Official StrategyCore S2 Gameplay FAQ

[DoomMunky]

What's up there, homies (and homettes, perhaps)? I've been putting it off and putting it off, but now I need to get started on it: the official StrategyCore Silent Storm Gameplay FAQ. And I need your help.

 

The Gameplay FAQ is this: the most Frequently Asked Questions about playing the game of Silent Storm. Questions you had when you started playing and questions you had when you were finished playing. I'll be starting us off with some things I saw in an older FAQ around this site, but I need your help to get it big and helpful.

 

So please post below with the questions you have about the game.

Stuff like:

 

How do the skills work? How do you get better in skills?

 

Why is my high-level engineer so useless? Can he get better?

 

How does the experience system work?

 

Why do all my character heads in the editor look like freaks?

 

 

 

And so on...basically, stuff that you wished you could have read when you'd been playing the game for a couple of days. Stuff that'll help anyone out who needs a better understanding of the game, and how it's played. Hopefully we'll be able to add a Sentinels section on at the end (maybe a whole separate FAQ), but for now, let's keep the discussion confined to S2.

 

You can post your answers to the questions, too, but if you just want to throw your questions out there, I'm sure SOMEONE knows the answer.

 

This will all end up being a part of the site FAQ for Silent Storm, and full credit will go to those who provide great, helpful answers, so start asking questions now, and become a part of StrategyCore history!

 

 

By the way, the GAME FAQ (about the game itself, not the gamePLAY, can be found here: https://www.strategycore.co.uk/ss/pg/s2gamefaq

Edited September 8, 2005 by DoomMunky

[Slaughter]

Enemy turns are REALLY slow at times. Can I speed them up?

 

So my scout is good at hiding, but me stabbing an enemy turn after turn without him noticing is a bit off? Can I change it?

[DoomMunky]

Perfect! Thanks, Slaughter!

 

Another couple: Why is it so hard to sneak around as a Scout at early levels? Am I doing something wrong?

 

Do the enemies use grenades ever?

 

Why are the enemies so hard/easy? Can I change the difficulty?

[Pete]

Try this one: "Can S2 ever be completed on the hardest setting with no save option?"

 

Granted that one may be more of a debate. Did the 1.2 patch add a save option for the hard setting? I can't imagine ever doing Berger's factory without saving and coming out alive, but my brother is adamant that it can be done. He plays every game he's ever played on the hardest setting. Likes the challegne or something

[DoomMunky]

Huh! He likes the "crazy" setting! I don't think that it can be done, at least not by this monkey. I don't save that much, but I sure need to to beat some of those missions.

 

Is Berger's Factory the one with the steam press at the end, where you get shut in with the dude, or is it the one where you have to capture the guy out of his PK at the end, the one where you first see the PKs?

 

And no, the 1.2 patch doesn't add save games to anything; you've got to download one of the Save Mods from our File Archive to get save game functionality. That or enable the console and type "savexxxx", where xxxx is the name of the saved game.

[Pete]

Ah, not Berger's factory then. It's one with a factory witha load of civilians (who must all survive), a lot of explosive barrels, about 50 bad guys and when you get to the basement, four or five PK's. I dunno what it was called.

 

What I was on about with the save games bit was did it allow insane players on super hard setting to save - as the original game doesn't on that setting. Wasn't sure whether you understood me there

[KoMik]

Like Slaughter said that turns may take helluva lotta time so completing a wide mission without save possibility may end to "Dammit, my hero died! I just played this mission about 3-4 hours and now I have to start whole mission from begin" -frustration.

 

Hardcore. Don't be too hard on yourself

[Pete]

Well it's not me fortunately. It's my brother, so I'll let him have his fun

[DoomMunky]

Ah, not Berger's factory then. It's one with a factory witha  load of civilians (who must all survive), a lot of explosive barrels, about 50 bad guys and when you get to the basement, four or five PK's. I dunno what it was called.

Yeah, I dunno either, but I do remember that mission. I've heard a lot of people complaining about it, but I was lucky enough to get through that one on the first try on Medium Difficulty.

 

What I was on about with the save games bit was did it allow insane players on super hard setting to save - as the original game doesn't on that setting. Wasn't sure whether you understood me there

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You asked if the patch allowed saving on hard difficulty, and it does not. The only way to get it is to do what I said above. This is one of the single biggest problems with the original game, in my humble opinion, but luckily it's fixable with a simple patch! :mad:

 

Keep the questions coming!

[DoomMunky]

Here's some more questions for us all. Again, guys, if you have the answer to any of these, or even just a solution that worked FOR YOU, post it here and I'll work it into the FAQ. I'd really like this to be a group effort, not just me making shit up.

 

Okay, thought of another couple:

 

1) What is Familiarity for? How does it help the player, and what's the relation of the number to the benefit you gain from it?

 

2) Does shooting silenced weapons mean you will be totally undetected? What about knives or shuriken?

