Starcrawlers -its out now!

Games
66

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)

67

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.

68

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!

69

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.

70

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.

71

Without reading the entire thread from the beginning, I got the impression from a video that you can’t save in the middle of a mission. Is that right?

72

I don’t agree. It’s totally a rogue like. There is a huge RNG element that rears it’s ugly head and you get a party wipe. Maybe you’re so awesome, you never get it, but I’m not the only one.

From WikiPedia

A roguelike game is one belonging to a subgenre of role-playing video games characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated game levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, and permanent death of the player-character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting their influence from tabletop role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.

From the store page:

StarCrawlers is a modern take on a classic cRPG dungeon crawler set in a gritty spacepunk universe. Build a crew of renegade adventurers on the fringes of space, taking jobs from megacorps to hunt bounties, sabotage rivals and conduct corporate espionage.

They even call their party members “crawlers”!!

I did re-install it. Interesting that it started up with “Continue” because of Steam Cloud saves. I played a few more hours and leveled up about 6 levels to 14/15 and I had yet to see anything even remotely close to the pic I posted above when I was getting hammered at level 9\10. I had some tough levels - lost one character here & there but able to revive once back at the base. I actually was beginning to think that devs fixed some bug.

But, then I just had another wipe. Riggo the boss and 2 of his 1100+ hp minions with 10 shields and a few sentries thrown in for good measure. Not even close. I had 6 health packs. Makes no difference. Wipe.

With the skill trees, I’m just filling out a full tech tree on most of my chars so just getting used to a single tech tree out of the 3.

So either you read up & grab void psyker and hacker and stay with that combo and just do what others have done and play in their footsteps or you try to figure this game out on your own. I’m choosing to try different things and it’s really frustrating when you get an RNG that is just totally out of left field.

What do you call this game if it’s not a rogue like? The only saving grace is you can revive fallen crawlers.

73

I just call it an RPG. You can save at any point, you can revive, there are procedural dungeons and there are storyline dungeons. There’s no killer RNG that I can see.

I didn’t do any reading. Tried a few party combinations, ie engineer/smuggler, haven’t tried a cyberninja, didn’t synergize with my playstyle, mucked around in the skill trees, and here I am.

74

No, that’s not right. You can save anytime during a mission.

75

I’m sorry but a key component of roguelikes is permadeath and no ‘save anywhere’ system like this one has. It does have some roguelike components but any old RPG player will recognize that this is primarily an old school blobber/crawler with roots that hearken back to Wizardry and Might and Magic. Hence the “crawlers” in the name. It is much more in that subgenre than it is a roguelike,

And the game really isn’t very hard for a blobber/crawler. Compared to Elminage Gothic for example, it’s an absolute cakewalk.

Blobber is a slang term that is used loosely to refer to first-person party-based RPGs in which the player controlled party is not represented as a distinct visual entity in the game world. As such, the game must stay in first-person view at all times within the game world (so that the camera can never be pointed at the party). Functionally, this means that the player’s party always stays together and moves and acts as a single unit. No member of the party can be separated spacially from the rest, so, for instance, one party member cannot be commanded to walk down a hallway while the rest of the party waits behind. Thus, the party only has physical presence within the game world in the forms of walking around (i.e. having legs), swinging weapons or casting spells (i.e. having arms), and staying glued together as a solitary mass (i.e. being a blob). This artifice came to be called “a blob with arms and legs” and games that used it were in turn called “blobbers”.

Blobbers originated as much out of technological limitation as intentional design in the early 1980s. Computers of that era were very limited in how much they could visually represent on screen, so maintaining a first-person view at all times was used to avoid the need to draw and animate the player’s party characters on screen. As a result, scarce computer resources and screen real estate could be dedicated to showing just NPCs and the environment of the game world (which was still far from fully achievable). The necessity of using first-person view in blobbers was also desireable for closely imitating the experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons in which a Dungeon Master tells players about their perception of the game world in second person and the player issues their actions in first person. In early computer RPGs such as blobbers, D&D was nearly always the overwhelmingly dominant source of inspiration, so any method of better simulating the D&D experience was seen as a prime objective.

76

I know you don’t want any specific advice on skills or classes so lets talk about some more general strategy type stuff.

Unlike most games in this genre there’s no dedicated healer class. That means you need to make some adjustments. To do well I think you’ll need to plan your party to have a good mix of the following:

  1. Both good single target dps (for bosses) and good aoe dps (for large groups and trash mobs).

  2. As much healing as you can find via gear or skills. Little as it may be, it adds up if you have multiple sources.

  3. Crowd control (stuns, etc.). It prevents damage and since there’s no healer, that’s essential.

  4. Damage prevention (barriers, etc.) Same as #3 above.

There are multiple classes that can provide the above. If you have all those areas covered in your party, I think you should do well.

77

I think you lay out a good strategy. The one piece that I’m weak on is any form of crowd control / stuns besides my smuggler mug that occasionally will proc for stun (it fails a lot), but it’s only a single person.

I know I can respec & try different trees, but in the end, what is really pissing me off more than anything is these RNG bosses that seriously I just don’t see anyway around.

So I posted a pic above and I’ll re-reference it here

The point is I get these bosses during random EASY/NORMAL missions that have huge health and huge number of shields. If I were to create a party to combat only these, I’m not even sure I could. They are so strong and tough, dealing shitloads of damage.

