Starcrawlers -its out now!

Well a few things I need to point out:

You don’t think the HP on 2 of these enemies were 2x my highest, and 5x my smallest and the big dude was 3x my highest doesn’t seem unfair at all? FWIW, I never encountered anything remotely like this, even on that stupid “Triangulatin” mission that I had to retry 2x before I could get it (with all leveled up chars). With 4 bosses you had to conquer, that was a tough mission! But yet, this job where I show the pic was just some random EASY job. This was just stupid HP on those bosses IMO.

Also - You need to understand what I was attempting to do. I had two under leveled chars (smuggler, psyker) and was intentionally doing easy & cakewalk missions to level them up. I think the game is broken with trying to keep all the chars leveled up - yet how can you experiment with something until you do a few runs with it? How do you keep all your chars leveled? I know now - don’t purchase more than 3 party members until way late because it removes the “keep them all leveled” problem. But that’s now where I was at.

So I have a decent team, but I’m stuck in a situation where 2 of my chars are 3-4 levels behind my main. How do I level these up? I was willing to grind out easy & cakewalk missions, but the game didn’t think that was a good idea, now did it?

Did you try firing the characters and rehiring?

Edit: I think the game scaled the missions according to your main, not the hirlings. So that may explain why you are struggling so much with easy missions.

So having a level 15 main with 2 level 11 hirlings is a sure fireway to invite trouble. As Easy is like 1 level lower than the main and cakewalk is 2 level lower than the main.

You were basically attempting a level 13 mission with 2 characters having level 11 if you take an easy or cakewalk mission if your main is at level 15.

Edit: and it’s horrible when the DMG characters are the underleveled ones that have not reached the end of at least 1 skill tree. they just cant get rid of the enemies fast enough to avoid the incoming damage

Having such a huge disparity in party level is definitely what’s killing you. So yeah, I would try firing and rehiring the lower level ones if you can afford it. Just remove their gear first so you don’t lose it. I’m not sure if the rehires scale to your lowest level troop or your highest level one so make sure you save before hand so you can experiment and see.

There are a couple of ways to keep your party leveled evenly. There are intellifoam canisters you find in missions that give extra XP when used. Use them on your most under-leveled char. Then there is that cybereye accessory you get when you find the Prototype that gives 5% extra XP while equipped. Finally there is equipment (like armor) with enhancements that also gives extra XP % while equipped. I have one equipped on my Void Pycher currently that gives an extra 6%. I give intellifoam to my other characters so she doesn’t get too far ahead of them.

Actually due to the low cost of hiring, I’ll just fire and replace them. Just rename them to be exactly the same name. Think and imagine of combat school for RPG purposes if that breaks the immersion. Or have the main character telling the guys “Get Gud!” and paying for their combat training.

Trying to level up to the same level as you main just invite so much more pain due to the initial starting XP disparity you would already have.

Although it may not work on special classes like the Prototype though. I’m not sure if you can rehire the special classes you get.

20 of 29 people (69%) found this review helpful
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For the record, I was on team helpful.

I am only 11, so things could change, but so far i am still liking it a lot as someone who played it in the beta long ago.

My team:
Force Psyker - Sentinal
Void Psyker - Evoker
Hacker - Optimization
Engineer Constructor

Force Psyker is decent. Once you get them a decent weapon, and high crit chance, they can throw up a lot of shields. Right now my people have around 600 health each and i’ve almost always got 80 shields on everyone. They also have some “Oh Shit!” abilities when people are dying, but thankfully i have only seen that activate a single time so far.

Void Psyker is very strong. I might end up going summoner which i think sounds more my type of thing, but Evoker seems more powerful, especially when you add in minor summoner levels. Manipulator completely sucks from what i can tell, which is a double shame because it sounds interesting from a lore point of view AND it seems super obvious that the abilities as they are would not be good.

Hacker is really good overall. I feel like their non combat abilities are too required. I could not imagine playing the game without a hacker. Optimization is pretty decent. I’m not really sure how stacking optimization buffs works though. It seems way too chancy and i don’t think i have ever seen it go past 3 on a single person. That said overclock is really good and hackers provide good maintenance heals to the group which is nice in a game with no healing. Hacker maintenance heals + force psyker heals sync pretty well together.

