I only began playing Saturday night -- late Saturday night -- and didn't get terribly far, but it is very promising.
Character creation is incredibly daunting, especially if you have memories of the original Wasteland and how a) you'd find yourself without a needed skill late in the game or b) you wasted points on a skill with no use. But I used the same general practice I applied to success in the original: one "scout" sort with high perception and action points, one combat/weapons specialist, a medic, and a tech/thief sort who specializes in lockpicking, disarming and sniper rifle. I'll tend to have multiple characters learn a few key skills such as medic (and lockpick, in case you need to separate the party such as you do fairly early in the game). I don't make anyone an idiot -- I figure it's better to have low luch or charisma than low intelligence since the later grants you your SP as you level up.
I didn't choose any of the dialogue-changing skills yet and I don't know if they'd come in handy with all my characters' low charisma, but I'll pick one up eventually to see if it makes anything easier.
About char creation: I know. I love that they don't hold your hand and are really going for the old-school level of difficulty. Of course, that also means that it's not unlikely that you might realize after 15 hours that your current build isn't viable. . .
the dialogue skills are independent of the attributes. As far as I can see, with the exception of charisma and the leadership skill and intelligence and the surgeon skill, there are no relationships between skills and attributes.
In fact, counterintuitively, I think that you should NOT have your charisma person do the speech skills, since people with high charisma benefit from other player's team successes.
A friend of mine suggested this rule of thumb with skills. If your skill level is 4, focus on 2-3 skills, if 8, 3-4, and if 10 4-5. If you do more than this, you spread yourself too thin and will be under powered later in the game.
while it was still in Beta and got really sucked into it. I hit a certain quest, a few hours into the game that just bugged and I couldn't play that save anymore. It was too depressing to just start over.
I just downloaded it yesterday and haven't had a chance to play it again, yet. Looking forward to trying it out tomorrow. I've heard great thing about how far it's come since last winter, when I played the beta.
The beta was so much fun, it actually got me to look for similar games and I found XComm and had a blast with that one as well.
If you guys haven't tried out Divinity: Original Sin, when you put down Wasteland 2, check it out. Similar mechanics, turn based, but in a Diablo type of world, with pretty deep story/character development. Friend and I are having a blast playing it on co-op.
I'm now on my 3rd party, as I get used to the game's mechanics.
The most important things are, in order, Skillpoints per level (SP), Combat Initiative (CI), and Action Points (AP). SP is self-explanatory. CI governs how early and how often your character can take a turn in combat. AP governs how much that character can do when he/she does get a turn.
Everything else is of much less importance (with 2 small exceptions/oddities I'll address below).
This makes for some imbalanced Attributes. Intelligence is the only way to affect SP, but you only gain SP at ranks 4, 8, and 10. My combat-focused characters get a 4, while skillmonkeys get 8 or 10.
After INT, Speed is great. It gets you CI, AP, movement speed (that is, you can go further in combat with fewer AP used), and adds some evade chance. The best defense is a good offense, and a fast character is one that can hit the bad guys before they hit you. Awareness is also very helpful. It gets you CI at even greater efficiency than Speed does, but lacks the other benefits.
Coordination is important not to lower too much, because your AP will suffer, but a heavy investment there is generally not super-worthwhile. That ranged accuracy benefit is too small to matter much-- 1% per rank, while a rank in a weapon skill increases accuracy by 5%.
Luck makes very unlikely things into slightly-less-unlikely things. I'd rather get +1 AP all the time than a random chance of bonus AP. I don't think any of my characters has a luck over 2.
Strength is weird. You'd think it's important for melee combatants. My first Blunt-weapons gal had a high STR, and she sucked. It turns out that STR's effect on melee damage is insignificant (+1%/rank on melee critical damage, nothing on normal melee damage). My current party has a blunt-weapons gal who emphasized Speed instead of Strength, and she's kicking ass. STR's main significant effect is on CON (i.e., hitpoints). The one odd strength thing that the game doesn't warn you much about is that you need a STR of at least 5 to wear Combat Armor, which is very good. My one front-line character gets a STR of 5. Everybody else gets a 1. I can live with low HP-- damage avoidance is better than damage-absorption.
