Anyone know what xxx.uc files needs to be tweaked where for this time to be shortened?

I would be a lot more willing to tranq the guys if they would drop in less than about 15 seconds. As it is, I often see no way to avoid the old reliable and fast bullet to head solution.

It's a one-hit-anywhere-and-face-on-the-ground weapon, so I think it works as intended.

The tranq dart isn't exactly a stealth attack, as much as it is a non-lethal attack. It gives them enough time to alert people and sound an alarm... which can suck because some alarm systems activate bots. Basically, the game kinda forces you into close combat for stealth & non-lethal, and this is rightly so, because it is meant to be the most difficult. Otherwise, stealth & non-lethal would be the most convenient method of play. You would shoot people, and drop them silently from a distance the whole way.

You can also use gas grenades and take them out immidietly.

Or shoot them in the back from point blank range, that'd do it too (yes, with a tranq dart).

Bear in mind that like VectorM says, it's a one-hit KO on any normal trooper, even if you hit them in the leg/arm, and generally the damage interval is just frequent enough to prevent them setting off the alarm (they keep trying, but the tick on the damage kicks in just before they finish the anim). Also, it's non-lethal, something DX makes a reasonably big deal out of (at least initially), so the reason you'd be using it would be because: non lethal. If all you want to do was kill someone at range silently, then stealth pistol or silenced sniper would be vastly better choices.

I forget how the damage per tick is decided for tranqs (I don't THINK it's hardcoded), but if it's based on the projectile's base damage itself, just change the damage for dartpoison.uc

"I forget how the damage per tick is decided for tranqs (I don't THINK it's hardcoded), but if it's based on the projectile's base damage itself, just change the damage for dartpoison.uc"

Hmm, interesting idea. I was looking for something like maybe stunTime. I would think increasing the damage for dartpoison.uc would change the hit point damage not the speed of the stun effect setting in. But, of course, I don't know and will do some experimenting.

As a newbie player, non-lethal requires stealth, but then having slowly stealthed into mini-Xbow range and sunk a dart in my target, it is very irritating for him to kill me. The darts seem to take about 15 - 20 seconds to drop the target and I'm just seeking to shorten that time. All part of 'tweaking' to game to suit my ideas about how it should be.

It's 16 seconds of damage, with damage applied 8 times, once every two seconds.
Doubling the damage would halve the time, since it's not like they're going to continue walking around with zero health. There's no effective difference between them taking 8 damage once a second or 16 damage once every two seconds.

The damage tick is hard coded, so not a simple defaultproperties change, but if you really wanted to alter it then updatepoison() in scriptedpawn is where you'd go. Me, I'd make the tranq darts more damaging, personally (simply because it's easier).

Incidentally, things to remember about DX: the AI is fuckstupid, so you really don't need to sneak that much. If you're starting outside of minicrossbow range, you're really going to have to make an effort to be spotted. Also, they can't hit a barn door at that range, so you could basically walk up and fire at them, then just run backwards. You'd have to be pretty unlucky to get taken down.

Finally, remember the minicrossbow is a projectile weapon, which means that unlike bullet weapons (which just trace an instant line to the target) it's effective far beyond its actual 'range': if you raise your aimpoint, you can reach a lot further (and of course, it's poison, so you basically just need to hit enemies...somewhere -headshots are not needed here).

I'm doing a non-lethal TNM playthrough on realistic, and it is pretty fricken hard. I'm actually having to -buy- stuff from Raving's this time around. For instance, you have to knock out everyone if you want to get Silver Dragon out non-lethally. (I wish I would have remembered Raving had the Stun Gloves, then I would have simply dumped all of my skill points into fists in the beginning, and this sh-- woulda been easy).

Oh, and lol when you flatter Jonas and he offers you an aug upgrade, I thought, "I wonder what he says if your inventory is full, because it is such a spur of the moment thing." So I tried it, and he got pissed!! lol. the surprises, the surprises.

Ah yes, the joys of having to write specific dialogue for the player having a full inventory, and then accounting for it when the conversation restarts next time.

It makes for a better game, but it's not a lot of fun to have to write 50 different such exchanges. Very glad you appreciated it though

DDL this is exactly what I was looking for - thx!

Since both the Traq Dart and the Prod seem to 'stun' their target, not kill them; I was looking for something in the .uc files that would reflect a 'stun' rather than just hit points. Since the Prod has a stun value, I was thinking that the hit points listed under the Traq Dart referred to the minor damage caused by getting stuck with the dart, not the major affect of the stunning.

Now I know where to start tweaking to see what I can do.

I figured you guys would have coded up something where it drops on the floor instead of having to bother with that. It is pretty tacky to do that, but, ya know, that's an easy alternative.

Did we ever strike you as the sort of developer who would opt for the easy alternative?

I think a few of the conversations do just drop shit on the floor if you don't have space, sometimes it's because we forgot to account for it before the dialogue was recorded, other times it's just because it would've introduced scripting problems. Getting the firestaff back from your pilot at the start of ABI is a good example - we really needed to get rid of that helicopter, we couldn't just have it sitting there until you came back to pick up the staff.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That dialog was pretty funny, too. In fact, I was trying to find it, but it is so difficult to find a particular conversation in your SDK. There seems to be multiple versions of your conversation files.

Ehm, no?
Atleast I had no issues finding stuff, not recall any double materials in the SDK.

Yeah, in fact, I cannot find that particular conversation. There are two folders. TNMConvos 1 and 2, not sure why. I'm guessing the mission involved is 22, but there are 3 of them. Kevo or Kevo_Copter is the convo owner. I'm sure it is in there, but it is exemplary of the difficulty of finding a particular convo in TNM. Not that it matters, in any way, but just something I noticed when I'm curious about how something was done.