TT final thoughts (and a couple more bugs)

[Tunnel-Master]

Hello. After a little hiatus, I finally wrapped up my first real (i.e. post-release) playthrough of Telepath Tactics and wanted to put my final observations in one place. (And I'll say upfront that I was still playing version 1.037 when I finished, so it's possible that you've already resolved some of these issues.)

1. I found during the last battle that I could not cure the slowed status using caffeine pills: using the pills says that it cures the status, but the affected character's movement is still handicapped. What's more, since the game seems to think that the slowed status is no longer in effect, that character's movement never goes back to normal, even after 20+ turns. I'm attaching a screenshot and a log. (For what it's worth, I think the caffeine pills did work as advertised in the previous battle, but they failed to do the trick on two different occasions when I had characters that were slowed during the battle with Tarion.)

2. On a related note, consuming caffeine pills appears to increase dodge by 4% and not 10% as it's described in the inventory menu.

3. I think the terror attack is too overpowered. Its range and the sheer number of status effects it can produce make it extremely annoying to deal with, all the more so since at least 1 out of every 3 times it's used on one of my characters, that character is stunned. Limiting how many effects can result from a single attack or even just reducing the attack's range would, in my opinion, make it possible to strategize against.

4. I was a little disappointed by the engineer class overall and in particular by the perks that come with its promotion to machinist. I found that the process of leveling up Teresa was kind of a tedious chore anyhow, and to only get a health and energy increase upon reaching level 20, I was definitely underwhelmed. As for the class in general, I guess I was expecting my engineer to acquire some skills that involved working with metal; after all, it is the next logical step after building wooden barricades and bridges, and particularly since Sabrina's rope trap gets upgraded to a metal one, I was hoping for something similar with Teresa. Those are my two cents, anyway.

5. I kind of hate to suggest this as it absolutely came in handy for me, but I think the stat improvement for the assassin class could use just a little tweaking: by the end of the game, Tremolo had become a level 6 whisper and his dodge at that point was 101%! Maybe the likelihood of dodge going up with every level should be just a tad lower or, if dodge is increased upon promotion (I don't remember offhand if it is), perhaps it should be by a smaller amount.

6. Tarion is not levitating during the final battle and thus cannot move from his square surrounded by lava.

7. Eating apples occasionally replenishes energy instead of health. I have not found any rhyme or reason as to when one is increased instead of the other.

8. Harriet doesn't earn any experience for killing Malcolm Eichan. She also doesn't auto-loot any of his gear, although that's more reasonable under the circumstances since she just turns around and leaves after the battle.

9. It seems that armor rend never softens the target, even though there's supposed to be a base 50% chance of it with each use of the attack.

10. This last one might be a little iffy but I'll throw it out there anyway: should there be a backstab bonus when using powder bolt? The attack isn't all that useful against units generally, but when facing spirits and golems, the powder bolt is after all more effective than the standard crossbow attack is. In those situations, I found myself wishing that Lakshmi would get a bonus when attacking her enemies from behind.

That about sums it up. Looking forward to playing some mods for this thing at some point! :)

-TM

[CraigStern]

Thanks for the feedback! Some of this is stuff I've thought about improving already; I'll go ahead and address some of this for the next build. :)

[Kletian999]

Apples always restored a bit of both health and energy for me.