Which leaves Charisma. I like to have 1 high-CHA character with the Leadership skill (mostly to maintain control of NPCs in combat). For everybody else, I generally leave their CHA at 3. It has an effect on quest-based XP, and your total-party CHA can supposedly prevent you from recruiting some NPCs.
my present group of unlucky, clumsy weaklings setting out to save the Wastes goes something like this:
Mon Cherie, Blunt-weapons gal. Speed is 8, I think. INT 4, STR 5, middling awareness, low coordination, Luck of 1. Primary skills are Blunt and Demolitions, although she has a couple points in Hardass and Brute Force.
Delmar MacDonald, Charismatic medic. INT and CHA of 8, STR and Luck of 1. Skills are Kissass, Leadership, Field Medic, and Doctor, with a point in Assault Rifles.
Henrietta, Sniper. Emphasis on Awareness and Speed. Her CI is fantastic, and she has enough AP to fire her rifle once and take a couple steps in a standard turn. She rocks-- I usually initiate combat with her from a distance, and she almost always follows that by taking the first standard turn. Skills are Sniper Rifles, Perception, with a little bit in Mechanics and Alarms.
Ty Nine-Nine, tech/access dude. My 10-INT skill guy. Computers, Toasters, Locks, Safes, Smartass, and a point in SMGs.
I'm probably spreading these guys a little thin, skill-wise, but I don't really know what gaps can be filled with NPCs yet. So I'd rather go broad than deep until I'm sure I won't be duplicating an NPC's skillset. For now, I lack an Outdoorsman, a Weaponsmith, a Barterer, or an Animal Whisperer, which all seem to be of little use early in the game.
Some skill use is probabilistic, while others are hard thresholds. I tend to prioritize the latter.
For example, adding a point in a weapon skill or in something like Lockpicking increases the likelihood that you will succeed at doing something that you can already do. But adding a point in something like Perception or one of the ___Ass skills opens up options that you didn't have before.
on the whole, I agree with your basic approach. Luck seems the closes thing to a dump stat. (It would be cool to do a critical hit luck-sniper build, but I didn't do that).
I just worry that I made an intelligence-1 brute to be my tank, and I wonder if he won't even get enough skill points to be good at his only real ability, blunt weapons, late in the game? Do you think it is a game-breaker?
My guys are modeled after me and my friends. The team leader is high leadership high charisma and intellegence, with medic stills and a little sniping.
Then the tech guy, with energy weapons, lockpicking, safe cracking, etc.
The aformentioned brute.
And the assault-weapon "nature" person with outdoorsman, some demolitions, and one point of animal wisperer.
As a rule of thumb, I've heard people say that if you have 4 intelligence, then focus on 3 major skills. If 8, then 4 major skills and if 10, then 5 major skills. Anything more and you may spread yourself too thin to be viable late game. Does this make sense?
but if you have Angela with you in the beginning, you get good starting weaponsmithing. And if you choose to go to Highpool, you can recruit an outdoorsperson. So you can cover those bases. . .
I'd really be careful about the talking skills. If you don't keep bumping them, you will find that you run into many cases where your one point of say, kissass won't let you try to do anything to persuade someone. It doesn't work on percentages like the other skills. It will just say "kisass 3 required". So you will have wasted your time putting a point into it.
a 1-INT character will hurt you. He'll probably suffer once his main skill get to the ranks where it takes 6 skillpoints to increase. But, assuming that you invested those Attribute points wisely in other areas, he'll kick ass until then. It's a party-based game-- one character whose effectiveness is greatest in the early-goings can be covered for later.
