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What skills and augmentations do you consider useless? To me demolitions is only useful, if you aren't good at spotting and disabling mines. But having it upgraded beyond trained it's a waste of skill points. And the same could be said about medicine, unless you are careless enough to get in firefights everytime.

Then there is the augmentations: I find EMP Shield pretty useless because only the spider bots do EMP damage but the rest of the enemies don't use any kind of EMP attacks, as far as i remember. And then there is Microfibral Muscle. It's counterpart, Combat Strength is much better for any player, be it combat oriented or stealth oriented. It's far better, be able to knock out an enemy with one strike than pushing and picking up boxes.

The microfibral muscle is very usefull. The player can lift barrels of explosives or gas and leave them in strategic places to eliminate various enemies without using much ammo.
Also can block the path with heavy objects and use them as shields.
What I don't like is that it doesn't improves the heavy weapon usage when activated.

I must admit, I actually prefer the way the Shifter mod changes the arm augmentations.
Firstly, it combines the Muscle and Combat Strength Aug into one (which makes more sense to me anyway) and changes Combat Strength to EMP Discharge which works the same way as it does in IW; the melee attack becomes an EMP attack, which is useful against bots. Another stealthy way of dealing with bots perhaps, if you can get close enough to them. Grenades are just so loud.

It's funny because there is always a debate on 'useless' augmentations and skills and the like, but I've never really considered many useless as such. Sure you only use a few of the augs a couple of times if you're lucky but I find it context based planning when deciding on what augmentations to use. I may get flamed for this but when deciding on initial skills before playing Liberty Island, I always upgrade computers and Swimming. Swimming I don't upgrade past trained mind but you need it at trained to get to that secret boat underneath the North Dock for the shotgun and weapon mods.*

*Also, a little trick to opening that boat hatch: The TNT crate on the dock near where the NSF guards were, you can actually use that to open the hatch. Just make sure it's floating over the hatch, get out of the water and shoot it. The explosion radius should destroy the hatch. Just in case no one else has tried that trick.
Make sure you talk to Filben first though.

You can just throw that explosive crate in then shoot it. I switch on the light first though so I know in which direction to throw it.

I talk to Filben after that with no problems. I agree with nerdenstein regarding skills and augs being context based. I also upgrade computer and swimming first, but also leave swimming at trained. I think the only aug I couldn't do without is the speed aug.

I have never used EMP Shield myself as you say, not really useful except for spiderbots. I have never really used Energy Shield either as I always have Regeneration to gain health when I need it quickly. Combat Strength I never really use either, as I prefer Microfibral Muscle and anyway, by the time I need melee attacks, I'll have the dragons tooth anyway, which doesn't really need any enhancing.

bobby 55 wrote:I talk to Filben after that with no problems.

He always goes into panic mode when I do it. Then I can't talk to him until he's done a lap of the island and come back.

nerdenstein wrote:

bobby 55 wrote:I talk to Filben after that with no problems.

He always goes into panic mode when I do it. Then I can't talk to him until he's done a lap of the island and come back.

Hahaha! I hate that when it happens, like Sandra and her dad in the 'Ton after shooting Jo-Jo.

The augs and skills thing I also think depends on what equipment you want to carry. I'd rather put put points into the Environment skill and have Thermoptic Armor then have the Cloak aug for example.

Cloak is tremendously expensive, to boot. Plus unless you're shockingly bad at stealth, it's not really needed.
NB: that's 'sneaking around' stealth: smacking people around while invisible is entertaining, but isn't exactly what I'd call 'stealth'...

I quite like radartrans, on the other hand, since you can pop it on and nip past cameras and turrets (which tend to have a more..focussed attention span) and then just pop it off again. Mind you, radar trans was one I installed in my first playthrough of DX, so it also gets nostalgia cred.

EMP shield is admittedly pretty useless in vanilla DX, since nobody carries EMP nades except you, and you're rarely going to go "BANZAAAIII" and throw an EMP into the middle of a mass of bots while simultaneously charging them with DTS at the ready (though if you did, it would be awesome).

Aqualung has been done to death (not least by me), so I'll leave that one. This time.

I also upgrade computer and swimming first, but also leave swimming at trained.

I upgrade Computer, Lockpicking and Medicine first and upgrade swimming a little later on when you need it more.

EMP Shield is bad enough considered on its own, but it also competes with Ballistic Protection, which is one of the better augs. The choice is basically a no-brainer. In my mod, I changed it to be passive (and require no energy) and protect against electrical damage a bit at high levels, just to give it something of a fighting chance.

