[TIPS] FTL: Faster Than Light

Some tips for playing FTL:

• Opening doors that lead to the outside is an effective way of putting out fires.  Note that not all ships have airlock doors (e.g. the Rock ship does not).
• When trying to do repairs in a room with no oxygen, open all the doors around it to improve oxygen levels in that room.
• Get used to not using the autofire.  Many weapons work better when fired in sync, even if they have differing cooldown times (e.g. using an Ion weapon to disable the shields as you fire your beam weapon to cut up their hull).
• The Crew Teleporter is not worth it unless you're planning on really committing to boarding actions.  It helps a lot if you have:
• a large crew
• Mantis crew members
• crew with upgraded combat skills
• Note that the final boss cannot be teleported onto while their shields are up.
• Power down systems you aren't using.  If your pilot ran off to put out some fires and you don't have autopilot, you can cut all power to your engines.
• Your fourth crew member helps a lot, but the marginal value of crew after that isn't much (unless you plan on aggressively boarding).
• If you plan on using missiles in the final boss fight, make sure to buy EVERY MISSILE YOU CAN during the game.  The worst feeling is to have a whole array of missile launchers and no ammo.
• At the start of the game, remove a power from your medbay and put it towards engines.  Your medbay doesn't need power unless it's actively healing someone, and the extra engine power will give you more dodges.
• If you're already comfortably killing enemies without taking damage, consider saving your scrap instead of immediately putting it towards upgrades.  You might see something in a store that you want more than an upgrade, and you can always do upgrades at any time but coming back to a store is very difficult.
• If an enemy is crippled and can't fight back, consider using weapons other than missiles to finish them off, to conserve ammo.  Alternatively, if they don't have shields, an asteroid field may kill them for you.
• Consider shooting their weapons first instead of their shields to minimize damage you receive, even if it extends the fight.  This is especially true if they have missiles.
• If you have slow-firing weapons with long charge times, cloak will be very beneficial.  Cloak is much less useful for fast-firing weapons.
• Beam I drone will not do any damage to shields and can't penetrate them either.

Weapons:

• Ion weapons do "ion damage", which temporarily reduces maximum power available to a system.  For example, if you have a shield system with two power (provides 1 point of shielding) and are hit by an ion weapon for 1 ion damage, your shield will power down (since two power is required for each point).
• Ion weapons that hit shields will also inflict their ion damage on the shield system first.  Only after the shields are down can ion weapons damage other systems.

Sectors:

• Nebula sectors will increase the total # of systems you can visit before you need to run from the Rebel fleet.  While individual stars will not slow the Rebels down as much as nebulas in "normal" sectors, it still helps.
• "Homeworld" systems can have a quest that allows you to pick up a race-specific ship for your next playthrough.  Note that this applies to "[Race] Homeworlds" systems, not "[Race]-controlled" systems.

Final Boss (Rebel Flagship):

• The first stage of the boss has lasers, ion cannons, missiles, a beam weapon, and cloaking.
• The second stage the boss has missiles, lasers, a beam weapon, and both offensive and defensive drones.
• When its "power surges" it will spawn a large number of drones to shoot at you for a short period of time.  Have your repair crews ready, or cloak to avoid all the damage.  You can also damage the drone subsystem ahead of time.
• The last stage the boss has lasers and missiles.
• Your priority in every fight should be to kill the triple missile launcher (middle-right gun).  Otherwise it'll keep doing consistent damage against you by bypassing your shields, and it's unlikely you have enough defense drones to shoot them all down.
• Damage isn't carried over from battle to battle, but the crew size is.  If you can, try to whittle the crew down in the earlier battles to make later battles easier.

[TIPS] Papers, Please

Some tips for playing "Papers, Please":

• Your first two citations per day will only result in warnings.  After that, you will be fined 5 credits per citation.
• You get five credits for each immigrant you see, regardless of whether they are admitted or denied.  However, if you receive a citation, you will not receive money for them.  Denying or detaining someone will both give you the cash, but you should generally attempt to detain them if you can as there are other incentives.
• Note that receiving a citation past the second is a "double whammy".  You don't get five credits for processing the applicant correctly, and you lose five more for the fine.
• Work day begins at 6am and ends at 5pm.  As long as you start the applicant process before the end of the day you can keep going, however.
• You start in a "Class 8 Apartment" which costs (25 Rent / 10 Heat) per day.  Moving to a "Class 7 Apartment" costs $100 upfront, and costs (30 Rent / 10 Heat) per day.  If you have to move back down to Class 8, you get $70 back.
• Juggle your family's requirements when cash is tight.  If they're "Hungry" but not cold, make sure to get them food but don't worry about the heat.

