Print

Please login or register.

1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever

Login with username, password and session length

[LuckyDee]

(On the rare occasions that I pick up play) I play a lot of games in which Whizkid isn't too high on my priority list, leaving me restricted to basic assemblies or single mod applications. That's not really a problem, but it kinda bugs me that this generally results in me not knowing what to do with the mods I find. Here's a couple of things that I always go for:

• Tac boots: can't go wrong with those. Since tanking isn't a viable option, a little extra speed is always good.
• P-modded blue/red armor: for those occasions you just know are going to cause you grief.
• B-modded blue/red armor: for those occasions you just know are going to cause you prolonged grief.
• Tac shotgun: unless I have a challenge that prevents me from using shotguns, I still very much like using them, and the tactical variant is a true blessing.

Then there's the Gatling Gun for rapidfire builds of course, and the Elephant gun for shotgun builds (I tend to go for WK1 and the storm bolter on pistol builds), but here's the thing: I'm counting a lot of B-mods here, and even more P-mods and preciously little else. Especially on the AoSh I'm attempting at the moment, I just can't never find enough P-mods.
Sylph taught me it's always good to have a nanofiber red on hand in case all else fails, but this takes even more B and P mods ;(

So the obvious challenge-related choices (ie basic weapon assemblies for the corresponding Angels) aside, what do you tend to do with your mod packs if you're not saving them for advanced/master assemblies?

[Thiebs]

Good question. I find far too many mods to use, and far too few of the useful ones. And my priorities run very similar to yours, even about taking Whizkid. I usually end up making a set of tac armor to go with my boots, since I've found that usually once I start taking damage, I'm done for anyway. But other than that...

[LuckyDee]

I generally don't bother with the tac armor - even if I do find enough A-mods, I like to think playing for speed and switching to running mode when called for oughta be enough. Be advised that you'll always lose 1.0s sliding into the damn thing...

Other than your response, I must say it's awwwwwwwwwwwfully quiet in here. Most of the regulars are just suckers for topics like this. Maybe we shouldn't have teased them with Jupiter Hell as much as we did... :0

[thelaptop]

I just throw the mods away.  Mods have little meaning ever since we tossed away the Advanced Weapons concept.

* thelaptop rues the time where AoMr could be beaten with an Advanced Pistol and tons of mods slapped on to it

[Sylph]

I generally don't bother with the tac armor - even if I do find enough A-mods

I think it's one of the best assemblies in the game! Speed might well be the best thing in the game, especially when you stack it. Getting to 50% movespeed means you're going to take half as much damage per turn even if you don't use any tricks to take advantage of your crazy speed (and there are plenty). This is *hugely* better than going everywhere on 200% health, because healing items work so well for you!

Re: Tac armour specifically: I make a point of assembling my tac armour *before* my tac boots. I A-mod boots first, because they'll never break, but after boots I do green armour, for maximum movespeed. After that, modding the tac armour will make it regenerate back up to 100% health, and shortly after, I'll finish the tac boots. Just those, and hellrunner2, are enough to start playing damageless with a pistol build or a hyperblaster.
As I say though, even without fancy turn-counting tricks, the casual protection that tac armour gives you probably exceeds nanofibre red by quite a large margin (provided you're not just standing there toe-to-toe against a target). It's an incredible assembly.


Other ideal non-whizkid assemblies I use are:
Highpower minigun
 - Miles better than the gatling gun! In fact it's a fair bit better than a firestorm plasma rifle!
Highpower chaingun
 - very slightly weaker alternative to a gatling gun (if you have ranks in TH), with double the ammo efficiency!
Tactical shotgun
 - We all know the value of this, even a shotgun-hater like me!
Ballistic armour
 - Stick this on a melee-resistant armour (ballistic vest, duelistm armour, gothic, phaseshift, medical) and you become near-immune to melee.
 - Point-blank kill cybie with any build! Move forward a square to get 'safe' when there are no corners!
Fireproof armour
 - Bulk mod a red armour, wear it down to <50%, then turn it into fireproof armour and enjoy massive resistance
 - the archviles, mancubi, and revenants that normally make lategame tricky hardly touch you!
 - Stack it with environment suit for near-immunity to beat cybie, JC, Cthon etc.
Plasmatic shrapnel
 - This is the best of the bunch, and I had to mention it here!
 - Wall destruction is good enough in it's own right, but on nightmare difficulty this item is crazy!
 - From the moment you pick it up, it makes nightmare about as tricky as hurt me plenty.