I don't mind going a little broader than is advisable early. An investment of a rank or two at the level where skill ranks only cost 2 SP each probably isn't going to matter much in the long run. And there are a lot of "Easy" skill checks early in the game that can be mined for loot and XP. So even though I may never raise, say, Brute Force above rank 2, I doubt I'll be unhappy that I put those points there.
I am always all about the talking skills in an RPG.
Hardass might eventually fall by the wayside if I find myself starved for skillpoints on my Melee Gal, but I fully intend to keep pace with Kissass and Smartass.
I mean, how can you not invest in the talky skills in this game?
but I meant to say that if you take a talking skill, you should invest in keeping it close to your level. Just one point won't help you the same way that just one point in say, outdoorsman or lockpicking can.
but will probably wait for the Steam sales to pick it up. The initial reviews were sort of tepid, but it seems like everyone here is liking it...
Jan, honestly, my take is that people are lazy and couldn't handle the fact that this game doesn't hold your hand. It's not skyrim (which I loved, but) that has a permanent "here's what to do next" sign.
IMHO, the turn based combat is really fun. Tactical AND exciting. Not plodding at all, which is what more "modern" gamers may be afraid of.
what you'd observed about strength. I built my combat-intensive character with 9 strength and in retrospect that seems like a mistake, especially since I sacrificed coordination or awareness (can't remember which) in order to keep my intellect at a useful level. It doesn't seem to be a game-breaker yet but I'm tired of him going last and usually not even having enough AP's to attack twice in a turn.
Ugh... I guess I'm not quite far enough where a rebuild would be terribly annoying.
which borders on obtuse sometimes with arbitrary design decisions and the risk that you put 15 hours into a party before realizing that they're just not going to be viable in the late-game.
But the game is very strong on RPG skill implementation. Balance isn't perfect, but all the skills are valuable enough to tempt you into taking them. (Well, maybe all of them except Barter. If only they had named it "Cheap Ass.") You will encounter lots of situations where you will either feel very satisfied for investing in a particular skill, or rather regretful that you didn't upgrade a different one.
keep putting "it gets you better prices" skills in their games. I don't know of any RPG with any level of player freedom where the in-game economy doesn't basically break when you're about a third of the way through the game.
(The game in recent memory that probably did the best in balancing available player cash with stuff to spend on was probably Mass Effect 2. But that's because that game controlled your money-earning opportunities very tightly-- no selling of equipment. You got paid for completing missions and that was pretty much it.)
If you must have a Barter skill, do it like Fallout: New Vegas did, and make it a useful dialogue skill in it's own right, opening up options to solve problems through bribery, horsetrading, and the like.
while it was still in Beta and got really sucked into it. I hit a certain quest, a few hours into the game that just bugged and I couldn't play that save anymore. It was too depressing to just start over.
I just downloaded it yesterday and haven't had a chance to play it again, yet. Looking forward to trying it out tomorrow. I've heard great thing about how far it's come since last winter, when I played the beta.
The beta was so much fun, it actually got me to look for similar games and I found XComm and had a blast with that one as well.
If you guys haven't tried out Divinity: Original Sin, when you put down Wasteland 2, check it out. Similar mechanics, turn based, but in a Diablo type of world, with pretty deep story/character development. Friend and I are having a blast playing it on co-op.
Just tried both this past weekend. Both really interesting games. Sadly, there are just too many great games and precious little time to actually get into any one of them.
but will probably wait for the Steam sales to pick it up. The initial reviews were sort of tepid, but it seems like everyone here is liking it...
Jan, honestly, my take is that people are lazy and couldn't handle the fact that this game doesn't hold your hand. It's not skyrim (which I loved, but) that has a permanent "here's what to do next" sign.
IMHO, the turn based combat is really fun. Tactical AND exciting. Not plodding at all, which is what more "modern" gamers may be afraid of.
I want a new Final Fantasy Tactics combined with Vandal Hearts. Some of the best times I spent as a teenager.
but will probably wait for the Steam sales to pick it up. The initial reviews were sort of tepid, but it seems like everyone here is liking it...
