New to the game: First impressions and a few questions

[zoutzakje]

Hi everybody!

Long time AI war player here. I've had like 5 euro's in my steam wallet for over a year and I decided I wanted to spend it. I noticed a bunch of Arcen games were on sale and I picked up Bionic Dues and Skyward Collapse. BD is the first one I'm trying out and so far I feel like I cheated you guys by buying it in a sale. I's a great little game and I'm having a blast with it. Easy to learn, difficult to master it seems.

I started a normal game without any of the nasty options enabled, this being my first game and all. my exo's are assault, ninja, science and I replaced the siege with a sniper. No idea what a siege does but in this game my sniper definitely deals the most dmg and from great distances too. My pilot is Tuck, who's sensor abilities seemed great for a new player (being able to look through doors and such has saved my bionic bum a number of times already).
Very interesting loot system. Power cost vs are the stats worth it? is a question I'm always asking myself. Recently saved up enough money to buy my first purple item. I haven't seen any higher rarity than purple yet, though I don't know if that even exists. Either way I'm having a blast upgrading all my exo's after each mission.
Great and fun variety of enemies. A lot of them require different ways to deal with them, which can result in a lot of !Fun! if you're not careful. I recently encountered my first few Doombots in a Factory mission. They can be hilarious. My sniper can take them out before they get close, but only if I got the space. One of them was hiding in a corner somewhere with a terminal close to it. I decided to hack it and it triggered all the bots in sensor range to go on a berzerking rampage. All the dumbots were shooting each other. The Doombot wasn't doing anything however. He had the stat saying "hates everyone" but he was still asleep for some reason. Is that a bug? Or was that done on purpose so that he wouldn't start killing every bot in sight and become overpowered? Either way, I moved myself way out of his range and I decided to whistle He woke up, moved further away from me and started to kill everything. I think he even took out a factory by killing a Bombot. He emptied his entire clip, insta killing every bot who got in his way. It was absolutely hilarious. I can't wait to see what other fun things I can do with some of these enemies.

Very fun game, looking forward to getting better and playing harder games. I got a few more questions before I shut up.

When using a grenade launcher with low splash, it can be difficult to get the bots to line up perfectly. Is there a way to make the grenade launcher target an empty floor tile? Or can you only target bots/obstacles?

When comparing item stats, is there a way to view both your new unequipped item and your equipped items at the same time? Like, you hover the mouse over a new item, press and hold a button and the stats of your equipped items pop up too? Features like that have always been helpful to me in any game that has a lot of loot. Although considering that in this game a lot of items can go in multiple slots, I suppose it would get quite chaotic when showing all the appropriate stats at once.

Looking forward to hearing from you guys and I hope that, if feasible for Arcen, more content will be released/available for purchase in the future.

Time to kill some bots!

[ptarth]

When using a grenade launcher with low splash, it can be difficult to get the bots to line up perfectly. Is there a way to make the grenade launcher target an empty floor tile? Or can you only target bots/obstacles?

I believe control + right click shoots at any tile? I'm not quite sure the exact keys, but there should be some messages about it in game or in game settings.

When comparing item stats, is there a way to view both your new unequipped item and your equipped items at the same time? Like, you hover the mouse over a new item, press and hold a button and the stats of your equipped items pop up too? Features like that have always been helpful to me in any game that has a lot of loot. Although considering that in this game a lot of items can go in multiple slots, I suppose it would get quite chaotic when showing all the appropriate stats at once.

I don't believe so. I think if you mouse over equipment it shows you the change if you were to equip that piece, but I think that's all.


Bionic Dues is a great game, but it is also a bit too easy once you get the hang of it. Playing your second game on hard+ is definitely worth while.
Another problem is that it gets a bit tedious upgrading gear after every battle, so I recommend outfitting only 1 mech after a battle (and then rotating through them).
The Siege Mech is actually my favorite given its massive AOE abilities. The Science Mech is my second favorite because I can do turret cheesing.

[Pumpkin]

Recently saved up enough money to buy my first purple item. I haven't seen any higher rarity than purple yet, though I don't know if that even exists.

The rarity can go up to orange (just one notch ahead of purple).

At the end of each mission, you get one item per surviving exo, on top of kill-cash and in-mission-loot. The rarity of these per-exo-items depend on the mission kind. Most are green, I think several key missions (lion's den, assassination, command center) give purple (yep, up to four purple if all exos survive) and IIRC the Bahamut missions (no more spoil) give orange items.

He woke up, moved further away from me and started to kill everything.

Did you tried the virus thing? A science exo with a big virus count, a big computer +% and some stealth points can do wonders with some cherry-picked allies.

The Science Mech is my second favorite because I can do turret cheesing.

I often crack up my ninja's trap skill and give it a few mines and turrets. Damages (and turret's range and ammo) can become insane. I prefer quality over quantity, and reserving my science for hacking, radar and virus.

I recently played a 4 ninja game, each with its specialty. One with traps, one with stealth, one with short range, high damage (ambush) and one with overload (paired with a huge damage reduction and some regen for free dps). Great fun was had. I'll do the four science, one day.

[Timerlane]

The Siege's main weapon(Rocket Launcher) combines very high attack, with decently upgradeable splash and range; the downside being low ammo, so it's best used to try to kill(or heavily damage) multiple bots in one shot. Very useful with some planning and care, but also as a bit of a brute 'panic button' if you realize you've woken up a bit more bot than you think can properly chew, otherwise.

If you click a new item from your inventory, then mouseover the item/slot you're thinking of replacing on your Exo, it will show the all the net stat changes of the potential swap(both positive and negative). You can also click a slot/already-equipped item in a slot, and your inventory list will change to only show the parts that can be equipped in that slot.

When using a grenade launcher with low splash, it can be difficult to get the bots to line up perfectly. Is there a way to make the grenade launcher target an empty floor tile? Or can you only target bots/obstacles?

I believe control + right click shoots at any tile? I'm not quite sure the exact keys, but there should be some messages about it in game or in game settings.

I believe it's Shift + Right Click, but Control(+ Mouseover) is also helpful in letting you see the tiles a bot can currently shoot at(or what a BombBot/Fuel Tank's explosion will cover).

[zoutzakje]

thanks for the responses guys.
I haven't figured out yet how to target empty floors with aoe weapons, but I haven't really given it much thought. After getting the epic upgrades for my sniper and assault I rampaged over everything, insta killing bosses and such. The rest was a joke and I beat my game on normal.
Afterwards I decided to try it as hard as possible. Started a game on misery with all the nasty options on and only a single assault exo. I died horribly in the first mission.
I figured I'll stick to 4-man games on hard or expert for now.

Edit: Shift + right click was the way to go, thanks man. That's going to make a lot of encounters a lot easier.