A thread to discuss the public beta

[The Masked Orange]

40 minutes ago, Sejoten said:

Am I unlucky or the Rookie difficulty doesn't change much ?

I lose most of the time.

And this spider dude decimate my teams all the time, I hate him 😆

Scuttlebutt is right up there with the most annoying villains, that's for sure 😄 The only thing I've found to be useful is to make sure your teams are in some form of cover until you've dealt with him (which is pretty much what you want to do if anyone on the villain side has a shockwave attack), and anyone with an ability which will lets you disable his 'Patient Predator' move is invaluable, so try and put someone with an ability like that on your hero creation. I try to get him out in the open and stun him just so he can't benefit from his defensive bonuses, but even then with the 1D chances he has to just dodge any melee or ranged attack he is definitely a potential keyboard breaker.

 

It's a very new game so I think we're all trying to learn how not to get our butts kicked. I tried a location-lock on The Wastelands on Experienced and it was a complete massacre. One large dog and several dudes with wild west guns aren't meant to deal with that many monsters and mutants. I'm still trying to figure out when is the best time to commit to a melee team, when you want some cowardly ranged builds and how best to make a hybrid of the two work.

[Vader628]

Can you set up so we can export the two teams before a big battle? I left the game before the next issue which was going to be a 5 on 6 battle. Would have been nice to sit with an export while unplugging from computer and plot out my strategy for the battle. Like you can do with a TEW promotion so you can generate some ideas offline before diving in to creating your storylines on-screen.  If possible I am thinking the overall attack/defense values (melee, etc.) and then a list of the powers.  I know it's the downside of being 50-something and still like to look at stuff offline to think about it before diving in to the next battle, and it's a nice to have that not many will use, but I would sure love it!   Either way, this is an awesome game, much more immersive than CBH, and I can't wait to donate my money on Saturday!

[The Quartz Burro]

On 10/22/2022 at 3:13 PM, Adam Ryland said:

There's no levelling up in the sense that you mean it. Characters get better or worse via storylines and natural character evolution, not by RPG style growth.

Can you expand on this? Also, I noticed in the journal that the popularity levels range from Iconic to Obscure, but there's a considerable degree of connotative noise in the interim rankings, where I'm not sure what ranks higher. I presume this is in the guide I haven't found yet?

 

[Undertaker666]

1 hour ago, The Quartz Burro said:

I noticed in the journal that the popularity levels range from Iconic to Obscure, but there's a considerable degree of connotative noise in the interim rankings, where I'm not sure what ranks higher. I presume this is in the guide I haven't found yet?

 

From highest to lowest: Iconic > Legendary > Major League > Renowned > Well Known > Prominent > Notable > Minor League > Obscure > Unknown

[The Quartz Burro]

14 hours ago, Sejoten said:

Am I unlucky or the Rookie difficulty doesn't change much ?

I lose most of the time.

And this spider dude decimate my teams all the time, I hate him 😆

The puzzles are easily gamed by pursuing a Generate a Lead/Follow a Lead strategy as often as possible. There's little point in doing any other action because a failure sets you back, whereas failing on the lead following doesn't affect the track at all.

Battles require some strategic thinking, and sequencing matters. Generally speaking, you want to set up your free actions before taking any of your actual actions - especially those free actions that debuff enemy defenses and buff your team's attacks.

Team selection also matters - in fact, it's often where battles are won or lost, before a single die roll. Study the opposing team for particular strengths/weaknesses and as much as possible, select your team with those identified strengths and weaknesses in mind. The AI doesn't do the best job of picking a squad every single time - in fact, sometimes I'll swap out the entire AI team for a completely different group.

[The Quartz Burro]

6 minutes ago, Undertaker666 said:

From highest to lowest: Iconic > Legendary > Major League > Renowned > Well Known > Prominent > Notable > Minor League > Obscure > Unknown

Thanks so much! Definitely different from the order in my head, which was Iconic > Legendary > Renowned > Prominent > Notable > Major League > Well Known > Minor League > Obscure > Unknown

[Adam Ryland]

8 hours ago, Vader628 said:

Can you set up so we can export the two teams before a big battle? I left the game before the next issue which was going to be a 5 on 6 battle. Would have been nice to sit with an export while unplugging from computer and plot out my strategy for the battle. Like you can do with a TEW promotion so you can generate some ideas offline before diving in to creating your storylines on-screen.  If possible I am thinking the overall attack/defense values (melee, etc.) and then a list of the powers.  I know it's the downside of being 50-something and still like to look at stuff offline to think about it before diving in to the next battle, and it's a nice to have that not many will use, but I would sure love it!   Either way, this is an awesome game, much more immersive than CBH, and I can't wait to donate my money on Saturday!