Engineer construct seems really strong. Twofer + Blasto will absolutely destroy high health targets. Twofer + Trumper will absolutely destroy groups of enemies. These constructs also provide a throwaway target for the enemy. I’m not sure Bolty is worth taking with Constructor being an option. The exploration option for engineers is also really good, probably only second to Hacker.

Optimization Hacker with overclock syncs really well with constructor engineer. My engineer summons a blasto, it fires and then my hacker gives the blasto a 2nd turn right away, doing a crap ton of damage (since blastos scale up each time they fire at a target).

I alternate between Challenging and Hard Missions now. On hard missions i generally have to use medkits to heal myself. On challenging i don’t, so I run them to get healing items (although i suppose i could just buy them).

Very happy with the game but I feel it needs some extra balance. The balance isn’t terrible, i’ve certainly seen worse, but there are some things missing. Force Psyker and Void Psyker (and possibly the other classes i havent played) should have more non combat ability. Right now it is like 60% Hacker, 39.9% Engineer, 0.1% Void Psyker & Force Psyker.

There are also some problems with combat balance as well.

I actually love single player games that do not have any semblance of balance.

Starting off weak but building up characters that ends up obliterating the enemies is a large part of the fun. Kind of reminds me why I liked the mechanics in Wizardry 6 better then 7+. Multi-classing was much much fun , until they decided to change the multi-class mechanic, balancing the mechanic to a bland “meh”.

Edit: Similarly, as we can only have 1 member of each class, the importance of balance is less emphasised in the game. I’ll not be surprised that people will find weird combos and synergies between the classes.

Actually I tried dismissing my Prototype class and recruiting it back. It seems that you are able to recruit even special classes you have obtained through the game play.

By balance problems i specifically mean some class skill trees are really really really bad. Ok i mainly just mean the Void Psyker manipulator tree. I can’t figure out what they were thinking with it.

Ah. Yea, some trees does seem quite useless.

Hmmm, I should try resetting the trees and muck around just for the heck of it, the costs seem very low.

My team is very similar to this except I’m using a Smuggler instead of an Engineer. My party is level 20 now and I’m so obsessed with this game it isn’t funny.

I’ve completed the middle skill trees for all of my chars and am now working on second trees. I’m going Guardian for the second Force Psyker tree and it’s really useful for the survivability.

I’m into Optimization now for my Hacker and have the first healing skill which is helping a lot. The Void Psyker is such a beast. Voidstorm destroys everything. That is unless the Hacker hits Killswitch first. The Force Psyker keeps everyone upright with barriers and some healing until they finish the deal. The Smuggler is along for the ride, mostly. She does good DPS but has a hard time getting kills in before the others do. She does have some handy retaliation abilities. I mostly use her to mug enemies for cash. I came back with 525 credits from white “loot” items my last mission. It also helps that Mug has a stun with it (50% chance).

So, I have 3 characters with CC stun abilities. Prison with Force Psyker, Overheat for the Hacker and Mug with Smuggler. It helps a lot. An encounter with 3 or fewer enemies gets locked up pretty fast.

Healing is a key to long mission runs. I get equipment with a chance to heal onto every character I can. The health leech accessory is also worth it’s weight in gold. I wish I could find more. I also use a lucky rabbit fool accessory that heals partial damage taken (only 10% chance though).

I think the procedurally generated missions for this game are incredibly well done. I hope they continue to add content and support the game with fixes and improvements because it really is a gem.

I played this quite a bit yesterday and have been enjoying it a lot. I am about level 8 or so, running the following party:
Void Psyker
Soldier
Prototype
Smuggler

It seems that it is dangerous to spread points out across skill trees, but rather pick a column and stick with it. I made the same mistake mentioned above early on, when I wasn’t upgrading the weapon on my Psyker – since skill damage is based on weapon stats, a properly scaled weapon made a huge difference. So far, I haven’t needed the hacker outside of missions, but office runs are a bit annoying. I like the small, bite-sized procedural missions - this makes it easier to pick up and put down during an interruption heavy day.

Yes, this is absolutely correct.

You can also just save in the middle of a mission and come back later to finish it. I like the procedural missions as well. I find them strangely relaxing.