[TIPS] Dwemer/Dwarven Artifacts

Quick list so you can keep track of Dwemer artifacts.

Smeltable (bars by weight of item):

• Small Dwemer Plate Metal (.6)
• Large Dwemer Plate Metal (.6)
• Bent Dwemer Plate Metal (.6)
• Solid Dwemer Plate Metal (5)
• Large Dwemer Strut (6.6)
• Large Decorate Dwemer Strut (7.5)

Used for a quest:

• Dwarven Cog (need 10)

Anything else can be sold (or more likely, not picked up at all).

In Summary:

Only pick up (Small/Large/Bent) Dwemer Plate Metal.

Pick up Dwemer Cogs until you have 10.

[TIPS]: Shadowrun Returns: The Redmond Barrens

• You get the same amount of karma whether you kill the Ork Halloweener leader or not.  I suggest letting him go since it reduces the risk of you taking further damage.
• Having Etiquette (Security) will help you avoid either a $100 bribe or doing a bit of running around when you talk to the cop at the crime scene.
• Make sure to complete the "protect the market" secondary objective BEFORE you investigate the crime scene, or you'll end up having to do it alone vs. with Jake.

[TIPS] Shadowrun Returns: Down And Out

• Your character will always have a pistol in this scene, no matter what your character creation options.
• Your character also starts with
• Doc Wagon Basic Trauma Kit
• Basic Medkit
• (2) Fichetti Concussion Grenades
• (2) Fichetti Frag Grenades
• The grenades in particular will be useful if your character is bad at ranged combat.
• Sam Watts also has two Frag Grenades in his inventory.  His Strength isn't bad so he can chuck it a good distance.
• You will not have any spells, but you will have totem abilities (assuming you have a totem).
• The oil puddle directly south of your start can summon a friendly water spirit.
• The boxes north/northwest of your start contain a Basic Medkit.

[TIPS] Shadowrun Returns: Character Creation and General Tips

All of these tips apply to the campaign that ships with the game, "Dead Man's Switch".  To see my review for the game, click here.

Character Creation

• Your character will be going through a lot of combat scenes early on.  It'll make your life easier if you have good combat skills early.  You'll be running into a lot of Karma very quickly, so you can always go your specified route later if it's not combat focused.  For example, if you're planning on being a decker with some rifle proficiency, upgrade your rifle/ranged combat/body stats before you start the game, then level your decking skill later.
• It's at least a few hours until you do any decking, and even then the first time you use it it's nearly impossible to fail even with poor statistics.  Later on good decking can pay off, but you'll often have a competent decker available to you anyway.  In general, I'd advise against making decking a priority for your main character.
• Focus on combat and dialogue upgrades on character creation.
• Specialize in one or two weapons.  Since you can only carry at most three with the right upgrades, you really don't need to  be good at more than two.
• Your very first mission will be using a pistol no matter what and you won't have access to any spells, so it might not be a bad idea to be at least somewhat competent at ranged combat.

General Tips

• Get Charisma 4 as soon as possible.  It unlocks many dialogue options through the game.  A score of more than 4 isn't necessary for the purposes of dialog. 
• For Etiquette, Street and Security are most useful at the beginning of the game.  After that, Shadowrunner and Corporate can net you some more cash in the mid game.  Academia and Gang are basically worthless.
• Better cyberdecks make a big difference.
• Pretty much all weapons are viable at all ranges.  It's very rare that combat takes place at the super long ranges where weapons like the shotgun would be handicapped.
• Speaking of which, shotguns feel like the best weapons in the game.  The only weapons that beat out their damage output are rifles on full auto, which is very inaccurate.
• Shaman spirits can make combats a lot easier for you, but certainly are not required to do well.
• Overwatch is done with the ability you currently have selected when you activate Overwatch.  Thus, activate Overwatch with your best ability (e.g. burst fire over single shot) available.
• No matter what your build, you will likely want to get a Body score of at least 6.  Your main character is the only one who cannot be revived by teammates if they get downed (it's an instant mission failure if you are knocked out) and you don't want a lucky 2% long-range shotgun burst fire taking you out and forcing you to restart.
• If you end a combat and the scene isn't immediately about to end, heal up!  You can use health even when not in combat by going to your inventory, selecting the medkit and selecting the person to heal.
• Don't be afraid to use the consumables on the shadowrunners that you hire.  The next mission they will have all new gear anyway.
• Look at your potential runners' gear carefully.  It changes mission to mission.  The street samurai who was packing a shotgun and an AK last mission might have a pistol and an SMG this one.
• Don't underestimate the buffs, especially Haste and Aim.  Aim is especially good when combined with a high damage, low accuracy ability like the rifle's "Full Auto".
• Magical accuracy is often different than hitting with a gun.  A troll hiding behind cover might be a 50% hit with a pistol but a 95% hit with a willpower spell like Mana Bolt.
• You CANNOT heal "Drain" damage from casting a spell before the cooldown is complete.

