SCS2 thanks

[Guest amenda]

Hi,

 

First of all a great thanks for this wonderful mod. Finally an excellent alternative to IA for those of us who have played the game many times and seek more challenge.

Compared to its main competetor Improved Anvil, it has the fine advantage of working with all other mods and any sort of game you want to play. IA more or less forces you down a certain path ie heavy melee damage to overcome strong innate damage resistance and regeneration, so protection from magical weapons and improved haste take on all assuming importance. In SCS2 there are still many ways to skin the proverbial cat, so games keep the interesting random element more. IA is more like chess.

 

This being said, there are still some ways in which IA is preferrable. If you have the time, Im hoping future versions of SCS2 can close the gap in this area and thus become all it can be: the ultimate bg2 tactical experience that yet keeps the broad freedom of the game.

 

1) The huge scs2 scripts create hiccups. I suppose this is minor, but after playing an scs2 game I was delighted with the swift smoothness of IA.

 

2)My main complaint about scs2 is mage repetativeness. I cannot count how many times I was hit by a minor sequencer with 2 acid arrows. They all seem to know the same spells, and tend to use the same tactics over and over. Now these tactics are superb and challenging, but every lich you meet casting time stop, opening two gates, then horrid wilting etc gets a bit tired. What about a lich that does not know horrid wilting? Maybe one that uses less common spells such as energy drain, TT+black blade, shapechange. One that purely disables. One that casts protection from fire then throws sunfires/fireballs? In other words, more randomness of mage behavior would be welcome. IA, with its individually crafted encounters, is more pleasing in this regard. In IA I was often surprised by a particular mages tactics. In SCS2, by the latter part of the game I could mostly guess what kind of an encounter with a mage would be. Immunity:abjuration also seems way too common. I know it is "unbalanced" and therefore a great tactic, but again it gets repetative seeing it all the time.

 

3) Making melee encounters tougher through potion use rather than roleplay breaking massive regen/resistance (like IA) is very nice. Still, this somewhat limits the tactical possibilities you can throw at the player compared to IA. Introducing potions of damage resistance or spell like innate abilities might be a way to make melee tougher without IA's immersion breaking permantent huge resistances/regen rates on random dwarfs/humans etc.

 

4) Last point is about summoned demons. Spell revision is a very nice companion to your mod, but with both installed, early game mage encounters become ridiculously tougher than melee if the mage summons a demon. A glabrezu is way tougher than just about any early to mid game enemy, and I kept running into mages who summoned these early in the game (with no adverse effects to the summoning mage).

 

 

All these aside, this is still a beautiful mod and has made me love the game more than ever, so if you continue to work on it, the above criticisms are what I think could still be improved. For most everything else, its hard for me to find anything to not like.

 

Thanks

[Icendoan]

Hi,

 

First of all a great thanks for this wonderful mod. Finally an excellent alternative to IA for those of us who have played the game many times and seek more challenge.

Compared to its main competetor Improved Anvil, it has the fine advantage of working with all other mods and any sort of game you want to play. IA more or less forces you down a certain path ie heavy melee damage to overcome strong innate damage resistance and regeneration, so protection from magical weapons and improved haste take on all assuming importance. In SCS2 there are still many ways to skin the proverbial cat, so games keep the interesting random element more. IA is more like chess.

 

This being said, there are still some ways in which IA is preferrable. If you have the time, Im hoping future versions of SCS2 can close the gap in this area and thus become all it can be: the ultimate bg2 tactical experience that yet keeps the broad freedom of the game.

 

1) The huge scs2 scripts create hiccups. I suppose this is minor, but after playing an scs2 game I was delighted with the swift smoothness of IA.

 

This is to simulate the diversity of actual people in a simple and very limited language.

2)My main complaint about scs2 is mage repetativeness. I cannot count how many times I was hit by a minor sequencer with 2 acid arrows. They all seem to know the same spells, and tend to use the same tactics over and over. Now these tactics are superb and challenging, but every lich you meet casting time stop, opening two gates, then horrid wilting etc gets a bit tired. What about a lich that does not know horrid wilting? Maybe one that uses less common spells such as energy drain, TT+black blade, shapechange. One that purely disables. One that casts protection from fire then throws sunfires/fireballs? In other words, more randomness of mage behavior would be welcome. IA, with its individually crafted encounters, is more pleasing in this regard. In IA I was often surprised by a particular mages tactics. In SCS2, by the latter part of the game I could mostly guess what kind of an encounter with a mage would be. Immunity:abjuration also seems way too common. I know it is "unbalanced" and therefore a great tactic, but again it gets repetative seeing it all the time.

 

If you want to create a 10 000 line script and a new cre for every fight you are welcome to.

