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Is SCS useful for Siege of Dragonspear?


frostysh

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So, after the epic battle I have bought a BG:EE +DLC "SoD". I have never played in BG series without SCS - this is ma favorite mod. But I have tried to install SCS on SoD, and I have obtain a broken descriptions, broken parameters etc... Then I have tried to use "modemerge" stuff, - Scott Brook's modmerge, after installing only a core component, anything is looks fine (I will made a full installation when I will be not so sleepy as right now...).

But I have a questions:

 

--- I SCS mod making the same cool stuff in the SoD too? I mean, as I remembered this mod was for BG:EE, and BG2:EE only.

 

--- Will SCS give me same pleasure (endorphine narcotic stuff when your party defeating a crazy overpowered guy, such Aec'Letec on the ~10% hp, in the end of a battle.. ^^ ) on LoB difficulty, as it gave to me in the previous versions of the game? My char 17 level, divener, exported from BG2EE, Illithid city - you know, like in the "Butterfly Effect" film, because of interaction with a powerful Illithid-guy :p .

 

Thanx for the answers.

 

P.S. Also, if somebody liked black-on-white fonts - I have made a gui mod for SoD too.

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But SCS is not only AI - stuff, there is a lot of other important changes.

So will be not shining mages/priests in SoD, with all those "precast" stuff? Or a fire breath speaking reptile with an insane amount of HP? What about fixing overpowered spells - such as "Harm"? So the SoD will be without all those bonuses even if I will install SCS on my BG1:EE +SoD?

Well I do not know, if only Legacy of Bhaal difficulty will be enough ;P. I will think about that.

 

patrick.jpg

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SCS basically won't touch SoD, but I gather SoD AI is also pretty good.

As someone who is currently participating in the solo LoB/SCS challenge over at beamdog forums: no, it's not. It is pretty terrible. My main issue with it is that enemies will stalk invisible characters basically forever, always knowing where they are, even if they can't actually detect them.

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And do you think this is a SoD-AI bug, but not the SCS-SoD compability issue? And I don't think that such stalking is a very big problem :D .

 

I would happy to read LOB/Solo thread in beamdog forums, but I do not want to obtain a lot of spoils - and more important, the beamdog forum is looks horrible to me :D, eye-harming visual style if you want to read a lot of text. Gibberlings3 - is the best in this case, cool design!

 

Besides "Mandatory for SCS are the basic improved AI settings, better calls for help, prebuffing, improved creatures & chapter-end-fights - including Ascension for ToB. Everything else is optional." -

 

1) Is Improved creature including "Improved Dragons", "Fiends", etc?

 

2) Where Arrow of Dispelling delete? - AoD is the mega-killing machine, totally imbalanced.

 

3) Where spells improvements? Lol - "Harm" = Dragon with 1 Hp... this is ridiculous.

 

4) Where item removing? Imba-shield against Beholders,

 

5) Where improved Bosses?

 

6) Where other tactical challenges?

 

This is a low difficulty SCS mode :p

 

 

P.S. I have never understood this "solo" runs, what a nonsense, the BG is a party-game! The combination of your party members, it is a moment that making a game so cool. IMHO. For an example - I have a lot pleasure, when my avatar making successful "Otiluke Resilient Sphere" on party member with a 1-5% hp, it is looks like a "I saved your life!" from a hollywood movies :) And many-many other moments... The interaction of the chars in the party - is indistinguishable part of BG-series.

 

P.S.S. DavidW is like a political authority, if he made a post on this forum, this post will be in quotes everywhere, soon after :D. SCS is a super popular mod, indeed!

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Well, from what I understand this is not a bug, but an intended "feature". This stalking is a big problem if you try to scout the enemies beforehand, because they react not only to being attacked. I'll just repeat what I posted on the other forum: my invisible dragon disciple was walking in the underground river area. As soon as he got near a shrieker and their "huff and puff" animation started, all of the monsters nearby - who did not react to his presence before - started to follow him around and would forever on stick to his backside like glue.

 

This is not limited to SoD. Same thing happens in IWDEE and in Black Pits, apparently.

 

 

As for party vs solo, I don't think there is one 'right' way to play BG. I have played full party, small party and solo, and all of those playthroughs were fun.

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my invisible dragon disciple was walking in the underground river area. As soon as he got near a shrieker and their "huff and puff" animation started, all of the monsters nearby - who did not react to his presence before - started to follow him around and would forever on stick to his backside like glue.

 

As for party vs solo, I don't think there is one 'right' way to play BG. I have played full party, small party and solo, and all of those playthroughs were fun.

Lol - nice feature, a poor-poor invisibility users :D . I am joking, I have used "Improved Invisibility" many times too, by ma party. But as I remembered, many enemies just do not care about any invisibility - for an example, some summons and Dragons, and some Beholders.

About solo/party - "The eye of Beholder" it is :), from the frostysh' eye - solo sux.

 

Still I have not decided yet, to install SCS on SoD or not to install, hmm...

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Well, from what I understand this is not a bug, but an intended "feature". This stalking is a big problem if you try to scout the enemies beforehand, because they react not only to being attacked.

