Coelocanth: Just thought I'd update my post
Here where I referenced the 'Average Joe' run. This was to see how Luck affected things (if at all). Well, I can tell you that it has a
huge effect on combat. I'm getting "Lucky +1 AP" or "Lucky Crit" or lucky miss (enemies missing me)
way more than with low luck characters. Oddly, even though I know Luck has no effect on loot (this was shown on the Wasteland forums where someone dug into the game code), this party is finding probably two or three times the amount of trinkets as well.
Anyway, aside from that, the Averages are doing really well. A bit more challenging in combat since they rarely have anyone other than Angela Deth act first, but it's a really fun run so far. I'm liking this party a lot. My three Rangers are Lucky the 'Face' (the higher Luck and Charisma character), Jo Average, and Jan Average. I picked up Rook, one of the 'filler' Rangers at the Citadel, and also have Pipezi, Angela, and Vulture's Cry to round out the party. Having a blast with these ones.
Oh, and I took no ranks in Leadership. Angela, Vulture's Cry, and Pipezi go Rogue quite often. I thought this would be very annoying, but most of the time they do well and it's sometimes quite amusing.
That sounds pretty good, and again reinforces my impression that the attributes are pretty well balanced in this game, certainly compared to many others. I'm fairly sure that luck affects safecracking failures. It just seems very weird to me that we often have to try 3 times and such on 60% safes, and more often than you'd expect are getting critical failures. Maybe confirmation bias is in play, but despite lots of points into these skills, we often have issues despite good odds (75-90%).
I have a low-luck party, and barely ever get critical success on safes or in combat, and very rarely get lucky AP, so luck definitely plays a part there.
This will be spoiler territory.
Spent all yesterday fiddling with Titan's Temple. Every outcome was bad in my book, so I kept searching for a less bad option. Ironically, I've now gone back to how I played it blind, which was [SPOILER] to side with the DBMs and deny them the nuke. But sadly I forgot to pick the toaster in the launch room in that play, so I'm retracing my steps for something like the fifth time :( Must admit it was funny to see the consequence of handing the nuke to the Monks, but I didn't want to continue with that result. Had hoped leaving the Monks in control would basically keep the situation as it was, but alas, that wasn't so :( But at least with the other nutters in charge, the valley is somewhat safe, so I assume there will be trade, even if the traders are more screwed than before.[/SPOILER]
The game feels a bit rough around the edges, particularly on this mission, and I've seen some minor bugs here and there, and dialogue options not firing despite clicking the keywords.
To comment on the lugging around bit again, I had to sell 500 bullets in Titan's Temple. They weigh too much, and we're picking them up everywhere anyway. Would probably be less of an issue if one of us used SMGs, but we're not proficient in it. Already have ~8000 scrap though, so it looks like money is a non-issue, and I've not picked up anything but weapons and (sometimes) ammo (and the odd trinket or 'white' item, whatever those may be for) for a long time now. Being such a loot whore, it's weird to leave almost everything behind.
Any clue what a metal bed post is for btw? With a few reloads and meticulous observation, I managed to sneak around in the underground without getting caught, and we found a metal bed post, what looked like a container like in the Citadel, but empty, and a container that couldn't be opened, but that was leaking probably radiation. Weird stuff. Tried to use the metal bed post on all kinds of objects, but no success so far. Another item to lug around, in the hope it will be useful at some point, along with an old condom, a clay wizard, and whatever else :D