3) Making melee encounters tougher through potion use rather than roleplay breaking massive regen/resistance (like IA) is very nice. Still, this somewhat limits the tactical possibilities you can throw at the player compared to IA. Introducing potions of damage resistance or spell like innate abilities might be a way to make melee tougher without IA's immersion breaking permantent huge resistances/regen rates on random dwarfs/humans etc.

 

Not really. SCS2 is about using the scripting and what was already there to build up a challenge, instead of making new creatures and spells. The potions are a an exception, but it means you get intelligence over uberstats.

4) Last point is about summoned demons. Spell revision is a very nice companion to your mod, but with both installed, early game mage encounters become ridiculously tougher than melee if the mage summons a demon. A glabrezu is way tougher than just about any early to mid game enemy, and I kept running into mages who summoned these early in the game (with no adverse effects to the summoning mage).

 

It is a 9th level spell, isn't this the point of it?

All these aside, this is still a beautiful mod and has made me love the game more than ever, so if you continue to work on it, the above criticisms are what I think could still be improved. For most everything else, its hard for me to find anything to not like.

 

Thanks

 

Not really nitpicking your comments, here, but trying to show you where there are flaws in there, for there are. Your IA uberstats preference is odd, as SCS2's policy is not to close exploits, and not to really add to characters. For example, some characters have the wrong spells for there class, and SCS only tries to use it sensible.

 

Icen

[Demivrgvs]

1) It's probably the most recurrent "complain". To reduce scripts length DavidW would have to create more different and shorter scripts so that each creature's script will have only the minimum required number of blocks. It would require quite a lot of work, and I'm not even sure it will completely remove the lagness.

 

2) It would be great being able to see Liches behave in very different ways, but once again accomplishing such a task requires a huge amount time, and unfortunately I don't think DavidW will have it. I'd be glad to be denied!

 

3) The suggestion is good, but I have to second what Icen said.

 

4)

Last point is about summoned demons. Spell revision is a very nice companion to your mod, but with both installed, early game mage encounters become ridiculously tougher than melee if the mage summons a demon. A glabrezu is way tougher than just about any early to mid game enemy, and I kept running into mages who summoned these early in the game (with no adverse effects to the summoning mage).

It is a 9th level spell, isn't this the point of it?

Glabrezus are summoned with a 8th level spell, while Pit Fiends are summoned with the 9th level version. Both of them are extremely powerful in SR, as they now have all their PnP abilities. When I made them for SR I had "balanced" them for players (who can't control them), and though I like how SCS handles them, it would probably be best if these spells were used a little less often by its AI.

[Icendoan]

Still, the point of being able to summon something like that is for it to be very powerful.

 

And, if they are ripping you apart, cast the cleric spell Protection from Evil 10' Radius, then they ignore you and will kill the rest of the Mages party!

 

Icen

[Demivrgvs]

Still, the point of being able to summon something like that is for it to be very powerful.

Indeed.

 

And, if they are ripping you apart, cast the cleric spell Protection from Evil 10' Radius, then they ignore you and will kill the rest of the Mages party!

It won't work against those summoned by enemies, and I'm glad SCS does that, because a first level spell like Protection from Evil shouldn't be able to make a Pit Fiend harmless (it would just cast dispel before ripping you apart again ).

[Jarno Mikkola]

IA is more like chess.

It's more like TES IV:Oblivion actually, and all for the wrong reason; the level scaling.

 

2)... 4)...

2) That's because the SCS'es don't actually touch the creatures, just their artificial intelligence, so if you make a mod that make a creature able to cast 10 000 Fire Balls spells and nothing else and assign it to have the standard AI, the SCS'es make sure he will use them the best of its abilities, so the repeating come because the Liches all have the same spells.

4) Early in the game??? This is when the level scaling flips, as the monsters are set, but if their power is not... It doesn't make any sense that you couldn't be able to defeat an orc if you were on 30th level, if you were able to defeat him while you were on the 7th.

 

6 level 1 chars should never have anyway of defeating a 30th level dragon, ever, without outside intervention.

[DavidW]

Replying directly to the OP's original post:

 

(1) There's only so much I can do about script length. (To some extent this is laziness-driven, it would probably be possible to get them down 30-40% if I did a lot of individual customisation... but I don't think that would make a qualitative difference.)

(2) I try to be moderately varied with mage sequencers (Minor Sequencer is perhaps the most boring choice, I concede, but it's hard to do much original with it). Other than that, SCSII basically goes with the existing spellbooks, which are themselves often fairly repetitive. I do edit them (randomly) but only to a limited extent. I hope that a future version will incorporate the SCS I approach: give each mage a spell school, and then build their spellbooks from scratch. Realistically, I'm unlikely to go beyond there and hand-craft that many spellbooks - it just takes too long.

(3) is probably a bit outside SCSII's "low-key" scope.

(4) is more an issue for SR than SCSII. I basically just use the resources I'm given. So if I'm given demon-summoning spells at L7, I'll use them.

 

And thanks for the kind words.