[LuckyDee]

Ah, I knew I could count on you to teach me a thing or two. Or three. Or four. Stoppit! :)

Re: Tac armour specifically: I make a point of assembling my tac armour *before* my tac boots. I A-mod boots first, because they'll never break, but after boots I do green armour, for maximum movespeed.

I can't quite follow you here - how does this max movespeed? Both assemblies give you a +15%, so the difference between vanilla green and tactical (from -5% to +15%) is indeed greatest... ah.. I see where this is going... as long as you make sure the armor isn't destroyed before the assembly is finished, you're pretty much set.

Highpower minigun
 - Miles better than the gatling gun! In fact it's a fair bit better than a firestorm plasma rifle!
Highpower chaingun
 - very slightly weaker alternative to a gatling gun (if you have ranks in TH), with double the ammo efficiency!

It's the reduced clip size that generally discourages me to build these (especially since I don't play rapidfire builds that often). And the gatling (1d7*6, 24 avg) does a hell of a lot more damage than the HP chaingun (1d6*4, avg 14), while the ammo efficiency doesn't outweigh the reduced clip size (60 vs 26).

For the minigun, hell yeah, that would work :)

Furthermore I'm gonna memo-to-self your comments about armors somehow. I've heard you talk about these before, and I know I asked about the fireproofing after wearing down a B-modded red to <50% (what was that about again?), but I keep forgetting. It'd at least put my T-mods to good use.

Plasmatic shrapnel
 - This is the best of the bunch, and I had to mention it here!
 - Wall destruction is good enough in it's own right, but on nightmare difficulty this item is crazy!
 - From the moment you pick it up, it makes nightmare about as tricky as hurt me plenty.

I understand what you're saying, but this depends on you finding an S-mod of course. Although they do tend to drop more often than the precious nanos and onyces...

Thanks, milady!

I just throw the mods away.  Mods have little meaning ever since we tossed away the Advanced Weapons concept.

The what what?

[Sylph]

It's the reduced clip size that generally discourages me to build these (especially since I don't play rapidfire builds that often). And the gatling (1d7*6, 24 avg) does a hell of a lot more damage than the HP chaingun (1d6*4, avg 14), while the ammo efficiency doesn't outweigh the reduced clip size (60 vs 26).

A high power chaingun does 1d8 damage per bullet, not 1d6. In your example, it would deal 18 damage. Granted, this is lower than the gatling gun, but every rank of triggerhappy edges it closer.

Damage aside, my point was that it uses 5 less bullets per burst (4 bullets vs 9), which not only gives it greater ammo efficiency against tough targets, it also means you waste 5 less bullets for every former human/imp/radarshot you have to take (out). This stacks up really fast, and after playing a few gatling gun games, a highpower chaingun feels like infinite ammo!
As for the clip size... I can't say it ever bothered me. I tend to carry 2 chainguns around with me and switch if I ever have to, to avoid the large reload time. An occasional (maybe once per level) switch-during-combat is worth it for double the ammo efficiency, for me.

The what what?

Before assemblies, 'advanced' weapons used to be versions of normal weapons that would accept 4 times as many mod packs (4 base, +4 with whizkid). They were quite silly. :P

I understand what you're saying, but this depends on you finding an S-mod of course. Although they do tend to drop more often than the precious nanos and onyces...

Yeah, if I find a nano mod, I tend to go for whizkid reactively. Playing masterless(♥) helps here, I guess. Same goes for firestorms if I have the mods for certain assemblies (even just a TTTFP plasma rifle is worth whizkid 2). Sniper is covered with plasmatic shrapnel, but onyx should have been included in my little summary, above... Namely because I did some testing a while ago with the tower shield, and provided you take it off before battling hordes of barons, it's pretty much your companion for the rest of the game! One of us needs to do more testing, because that tower shield is likely pretty abusable!