Aliens the roguelike: introrun

[someone else]

Developer: http://alien.chaosforge.org/

Which of you poor sods didn't watch the movie Aliens?
I'll do a intro-run of this game; AliensRL is a tactical roguelike game, created in 7 days, inspired by the "Aliens" movie and the "Alien Breed: Tower Assault" computer game.

This roguelike comes with music and sound. the newer 0.8 version, only available in the developer forum but its suppose to be a secret. shhh, comes with the feature to save and load.

New game and it starts generating the 7 towers.

Scout is the easiest but I'm taking the kinda useless Heavy Weapons Specialist.

You start with untrained in all skills and it costs 800XP to upgrade heavyweapons to basic. As I'm a HW specialist I get a discount and can reach master level in HW. But HW comes into play late in the game so I'll get sidearms first and save the XP. Better weapon skills = more damage.

On with the epic plot:

Intro speech straight out of Alien Breed Tower Assault and yes that is the default character name.

The character sheet.
Missions is greyed out as side missions haven't been implemented yet.
So we start with 2 low armour-piercing 9mm weapons, a couple of hundred 9mm rounds and a few grenades.
This is a survival horror game so its all about resource conservation, aliens, like in the movie, are easily killed by your weapons but your ammo is ...not exactly scarce but aliens are legion.

We are at the cross junction of level 1 of the Civilian Tower, all towers have this cross design so you can easily divide each tower into 4 quadrants. Important as you will want to map which quadrant has the stairs and important items. Aliens and items remain where they are found, only aliens respawn.

First thing is to get more ammo so let's go north to the dreaded Storage Tower. Didn't see any aliens yet.

Storage is dark, you can only see 4 steps ahead of you but so do the aliens. As the name suggests this place is filled with items and there are not many aliens. I'm using the 9mm pistol to conserve ammo as the MP5 only shoots in bursts. I can pull it out in emergencies. Grenades are not much use here due to the poor visibility.

Alien spotted, a juvenile, the weakest of the lot. One interesting feature of the game is that your damage decreases with range so its a choice of waiting till they are closer before shooting to conserve your ammo and risk getting injured using more of your med packs. Since my vision is only 4 squares I shoot on sight.

A worker, they only go aggressive when you are 2 paces from them. They are the only aliens slower than you, do little damage, but are heavily armoured. Killing them are a waste of ammo so you should just evade them. If they start chasing you, you can lead them into rooms and trap them behind close doors. Aliens, other than the elites can't open doors.

Here we have a random spawn, introduced into the game to increase tension. Switching to MP5 in such situations may be a good idea, hunters are poorly armoured but they are fast. Switching weapons costs time so you have to take that into consideration.

Cleared the level 1 Storage Tower and these are the ammo I have scavenged, also gained enough XP to upgrade sidearms to advanced.
Exit west to Military Tower, that's where you will find better firepower(and tougher aliens).

Open a door and be greeted by a swarm. Thing is, opening and closing doors are free actions, the aliens won't react to you opening the door so you can close it and leave or prepare with the correct weapon.

I choose to grenade the crowd and managed to hurt myself. Good thing med packs are plentiful in this game. Its best to keep health above 70 and backtrack to cleared areas to pick up med packs when I'll running low, there isn't much alien respawn so its worth it.

Lookie, a combat shotgun. something for those 12g shells I'll picked up in Storage. But there are 5 aliens in the room.

Should I:
1) Shoot from the door so they queue up and can only attack me one at a time?
2) Use grenades? An incendiary grenade will wipe out all of them as they rush blindly through the flames.

3) Close the door, open it from another direction so only one can see me and attack me.

Pull back from the door before stepping into view giving me more distance for my trusty 9 millimeter.

Again.

And again.