 

And the answer to 2): No, unfortunately, it does NOT mean you will remain undetected. Every time a hidden character does something to an enemy, there is a check of the hidden person's Hide skill against the enemy's Spot, and if your Hide is low, you gonna be in trouble! This is why it's always good to have some cover to duck behind when trying to accomplish stealth attacks: if the enemy notices you, you can always run for cover (and hope he doesn't have a high Interrupt skill level as well!)

 

3) Help! There's one last bad guy on this map and I can't find him!

 

4) And similar to number 3: Every time I open the door to get to the bad guy, he fills me full of lead! What do I do?

 

Share your tips and answers with the group, guys! Your Commander demands it! (c'mon, Pete, demand it! please?)

[DoomMunky]

Here's my attempt to answer one of Slaughter's questions:

 

So my scout is good at hiding, but me stabbing an enemy turn after turn without him noticing is a bit off? Can I change it?

 

Answer (as far as I know): Nope! Once you get really good at hiding, you can't get un-good. The enemies just aren't equipped to handle a freakin' ninja stealth bomber like a high-level Scout, and just tend to fall apart. It sure can get annoying to be able to waltz over the enemies like that, but that's the price you pay for perfection.

 

Unless, of course, someone knows how to go in and change the values, in-game, or by messing with .cfg files...? KoMik? You know how to do this?

[KoMik]

So my scout is good at hiding, but me stabbing an enemy turn after turn without him noticing is a bit off? Can I change it?

S2's "never ending backstabs" or "always throat cutted" game element is quite constant one but in Sentinels you have to finish the mob on first turn. S2 hardness lays in hearing enemies and in Sentinels mobs open their ears after the first hit, 'group-alarm' or smell of gunpowder. ?-mark in enemy icon mean AI is looking for ya.

 

To set hiding skill open console and write both commands:

UnitSetSkillMaxValue( unit, ST_STEALTH, value )

UnitSetSkill( unit, ST_STEALTH, value )

unit = If hero then "GetHero()" and "GroupGetUnit( GetParty(), '1-5' )" if some other party boy or girl

example: UnitSetSkillMaxValue( GroupGetUnit( GetParty(), 2 ), ST_STEALTH, 20 )

 

4) To get the mole from mole's hole have you DoomMy tested to set a grenade to door as mine and shoot it from shelter to get bigger door's hole and free view from further or different angles? Maybe your character will get hitted anyway when moving to mob's view because mob's good interrupt skill but now there is at least a chance to longer distances. Sometimes it's useful to punch holes to houses to find out who's hiding and who's not but that's not recomended when you are looking for V.I.P.s (Modder's thing: Destroyin' digital-houses which you have just builded is like living own childhood again with save possibility.)

[DoomMunky]

Wow, KoMik comes through again with a ton of sweet freakin' knowledge! Thanks, dude! I might have to use that in my older S2 game, because Toki is just freakin' unstoppable at level 9 or so...

 

Also, great idea with the 'mole in the hole'. I never thought of that, and I've been playing for a fair while now. Dammit. That's definitely going into the FAQ. Sweet.

[brandeburg]

hi doomunky & everyone else

 

3: Every time I open the door to get to the bad guy, he fills me full of lead! What do I do?

 

to see hiden people in room & to avoid blast fire from unexpected ennemy

_you can do a widder entrance as state by komik, but avoid to do it in main missions in hard level, cause you may detroy clues or kill important people. (it happened to me several time, so I had to reload at the start of mission when I unerstood I did not find the clues!!!)

_you can open a hole in walls or floor with rocket launcher or with Lmg full burst or 2 or 3 men with Smg, but be awarded to keep always at least a man with AP to shot in case of bad encounter after the hole is done! and it is safer for clues if you do it into the middle of the rooms'floors

_ you might pulverised a wall too with grenades, not elegant but funny.

 

In case of hiden people behind a garden's wall

do the same way hole, or better throw grenades above the wall ( koch manor, swiss mansion, german hannover area mansion...)

 

have fun guys

[DoomMunky]

  1) What is Familiarity for? How does it help the player, and what's the relation of the number to the benefit you gain from it?

 

Answer: As far as I can tell from searching this and the Nival forums, there are no hard numbers on what exactly Familiarity does. Everyone agrees that the higher the Familiarity, the better your character's performance with that weapon, but nobody seems to really know how or why. Guido from StrategyCore put it this way:

However, I'm still unsure how exactly fam. is gained. It seems to increase for each use of the 'fire' command rather than for the time spend firing the weapon. Rifles used with snap shots seem to become familiar very quick, while rifles used with snipe mode or careful shots are slower. MG's aren't the fastest either I think if you use them in long bursts. And of course remember that many characters have stuff like Increased Familiarity, Force of Habit and Faster Familiarization as early perks.

So familiarity is not something that is well-understood by any means. Even some of our more brilliant modders don't understand it, and there's certainly nothing about it in the manual or on the developers website.

 

When worrying about Familiarity, think of what LoTekk said over on the Nival forums: "[Y]ou don't actually suffer a penalty for having a familiarity level of zero. You simply get bonuses to accuracy when you get more familiar with a weapon." And then there's always me,with this piece of advice:

I'm usually just happy when it's there, and cry when it's not. Trading up to a 'better' weapon might not always be a good idea if your Familiarity is very high, but how you make this call is up to you. Maybe it's a Role-Playing choice for you (My characters tend to get attached to certain weapons, and go so far as to sleep with them)

[brandeburg]

Hi guys

how to upgrade an engineer to make him more efficient in S2/S3.