I don't think there's any real scope for an export button on that screen, although I'll look into it in case I can figure out a solution, but in case you weren't aware; if you exit via the Return To Homepage button, you'll return to the same teams when you re-load the game. So, you could just write down the teams if you wanted to ponder on strategies, etc. I know that doesn't give you the stats, but once you've got a decent knowledge of the database you're using it'll at least give you info on who is involved.

[LostInWeb]

5 hours ago, The Quartz Burro said:

Can you expand on this? Also, I noticed in the journal that the popularity levels range from Iconic to Obscure, but there's a considerable degree of connotative noise in the interim rankings, where I'm not sure what ranks higher. I presume this is in the guide I haven't found yet?

 

The handbook is available on every screen by clicking the questionmark in the upper right corner. Not sure, if the popularity rankings are in there, but I guess they are. Your question has been answered already, but you can just rememeber that the ranking is arranged, as you can select it in the box. Meaning: the highest rank is at the top and the lowest ist at the bottom.

About the levelling up: in CBH, the predecessor of this game, you could level up your character like in an RPG, where you have some kind of pointsystem and use the points to level up skills. This is not in CBU. Levelling up works through triggers in events and storylines.

That being said, @Adam Ryland after I trialed and errored a bit around with events and storylines (as you suggested), I guess I get the hang of it now, but am kind of missing an event or two: would it be possible to trigger an event, where characters gain a new power, raise or reduce a skill or gain a new health level? That would be nice to evolve characters over time some more. Of course, one could use the Identity Switch for that, but that would mean to build a character for every new power, skill etc.

[Adam Ryland]

1 minute ago, LostInWeb said:

That being said, @Adam Ryland after I trialed and errored a bit around with events and storylines (as you suggested), I guess I get the hang of it now, but am kind of missing an event or two: would it be possible to trigger an event, where characters gain a new power, raise or reduce a skill or gain a new health level? That would be nice to evolve characters over time some more. Of course, one could use the Identity Switch for that, but that would mean to build a character for every new power, skill etc.

No, that wouldn't be viable because of the amount of data involved - if you were adding a power for example, you'd need to have all that information (name, power type, what health levels it's for, how many targets, etc, etc) and there's nowhere near enough space to have that as part of a reactive event or storyline. For significant changes like that, you're meant to be using the Identity Switch feature.

[Adam Ryland]

3 hours ago, The Quartz Burro said:

The puzzles are easily gamed by pursuing a Generate a Lead/Follow a Lead strategy as often as possible. There's little point in doing any other action because a failure sets you back, whereas failing on the lead following doesn't affect the track at all.

Just to note, that's not entirely true - it's only on the easiest difficulty levels that failing a lead can't result in a penalty. If you're playing at the more difficult levels then there are potential penalties.

[The Quartz Burro]

6 minutes ago, LostInWeb said:

The handbook is available on every screen by clicking the questionmark in the upper right corner. Not sure, if the popularity rankings are in there, but I guess they are. Your question has been answered already, but you can just rememeber that the ranking is arranged, as you can select it in the box. Meaning: the highest rank is at the top and the lowest ist at the bottom.

About the levelling up: in CBH, the predecessor of this game, you could level up your character like in an RPG, where you have some kind of pointsystem and use the points to level up skills. This is not in CBU. Levelling up works through triggers in events and storylines.

That being said, @Adam Ryland after I trialed and errored a bit around with events and storylines (as you suggested), I guess I get the hang of it now, but am kind of missing an event or two: would it be possible to trigger an event, where characters gain a new power, raise or reduce a skill or gain a new health level? That would be nice to evolve characters over time some more. Of course, one could use the Identity Switch for that, but that would mean to build a character for every new power, skill etc.

Thanks! It never would have occurred to me to click the question mark - I presumed that was just for screen-specific info, and I found the screens all self-explanatory

[The Quartz Burro]

Just now, Adam Ryland said:

Just to note, that's not entirely true - it's only on the easiest difficulty levels that failing a lead can't result in a penalty. If you're playing at the more difficult levels then there are potential penalties.