This leaves the worker who didn't react to me as I rush in and claim my price, the combat shotgun. An excellent crowd control weapon, goes BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! and eveything dies in a cone in front of you.
Well everything except for those heavily armoured elites and workers.
You can only carry one sidearm/primary/heavy weapon. Weapons remain where you drop them and weapons are found everywhere so you can easily swap weapons to use different ammo(the key to ammo conservation).

Hmm, that blue thing on the bottom left is the stairs, go up? or clear the rest of the level 1 towers? C&C!

So ends this introduction. Hope this gets you interested in the coffee roguelike.
The developer is currently busy with DoomRL so it will take awhile before this gets updated.

remember to get the beta version from the forums

 

[getter77]

Thanks for the introplay! Be nifty to see how far along DoomRL and this one wind up when all is said and done.

 

[Castanova]

Good stuff, thanks. I've played DoomRL before but never really got into it.

 

[hicksman]

wow, very cool. I've never heard of this despite loving the franchise. I'm going to check this one out for sure.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

better than anything opsidian could have done

 

[Tails]

AliensRL is pretty good. To bad that Kornel is rarely working on new version.

 

[Elwro]

Great find!

 

[Overboard]

Nice, I might have to dig this up again. Oh and HW Specialist isn't useless, points-wise you do ok and the HWs come in very useful at the later stages.

 

[MLMarkland]

Awesome

 

[sheek]

The developer used to post here... a German guy I think?

Good game indeed.

 

[Tails]

The developer used to post here... a German guy I think?

Polish.

 

[Gragt]

Been playing it for a while now. It's not NetHack but it sure is fun.

 

[Hard Knox]

Rougelikes are really boring.

 

[Castanova]

Rougelikes are really boring.

:evil:

 

[sheek]

I found my first mission a lot tougher than you did. I was playing scout as well.

What happened was I got screwed in the 3rd tower when I ran out of ammo and couldn't find any more.

Didn't know about the respawns, it's useful to know, I wouldn't have spent as much time exhaustively exploring if I'd known.

 

[MLMarkland]

I'm really loving this one

 

[sheek]

So any tips?

I tried this again, this time avoiding all workers (luring them into rooms to be trapped even if it costs me some health), opening doors to see what's inside and whether it's worth fighting for, and using frag grenades on groups of 2+ aliens, pistols on aliens at any range and SMG bursts only for close combat.

Ammo is the problem again, I'm down to 5 rounds in my SMG and 1 frag grenade.

It started off OK, I picked up just a little more ammo than I used to clear a room. I found a flak suit (2 damage reduction), more health packs than I needed and frags grenades, the SMG and about 30-40 shotgun shells.

Then I went down to 20 9mm bullets to reload with, and I picked my rooms carefully, ignoring those that were too tough. 3 hunters popped out of nowhere and forced me to use my SMG a few times. I used up my incendiary grenade effectively killing 1 warrior and 3 juveniles.

But I have practically scouted out the entire first level. There is one large room left, which has three juveniles and a warrior in, and five clips that I can see (at least two of them 9 mm). There's another small room at the back of that one which I'm hoping has more. But I feel ~60 bullets (both weapons loaded 15 extra ammo) total for 4+ aliens (I can only see part of the room) might be cutting it a bit fine.

So I go down to another, easier room I'd left alone before, which had a couple of clips plus one frag grenade and three aliens in.

My early shots only graze them, and I take damage, and am forced to switch to the SMG. Both of the clips I had seen turn out to be more shotgun shells...

So now I am left with 5 bullets in the least effective gun, 2 frag grenades, and maximum health packs. I know there is that room with quite a few clips but a single burst of SMG is unlikely to take even a juvenile down.

Skills: Scout with Expert Side Arms skill.


So... ammo management? How do you do it? I've practically only used Side Arms at the maximum skill level possible, I can't imagine how it would even be possible to play the Marine or Heavy Weapons specialist.

Maybe I just got a bad map?