Jan, honestly, my take is that people are lazy and couldn't handle the fact that this game doesn't hold your hand. It's not skyrim (which I loved, but) that has a permanent "here's what to do next" sign.
IMHO, the turn based combat is really fun. Tactical AND exciting. Not plodding at all, which is what more "modern" gamers may be afraid of.
I want a new Final Fantasy Tactics combined with Vandal Hearts. Some of the best times I spent as a teenager.
Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time. So much love for that game.
Just wanted to add: not that we are badass texas rangers, but what we would be like if we *were* in that situation. So my one buddy, an engineer, is the tech dude, etc.
RE: Just checked this game out after reading this.
than I had thought because it provides a substantial XP bonus. My new character with 6 Charisma has around 900 XP whereas the next most experienced character has around 720.
and my rig isn't optimal for games, so every bit helps.
Just returned to the Citadel for the first time. Some tips:
1. Save the shit you find! Somebody there wants the nitrogen for bomb making and will pay top dollar.
2. Save your junk weapon parts. Somebody there will pay top dollar for them to work on weapon building.
Also, 3. Animal whisperer is a far cooler skill than I thought. If you get animals to follow you, each type confers a different attribute bonus. So a goat confers +1 perception, etc. I have a goat, cow, and rat, and each one gives my tracker char. an attribute bonus. Very cool.
nice tip Moondwg. I'll give that a try, but how many levels do you need to invest into the skill before it becomes useful?
If I was starting from scratch I'd definitely pop more than just 1 SP into charisma for everyone. The XP boost is so much more significant than I thought.
I decided to go to Highpool, and I found an NPC who already
had rank 4 or so, and I recruited her to join the team. Maybe I added one point, so 4-5ish at most. I don't know if you need a lot of points to recruit farm animals. To tame badass animals, you need it high. It's a cool feature.
and I think it's doing a particularly good job so far of gradually adding intriguing elements to the fold -- new places, new weapons, new types of enemies, etc.
But shit, it can be super tedious at times and can just feel like plain old work, perhaps because it can take your group more than a minute to walk from one side of a level to another. On the missions where you have to go there and back and there and back again, that's kind of unwelcome.
of going "old school" in design philosophy is nice, but you've got to temper it with the more modern sensibility of having respect for your player's time.
I tend to get overly grognardy with titles like this, trying to be a perfectionist in my party building. I'm concurrently playing both my 3rd and 4th teams. It seems that the "ideal" way to set up a group is to build 3 combat monsters and 1 skill monkey. The NPCs are just rather poor builds for combat efficiency, so you're better off using them mostly to cover skill deficiencies.
The meta-gamey way to fill your skill gaps is to buy the rad suits as soon as you can afford them and run to the Rail Nomads camp before completing the Radio Tower, so that you can recruit Scotchmo (Locks, Safes). Then pick Ag Center to get Rose (Surgeon, Computer Science). That leaves only a few "must-have" skills for your group: Perception, Demolitions, the 3 Ass skills (Hard being the least important of the 3, if you're prioritizing), enough Leadership to prevent NPCs from going Rogue, and Weaponsmithing.
I am stuck where it says that some guy is probably in jail at Ranger
Center who has info on really good rad-suits, but nobody at the range center has any info about the guy Should I just get the rad-suits I have and make the rush to Damonta?
and I think it's doing a particularly good job so far of gradually adding intriguing elements to the fold -- new places, new weapons, new types of enemies, etc.
But shit, it can be super tedious at times and can just feel like plain old work, perhaps because it can take your group more than a minute to walk from one side of a level to another. On the missions where you have to go there and back and there and back again, that's kind of unwelcome.
I've made a point of clicking on the exit sign, and then going to the bathroom or something while the party runs for a minute.
the guy's actually in a cell at the Ranger Center. The door to the cells is near the doctor's office I believe... it's one that you couldn't open prior.