No, the endless stalking is a known bug and on my list of wanted fixes for the next patch. Enemies should wander around randomly if disturbed, but not stalk you.

 

This is not limited to SoD. Same thing happens in IWDEE and in Black Pits, apparently.

 

Can't comment on this, but for BP it sorta makes sense, I think. I played IWDEE a bit, but don't really remember such behavior? Could be vanilla scripting too.

 

So will be not shining mages/priests in SoD, with all those "precast" stuff?

Most of SoD's spellcasters do pre-buff.

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But SCS is not only AI - stuff, there is a lot of other important changes.

So will be not shining mages/priests in SoD, with all those "precast" stuff? Or a fire breath speaking reptile with an insane amount of HP? What about fixing overpowered spells - such as "Harm"? So the SoD will be without all those bonuses even if I will install SCS on my BG1:EE +SoD?

I can't speak for BGEE + SoD; but I've played EET with SCS - all SCS tweaks (such as Harm tweak etc.) can be installed normally. I don't think it's much work to tweak SoD enemies to get SCS scripting (afaik, and I may be wrong; it's just a matter of including few .bcs files in SCS code governing script assigning)

SoD AI is imo fine enough. You go invisible, enemies use spells to remove it. They use group buffing, and behave rather sensibly. It's not SCS (for good or bad) but it's a major improvement over usual BG2 AI.

 

 

P.S.

Invisibility in BG games is outright nonsense in it's implementation. Enemies (all of them, from dogs to beholders) should have a chance to remove it from you.

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Very helpful information guys! The problem is that no normal manual about interactions of SCS and SoD exist, as for an example the manual about BG1, BG2, TuTu, etc that DavidW made. And nobody wants to start a configured game, and then on the half-way to the finish realize that something is wrong :/.

 

So I need clarify some things, well DavidW said that SCS won't touch the SoD content, still:

 

1) If I will install SCS on BG1EE + SoD with help of modmerge, does it replace default SoD AI??? - if not, it is not a problem! I see a lot of good replies about SoD AI - so I hope it is fine

 

2) If I will install SCS on BG1EE + SoD with help of modmerge, does it makes a Spell-Tweaks from SCS working on SoD content?

 

3) Is there any other stuff that I should know before to start a game? Well, for an example - about if the new version of SCS will be released, need I to restart my game then?

 

4) How long SoD content to totally explored it, I mean every corner in every locations, ever possible side-quest (for an exception about evil quests)?

 

Thanx-thanx again.

 

P.S. +1 for user kreso' version of invisibility - imho the need a lot of levels of invisibility abilities and spells, and this levels maybe penetrated by different monster with a different probability, from different distances, depending on the wear and speed of invisible creature - for and example:

 

Beholder can penetrate any invisibility, except "Astral" with 100%.

 

Eye_of_beholder_Lo_TR_for_forum.jpg

 

Normal human npc can penetrate 1st level "Basic Camouflage" with ~50% from distance few fetes if invisible creature is standing still, and with 70% if running if in addition invisible creature holding a huge bag or a heavy armor - with 100%, 2nd level "Advanced Camouflage" - 25%, 40%, 90%.

The "Deafness" and "Blindness" spells, and similar abilities can drastically eradicate the ability to detect invisible creatures, etc, etc..

 

I hope you will get a point what I can try to say :) . Some of those stuff was in another RPG - like Morrowind.

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1) If I will install SCS on BG1EE + SoD with help of modmerge, does it replace default SoD AI??? - if not, it is not a problem! I see a lot of good replies about SoD AI - so I hope it is fine

 

2) If I will install SCS on BG1EE + SoD with help of modmerge, does it makes a Spell-Tweaks from SCS working on SoD content?

 

3) Is there any other stuff that I should know before to start a game? Well, for an example - about if the new version of SCS will be released, need I to restart my game then?

 

4) How long SoD content to totally explored it, I mean every corner in every locations, ever possible side-quest (for an exception about evil quests)?

 

Normal human npc can penetrate 1st level "Basic Camouflage" with ~50% from distance few fetes if invisible creature is standing still, and with 70% if running if in addition invisible creature holding a huge bag or a heavy armor - with 100%, 2nd level "Advanced Camouflage" - 25%, 40%, 90%.

The "Deafness" and "Blindness" spells, and similar abilities can drastically eradicate the ability to detect invisible creatures, etc, etc..

1) no, it won't

2) yes

3) you'll probably need to uninstall old SCS and install new; I doubt a new game will be required

4) cca 20-30 hours

 

Invisibility- I don't think this can be coded this way. I was thinking about a rather simple approach; so that chance to remove invisibility is dependent on INT score; while thieves could be made immune to that.

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At last I will go and install SCS and start a journey, perhaps even right now. :) .

 

Why INT - lol? With the same success you can use WISDOM (like a experience of detecting of invisible stuff), or CHARISMA (the invisible creature can be taunted by your charisma and lose concentration), DEXTERITY (you know ho to jump and doge, you can feel even a small breath etc.). Well I think developers guys can made such "coding" and make a normal invisibility.

Imho, BG series have a too little amount of parameters :(, will be nice if it may have PERCEPTION, AGILITY. etc...

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