This was using the v0.8 beta

 

[someone else]

Funny, I thought I gave out enough tips to conserve ammo.
Firstly this game is designed to be predictable, success depends mostly on the player and not on the random number generator. Though it might be possible to really luck out and couldn't get a gyroscope or smartgun.
With the Scout I have 5000+ rounds of pulse rifle ammo before I started using it on level 5. I'll say the Scout is broken because with master sidearms you can kill even elites with your 9mm pistol, this means you can use the shotgun for a long time.

1)I almost never use MP5, I'll rather get hurt than waste ammo at the start. I also use burst weapons like MP5, pulse rifles and smartgun at closerange, like 1 or square right next to me so I kill with 1 burst. If alien is still alive I switch to sidearm and finish it with a shot or 2. Of course as the game gets longer and I have more ammo priority switch to not getting hurt badly.
2)First thing to do is to get a combat shotgun. They can easily be found in Military, Security and less often in the Main Tower level 1. You can always go up to level 2, its not much harder.
3)With your limited starting ammo, this could lead to your death if you run out of ammo before you find ia shotgun so I always clear storage tower first.
4)Max sidearms first, this means your primary weapons are weaker so why waste 9mm on the MP5 when you can use the pistol?
5)Closer range = more damage, shooting from 7+squares is a waste. Count the number of shots and start shooting from there, If you can survive 4 squares visibilty in storage you can hold your fire until 4 squares. I hardly follow this rule actually since I don't run out of ammo. I shoot the shotgun into the unknown or at barrels hoping to score a kill.
6)Use shotgun for crowds, pistol for singles and leftovers.
7)Juggle weapons, use the colt .44 until you run low on .44 then switch back to 9mm pistol. The same for your shotgun/pulse rifle.

8)Elites start turning up after awhile, 9mm and shotguns are ineffective though running through the magazine of the MP5 does work. Save Krag and incendiray grenades for them at the start. Eventually playerswill be forced to carry at least one weapon that can kill elites so this means the 9mm pistol/shotgun combo won't work. The Scout doesn't have this handicap but groups of elites will require more than the 9mm pistol.
9)Level 2 will have the pulse rifle, the standard weapon that kills elites. With good skills, a single burst at point blank range can kill an elite, the marine with master light weapons shine here.
10)Once you have high weapon skills you will notice you will be leaving extra ammo on the ground. Pulse rifle and Smartgun ammo is worth jotting down the location. So is the gyroscope, you need it to use heavy weapons.
11)Save Smartgun ammo for elites and aliens in single file. But priority is to save it for the queen and endgame run.
12)Armour is not so useful, I'll ditch it for heavy weapons when I have extra HW ammo.

13)Once you get higher up, lots of elites start appearing leading to more ammo shortages, this is when you should consider going after the queen, or max your skills first or climb to the top of Military Tower hoping to find the randomly spawned power armour which allows heavy weapons with the highest protection.
14)Remember to make a map of elevators, you will be running for level one after you killed the queen.
15)Grenades and grenade launchers are bugged and a miss may result in no damage from explosion. Grenade launchers explosion doesn't affect you.
16)I suspect that grenade launcher ammo takes up other ammo spawns, so it could be a contributing factor to ammo shortage as you go higher up.


Ammo shortage isn't that bad, esp with a Scout, there is enough ammo to kill everything in the game before the queen but your XP will be maxed way before that. You only need to kill the queen and escape which requires:

1)Clear and mapped path from the top to the bottom.
2)Smartgun & pulse rifle with as much ammo as possible.
3)A place to restock ammo & med kits on your way down. Believe me you will get hurt.
4)Some skill in weapons, smartgun does a lot of damage even with low skill.

You can win without doing the above but its easier and should be the goal to aim for.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

So anyone played the new version (8.2)?

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

It's pretty different. Technician can now use terminals, locate / repair elevators, put on lights, open/block security doors, reduce radiation (not sure how exactly that works). Great idea to change the play style.

There are also glass walls so you can check out some rooms before you enter and medic apparently also been upgraded not sure how yet