Character creation is incredibly daunting, especially if you have memories of the original Wasteland and how a) you'd find yourself without a needed skill late in the game or b) you wasted points on a skill with no use. But I used the same general practice I applied to success in the original: one "scout" sort with high perception and action points, one combat/weapons specialist, a medic, and a tech/thief sort who specializes in lockpicking, disarming and sniper rifle. I'll tend to have multiple characters learn a few key skills such as medic (and lockpick, in case you need to separate the party such as you do fairly early in the game). I don't make anyone an idiot -- I figure it's better to have low luch or charisma than low intelligence since the later grants you your SP as you level up.
I didn't choose any of the dialogue-changing skills yet and I don't know if they'd come in handy with all my characters' low charisma, but I'll pick one up eventually to see if it makes anything easier.
In fact, counterintuitively, I think that you should NOT have your charisma person do the speech skills, since people with high charisma benefit from other player's team successes.
A friend of mine suggested this rule of thumb with skills. If your skill level is 4, focus on 2-3 skills, if 8, 3-4, and if 10 4-5. If you do more than this, you spread yourself too thin and will be under powered later in the game.
I just downloaded it yesterday and haven't had a chance to play it again, yet. Looking forward to trying it out tomorrow. I've heard great thing about how far it's come since last winter, when I played the beta.
The beta was so much fun, it actually got me to look for similar games and I found XComm and had a blast with that one as well.
If you guys haven't tried out Divinity: Original Sin, when you put down Wasteland 2, check it out. Similar mechanics, turn based, but in a Diablo type of world, with pretty deep story/character development. Friend and I are having a blast playing it on co-op.
The most important things are, in order, Skillpoints per level (SP), Combat Initiative (CI), and Action Points (AP). SP is self-explanatory. CI governs how early and how often your character can take a turn in combat. AP governs how much that character can do when he/she does get a turn.
Everything else is of much less importance (with 2 small exceptions/oddities I'll address below).
This makes for some imbalanced Attributes. Intelligence is the only way to affect SP, but you only gain SP at ranks 4, 8, and 10. My combat-focused characters get a 4, while skillmonkeys get 8 or 10.
After INT, Speed is great. It gets you CI, AP, movement speed (that is, you can go further in combat with fewer AP used), and adds some evade chance. The best defense is a good offense, and a fast character is one that can hit the bad guys before they hit you. Awareness is also very helpful. It gets you CI at even greater efficiency than Speed does, but lacks the other benefits.
Coordination is important not to lower too much, because your AP will suffer, but a heavy investment there is generally not super-worthwhile. That ranged accuracy benefit is too small to matter much-- 1% per rank, while a rank in a weapon skill increases accuracy by 5%.
Luck makes very unlikely things into slightly-less-unlikely things. I'd rather get +1 AP all the time than a random chance of bonus AP. I don't think any of my characters has a luck over 2.
Strength is weird. You'd think it's important for melee combatants. My first Blunt-weapons gal had a high STR, and she sucked. It turns out that STR's effect on melee damage is insignificant (+1%/rank on melee critical damage, nothing on normal melee damage). My current party has a blunt-weapons gal who emphasized Speed instead of Strength, and she's kicking ass. STR's main significant effect is on CON (i.e., hitpoints). The one odd strength thing that the game doesn't warn you much about is that you need a STR of at least 5 to wear Combat Armor, which is very good. My one front-line character gets a STR of 5. Everybody else gets a 1. I can live with low HP-- damage avoidance is better than damage-absorption.
Which leaves Charisma. I like to have 1 high-CHA character with the Leadership skill (mostly to maintain control of NPCs in combat). For everybody else, I generally leave their CHA at 3. It has an effect on quest-based XP, and your total-party CHA can supposedly prevent you from recruiting some NPCs.
Mon Cherie, Blunt-weapons gal. Speed is 8, I think. INT 4, STR 5, middling awareness, low coordination, Luck of 1. Primary skills are Blunt and Demolitions, although she has a couple points in Hardass and Brute Force.