The worst thing about Microfibral Muscle is that, if I remember correctly, there's not really any point to upgrading it. I think you can pick up pretty much anything you'd ever need to with only the first level. I think I changed that, and object weights, such that at least the first few levels have some benefit regarding objects you're likely to want to carry.

I have no idea how to salvage Aqualung. I just don't. If anyone can give me a suggestion, I'll love you forever, but I don't think the game has enough advantages to swimming for it to be very worthwhile, and when it does there are usually rebreathers floating around somewhere.

The first level of the vision aug (and by extension, the tech goggles) are basically entirely useless. All it does is produce a green overlay on the screen, enhancing the green component of all pixels while eliminating the rest. For example, anything purely red or blue (like blood) looks black instead. It makes some stuff look brighter, but not in a way that actually enhances clarity. Use it in a really dark place and you'll see what I mean, especially since it's an overlay applied after basic rendering, so you lose detail in dark places no matter what. You'd get better results adjusting your gamma settings, for serious. Unfortunately, I can't find a better way to implement it. I tried having a script change the ambient lighting in the level, but that doesn't really work and affects NPC vision as well. Taking suggestions regarding this too.

Run Silent is notorious for not being very good compared to Speed Enhancement, because Speed Enhancement works while you're crouched. It's still not as fast as silently running, but is certainly fast enough. I believe I changed Speed Enhancement to work a bit differently and either not affect your speed while crouched, or not affect it nearly as much.

Regarding Combat Strength and the nanosword: They are actually pretty useful in conjunction with each other, but not for the reason you'd think. With combat strength and good low-tech skill, you can smash open essentially anything in the game that can be smashed open. Doors, turrets, cameras, anything. It's pretty damn effective.


Of course, some augmentations are also far too good. Regeneration heals far too quickly (I lowered the rate significantly) while also giving you the ability to exchange bioelectrical energy for health (so repair bots effectively become medbots as well), for example.

I must give your mod a whirl with HDTP when it comes out G-Flex! Provided they're compatible of course.
Have you got a new version in the works?

Oh, there have been versions out for a long time now.

viewtopic.php?f=36&p=92053

I'm currently working on a minor revision that fixes a couple minor bugs, makes a couple small balance changes, and changes how heavy weapons slow you down (mostly to incorporate Microfibral Muscle into the calculation). I'm also investigating possible fixes for the night-vision aspect of the vision aug (level 1), but I don't count on myself having any way to actually fix it.

Human Renovation or Biomod, I cannot decide. I would pick Human Renovation for when HDTP is released but Biomod has mantling + some great initial shifter changes, it is such a tough choice.

Hey G-Flex, in the PS2 version the developers decided to have medkits heal 10 points at untrained (I cannot remember the value increase each upgrade, something like 20-40-80) which really added importance to the medicine skill. Please consider nerfing medkits alongside your regen aug nerfing

EDIT: Hmmn PS2 version doesn't have localised health system for the player, so the nerfing makes a ton of sense, but I still think 30 points in the PC version is a bit much at untrained. 20 or 25 would be great imo.

I could be being irrational here though, as those on their first playthrough need those 30 points, but for us vets medicine skill is useless.

EDIT: Human Renovation, I have decided:

"Key Features¶

•Implemented a vast number of bugfixes and other tweaks from Deus Ex 2.0 and Shifter, such as allowing unconscious NPCs to be killed, broken mission scripts, and a whole lot of other things.
•Many more old and new bugs have been fixed: Firing spread is now circular instead of square, aspect ratio problems (e.g. widescreen displays) are a thing of the past, problems with some augmentations have been fixed, some more mission script bugs are fixed as well, and a host of other bugs, large and small, have been effectively taken care of.
•Field of View angle is adjusted automatically for your aspect ratio, even for weapon scopes and binoculars (another previously unsolved problem). This should finally make the game fully widescreen-compatible.
•Enemies now scale in difficulty and alertness as you increase the difficulty level, and NPCs are a bit more difficult in general, especially unique ones like the various augmented ones.
•Some weapon balance and features have been improved (e.g. less powerful nanosword, better plasma weaponry, sabot slugs without pellet spread, and many other small changes).
•"Swimming" skill is now "Athletics" and affects your speed, jumping, and falling damage as well as swimming speed and oxygen capacity.
•A few augmentations have been rebalanced a bit, including a less-overpowered regeneration augmentation, speed aug that doesn't work as well when crouched, improved spy drone costs, an always-active EMP Shield, and slightly better Microfibral Muscle.
•Better and more realistic bullet/projectile spread from weapons like the shotguns and plasma rifle.
•New and better laser sight mechanic, improving upon Shifter's model.
•HDTP compatibility.
•Many other fixes and tweaks; see the readme file for more information, available as a standalone download, in the downloadable mod package, and in the source."

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