Personal scale combat power progression

[Ephafn]

Something that bug me in the current GH1 is that, unlike mecha-combat, you don't get a lot stronger as the game progress. Yes, your skills and stats get higher, but you can't get much better weapons that at the start game (except if you are an adept of bare-handed fighting).

The problem seems to come from the equipment who don't change a lot from the beginning to the end. I would guess that many game-end char are still using ceramic armor and some form of rocket rifle. And those can be bought from the starting money for reasonably young characters. The only changes in equipment that will happens are if you buy very big guns (laser/plasma cannon and few others), but they only cost 100~200k, so they can be bought in mid-game. Or you could increase a lot weight lifting and body to be able to afford the weight of a maximus suit of armor.

My gripe is two-folds : first there are no SF:0 equipment that can be got only in the end-game (except for the golden chainsword); and second almost all good equipment can be bought right from the start.

Compare this to mecha combat : to get the best mechas, you need to get a lot of money, something feasible only in the end of the game. To get the best equipment, you need to defeat enemies using it, so you need to be powerful enough to do so. So you can only get nuclear missiles if you are renown enough to fight Gigas and strong enough to survive it.

My suggestion for GH2?
Use the legality and the faction of the equipment to restrict it. So you could only get the good equipment of your faction or by killing their previous owners. So a bazooka (legality 30, an army faction) could only be got from a smuggler, being in the army (with an high enough rank) or by killing a crime lord or a soldier. That way, the player would still be excited to get the bazooka in the end-game. And I would really spice SF:0 combat to fight bazooka-wielding foes.

[Francisco Munoz]

Errr did you played GH2? Silver knigths have that (special level with a shop that only avalible after joining you) . Privateers too.
... but GH is mainly a mecha game so no much point add too many things for scale 0 combat.

[Ephafn]

Quoting: Francisco Munoz

Errr did you played GH2? Silver knigths have that (special level with a shop that only avalible after joining you) . Privateers too.

Well, I didn't play a lot of GH2. So this seems to be a step in the right direction.

But you can start in the Silver knights faction, isn't it? Then you can buy those items right from the beginning.

And while it is true that GH is mainly a mecha game, personal scale missions offer a good break of pace, especially since you can't lose your equipment when dying. Also, the missions in personnal scale are much more diverse than in mecha scale (which mostly revolve on destroying the opponent mechas only, but this could be improved anyway).

[Onisuzume]

My gripe is two-folds : first there are no SF:0 equipment that can be got only in the end-game (except for the golden chainsword); and second almost all good equipment can be bought right from the start.

Actually, I remember finding a "bonesword" or something similiar in the ziggurat once. And my first thought when looking at it's stats was "wow".
I just looked up it's stats and my memory was right.

[macksting]

That said, a strong consideration is spending scads and wads of cash on training.

[Tung Nguyen]

Quoting: Francisco Munoz

... but GH is mainly a mecha game so no much point add too many things for scale 0 combat.

I disagree on this one point. I like the up-close and personal approach sometimes, and as mentioned, it's a good change of pace.

[macksting]

It's also a major part of the game for monks (Hwang Sa) and Guardians. For that matter, the second-to-last engagement is a difficult scale 0 combat, reached only by more scale 0 combat.
It's always better to win than lose, eh?

[Michael]

Quoting: Ephafn

The problem seems to come from the equipment who don't change a lot from the beginning to the end. I would guess that many game-end char are still using ceramic armor and some form of rocket rifle. And those can be bought from the starting money for reasonably young characters.

That's true for the sort of character I play, who skips the Heavy Weapon skill. (Although I go for Lasers instead of Rocket Rifles).  But it's not true if you go the Weight Lifting and Heavy Weapons route.  Or the Cybertech route.

There are also several good personal scale combat items that can't be bought in stores -- not just the Golden Chainsword.  Quite a few are faction rank prizes....

Also, the main way you multiply your personal scale fighting power is via pets.  You can sink lots of money buying weapons and armor for them, and getting them requires some investment, albeit mostly time and XP rather than money.

[Aquillion]

Also...  at the end of the day, personal scale combat in Gearhead has, I think, always been intended to be a bit on the 'realistic' side (martial arts aside).  That means that just about anyone with a saturday night special from the local weapon shop is a threat, and it really doesn't fit with super-secret legendary guns that you pull from a stone and anvil or whatever.