Delmar MacDonald, Charismatic medic. INT and CHA of 8, STR and Luck of 1. Skills are Kissass, Leadership, Field Medic, and Doctor, with a point in Assault Rifles.
Henrietta, Sniper. Emphasis on Awareness and Speed. Her CI is fantastic, and she has enough AP to fire her rifle once and take a couple steps in a standard turn. She rocks-- I usually initiate combat with her from a distance, and she almost always follows that by taking the first standard turn. Skills are Sniper Rifles, Perception, with a little bit in Mechanics and Alarms.
Ty Nine-Nine, tech/access dude. My 10-INT skill guy. Computers, Toasters, Locks, Safes, Smartass, and a point in SMGs.
I'm probably spreading these guys a little thin, skill-wise, but I don't really know what gaps can be filled with NPCs yet. So I'd rather go broad than deep until I'm sure I won't be duplicating an NPC's skillset. For now, I lack an Outdoorsman, a Weaponsmith, a Barterer, or an Animal Whisperer, which all seem to be of little use early in the game.
For example, adding a point in a weapon skill or in something like Lockpicking increases the likelihood that you will succeed at doing something that you can already do. But adding a point in something like Perception or one of the ___Ass skills opens up options that you didn't have before.
I just worry that I made an intelligence-1 brute to be my tank, and I wonder if he won't even get enough skill points to be good at his only real ability, blunt weapons, late in the game? Do you think it is a game-breaker?
My guys are modeled after me and my friends. The team leader is high leadership high charisma and intellegence, with medic stills and a little sniping.
Then the tech guy, with energy weapons, lockpicking, safe cracking, etc.
The aformentioned brute.
And the assault-weapon "nature" person with outdoorsman, some demolitions, and one point of animal wisperer.
As a rule of thumb, I've heard people say that if you have 4 intelligence, then focus on 3 major skills. If 8, then 4 major skills and if 10, then 5 major skills. Anything more and you may spread yourself too thin to be viable late game. Does this make sense?
I don't mind going a little broader than is advisable early. An investment of a rank or two at the level where skill ranks only cost 2 SP each probably isn't going to matter much in the long run. And there are a lot of "Easy" skill checks early in the game that can be mined for loot and XP. So even though I may never raise, say, Brute Force above rank 2, I doubt I'll be unhappy that I put those points there.
Jan, honestly, my take is that people are lazy and couldn't handle the fact that this game doesn't hold your hand. It's not skyrim (which I loved, but) that has a permanent "here's what to do next" sign.
IMHO, the turn based combat is really fun. Tactical AND exciting. Not plodding at all, which is what more "modern" gamers may be afraid of.
Ugh... I guess I'm not quite far enough where a rebuild would be terribly annoying.
But the game is very strong on RPG skill implementation. Balance isn't perfect, but all the skills are valuable enough to tempt you into taking them. (Well, maybe all of them except Barter. If only they had named it "Cheap Ass.") You will encounter lots of situations where you will either feel very satisfied for investing in a particular skill, or rather regretful that you didn't upgrade a different one.
(The game in recent memory that probably did the best in balancing available player cash with stuff to spend on was probably Mass Effect 2. But that's because that game controlled your money-earning opportunities very tightly-- no selling of equipment. You got paid for completing missions and that was pretty much it.)
If you must have a Barter skill, do it like Fallout: New Vegas did, and make it a useful dialogue skill in it's own right, opening up options to solve problems through bribery, horsetrading, and the like.
I just downloaded it yesterday and haven't had a chance to play it again, yet. Looking forward to trying it out tomorrow. I've heard great thing about how far it's come since last winter, when I played the beta.
The beta was so much fun, it actually got me to look for similar games and I found XComm and had a blast with that one as well.
