Author Topic: SixOfSpades's In-Depth Review of the Tactics MOD  (Read 16684 times)

SixOfSpades

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SixOfSpades's In-Depth Review of the Tactics MOD
« Reply #25 on: March 11, 2004, 11:22:17 PM »
Roleplaying-wise, using the Pause command to issue orders is perfectly OK for things that the characters should be perfectly smart enough to do for themselves: Against a group of Githyanki, the primary Mage (wearing the Robe) casts Greater Malison while the second one casts Fireball. Or if you want to call orchestrated plays that you planned beforehand ("If I yell out, "Dragon!", that means everybody casts Resist Fear or Mirror Image, got it?").

The three major problems I have with Pause are:
1)  Moving things around in Inventory in the middle of a fight. ("Crap, he's immune to +2 weapons. Where'd I put my +3 Dagger....hang on guys, I've gotta take my backpack off and root through my Bag of Holding for a minute. Oh, and hey, while I'm at it, I should actually be wearing this pair of Boots for this fight.") Certain classes are granted some leeway here, but only for Quick Weapons: I believe that all classes should be allowed to have as many as 4 Quick Weapons (just like Fighters) available at once, but many classes are limited to 2. Cleric/Thieves only get 1. It makes no sense that being able to Turn Undead means you can't stick a weapon in your belt.
2) Doing the impossible in 0 time. Ever try to Pickpocket a moving target? It's tough. Even with the Boots of Speed, you only get a few tries before they reach their destination, so if they're loaded, you'll never get everything. But if you Pickpocket-Pause-Pickpocket-Pause-Pickpocket, you can squeeze them dry before they've walked 2 feet. This is completely unbelievable--the only way you could go through anyone's pockets that fast without their noticing is if they were unconscious. Or let's take the old Stronghold--Inventory Shuffle. Go to the container where you keep all your unique weapons, hit Pause, and move things around to your heart's content. Do this over and over until you've completely reorganized your Bottomless Bag of Holding--in a space of about 9 seconds of game time (real-time, 15 minutes). This, too, is unrealistic, though I admit I do it myself simply because I don't want my characters to get up in the morning and spend 9 hours of game time just dumping out their gear.
3) This is the big one: Using Pause to examine the Text Window, especially to get knowledge that your party doesn't yet have. Suppose some Wizard sees you, turns Hostile, and explodes into all sorts of protection spells. Now, Nalia just watched it happen, but it was over so quickly that she doesn't have a dang clue what protections the enemy's got up. She can see that he's Improved Invisible, but did he cast SI:Div as well? What about SI:Abj? Does he have Spell Shield as well? What about PfMW? She just doesn't know, dang it, so she's clueless as to what to cast next. But if you Pause, and scroll back up....... The same is true of the Small Teeth Pass. Enter, hit Pause, and notice that a Red Dragon Breath is coming your way. Okay, so you know that now, but do your characters know it? Why don't you ask them? Ain't nobody seen no Red Dragon, ain't nobody seen no Fireball. Therefore, ain't nobody got a good reason to cast Protection from Fire.


As for entering the STP and landing right next to a Dragon, try entering the area from anywhere but the Underdark Exit or the Forest of Tethir sometime.

Offline jcompton

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Re: SixOfSpades's In-Depth Review of the Tactics MOD
« Reply #26 on: May 20, 2004, 11:22:04 PM »
If you and your partner get 200 points, we'll be delighted to give you $5000...

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Posted: May 7 2004, 06:21 AM

So far, I had few problems with Weimers mods - especially compared to improved battles...

Every single mage getting the exact same armor/stoneskin/protection from element combo is silly, but the only part to care about is stoneskin...

Having wizards buffing from another area altogether should be fixed... I spent 5 minutes searching Umar Hills fro Ribald... (wanted another ring of regeneration)

Throwing a bit of variety into the assassin parties would be nice - swapping out the assassin once in a while for an archer with a wardog would be interesting.... for example.

Oh - I'd like to second giving improved undead the same abilities when they're summoned by you, and down with no exit combats.

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kopywrite    
Posted: May 7 2004, 08:11 AM


"Oh - I'd like to second giving improved undead the same abilities when they're summoned by you"

I agree. If any undead *you've* summoned turn hostile for whatever reason, they suddenly learn all these new tricks...

"and down with no exit combats. "

Like Mae'var and guarded compound? That's a plausible tactic for these guys I think...some intruders come hurtling in, someone flicks a switch or somesuch which locks all the exits.