Noted. I was at the default Experienced level, so that's why

[LostInWeb]

4 minutes ago, Adam Ryland said:

No, that wouldn't be viable because of the amount of data involved - if you were adding a power for example, you'd need to have all that information (name, power type, what health levels it's for, how many targets, etc, etc) and there's nowhere near enough space to have that as part of a reactive event or storyline. For significant changes like that, you're meant to be using the Identity Switch feature.

Thanks. I figured it would be the case, because there is a character in the default database using the identy switch to make 8 or 9 new versions and that gave me the idea in the first place, but I thought I'll ask anyway.

[The Masked Orange]

8 hours ago, The Quartz Burro said:

The puzzles are easily gamed by pursuing a Generate a Lead/Follow a Lead strategy as often as possible. There's little point in doing any other action because a failure sets you back, whereas failing on the lead following doesn't affect the track at all.

That's funny because I've been having a lot of success doing pretty much the opposite (again, Experienced difficulty). I will only generate leads if the character in question has a really woeful attack stat for the type of puzzle. Like, a 6 mystical attack against an 18 mystical defence situation the character selection left me with. Otherwise my go-to tactics are to use powers to leverage the best position I can and have character 'Take a Risk' during the power play more often then not (if powers fail to trigger or if someone's a bit weak on attack, just standard solution). Heck, I'll even through in a Leap of Faith if I think I can try and power through to get the extra few hero points I think you get for outright solving a puzzle before the counter goes down. I've found that being aggressive forces the villains to make riskier plays like to make cunning plans against your strong characters, which then lead to them getting some -2s fairly frequently with the right character selection and power usage.

 

I'm curious, how does the Generate a Lead/Follow a Lead strategy play out when the ai is being aggressive? In theory you're generating something like a lead every two turns per character on average but the ai can knock you back two steps per character per turn if they pull off a cunning plan. Is this something where a conservative approach means the ai just doesn't take those risks for you, or does the progress forward and backward cancel itself out? And are you winning the puzzles outright or with the turn limit? Because it seems crazy to me that a lead-based approach can solve the puzzle before the round counter runs down, but I guess there's not really much difference between winning by a foot and winning by a mile in this circumstance.

[The Quartz Burro]

4 hours ago, The Masked Orange said:

That's funny because I've been having a lot of success doing pretty much the opposite (again, Experienced difficulty). I will only generate leads if the character in question has a really woeful attack stat for the type of puzzle. Like, a 6 mystical attack against an 18 mystical defence situation the character selection left me with. Otherwise my go-to tactics are to use powers to leverage the best position I can and have character 'Take a Risk' during the power play more often then not (if powers fail to trigger or if someone's a bit weak on attack, just standard solution). Heck, I'll even through in a Leap of Faith if I think I can try and power through to get the extra few hero points I think you get for outright solving a puzzle before the counter goes down. I've found that being aggressive forces the villains to make riskier plays like to make cunning plans against your strong characters, which then lead to them getting some -2s fairly frequently with the right character selection and power usage.

 

I'm curious, how does the Generate a Lead/Follow a Lead strategy play out when the ai is being aggressive? In theory you're generating something like a lead every two turns per character on average but the ai can knock you back two steps per character per turn if they pull off a cunning plan. Is this something where a conservative approach means the ai just doesn't take those risks for you, or does the progress forward and backward cancel itself out? And are you winning the puzzles outright or with the turn limit? Because it seems crazy to me that a lead-based approach can solve the puzzle before the round counter runs down, but I guess there's not really much difference between winning by a foot and winning by a mile in this circumstance.

So far the AI has tended to play cautiously since I've played it that way too. And I'm winning via turns - you're correct that it won't win the puzzles outright. It's too safe a strategy to do that. But all I care about is getting the benefit from winning - not the bonus from winning outright

[The Jules]

Can characters gain or lose power unless a "Storyline" or "Reactive Event" has been created specifically for them? I see that popularity can change, but does that actually affect a characters abilities or stats?
Maybe that happens through "Publisher News"?

I have really enjoyed my time with the demo and will be purchasing the full version regardless

[Adam Ryland]

32 minutes ago, The Jules said:

Can characters gain or lose power unless a "Storyline" or "Reactive Event" has been created specifically for them? I see that popularity can change, but does that actually affect a characters abilities or stats?
Maybe that happens through "Publisher News"?

I have really enjoyed my time with the demo and will be purchasing the full version regardless

No, a character can't randomly gain new powers or stats. They can be boosted through acquiring artifacts or switching to a different identity only.

Popularity changes have no impact on combat stats.

[Adam Ryland]

The public beta is now ended and the retail version available so this thread is closed.