If you guys haven't tried out Divinity: Original Sin, when you put down Wasteland 2, check it out. Similar mechanics, turn based, but in a Diablo type of world, with pretty deep story/character development. Friend and I are having a blast playing it on co-op.
Just tried both this past weekend. Both really interesting games. Sadly, there are just too many great games and precious little time to actually get into any one of them.
Quote:
but will probably wait for the Steam sales to pick it up. The initial reviews were sort of tepid, but it seems like everyone here is liking it...
Jan, honestly, my take is that people are lazy and couldn't handle the fact that this game doesn't hold your hand. It's not skyrim (which I loved, but) that has a permanent "here's what to do next" sign.
IMHO, the turn based combat is really fun. Tactical AND exciting. Not plodding at all, which is what more "modern" gamers may be afraid of.
I want a new Final Fantasy Tactics combined with Vandal Hearts. Some of the best times I spent as a teenager.
Quote:
In comment 11878334 Jan in DC said:
Quote:
but will probably wait for the Steam sales to pick it up. The initial reviews were sort of tepid, but it seems like everyone here is liking it...
Jan, honestly, my take is that people are lazy and couldn't handle the fact that this game doesn't hold your hand. It's not skyrim (which I loved, but) that has a permanent "here's what to do next" sign.
IMHO, the turn based combat is really fun. Tactical AND exciting. Not plodding at all, which is what more "modern" gamers may be afraid of.
I want a new Final Fantasy Tactics combined with Vandal Hearts. Some of the best times I spent as a teenager.
Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite game of all time. So much love for that game.
All the best games are!
Just wanted to add: not that we are badass texas rangers, but what we would be like if we *were* in that situation. So my one buddy, an engineer, is the tech dude, etc.
The original Fallout would've been Wasteland 2 if they could've cleared the rights.
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Looks a lot like the old Baldurs Gate or Fallout games. I may have to try it out.
The original Fallout would've been Wasteland 2 if they could've cleared the rights.
Yep. And those of you who are fallout fans will find that sensibility present here, no doubt. . .
Just returned to the Citadel for the first time. Some tips:
1. Save the shit you find! Somebody there wants the nitrogen for bomb making and will pay top dollar.
2. Save your junk weapon parts. Somebody there will pay top dollar for them to work on weapon building.
Also, 3. Animal whisperer is a far cooler skill than I thought. If you get animals to follow you, each type confers a different attribute bonus. So a goat confers +1 perception, etc. I have a goat, cow, and rat, and each one gives my tracker char. an attribute bonus. Very cool.
If I was starting from scratch I'd definitely pop more than just 1 SP into charisma for everyone. The XP boost is so much more significant than I thought.
But shit, it can be super tedious at times and can just feel like plain old work, perhaps because it can take your group more than a minute to walk from one side of a level to another. On the missions where you have to go there and back and there and back again, that's kind of unwelcome.
I tend to get overly grognardy with titles like this, trying to be a perfectionist in my party building. I'm concurrently playing both my 3rd and 4th teams. It seems that the "ideal" way to set up a group is to build 3 combat monsters and 1 skill monkey. The NPCs are just rather poor builds for combat efficiency, so you're better off using them mostly to cover skill deficiencies.
The meta-gamey way to fill your skill gaps is to buy the rad suits as soon as you can afford them and run to the Rail Nomads camp before completing the Radio Tower, so that you can recruit Scotchmo (Locks, Safes). Then pick Ag Center to get Rose (Surgeon, Computer Science). That leaves only a few "must-have" skills for your group: Perception, Demolitions, the 3 Ass skills (Hard being the least important of the 3, if you're prioritizing), enough Leadership to prevent NPCs from going Rogue, and Weaponsmithing.
But shit, it can be super tedious at times and can just feel like plain old work, perhaps because it can take your group more than a minute to walk from one side of a level to another. On the missions where you have to go there and back and there and back again, that's kind of unwelcome.
I've made a point of clicking on the exit sign, and then going to the bathroom or something while the party runs for a minute.