Just take all the grenades you can find, and trap as much as doors, windows, you may find, and disarm them. If you want to spare engineers tools, train your whole squad in firing at them!

[DoomMunky]

Good one, brandeburg. I like that your Main character is bald and evil looking. malinka can save ME from Thor's Hammer any day...

 

Anybody else got training tips for bored players? Maybe training that doesn't take a year and a half?

[brandeburg]

hi guys I am back after 2months, due to my computer failure ! (window crasch & ATI RADEON 9800 graphic card died!), I will use LINUx now!

 

About the engineer, train him to trap the ennemy: run to them when it 's your turn, put a mine beetwen the ennemy legs & run far away from the blast.

YOU DON 'T NEED TO BE HIDE_ I do not use any more the hiding capacity and I prefer to run under the fire and find cover: more fun!

Look at the capacities chart of my 6th level engineer I am curently playing!

 

[Slaughter]

Welcome back brandeburg! Glad to hear you have a PC up and running again. Does this mean you're playing Silent Storm on Linux? We'd love to hear how if so!

 

(oh, and I just deleted your other posts in this thread as they were double posts)

[brandeburg]

sorry,for the multi reply, I still have trouble: I worked on MAYA when it happened and I lost most of my work

some other tricks/

train your team all together in running and shooting after each encouter, it increase AP, % in firinrg but give to each of them a submachine gun so they will do improvment in burst at the same time!

train in hand to hand your scout &/or medic before shooting! by this way they will earn the benefit of weapons familiarity: for every 1point you get +1% of firing accuracy.

 

and be sure to destroy every lorry you find, as you may find special weapons in them :it seems that you need to do the same encounter at least 10 times to have a spacial weapons or their ammunitions!)

 

[brandeburg]

ABOUT THE SNIPER

train him in shooting & sniping as usual by killing a lot of ennemies to gain perks; take your squad leader and bring only the sniper around the random encounters.

take the perks that bring to the "increase of +25% to the sighting range"

As you reach this hability, you can now increase your sniping value more easily: the enhance of the firing sight distance allow him to shoot a living target without being noticed, and as the hit value is low you can aim the ennemi and firing a lot of bullets to him to increase your sniping % without killing him and without the ennemy notice it as the AI is poor!

After that, you got a real sniper, killing from distance

YOu might use the" headshoot should kill" to lower the chance to hit the head to make it more difficult.

Watch at the hole in the wall behind my target 12 or more missed shot

 

Another tip I found with more than 1600 hours of game , the best light machine gunner is the sniper, with the higher chance to hit at long range, and as he shots 3 bullets he got 3 chances to hit instead of one accurate shot with a scoped rifle!

[brandeburg]

some other tricks that may help, I hope so:

do not forget to nurse the civilians (I abused of firing at an hidden ennemy as she was behind!!)

make holes in walls with LMG to go inside:

use truncheon or machete instead of knives, as with them you can cut bush to find item or clear an area or destroy a door, a watch tower, or make an hole in a bricks walls= hit it 7 times, or a hole on a bridge concret!

you can "shot off" the lights before sending your troop!

GOOD GAME

[DoomMunky]

Hey, that's great! I didn't know you could shoot out the lights! Certainly adds to the atmosphere of sneakiness, but does it increase your Hide ability in the newly-unlit areas?

 

As for training: Yes. Use every opportunity to increase your skills. I like to roleplay it a bit, healing wounded civilians (increases gratitude, yes?) and destroying the hell out of anything the enemy could conceivably use as a resource in the future; goodbye trucks, buildings, and pretty much everything I can blow away!

[brandeburg]

happy that some of my tricks might be useful.

 

About the civilians:

take care when you are playing axe in germany as you may sometime be attack by "terrorists" hidding among neutral civilians: they attack you when one of your character is bare handed or with a knive and shows his back (I wrote it "terrorist" ). They are playing during the neutral/civilian turn (look the screen capture) and he or she are well armed. they do not have a red ennemy outliner or ennemy icon if you arev playing with Icon setting

In an old only a 16 level scout notice one of them as "A CIVILIAN WITH WEAPONS".

This time my 10 level Toky did not notice one of them.

They are always with deadly weapons! This time .45 colt and F1 grenade !

I am playing a lot to learn and understand the game to do a valuable Mod and using think like these hiddding "resistants", lower the armor point of streets ligths to make them more easy to destroy...

Got many other tricks to follow.

[DoomMunky]

Wait, are you saying they won't attack if you don't show your back, or have a big ol' weapon equipped? Has anybody else observed this action? I have run into the "Armed Civilians" that attack when one of their number is wounded, or after you pass a certain point in the mission (Sleepy English Town in Northern England), but never have I seen opportunistically aggressive civilians...

 

Yeah, brandeburg, keep those tips coming!