I mean, look, you shoot someone in the head with a plasma cannon, they die.  What more do you want?  Do you want a gun that makes them MORE dead?  Maybe a gun that shoots them for you, then cleans up afterwards and offers you a nice cup of hot chocolate to get over the sniffles?

I think that factions and so forth could maybe offer fancy custom guns and such, but I can't really see them as being substantially stronger than the stuff available midway through the game.  Mechs are huge expensive military hardware with generally limited production, so it stands to reason that the best would be hard to get.  The best all-around firearm in the world, on the other hand, rolls off its conveyor belt a million units at a time and is given to the soldiers of every military in the solar system as standard equipment.  I mean, what are they going to say to their boss when the entire squad gets killed?  "Oh, yeah, it sure is a pity they all died, but I really couldn't let them have the laser pulse pistols...  they were only faction rank 5!  They should've spent more time doing minor quests, then we'd have been able to distribute the pulse pistols and would've won.  Pity, that."

[Michael]

Quoting: Aquillion

Maybe a gun that shoots them for you, then cleans up afterwards and offers you a nice cup of hot chocolate to get over the sniffles?

But you can have that in GearHead 1 - just use Robotics.  (Ok, maybe not the hot chocolate part...)

Or Dominate Animal.  Get an Electric Rat up to 3000XP, select "Do Training" and it turns into a autonomous weapon that can swat 6 popcorn monsters in one blow (DC:9 BV:6 SWARM HAYWIRE).  It will basically win early SF0 missions singlehanded.

[Francisco Munoz]

I agree with Aquillion.
 But I also like the idea of extra faction items.
 My personal designs for the Solar Navy in GH2 have the exclusive over Laser Carbines and a sligthly improved SkinSuit.

[Ephafn]

Quoting: Aquillion

I mean, look, you shoot someone in the head with a plasma cannon, they die. What more do you want?

But look at how early you can get a plasma cannon. You can get it in early mid-game, and then you won't have to change it till the end.

Quoting: Aquillion

The best all-around firearm in the world, on the other hand, rolls off its conveyor belt a million units at a time and is given to the soldiers of every military in the solar system as standard equipment.

Not necessarily the truth in the Gearhead universe. You could think of many reason why some weapons are harder to get. Maybe they are hard to make and only few artisans are able to do it (remember that the industrial infrastructure is in a sad state); maybe the army want to retain a level of control on who has big guns and don't want to give them to new guy who will be killed soon enough by a bandit (and have their gun stolen); maybe a company uses some secret technology to manufacture the armor, and is not sure you are not a spy; maybe it needs some Prezero object to be built and thus is in very limited supply...


But I want to repeat that my favored solution is not to restrict good equipment from beginning characters artificially, but to prevent some characters to buy certain good whatever their level based on their faction and lawfulness.
Taking example on GH1 faction, you could have the Thieves having all the "illegal" stuff (like gas grenades, night blade, ...) and the Guardian having the best personal armor, but mostly weak weapons. So a guardian player could buy very good armor, but if he wanted to get better weapons (like a bazooka), he would have to get it from the corpse of a defeated thief. So the character weapons would get better and better as he can defeat stronger and stronger thieves gangs, but he would start with a pretty good armor.

[macksting]

There are some unusual and hard-to-get firearms, if Zeron Armor applies.

[Michael]

Quoting: Ephafn

But look at how early you can get a plasma cannon. You can get it in early mid-game, and then you won't have to change it till the end.

But this really isn't a problem.

First, it just means that once you get your favorite money-is-no-object weapons set, you're simply no longer competing based on the hardware you can buy.  Instead, you're competing based on skill and how many allies you can bring.

And once you've equipped yourself perfectly, you can still spend money similarly optimizing robot buddies.


Actually, if you wanted to encourage the use of weaker equipment, one thing to try would be to make them depreciate.  If you had to periodically re-buy your armor, starting the game with just enough to get through the early dungeons would make more sense.  But this would be a little cruel. (although not as bad as the SF2 situation, where one loss usually costs every SF2 thing you brought into the fight.)

[Varil]

It would be neat for some high-spec equipment to require some effort to acquire. Be a high-ranking military member, raid the black markets, or just kill the right people. But this doesn't need to be Diablo II, either. I never found any appeal in constantly updating my equipment, but it is nice to have the opportunity for improvement.