[Attention!]Feedback on Hero difficulty

[Nomad]

2 Attempts on Elena recruitment resulted in two fails.

Attempt to recruit Ray (I've given up trying to get Elena).
Mafia guy kicked Ray for 20 health (not a crit) on the first round.
Ray hit the Mafia guy back for 9.
Ray has 58 Max Health.
Mafia guy has 80.

So... they have 50, 64 and 80 health versus my 62 and Ray's 58.
The second round. Mafia guy hits for another 20 and then his ally hits Ray for 15 more. Ray has 3 health at the end of the second round. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do to be able to take these guys on.
My pistol shot in round 2 did a grand total of 7 damage and I had Ray use all his AP to run screaming. He died as soon as it was their turn.

I can't recruit anyone at this difficulty level. I don't think it's my tactics. I think it's the math.

Edit:
Using the Toggle City Info button to find Emila.

Survivalists are hitting us from across the map for 14 or 15.
Emilia gets a crit on a Survivalist that has closed the distance (all of the other three are staying at the back). She crit him for 14. She hits normally for 9.
She's hit for another 15.9 and spends her turn using 2 medpacks.
I'm firing twice a turn with the pistol using the aimed/normal shot (as opposed to snap shot). The last three turns (6 shots) have all been misses (meh, RNG). I have a 38% chance to hit.
I have a 23% chance to hit the guys at the back.

So, ignoring my bad luck, do the math. Assuming the guys at the back have a 20% chance to hit and the guy that's closer has a 33% chance to hit.
The guys at the back hit every 5 shots. There are three of them. That means that after 5 turns they can reasonably expect to have 3 hits. The guy halfway down hits every third turn. They hit for 14-15 each.

Because it all divides nicely... after 15 turns... The guys at the back have hit roughly 9 times and the guy half way down has hit 5 times.
So... out of 15 turns, we can expect around 14 hits.

Assume everyone misses on the first round... we can reasonably expect an average of 1 hit a round for the next 14 rounds at 14-15 damage each.

Three hits will drop Emilia as she has 42 health at full (she does have medpacks, though they are a limited supply). She heals for 9 because I gave her the Read The Label Perk.
They have high 50's to 64 health.

lol... Emilia isn't down.... because now I'm on 1 health. I had another round of not hitting... so I don't know what damage I'm doing... but Emilia is hitting consistently for 9.
I heal for 7.7, so after two medpacks, I counteract one hit.
I crit the middle guy for 11 and he's gone down. Now I have to decide whether to charge the guns down the back because I'm low on ammo. I run over to full cover behind the building. Three shoot at me. One hits. I try to get Emilia to come over with her last heal kit. I shoot at them and miss twice. The three of them shoot back and drop me before Emilia gets to me. Then Emilia gets hit because I'm not a target.
Emilia gets behind the building to heal herself. The three guys move up, close, and one kicks her twice for 13.9 and then the next guy kicks her for more and she's down.

Summary:
I don't think I can recruit anyone at the Hero difficulty.
I'm thinking that hard games just aren't my thing.

(it's 4:15am here... so maybe it's just because I'm tired)

[ushas]

Just in case any of the following would help:
Play hide and seek. Don't give them any opportunity to hit you if possible. On that map with Ray it's quite viable with small buildings - shoot and then run around the corner in the same turn. Till character system is balanced a good speed changes everything (Fleetness min 7, Toughness min 4, Athletic perk). Shoot down first the ones with pistols and then take any dropped bullets if you're concerned about enough ammunition.

Btw. some hp bloat there. Though I was also having ~50hp already around 4/5 lvl.

The thing is +-20 HP of enemies doesn't matter a lot if they have the same AI. It just drags the battle. Limited resources on the other hand...

Edit: Didn't read you were after Emilia, sorry. Yeah that map is tricky isn't it? I would bring Sam with smoke and fire grenades, and maybe after he leveled some?

[Daithi]

I have to confess, I haven't played much on the hardest difficulty so my guesstimate on skill/stat buffs seems to have overshot the mark. Will review.

[Daithi]

They do level up really fast on Hero, possibly too fast. I'll do my testing in hero on this update.

[Nomad]

Some additional info.
I was level 3 when I did the first Elena mission and then level 4 when I tried again.
I was only doing Cultists in Danger level 1 areas to build up and scavenge enough to buy or loot bullets and medpacks.

By Ray I was level 5 and had a fully upgraded vest but still the starting handgun as I bought the vest components in dribs and drabs and I didn't find or buy a better gun (due to lack of funds). Ray went down in two turns anyway, so my gear isn't really an issue there.

I have 10 Fleetness, AP Bank and Althetics to give me a massive amount of AP (which I REALLY needed).
Getting that Fleetness was obviously at the expense of the other stats.

[Daithi]

Cheers. Will try hardest difficulty this time around, and do some basic tweaking on it. What is the primary cause for low cash? You do start with less, but guessing not being able to tackle survivalists so you can get better gear to sell is a factor. Scarcity would be good in Hero, but it sounds like it's too short on cash.

I think dropping the enemy level up rate would be a good starting point. Going from hard boiled to hero makes them level 50% faster.

[Nomad]

For the most part, I liked the lack of cash.
It did wear on me a bit when I completely failed to succeed in getting any loot at the end using Bypass.
As I was fighting cultists and it took so long to wear them down, they used all their medpacks, so there was no loot to be had from the combat.

In instances like that, the money drops from dropping people are a godsend.
Not being game to try Survivalists or Mafia really makes a difference to loot.

I honestly thought the lack of loot I was getting was a difficulty setting... but I realise it's not. In a normal game I'll take on all the gangs at level 1 danger.

I don't think it's too short on cash once the fights are doable.
Considering how hard they were hitting, how regularly they were hitting and how much health they had, I'm pretty sure they were out-levelling me quite significantly.

[Nomad]

So... for the new system of giving Perks, skill points and Stats...

A suggestion:

• Soft Boiled - Every even level gain a Stat point, every odd level gain skill points, every third level gain a Perk.
• Vigilante - Every level gain one of the three.
• Hard Boiled - Every 4th level get no gain (as though it's cycling 4 options and one option is nothing).
• Hero - Only get Skill Points, Stats and Perks each second level. Every even level it gives the next one. Eg: Level 2 gain 1 Stat, Level 4 gain skill points, Level 6 gain 1 skill points, Level 8 gain 1 Stat, etc.

Just throwing ideas around.

[Daithi]

Will keep it in mind, cheers!

[Nomad]

That was a thought on how to increase difficulty without simply resorting to having the enemies bullet sponges that hit like tanks. =)