[REVIEW] Shadowrun Returns: Review

Shadowrun Returns released yesterday after over a year in development.  The Kickstarter launched on April 4, 2012 and ended up receiving over $1.8 million.

Background

The world of Shadowrun is actually based on a role-playing game that's been around 1989.  Set in a dystopian cyber-punk future mixed with Tolkien races and magic, it's one of my favorite settings.

There have been three previous game releases:

• Shadowrun, released on the SNES in 1993 that was a mixture of action and role-playing, with a stronger emphasis on role-playing
• Shadowrun, released on the Sega Genesis in 1994 that was also an action/RP mix but with more of an emphasis on action.  My personal favorite and it also has fantastic music
• Shadowrun, released on the PC/Xbox in 2007 and was very loosely based on the RPG universe

Let's talk about the game

The new game, Shadowrun Returns, is a top-down, isometric, turn-based RPG/action game.  It plays and feels very similarly to Fallout 1 and 2, or for a more modern example, XCOM.

You spend your time in the game transitioning between "role-playing" and "action" segments.  In the RP mode, you wander already, talking to people, collecting clues, purchasing equipment, etc.  In the action segments you face off against street punks, corporate security, and even hostile life forms from another dimension (no spoilers here!).

Everything is done on the top-down/isometric map, so there's no cutscenes or anything else that will take you away from your characters.  Conversations are done through dialog trees.

The action is definitely worth nothing.  Every character has a certain number of "action points".  AP can be used to move or use abilities.  Certain powerful abilities (firing a gun on full auto, casting a massive fireball, etc.) require more than one action point.  Everyone on one side goes before the other.  Who goes first is mostly

You start the game off receiving a call about an old runner friend who's been murdered.  He's recorded a video to be played on his death, asking you to find out who killed him and avenge him in exchange for a cash payout.  You head to Seattle and begin your investigation, which takes you from the slums of Redmond to high-security corporate facilities and everything in between.  Along the way, you make some friends, help some people in need, and occasionally have to make morally ambiguous decisions.

The skill system in the game is very important to explain.  There are no "classes" in the game- you can choose to be a mage, shaman, adept, decker, whatever you'd like.  It just takes points invested in the appropriate skill (e.g. summoning, decking, shotguns).  Of course, being a jack-of-all-trades makes you weaker in any single category.  You gain skill points (called Karma in the Shadowrun universe) through the completion of objectives, like helping a stranger out, finding a critical clue or completing a mission.

Before you embark on a "Shadowrun" (a mission) you can recruit up to three other runners.  Some will work with you for free for plot reasons, but most expect cash.  In combat, you control all four members of your team, and have to learn how to put their strengths together into an effective team.

Overall:
7.5/10 with just the main campaign
8.5/10 with additional content (assuming fans put out more campaigns)

Summary

Pros

• Extremely flexible skill system- build any character that you want
• Strong writing and dialogue
• Interesting combat options and abilities
• Gritty, engrossing universe
• Fleshed out content- even the side missions feel very complete and are not just tacked for filler

Cons

• The campaign that ships with the game, "Dead Man's Switch", is short.  I completed it in 11 hours.
• Ultimately, both combat and RP scenes are very linear.  There's always just one possible ending, and your decisions often feel like they don't matter all that much
• Unlocking new dialogue options through having the appropriate skill or attribute level often has minimal effect
• Inability to save during a scene can make bad luck with the dice frustrating, or if you run into a bug and are forced to restart
• Minimal explanation of core game mechanics (cover, karma costs, critical chance)
• Weapons feel incompletely balanced
• Moving around between fights in a scene can be tedious since you're stuck in turn-based mode