Telepath Tactics - opinions

[CraigStern]

There already is pop-up text, but people sometimes miss it. Adding an audio cue on top of it will make it hard to miss. :)

[bugfartboy]

Minor suggestion, that I don't think would be too difficult to implement.  When a character isn't selected in a battle, have the Esc key bring up the menu.  It's just a touch annoying to hit Esc to deselect a character, and then have to mouse over to the menu button when I could theoretically just press Esc twice for the same effect, and then again to automatically resume the game.

-EDIT-
Also: being able to press L on the main menu to generate a log.  I've run into a few issues where the game dumps me back at the menu, and being able to generate a log to see what's going on would be nice.

[Thaecrasis]

Actually I think in general, when a log is produced, there should be two logs; one that details everything that happened in the last session of playing, and one that is just the current event/encounter. That way, if a bug happened earlier, and you didn't catch it, the session log would still detail it.

[bugfartboy]

one that details everything that happened in the last session of playing

The trouble with that is the log file would get to be absolutely enormous.  The current log files only store the last 999 steps taken internally, and even that's cutting down on details.  If a log kept track of everything since the game launched, it would be a lot longer and a lot bigger.  The last log I generated alone was 62.6 KB, and even that's a lot of stuff to sift through.  Add too much more info and it would take forever to find where a bug occured.  With this in mind, I think the current system works pretty well.

[Thaecrasis]

The size of the log doesn't matter too much, so long as you know approximately when the bug happened. You can just use ctrl+f and search the relevant information e.g. a character's name and look for specific cues. That's what I usually do when sifting through the logs anyhow.

[CraigStern]

It's not that it would be hard to find where the bug occurred so much as concerns about taking up too much of the player's disk space. Even at 999 lines, those logs can add up. If the game was generating 6 MB files every time an error occurred, that would be cause for concern.

[bugfartboy]

A few smallish requests:

• An "EndTurn" action with the same effect as the "EndTurn" reply


• The ability to change the remaining character stats (hurtParticle, shadowType, shadowY, lighting, ctr, onDeath, and defaultAtkAnim) with the "SetStat" actions

[Chocobo_Fan]

The topic of this thread seems to have moved away from "general opinions", so I hope I'm not committing a faux pas here, but I did feel the need to express one thing: Though I was very pleased by the game overall, I'm rather disappointed that the focus was moved away from the namesake of the series. The main character isn't a telepath (at least not in the same way the previous protagonists were), and most of the classes are physical fighters. One of the things I found unique and interesting about the first Telepath RPG is that it reversed the RPG standard of fighters being default and casters being exceptional, but now that standard has reasserted itself: there are only two psychics in the initial party of 8, and there is only one shadowling and one spriggat in the entire playable cast. The setting and atmosphere feel a lot more mundane as a result, and I can't help but feel the game loses something because of that. The original Telepath RPG brought a lot of novel and intriguing concepts to the table, but Telepath Tactics...doesn't, really. You could replace psychic powers with magic and the shadowlings with orcs or demons and it wouldn't really change anything. I can understand if you were aiming for a more "low fantasy" approach, but the shift is still pretty jarring to me.

Sorry if this was brought up before, it's a large thread.

[bugfartboy]

The "Done" button is my nemesis.  I'll be undoing a long string of actions, just to accidentally click Done when it slides into the Undo spot.  Could the Undo button maybe get greyed out or something when it's no longer viable, instead of just removing it entirely?  It'd get the point across, while also reducing the chance of accidentally cementing a character in place for the turn.

Playing through the game (I'm further than I've ever been) I'm realizing just how serious the slowdown issue is.  I didn't think much of the complaints before, but seeing it firsthand is scary.  I'm really hoping a solution is found at some point.

[Chocobo_Fan]

Well, the slowdown is a lot better than it used to be, so that's something.

[CraigStern]

The "Done" button is my nemesis.  I'll be undoing a long string of actions, just to accidentally click Done when it slides into the Undo spot.

You can Undo hitting the Done button.

[FreudianLisp]

Hey, I just bought this game today and near as I can tell, this is the unofficial "suggestions" thread. My entire history of this genre can be summed up with the words "Fire Emblem", so I hope it isn't some kind of sacrilegious for me to compare Telepath Tactics to that series.

I wanted to mention a couple of things that have me stumbling as a beginner in this game, to be taken either as suggestions or as requests for someone to point me in the right direction if they already exist and I missed them.

The biggest hurdle for me right now is with ease of access to information:

• Weapon durability is found only in the inventory and not during the attack action itself. With a lot of characters to keep track of, each with a couple of weapons, you end up navigating a lot of menus before every attack to ensure your weapons are okay.
• I haven't been able to figure out when an enemy is able to perform a counter attack, or even what range they have on their weapons
• I don't think it says anywhere what actions are free/minor/standard. Attacks tell you when they end the turn but pushes, laying traps, picking up items, using items, etc do not. Unless I had already learned otherwise, I found myself always assuming that the turn would end after doing anything, just to be safe. Similarly, it does not say what actions are undo-able.
• Selecting an enemy will show the squares they can move to, but not the squares they attack. Also, only one enemy is selectable at a time.
• Cannot easily compare two units together. Primarily this is a concern when trying to determine if an enemy unit has a good chance of hitting you. You can view your Hit% immediately when attempting an attack, but to see an enemy's Hit%, you need to open your stat screen and look at your Dodge% and then open the enemy stat screen and look at their Acc% and then do some math with those two values to determine the Hit%. A tedious task when there is a few enemies to check.
• There is no penalty for changing weapons mid-battle, but doing so is tedious to check which option is better. You need to choose attack, hover over target, check the stats, hit cancel, open inventory, select second weapon, select equip, press close, press attack, hover over target, and check stats again. That's 11 steps just to see your attack options on a single unit vs a single other unit.

I hope this doesn't sound overly critical, these are all quality of life things, but left me stumbling when trying to get in the flow of the game. I am really enjoying this game so far and wanted to post a couple of the things I was thinking about in my first few hours playing.

[bugfartboy]

• I haven't been able to figure out when an enemy is able to perform a counter attack, or even what range they have on their weapons

I can't speak for anything else, but right clicking on an enemy should bring up their info screen.  Mid-screen (ish) should be a "Counterattacks" stat.  If it isn't there, they aren't able to counter.  Otherwise, it should tell you the number of counters they have left as well as their maximum per turn.  Beyond that you'd need to dig into the campaign files to see all the details.

(This has given me an idea for a new side project.  If it ever comes to fruition, I'll share it with the forums.)

[FreudianLisp]

Mid-screen (ish) should be a "Counterattacks" stat.  If it isn't there, they aren't able to counter.  Otherwise, it should tell you the number of counters they have left as well as their maximum per turn.

Oh, interesting, I guess I missed that. Is this counterattack stat the same for the player controlled characters as well? Do Emma and Sabrina have a limited number of counterattacks?

[bugfartboy]

Yup!  If I remember correctly all characters are hard-limited to 4 counter attacks unless defined differently in their corresponding file.