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Posted: May 7 2004, 09:24 AM

   
Except that you can still send people in... just not out.

Blah.

I can actually understand this sort of tactic for for... I dunno, demi-liches and major mages... but a bunch of petty fighters (don't tell me improved Mae'var's guys are theives - they have helmets on for cripes sake - did I forget to mention that silly too?) cause a force-wall to appear, that can allow people in, but not out?

Actually, I would find the Mae'var battle a lot more fun if the battle could spill out into the street and everything - once you've encountered Mae'var, all the stories of his guild, and the street outside would have a few more invisibile assassins (a LOT weaker then his bodyguards - just guys coming back once the alarm was heard) spawned in... so you can get away, but there's company waiting for you. After the combat rages on for a while, they all start heading for Mae'vars basement... also make his bodyguards just a bit more thief like, and less like m4d bersekers - weaker, but more credible, add a few more traps scattered throughout the guild... and give his cleric a LOT of cure light wounds - makes running away a pretty bad idea...

Here - this makes for a dynamic combat, and if you decide to make a break for it, you might be better or worse of, but it will defintely chaotic and fun...

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Shadow Dancer    
Posted: May 7 2004, 09:34 AM


I really want to try this mod, but some of the cheese enemies pull(according to spades) is making me hesitant.


Insta casting spells and having an infinite amount?


Eewwww........

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Posted: May 7 2004, 10:15 AM


Well, personally, I suggest installing damn near everything that doesn't come from teambg... worst case scenario, you spit, uninstall, and get into a pointless argument on-line... (less step no absolutely necessary)...

After having completed the game for approx 232537613 times, I've found few things which are unpassable, or totally annoying... though I have yet to get to most of SoS's D- rated things... I think that the Red Badge is going to be a major annoyance, while Improved Bodhi is going to be a walkthrough... though only time will tell.

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Posted: May 7 2004, 12:21 PM

   
Now, if no-one would mind a more detailed analysis:

Improved Nalia's keep - Agree that Spirit Trolls on the first floor shouldn't start out invisible. And is it just me, or do invisible trolls occasionally ignore the party going one way, and attack them while they're coming back? Or do they respawn? Either way, it's annoying, seeing how once the level is clear, I usually don't worry about my party keeping a combat formation - and they don't in the narrow corridors.

I would suggest actually putting Torgal's minions BEHIND him, so that they can't be lured out and killed before engaging Torgal... but that would make the battle a bit too difficult.

Improved Illyich - I had the "druegar proletarian"/"party member" - annoying, but apparentely not as impossible as the shadow theive's - guys that I would actually like to see, especially if their hostile to Illyich and co.

It's far too easy to make Zhivago's deva fry him and all his friends with fire storm...

A confused/silenced Imoen can focus the entire groups attention, while you beat down on them...

I get the feeling that Illyich has a lot more dialogue then I actually saw - he bantered with Minsc once, but ignored him the rest of the time - fix that, I liked his dialogue... if you'd like, I can offer some more...

Improved Guarded Compound - good battle... might try it on insane again, as it seemed a bit too easy for me... suggestions - have the thief girl start out in the room directly to the right of the stairs, so that the party doesn't find convenient shelter there, and lose the "can't run away" thing... Actually - have all the summons that appear once you approach the staircase on the first floor re-spawn if you run back downstairs... you might be caught between a rock and a hard-place, but you have a chance to make it out... oh, and edit the summons so that they don't self-destruct in demon-summons fighting.

Improved Undead - As mentioned, same abilities to friendly undead. Also, not every Skeleton has horror, not every shadow has larloch's minor drain... one out of 2-4... casters in the previous life.

Smarter mages - having EVERY SINGLE ONE of them cast the same defenses (slows the loading, too) and the bugs with buffing mages that aren't in the area is annoying. A bit of variety, a few different buffs. And while it makes sense that a lot of mages keep stoneskin/armor up throughout the day, protection from energy is a bit pointless.

Smarter Liches - eh, I liked the "bring the party back to me trick", even though when one party member meets the lich in the bridge district, and the party get re-shuffled above him (my guys always ended up on the edge of Anomen's sister's murder's house... had to invisibly sneak our way through... robbed the house along the way)is odd, so DD-ing, sending a few summons their way might be better.

Smarter Dragons - Uninstalled. 10 wing buffets per round is not reasonable, nor "Smarter" - it's pointless cheese. Going hostile at traps, feeblemind and magic resistance - yes. Slightly longer (no hiding under the ark) (but not infinite range) breath weapon - yes. A few more spells going on - yes. But not 3+ wing buffets per round. Keep it to P&P.

