GH2 playthrough: Theles Spinner

[Anticheese]

Warning. Contains spoilers.

So I started up a new GH2 RPG mode character. Let's call him Greg.

So I built Greg as a combat pilot and just for the hell of it, started in Theles Spinner.

The first plot event I had was to take down some mecha attacking a building. It seems the plot deadended from there (though I don't remember seeing a plot deadend message) so I descided to go off and hit the arena.

I thought it was a mech arena, man was I wrong.

Strangely enough, after flailing away at a mop-bot and sentry drone for three hours (game time), my character had somehow become an expert martial arts and dodging. Five ranks in both for sheer persistance is nothing to sneeze at.

He was going to need them.

So while the man at the arena tried to steal a couple more bots I found the basement levels. Going down through them was no real issue, although I did notice that my character (completely unarmoured with no acrobatics skill, but he did have 5 ranks in dodge) could dodge shotgun blasts with ease and when he didint....He took absolutely no damage from them.

The smugglers shops were a serious dissapointment. Really. Tambourines, chocolate bars and other things that could be found in what passes for a legitimate shop in Theles.

My suggestion is to give shopkeepers an individual bias as to what they sell..This might lead to having a smuggler that actually sells legality -30 goods.

Anyhow, after being ambushed by a bandit who got off a lucky shot to my head, my character died.

<<FFWD>>

So my character wakes up in the hospital with torn muscles. Fortunatly he still has the prize winnings on him and there is a convenient cybernetics store to the east, so one botched surgical operation later, it's back to the dungeon crawl.

That did not last long.

This time an eye got blinded. Unfortunatly my character was too poor to afford a nice shiny set of cybereyes, so it was back to the arena.

That one went well, but still not enough cash for the eyes.

The next challenge permakilled my character.

--

So I enjoyed that playthrough, but I reckon that dodging (For some reason my character has only ever taken damage from bandit's hand axes, corpse eater bites and the occasional mop to the face) and smugglers need a look at.

Also, could hospitals offer discounted low end cyberware or some form of (expensive) biotech regeneration?

[Onisuzume]

Well, low-class cyberware could be an idea...
Possible with an awareness and/or perception penalty. (for eyes at least)

[Erathoniel]

Permakill? Does that even happen in GearHead?

[Anticheese]

Well, not exactly.

What happens is that the game saves at the start of the fatal encounter and shunts you back to the menu screen, giving you the choice to either start a new character or put faith in the RNGod and hope like crazy you beat them this time around.

[Joseph Hewitt]

No damage from shotguns!? Weird. If you can replicate this, press "R" to see what the heck's going on with the skill rolls.

I'll edit the Theles arena and make sure that it's clear that it's a personal scale arena.

I agree that the black market shops are pretty disappointing- the weapon selection is typically good, but you have to wade through a lot of crap to find anything. I'll try to improve this.

[Anticheese]

Alright, I'm just about to leave for home now, so I'll zip the saved file up and send it to you..And also report on the rolls.

Through some miracle I managed to beat the arena..So I'm sorry I don't have the original character.

But the 0 damage shotguns and autoguns (sorry, I forgot to mention) still remain.

I'll post again in about an hour

--

EDIT

First shotgun doing 0 damage roll recorded

STREET PUNK rolls Heavy Weapons[4-4] vs 13:1
acc+1 tr-speed-2; range-3
Greg rolls Dodge[11] vs 1:14

--

Also, the shotguns and autoguns never did any damage even when I had no dodge skill.

Reflex 15 incase you need to know.

And he's wearing a Skinsuit.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Wild. I can't explain the complete lack of damage if you got hit by the shotgun and were wearing no armor, but given the difference in skill levels involved your opponent was probably only doing class 1 or 2 damage if he hit at all. Class 0 damage is supposed to count as a miss, so I don't understand what's going on there.

The skinsuit is the ultimate anti-shotgun armor. Scatter weapons aren't good at penetrating armor anyway, but at least they can damage it. Because the skinsuit is hardened, though, it usually doesn't suffer any degradation at all from a shotgun blast. It's more likely to be degraded by an autogun, but still it can last a long time.

[Burzmali]

I've noticed the rampant skill development as well.  Specifically, skills like conversation, flirtation and shopping all can be bought at level 1 and expected to be quickly leveled.

I would recommend one of the following to prevent gaming this:

1.) Divide the skillXP earned from an activity by the (character's skill level + 1)

2.) Have XP earned = Factor * (number rolled + number needed - 5 * skillLevel), min 1 (Titans of Steel style)

Both methods make it more difficult to farm low XP tasks that are risk-free (Chat)

[Joseph Hewitt]

#2 is similar to the way things work currently: you only get SkillXP if the roll target is high enough to challenge you. The XP reward is linear, so even given skill targets that keep up with your advancement the rate of skill improvement will slow down as you advance in level. It's possible to tweak the advancement rate for particular skills, so maybe I should turn down the rate for Conversation.