The one I had was similar to the what I encountered above - huge HP, huge shields + 2 more for a party of 5; they hit really, really hard (my force syker was gone in 2 rounds), and it feels like they are getting 2 shots for every one of mine. I really don’t see any viable strategy other than quit and reload. This is the biggest problem with this game IMO. If it weren’t for these RNG bosses showing up on minor missions, I could play this game a lot. But this just turns me off completely.

Have you encountered a boss group like than in a random mission? Because I truly want to hear how you tackle it

Thinking out loud, (EDIT: using the chars I have) the only chance I could have would be: Engineer ( has a bot “Sapper” that just feeds on shields), Force Syker (right tree with both shields and AOE), Hacker (right tree, some defensive dodge / minor healing / shield replenish, ex machina) and then soldier (middle tree is just too good with bouncing betties and rocket strike for big single hits). But honestly, I just want to punt when I see a mix like this.

Because this just forces me to read the forums, and find that killer combination (void psyker, hacker) that everyone is using and use it above all else. Where is the fun in that?

It also doesn’t help that I picked engineer as my main and according to this thread on the forums, it’s the overwhelming “most worthless class” choice among the responders.

But I think smuggler is fun (right tree for big hits + cash) and prototype (ugh, I went down middle tree but I think it’s a dud) and I haven’t even tried the ninja or void psyker yet).

So much fun/potential and yet so much frustration.

78

I was not happy at all with the prototype, but i know some people liked him.

I also did not like Sapper, generally always preferring the other bots over it, but probably depends on your party, enemies, etc.

I can’t say i’ve read any forums other than this one and i really haven’t used any preset strategy. I did end up trying out a smuggler in exchange for my engineer though. This was mostly because i wanted to try out a dps hacker and i don’t really want to use an engineer without overclock though.

79

For those you need:
a) Someone with great single target DPS.
b) Someone to lock up the boss so he can’t attack you (you have a Force Psyker so Barrier Prison ftw).
c) Someone to break shields (some skills are better than others at this so you want the ones that can remove multiple or all shields in one turn).

Many times. My first priority is to stun the big boys so that they never get to even attack me before they’re dead. I can stun 2, maybe 3 if I’m lucky so I prioritize stunning the boss and the ones with the most health and then take care of the smaller ones first. In my fight with Riggo, he was the first thing I stunned. Once I’m down to 2 mobs, I can keep them permanently stunned and kill them without fear of taking damage. Then put up my barriers, use shield breaker skills and/or AOE to take out the smaller ones and weaken the stunned ones and then use either my big single target DPS skill to take out the boss or use Killswitch if I have enough viruses in play. It doesn’t really matter too much as long as they are continually stunned and out of play. I don’t think I had anyone lose more than 100 health on the Riggo fight.

I’ve fought those mobs in your picture many times. That one’s easy because I just stun two of the 3 right off the bat and then concentrate on the other one.

One thing you should prioritize is having light armor, fast weapon, and equipment/accessories that boost combat initiative on your stunners and reduce their turn times. Because you need to go first so you can stun before the majority of the enemies can attack.

Just be aware that the right tree is their DPS tree and you miss out on Barrier Prison. If you want them to fill the DPS role though, that’s fine.

EDIT: I should also mention that you want something like maybe a shotgun for your DPS. High damage, very high crit chance. It makes a huge difference. Riggo dropped the perfect weapon for that when I killed him (Riggo’s Shotgun).

80

What are you using for doing this?

81

With my particular build I use Barrier Prison (Force Psyker), Virus: Overheat (Hacker) and Mug (Smuggler - needs high crit % to work).

82

Haha, the Hacker got nerfed. And Coldsteel is getting some flak for suggesting it’s unnecessary.

I’ll need to respec my Hacker and probably swap in someone to replace my Prototype who is not doing any meaningful damage. Probably a Void Psyker. Can’t swap the Hacker because it’s my main.

83

Hacker is my main too. I don’t mind the Logic Bomb change, I rarely use that anyway. The Kill Switch nerf really bothers me though because that is the apex skill for the whole Malware skill tree. The big nerf there was overkill and really makes you question why you’d want to go get the apex skill for that tree. This was a hot fix out of nowhere so it’s just a knee jerk reaction to whining on the forums by the devs.

It just so annoys me when people want to balance all the fun out of single player games. Did anyone whine that the archmages in Might and Magic 6/7 were OP? No, they did not. And the Halfling slingers in MOM are still some of the most fun you can have in a game. I think people have become so conditioned to whine about balance in multiplayer games, they do in reflexively in all games now, even ones where it doesn’t matter a whit.

84

Hacker is also my main. The Kill Switch nerf came out of the blue. A 10 turn cooldown with no way to reduce the cooldown? Not a single fight ever has gone 10 turns. It’s now really lackadaisical for the top skill in a tree. The nerf bat was swung too hard.

85

So I picked this up yesterday, and while admittedly haven’t played much of it (only the tutorial and a side quest), I’m pretty underwhelmed. Does every quest consist of exploring a map made up of rectangular generic rooms devoid of anything interesting? So far it’s be enter room, pick up random loot lying around, and battle some droids. Is that the whole game?

I’d like to keep going and find some degree of immersion, but I need motivation.