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Posted: May 7 2004, 07:53 PM


I dislike the Smarter Mages ignoring spell memorization rules and casting almost every possible arcane protection spell, but since it'd take an insane amount of effort to fix (many files and lots of scripting involved) I probably won't get around to fixing it myself "the right way." I may cut it down to long duration protections only, since they're the ones a mage is likely to have up anyway.

If the Smarter Liches would only summon the last party member they saw or, as you suggested, sent a summon (or three) in the direction he last saw the party flee, then maybe it'd work out nicely. As things stand, I simply edit the BCS files to remove the summoning entirely.

Oh, and improved spellcasters also appear to use more than two contingencies frequently. The seem to use multiple spell triggers as well. If they use a single minor sequencer, a single sequencer, and a single trigger, I'm happy. They at least *appear* to use two or three actual Spell Triggers, though, which is cheese.

The Smarter Dragons only wing buffet three times per round now (or is it two? I can't recall exactly). It's better, but I still will probably edit my copy in the near future so they only use it once every 10 seconds or so.

[insert further gripes here]


As a whole, I like the difficulty provided by Tactics. I'm willing to ignore some cheese here and there, but a handful of things really irk me (many of which I remove, the more significant of which I don't remove because doing so would be a monstrous task). I don't think I'd want to play the game without Tactics again, since, after learning to use cheap tricks just to survive with the mod (partially due to Insane difficulty, tanks don't work well and die in at most two rounds anyway, plus a lot of the rest of my standard operating procedure is rendered ineffective), the original game would be pitifully easy.

I'm happy with most of it. I just wish it were free of cheese (like improved pit fiends being always considered "good" and thus immune to party-friendly attacks and having improved invisibility that can only be removed by dispel magic, and even then they recast it instantly if they aren't attacking a target with their claws, which they never do since I play it safe and always use protection from evil).

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Posted: May 8 2004, 09:26 AM


Now, about the lich near the thieve's guild... I had 3 seperate mugger spawnings while I did the battle, and she eventually ran out of the buliding, leaving my group trapped.

Improved undead have their little scripts (Doom, Greater Emotion) going off in the middle of the liches time-stop. The hell?

And the Twisted Rune keeps sending me back to windows once corpse-boy finishes his speech...
Cespenar says, "Kelsey and friends be at the Pocket Plane? Ohhh yesssss!" http://www.pocketplane.net

Offline colbruce

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Re: SixOfSpades's In-Depth Review of the Tactics MOD
« Reply #27 on: July 28, 2004, 08:12:30 PM »
If you and your partner get 200 points, we'll be delighted to give you $5000...

Improved undead have their little scripts (Doom, Greater Emotion) going off in the middle of the liches time-stop. The hell?

I don't think of this as the Undead "casting."  I consider it to be a natural-effect of Undeads.  You see a scary walking skeleton so you become frightened.  You encounter a ghostly undead and you are sketched-out and less effective in combat (Doom'd).  Therefore I think it is reasonable for these effects to occur during TimeStop and for you to endure their effects after TimeStop ends.

People accusing Tactics of cheese are, at times, taking the abilities too literally.  In real p'n'p D&D, the Dungeon Master can freely bend a rule or justify it, at any time, especially when the point is to provide a challenge to already over-powered player-characters.  Just because there is a rule limiting YOU in the game, does not mean your adversaries should be bound by the exact same rules, if it is truly a role-playing and creative game.  Just use your imagination.

Aristothenes

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Re: SixOfSpades's In-Depth Review of the Tactics MOD
« Reply #28 on: July 28, 2004, 10:52:34 PM »
Sounds Interesting. Maybe I should give this mod a go.
How many extra cloaks of Mirroring/Spell Reflection are added?
SixofSpades: I sort of feel your pain. Running a VIA chipset here, have huge installed base of MS-DOS things, but don't see a need to upgrade to XP yet(98SE) now. So far nothing critical except some niggly things.
(Strides confidently off, hoping his party can handle things)

Azazello-guest

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Re: SixOfSpades's In-Depth Review of the Tactics MOD
« Reply #29 on: January 12, 2005, 05:26:52 PM »
I searched this forum and could not find an answer - how can the cheese of the 999-damage poison bite of the "Slightly Tougher" pit fiends be modified or removed? I canna find this value in the CRE or BCS files.

 

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