skill even when moving, so if you have a low initiative and fire while in a fast moving vehicle you may move several tiles before you get a chance to act again.

[filibuster]

I would also like to ask why sometimes you can improve some of your your stats via training and sometimes you can't. E.g., the training menu of the 1st character I created had this option, though only for 2 or 3 stats, but my present character doesn't have it.

Also, a correction to one of my previous remarks:

Quoting: filibuster

6. The wiki says that science skill may be substituted for codbreaking and investigation.

Actually the misleading info is not in the wiki but in the Guide I downloaded from your site, so you may wish to change that.

[draconuszero]

Quoting: filibuster

Actually the misleading info is not in the wiki but in the Guide I downloaded from your site, so you may wish to change that.

The guide hasn't been updated in like a year or two...  The last changes on it were stylistic changes without any new information...

[Joseph Hewitt]

Maybe the guide should be removed from circulation, and all such info moved to the wiki. It would be nice to have something downloadable, but I think the wiki would be far easier for the community to maintain.

As for improving stats, you need to have enough skill ranks connected to the relevant stat. You can improve a stat by +1 if you have one skill at rank 6; for +2 I think you need two skills at rank 6, for +3 you need two skills at rank 7, for +4 you need three skills at rank 7, and so on.

[Another]

I noticed that both the Guide and the Wiki state that Sure Footed talent gives +1 to Mecha piloting while walking. But in game in Gearhead 1.01 it says that it adds +2 Mecha piloting. I guess that generally in-game information is more accurate, am I right?

[draconuszero]

Another, the latter is more accurate.

[macksting]

JHewitt: Can you think of a reason the game would occasionally, at rank 6 in a skill, still not allow me to raise the dependent stat? I assumed it was a feature of some kind.

[Joseph Hewitt]

One of us should head over and change the wiki entry on this. :looks around guiltily: Er, paper rock scissors?

macksting- the only reason I can see for that is if the game thinks you've already increased the stat. Zip the savefile and send it to me if it happens again, so I can see what's going on inside.