I can’t stop thinking about this game. It was hitting so many right notes with me before this starting happening. It’s very frustrating because I was enjoying it a lot. I read the forums and there are other complaints of bosses too hard (one apparently regens so fast, hard to take down w/out the right combination).

I’ve thought about this more & I’m contemplating re-installing and trying this again, and trying to figure out how can I experiment with all the different crawlers and not get myself back in the same situation? With 3 skill trees across so many crawlers, I’m having a problem figuring out how to experiment. Reading the forums, I see a lot of variety but I don’t like having to copy someone else’s formula. Part of the appeal is figuring out what works.

However, having 6 or 8 crawlers when you can only use 4 at a time presents a problem. How to test these out without getting lopsided? Thoughts?

I’d suggest picking a Void Psyker and a Hacker for 2 of your 4 characters and then pick whatever you like for the other two. Fill out the middle trees on the Void and Hacker and then experiment with rotating in and out the other two to see which ones you like.

The massive DPS from the initial pair will help carry your rotation experiments with the other two. Keep updating their weapons (check the Damage per Time Unit (TU) stat on the weapons to see which is stronger. You’ll want as high a crit as you can get for those two as well. Shotguns I’ve found work very, very well for hackers. They have massive damage and high crits. Their only problem is accuracy so look for accuracy mods and accessories.

My party is level 22 now and I am crushing everything, even bosses. Just stick with it and experiment until you find that sweet spot you like. If you’re getting frustrated again, just change up the other two classes again or restart and try something else. The game really is a lot of fun. I’m going to start another party with different classes at some point after I finish this run and the NG+ mode.

If you need any advice on skills, just ask. Good luck out there!!

I don’t think that should be a problem if you fire and rehire. It should always hire the new guys at the same level as your hacker and void characters.

See, I had a hacker, but not originally - it was late where I saw the heal attributes. How / why did you pick your two? What made you decide out of the 8 available those were the best? How did you decide which tech trees to fill out first?

There are tons of options in this game. Even taking your suggestion is already putting me on a certain path - you even recommend the middle trees. I would like more freedom to check these out.

Firing / Hiring is going to cost $$. I have zero idea how much but the credits don’t come easy (I maybe make 300 or so on a routine / non-storyline mission)

I did some basic research to start with that told me they were good DPS, which I like. And I like the psyker types in games (I have a force psyker too) and I love hackers in games as well. I threw in a smuggler just because I like the way they look. Now I have 25 levels of experience with them and I can say with some authority, void psykers and hackers kick ass.

Do give it a try again.

It cost relatively very little to respec the ability points at the doc. Like 100+ a pop. So you can actually respec to try out the entire skill tree.

Good to do it at level around level 15 or so when when you have filled out 1 skill tree.

Edit: From your experience it seems it’ll help much to put all the +XP trinkets on the hirelings instead of on the main character.

This is a game where the scaling rewards having the main being lower leveled compared to the companions!

I just got so lucky. A legendary level 25 rifle just dropped for me on a non-story mission that does over 700 damage. This is going to be fun. I gave it to my void psyker first to see how that goes. It did cost me about 1400 credits to upgrade it to the max.

I also found out that once you reach friendly rep with a corp, you can earn favor points with them by an contacting the corp on the wire and talking to their rep. They’ll give you jobs to do that will gain favor points with them. Once you get 3 or more points you can call them and spend it on all kind of stuff, depending on what corp it is. The more favor points, the better the reward. Anything from epic weapons and armor to accessories and mods. Plus, some unique stuff as well. It’s another layer to this game that I didn’t even know existed until now. Pretty damn cool. You can check your status with corps and see if you have favor points with any by hitting the ‘i’ key.

I really think it’s an unfair criticism to call this game a rogue like. If you dabble in different skill trees and you have an underleveled party, it may be tough, but you can always respec or fire and rehire any class to get them to the same level as the rest of the party. Money is not in short supply… It’s too easy if anything, and I’m hoping it gets tough in NG++, where I’ve heard there is spike damage. Most battles are resolved in 1-2 turns.

My current group is Soldier for aggro, Force Psyker for shielding, Void Psyker and Hacker for massive DPS and it’s a cakewalk. And I love it. Classes and skill trees are not balanced, nor should they be in a single player game.